http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/italys-solar-lead

has had a bit to say for himself lately, both in the form of his free shot in the comments thread of his Climate Spectator article, and in a couple of comments in discussion threads around the pro-nuke blogosphere, here,

http://channellingthestrongforce.blogspot.com/2010/08/censorship-raises-its-ugly-boot-on.html

and here:

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/italian-solar-guru-calls-townhall-hilarious-amusing-bring-it-on/

Your posts are excellent. I hope you can put them together as a series of short essays an put them in an article on BNC so we can always find them when we need to. They get lost in comments thread, especially when the thread runs to 558 comments so far as this one has.

It is interesting that this is another example of how far they had to go to get the figures they .wanted.

In SA both Federal Energy Minister Ferguson and Premier Rann confidently predicted around 2007 that HDR granite geothermal would soon provide baseload power. Now ‘wet’ sedimentary geothermal near Penola in the State’s south east is all the go. Those gents should note that SA probably has more uranium than Kazakhstan which is currently making a motza.

My comment:

Geothermal, chasing another pipe dream?- edit
Submitted by Peter Lang on Wed, 2010-08-11 13:23.
Geotherma hot dry rock (HDR) and hot fractured rock (HFR) is quite different to geothermal in volcanic areas. Australia does not have volcanic sites like Iceland, Italy, USA, New Zealand and many Pacific rim countries. So we are trying to make HDR and HFR work.

No country has succeeded with HDR or HFR yet after nearly 40 years of research, development and demonstration. The problem is not creating cracks in the rock. The problem is making fractures with equal appeture over the whole fracture surface and maintaining that for 30 years. It is not possible. The water finds the easiest path between the injection and production boreholes, instead of flowing over all the fracture surfaces. So the water runs in ‘channels’. So it cannot extract heat from the whole fracture surface. So altough there is plenty of heat in the rocks, it is diffuse, like sun light and cannot be easily extracted. There is an analogy with solar energy. The sun has plenty of energy, it is the collection of it that is the problem. The same is true with HDR and HFR geothermal.

http://geoheat.oit.edu/bulletin/bull22-4/art4.pdf

Right now, they should be positively encouraged to do two things:

(i) apply a little more critical analysis in their coverage of renewable technologies, which almost no mainstream coverage is doing

(ii) cover nuclear technology in an impartial way, on an equal footing with renewables

The former would put renewable energy in a proper context, the latter would help to normalize discussion of nuclear power as a greenhouse response.

There’s a limit to what can be expected on nuclear coverage for an Australian energy news website. But CS has an opportunity to provide the kind of analysis and coverage we would like to see. They won’t do this from a position of defensiveness, so I think its important to offer commentary in a tone that does not force them to that posture. The facts and numbers are on our side, there’s not really much we need to do other than encourage quality journalism to bring them out.

The ZCA report states:

page 71

Heating loads currently delivered by natural gas and other fossil fuels can be delivered by renewable electricity, while solar thermal co-generation can provide both electricity and direct heat, saving on costs significantly.”

For each gas application there is an available electrical substitute. Electrical heating methods have advantages over other forms of chemical combustion in regards to: precise control over the temperature, rapid provision of heat energy, and ability to achieve temperatures not achievable through combustion.

The ZCA report aims to convert all fuels to electric, however it neglects to discuss the implications for peak electrical demand and other issues including the significant cost advantage of gas over electricity in Victoria, and the costs in proposed conversions. Taking the case of Victoria due to its widespread availability of reticulated natural gas and significant winter heating demand, the hourly peak demand is 82 TJ/hour, which equates to 23 GW continuous over one hour. Peak demand occurs during the cooler months of June through September, and Melbourne makes up typically 70% of this demand.

http://www.aemo.com.au/planning/0400-0003.pdf
http://www.aemo.com.au/planning/0400-0012.pdf

The instantaneous demand will be higher than the hourly peak, but the AEMO report does not provide finer resolution because natural gas pipelines act as a short-term buffer. For comparison the Victorian peak summer electricity demand is 10.6 GW and winter peak demand is 8 GW, suggesting that there is not a significant headroom to enlarge winter electrical demand.

