5>Solar - comes in two flavours
a> Photo-voltaic. It works, it's now cheap as dirt. It does require space, it works and is viable. But not at night or some days.
b> Solar Thermal.
This is an interesting one because solar thermal is basically a failure. The reason is because of solar PV. The original reason for building solar thermal was that
solar PV was expensive. Now it is cheap, solar thermal is expensive by comparison.
Solar Thermal has tried to save it's sorry arse by suggesting that it could be better suited to a heat storage system like molten salt etc.
This has also proven to be complete crap. The Australian federal government has wasted over $14 million on this technology that I know of and got squat to show for it.
This does not deride the good R&D work the CSIRO has been doing with it at Newcastle. I do not think anything will come of their research with respect to solar thermal power, however, I do think they will learn and develop lots of other useful tech that would be well suited to other technologies.
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