The current great debate is how to mitigate climate change. Clearly we must stop, or at least minimise, the burning of fossil fuels. At first sight renewables would seem to be the answer, however, I will present in this article sound mathematical reasons why a combination of wind, solar and batteries will NOT provide an alternative. Australia is rapidly heading for a crisis, not undue heating, not sea level rising but social unrest on a massive scale. The rising cost of energy and the inevitable energy "black-outs" will together exacerbate the already increasing social divide between the haves and the have-nots. So much so that there is a very good chance that society will reach breaking point; the pitchforks are coming.

My arguments are simply from a mathematical perspective. I am saddened that this subject has become a party-political issue. It is far too important to be treated in this way. I should declare myself to be philosophically somewhat to the left of the political centre and yet, given the current state of the debate, the reader of the article might conclude otherwise! I do have solar panels on my house and enjoy the benefit thereof. I regard having them as somewhat akin to having a vegi plot, nice to have some home grown, but I would not wish to do without the supermarket.

I take for my example the proposed retirement of Loy Yang A ; Victoria's largest coal fired power station, rated at 2,210 MW. The largest wind farm in Australia,the McArthur farm is able to produce 420MW. from 140 Vestas turbines. Victoria's largest solar farm, Numurkah is rated at 128MW. A simple calculation suggests that we could replace Loy Yang A with either 5.26 McArthurs or 17.26 Numurkahs or a combination of the two. A considerable undertaking but do-able.

The problem is that this conclusion is not just wrong', it is wildly wrong. The above ratings are in units of Power. What we need is Energy. Energy is Power delivered for a period of time; the units are MWh (megawatt hours). On average, last year, Loy Yang A delivered 2,210 x 24 x 75% = 39,780MWh per day.. The 75% is known as the Capacity Factor; the percentage of time the facility was running at full power. Experience has shown that the typical Capacity Factor for on-shore wind farms is 32%. The published Capacity Factor for the Numurkah solar farm 22.2%.

Redoing the above calculations in terms of Energy rather than Power we find that to replace the Loy Yang A power station we would need either 12.3 McArthurs or 58 Numurkahs or a combination of both.

These numbers now seem seem very large! But this is only the beginning. We must provide energy during the night and during cloudy windless days. Victoria has the largest battery in the Southern Hemisphere able to store 450MWh of electricity. Loy Yang A provides this amount of energy every 16.3 minutes! In order to provide the energy for two consecutive cloudy windlass days we would need 176 such batteries. That is 176 of the largest batteries in the hemisphere and that only gives us energy for two days! We then require excess energy in order to recharge these batteries ready for the next cloudy windless period.

Thus the numbers involved in renewables are eye-wateringly large. And my calculations relate to the phasing out of just one power station. Furthermore I have not considered the cost of constructing the hundred of kilometres of transmission lines required to bring this energy to the centres of population.

Fortunately science has the answer. We replace the existing fossil fuel power stations with nuclear power stations. Yes, they are expensive, but they do work. They are clean, "green" and have a safety record far superior to their fossil fuel counterparts. They could be situated near existing fossil fuel stations providing local jobs and reducing the need for extensive new power lines.

The numbers derived in this essay show that renewables, while making a contribution, will not do the job. Present government energy policies have us on a trajectory towards energy shortages, higher and higher energy costs, inevitably leading to social unrest.

The pitchforks are indeed coming.

 

To summarise: we can replace one power station, just one, Loy Yang A, with either 12.3 McArthurs or 58 Numurkahs or a combination of both. To cater for just two consecutive cloudy, windless days we will need 176 batteries of the size of what is the currently the largest battery in the Southern Hemisphere. Furthermore, we will require many hundreds of kilometres of copper cable and associated infrastrucrure.

NOTES:

A good solar panel will deliver 41 watts and measures 1.7 m^2. To get an average of 40,000 Mwh per day from solar we would need
       40,000 x 10^6 / (41 x 24 x 22.2%) = 193 million solar panels.
These panels would cover 292 sq kilometres. ie. more than 45 times the area of Melbourne's CBD.

Should anyone still doubt the verisimilitude of human induced global warming I suggest watching Professor Raymond Cas's lecture to the Royal Society of Victoria in which he considers, one by one, the natural causes of warming, and shows that none of them can account for current events.

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This article has been peer reviewed by several of my former colleagues. At least two of whom are Fellows of the Royal Society (the one in London).

 

If you see any errors in my calculations, or if you spot any spelling mistakes, please contact
Tony Heyes by email:     Tony.Heyes@gmail.com

 

This web page has been written by Tony Heyes
of Perceptual Alternatives

 

 

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