SA to power the world

[Jim]

In the post oil world

In only 40 year there will be no oil. In 120 years with the anticipated industrialization of China and India uranium will be all gone. In another 50 years after that coal will be running out. Even the power of our geothermal resources which are based on radio active decay will be exhausted.
But there are three places on earth that will have wealth beyond belief, North Africa, Mid West USA and South and central Australia. These areas have solar potential beyond belief. An area the size of the Maralinga no-go zone alone could currently supply the whole of the USA and China with thermal solar electricity. I recently attended a lecture at Adelaide Uni and told of plans being developed to link North Africa with Europe and Australia to Asia. The first small step would be to link Roxby downs in SA with the Queensland electricity grid this would cost about $1billion. This one move would make it then economic for private thermal solar and geothermal companies to get the ball rolling.
I think as South Australians we need to grasp the vision and make this happen. Adelaide has the potential to be at the centre of this new world we just need to make the vision happen.

[Jim]

Further to the above:
Apparently Australian companies are at the forefront of undersea power gable design and new developments used for the three dam’s hydro project in China have solved most of problems associated with power loss over cable distance.

[Wayno]

I agree Jim, and the ability to achieve reliable "baseload" power from solar energy is steadily getting closer. Hopefully we will have a couple of demo plants here in SA within ~5-10 years.

A promising approach appears to use 100's of large mirrors all centrally focused to create vey high temperatures. A chemical reaction uses the heat (and zinc as a catalyst i believe) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the hydrogen is then stored for base energy usage. Now all we need is the water...

[Jim]

I agree Jim, and the ability to achieve reliable "baseload" power from solar energy is steadily getting closer. Hopefully we will have a couple of demo plants here in SA within ~5-10 years.

A promising approach appears to use 100's of large mirrors all centrally focused to create vey high temperatures. A chemical reaction uses the heat (and zinc as a catalyst i believe) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the hydrogen is then stored for base energy usage. Now all we need is the water...

Apparently the Wizard Power project to be build near Whyalla will use reflectors it heat salts to about 600 Degrees then used to produce steam to power a traditional turbine. The project has two byproducts salt to be used by industry and desalinated water for Roxby. The heated salts can be stored over night to produce base load power 24hrs. Imagine if we were supplying Asia with power how much desalinated water would be a byproduct!!

[Wayno]

Apparently the Wizard Power project to be build near Whyalla will use reflectors it heat salts to about 600 Degrees then used to produce steam to power a traditional turbine. The project has two byproducts salt to be used by industry and desalinated water for Roxby. The heated salts can be stored over night to produce base load power 24hrs. Imagine if we were supplying Asia with power how much desalinated water would be a byproduct!!

the power loss between australia and asia (if cables were used) would make it unworkable. An alternative might be to export liquid hydrogen produced by our solar thermal plants...

[Jim]

Apparently the Wizard Power project to be build near Whyalla will use reflectors it heat salts to about 600 Degrees then used to produce steam to power a traditional turbine. The project has two byproducts salt to be used by industry and desalinated water for Roxby. The heated salts can be stored over night to produce base load power 24hrs. Imagine if we were supplying Asia with power how much desalinated water would be a byproduct!!

the power loss between australia and asia (if cables were used) would make it unworkable. An alternative might be to export liquid hydrogen produced by our solar thermal plants...

The liquid hydrogen will be one option but the CEO of the Whyalla project recently spoke to the Adelaide Uni seminar I attended, there were some skeptical electrical engineers there, but he spoke of minimal loss of power now achieved on the Tasmanian power link and new projects in China. He also said that the cost of solar thermal is now commercially the same as brown coal, as the cost of coal increases and solar relatively decreases the % lost to cable problems will become insignificant (cheaper to put in more solar plant). The plan to link Asia untimely involves tapping into huge amounts of volcanic geothermal on the Indonesian archipelago.

[Jim]

Imagine Adelaide and SA with unlimited desalinated water and power!

[Aidan]

In the post oil world

In only 40 year there will be no oil.

Yes there will. It will probably cost over a thousand dollars per barrel, but there will be some!

In 120 years with the anticipated industrialization of China and India uranium will be all gone.

Wrong again! There's a lot more uranium out there, even though much of it's in concentrations too low to be economic to mine at the moment. It can even be extracted from sea water! Then there's U238 and thorium, which are much more abundant than U235, even though they aren't as easy to split.

