Western Australia’s wave power microgrid – a world first
World-first wave power microgrid to be trialled in WA http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-29/world-first-wave-power-microgrid-to-be-trialled-in-wa/6896994 By Emily Piess A WA energy company is about to trial the world’s first renewable microgrid power station using wave energy as one of its sources.
Perth-based Carnegie Wave Energy will build the pilot project on Garden Island, using wave and solar energy to supply power to the Defence Department and a desalination plant. Chief executive Michael Ottaviano said the technology could be used to provide power to regional townships near the coast, as well as island communities. “This is a model for islands to move away from diesel-power generation into a combination of renewables,” Mr Ottaviano said.
“It’s also [a model for] regional towns in Western Australia, particularly those that are either off-grid and also running on diesel, or those that are on the so-called fringes of a grid, typically on the end of long transmission lines.”
Mr Ottaviano said the technology could reduce WA’s reliance on transmission lines that are expensive to maintain and upgrade. “It can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade, so as a way to avoid that sort of large expense, embedding renewable microgrids on the end of those transmission lines will be the future of clean power in Western Australia,” he said.
“The Garden Island microgrid project will do the equivalent amount of power for about 2,000 to 3,000 households, so it’s already of commercial scale.” Western Power is partnering with Carnegie and will provide technical expertise on the project.The microgrid, which will cost up to $10 million to build, will produce about five megawatts of energy, a significant portion of the Defence Department’s electricity use on Garden Island.
If the trial is successful, Mr Ottaviano said the microgrid model could be used in regional centres such as Albany and Geraldton. “This potentially could be rolled out to thousands and millions of households across Western Australia and beyond that really across the globe,” he said. “The potential for these sorts of projects is enormous.”Carnegie will undertake a detailed design phase before construction begins next year.
The microgrid is due to be completed by the end of 2016.
Karoonda Council, South Australia, considering floating solar plant
Floating solar power plant mooted for Karoonda to power waste management pump station http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-30/floating-solar-power-plant-mooted-for-karoonda/6899436 The District Council of Karoonda-East Murray says it will look into the possibility of a floating solar power plant at Karoonda in South Australia’s Murray-Mallee region.
Council CEO Peter Smithson said the floating solar plant would provide power for the waste management pump station next to the stormwater dam.
A similar plant is already operating at Jamestown in the state’s mid-north.
Mr Smithson said the council had committed to undertake further due diligence about the green power opportunity.
“We’ve been approached by a company about the possibility of a solar generating power plant at Karoonda which would provide power to our CWMS [Community Wastewater Management System] pumps,” he said.
“We’ve gone and looked at Jamestown.
“There’s quite a long resolution because it really details the fact that there’s no capital outlay by council and it really looks at the fact that we’ve done due diligence and we’ve asked the company to come and address the next council meeting.
Tanzania’s shining solar energy programme
“People who have small shops no longer close their shops early because they don’t have electricity. They can now operate until late at night. The availability of solar electricity has helped control immigration of people to urban areas,” says alternative energy specialist Dr Brenda Kazimili at the University of Dar es Salaam.
The government now wants all health centres and dispensaries that are not connected to the grid countrywide to be provided with solar panels.
How Tanzania plans to light up a million homes with solar power, Guardian, Erick Kab
endera, 29 Oct 15, In a country where only 40% of people have access to grid electricity, the government is looking to sunshine to power health centres and homes efore solar panels were installed at Masaki village’s only health centre, doctors, nurses and midwives had to use dim flashlights or the glow from their cellphones to deliver babies and treat night-time emergencies.
In one case in 2010, a man arrived late after a motorcycle accident and needed a wound stitching. As the nurse began the procedure by the light of her torch, she felt a cold slithering sensation against her legs.
A large black snake was moving across the dark, cement floor. The nurse fled, leaving the patient in the dark with the snake.
The work of the centre, which is five hours drive down a dirt track from the capital Dar es Salaam and serves a population of 1.5 million people in surrounding villages, is now transformed by a two kilowatt solar array installed on the roof at a cost of $15,000 (£9,700). And the government wants many more like it.
In February, it launched its One Million Solar Homes initiative to provide the sun’s power to 1m properties by 2017. Off Grid Electric, the Tanzanian company implementing the initiative, says it will provide power to 10% of the country’s homes. Currently, only 40% have access to grid power with access particularly sparse in rural areas. Continue reading
MP Rowan Ramsey explains difference between Lucas Heights nuclear waste and the Sean Edwards import plan
A shipload of these rods, which are classified as medium-level waste, sent to France a decade ago for reprocessing is due home soon. With no place to store the radioactive material yet established, a special facility has been built at Lucas Heights in outer Sydney to store them until a location is secured…….
Mr Ramsey, who has a property outside Kimba in South Australia’s west, volunteered, but was told by then Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, it would constitute a perceived conflict of interest.
