Aussies to Plant $1.8B Wind Farm in Outback

I know that in the US there have been protests on some plans to create huge windfarms, one that comes to mind would be adjacent to a popular forest land and the opponenets said it would ruin the appearance of the park and endanger some animal species.

Is wind power the correct way to harness clean energy in Australia's outback, with the advances in solar panels, would this be a more viable option?

Which one would impact the area in a more negative way?

Aussies to Plant $1.8B Wind Farm in Outback

Epuron's plans to construct what it calls the world's largest wind farm in Australia's outback include between 400 and 500 turbines. The $1.8 billion project, which is expected to begin in late 2009, could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by up to 3.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Either way, it would definitely help in reducing the GHG.

We already have some windfarms in Australia so this comes as no surprise. I dont know about them building it in the outback. It would be a more viable source closer to the coastal regions where it is windy. Although I dont know how the source defines outback?

As an Australian, I cannot beleive later in my life, my taxes will be going to BS projects like this.

Safe, clean and cheap. Nuclear power for the win.

What a waste.

We have such a sunburnt barron land, and we're putting windmills?

I saw, we should setup the worlds largest solar panel farm.
Make it gigantic, large enough so you can see your reflection in space..

Imagine that...We could use the remote aboriginal communities, to monitor it and keep it running.
Get them off the streets and booze, and helping australia become one with earth.. like they want it to be.

windfarms, bs..

make a solar panel state!

Or people in the cities could just switch their lights off at night: thereby reducing GHG emissions, saving money, and removing any need to build useless windfarms .....

Solar panels are good, but they wouldn't work all that well in the outback. Sure, loads of Sun, but then there's loads of dust which would scratch the panels. Also, solar panels, on average, last about 15-20 years if they're kept in good condition, which would be very difficult in such a harsh environment.

Windmills on the other hand, need next to no maintenance, can last around 50 years (which is on the coast, probably more inland) and can potentially generate electricity all day and night.

So, windmills are the more logical choice.

Safe, clean and cheap. Nuclear power for the win.

Not so. Yes, it's cheap (after enourmous set-up costs), but it's certainly not clean. Low level waste (clothes, etc) gets buried, destroying habitat, medium and high level waste are then dumped in the ocean. Contrary to popular belief, radiation does seep out of the containers due to cracks and the like.

Wind power has little to no disadvantages. The land under them is not harmed, sheep can still be grazed and wildlife thrive. They also create no waste.

but it's certainly not clean. Low level waste (clothes, etc) gets buried, destroying habitat, medium and high level waste are then dumped in the ocean. Contrary to popular belief, radiation does seep out of the containers due to cracks and the like.

With reprocessing and newer reactor designs the amount of waste will be highly reduced, in my opinion the lack of emissions easily makes up for the reduced waste that is produced. So, in my opinon it is green. I would gladly trade off some land of the outback to dump sites if it were to make our aircleaner and our taxes lower.

High level waste does not nessesarily have to be dumped into the sea. USA, Finland and Sweden all have planned highlevel waste sites. Why can't Australia?

Wind power has little to no disadvantages. The land under them is not harmed, sheep can still be grazed and wildlife thrive. They also create no waste.

And it's very expensive which is why I oppose it, same with Solar. However with newer solar...

[edit on 10/10/07 by JimmyCarterIsSmarter]

Nuclear power would be safer and more acceptable if we shifted to Thorium

www.world-nuclear.org...

To my mind, economically, wind power inland in Australia Vs solar power is madness...You'll get miles more for your buck with solar...

Near the coast, its probably a line ball...

As far as nuclear goes, as long as we are enriching it ourselves and not paying other countries to turn our raw uranium into fuel, I'm all for it on a relative scale...

That means not building eleven teen nuclear power stations 5 yrs after it is given the get go...

It means gradually phasing out coal fired stations and replacing with nuclear, whilst also increasing the number of clean gas fired stations...

These too can be replaced by nuclear as the technology advances, and hopefully one day, by fusion...

A long way off tho...

But for Australia not to harness one of its most abundant natural resources sometime in the near future doesn't make sense to me...

Peace

Originally posted by Rilence
As far as nuclear goes, as long as we are enriching it ourselves and not paying other countries to turn our raw uranium into fuel, I'm all for it on a relative scale...

Check out the link I posted - Australia also has the world's largest reserves of Thorium. Be grateful if you could sell us some please

Well, there is an alternative to making a solar panel state, Agit8dChop.

www.abc.net.au...

Australian scientists have developed a new way of producing electricity, which could provide all of Australia's electricity needs in 2020.
It has been developed by mixing solar energy, heat and natural gas.
In the search to find a cleaner, more efficient form of power, scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have developed what is called solar-thermal energy.
Two hundred mirrors track the sun, and focus the sun's rays towards a tower.
The heat can reach temperatures of more than 1000 degrees Celsius, producing 500 kilowatts of power.
This is then mixed with natural gas and water to produce a renewable energy.
Wes Stein from the CSIRO says the new development could provide for Australia's future energy needs.
"It would only require about 50 kilometres by 50 kilometres in the centre of Australia somewhere to provide all of Australia's electricity needs in 2020," he said.

