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Thread: Solar Trams

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    Default Solar Trams

    Great news the largest tram network in the world is going solar

    "Melbourne's trams network will soon be powered by the first large-scale solar plant to be built in Victoria.

    The solar plant, which will be completed by the end of 2018, is expected to be located in Victoria's north-west.
    The state government announced on Thursday that the solar plant would produce 75 megawatts of power, with about half of that production to be linked to the tram network.
    35 megawatts of power was sufficient to cover the energy needs of 410 trams in the Melbourne network."

    ... tuazz.html

    A step in the right direction



Look Here ->
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    Just the usual silly questions,
    Is this a dedicated system solely to power up the Trams or are the panels being connected to 'the Grid' for distribution which is most likely?
    If its a 'dedicated wholly for the Tram system' which is highly unlikely, whats it going to cost to run the 'Poles and Wires' from the array to Tram grid and what powers the Trams after Dark?

    NSW has a Solar massive array out in the Far West of the State with another planned close by but nothing has been said that the Tram network now being constructed in Sydney 500 kms away will receive any power from it.

    Dont get the idea I am in the slightest way against Solar being used but I do wish they would stop distorting the story about using the power generated by such methods for such projects like the Lord Mayor of Sydney spruiking that there was a 'Green Power outlet for Electric vehicles in the heart of Sydney' but never said ALL of Sydney's power came from the coal fired generators.
    Apparently they had a dedicated turbine a couple of 100 Kms from Sydney run by wind, solar or water that generated a few hundred watts that was fed into the Grid so that was where the 'Green Power' came from to this outlet.
    Last edited by gordon_s1942; 19-01-17 at 01:35 PM.
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    Pretty sure the trams will be a big long term customer, using half the supply and guaranteeing a profit, so the bank gives a loan to the project.
    Make sense, as trams run mainly in daylight and existed because of the cheap but filthy polluting brown coal.
    Thats now being fazed out and replaced.

    We need to find ways of moving people in a carbon neutral way especially as oil is becoming scarcer,electricity will take up a lot of the slack.
    Trains should be next

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    Newton's Law states that for every action, there is a re-action or to generate electricity, even by Solar panels requires energy to do so.
    In the case of Solar panels, they need to be made by smelting Bauxite to Aluminium which requires a vast amount of power and the conversion of the silica to glass, along with the mining and using blast furnaces to obtain the copper needed for the wiring.
    All of the preceding at this time used COAL, LOTS and LOTS of COAL, Dirty, Filthy COAL by the TRAIN load because without the Coal, you'd still be sitting in the dark over a wood burner stove lit by your whale oil lamp writing your protests about using Dirty, Filthy Coal on vellum using a Goose's feather dipped in lamp black !!!
    I stand unequivicably behind everything I say , I just dont ever remember saying it !!

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    Quote Originally Posted by gordon_s1942 View Post
    Newton's Law states that for every action, there is a re-action or to generate electricity, even by Solar panels requires energy to do so.
    In the case of Solar panels, they need to be made by smelting Bauxite to Aluminium which requires a vast amount of power and the conversion of the silica to glass, along with the mining and using blast furnaces to obtain the copper needed for the wiring.
    All of the preceding at this time used COAL, LOTS and LOTS of COAL, Dirty, Filthy COAL by the TRAIN load because without the Coal, you'd still be sitting in the dark over a wood burner stove lit by your whale oil lamp writing your protests about using Dirty, Filthy Coal on vellum using a Goose's feather dipped in lamp black !!!
    Since the goal was to replace carbon-intensive generation with clean energy, one could argue that 24g per kWh for a multi-crystalline silicon power plant is still a significantly better deal than having almost 1,000 g of CO2 emitted for the same amount of electricity generated by coal.


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    Just remember, South Australia is powered by Hot Air. and we know how reliable that is.
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    With the exclusion of Atomic energy I cannot see the storage of Solar generated energy except by some kind of Batteries for use when the Sun goes down and the panels stop generating power.
    They like the Solar Panels will have a finite life and will have to be replaced one day and its the disposal of those batteries contents has me concerned.

    It wont be just a few hundred or even a few thousand but possibly a million or more that will have to be replaced eventually.
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    I would suggest that there are very few truly "green" power supplies suitable for Australia that can supply base load. My thinking being 1: Nuclear, well away from open Ocean (protection from tsunami), 2: Geo-Thermal (geologically stable environment) and 3: Tidal (tidal movements, especially in northern Aust are more than adequate for this). Of course, there would be some costs in setting up and storage of waste in the case of nuclear, but a long term cost benefit analysis should show that two of those alternatives should, at least, satisfy the professional stirrers in the crowd.
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    1>Nuclear - generates lots of power, with a moderate startup time, has a moderately high set up cost, but produces cheap green electricity. Has very high political costs
    2>Hydro - generates lots of power with fast startup time, high set up cost, produces cheap electricity, water and land resources with high political cost.
    2>Geothermal - three types
    a> Vulcanism - Australia has no active volcanoes and no suitable caldera volcanoes. (Even our dormant volcanoes are in the deep freeze.)
    b> Radioisotopic Decay - You'll notice despite our large Uranium and Thorium resources we have no geothermal power stations worth their salt.
    c> Heat mining - Not unlike mining any other resource, heat trapped underground can be mined.

