Solar Power for the ACT?

peterh said :

questions I have always thought about:
is there any way to dump power from the grid into some sort of containment for future use? (safely)

Some relevant information on the problems of integrating green energy systems into the existing grid:Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits

Storage technologies: Pumped Storage Hydro

A good overview:Solar Thermal Energy

why are PV cells more prevalent than solar thermal?

Scale – solar thermal works best on large scale.

peterh said :

um, what about a battery of batteries?

wouldn’t they be able to store power at each individual house for evening consumption?

Well, size would be an issue for a start. You don’t just need to store power to get you through the night but also the possibility of a week of rain (remember those – kids these days wouldn’t know just how slow a wet week was!). We are talking a sizeable quantity of batteries here. There there is the problem of toxic materials – lead, cadmium, lithium take your pick. And would you really trust a percentage of the population to safely store a significant quantity of energy inside there house?

Gungahlin Al said :

For Pete’s sake Deano – you aren’t serious about those “calculations” are you??

1. The discussion for the power station is about solar thermal not PV. (and solar thermal can store heat for night-time generation BTW)

I was commenting in respect of the person advocating the supply of PV to individual houses.

Batteries aren’t yet viable on this scale, and come with their own environmental problems in terms of both manufacture and disposal.

nathan said :

I grew up with solar power – batteries are expensive, bulky, maintenance-intensive and less efficient than using the power immediately, i.e. feeding it into the grid.

the newer batteries (of similar type to the hybrid batteries in cars) are less maintenance intensive, and more efficient. but the big stumbling block is the cost. until they are cheap to manufacture, we won’t see them as a viable solution.

questions I have always thought about:
is there any way to dump power from the grid into some sort of containment for future use? (safely)

what happens when we can harness lightning – and gain thousands of KW from one strike?

why are PV cells more prevalent than solar thermal?

I grew up with solar power – batteries are expensive, bulky, maintenance-intensive and less efficient than using the power immediately, i.e. feeding it into the grid.

Deano said :

tortfeaser said :

A dude was on 666 this morning, pushing photo voltaics. Mentioned that $140mil could buy PV for 25,000 houses at 2MW each house. Combined with solar hot water, this would be sufficient to supply that house’s needs. Much better value, no loss of land for other productive uses, greater choice for individuals in sourcing their power.

I’m loath to parrot the dude off the radio and can’t rebut the figures, but alternatives need to be considered.

The dude has no idea about how electricity supplies work. Putting PV on houses would create a system where the peak generating capacity is in the middle of the day (when people aren’t home) and the peak loads are in the evenings. You can’t generate electricity for use later on. Electricity that isn’t used or stored somehow just doesn’t get created. The current grid just doesn’t have any significant storage capacity and the efficiency of most practical storage technologies is less than 10%.

He also has no idea about solar power either. The absolute maximum solar power falling on the earth at the best place at the best time is 1KW per square metre. To generate 2MW per house with 100% efficient PV cells, each house would need to be 2000 square metres!

Another interesting calculation is to look at the proposed 120ha solar station, which is 1,200,000 square metres, divide that by the 10,000 homes it is intended to support equals 120 square metres per house, and compare that to the average house size of 190 square metres.

um, what about a battery of batteries?

wouldn’t they be able to store power at each individual house for evening consumption?

Go solar!!!!

For Pete’s sake Deano – you aren’t serious about those “calculations” are you??

1. The discussion for the power station is about solar thermal not PV. (and solar thermal can store heat for night-time generation BTW)
2. The 120ha is total area – including the gaps between the solar tracking troughs, infrastructure, parking, yada yada…
3. Think someone is mixing their Ms with Ks.
4. Any calculations on costs must also incorporate the foregone revenue of the land that is consumed, vs any calculation on rooftop PV must incorporate zero land content.
5. Peak consumption is at night?? It was once perhaps. But along came cheap reverse cycle A/C. Summer peaks now correspond with peak solar production periods.

It’s all very well for us to trot out our thoughts, hunches and feelings about these issues, but if we are going to stary bandying about numbers, I think the calculations need to be a bit more rigorous that above.

The dude has no idea about how electricity supplies work. Putting PV on houses would create a system where the peak generating capacity is in the middle of the day (when people aren’t home) and the peak loads are in the evenings. You can’t generate electricity for use later on. Electricity that isn’t used or stored somehow just doesn’t get created. The current grid just doesn’t have any significant storage capacity and the efficiency of most practical storage technologies is less than 10%.

While this is true, it is not necessarily the whole truth. If the PV pannels are feeding the grid, it just means that someone else on the grid, whom it costs more to produce electricity will reduce production slightly, then in the evening, increase production to cover the peak load.

So while there will be just as much coal and gas power being used in the evening, at mid day there will be less, and so the total average will have reduced.

