Nah, bgt, No one will ever tell me when to turn of the lights. Anyway, my Honda generator will always be there for me to keep the lights on eh. But please don't tell those "funny" anti Genny folks what I said. It's our secret, I know I can count on you Cobber :)

bgt wrote:

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Aussie1 I'm waiting for someone to invented a solar powered generator!

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 It is called a photovoltaic cell AKA a solar panel :)

Cheap, no fuel required except the free sun which never runs out (that is why it is called "renewable"), no maintenance required, non polluting, fully automatic and totally silent.

Magic really.

Cheers,

Peter

msg wrote:

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Except Peter, they eventually break or wear out.

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 25 years? How many little petrol generators would run 8 hours per day for 25 years?

And there is a lot of resources required to make a petrol generator that will last a faction of the time.

Cheers,

Peter

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

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Dick0 wrote:

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I thought the climate changes every day...it does where I live!

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 No. You are confusing "climate" with "weather".

Cheers,

Peter

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"Weather" it does or "weather" it doesn't. 

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

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bgt wrote:

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Aussie1 I'm waiting for someone to invented a solar powered generator!

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 It is called a photovoltaic cell AKA a solar panel :)

Cheap, no fuel required except the free sun which never runs out (that is why it is called "renewable"), no maintenance required, non polluting, fully automatic and totally silent.

Magic really.

Cheers,

Peter

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 Abra Kadabra! We have magic from fossil fuels emitting huge quantities of Carbon from a country emitting the greatest green-house gasses globally without impunity and marketing their products to other countries which are subsidising the products with taxpayer funding.

Now, that's magic really!

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

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msg wrote:

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Except Peter, they eventually break or wear out.

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 25 years? How many little petrol generators would run 8 hours per day for 25 years?

And there is a lot of resources required to make a petrol generator that will last a faction of the time.

Cheers,

Peter

 

 

 

Short answer, none, they will be well banned by then  

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tonyd wrote:

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One of the big problems that sensible people face about climate change is convincing the rabid greenies that solar power panels don't work all that well at 9pm.

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 Ever heard of Snowy 2? Any idea what it is for and how it works?

There will be hundreds of smaller versions all over the country.

Just need to change the mind sets.

Cheers,

Peter

Solar panels need a bit of water for cleaning. Wind turbines don't use much. Processing of coal uses a lot of water. More water in generating electricity & more water in fire suppression of end of life mines.

Gee...I wonder what it takes to manufacture Solar Panels, Wind Turbines and Lithium Batteries.

Oh, that's right, nothing...they are Renewables. 

Approximately six months of embedded energy.

bgt wrote:

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Peter ever heard of droughts? How is pumped hydro going to work in a drought? And those same pumped hydro systems need power to pump the water back up hill. Will the folks in Hay appreciate the fact that their water is still going up and down hill back in the Snowy while they have no water?

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 Pumped storage does not consume any water. Fill it up once during a wet season and it is available forever. This will be water that was never available before.

In Adelaide we will use excess solar power to desalinate sea water so we can reduce our reliance on the River Murray, so there will be more water that there used to be.

There is also the opportunity to pump sea water into a dam and let it run back to the ocean to produce power any time it is needed.

Or we can turn the excess solar into hydrogen and use that to make electricity using fuel cells. These are already available. and the by-product is pure water.

We need to change the way we think.

Cheers,

Peter

peter67 wrote:

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Hi Buzz I agree with comments made here about Australia being a small cog in a world wide wheel. For people who are worried about our flora and fauna in Australia one of first things they should look at is cat's. NO, I'm not a cat hater, will include a pic of "squeeky" the vet next doors cat with collar and bell, who likes to visit because I quite often buy fish and chips and she never drinks my beer so that's OK :) but...I'd bet the majority of cat's have neither in the suburbs and the bush speaks for itself. The figure I saw re small animals, lizards etc was over a million per year Australia wide not to mention insects, shoot I just did nevermind and lets not forget the fox, wild brumby's and ugly people, good looking people obviously deserve to live. Not many of us would be knocking ourselves off would we? :):)

ps here's squeeky the day she got a severe haircut

 

 

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 I totally agree. Introduced species, along with habitat destruction, are a major contributor to the loss of fauna in Australia. It's something like 70% less native animals in Australia than 1970. I used to have a cat, until it died, but I made sure that it stayed inside all the time. I don't hate cats, it's the irresponsible owners that let the cats go out and kill that are to blame.

It's not just cats. It's all feral animals destroying Australian flora and fauna like camels, horses, deer, pigs, foxes, rabbits, cane toads, etcetera (in case I left some out. I'll leave humans off the list for now.  ;--)) ). There should be a major push to eliminate these in Australia to help the native animals to recover. Along with saving habitats and getting rid of feral plants.

However, I digress because the original post was about climate change. :--) 

Whenarewethere wrote:

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Approximately six months of embedded energy.

 

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 I remember seeing something like that. The amount of energy to create solar and wind turbines was recovered well within 18 months of operation. The trouble is that I couldn't be bothered trying to find that information. I don't think it's not going to convince anyone on this forum. 

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

25 years? 

Cheers,

Peter

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 Mined were guaranteed for 25 years so I expect to get more than that. :--) 

bgt wrote:

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Peter ever heard of droughts? How is pumped hydro going to work in a drought? And those same pumped hydro systems need power to pump the water back up hill. Will the folks in Hay appreciate the fact that their water is still going up and down hill back in the Snowy while they have no water?

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 I think the point is that the excess energy produced by the renewable energy sources is used to pump the water uphill and then the water is released to produce hydroelectricity when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow.

There's also batteries, I use those, and some type of bricks, invented by the Queensland University (I think), that store heat. They can be used in the decommissioned coal power stations and then used to run the turbines when needed.

They're a lot of smart people creating heaps of solutions. They just need money and government assurance to get them into production. 

Buzz Lightbulb wrote:

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Whenarewethere wrote:

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Approximately six months of embedded energy.

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 I remember seeing something like that. The amount of energy to create solar and wind turbines was recovered well within 18 months of operation. The trouble is that I couldn't be bothered trying to find that information. I don't think it's not going to convince anyone on this forum. 

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 My portable solar cells will take a long time as we don't use them enough. 

We do what we can do, even very small stuff like picking plastic up off the foreshore & pick screws off the road which seem to be everywhere these days.

We do what we can do, & so be it if others don't.

It is the same storage, they just need to pump more uphill to fill the battery when there is plenty of solar & wind.

The oldest of the 3 pot lines of the now closed aluminium smelter at Kurri Kurri needed 17,000 kWh of electricity per tonne of aluminium.

New smelters are about 13,000 kWh per tonne.

So that's easy enough to calculate. The kids can work it out for small & big windmills!

You need about 1.6 tonnes of coal to smelt a tonne of aluminium.

Someone other kids can have a go at steel electric arc furnces!