    Both c & d suffer from the laws of thermodynamics. While the amount of geothermal heat is large, it's very diffuse in the host rock.
    The other factor is how fast you can pump heat out. As you might suspect, rock is not very thermally conductive. If you pump the heat out, it takes a long time for
    heat to replenish the heat exchanger.
    This technology is really is as lame as the power it produces. Imagine who will complain when they mention the words hydraulic fracturing.

    3>Tidal - Another lame arse technology. This requires a very large basin of water in contact with the ocean.
    Imagine building a lock across Port Philip Bay. Yep... more environmental boondoggle. Building huge levys where viable tides occur.
    No, you'd have a better chance of convincing a feral greenie to build a nuclear power station.

    4>Wind. Very expensive installation costs. Wind costs more than Nuclear to install per Watt-hour. Wind's financial advantage is that you can buy these very expensive power generators in small quantities. Nuclear really only comes in one size. "Big". The advantage of wind is that it works. The disadvantage is of course it's predictability.
    There are some locations well suited to wind and others which are a waste of time and land. Wind also suffers from faux environmental issues which are directly related to money.

    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.

    However I do think solar thermal has it's place. But not on it's own. Solar thermal's saving grace will be when it is hybridized with coal, gas and nuclear.
    If waste heat from thermal power stations can be captured and used to pre-heat incoming fuel, coolant or even air, that energy increases the efficiency of the power station.

    Think of a plain old coal power station. It burns coal in air to boil water.
    The steam takes the heat to a turbine. Waste heat goes up the chimney and out the cooling towers.
    Imagine if that heat is used to warm up the incoming water.
    But if the incoming water is recovered from the cooling towers, it could be taken to the solar thermal array and then that wet steam pumped up to the boilers to become dry steam. The air fed into the furnace could be pre-heated by drawing it in through the cooling towers or chimney heat exchangers.
    There is of course no reason why that air could not be drawn across a metal heat sink which is heated by solar.

    There's also no reason why such hybrid tech can be used with gas and nuclear. It may not make the station much more efficient, but 5% improvement on a 1000MW nuclear reactor is 50MW of solar.


    Solar PV in terms of trams. Yeah, I do think it has merit. Solar PV is cheap. Wholesale its about $0.50/W installed. With a 20 year life expectancy of panels (actually close to 30 in reality) 5 hours of sunlight for Melbourne per day on average.

    5 hours x 365 days x 20 years = 36500 hours. Total price 36.5KWhr for 50 cents. This same electricity distributed wholesales for about $182.50.
    So you can see there is some value in using solar for Trams. It would be nice to think that the PV DC directly powers the trams, but it is more likely the power is going to be
    transmitted to the trams via existing infrastructure. So in reality it is just a PV offset.

    The dollar is the carrier particle of tram kinetic energy, not the electron.
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    Quote Originally Posted by lsemmens View Post
    I would suggest that there are very few truly "green" power supplies suitable for Australia that can supply base load. My thinking being 1: Nuclear, well away from open Ocean (protection from tsunami), 2: Geo-Thermal (geologically stable environment) and 3: Tidal (tidal movements, especially in northern Aust are more than adequate for this). Of course, there would be some costs in setting up and storage of waste in the case of nuclear, but a long term cost benefit analysis should show that two of those alternatives should, at least, satisfy the professional stirrers in the crowd.

    What about graphite blocks that are used as thermal storage giving baseload power ?


    Mirrors heat up the graphite block boils water runs turbine.

    "The main advantage of the Solastaor system, he argues, is its storage capabilities, which allow it to provide 24/7, “dispatchable” clean energy – a feature of all solar thermal technology that makes it a favourite technology for 100 per cent renewable scenarios."
    According to Solastor’s calculations, the price for power from one of its power stations will be approximately 12c/kWh, including generation and storage, which will then fall to 6c/kWh once financing costs are paid and then 4c/kWh in the second half of the facility’s 50-year life.

    “We can produce the lowest price 24/7 solar power in the world and we’re confident of that,” Hewson

    ... wer-86282/

    Basically its components to, you assemble as many as you need for the power you need.
    Last edited by Dishtrackted; 31-01-17 at 07:18 PM.

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    Haven't seen that one Distrackted, looks interesting.

    1>Nuclear - generates lots of power, with a moderate startup time, has a moderately high set up cost, but produces cheap green electricity. Has very high political costs
    2>Hydro - generates lots of power with fast startup time, high set up cost, produces cheap electricity, water and land resources with high political cost.
    Nuclear, no arguments
    Hydro, A reliable water supply is a big issue, given that MOST of Australia is largely dry.
    2>Geothermal - three types
    a> Vulcanism - Australia has no active volcanoes and no suitable caldera volcanoes. (Even our dormant volcanoes are in the deep freeze.)
    b> Radioisotopic Decay - You'll notice despite our large Uranium and Thorium resources we have no geothermal power stations worth their salt.
    c> Heat mining - Not unlike mining any other resource, heat trapped underground can be mined.

