I just about choked on my morning drinking choc on seeing this headline by Tristan Edis from the Business Spectator KGB – in my email inbox on Friday 4 Oct 2013. Full article.
Is there a parallel universe out in media-land? The renewables “industry” has had multi-$Billions thrown at it – for what result – higher electricity prices and a less stable national grid.
I have to think back to the Whitlam era and Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor to come even close to the 2008-2013 period of bad relations between miners and Govt.
At times I post on Resources issues.
The resources industry provides consistent and reliable electricity supplies.
The ‘renewables’ sector supplies intermittent and unpredictable electricity.
Since voters want reliable electricity and become quite upset if the power is interrupted 3 or more times a week, politicians tend to listen to them. The last Government threw $10 billion down the gurgler for no result. How much does he expect the country should waste?
Remember the RET scheme was set in place by the Howard Govt in 2001. Enhanced (made worse) during the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years.
Would be great to see the entire expensive mess just abolished.
Graeme – how is SA coping with being the “wind power” capital of the nation ?
Are there any discussions about what might happen in a wind drought on a scorcher hot day – if electricity from the grid further east was also in short supply ?
Do you know what coal or gas generators will be available around Adelaide this summer ?
Close to where I live on the Curtin Uni Tech Park, there is a big sign ‘CSIRO Geothermal Project’. As there are no particularly hot rocks under the Perth Basin to my knowledge, I thought I’d check it out.
According to the CSIRO, the project was funded to research geothermal power for urban cooling. With some guff about making Perth the first geothermally cooled city in the world. If you use geothermal power to produce electricity you can use it for anything. I saw no indication they were researching a different approach.
I’ll note that while peak electricity demand is on hot summer afternoons, we actually use more energy for heating in winter than cooling in summer. This is because we generally only run our aircon for 2 or 3 hours until the sea breeze kicks in, and we don’t have the high humidity the East has. Whereas in winter, we heat all day and for more days than we aircondition.
As Warwick notes, cooling is a peak demand problem, and I am sceptical geothermal power, were it feasible and cost effective, would be suitable for servicing peak demand.
From CSIRO www site
Perth established as one of world’s top five geothermal cities
Funding for a major Australian geothermal project and establishing Perth as one of the world’s top five ‘geothermal cities’ were celebrated as some of the major achievements of the Western Australian Geothermal Centre of Excellence (WAGCOE), at its successful conclusion today.
19 February 2013 | Updated 21 February 2013
Here is a transcript giving a summary account of what it is all supposed to mean, this concept of Perth as a Geothermal city.
Transcript
Considering the challenge of climate change, the work that we are doing here in the Western Australian Geothermal Centre of Excellence, in short WAGCOE, is less about the last four years of research that we have been doing, but about the coming future, the next 50 years.
We have developed a concept called geothermal cities. Now, what is a geothermal city? A geothermal city consists of a city that is entirely driven by the heat beneath your feet.
How does it work? You start with an electric power plant. There you can actually turn heat from 125 degrees nowadays into electricity, so you only need to drill, say, 3 kilometres down and get hot water up and drive an electric power station.
The next step would be then use the waste heat from that power station- which normally goes up into the atmosphere and wastes water in cooling towers- you don’t do this, but you use it for other machines that can be used for, for instance cooling. So, at say 80 degrees you can still use that heat to run what is called an adsorption, or absorption chiller that turns heat energy into cool energy, so you can use it for district cooling.
The next step would be, well, we need to drink. At 65 degrees we can still use the heat to run a distillation process, under partial vacuum, and then win fresh water from dirty water, or basically salt water from the sea.
After that at 40, 50 degrees you can still use the heat for your fun, for swimming pool heating, or for aquaculture so you can actually make big ponds and raise fish, farming, greenhouses need heat, they need an air conditioning system to run the plants properly.
So you can have a complete system engineering design where the city is entirely driven by heat. So that’s a geothermal city.
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I would ask –
is this grand concept working anywhere?
is a pilot project – say at a village scale working anywhere?
if this concept was commercially feasible, industry would be exploiting the technology now.
Many more questions but that’s enough just now.
According to the Western Australian Geothermal Centre of Excellence brochure, they intend tapping hot groundwater, Which I know there is quite a lot of under Perth, as the Water Corporation is also intending to tap these aquifers. If these activities are combined, I can see some value in geothermal energy from groundwater, if only as a by product of water extraction, but on a fairly limited scale. Much of the rest looks like grant-seeking wishful thinking.
www.geothermal.org.au/images/BROCHURE_FINAL.WEB.pdf
Looks like an area heating/cooling concept. Which makes Perth unsuitable as we have low population densities. The high density inner suburban areas of other Australian cities are almost completely absent in Perth.
chartingtransport.com/2012/10/19/comparing-the-residential-densities-of-australian-cities-2011/
Philip
I hardly know where to start. When I started at the CSIRO, Exploration and Mining were at Floreat, and Petroleum were at North Ryde (Sydney). We at Floreat mostly lived north of the river, and we occupied a fairly nondescript set of perfectly functional buildings. It took me about 10 minutes to get to work, including dropping off one of my sons at school.
