Solar thermal can provide baseload power

The Editor

Campbell Street

Bowen Hills

 

Dear Editor

 

G.M Derrick (Letters Mar 2) challenges Peter Garrett or Bob Brown to name plans for any solar or wind plant capable of baseload operation.  Prime Minister John Howard also often makes the assertion that there is no such thing as a solar baseload power station and therefore insists this can be supplied only by coal or nuclear.  They both need to go no further than our own country. I simply refer them to the Australian company Solar Wind and Power which has built a 40 MW concentrator next to the Liddell power station near Sydney.  Based on the success of this trial the company plans to develop a 240 MW stand alone solar power station producing baseload power for sale around the world.  Even the report from the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development (April 2006) admits "Solar thermal appears to be the most promising technolgy for large scale baseload electricity generation from renewable energy."

 

The Howard government and people like G.M. Derrick who repeat its anti-sustainability messages have done much to undermine a potentially thriving, export-oriented, renewable energy industry in this country so that much of our best research and development talent has had to move to other, more progressive countries to continue their work.  A few minutes searching on the intenet would show them how wide of the mark many of their assertions are and how advanced the plans for baseload solar power are.

 

Drew Hutton