`Cottage industry' claim gets proponents fired up

Canberra Times
Saturday 25/7/2009 Page: 12

Renewable energy experts have hit back at claims that solar energy is nothing more than a "cottage industry" that could not deliver baseload power requirements. Head of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Ziggy Switkowski said only nuclear energy was a viable alternative to fossil fuel-based power plants.

But director of the ANU's Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems Andrew Blakers said a mix of renewable energy sources - particularly solar - could supply all of Australia's energy needs. "He obviously has a view that nuclear is something we should develop, but we have a nuclear reactor that's tens of thousands of kilometres away and will last 5000 million years - the sun," Professor Blakers said.

"The sun as a solar resource is 500 times larger than all fossil resources put together, it is available forever with minimal environmental consequences.., it's a sustainable, folly ubiquitous resource." Professor Blakers said Dr Switkowski's claim that renewables could not supply base load power needs was incorrect.

"He is just wrong to say that. The problem is not baseload, it's peaking power. What he is talking about is what happens at night when the sun doesn't shine, but there are number of ways to fix that problem, commercially available, simple solutions like pumped hydro to store power," he said.

Dr Switkowski also said that a combination of renewables, carbon capture and storage and energy conservation measures would not adequately bridge the shortfall left if fossil fuel-generated power were to be scaled back. Lloyd Energy Systems chief executive Steve Hollis said he "totally disagreed" with Dr Switkowski's comments. Lloyd Energy Systems is bidding to build a renewable energy plant iii Canberra.

Mr Hollis said, "Solar technologies that do incorporate storage are fairly new to the market, but it is coming along very quickly. We have grown up with the idea of very large power stations. But we think there should be distributed power stations around the country, supplying into the grid."

Mr Hollis said his company had suppliers and factories in Canberra, Queanbeyan, Cooma and Moruya and hoped to build a 30 MW plant for Canberra.