    Both c & d suffer from the laws of thermodynamics. While the amount of geothermal heat is large, it's very diffuse in the host rock.
    The other factor is how fast you can pump heat out. As you might suspect, rock is not very thermally conductive. If you pump the heat out, it takes a long time for
    heat to replenish the heat exchanger.
    What is point d? There may be issues with thermodynamics, however, given time and resources, I'm sure these, too, could be overcome.
    Imagine who will complain when they mention the words hydraulic fracturing.
    Agreed
    3>Tidal - This requires a very large basin of water in contact with the ocean.
    T'was why I mentioned northern Australia which has tidal movements measured in metres and many tidal rivers across the top end.

    4>Wind. Very expensive installation costs. Wind costs more than Nuclear to install per Watt-hour. Wind's financial advantage is that you can buy these very expensive power generators in small quantities.The advantage of wind is that it works. The disadvantage is of course it's predictability. Wind also suffers from faux environmental issues which are directly related to money.
    Agreed

    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.
    Agreed

    However I do think solar thermal has it's place. But not on it's own. Solar thermal's saving grace will be when it is hybridized with coal, gas and nuclear.
    If waste heat from thermal power stations can be captured and used to pre-heat incoming fuel, coolant or even air, that energy increases the efficiency of the power station.

    Think of a plain old coal power station. It burns coal in air to boil water.
    The steam takes the heat to a turbine. Waste heat goes up the chimney and out the cooling towers.
    Imagine if that heat is used to warm up the incoming water.
    But if the incoming water is recovered from the cooling towers, it could be taken to the solar thermal array and then that wet steam pumped up to the boilers to become dry steam. The air fed into the furnace could be pre-heated by drawing it in through the cooling towers or chimney heat exchangers.
    There is of course no reason why that air could not be drawn across a metal heat sink which is heated by solar.
    The main problem with coal fired Power stations (apart from the greenies) is that the resource is not renewable and eventually we will run out of coal. The only reason that these stations gained pre-eminence in history as this was the first technology developed during the industrial revolution, No one had even worked out how to split the Atom or developed the crystalline structures for PV back then.
    Solar PV in terms of trams. Yeah, I do think it has merit. ...................It would be nice to think that the PV DC directly powers the trams, but it is more likely the power is going to betransmitted to the trams via existing infrastructure. So in reality it is just a PV offset.
    Agreed.
    The dollar is the carrier particle of tram kinetic energy, not the electron.
    Absolutely!!
    Last edited by lsemmens; 01-02-17 at 09:21 AM.
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    What about graphite blocks that are used as thermal storage giving baseload power ?
    <points and laughs>
    The problems thermal storage has is,
    1 the quantity of of the storage. It's difficult to store a large amount of heat.
    2 the Δt of thermal storage. Basically how fast you can move thermal energy.

    Geothermal has the same issue.
    What is point d? There may be issues with thermodynamics, however, given time and resources, I'm sure these, too, could be overcome.
    It's flogging a dead horse. Given enough time I'm sure the horse will get up.
    The issue is how fast you can take energy out of the system.

    Anybody who has used an "instant on" hot water system understands the Δt problem.
    If the water runs slow, then it produces usable hot water. However, turn the tap on more and a high flow of water will come out luke warm.
    Geothermal is no different. You can't turn up the heat and therefore you cannot suck more heat out than the system can provide.
    The laws of thermodynamics apply to green power sources just like they do to anything else.

    the resource is not renewable and eventually we will run out of coal.
    This applies to heat mining. The heat is the non-renewable resource. This doesn't apply to the vulcanism type of geothermal where the resource is large enough to be considered unlimited or limited by the aperture to the resource.

    Coal as a non-renewable resource is also a bit like vulcanism geothermal. The resources are huge, we're not going to run out of coal any time soon.
    It's almost far to say that Australia will never run out of coal the resources are that large. The limitation is political.
    So the real issue is carbon emissions. The greenie's wet dream; we'll choke on coal long before we consume it all.






    I mentioned northern Australia which has tidal movements measured in metres and many tidal rivers across the top end.
    It is possible to build basins in some places. But in terms of Northern Australia, the amount of power able to be generated and how far it is from the population doesn't make it practical.
    Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.

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    Sounds like this mob is talking up their product
    There is a fine line between "Hobby" and "Madness"

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    This is simply a feel good garbage claim.

    All they are doing is building a solar plant (elsewhere in regional victoria) to produce electricity to feed into the grid.

    To help make the project viable, the Victorian Andrews government has pledged to effectively “buy” 35MW of power from the farm by surrendering renewable energy certificates matching the amount of electricity used by the privately-run Melbourne tram network.

    So no solar panels on their roof nor anywhere remotely near them. Its just another push by the Andrews Government to send as to the same renewable target that South Australia has.

    Last one out, don't bother turning the lights off, they will already be off. Not that anyone will be able to afford to have them on.

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