[LINK] Past the Black Stump - Was Hot Rocks

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Richard Archer
> Sent: Monday, 4 April 2011 4:44 PM
> To: link at anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Hot Rocks
> 
> 
> At 4:31 PM +1000 4/4/11, Tom Koltai wrote:
> 
> >Err. I have to qualify that and confirm that my position as 
> stipulated 
> >in 2009 remains... Hot rocks are good if the consumers are 
> within 99 Km 
> >otherwise, transmission loss nullifies the benefit.
> 
> Victorian power generation is east of Melbourne.
> Melbourne is between 150 and 200 km away
> The biggest consumer is in Portland, 500+ km away.
> 
> So apparently your 99km limit is somewhat flexible.
> 

Umm, not really. My understanding was that it was to be a 2 MW plant,
with transmission loss on a cold day being 2kW per kilometre
(conservatively) than the deliverable to 100 Km distance is only 90% of
generated power.
@ 200 kilometres, 80% of Gen. power.

For the Portland customer, they would only be able to deliver -200 kW.
(yep minus 200 KW)

(Distance from Innamincka, SA, Australia to Portland, VT, Australia is
739.9 miles, 1190.8 km, or 642.6 nm. ) [1]
(Distance from Innamincka, SA,Australia to Tullamarine International
Airport, Melbourne, VT, Australia is 728.5 miles, 1172.4 km, or 632.6
nm) [1]

This doesn't allow for any DC-AC, AC-DC conversions or Transmission
step-ups or transformer step-downs.

As the majority of the plants income will be from offsets for delivered
baseload green power, experience tells me that they want to deliver it
<100 kms.
Plus the cost of transmission lines to the closest Grid interconnect
would be impossible to amortise (with only 2MW generated) in several
lifetimes.

Nope, needs a refinery or steelworks or datacentre (within a 100Kms) to
make financial sense - e.g. Port Pirie or Broken Hill are the closest
non military industrialised towns. But in reality 2MW Baseload is enough
to run about 6,000 country homes or 4,500 city homes. City folks have
more "stuff" plugged in.) 

The problem is the transmission towers from Inna to anywhere...

For those that don't quite know where Inna (Hopetoun) is or have never
had the pleasure of visiting the red centre of Oz...

Innamincka is perched in between the Strzelecki, Tirari and Sturt Stony
Deserts.

>From Tibooburra, 224.82kms NW (314kms, 11hrs 17mins driving) 
>From Birdsville, 247.01kms SE (418kms, 14hrs 14mins driving) 
>From Marree, 335.35kms NE (541kms, 19hrs 34mins driving) 
>From Quilpie, 371.18kms W (496kms, 13hrs 8mins driving) 
(Google Maps links @ [4] below)

In other words... Too far for any Grid Connect.

For the purposes of testing - an excellent test bed which will no doubt
result in a massive tourist resort being built there in the future.
Hot springs in the desert - I can see it now... About Innamincka [3]
(They need more hot showers - really....)

However, as a press release saying "lookee lookee, we have green power
to the grid!!! Priceless. (I would be fascinated in seeing their
proposal for getting the power to the grid.)

[1] http://www.distancefrom.info/Innamincka/ST/Australia/
[2] Distance from Innamincka, ST,Australia to Port Pirie, ST, Australia
is 415.4 miles, 668.6 km, or 360.8 nm
[3] http://www.exploroz.com/Places/4716/SA/Innamincka.aspx
[4]
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=aGK&rls=org.moz
illa:en-GB:official&channel=s&q=innamincka+google+maps&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=
&hnear=Innamincka+SA&gl=au&ei=nXaZTZ-GOI6avAPrxMD2Cw&sa=X&oi=geocode_res
ult&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ8gEwAA

/body