Thread: has Australia dropped the ball on solar?

In the mid eighties I was in Hawaii. They had a large valley full of wind turbines to generate electricity. Were taking advantage of the local climate which sees a constant wind speed almost all year long.

In the news this week there was a story about Hawaii and solar which they had gone into in a big way with panels on peoples roofs. Seems they were having problems within the delivery system. Solar panels delivered most energy morning into afternoon. The power fell away just as demand ramped up for peak useage which was late after noon into the evening. Further problem was that the power from the panels going into the grid as low and so it stayed local and would not flow up stream against the high power from the central generators.

Originally Posted by bob10

Yes , it appears that Tas. was a World leader in the vanadium battery, but what happened? Canada has a company, supplying vanadium batteries to New York. [ see seperate thread] Next question, does Australia have a home grown source of vanadium? Bob

Bob - Australia has one of the world's largest deposits of Vanadium, at Windimurra in WA (just near Mount Magnet).

Production there has been on & off for years. Is currently owned by Atlantic Resources and is in production. Was initially developed by a company called Precious Metals Australia (PMA) and was bought out and then shut down & stripped by XStrata / Glencore to push up the price of Vanadium in other operations that they owned elsewhere in the world (it's the main reason why XTrata's name is dirt over this part of the country - as far as I and many others are concerned, they shouldn't be allowed ownership of anything in Australia).

Has taken many years for a number of other smaller companies to re-build from the mess left behind by XStrata, and the mine, while one of the largest known deposits in the world, is still small by world standards.

There's quite a few other known deposits of Vanadium in Australia (mostly in WA plus the Hawkwood deposit in Queensland), but Windimurra is so far the only one to go into production.

Most of the world's current production of Vanadium is from China, South Africa and Russia.

The world Vanadium market is supplied largely from secondary sources, particularly the reprocessing of slags from iron smelting. So the development of new Vanadium mines is pretty slow - they have to be a very good, low cost deposit to enable them to compete for sales.

But it is available here if we should choose to use it.

I think you are onto something here 3toes.

Possibly the best outcome is utilising all forms of power generation concentrating on the 'free' alternative sources when abundant and using fossil fueled generation as the reliable backup or peak booster that it has always proved to be.

Brisbane uses an opposite type scenario for it's peaks , using a hydro electric turbine at Wivenhoe Dam as a KVA(I think that may be the term to be used) by pumping up the holding dam off peak and using the turbine to meet peaks instantly.

I think the govt may not like the home roof based systems because very little money goes back into the govt coffers.....which , unfortunately is their true concern rather than that of clean renewable energy sourcing. There motto is WIIFM rather than how can we genuinely do something for everyone.

Sorry it's very hard not to be political when you look at this.

Xstrata/Glencore might have screwed over your bit of the country, but they've kept a roof over millions of heads for over 10yrs in QLD.

I agree - they are politicians crossed with accountants, and they will step on toes if they have to in order to get what they want.

these vanadium batteries are very expensive.

any form of alternate energy is very expensive.

they all have massive financial or energy footprints.

we really have abundant fossil fuel.....surely by now our engineers and scientists can find a way to create 'clean' energy from it.

For base load you need big stable power sources, only coal and nuclear do that. But they take a while to warm up, hence 40 years ago, at least they used excess power to push water back up the hill in the kiwa (sic?) valley for the a.m peak.

I am not a fan of market manipulation by artificial means, and I say that that as a beneficiary of the rooftop solar schemes. Why should I get a credit which is partially paid for by low income renters.

I am skeptical about the proponents of global warming, when none will address the biggest issue, population growth. In fact in Oz we encourage it!

The best contribution Oz could make to global warming is pure research, I.e. Many billions $ and license the results. Like how Csiro & the invention of wifi.

Rant over

well Andy, it may change for the better.

If the mad monk wants to be in Obamas good books he will have to change his attitude on the global warming debate.

I hope for the good of Australia that Obama brings some pressure to bear to align Australia with USA's total environmental policies.

My heart says solar, wind and thermal .. my brain says today's technology cannot guarantee large cities having 24x7 power, so regardless you have to invest and maintain conventional power.

As others have said we are sitting on massive reserves of cheap (comparative) fossil fuel and the worlds growing population (and economies) demands it. We are not strong enough to deny it (defend it), so we have to play the game and might as well use it to provide cheaper power to our own population to remain somewhat competitive (if we could work out what we could competitively manufacture!!) .. however I agree, we should be investing heavily in making it cleaner to generate power, and exporting this technology to others to try and limit the pollution.

We should also be preparing eventually for the day that it becomes cheaper to use alternative energy. Why we lost our leadership in solar is beyond me .. I was proud that we had the skills, the science and capability to be the world leader. Why did we as a nation collectively allow this to fade away ?? Very depressing.

Are we to be just a source of raw materials and massive import warehouses of other nations goods to sell ?? Investing and developing skills and capabilities in energy science and technology is critical, and holding on to these resources once developed mandatory. We shouldn't be just a scientist breeding ground for other nations.