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[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Wait.

I don't believe that Aus's sunlight can melt skins.

Hell, tropics got the most scary sun there (though I admit it is more balanced all-year, there are no 'summer' here, just dry season, which is getting fucked up by global warring)

[Muz]

A bit of an exaggeration there, but the country still has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. Tropics don't have very intense sunlight, they just have a lot of it.

[Neruz]

Good luck getting the power companies to accept the idea of decentralising the power grid.

Also:




And finally, how are you going to pay for all the solar cells and their inevitable replacement after a decade or two? Also who's going to pay for the infrastructure? And so on and so forth, and how long will it take the cells to repay that phenominal up-front cost?

Seriously, go nuclear. By the time we run out of Fissionable material we should have Fusion worked out, and it's all downhill from there.

[Cheeetar]

What is that picture? It looks extremely fake.

[Jackrabbit]

You're joking.

[Neruz]

What is that picture? It looks extremely fake.

Didn't you know? Down here on the bottom of the world water falls up.

[Muz]

The power companies have accepted the idea of decentralizing the power grid a long time ago, especially if it saves money

Seriously, though, solar cells are cheap. UNSW produces the best silicon cells in the world. And they produce so many of them, they have to throw them out.  Just don't go gallium-arsenide, those are the expensive ones. The infrastructure is also good for it, there's just some stuff with current solar cell standards where they might burst suddenly burst into flames, because of some flaws in high-voltage DC power. But they're working on that

Besides, I don't think Aussies would accept nuclear power. Might as well use our own technology.

[sneakey pete]

And finally, how are you going to pay for all the solar cells and their inevitable replacement after a decade or two? Also who's going to pay for the infrastructure? And so on and so forth, and how long will it take the cells to repay that phenominal up-front cost?

Seriously, go nuclear. By the time we run out of Fissionable material we should have Fusion worked out, and it's all downhill from there.

You do realise that the same problems that you mentioned in your first paragraph apply to the second?

And as for UNSW solar cells, they're good and probably the way of the future Not the old style of solid panels, these things are thin films. Not as effective, but the drop in cost is much greater than the drop in effeciency. So unless your streached for space they're much better than the old style. Why do they have so many of them? well they are the leaders in making them, so they need to make a new batch each time something is changed. If they were a business i doubt they'd have any to give away. 

[Osmosis Jones]

Coal is a limited resource, and regardless of whether it's in 80 years or 300, we will run out, necessitating a change in the infrastructure anyway.
Changing to a nuclear power plant requires building one, as well as arranging for waste transport and management (not to mention a P.R. campaign of epic proportions to get public approval in the first place).
All these are expensive, and all will be projects that one government is going to have to commit to, with the knowledge that any payoff from it will most likely land during the opposition's reign, while having to deal with a huge public furore. In short, far too much effort for most politicians to deal with.

Compare this to switching to alternate, primarily decentralised, power generation. As I said earlier, there will need to be large infrastructure changes, and I'll happily admit it may come to more, in total, than switching to nuclear would.

HOWEVER, switching to decentralised power can be done gradually, spreading the cost out over multiple terms of government. For example, legislating that all new buildings generate at least X MW of power for every Y MW of predicted usage would be a good way to begin. Further on that legislation tack, requiring more energy efficient construction styles would also increase the relative value of every Watt generated.

Regarding cost of the actual equipment, you could use federal funding to construct manufacturing facilites to produce solar cells etc for both domestic and foreign consumption, providing both local jobs and an additional export revenue stream from the increasingly environmentally conscious world.

It is far more likely to garner public support, as even the staunchest denier of global warming cannot argue against a pollution free method of power generation with far greater redundancy and likely lower end costs for individual consumers over long term use.

Finally, it already aligns with existing government policy; in short, it is far more likely to be taken up by the government now.



tl;dr? I'm not saying switching to alternative energy generation is the only viable option. I'm not even saying it is definately the best (I honestly have neither the information, time, nor inclination to do a complete cost benefit analysis of all possible methods), all I'm saying is don't write it off. It's not impossible, nor even that improbable that 50 years hence we all produce our own power and nuclear or coal-fired power is a fading memory.

[Neruz]

The power companies have accepted the idea of decentralizing the power grid a long time ago, especially if it saves money

That's the thing; it doesn't. Switching over to full solar power would require massive up-front costs.

As with most renewable energy people, you clearly don't undestand just how much energy is in fossil fuels.


Nuclear Power will never be a fading memory, especially once we get Fusion working. Doubly so when you add in the reliability aspects.



I feel i should also add that solar cells last somewhere between 20 and 40 years, depending on what model you have. The costs of replacing every solar cell every 40 years are rapidly going to outstrip the costs of running a nuclear power plant (which are actually pretty minute, the vast majority of the cost is in construction.)

[sneakey pete]

Neruz, I think you'll find nuclear power costs much more than you think it does, and that solar cells are a bit cheaper than you think they are.

[Neruz]

Doubt it, my uncle has spent the better part of half a decade trying to come up with a feasible way to incorporate large amounts of solar power into the grid and all this comes straight from him. If the solar cell technology was more advanced then it would be more feasible, but at the moment it just isn't.

[Muz]

Nuclear fission is just too expensive, and not in terms of money. If you had a culture which accepts it easily, like Iran and N. Korea, you'd have no problem with them at all. As it is here, building a nuclear reactor is the kind of thing that would have someone kicked out of office, and that's why it just won't happen.

Solar brings a profit politically. Since you guys have privatized energy, the bonus from someone using solar power is 'green' people will start to use a more expensive energy provider who uses solar power, than a cheaper one who uses coal. When someone offers to switch to nuclear power and charge 15% less, well, people aren't going to be excited about it.

Besides, if you're waiting for cold fusion, coal should be enough to last until then. Coal pollutes the air a little more, sure. But nuclear also brings in the image of radioactive pollution, and it's still a limited resource. And massive up-front costs to change something that works. You also need a lot of skilled techies to run a nuclear reactor, and the problem is that there are far, far more renewable energy techies than those skilled in nuclear physics.

But obviously, if solar was such an easy solution, they'd have done it by now. But since there are a lot of people putting research in solar power, and many of them are Australians, I think it's got more of a future.

[Neruz]

Cold Fusion is nonsense, how do you get energy out of a room temperature reaction? I'm waiting for normal, run of the mill every day Fusion. And i fully expect we'll get it before we (Australia) run out of coal.

Solar power has an excellent future as a secondary power source, and a primary source for space-based systems, but i doubt it will ever become the primary planet-side power source, unless we get weather control of course, that solves the major reliability issues.

[sneakey pete]

Unless the government wants to forcibly sieze all coal in the country, i doubt that "we" and "the world" will be much different when it comes to coal supply.

But still, a balanced approach is required.