Errors in IPCC climate science

Washington Post records that –
Sting operations reveal Mafia involvement in renewable energy

A rare and welcome chink in GreenLabor armour – Labor’s whip Joel Fitzgibbon calls for green target cut
We have often discussed these issues here – check the Renewable Energy list.
Although not mentioned by Mr Fitzgibbon – if we keep aiming for the existing RET target while gross electricity use is declining we will for sure end up with a less stable grid sooner than expected. Welcome to the new GreenLabor world.
My comments from February point out where an ever increasing RET component of our electricty grid is taking us.
So – if you want an increaing possibility of brown outs, black outs and more expensive electricity, Vote GreenLabor.
- if you particularly want more expensive electricity, Vote GreenLabor.
- if you want to be getting up in the middle of the night when you might be able to afford to run appliances, Vote GreenLabor.
- if you will enjoy owning a portable engine driven Electricity Generator, Vote GreenLabor.
- if you will enjoy the sound and smell of portable engine driven Electricity Generators all over your suburb, Vote GreenLabor.
- if you are mechanically handy and will enjoy rigging up a household wind powered generator and like the idea of paying for that plus banks of large and heavy batteries, then paying for their upkeep and replacement, Vote GreenLabor.
Readers might suggest other reasons to vote GreenLabor.
Andrew Bolt says – Fitzgibbon goes cool on pricey green power
Alan Moran has expert comment at Catallaxy –
Renewable Energy and the Carbon Tax: Government and Coalition Both Half Wrong
Read the rest of this entry »

I thought readers would be interested in Scottish plans to go 100% renewable by 2020 – shutting down their nuclear electricity generators. Making Scotland the Green Energy Capital of Europe – I thought other countries might have made that claim in the past – I wonder what readers think.

This month has seen a variety of headlines about increasing electricity prices and our electricity system. Remembering this article from a year ago -

Watchdog warns about cost of green power
BEN HARVEY and DANIEL MERCER, The West Australian – August 12, 2011

Then this month -

Poorer suburbs switch off heating to save money – The Sunday Times – August 04, 2012
Gillard blames states for power price hike -7 Aug 2012
PM must be joking on electricity: Baillieu – August 07, 2012

I wonder what readers think about where the truth is.

For my money – if people are discussing the issue of increasing electricity bills and not accounting for the influence of years and years of increasing the percentage of expensive wind and solar power – then they are probably not getting facts right.

I wonder how much of this “poles and wires” expenditure is to accomodate wind and solar. Remembering that our grids were built to deliver cheap, reliable, steady, coal fired electricity outwards from generators.

Last night on the ABC (Australian Govt owned TV channel)- Q & A usual GreenLeft-fest – I saw Bob Brown say that the never built hydro dam on the Franklin River (thats Tasmania) – would have had a 184MW capacity. What knocked me out was his claim that this(184MW) was one fifth of a baseload solar power station. Viewers should have been made aware that Bob was speaking about “planned projects” or “hypothetical projects”.
According to Google the largest solar power station in the World is ANDASOL in Spain using CSP to heat molten salt – which comes in at 150MW.
There is the “planned” 1,000 MW Blythe solar power plant in the Mojave desert but that seems to be converting to strait PV – so no night-time power there – can hardly be termed “baseload”. Not to mention the fact that the owners have filed for bankruptcy according to the LA Times – 3 April 2012. So Bob Brown is quoting numbers of a “hypothetical” solar plant. Typical Green propaganda – pie-in-the-sky hopes.
Here is the question he was answering on Q & A.
HYDRO POWER
“Sue Bastone asked via video: Good evening Senator Brown. As electricity prices continue to rise in Tasmania do you ever feel the slightest bit guilty about putting a river before people when you led the campaign against damming the Gordon below Franklin? Surely our environment would have been better off with hydro powered electricity than having to import power from dirty coal powered generation on the mainland and wouldn’t we be financially better off? Perhaps locking up huge areas of Tasmania’s forests is equally short sighted.”
I will try and get the script of Bob Brown’s reply later today from the Q & A webpages.

AGL Energy Ltd announced “23/03/2012 SILVERTON WIND FARM DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS – a one page summary pdf. The ABC reported on this – and there is a Silverton Wind Farm web site. The two stage project will end up at 1000MW capacity which is about half of all the wind farms listed on this site.
They say there are planned 282 turbines in stage 1 – capacity 300MW – then another 316 turbines in stage 2 = total 1000MW for 598 turbines. The maths do not add up if the turbines are all planned to be of equal size.
I expect all of the claimed performance figures are exaggerated – as proposed wind farms usually are.
I wonder what size gas turbine power generator will be required somewhere nearby to balance this huge load of erratic electricity – similar to the Dalton gas fired proposal. AGL says nothing about this in their material on Silverton. I predict a White Elephant at Silverton – another loss for taxpayers and electricity users.

I thought this Table was worth posting – so readers can compare / contrast with other cost data. Shows huge costs for solar PV and solar thermal.

The DoE numbers for Biomass seem low – maybe be from projects utilising existing waste material.
There are other DoE links here.

Here is a useful link to a list of articles by Anton Lang for those seeking information on this very important subject.
Who really wants their reliable and cheap household electricity that we all take for granted – to get unreliable and expensive. Come on – who will vote for more unreliable and more expensive ?

Talk by David Archibald tomorrow 15 Feb 2012 at Parliament House Canberra.

Paper by David last month;
New report into global energy and food security by David Archibald

HT to Val Majkus.
The paper “Simulations of Scenarios with 100% Renewable Electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market” by Elliston et al. (2011a) (henceforth EDM-2011) has been analyzed by Engineer Peter Lang in his paper, “Renewable electricity for Australia – the cost”. Peter Lang is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on many types of energy projects throughout the world.

For the EDM-2011 baseline simulation, and using costs derived for the Federal Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (DRET, 2011b), the costs are estimated to be: $568 billion capital cost, $336/MWh cost of electricity and $290/tonne CO2 abatement cost. That is, the wholesale cost of electricity for the simulated system would be SEVEN times more than now, with an abatement cost that is THIRTEEN times the starting price of the Australian carbon tax and THIRTY times the European carbon price. (This cost of electricity does not include costs for the existing electricity network). Peter has provided an Excel spreadsheet of calculations – which readers can use to do their own analysis.

This proposition to provide 100% Renewable Electricity for Australia is very expensive pie in the sky IMHO – typical of the GreenLeft – and on current technologies could not deliver stable grid power as we now know it.
So – if you want brown outs, black outs and more expensive electricity, Vote Green.
- if you particularly want more expensive peak hour electricity, Vote Green.
- if you want to be getting up in the middle of the night when you might be able to afford to run appliances, Vote Green.
- if you will enjoy owning a portable engine driven Electricity Generator, Vote Green.
- if you will enjoy the sound and smell of portable engine driven Electricity Generators all over your suburb, Vote Green.
- if you are mechanically handy and will enjoy rigging up a household wind powered generator and like the idea of paying for that plus banks of large and heavy batteries, then paying for their upkeep and replacement, Vote Green.
- the Elliston et al plan requires an increase of wind farms by a factor of 16.8 times – so if you like the idea of that – vote Green.
Readers might suggest other reasons to vote Green.