Renewables: Is Australia falling behind?

26 Apr 2011, 1:00 pm   -   Source: SBS -Chiara Pazzano
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Sites where there is strong, consistent wind, such as Southern Australia, are the most appropriate locations for wind farms. (Getty Images)

Sites where there is strong, consistent wind, such as Southern Australia, are the most appropriate locations for wind farms. (Getty Images)

Experts claim Australia is lagging behind on renewables compared to many other developed countries. What's in the planning?

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Australia has some of the world's best clean energy sources, but experts claim the country lags behind on renewables compared to many other other developed countries.

WIND POWER

SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC

HYDROELECTRICITY

GEOTHERMAL

SOLAR THERMAL

OCEAN POWER

BIOENERGY

SOLAR HOT WATER

INTERACTIVE MAP: Australia's Renewable Energy Atlas

This interactive Renewable Energy Atlas profiles wind, solar, geothermal, ocean energy and bioenergy resources in Australia.

Top ten tips for saving energy

Top ten tips for saving water

Per capita, Australia is one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters in the industrialised world. One of the main causes of this is the generation of electricity from coal. 

Australia's stationary energy sector, which includes electricity derived from coal-fired power, is responsible for about 50 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Clean Energy Council.

In 2007 the Government committed to ensuring that 20 percent of Australia's electricity supply would come from renewable energy sources by 2020, by establishing the expanded national Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme.

Draft legislation on the design of the expanded RET was released in December 2008 and the final legislation was passed in August 2009.

WIND ENERGY

How it works

Wind energy, currently the cheapest renewable energy source, involves the generation of electricity from the naturally occurring power of the wind.

Wind turbines capture wind energy within the area swept by their blades, proportional to the wind speed cubed, up to the designed maximum blade speed. The blades in turn drive an electrical generator to produce power for export to the grid.

Sites where there is strong, consistent wind, such as Southern Australia, are the most appropriate locations for wind farms.

In Australia

In 2008 estimated wind energy generation saved Australia 3,530,744 tonnes of carbon dioxide. According to the Clean Energy Council that is equivalent to:

• the removal of 784,610 cars from our roads or

• planting 5.26 million trees. As an additional environmental benefit, no water is needed for wind farm operation.

Currently there are 47 operating wind farms in Australia, with a total of 834 operating turbines.

South Australia has the largest installed capacity around 50 per cent of the nation’s total capacity.

The top four wind energy nations for 2008 were:

• United States - 25,170 MW

• Germany - 23,903 MW

• Spain - 16,754 MW

• China - 12,210 MW

Australia's wind farms produced 1,306 MW in 2008. 

SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) panels on the rooves of homes and businesses capture the sun’s energy to generate electricity cleanly and quietly.

Light energy is converted directly into electricity by transferring sunlight photon energy into electrical energy. This conversion takes place within cells of specially fabricated semiconductor crystals.

Solar power is a zero-emission electricity source.

In Australia

Today solar PV power is installed on over 41,000 homes across Australia.

Solar PV has a long history of supplying reliable ‘off grid’ power to remote and regional Australian communities. Around 70 percent of all PV installations are currently off-grid.

However, with the introduction of recent government incentives, the number of grid-connected solar PV installations has grown and now accounts for about 30 per cent of Australia’s total installed capacity, the Clean Energy Council says. 

HYDROELECTRICITY

How it works

Hydroelectricity, also known as ‘hydro’, uses the energy of flowing water to spin a turbine connected to a generator that produces electricity.

The amount of electricity generated depends on the volume of water and the height of the water above the turbine.

Large hydroelectric power stations need dams to store the water needed to produce the electricity.

These dams are often built for irrigation or drinking water, and the power station is included in the project to ensure maximum value is extracted from the water.

Smaller hydro power stations, called mini or micro may not need dams but rely on naturally flowing water such as streams.

These also provide a good source of power and are often used as stand-alone systems not connected to the main electricity grid.

Hydroelectricity does not actually ‘use’ water: all the water is returned to the river.

In Australia

With a long history of development in Tasmania and the Snowy Mountains Scheme in NSW, hydro delivers the majority of Australia’s renewable energy.

Australia’s major hydro electricity schemes are in:

• Tasmania

• The Snowy Mountains

• North East Victoria

• Queensland and

• The Ord River in Western Australia.

