Anybody live around here?

kwieland

Just saw this going down under:

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/first_solar ... pv_project

Anybody live around here? What are the locals saying? I was surprised that most of the electricity generated is going to go to desalinization.

dr bee

I am located near the desalination plant. We were told when the project was planned that the energy for the project was "green". Mind you we here that about almost all new projects at the moment. Would love to see an audit of all the green energy and the projects meant to be running off it.

The desalination project has just had approval to be doubled in size following near record low run offs for the past few years. Mind you the water restrictions are pretty weak here, Sprinklers banned over winter, then twice per week on a roster system. No limit to how long, just as long as its not between 9am and 6pm.

RupertofOZ

Most of the desalination plants built... comsume an equivalent of about 60-70% of the power they produce... to actually run them...

Outbackozzie

heh? You might want to re read that rupe.

RupertofOZ

Will do OBO... I'm sure that was the figure quoted with regard to one in Sydney.. :dontknow:

Doh... just reread what I posted.... should have been 60-70% of the water they produce... :funny1:

werdna

That is the nature of reverse osmosis, generally for every 1 litre or water they produce, 5 litres passes through them.
Not really an issue when the water comes from the ocean.

Wasn't there one is NSW that was going to take 25 years to pay off but had a life of 20 years or something?

I have been out to waste water treatment plants, most of it is filtered to 5ppm clean the boiled off.
Such a waste, personally I think we need to get over it and just reuse the water.

arbe

Trouble is they return the waste back to the ocean - water with very high salt content. Where the waste water is returned nothing grows.

kwieland

arbe - you suggest they should be polling out solids?

Privatteer

Forgive my skepticism but its just so they can point at something to draw attention away from the fact they spending more than $150 million refurbishing the four 40 year old 60MW coal fired units at Muja power station that they mothballed a few years ago. Probably double that by the time they do the associated plant such as conveyor systems.

50km south east of Geraldton does not have many locals its fairly sparely populated farmland/scrub. Not too bad a flight from Perth so they probably just fly everyone in and stick them in camps.

kwieland

Do you have links on the refurb? I was surprised by how much water a coal plant uses. The Bay shore power plant that provides much of my power uses 700 million gallons of water per day. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/tcmar ... chine.html)

There is also a sierra club article that compares it to other water uses 4 times domestic use. www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/media/2011 ... tsheet.pdf

So, in this case solar really does make sense, especially if you are using the energy to make WATER!

kwieland

http://www.epa.ohio.gov/portals/35/perm ... ection.pdf Page 8 says the power plant has a rated input of 810 MGD, or MILLIONS OF GALLONS A DAY!

Privatteer

kwieland wrote:

Do you have links on the refurb?

Media release

verve-defends-coal-fired-plan
To my knowledge they are the 4 most polluting plants in Australia. I am assuming there is something being done to reduce that. They do chew a lot of water for Muja most comes from the mines dewatering system and a series of bores into old mine shafts.

Oh and this biomas facility they have listed, failed ~2years ago. Pinetec went bust and they were having issues with the sawdust feeding the boilers. Just minor things like explosions.

kwieland

Privatteer wrote:

Just minor things like explosions.

Nice. I thought US patented the bad fiscal, engineering, and business decisions. Glad to see the rest of the world got some LOVE too!

dr bee

Privaateer,

I'm with you on the scepictism. Having been involved in the sawmill during its start up, it should have been a great concept. Unfortunatly it didn't go according to plan. Coal crushers don't make good wood residue grinders. Sad for the guys who lost their jobs.

Would have been nice if the solar rebates had gone on a bit longer, countering the requirement for the refurb. Missed the boat as the new house has only just been completed.

furnaceboy

It is interesting that in Europe, there are an ever increasing number of power plants that were built to use coal, now turning to wood pellets, which is a renewable waste resource, and burns something like 95% clean. Western Australia has a large wood pellet producer that exports everything to Europe (mostly Germany). None are used in Australia. Figure that one out.

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