The Oil Drum: Europe

Down Under - "Nuclear is in my opinion the best way forward for base power."

Great - so in a county like ours with unlimited land area for wind and solar you think a nuclear is the best option. What do you do with the waste? Bury it in the outback where you can forget about it?

"Wind cannot be predicted in advance and never will."

Really? What about predicting the weather? I am sure that the BOM would disagree. There are now highly accurate models and forecasting techniques that do work:

"To address these needs, 3TIER Environmental Forecast Group develops, maintains and operates a comprehensive environmental forecast system to provide forecast information for its clients. We have found that recent advances in computer power, coupled with advances in environmental simulation models and improvements to global and local observational systems allow us to predict the weather and the state of the environment accurately for a specific site and a specific resource."
http://www.djc.com/news/en/11146933.html

"You didn't address the technical issues I raised because I suspect you don't understand them"

That is partly true as I am not an engineer however I can address some of them.

"I won't go into too much techncial detail here but there are something like 100,000 large AC generators in the US grid system. That power has to be provided within 1% tolerance for voltages across the system and most importantly a necessary amount of reactive power must be produced by generators to supplement those that can't provide it."

Yes that is true however storage options for renewable power is becoming increasingly cost effective. Several options are now in use in Australia. Modern wind turbines are now variable speed meaning that all frequency stabilisation is done with power electronics rather than controlling the speed of the turbine. Even a small reserve of ultracaps makes wind power stable frequency wise and able to cope with large swings in wind strength without upsetting the frequency. Furthermore even small amounts of storage within the renewable power electronics can help stabilise the grid as the frequency and phase of the power controllers can be varied easily and quickly to bring the grid back into sync.

"Lines of thunderstorms with hail, lightening and extreme turbulence will wreck any of these types of systems if the cell passes overhead. On any day there are 50,000 active thunderstorms around the world with 20 to 30 million associated lightening strikes."

Wind turbines are all lightning protected and have survival wind speeds of up to 240km/hr. In these sort of conditions the blades are automatically feathered, locked down and do not spin. This is no more a valid argument that objecting to a NP plant because of the same objections.

Perhaps you could answer a few of my objections to NP and perhaps comment on V2G cars if you understand them. How is nuclear power going to help with Peak Oil without electric cars, and if we have all these electric cars then NP is unnecessary because in Australia at least we have sufficient renewable power coupled with storage in electric cars to power our needs 24X7.

"The E.on Netz report had nothing to do with coal companies as it is an electric utility"

So, let's make sure I understand this....an electric utility puts out a report that says it is impossible for anyone to produce power reliably except an electric utility......why does this not amaze me? :-)
(We have E.on power in our area of Central Kentucky by the way, through LG&E, and KY utilities....why am I not amazed that the only solution they can imagine is coal?)

On the technical issues, as you said, they are very involved and too long to handle in a board post of this type, however, I would like to point out two big factor of interest that cause me to slightly doubt that renewables are impossible on an impactful scale due to variability in a grid based system:

1. The world has a few thousand firms of various sizes in nations all over the world working on grid connected renewable. Now, they do NOT have engineers working and money being dispersed on say, time machine research. Why do you think that is?

Because the first (time machines) are considered technologically not real as a practical area of work and research, and the other (renewable energy including energy from variable power) is considered technologically viable.
This by the ways is true in several industries that often dismissed as rubbish or totally impossible. Many nations are researching renewable production of hydrogen, for example, and have some of the best talent in the world on research projects at a cost of millions. Yet, there are those who swear it is completely impossible. Fascinating difference of opinion, we will see, but think of the many inventions and developments in technical history that were declared impossible before they were designed and built (just about all of them in fact!)

2. On the issue of wind "changing by the minute", this is of course true and obvious. What is also changing by the minute are the precision and sophistication of the control and monitoring devices used in energy production, management and distribution.

I would only ask that you go to the magazine and website:
www.distributedenergy.com/de.html

Please take a look at the devices and control systems advertized, at the projects already working, at the giant industrial firms who are already getting a share of the Destributed Energy business.
(by the way, you can register for the magazine, it is free, and a great read, again, the adverts alone are fascinating :-)

Distributed electrical generation, back-up and emergency electrical supply, peak hour energy production and consumption control, devices for control of variability at the mili-second level, power storage on both small/fast and large/long scales, and all ranges between...

When folks say that America has run out of new industries to invent, I simply send them to this website! People most often (including people like me who try to stay abreast of these developments) come away surprised, stunned, at how fast the energy, distributed energy and renewable industry are moving.
It is a fascinating time, and the game is just now getting underway.

Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom