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Re: General Discussions

Reply #705 –
When it comes to power supplies, my favourite is Solar Power Satellites.
Yes, I am a SF freak, and yes, I even write the stuff, but there are major reasons why I like this system.

What does it consist of?
SPS consists of a series of huge mirrors in space that collect and focus the sunlight into a collector. The collector them beams the energy directly to a base station on Earth that converts the energy into electricity, which is then available to the entire grid.

My reasons:
[1] Like a dam, the initial costs are almost the only costs you have. The collector satellites can collect 24 hours a day, 365.25 days per year and they can be made almost as large as you wish. The material requires a little effort holding it in space, but can be basically like Aluminium foil. There is no structural strength required. The satellites are in orbit and don't require much at all to maintain them.
[2] Your base station is best placed in a desert area where they are few, if any, humans. The energy beams down every single minute of every day, however, it doesn't have to be visible light. You just have to be careful not to fly through it.
[3] Australia has plenty of desert that would be perfect for such base station. We would become the world's largest energy source. Taxes and royalties would be minimal per kilowatt of power, but would supply the government with huge quantities of money. And no government that has ever existed doesn't want more money.
[4] The collectors would be a series of satellites in orbit that would shift the energy around so that it is always focussed on the base station.
[5] There is space construction required, but I am all for as much of this as we can manage. The actual engineering is relatively straight forward. There are so many resources out there that do not have populations restricting their use.

The idea has been around for a long time, but neither the Soviets (in their day) nor the Americans were willing to cough up the money. That is probably more the case now, as most people just don't think of space construction. After all, nobody bothers to put reasonable quantities of money into the International Space Station, and that is a tiny triviality.
There is enormous profit to made from materials and energy is orbit, and it would produce so much energy that we could retire fossil fuels. Cheap energy is the key to improving life for all humans.
I do understand that it would take time, but I have a lot more patience than the eco-freaks do. They want an immediate end to fossil fuel usage, which is impossible.
Live Long and Prosper!

Re: General Discussions

Reply #706 –
I presume you're speaking of a geo stationary orbit configuration?

Re: General Discussions

Reply #707 –
Quote from: crashlander – on
The energy beams down every single minute of every day, however, it doesn't have to be visible light.
Actually it sort of has to be visible or RF, as it has to be in the region of the spectrum that the atmosphere is most transparent to, or else the atmosphere absorbs too much!

Dams are not free to run, they come with a significant maintenance and monitoring budget, emit large amounts of methane as the water levels rise fall and have cycles of algal bloom.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: General Discussions

Reply #708 –
Security would also be a concern. A hostile nation could destroy that system pretty easily without any loss of life but with a major impact on the energy grid if it it became the major source of energy.

I can just imagine China wiping out our solar collector while denying responsibility for it.

Re: General Discussions

Reply #709 –
All the space faring nations are focussed on queuing up to setup permanent Moon bases, they all want access to Helium-3 resources to make fusion reactors a reality. Helium-3 accumulates in surface sediments as a result of the bombardment by cosmic rays, solar radiation and solar wind. At the moment for the test bed fusion reactors they harvest minute quantities helium-3 from conventional fission reactors. Think of the moon as a giant Helium-3 collector.

Why are they so keen for helium-3? Because Helium-3 is the only naturally occurring isotope that can be used as fuel in fusion reactors without producing radioactive by-products.

If they can't get enough helium-3 off the moon, they will construct specific types of fission reactors that are designed to generate(breed) helium-3 fuel for fusion reactors. There are a few different ways they can get to it via fission processes, one of them is using lithium, and if that pathway eventuates lithium batteries will be dead in the water as it will become a tightly controlled and expensive commodity much like normal helium is now. Normal helium is abundant in the universe, but rare on earth because it is so light it just floats away if not constrained!

Fusion reactors are like fission reactors, they get efficiency from scale, and once you get them running they are not easy to stop and start so you need to keep them running. It's likely that the best place to build one is next door to a desalination plant, steel or aluminium smelter so they have the 24x7 minimum demand meet. Australia was stupid not building nuclear plants next door to some of the myriad of desalination plants we are accumulating. Another nice industry to put in close vicinity is hydroponic agri-business that needs both heat and power to run 24x7.

Personally though, for agri-business I'd love to see Victoria make strong use of the low grade geothermal resource that exists in a band stretching between Bairnsdale and Ballarat. There is probably enough specific heat capacity to see Victoria feed all of Australia with greenhouse compatible crops all year round, consuming virtually none of the dairy critical land in the process. You won't get Federal funding for it though, because politics is mired in the Nationals farmers dig dirt mentality, that roots the bulk of the industry to Qld and WA. Politics and bureaucracy interfering in progress yet again.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: General Discussions

Reply #710 –
Quote from: DJC – on
$2.8 billion for renewable energy, including the “clean coal” allocation.

Renewable energy amounted to 32.5% of electricity generated in 2021 so, even discounting the “clean coal” scam, taxpayers are shelling out more to keep the coal-fired power stations going.  Even with that significant assistance, energy companies are bailing out of coal plants because there’s no money to be made.
It's very difficult to debate those claims because the reall world figures are so hard to find, but those big dollar figures that talk about subsidies in the billion$ are pretty bogus.

I believe the inflated figures use the IMF/WTO definitions of a subsidy, which includes things like the emissions and energy consumed in traffic and traffic jams as a fossil fuel subsidy. Petrol and LPG are counted on top of oil and natural gas, but petrol and LPG are derived from natural gas and oil so that is artificially exacerbating the figure.

I went looking for real figures and it turns out it's quite hard to find. Even for literate economists like professors from ANU, Melbourne and Sydney Universities. The Unis were engage as a CRC to try and establish the true dollar$ in the energy debate, and after more than a year of research they all reported that most likely the real world subsidies totalled below $1B, in fact they reported the most likely value was less than $500M. They didn't agree on the figure, some claimed as low as $300M and others as high as $1B, but it was clear $10B was a fantasy.

I crossed checked this with someone I know who just so happens to be one of our Deputy Commissioners for Taxation, they really do have all the numbers. While they couldn't tell me the specific figures, they told me a good measure of the level of bullcrap was that "all industry and research subsidies" for the same period totalled just over $12B dollars, so the claims of $10B for just one segment of industry it seems is utter bullcrap!

Fwiw, it seems the UNs rock throwing at Australia uses the IMF/WTO definitions, and claims our derided "Clean Coal" R&D budget in total is more than what the Australian Tax Department claims is our countries entire Industry / Science subsidy spend!

My takeaway on all this is simply the bullcrap politics infiltrates on both sides of the debate, both sides lie through their teeth! It's interesting because it's the old debate about extremes of left or right being circular, if you go far enough to become an extremist in either direction you meet back in the middle.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: General Discussions

Reply #711 –
Quote from: LP – on
All the space faring nations are focussed on queuing up to setup permanent Moon bases, they all want access to Helium-3 resources to make fusion reactors a reality. Helium-3 accumulates in surface sediments as a result of the bombardment by cosmic rays, solar radiation and solar wind. 

For the time being ... only one nation is capable of that.  The United States, and they're miles in front.
 

Re: General Discussions

Reply #712 –
Quote from: capcom – on
For the time being ... only one nation is capable of that.  The United States, and they're miles in front.
The other alternative is Elon Musk who seems to be doing his own thing and has some obsession about having folk live on Mars.

Re: General Discussions

Reply #713 –
Quote from: capcom – on
For the time being ... only one nation is capable of that.  The United States, and they're miles in front.
I think you'll find China is pretty close and has the funds to do it, when we talk about a lunar base people should not be too obsessed with humans on the moon, it might well be robotic.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: General Discussions

Reply #714 –
Quote from: ElwoodBlues1 – on
The other alternative is Elon Musk who seems to be doing his own thing and has some obsession about having folk live on Mars.

He's gonna need something on the scale of a Saturn V EB, what with weight, consumables, and crew :)  And after innumerable unmanned landing missions dating back to 1976 which have exhibited nothing of special interest, Mars is not sustainable or worthy of the cost.  I'm afraid (courtesy of speed / time restrictions to other destinations) the moon is as far as we can get.  26,000 mph sounded impressive in 1968, but it's nothing compared to what we need.