This does of course mean that the price you can sell your solar power to the grid for is always going to be the mid-day price, which means it will take a lot longer for the solar farm to pay for itself, compared to a gas plant where you can choose to use it or not depending on demand (and there for price per KWh).

tortfeaser said :

A dude was on 666 this morning, pushing photo voltaics. Mentioned that $140mil could buy PV for 25,000 houses at 2MW each house. Combined with solar hot water, this would be sufficient to supply that house’s needs. Much better value, no loss of land for other productive uses, greater choice for individuals in sourcing their power.

I’m loath to parrot the dude off the radio and can’t rebut the figures, but alternatives need to be considered.

The dude has no idea about how electricity supplies work. Putting PV on houses would create a system where the peak generating capacity is in the middle of the day (when people aren’t home) and the peak loads are in the evenings. You can’t generate electricity for use later on. Electricity that isn’t used or stored somehow just doesn’t get created. The current grid just doesn’t have any significant storage capacity and the efficiency of most practical storage technologies is less than 10%.

He also has no idea about solar power either. The absolute maximum solar power falling on the earth at the best place at the best time is 1KW per square metre. To generate 2MW per house with 100% efficient PV cells, each house would need to be 2000 square metres!

Another interesting calculation is to look at the proposed 120ha solar station, which is 1,200,000 square metres, divide that by the 10,000 homes it is intended to support equals 120 square metres per house, and compare that to the average house size of 190 square metres.

tortfeaser said :

A dude was on 666 this morning, pushing photo voltaics. Mentioned that $140mil could buy PV for 25,000 houses at 2MW each house. Combined with solar hot water, this would be sufficient to supply that house’s needs. Much better value, no loss of land for other productive uses, greater choice for individuals in sourcing their power.

I’m loath to parrot the dude off the radio and can’t rebut the figures, but alternatives need to be considered.

There was mention on another radio station news segment that a power station like this would also cost $2mill a year to run.

Did you say monorail? MONORAIL!

Maybe we can use the electricity to power a monorail?

Bah humbug – link didn’t work.
You’ll have to go here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/audio/ and scroll down to the article “ActewAGL boss…”

Smee, your comment makes more sense with the last six words omitted.

Anyhoo, back on topic, solar power may be useful when there is no alternative – eg, in the outback to power a small application for a short time. It can’t supply bulk power without reliance on other supply – like when it’s dark or cloudy.

The mayor’s waste of punters money is as much use to energy supply as his pretend windmill/traffic hazard at Woden. But he’ll hang the hat on “fighting climate change” to con the faithful.

The 666 interview with ACTEWAGL head is available as audio here. He confirms the underlying drive for a gas powered station…anything to do with AGL’s gas business ya think?

This is good. We need little projects like this to give the federal govt a bit of a kick to get the solar power generating industry a leg up with increased investment. So we can become a world power in solar which is currently Germany mainly because of govt help.

Mean while all we seem to be good at in Australia is digging stuff out of the ground. We have just lacked a govt over the years with vision and drive to go forward with projects and investment like this while the rest of the world takes our best people and ideas and leaves us behind.

I’m all for bulldozing Gungahlin down and replacing it with solar panels…

Nope, we have whole teams dedicated to data centre design. I just request space – but these days we tend to find ourselves constrained by the availability of sufficient power and cooling rather than physical rack space.

caf said :

Nothing you’ve said in anyway contradicts my point. CBs trip on a momentary high current, and are not necessarily an indicator of sustained high power consumption.

Corporate data centres are trending towards lower power consumption – it is principally this that has made server virtualisation take off. CPU manufacturers these days trumpet the performance per watt of their devices.

There’s an article in the most recent IEEE Spectrum that mentions in passing that more than half of the lifetime cost of a server is accounted for by the electricity it uses.

so, did you get an invite to the breakfast this morning entitled “The tools that maximise Energy Efficiency” at the Boathouse (8am)?

there are couple of tools that were released today as well – very interesting for calculations of consumption and carbon offset.

have a look at http://www.apc.com/prod_docs/results.cfm?DocType=Trade-Off%20Tool&Query_Type=10

the Data Center Carbon Calculator is very interesting.

Nothing you’ve said in anyway contradicts my point. CBs trip on a momentary high current, and are not necessarily an indicator of sustained high power consumption.

Corporate data centres are trending towards lower power consumption – it is principally this that has made server virtualisation take off. CPU manufacturers these days trumpet the performance per watt of their devices.

There’s an article in the most recent IEEE Spectrum that mentions in passing that more than half of the lifetime cost of a server is accounted for by the electricity it uses.

caf said :

The spike may be large in terms of instantaneous power consumption, but it’s short in duration. And energy is the product of power and time, so the amount of energy used is still quite small.