"That's not very much of Australia."

Not very much at all, especially to provide for all of our energy needs. Read more here and here.



In another CSIRO-backed energy scheme, they've planned a tall, hollow tower, put wind turbines in it, and then covered all around the base with greenhouse-like material. The air gets comparatively warmer, flows up the tall tube, and turns the turbines.

www.atse.org.au...

The project will involve building the world’s tallest structure, shown in Fig. 1, a 1000 metre high tower, fitted with a 3.5 km radius greenhouse “skirt’ around its base, below which trapped air is warmed to ~15° above ambient. A further natural temperature differential of 10° exists between the bottom and top of the tower. The column of hot air rising up the tower will achieve a velocity of 45 kph. The wind thus created turns 32 turbines distributed around the base of the 120 metre diameter tower. Each turbine can produce over 6 MW of power, giving a total output of 200 MW.

(Click pic)


So really, instead of arguing about crap, why not actually support one of these developments, and actually help the issue of energy production in Australia, rather than mire it down in conflict?

Yep Andy, Thorium does have some promise as a front line reactor fuel...As it is used, it needs to be fed into other reactors which can enhance its usefulness as a fuel and so on..

I figure we need a mix of Thorium, U238 and plutonium reactors in order to get a good mix where we bury as little as nuclear waste as possible...

On the thorium side mate, I honestly don't know if any Australian companies are actively looking for the stuff ATM, given the amount of uranium we have and the economics of getting Uranium out of the ground Vs Thorium...

I guess one day its only a matter of time before Thorium starts to appear in the equation, at least I hope so...With falling supplies of Uranium and so on...I do hope it happens sooner rather than later, because the footprint involved with Thorium is much less with Uranium, and if we mix it up, we can only make both resources last longer for all humanity...

Great post Andy

Peace

reply to post by watch_the_rocks


There is a "solar tower" due to be built in SW NSW, just north of the Vic border in the next 3 or 4 yrs...I wonder if this is what you are posting here ?

Curious dude, and if it is, its a great idea


Peace

Actually, it's a German company that's planning to build the wind farm. The solar tower was supposed to be built by now. The Gov. announced another solar project (solar collector) in the same area (Sunraysia), but did nothing about it. It's a shell game. Most of the electricity generation in SE Australia is for the benefit of Alcoas aluminium smelter. And it's provided by coal.

To the nuclear, cheer squad, where's the water going to come from??? Walter??? For 50 reactors?? In a permanent drought????

Originally posted by Essan
Or people in the cities could just switch their lights off at night: thereby reducing GHG emissions, saving money, and removing any need to build useless windfarms .....

Essan, Did you have to go to uni to work that out? Wow.

Just to clarify, there are no definite plans to do this, it's just a 3d animation and press release at the moment.



[edit on 11-10-2007 by fingapointa]

To the nuclear, cheer squad, where's the water going to come from??? Walter??? For 50 reactors?? In a permanent drought????

Closed Circuit reactor? Or use seawater for the third coolant loop?

reply to post by JimmyCarterIsSmarter


I'm far from the nuclear cheer squad...But from an economic and environmental perspective, a nuclear industry within Australia is inevitable within 30 years unless someone can come up with a large scale alternative to clean power production...

A closed circuit reactor, one that is cooled by an initial seawater source then recycled, or one powered by recycled waste water is probably technologically possible now, let alone in 30 years...

And lets presume fusion goes forward in leaps and bounds after ITER, why wouldn't any nation embrace such power generation technology ?

You'd be nuts not to...

I say we see how we go with solar and clean coal for a bit, and if that doesn't deliver as it most likely will not, we consider other options...What with our population getting older and what have you, we need to consider the cheapest, cleanest power generation options in the decades to come...

Peace

It's all about cost effectiveness and renewable energy credits are a large part of that these days. Wind turbine technology has matured enough to be a contender and Australia has the open coastal space and prevailing roaring 40s winds to make use of it right now.

Take a look at the latest giant Vestas V90 turbines that are currently being built and operated in Tasmania - they produce 3MW each in a 25 knot wind and they don't shut down at night like solar. The effective midday solar power available is theoretically around the 1kW/m^2 mark if a 100% efficient conversion could be achieved so that technology has a way to go yet before it's a practical solution and even then it will be only supplementary offsetting some thermal generation for a third of the day typically. There's already a solar power intallation at White Cliffs and that hasn't exactly been a success story to date with a lot of dust problems etc and the supplementary diesel generators are still required at night naturally.

The duty cycle of the wind turbines on Tasmania's west coast is around the 50% mark which makes it one of the best locations in the world. The early turbines suffered a lot of air-cooled transformer failures because they were running at a higher average output than expected and overheating.

Australia's problem is one of distance which makes it impractical to use solar generation in the western desert and transmit it to the areas of denser population and industry. The east coast is networked linked from north to south but western australia remains isolated and probably always will be.

As for cooling water some thermal power stations on the east coast are already running reduced outputs because the lakes they use for cooling are warming up or the drought has reduced availability of sufficent water for them.

[edit on 14/10/2007 by Pilgrum]