Geoff_H

Not an untruth, but the situation could be misconstrued from what is written. I am fully in favour of renewable energy. But without a planned transfer and analysis of the situation we will see blackouts before too long. The attached file shows what happened in the recent Queensland failure. Gas came to the rescue. As older coal generators give up the ghost we will have little or no backup to cover failures. x1.png.pagespeed.ic.0VmDUTsi93.webp

I have worked on the Newman installation. What you read is half the truth. How is the mine powered? There used to be 3 GTs. I worked on one.

Wind generator costs about. 1.5M/MW. Gas turbines similar price. Diesel engines much cheaper. But you still need full capacity for when the wind does not blow. So wind capital costs are twice plus outback installation costs which could be extremely expensive...I have worked on outback mines they are expensive. Truck driver gets $200k+a year. So wind costs $90M+ extra, 6W typical load

Just one item on a wind generator is a crane to assemble it. I don't know if you have ever ordered a large crane but they are mega expensive. And take as long time to get into the outback. Cells produce rated output at 20deg junction temperature. You are getting a nice output at the moment. What is the outside temperature where you are? Cells are specified with a degredation rate as junction temperature rises. It gets very hot from electrical resistance while generating. I have often thought of using Peltier effect devices to cool the junction and increase the output, around double the rated output in summer. Same could work for decreasing charging time of ev's

Output

It's the max panel put

Most of what you read about renewable resources on the internet is published by persons or companies with a agenda. The greatest con is to quote MW not MWh. Every now and then I do a sanity check on the figures few rarely give statements that are honest

They were looking at 3 to 5 MW. He is a Greenie but is also a very capable engineer. He told me that he couldn't get one sold on economic grounds. 4 times the cost of running gas turbines and diesel engines.

What put are you getting in winter?

I have time of use metering. I have significantly cut my electricity bill by scheduling things like the pool in the middle of the night all washing and drying eccetera is done before 14 in the afternoon my underfloor ventilation system only works at the cheap time. Another problem I have is that my roofs face East West so panels would stick up at a funny angle who the roof. Just about every calculation I have done as shown that the return on the investment is not that great I would love to disconnect totally from the grid but the cost of batteries was astronomical. I did a lot of work with organic Rankine cycle generators that just use panels getting heat like hot water heat off your roof. It would use hot water tanks for heat storage. The efficiency was so low that I would need some 80 panels in the backyard to give me freedom from the grid. Still looking. I just replaced my roof the old one leaked too much. The replacement roof cost me $20,000 I investigated getting Tesla like PV tiles in my roof. Quote came back at $70,000 with 5 kw of panels, not quite sure if the 5k was actual or nominal but either way its not economic.

Some light relief. Just did some calks on how are you can go using the energy from a 100 kilowatt hour battery as found in a Tesla s model. Tesla s will take you 567 km according to Tesla website Based on BMW 330 I doing 5.5 l per 100km on a trip it will get 161 km A Mooney M20J, weight increased or decreased not even considered, would would travel 160 km at 8000 feet.

That should have read 150W not 150kw

What kW output do you get from your solar cells in a day? A 300W panel where I am will put out 150kw. Not something mentioned by PV panel salesmen.

The mining companies do not see direct financial returns. The dig our earth and make a lot of money. They see not being green will upset the community, starting to happen. So they don't annoy the Greenies and loose their licence to dig they are going renewable...was like that when I was working doing this work. They spent a fortune to placate the community. When a large mine is making over $2M an hour profit paying $400 Million to seem to go renewable is peanuts.

Your panels were free?

Please do. I spent 2 years consulting to a very large mining company and we could not find any economic renewable energy system that was economic. Even though we had large sources of low grade heat. I think they government subsidies can make it economic for households. A consultant friend did many wind studies for mining companies using tall masts and data logging. He told me that wind cost 4 times that of conventional power systems.