In another 50 years after that coal will be running out.

I certainly hope not - if they use it as fuel it would create an environmental catastrophe long before running out!

Even the power of our geothermal resources which are based on radio active decay will be exhausted.

That seems unlikely, as they are based on radioactive decay in the Earth's mantle, not just the rocks themselves.

But there are three places on earth that will have wealth beyond belief, North Africa, Mid West USA and South and central Australia. These areas have solar potential beyond belief. An area the size of the Maralinga no-go zone alone could currently supply the whole of the USA and China with thermal solar electricity.

True, though I hope you don't think that that means it would make sense for us to supply the USA and China with solar energy!

I recently attended a lecture at Adelaide Uni and told of plans being developed to link North Africa with Europe and Australia to Asia. The first small step would be to link Roxby downs in SA with the Queensland electricity grid this would cost about $1billion. This one move would make it then economic for private thermal solar and geothermal companies to get the ball rolling.
I think as South Australians we need to grasp the vision and make this happen.

I think we as Australians need to do so! Energy and climate change are big federal issues at the moment. One point in SA's favour is that the government will probably have to negotiate with Mr X!

Adelaide has the potential to be at the centre of this new world we just need to make the vision happen.

No, SA will be a big part of it, but SA is too far from the main users of electricity to be at the centre of it. Though we have good conditions, so do a lot of other places nearer where more electricity is used.

Solar and geothermal together have the potential to completely replace coal as a source of Australia's electricity, and SA's probably the best state for both of those. We should be able to easily export electricity interstate, but internationally it's a different matter. There is certainly scope for exporting it to PNG and Indonesia, and possibly East Timor, the Solomon Islands and further afield in SE Asia. But China and India have their own deserts, and it's much cheaper installing electricity cables over land than under sea, and it is likely to command a higher selling price there as demand can be spread across more time zones.

[Jim]

So Aidan are you one of those selective (clever) nit pickers, just the sort of non-visionary Australia needs?

Well you might as well stick you head in the sand; I don’t think you were at the same lectures as I attended.
OK so yes there will be some commercially unviable coal, uranium, gas and oil somewhere on earth in 120+ years. (thats very clever) Are your only real points that you dont think that our grid can be conected through Asia to China or that SA can be the "centre" of this?
So what’s your solution let some one else do it? Perhaps you could encourage these industries to set up in southern QLD and NSW and bypass us altogether!
It was not long ago that types like you would have said it was ludicrous to link the power grids of SA with Victoria or Victoria with Tasmainia, but they obviously would not have any vision either!
We are now actually in a position to potentially export far more green energy to Victoria but our interconnector hasn’t the capacity.
This is a thread for visions and solutions perhaps you could start you own thread on what won't work.
If business groups and industry associations in Europe and Australia/Asia are planning inter-continental grids now I think we should take it seriously. I think I said the first small step was to build an interconnector to link Roxby to Qld. Get some vision mate!!
Oh yes you may not know its Australian companies that lead the world in undersea power cabling projects!

[Aidan]

So Aidan are you one of those selective (clever) nit pickers, just the sort of non-visionary Australia needs?

On the contrary! Just because I understand why your vision can never be put into practice doesn't mean I'm lacking in vision!

Well you might as well stick you head in the sand; I don’t think you were at the same lectures as I attended.

Well maybe you should pull your head out of the sand to make room! Yes I wasn't at the lectures, yet I still understand the issues far better than you do!

OK so yes there will be some commercially unviable coal, uranium, gas and oil somewhere on earth in 120+ years. (thats very clever) Are your only real points that you dont think that our grid can be conected through Asia to China or that SA can be the "centre" of this?

It's not that our grid can't be connected through Asia to China. It can. And not just China - also Russia, Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East, North America, and even South America. See http://www.geni.org for more details. But that doesn't mean we will be exporting electricity all over the world. Electricity transmission infrastructure is fairly expensive, and the cost of adding enormous intercontinental capacity would greatly outweigh the benefits.

So what’s your solution let some one else do it? Perhaps you could encourage these industries to set up in southern QLD and NSW and bypass us altogether!

We should encourage them to set up all over Australia. SA does have significant natural advantages, so it makes sense to have a lot of it in SA. But it also makes sense to generate a substantial part of the power near where it is consumed, to reduce transmission costs.

It was not long ago that types like you would have said it was ludicrous to link the power grids of SA with Victoria or Victoria with Tasmainia, but they obviously would not have any vision either!

Then they would not be like me.

We are now actually in a position to potentially export far more green energy to Victoria but our interconnector hasn’t the capacity.

You make it sound like we're already generating more green energy than we consume, which is far from the case. Also, we already have two connections to the Victorian electricity grid, as the Murraylink underground HVDC cable is already operational. I'm also in favour of constructing connections to NSW and, as I said before, Queensland via Moomba.

This is a thread for visions and solutions perhaps you could start you own thread on what won't work.

So you'd prefer to be kept in the dark about why your ideas won't work?

If business groups and industry associations in Europe and Australia/Asia are planning inter-continental grids now I think we should take it seriously.

I'm not saying we shouldn't take it seriously - in fact I specifically mentioned that there is scope for exporting electricity to our near neighbours. But I make no apologies for pointing out that solar energy generated in SA would cost far more in China than solar energy generated in China!

I think I said the first small step was to build an interconnector to link Roxby to Qld.

Indeed you did, and I said I agree with that.

Get some vision mate!!

I have vision, but it's international. Unlike you, I recognise that China is capable of doing things for itself!

Oh yes you may not know its Australian companies lead the world in undersea power cabling projects!

Yes they do, but it is much harder to lay electricity cables under deep oceans than shallow seas, and such cables are only economically viable when there's a big difference either in the cost of electricity or the times of peak demand and peak supply. Continental Europe and Asia have the advantage of being able to spread their network over many time zones. We don't, and building the capacity to enable us to do so would be far too expensive.

But SA does have natural advantages that make generating electricity cheaper here even though the costs of exporting it very far would sometimes negate those advantages. So it may instead make sense to encourage more heavy industry to locate in SA to take advantage of the cheap solar electricity. Just don't pretend our situation is unique!

[Jim]

Aidan by god you are good, are you a lawyer?
I think we are dealing with semantics here and I am now actually thinking you may have some vision after all. We both agree that:
SA could be linked to Asia and beyond by a grid,
SA has fantastic potential to produce solar power,
We both would like to see more interconnections linking SA with the eastern states,
We both agree "commercially viable" resources of Oil, Uranium, Coal, and gas will be in short supply in the relatively near future . from 40- 120 years +
Our main areas of differences are that:
a) you don’t think undersea links will be viable, (But you now do think a link to an Asian grid is possible.) Is this a contradiction?
b) you don't think that we will be powering China.
I guess I would concede that as part of a grid our zap’s generated may not be the ones technically used in China but as part of a grid we will derive income for all the power we put into it.
The way the links were sold to me was,
1) Inefficiencies and power loss on long distant power cabling is improving.
2) The cost of all non-renewable power sources was increasing.
3) The cost of Thermal Solar is already the same as brown coal.
4) The cost of thermal Solar in coming down in comparison to non-renewable.
As a result in the near future any inefficiency in the loss of transmission would be easily made up by putting in more solar plant and the relatively inexpensive nature of solar thermal and offcourse the cost of the sun is a static cost not subject to fluctuation.
5)The cost of transporting non-renewables around the world will increase, and subject to fluctuations in cost, while once built the cost a grid will static.

Following quote from Geni (Global Energy Network Institute) website http://www.geni.org
"Technological development now moves power further and cheaper
Thirty years ago, electric power could only be efficiently transmitted 600 kilometers. Breakthroughs in materials science extended this transmission distance to 2500 kilometers. This allowed utilities to interconnect across time zones and compensate for variations in seasonal demand. The buying and selling of power is now common, because utilities desire to level the peaks and valleys of energy demand.
Today, research shows the efficient distance of ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission to be 7000 kilometers for direct current, and 4000 kilometers for alternating current. This would allow for power interchange between North and South hemispheres, as well as East and West. Because of electricity's link to a quality standard of living, the interconnection of regional power grids became the highest priority objective of the World Game."

(Adelaide to Hong Kong as the crow flies 6871km) obviously a grid is not as that direct.
My thoughts are that it doesn't take much vision to see further or simular improvements over the next 40-120 years. There are also countries like Japan whom don't have their own solar deserts and will not want to be totaly reliant on China for their power. These countries will want power to come from a retitivly independent country like Australia.

SA also has a need for desalinated water for our long term survival and the growth of our mining and minerals processing industries. Desalination can be a cost effective byproduct of excess heat generated by thermal power. This demand for water is an added sweetener to base these industries in SA.