In the past, drought has had an impact on hydro schemes across the country.

Although generators of hydroelectricity have employed water conservation and recycling measures where possible to mitigate the reduction of water in dams and rivers, power generation has been affected.

GEOTHERMAL

How it works

Heat is naturally generated in special granite rocks located deep below the Earth's surface and is trapped there by layers of insulating sedimentary rocks.

These are sometimes called Hot Dry Rocks (HDR), Hot Fractured Rocks (HFR) or Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Getting the energy from the hot rocks relies on techniques established by the oil and gas industry.

Wells are drilled to a depth of 3-5 kilometres below the surface to find the heat – producing granites. Water is then pumped down in the wells and through the cracks in the rocks.

The water is heated to a temperature of up to 300°C and pushed back to the surface where the heat is used to drive a turbine and produce electricity. The water used is recycled.

In Australia

While some of the world’s best sites for hot rocks are in Australia, at this stage the only working geothermal power station in Australia is in Birdsville, Queensland.

It uses hot water from the Great Artesian Basin and is rated at 120 kilowatts.

Other companies are working on geothermal exploration in Australia and several of these expect to have working hot rocks geothermal generators working in the next few years. In late 2009, around $1.5 billion worth of exploration work was in progress.

The major areas of exploration in Australia are:

• the Cooper/Eromanga Basin in South Australia;

• the Hunter Valley near Newcastle;

• Otway Basin in Victoria; and

• Tasmania.

BIOENERGY

How it works

The technology to produce bioenergy is ready today and involves a range of power generation technology to efficiently extract considerable quantities of clean, low-emission electricity from sources such as agricultural crop wastes, plantation wood waste, urban garden and food waste, sugar cane residues, sewage and animal wastes.

Landfill gas plants are already in operation across all Australian capital cities.

Bionenergy supplies less than one per cent of Australia's total electricity supply.

OCEAN POWER

Ocean power uses the oceans’ tides, currents or waves to produce electricity.

Power comes from the water’s movement, either the changes in height of the tides or the ocean’s current. Different technologies adopt different methods for harnessing the ocean’s energy.

However, the most common oceanic power generation system uses a turbine to drive an electrical generator.

It is also possible to use oceanic power generation to desalinate seawater and produce drinking water.

Tidal

A tidal power station is part of a dam or barrage, built across a narrow bay or river mouth. As the tide flows in and out, it creates uneven water levels on opposite sides of the barrage.

Water flows from the high side to the low side through turbines to generate electricity.

Wave

Surface waves and pressure variations below the ocean’s surface can generate intermittent power.

Floating buoys, platforms, or submerged devices placed in deep water, generate electricity using the bobbing motion of the ocean’s waves.

Ocean Thermal

Ocean Thermal Energy extracts energy from the temperature difference between the ocean’s warm surface waters and deeper colder layers of the ocean.

Thermal energy conversion plants use the water to make steam and then pass the steam through a turbine generator to make electricity.

Currently there are no plans to utilise this technology in Australia, the Clean Energy Council says.

In Australia

The resource is so far almost completely undeveloped, but that is beginning to change.

Currently there is only one wave powered generation plant operated by Oceanlinx Limited at Port Kembla in NSW, generating 0.5 megawatts.

Another plant is under construction in Fremantle, where Carnegie Corporation is developing a plant which will have installed capacity of 0.1 megawatts.

Another 915 megawatts of ocean power is being evaluated around Australia.

SOLAR THERMAL

How it works

Solar thermal energy harnesses the sun’s power to generate electricity by using lenses and reflectors to concentrate the sun’s energy.

The concentrated energy is then used to heat a fluid such as water or oil and uses the steam to drive a turbine.

The most common solar thermal power stations utilise:

• Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) - modular flat reflectors focus the sun's heat onto elevated receivers containing water. The concentrated sunlight boils the water in the tubes, generating high-pressure steam for direct use in power generation and industrial steam applications without the need for costly heat exchangers

• Trough system – array of linear parabolic concentrator to focus the sunlight into a collector pipe that then pipes the fluid to a central point

• Tower System – a field of tracking mirrors reflects the sunlight onto a centrally located tower containing the fluid

• Parabolic dish system – an array parabolic dish concentrators that focus the sunlight to a point at the focus of each dish to heat a fluid Greenhouse gas savings Solar power is a zero-emission electricity source.