Caf, I have seen spikes that have tripped circuit breakers on initial startup, whole banks of servers and storage that have overridden the acceptable levels, and have created massive drain just for the startup process.

floors of mfd units that have blown fuses with the spike generated, and also toasted sensitive equip.

I have also seen server rooms that are churning out tonnes of cold air per day, but are slugging the environment pretty heavily.

before we go after change from mums and dads at home, big business needs to find sustainable ways to reduce the overall power consumption for the datacentre.

otherwise, earth day will be ineffectual. Datacentres will still drive us headlong towards climate change.

The spike may be large in terms of instantaneous power consumption, but it’s short in duration. And energy is the product of power and time, so the amount of energy used is still quite small.

barking toad said :

Yet anothet pre-election stunt from the mayor to pander to the greens and those that turn off lights for an hour each year so they can smugly burn candles and pat each other on the back.

Economically not viable at present, relies heavily on access to the main grid for down time and is pretend green.

By all means put money into research for developing alternative, efficient energy production. But don’t waste it on this crap now.

has anyone thought of the amount of power generating a spike when you turn on a cpu or old monitor? some MFD’s will toast a ups when you turn them on. The spike is huge.

earth day is causing more power usage. I would rather the computer didn’t get turned off and on. I don’t turn off my work computer until the weekend.

(if you don’t know what a MFD or UPS are, ask me)

johnboy said :

Peter,

Turbines produce power to the square of their speed.

This makes slow moving turbines a waste of resources to produce.

Basically trickles are no good.

hey JB,

i use power. I don’t produce it.

want an effective datacentre?

I can point you in the right direction re competent resellers.

turbines and what they do?

no clue.

(except from the tour i did at SMEC & SMHEA many, many years ago)

just had a couple of thoughts re what could be done by the ACT govt prior to building a gas fired plant….

However, there already *is* an ActewAGL turbine on Mt Stromlo, generating power from the energy remaining in the water that has traversed the gravity main from Bendora Dam. I believe the government buys the power from it for the streetlights, or something like that.

Peter,

Turbines produce power to the square of their speed.

This makes slow moving turbines a waste of resources to produce.

Basically trickles are no good.

Yet anothet pre-election stunt from the mayor to pander to the greens and those that turn off lights for an hour each year so they can smugly burn candles and pat each other on the back.

Economically not viable at present, relies heavily on access to the main grid for down time and is pretend green.

By all means put money into research for developing alternative, efficient energy production. But don’t waste it on this crap now.

how do the people who have moved out to “the country” like royalla, etc feel about the michelago site?

why doesn’t the ACT govt & ACTEWAGL provide solar panels to residents for their roofs? bulletproof glass may be able to withstand some decent hail storms, and they can trickle production back into the grid.

They could also put a small turbine on scrivener dam, has to be some flow there which could generate electricity, and the same for all the other dams that we have.

even water wheels in the stormwater drains would produce a little trickle of power when it rains….

I wish home solar photovoltaic panels generated power by the MW.
I think in well-lit times you get about 10W/m^2, so:
100m^2 of roof would give you a KW.
200,000m^2 will give you your 2MW.

But, thats still just twenty hectares of space, and would require something like 0.1% of world annual solar photovoltaic production.
Per (apparently enormous) house.

Your source is a nutjob.

However, I notice that the site will be at least 120 hectares – probably significantly larger. Which would seem more intuitive.

If he said 2MW per house then he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. The peak winter load for Canberra as a whole is only on the order of 700MW.

Ahh apologies, the whole 120 hectares being 1.1 km a side.

If he said 2MW per house then he’s doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. The peak winter load for Canberra as a whole is only on the order of 700MW.

A dude was on 666 this morning, pushing photo voltaics. Mentioned that $140mil could buy PV for 25,000 houses at 2MW each house. Combined with solar hot water, this would be sufficient to supply that house’s needs. Much better value, no loss of land for other productive uses, greater choice for individuals in sourcing their power.

I’m loath to parrot the dude off the radio and can’t rebut the figures, but alternatives need to be considered.

So we’re talking about an area roughly similar to the inner north?

About this area (superimposed on the City area).

andym the big advance in recent times with solar thermal (as opposed to photo voltaic)power gerenation is that the heat is stored so that there is a constant supply to the turbines. Doesn’t matter whether it is cloudy or nighttime, a solar thermal plant keeps on generating. The ANU has been doing some interesting stuff with storage media, hence it would be good to follow Skid’s advice…
The ACT’s got some pretty interesting geology too – it’d be interesting to see if there are any ‘hot rocks’ here.

I’m no expert, but wouldn’t you build a solar farm north of the Tropic of Capricorn to maximise the daylight hours. I’m not saying don’t build it here, just that you would get more bang for your buck further north. I would think foggy, cloudy, short winter days in Canberra would not be conducive to solar power generation.

