The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[LP]

The renewables are not a similar level of one and done by contrast.  They all degrade over time, and with their degradation their ability to produce power does too but in Nuclears case, the power generation component is only impacted when the site needs to be closed for maintenance.

Actually this is a very big deal largely ignored by the renewable boosters.

R&D into making SolarPV, Wind and Solar Thermal last longer is big business, there are several multimillion dollars companies in Australia trying to solve the problems.

At the moment SolarPV and Solar Thermal are plagued by higher than expected labour costs, because they need so much maintenance, ground plane installs basically have crews and manual labourers continuously patrolling arrays of panels cleaning, it's a bit like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, they get to the end and start all over again. So guess what, they are shying away from building in the sunny desert locations because dust is turning out to be too much of a problem, not only cleaning but on the wind dust and sand act like mild grit blasting, so they want to build ground plane installations over dairy farms or in the wheat belt!

Secondly, the longevity of the panels and mirrors is a big hurdle for commercial investment, without access to subsidies the commercial arrays wouldn't get built, and without more subsidies they won't be maintained. It's a big reason why there are companies specialising on building only before quickly offloading the assets. My understanding this was a point of contention between Cannon-Brookes and Twiggy Forrest over the future of the investments in the north.

The situation with wind is even worse, I have two friends now fulltime employed replacing redundant Wind generators, these are systems that have only been built this century and they are already replacing them. Even worse, the way they were built and the materials used means they can't be recycled at this time, and there is no domestic recycling solution in the works at this stage, so the obsolete hardware will eventually have to be shipped offshore. I bet that's not in the environmental cost analysis!