 

Re: General Discussions

Reply #715 –
Quote from: LP – on
It's very difficult to debate those claims because the reall world figures are so hard to find, but those big dollar figures that talk about subsidies in the billion$ are pretty bogus.

I believe the inflated figures use the IMF/WTO definitions of a subsidy, which includes things like the emissions and energy consumed in traffic and traffic jams as a fossil fuel subsidy. Petrol and LPG are counted on top of oil and natural gas, but petrol and LPG are derived from natural gas and oil so that is artificially exacerbating the figure.

I went looking for real figures and it turns out it's quite hard to find. Even for literate economists like professors from ANU, Melbourne and Sydney Universities. The Unis were engage as a CRC to try and establish the true dollar$ in the energy debate, and after more than a year of research they all reported that most likely the real world subsidies totalled below $1B, in fact they reported the most likely value was less than $500M. They didn't agree on the figure, some claimed as low as $300M and others as high as $1B, but it was clear $10B was a fantasy.

I crossed checked this with someone I know who just so happens to be one of our Deputy Commissioners for Taxation, they really do have all the numbers. While they couldn't tell me the specific figures, they told me a good measure of the level of bullcrap was that "all industry and research subsidies" for the same period totalled just over $12B dollars, so the claims of $10B for just one segment of industry it seems is utter bullcrap!

Fwiw, it seems the UNs rock throwing at Australia uses the IMF/WTO definitions, and claims our derided "Clean Coal" R&D budget in total is more than what the Australian Tax Department claims is our countries entire Industry / Science subsidy spend!

My takeaway on all this is simply the bullcrap politics infiltrates on both sides of the debate, both sides lie through their teeth! It's interesting because it's the old debate about extremes of left or right being circular, if you go far enough to become an extremist in either direction you meet back in the middle.

The $10.3 billion fossil fuel subsidy is detailed in the Australia Institute research, fully footnoted and referenced:

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/viewer.html?pdfurl=https%3A%2F%2Faustraliainstitute.org.au%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F04%2FP1021-Fossil-fuel-subsidies-2020-21-Web.pdf&clen=1064959&chunk=true

The $2.8 billion renewable energy subsidy is an estimate by the Minerals Council of Australia and reported in the Financial Review.

https://www.afr.com/politics/renewable-energy-subsidies-to-top-28b-a-year-up-to-2030-20170313-guwo3t#:~:text=Renewable%20energy%20sources%20such%20as,Target%2C%20according%20to%20new%20research.





It's still the Gulf of Mexico, Don Old!

Re: General Discussions

Reply #716 –
Quote from: LP – on
I think you'll find China is pretty close and has the funds to do it, when we talk about a lunar base people should not be too obsessed with humans on the moon, it might well be robotic.

China's manned presence in space is limited to a small space station in earth orbit, certainly not the moon.  Robotic is a waste for what it can gather and return.  Ask the Russians.

Re: General Discussions

Reply #717 –
Quote from: ElwoodBlues1 – on
The other alternative is Elon Musk who seems to be doing his own thing and has some obsession about having folk live on Mars.

The only reason Mars gets a run is iron ore IMHO.  That's why its red. 
"everything you know is wrong"

Paul Hewson

Re: General Discussions

Reply #718 –
With over 50 billion metric tons of iron ore alone in Australia, I can't see Earth needing much from Mars :)

Re: General Discussions

Reply #719 –
Quote from: DJC – on
The $10.3 billion fossil fuel subsidy is detailed in the Australia Institute research, fully footnoted and referenced:

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/viewer.html?pdfurl=https%3A%2F%2Faustraliainstitute.org.au%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F04%2FP1021-Fossil-fuel-subsidies-2020-21-Web.pdf&clen=1064959&chunk=true

The $2.8 billion renewable energy subsidy is an estimate by the Minerals Council of Australia and reported in the Financial Review.

https://www.afr.com/politics/renewable-energy-subsidies-to-top-28b-a-year-up-to-2030-20170313-guwo3t#:~:text=Renewable%20energy%20sources%20such%20as,Target%2C%20according%20to%20new%20research.
They're very generous definitions of what subsidies are, and where they come from, that vary subject to political or commercial allegiance.

People can believe what they like and then vote or invest accordingly.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"