Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavytone
Before you all get too excited about solar power, a few sobering thoughts concerning NSW (for example) - from the publicly available annual reports of the network operators:
1. NSW annual electricity consumption for 2914 : 91,000 GWh
2. Net solar power into the grid: 850 MWh which is less than 0.001% of the demand;
3. Net wind power into the grid : 1,600 GWh which is about 1.5%.
And bear in mind both wind and solar are only produced because of a political interference (the subsidies) to distort what should have been a free market; without the subsidy neither are viable economically.
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You appear to be comparing apples to oranges here:
the data for Solar PV generation in NSW is 1.178GWh, or about 1.3% of total electricity consumption, or to put it another way, 1000x your figure, and much more relevant to the demand figures. And you'd need to do a lot less than cover the country with turbines or panels to generate an awful lot more (see Clive's info as a mere starter). After all, you have to look fairly hard to find the wind turbines over NSW's 800,000sq km, the wind and solar power resource has hardly been tapped compared to many countries!
As for subsidies, don't make me laugh, quite apart from financial support, the thermal power stations get to use the atmosphere and ocean as a free dustbin with
well-known physical consequences that they are unwilling to pay for... that is a subsidy paid for by everybody, now and into the future.