Hall of Fame BS

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By Dwain Duxson.

Hall of Fame BS - We have been writing about renewable energy on a couple of occasions recently and I have had plenty of replies on the subject. I'll show my hand and say I'm not a believer in transforming all our energy requirements over to renewables. I believe it has its place on Sheds, Houses and the Factory roof, but not in our Farmed Paddocks.

I had a very good reply to the House of Cards article. It's the best I've seen anyone explain it. See what he wrote here: "As for the wind/solar thing....the issue there is power density (lack of it), and maintenance burden. The other issues, such as amenity and transmission, all stem from the power density problem as well. Due to technical illiteracy, it seems policymakers have been drawn down the yellow brick road to a land of milk and honey, but the physics just don't stack up.

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Building this eye-watering amount of infrastructure to harness these very inefficient power sources is expensive on its own... But the maintenance burden we are building means you never get the 'free' effect of the energy source being 'cheap'...sure the sun and wind are free, but capturing them and maintaining the infrastructure to do it is as expensive as it gets! We keep being told it's the cheapest source of energy…. It's first-rate, Hall of Fame bullshit".

It's an interesting take and makes a lot of sense. As I said the other day, you very rarely see a Coal mine, but these wind towers and solar facilities are front and centre, and you can get an understanding of the infrastructure cost and maintenance he was talking about. We will give this subject a rest for a little while. Do you have anything to add to the above? Reply to dwaind@farmtender.com.au

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