And yet only one person has even vaguely attempted to address the original question, where can I find information to evaluate the system specs and economics.
So I will give you the benefit of my understanding of the basic economics based on the little info available and walk you thru some very basic engineering calcs that I would do to evaluate the economic potential of the technology (I do this for a living and have doe so in far more detail for some decades)
1 - Sept 2011 - They indicate 1MW of continuous generation capacity costs around $5mill - I can't work out whether that includes balance of plant (eg the economiser to recover the waste heat and synchronising to the islanded grid etc), let us be generous and say it is 5 mill all up.
Side point - at 20% efficiency this means 5MW of waste heat needs to be available, less the efficiency of the economiser. This is a cost/value proposition, so let us say that we get 75% efficiency - this means the base consumption of the Jundee plant needs to be around 15MW - probably ball park when everything (milling crushing, camp etc is on line).
2 - For a bulk purchase of $5 mill you could reasonably expect a dollar a watt installed solar cell capacity, but you are only going to get that an average of maybe 4-5 hours a day across the year for a fixed angle install (I am currently in Kal, consulting to Very Large Mining Company) and asked my mate tonight what he gets on his home solar panels across a year, as he monitors in detail. So this would return maybe equivalent 1MW average offset across a year. Note also no moving parts and minimal corrosion issues, reasonable resale potential on the panels if the mine folds.
3 - Next problem, how to allow for sudden drop of input due to cloud crossing sun (or whatever), a minimal amount of storage would be required to give the generator prime movers time to ramp up to compensate. It could be rotary or static, probably only needs to be 30 seconds to a minute. At this stage of the game rotary is probably easier, but devil is in the detail. So lets allow a mill for storage to allow for transition, so let us say we only get 800kw continuous equivalent across a year. Probably major risk is a hail storm, maybe you could insure, maybe not. Maintenance - panel cleaning would be required regularly, but no great cost.
So already you see, maybe recent changes in the playing field mean that the economies that stacked up in 2011 maybe are close to being eclipsed by other alternatives, but there is not enough detail to evaluate from ERJ.
All I have been asking for is enough detail to make an informed decision - this could be a buy, or it could not be, depending on the detail. What amazes me if this was a resource in the ground, the JORC guidelines would have to be followed, but in this case no substantiating information need be provided.
Yet all the naysayers seem to want to concentrate on is the number of posts I have made, were you not all first time posters at one stage?
Only one other person in this forum has shown even the slightest technical competence in this matter, the rest seem to be swayed by the emotion of their purchase price, or desire for the price to rise without reason, who knows but the informed technical opinion seems very thin on the ground.
So, please, please correct any of my very basic assumptions on the numbers, because all I want is to make an informed decision before I decide whether to buy or not.
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