bit off topic but as the greens are spruiking alternate energies...

bit off topic but as the greens are spruiking alternate energies in the northern rivers, it's interesting what a structural engineer had to say on the EHR thread a couple of weeks ago about solar's and wind's contribution to baseload --

'I know that a lot of people (and, indeed, the government) are backing wind and solar in a big way. I can't bring myself to put money into these ventures because of what I know about the power industry.

'As I understand it, there are some significant technical challenges facing distributed solar. For one, it can cause big problems for the network. Then there is the practical issue of cloud cover.

'Take South East Queensland for an example. The big power stations need time to ramp up their capacity to meet anticipated demand. Most of the distributed solar panels that feed into the grid are located in Brisbane. Now, say the power generators look at the weather forecast for a particular day and rely on the Bureau's "Sunny" forecast. They factor in a certain amount of solar and then provide enough baseload power to cover the rest.

'Ok, so what happens when a storm rolls in out of nowhere? Believe me, this happens in Brisbane (just recently). All of a sudden, the solar cuts out, resulting in brown outs across the network while the power generators rush to get another unit or two up and running.

'Now, we all know that security of power supply is a big deal, so noone wants to let brown outs or black outs occur. What does this mean? The power generators, from what I understand, tend to ignore the distributed solar and overproduce energy in case it is needed when a cloud passes over Brisbane. All this excess energy gets sent to earth.

'So, from what I understand, having distributed solar energy in the network has very little effect on the amount of GHG emissions from the power industry. As for wind, the same technical issue exists.

'This is why I want to back geothermal energy. Because I know that reliable, base load power is very, very important to the power industry. As I see it, solar and wind are nothing more than an impost on the power industry (because they are forced to pay people for the clean power they produce ... all the while sending dirty power to earth just in case it is needed when the wind stops blowing or a cloud passes over the city).

'Then there is your very valid point that the components are being manufactured using dirty power.'