The great minds got to work on this problem. Re-locate to the opposite side of the city from where everyone lives is a great start. Re-locate Petroleum from Sydney to Perth is another great money-saver. Then build a 5-storey monument with an entirely glass wall is another excellent energy saver. Cleaning the glass requires abseilers. Changing the bulbs in the building requires towers.
The brilliant bit was to put the heads of both divisions into a pair of glass offices thrusting out over the main entrance. On the day Exploration and Mining made me and four other scientists redundant, they took on three publicists. Presumably to tell the world what great science they would be doing if only they had the staff.
On topic. I now live in Japan, where we have lots of truly hot rock, and geothermal doesn’t work here. CSIRO bloviating about Perth geothermal is standard “biggest.. best..southern hemisphere” stuff.
WSH.
S.A. power supplies are in a difficult position as the State Gov. is in LaLa land.
The only 2 coal fired stations are Playford B and Northern, both based in Pt. Augusta to be nearer to the coal supply from Leigh Creek.
Their closure keeps getting announced then put off. I believe both were in operation last summer after shutting down when the carbon tax came in. They had to be used otherwise the State would have been blacked out.
I believe the situation is that Playford B (the older less economical unit) is shut down but will be back operating for summer. I think that Northern came back on in late June after being shut down early this year.
In answer to your question re price, it’s simple. The price goes through the roof. In May S.A. base cost for electricity was over $100 per MWh on 12 days, and over $200 and $400 for 1 day each. The average cost for the month was just under $109 and just under double Vic’s average cost.
In June there were 5 days over $100, 2 days over $200 and 1 day at over $600!! Not surprisingly the average cost went up a little.
In July there were only 2 days over $100, and the same for August. The cost for each month was close to $70.
By contrast, in those 4 months there were NO days over $100 in either NSW or VIC. and (with 1 exception -$61) their cost was below $60 per MWh.
South Australia is paying dearly for ‘renewable’ energy.
If CSIRO wants to research a scheme to supply an entire city’s energy needs from hot water 3 km below the surface, as a layman I have no particular objection, but I would like to see some clear explanation for grown-ups as to which of the necessary technologies are already proven, which need to be developed, likely costs compared to alternatives, lessons from similar attempts elsewhere, timetables, specific research activities etc. A string of gee-whiz feel-good soundbites suitable for kids to stick in their school projects is not good enough. The impression those soundbites convey that it is only a matter of time before all this happens is downright mendacious.
Graeme’s comment also bears out a point I have come to appreciate more and more, which is that assessments of energy alternatives based on costs per generated kilowatt-hour completely miss the point. It’s not the cost of generating an “average” unit of electricity that we should be focusing on, but the relationship between cost and the price on the market of electricity when it is generated. Unfortunately for wind and solar power, the amount available at any one time is unpredictable (except for solar at night = zero), and whenever they do happen to be available, that very availability will tend to push down the price they fetch on the market. The more you have, the less it will be worth.
Even more unfortunately for wind, windspeed tends to be near zero on heatwave afternoons and freezing winter evenings, when demand is highest and prices spike.
The astronomical price peaks in SA are just what you would expect from over-reliance on wind with inadequate reasonably-priced backup. But then if you did have adequate backup, would it really be worth having any wind-power at all?
A rundown of current geothermal projects in Australia. At least one is fracking.
www.agea.org.au/geothermal-energy/australian-projects-overview/
Thanks Phillip for that link to – the Australian Geothermal Energy Association – a group with interests promoting geothermal energy.
The 3 bullet points under their headline –
“A number of small geothermal projects already exist in Australia”
List as #1 the 80KW Birdsville Organic Rankine Cycle Geothermal Power Station – wow factor; knocked off my feet at the thought of 80 single bar heaters working.
The next 2 bullet points talk about hot pools – are they serious.
OK – moving forward to the next headline –
“Australian geothermal development pipeline”
Maybe something with economic potential here –
The first bullet point talks about Panax Geothermal and their Salamander 1 well near Penola South Australia – a pioneering well within the Australian geothermal sector. It is the first well to test a Hot Sedimentary Aquifer (HSA) resource.
Panax Geothermal seem to be owned by listed company RAYA GROUP LIMITED (RYG) –
RYG shares were worth over $1.50 4 years ago, now worth 1.1 cents. I make that a 13,636% decrease in value – so it looks as if ASX investors are not exactly beating down the doors to share in the Salamander 1 well.
The next project listed is Petratherm Limited (PTR) also drilling in South Australia – to cut to the chase – PTR shares were over 40c four years ago and are now 2.5c – I make that a 1,600% reduction in value.
The next company listed is Geodynamics Limited GDY which I discussed last month.
So when you “drill down” a bit into the examples on the AGEA web page – success is hard to find. I wonder how much Australian money has been wasted so far on the quest for payable geothermal power – hot rocks green energy – whatever.