Grey wrote on Mar 22
nd, 2011 at 7:52pm:
It's 19thC technology. It's ugly, it's inefficient, it's dangerous, it's time it was localised and buried underground.
Like the work of a deranged robotic spider it covers the landscape. You get used to seeing it and so you don't see it; but unconsciously it niggles away at your asthetic sense. Imagine, a landscape free of the tyranny of power lines. No more poles and pylons, no more disfigured trees, avenues of palms with one side lopped off, rotting carcases of birds and possums.
No more wasted power to pay for. No more fires started by unmaintained equipment, writhing tentacles of death in storms, no more, (or a lot less) poles to collide with. No more extensive blackouts because of one small fault. No more megapower 'plants' of physical and visual pollution. No more rental payments for having it pass by whether you use it or not.
This is now possible. All that is needed in a aolar world is a battery or two per block connecting houses with an underground grid. The ability to link to adjoining blocks to deal with emergencies when a fault produces a LOCALISED black out.
Industrial volumes of power can be delivered by industrilal power stations where its needed. A combination of solar and wind turbines can cover the roof spaces of areas already asthetically unpleasant.
Let's have some visions of the future. Let's tell THEM what we want - BEFORE they tell us what we are going to get.
The power plants burn coal or gas or use nuclear fission to boil water to create steam that drives the turbines that generate power.
The power plants then transmit this power via high voltage powerlines to sub stations that step the power down to 240V before distributing it locally.
The high voltage powerlines from the power plant to the substation cost about a million dollars per KM last time i checked to bury them underground they get hot and need cooling so the cheapest option is to hang them in the air it gets very expensive if you want to bury these particular lines.
Putting the 240v power lines from the substations to homes/businesses underground is another matter thats ok they should do it.
We need power plants to supply base load to give industry reliable 3 phase power so the question then becomes what do you use to boil the water to create steam to drive the turbines?
Coal sucks we should phase that out and use propane/butane we have lots of it we sell it to China for 2 cents a litre.
Nuclear power with a modern reactor is much safer yet the cost is not cheap it is usually government subsidised so the real costs are hidden and for a KW per dollar PV solar and wind are much cheaper.
If we build more power plants then we need more substations as part of the package and take into account there are transmission losses in sending power down cables.
Solar thermal there are many different types my old solarhart hot water heater is an example of solar thermal.
Solar thermal to produce electricity costs far more than solar PV for Kw per dollar.
They say we should build these solar thermal plants in the desert which sounds ok then where do they get the water to boil to make the steam that drives the turbines in the middle of a desert?
If its cloudy solar thermal is no good and if sand happens to blow onto the reflectors then efficiency drops.
You need a large area to put it in which means red tape nightmare then you still have to build substations and the reality is only about 400 mega watts are currently produced worldwide from solar thermal.
If you compare the water use from PV solar which might only need it to clean the panel (rain also does this) to the massive water use required from solar thermal and look at how country areas in Australia have been in drought for the last few decades you might wonder if we should even bother with this unproven technology down here.
Solar thermal will cost more per KW compared to solar pv or wind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrating_solar_powerSolar is good you can get an inverter and hook it up to the grid so any excess power gets sold back to the power companies.
If there is a blackout you cannot put power back into the grid for safety reasons so diverting it to a battery bank if you are not using the power could be sensible.
If people put panels on their roofs they enjoy cheap green power and we dont have to upgrade any infrastructure to do this.
Australia enjoys good average windspeed on the coast so wind turbines work very well here.
Here are some smaller ones more suited for domestic use
http://www.energymatters.com.au/images/Proven%20Energy/Proven%20Wind%20Turbines%...