On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 01:55:49AM +1100, gstev...@bigpond.com wrote: > As you well know, we are in relatively early days for wind power > generation in Oz, and the odd wind farm here and there is more > or less a cute novelty - albeit VERY green - but really neither > here or there in the larger scheme of things.
Come and visit South Australia sometime. Turbines are everywhere: Flying through the mid north, you see them all over the place, generating enough power to service more than one quarter of the State's demand. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-19/wind-power-energy-south-australia/3898754?section=sa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_South_Australia 1.2GW of ultimate capacity offsets a gas-fired power station. They tend to be lined up in rows. In terms of obstacles, I'm not sure why they're any worse than a line of high-tension power lines. > On the matter of urban visual pollution, I recall seeing some > years ago, images of power generation wind "trees" located in every > street in a town in the Netherlands - I think. The current "in thing" in Europe is to build the wind farm out at sea just over the horizon, where the NIMBYs can't see it; and run submarine high-voltage cables back to substations on land. > Just a few other points, on power generation. 2 or 3 hundred > square kilometres of solar panels will generate a hell of a lot > of energy. And, until the next couple of generations of tech, will probably cost more than Australia's GDP. Which is one of the reasons why I reckon Solar has been one of the technology world's great historic failures: You can go back to the 1950's and see predictions of "everything powered by solar" in 5 - 10 years. Always 5 - 10 years away. Never "tomorrow" or "today." It's not that the tech hasn't advanced (it has -- witness all the solar panels on houses now). It's that it hasn't advanced in the way that achieves the technical and economic standards the experts have spent the last 60 years predicting. The good news is that solar tech tends to advance disruptively rather than progressively. In the grand scheme of things, it won't be long until large solar facilities become plausible. But since the grand scheme of things goes back 60 years, "it won't be long" could still mean "20 or 30 years" :) - mark _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list Aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