I did this calculation and many other such calculations in 2019. I can supply the calculations, but would expect renumeration as this area of work is what I did for the last 10 years of my working career. Consulting to many large organisations including BHP. All data used was from published sources. I have a degree in engineering and 45 years experience in energy systems. The point about using home PV cells to charge EV batteries is very valid, however as one 300W PV panel charging on a fine day will power a Tesla for 4 kilometres you either need to have a limited travel requirement or a lot of cells on your roof. I did calculations on how big a battery that I would need to go off the grid and last one week without sunlight and do the 10,000 kilometres that I do and power my airconditioning and replace my gas with battery power. The cost amazed me several orders of magnitude more than I expected. The story about how long it would take to power the New York state grid allowing for 7 days without PV cells is staggering. Elons giga factories would take over several decades to produce enough batteries by sole production.

If you're going to go for low emissions using electric I would not be too eager to swap to electric aircraft too soon. A petrol fuelled BMW 330i creates less CO2 emissions than a Model S Tesla. I expect that this is also true for petrol engined vehicles that have dual cycle engines, many vehicles for sale today. Tesla charge with power from the eastern Australian grid. The grid hass a high emissions per kilowatt hour generated. Basically owing to the use of coal for power generation. The Tesla in NSW generates 0.164kg/km of CO2, the BMW generates 0.147kg/km of CO2. I suspect that as I know of no dual cycle aircraft engines it would not be expected that this would be true for an aircraft. However the CO2 emissions reduction would be small.

Yes an internal combustion engine with a very light tank. Technology change less than fuel cells. I think that passenger airline aircraft turbine engine would be simply modified to burn hydrogen. Cryogenic tanks would be quite light, evaporation of fuel would be limited. The aircraft industry is so conservative I think that batteries or fuel cells and electrical motors are a change too far. An A380 has 4 70MW engines, a significant amount of energy dissipation will require a significant technology change for electrical power.

My personal opinion is that electric will never make it to aircraft. I see hydrogen stored cryogenically as a smaller working solution. Much lighter. All hydrogen left in the tank after flight can be expected to be lost through evaporation. I see hydrogen systems to fill tanks before and emptied after flight. Engines will require a limited amount of development. The natural gas pipelines will be able to get the hydrogen to the airports. I am worried about the flammability of hydrogen. When vented two dust particles colliding can ignites colourless gan with a flame front 10 times the velocity of natural gas. When you work on a hydrogen system you have to use brass tools to restrict spark generated.

Having started and not finished 3 projects and followed the building of many home built aircraft I can say that for me the problem is if I were to buy one that is not finished is the standard of the build. One aircraft had a twist in the fuselage that during construction required a 44gallon drum of water weight to close the fuselage. Buying an incomplete aircraft is an enormous risk. It is difficult to check dimensions etc. You could end up with a pile of junk with only an engine instruments etc able to be sold to recover costs. So to me a box of unbuilt parts has more value than a partially built aircraft. Transport costs can be large if the wings are attached. A damaged aircraft is similarly a real risk. How extensive is the damage. From my work with composite construction I know that a crack in a core maybe unable to be seen during inspection for sale or even after rebuild and the consequent costs and loss of safety are possible. Again the value to me would be the recoverable sale value of the parts. But many owners want to recover costs for their financial outlay on an unfinished project. A risk to the buyer. I sold one partially built aircraft and design that I spent several years working on as it an idea I had to make a cheap aircraft, it was just too heavy. Sold it for $1. But I learnt a lot getting the build to where I got it. Another problem I have is where to finish the project.

I want to get current again. 5years since last flight. Decided to do it first in an RA. I live in northern Sydney. Who, where and what is the best place to do some TA flying?

Out of sheer curiosity what is it that makes a fixed wing pilot a bad angry palm tree pilot?

So what do I need to do to fly a recreational aircraft? I have a ppl.

Does this mean that I can use my PPL with some Cessna 152 experience to fly a recreational aircraft?