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South Australia is leading the world on the integration of wind and solar.

 There is little doubt that South Australia is leading the world on the
integration of wind and solar. Now, it’s about to take an even bolder
leap into a deep green energy future through its hydrogen jobs plan.

The state has sourced more than 70 per cent of its electricity demand from wind
and solar over the past year, and when RenewEconomy interviewed state
energy minister Tom Koutsantonis on Sunday afternoon for its Energy
Insiders podcast, it was nearing the end of a 60-hour period where it
average more than 100 per cent wind and solar. Earlier that day, the state
had reached a stunning new peak of 264 per cent “potential” wind and
solar, the combination of renewable energy actually produced, and the
renewable energy curtailed by the lack of a market.

South Australia response to the this excess of green energy is to encourage even more, with
another bold step that it hopes will make it a global leader in green
hydrogen, just as it has done with renewables.

 Renew Economy 25th Oct 2023 #Australia #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

October 27, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, renewable | Leave a comment

‘Cottage industry’: Gurus say nuclear no match for solar energy

Hans van Leeuwen  https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/cottage-industry-gurus-say-nuclear-no-match-for-solar-energy-20231013-p5ebxp

Hans van Leeuwen covers British and European politics, economics and business from London. He has worked as a reporter, editor and policy adviser in Sydney, Canberra, Hanoi and London. Connect with Hans on Twitter. Email Hans at hans.vanleeuwen@afr.com

London | The debate on nuclear power is a distraction from solar, which is about to tip into exponential growth that will sweep aside all other energy sources, say Australia’s much-garlanded pair of leading solar inventors.

Andrew Blakers and Martin Green, often dubbed the “fathers of photovoltaics”, described nuclear energy as “a cottage industry”, with no chance of reaching economies of scale in any useful timeframe.

Solar, though, “is going to take over energy it is in a way that will be utterly astonishing for most people”, Professor Blakers said.

“It is going to do it as fast as we went from film photography to digital photography. In the space of 20 years, basically we’re going to flip from solar being a few per cent to solar being everything but a few per cent. It really is the fastest energy change in all of history by a large margin,” he said.

The two men were in London to collect the latest in a string of prizes for their work on PERC solar photovoltaic technology, which has brought down the cost of solar panels by 80 per cent in the past decade.

At Buckingham Palace on Thursday (Friday AEDT), the King awarded them and their colleagues Aihua Wang and Jianhua Zhao with the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

Professor Green described nuclear as “pie in the sky” – including the small modular reactor technologies that have enthused the British government and the opposition in Australia as countries race to transition to green energy.

“They are going to have a few prototypes up by 2030, but it really needs the economy of volume to get the prices down to where they’re projecting,” he said. “So you need to be selling hundreds of these things, not just a few sample ones.”

He also said that the history of power generation had been about reducing costs by making things bigger. “It’s going against historical trend, I think, imagining that you can do things cheaply by making a lot of [smaller ones].”

Professor Blakers said nuclear was simply not in the net-zero race. “This year, it looks like the world will do about 500 gigawatts of solar and wind – maybe 400 gigawatts of solar, 100 gigawatts of wind. Hydro will do about 20 gigawatts, nuclear will do approximately one, gas and coal maybe 50,” he said.

“Solar has been growing at 20 per cent a year for a long time. If it continues to grow at this level, we will completely decarbonise the world by the early 2040s. This is how fast it’s happening. It’s so cheap compared with anything else.”

Nuclear, meanwhile, had not increased its capacity in the past 13 years, he said, adding no more than a gigawatt a year.

“You cannot grow an industry from one to multi-thousand gigawatts, which is what you’d need per year, in any reasonable timeframe. It’s impossible unless you put it on a war footing,” he said.

“You just don’t have enough engineers, scientists, raw materials, the factories, the factories to build the factories, the factories to build the factories to build the factories – it just doesn’t happen.”

Grids: the big hurdle

Both men were convinced that battery technologies and costs would continue to fall, driving increasingly rapid growth. The one big obstacle in Australia was transmission.

“Basically, you need a lot of new transmission to bring the new solar and wind into cities. And we’re not building it,” Professor Blakers said.

“Transmission only becomes important once you get up to 30, 40 per cent solar-wind. We’re currently 33 per cent solar-wind, and we will be 75 per cent by 2030. We don’t have a transmission problem yet. But in two years’ time, we’ll have a major one, and everyone can see that.”

He said initiatives to increase compensation to land owners should overcome the remaining community resistance.

Professor Green said the growth of solar energy use would not unseat China’s dominance of the supply chain for solar panels.

“Solar is basically going to demolish the market for coal and gas. And the geopolitical question is whether India, Europe and the US would tolerate having 80 or 90 per cent of the global solar industry coming out of China,” he said.

“It’s very hard to see other countries competing with China. The momentum they’ve got.”

He said India might become a major manufacturer, but its industry’s development would not be as co-ordinated and co-operative as China’s had been.

China, though, would have to address the demand of its customers for higher environmental and social standards – creating an opportunity for Australia to become a player in providing green-friendly metallurgical-grade silicon. #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, renewable | Leave a comment