One megawatt hour (MWh) of solar-derived electricity avoids approximately one tonne of CO2.

In Australia

There is a comparatively small number of working solar thermal power systems in Australia.

The largest is part of the coal-powered Liddell Power station, which uses Ausra’s Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) solar thermal technology, and is a demonstration plant of around 1.5 MW although a larger system is being planned on this site.

The CSIRO is also constructing a 0.5 MW solar thermal power station in Mayfield.

With a number of companies evaluating much larger systems in Australia, the commercial deployment of large scale solar power generation could play a significant role in the nation’s renewable energy mix.

WorleyParsons have plans for power stations of around 250 megawatts in Australia.

In May 2009 the federal government announced the $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program to help fund the construction and deployment of up to four large-scale solar power stations of around 250 megawatts of which two can be solar thermal.

State governments and private enterprise would add to this fund to enable the deployment of the power stations. 

SOLAR HOT WATER

A solar water heater uses energy from the sun to heat water. Water is heated by the sun as it passes through collectors located on the roof of a house.

The main solar collector types are flat plate, evacuated tube and heat pumps.

In Australia

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 7 per cent of Australian households used solar energy for heating water in 2008, an estimated 600,000 homes.

The installation of a solar water heater will reduce the greenhouse pollution associated with water heating in the average Australian home by between 60 and 90 per cent (depending on the location).

With only 7 percent of Australian homes currently fitted with solar water heaters, there is considerable potential for market growth.

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Your Comments

Mr

James Hunter - from Metford NSW, 11 months ago

We should be going all out to develope safe clean Thorium neculear power. we have oodles of it the rteaction process is safe and the waste products negligable. What is wrong with us all ? time is we will soon have to stop living in the past and with the predujices of the past.

solar hot water is affordable

bruce - from burwood, 12 months ago

We should all have solar hot water as that is quite affordable relative to solar power. Trouble is, in southern Aust, solar hot water still has to go through a fossil fuel booster of some kind esp. in winter so it cannot be a total substitute. There is human resistance to throwing out a perfectly good existing water heating system, but when it stops, change over.

Atitude-Change

Rashid - from Perth, 12 months ago

The biggest energy sources are: -Conservation, eduction, cultural and attitude to life-style change of people. -Attitude change to better re-cycling and waste reduction. -Expenditure on manufacturing efficiency improvement of all domestic, industrial, generation and distribution equipment. -Government intervention to restrict inefficient and gas-guzzling transport vehicles and free up all efficiency improvement patents locked up in oil companies safe boxes.

Whatever happened...

robb - from geelong, 1 year

Whatever happened to that Qld Uni invention where electricity was going to be generated from sunlight exposure to a plastic transparent film that could be manufactured by a glorifed photocopier, cheap and fast.. Is it still being perfected or was it bought out and shut down as so often happens.

yes

robb - from geelong, 1 year

Absolutely nothing is not quite right as Aust.'s wind farms all started over the last 20 years. But a lot more could have been done with other energy sources and in that respect the answer is "yes". The most obvious source (the sun) is still there. Removing the solar panel rebate is the greatest illogical act in the whole debate and solar is not "a zero-emission electricity source". There are emissions in the manufacturing process.

How do we replace base load power from coal?

Hugh - from Blue Mountains, 1 year

Isn't it seriously misleading to draw a one to one correspondence between the amount of power generated by, say, wind power, and the amount of carbon not emitted into the atmosphere? If base load power stations (coal fired) must run at a fixed capacity, and can't just be turned off and on, wind power (or solar, or wave, or whatever) only prevents carbon emissions if extra non-renewable generation is forestalled; if gas stations don't need to be fired up to cope with peak demand, for example.

Made in China

Dave - from Gawler, 1 year

We'll have to wait for a manufacturing giant like Germany, Taiwan, Japan, Korea to develop the tech so it makes financial sense for people to adopt it on a personal level. It's horrifying to see that the energy companies are not lagging behind as they predict massive increases in energy costs.

falling behind?

Michael - from Perth, 3 years ago

If we start to accept that we don't fall behind, but that we are already behind, then there might be a chance for us to catching up one day. But we first need to accept where we stand! We did nothing for the last 20 years, absolutely nothing, and that is to accept in order to learn out of those mistakes, for a better Australia and a greener planet.

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