As discussed in an earlier post (http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/07/14/zca2020/#comment-87928), the portion of the demand that is converted to electric heat pump for space and water heating will incur an energy saving of typically 60 to 70% due to the higher COP of heat pumps versus gas furnaces. Around 7% of annual consumption is due to gas power generation, with 4% of peak demand attributed to gas power generation. Industrial processes that are converted to electric would be expected to derive an estimated 20% energy reduction due to the higher end-use efficiency of resistance and induction heating versus gas combustion. Industrial processes are not generally suitable for conversion to heat pumps due to the higher temperatures required, although in some limited cases, high-temperature heat pumps may be suitable, in for example, some boiler applications.

Depending on specific user tariffs, consumers will typically pay between 3 and 4 times more per unit of energy for electricity compared to gas. In applications, such as heat pumps, which derive a significantly higher end-use efficiency, the additional costs are largely offset, and may even work out slightly more cost effective if the highest efficiency heat pumps are utilized. On the other hand, conversions with lower efficiency gains, such as a switch to resistance heating will incur both energy, and peak usage cost increases. The report makes the valid point that co-generation offers opportunities for reduced energy use, but strangely, seems to exclude its use with natural gas, which is where its obvious strength lies, favouring its use with solar applications.

Many small enterprises that currently use natural gas combustion processes may also incur the installation cost of a local transformer to supply the additional load. The report does not address a myriad of other issues such as the widespread use of natural gas boilers in large HVAC applications, and the non-trivial task of replacing these in high-rise buildings.

The ZCA report appears to have addressed aggregate, average, energy consumption with a number of assumed efficiency savings, without consideration of peak loads and the practical consequences of shifting natural gas loads to electric. The mind can only boggle at the over-build required for solar-based generation infrastructure trying to supply a dramatically higher demand in winter, and it is left to others to consider doing the calculation.

Businesses, both small, and large, are unlikely to look favourably on needing to retrofit or change-over natural gas processes with electric, incur potential additional costs for the installation of a local transformer, and pay 3 to 4 times more for energy costs, assuming that the network is capable of reliably supplying the power. The ZCA report seems at odds with mainstream opinion regarding Australia’s substantial indigenous natural gas resource, which is seen as a significant asset in the context of an (eventual) carbon price. As discussed in an earlier post, it may be sensible to implement policies encouraging the conversion from natural gas to electric given the availability of low emission generation in the long term, however it is clear that current natural gas loads, and dramatically higher costs, preclude a sensible discussion about conversion in the short to medium term.

It can then be used to convert between thermal and electrical energy units: 0.324 KW.h(el) = 1 KW.h(th)
It is sometimes used as the inverse, as in ISA:
1/0.324 = 3.10

It changes as the energy mix changes and as the efficiencies change.

http://channellingthestrongforce.blogspot.com/2010/08/censorship-raises-its-ugly-boot-on.html

Sophie,

Your sentence diisplays unbelieveable bias:

“John and Peter you have both had a very good run in Climate Spectator’s comments section, unmoderated until this point. But there are limits, …”

You’ve allowed the most disgusting abuse to continue unabated on the ’2020 Vision’ thread, presumably because it aligns with your beliefs, and yet decide to delete a perfecty reasonable post by a highly intelligent and highly credentialled person, John Morgan.

Climate Spectator is displaying a high level of pro renewable energy bias. This is not about addressing climate change. It is about propogating a belief.

Sophie,

Thank you for the explanation. However, I am very surprised that Climate Spectator allowed the highly derogatory comments by Jess Wayward to remain on this “2020 Vision thread”.
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/2020-vision

I hope you won’t go an delete them now because the history sholuld remain, but I point out that there is bias in what you decide is OK to allow and what is not. Your editorial policy looks strongly biased in favour of renewable energy rather than clean energy.

I’ve just posted this:

Why is the comment by John Morgan being deleted. I can’t see anything offensive about it at all. There is mild criticism of journalits that dont present balanced views and dont’ do proper investigative journalism. But surely, removing valid criticism of biased journalism consistent with the criticism joutrnalists dish out all the time, isn’t it? And journailst ar ethe first to complain about censorship.

Poor form, Climate Spectator.

