The first renewable-energy outside broadcast for Victoria

www.abc.net.au/
Monday, September 17, 2007

If the best radio takes chances, then the morning show today was great radio. Rather than our usual safe studio environment, Dave Lennon went to View Street, outside the Bendigo Art Gallery, for an outside broadcast marking the occasion of the Renewable Energy and Regional Australia conference. And, appropriately for the conference subject, instead of drawing power from the mains, our outside broadcast set-up was powered entirely by renewable energy.

While ABC Darwin might have beaten us to the title of Australia's - or even the world's - first solar-powered broadcast, it was Victoria's first and a world second, as far as we know.

The main source was direct solar energy, with four solar cells on top of a specially-built trailer; the two backup sources were the trailer's batteries, charged earlier by solar power, and a couple of reclining bikes that Weeroona College students use to generate power for their test vehicles in events like the Energy Breakthrough at Maryborough.

State Premier John Brumby was the opening keynote speaker for the conference, which has drawn speakers and attendees from across the country. He also paid a visit to our outside broadcast site, talking with ABC Victoria mornings presenter Dave Lennon about research and development in battery development.

"We are doing some great research in Victoria in battery technology," he says. "The key of course to why batteries are so important is, the sun doesn't shine all the time, and the wind doesn't blow all the time. If you can develop better batteries to store energy, then you overcome many of the challenges that normally push up the cost of renewable and intermittent energy sources.

"New technology R and D, of which Victoria is a national leader, is part of the solution as well. "You're seeing [battery improvement] with motor vehicles...with the hybrid vehicles. You can get extraordinary fuel economy - but every three or four years, you have to trade in all the batteries. "I think the best example is mobile phones - 15 years ago, 20 years ago, they were like a housebrick and the batteries were that large. They're now a very small lithium battery and you can have a mobile phone that, depending on how much you talk, will last for days and days and days.

"So it's R and D that's going to drive this, and I mentioned in my speech this morning the importance of research and development, and it is through research and development that you'll get the technology that converts these intermittent sources of power into sustainable, 24/7 power sources going forward."

Having done the interview, the Premier moved from the radio desk that consumes power to the trailer that generates it over to the reclining bikes that generate it. He and ABC Victoria State Director Randal Mathieson hopped on the bikes, putting out about 17 amps initially. There was one small problem though - a chain on the Premier's bike broke at just under 20 volts of power output.

The broadcast was a success, and the conference continues, wrapping up at 4.30pm tomorrow, 18 September 2007