Gungahlin Community Council is already on the record proposing a solar (PV or thermal) farm to be located where visible from the Federal Highway (a major entry statement), to be run as a community cooperative, such that people with less to invest than it would take to do a PV installation on their own rooftop could invest in both the looming emissions trading market and the new Feed-in Tariff.

I’ve subsequently both written and talked to Jon Stanhope about this, but not getting a lot of traction. Perhaps the major ACTEWAGL shareholder wants to keep the profits in-house?

I echo Jonathon’s comments on not wanting a gas power station as part of it. Such a thing is not as they’d have us believe a green energy supply – it is only somewhat less polluting than other non-renewables.

caf said :

For those who find hectares about as intuitive as furlongs…

Or for something a bunch of people drive past everyday, roughly the area of Phillip and Woden combined.

caf said :

For those who find hectares about as intuitive as furlongs, 120 hectares is a square 1.1 kilometres on each side.

So we’re talking about an area roughly similar to the inner north?

Right on, Skid. Not only could you get Fed money, but private investment would be a shoo-in. Most of the big fund managers have ‘ethical’ unit trusts that would be keen to invest in such a project. Improvements in technology and economies of scale would come into play with a project that size.

For those who find hectares about as intuitive as furlongs, 120 hectares is a square 1.1 kilometres on each side.

Q: How do you excite a bigwig at the Federal Dept of Environment\Office of Renewable Energy (and depending on the location, Gungahlin, Williamsdale or Hall) either ACTEW or NSW DEUS, all while building an international reputation for sustainability?
A: Spend billions, not millions.

March into ANU, find a bunch of physics propellorheads, tell them you’re wondering what options they could provide if you were looking to spend $1.4billion on existing solar technology, but wanted to see what improvements could be made in efficiency or to reduce overall cost.

The price per MW would probably come down some, you’d get a bunch of people in the relevant fields very excited and very interested, and a bit of infrastructure people would feel all warm and tingly for, and warm and tingly people vote for more warm and tingly feelings…

But this, this will probably just upset a bunch of NIMBYs and be seen as a pre-election claim by whoever gets in come October.

At last! Someone is actually considering the bleeding obvious! And if it uses Ausra technology then it would be a victory for Aussie know-how too. Now all we have to do is get people thinking that if we spent $1.4 billion we could power the whole ACT and we’d really be getting somewhere.

Of course it will need to be supported by gas power generation. It’s also going to be fcking expensive.

I’m all for green options, provided they are realistic.

The kickers are in the conclusions & recommendations:

Within the Conclusions (14.1):

* use of natural gas as an auxiliary fuel to supply heat as an alternative. If this is supplied by the waste heat from a cogeneration plant, an additional 47 MW could be generated by a gas turbine. The use of gas auxiliary fuel does not affect the eligibility of solar generation as renewable or green energy under the current regulatory arrangements, but may have some impact on community perceptions;

* the provision of gas as an auxiliary fuel would allow dispatch able operation and operation during extended cloudy periods;

* under the current regulatory arrangements the use gas for auxiliary firing does not affect the certification for RECs or Green Energy;

* the additional non-solar heat could be supplied by a gas turbine or gas engine combined cycle plant. This would allow additional despatchable generation of around 47 MW or more, depending on the configuration. Alternatively, a boiler could provide stand-by heat input at times of low solar energy availability;

Within the recommendations (14.2):

* study options for providing auxiliary heat and integration with gas turbine or gas engine plant as a means of providing additional generation that is gas-fired.

I’d be happy to see the plant somewhere in my back yard in the Gungahlin Region… but NOT if it is supplemented by gas. Sounds to me that ActewAGL are looking for new ways of justifying their electricity generation from gas and attempting to slip it under the radar in the guise of a clean & green solar powered plant.

A great asset, considering if you gave $14,000 to 10,000 houses to install their own solar panels, you wouldn’t be able to charge them for the electricity!

With the sort of volume discount that 10,000 units attracts, putting panels on houses with back to grid connections sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Maybe they can cover the new Cotter dam with a roof. Reduces evaporation and you can put solar panels on it…

Brilliant idea.
But even if they can’t find a spot in the ACT (most flat spots would be housing I suppose) there’s probably heaps of it out around Murrumbateman or Bungendore.

Bang for buck seems pretty low, in the short term at least. Standby for a bunch of half-arsed experts popping up saying there’s nowhere to build it, haha.

A great asset, considering if you gave $14,000 to 10,000 houses to install their own solar panels, you wouldn’t be able to charge them for the electricity!

Build it! The only place for it to be built is at Williamsdale as it is away from major residential sight lines and flight paths.

That plus the 600MW gas fired power station will make it a nice little asset for the ACT