If electric cars were to catch on, the load on the street-level/sub-station grid infrastructure will be severely overloaded unless smart meters are used, and who wants to wait for the meter to say you can charge now and start driving in 8 hours’ time ?
This is probably one of the biggest myths about electric vehicles. IF all vehicles in Australia( 15M) were PHEV’s and ALL requiring a FULL charge EVERY day would need 120GWh , 17% more than the 700GWh daily consumption.
Most of this would be between 10pm and 6am when really all vehicles are parked and demand is 15GW lower than peak day-time present demand.

Changing from incandescent to compact fluoro would save you (60 – 11) = 49 W.h per standard bulb per hour, so you would need to be burning 45 bulbs for 4 hours/day/car for that to work out.
Office lights are usually on for 10h/day and few drivers would need a full re-charge, in fact most wouldn’t need any re-charge( those traveling less than 60km round trip), and some would travel by mass-transit or car-pool but lets say 1KWh/employee/day. That’s 2 incandescent bulbs replaced/ employee ( 50Wx10hx2=1Kwh).

No doubt knowing the real figures wouldn’t actually stop the wasteful Australian car driver from buying an EV, but we are up against limits here and governments have to “keep the lights on”, and the air-con, and the cars. They will end up not retiring the coal-fired power stations because they can’t let people sit in the dark.
I hope I have shown this to be an irrational fear, but when oil runs out, lets hope we have sufficient nuclear and renewable electricity, unless you were thinking we will be driving nuclear powered vehicles.

I reposted your comment at Climate Spectator:
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/italys-solar-lead#comment-995

Here is what you said, in case it gets “lost” again.

Reporting on renewable energy
Submitted by John Morgan on Mon, 2010-08-09 22:13.

“There is however a lot of coverage of CSP and investment appears to be expanding. Is it all wrong?”</i? [quote from comment by Joe Dortch]

In my opinion, yes, mostly.

When I read the sorts of articles like this one above, it reminds me a very great deal of a particular sort of science journalism that especially infects medical science.

The sort of article where some scientist is doing some worthwhile basic research on, say, vascularization, but the reporter feels obliged to tell us how it will lead to a cure for cancer. You know what I'm talking about – pick up any issue of New Scientist. The style is marked by breathless excitement and overeaching. This style seems to be a journalistic imperative to sell the story to the reader. That appears to be exactly what is going on with the reporting on alternative energy technologies.

What is lacking is a critical analysis of the technologies or projects. One that gives perspective and context, and is honest about the economics, and the rocky road to development to utility scale. I could rewrite the headline for just about every article on Climate Spectator as " Not Yet Viable”, without changing the text. But that’s not going to do much for the readership.

As to the investment, certainly, none of the projects in the listing you cited are commercial, in the sense that their investment is being paid off by sale of electricity at market rates. So what’s going on? They are either R&D facilities, like the one in the article above, or demonstration projects, mandated by a policy choice made independent of economic viability, or subsidy chasers. Nothing wrong with an engineering company making a business on these contracts, and there is bound to be good money in it for a while. But as a solution to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to zero, then providing the energy for further carbon drawdown, they won’t get us there. They won’t provide power with the reliability necessary to displace fossil fuels from the grid. So what are they for, really?

China has made quite a commitment, as you say. But I think this is mostly due to their belief that this constitutes a market opportunity, not because it will provide useful power. They are serving their energy needs by a big rollout of nuclear power, and a huge rollout of new coal power.

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I get 2.7 GW.years(th) as the “up front energy cost” before any electricity can be generated.

That sounds about right, as ISA’s default plant is about the dimensions/material costs of a typical Gen II+ design like Sizewell B (or an EPR), not an AP1000. So, as you correctly note, that’s about 10 months of operation for energy payback. For an AP1000, it would be more like half that or less, i.e. perhaps 3-5 months. This is trivial.

Metal-fuelled fast reactors and LFTRs are ideal for load matching — it happens as an inherent feedback in both designs (in the IFR exemplar, the EBR-II, this natural load-following ability was demonstrated during its years of operation). Dave, the problems you are fretting about don’t need to apply for nuclear — it can be used to completely replace our FF infrastructure with short energy payback times.