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24/09/17
10:40
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Originally posted by pintohoo
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even in Tasmania which has lots of water in places and LOTS of existing infrastructure for hydro in place and working - to construct pumping is a very very very large outlay with doubtful outcomes.
I have felt for quite a while that I am so glad I don't have to make any long term decisions on power infrastructure atm - because it's a political, economic, technological nightmare time in history - and, I have to say, I do have sympathy for any governments that stuff it up or delay decisions
why?
because we are in a technological fast forward at 10 speed time in history
the times to build coal or fossil fuel generation are long - big money and time commitments -
ditto nuclear
wind and solar are quicker and probably cheaper - but, nowhere near as reliable - in fact, the latest report for wind is dismal
right at the same time - we have heaps of 'potential' technologies that are just theoretical - and probably will never happen - but, some will - and, there is just so much research going on into new things that it is almost odds on that something will come out of the box in the next 10 years - certainly 20 that will blow away everything we know about right atm.
We still have Lockheed Martin saying that they will have fusion commercial - as far as I know they haven't retracted that - they are saying it won't be as small and instead of 20 tons it might be 2000 tons - but, although that would take it out of the equation for small mobile applications - it sure wouldn't take it out of the equation for large operations fixed - or even big ships
which would just change the whole game overnight at a guess --
to me - that makes decisions that involve multi billion dollar bills and commitments with time scales of decades - very difficult to make - they are hard decisions at the best of times - but, in this time - wow - glad it's not me.
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Regardless of the existing or emerging technologies the embedded energy in getting some of these things working is usually ignored, eg EVs. This is no more evident than when these old industrial sites need rehabilitation, at a cost of squillons of dollars.
Hydro power that was installed in Tasmania in the 1970s is still working and now even supplying power to the national energy grid. Technology will come and go but water will never go out of fashion, and once they can harvest the hydrogen out of it efficiently, and on demand, (which they will) energy problems in many applications will be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.