Australia’s nuclear/uranium giants don’t want nuclear technology (just waste dumping)
government has guaranteed to pay £92.50 a megawatt hour for power. At current exchange rates that works out at $198.91mwh. The average spot price for electricity across Australia on Tuesday was $39.89mwh.That gap demonstrates the quantum of incentive that Australia might need to attract the capital necessary to establish a footprint in nuclear power.
Nuclear warriors reject power and enrichment, AFR, by Matthew Stevens, 31 Oct 15, Hugh Morgan has been an apostle of the nuclear industry for more than 30 years. Australia’s biggest uranium mine, Olympic Dam, opened under Morgan’s watch as chief executive of Western Mining. And, to the ridicule of many, one of Morgan’s retirement projects was a business set up a decade ago that aimed to build nuclear power stations in Australia.
You might imagine Melbourne’s miner of legend is pretty excited about the quite sudden emergence of some level of national political consensus over South Australia’s attempt to expand its place in the nuclear energy cycle.
But Malcolm Turnbull’s support for a nuclear fuel industry based in South Australia is no Toyota moment for Morgan. And neither is our favourite defender of all things atomic tempted to excitement by Bill Shorten’s observation that an Australian nuclear industry should have been established years ago.
Morgan, you see, remains ever the financial rationalist. Continue reading
AUDIO: ABC Radio talks with Prince Charles about Paris UN Climate Conference
Prince Charles to attend Paris climate change summit, ……http://www.
abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4342148.htm ABC Radio The World Today Lisa Millar reported this story on Friday, October 30, 2015
KIM LANDERS: Prince Charles has announced he’ll be attending the UN climate talks in Paris to urge leaders to send an unequivocal message to the world. With a month to go, organisers of the talks say there still some thorny issues to be thrashed out but they’re confident of an agreement. What they’re desperate to do is avoid the failures of Copenhagen where hopes were raised and negotiations then collapsed.
Europe correspondent Lisa Millar reports.
LISA MILLAR: More than 80 world leaders have confirmed they will be in Paris on November the 30th for the opening session.
The French President has asked them to arrive at the start of the 12 day summit, rather than the end, hoping that change of tactic will help avoid the shambles seen in Copenhagen.
Prince Charles has announced he’s accepting an invitation to speak on the first day.
PRINCE CHARLES: Paris will be an absolutely crucial milestone, as you all know better than I, in the long overdue international effort to keep to a two degree world.
Although I think that everyone realises that this cop will be the beginning of a new phase in the process, not, not the end in itself.
It must, however, send an unequivocal long-term signal to the international community and to global markets that the transition to a low carbon, sustainable climate-compatible economy is firmly and irreversibly underway.
LISA MILLAR: The Prince of Wales has been an environmental advocate for more than 40 years, and has long argued that profound changes are needed to save the planet from the risks of global warming.
Between now and Paris, he’ll be visiting New Zealand and Australia, and meeting Commonwealth heads of government in Malta.
PRINCE CHARLES: The two degree world is therefore still, just, if we stretch every sinew, by setting a proper price for carbon, within reach.
It seems to me that we must build on all that has been achieved to date by establishing a whole new set of strong partnerships for action between forest countries and regions, donor governments, civil society and the private sector.
The policy and governance drive to reduce deforestation can come only from forest countries, with the benefits being of almost incalculable value both locally and globally. ……
NoNukes South Australia comments on the South Australian media
The News’ media in South Australia are daily and nightly having a nuclear field day in what they say promoting human nuclear as saviour of the planet.
It is easy to see who and what this Mr Jacobi and his mob are about.
The human nuclear mob have been intensively above and behind the scenes of the human nuclear movement since early the past century.
IT IS IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT THAT THE DEBATE REGARDING HUMAN NUCLEAR WAS ALREADY DONE – ALREADY COMPLETED – IN THE 1970’s IN AUSTRALIA
THE VERDICT OBTAINED BY ALL EXPERTS ASSEMBLED AT THE TIME FROM NEAR AND FAR WAS
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
NO HUMAN NUCLEAR.IN AUSTRALIA
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and especially since there is an extreme pristine clean perpetual abundance of Sunshine and Natural Gas in over and all around Australia that could last almost forever in a conservative frugal austere sustainable society, such as the People Society who has a record of over 50,000 years of natural pre-Invasion habitation.
Regarding the sudden re-appearance of the erroneous need for human Nuclear evaluation and approval:, the same words of wisdom apply as they did for the mass falsetto of the South Australia State Bank Debt crisis (deliberately engineered by human world finance in the 1980’s) and also the pre-emptive dumping of the Libya-like Gough Whitlam government earlier in the 1970’s
“The World is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
Benjamin Disraeli – British Statesman
NEVER TRUST NEWS
NEVER TRUST HUMAN NUCLEAR
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 