From sophisticated electronic company back to energy business ?

www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/02/apple-just-spent-an-incredible-amount-of-money-on-solar-power/

One may say that for smart investor , copycat of the most successful company couldn't go wrong here, in Australia.

1 billion pale insignificant in comparison to our wasted investment.

Lets scrap submarines and build solar farms instead.



To make this deal even better we could possibly trade our coal directly on Chinese solar panels.
Keep our best partners happy and provide thousand of jobs in installing and maintenance this panel here.

I could imagine already all our big ships going one way full of coal then returning back packed with solar panels.

Mark is there anything that leads you to believe we're short of space in Australia?

If it's economically viable in California, we should be all over it.

mick14 said..
Mark is there anything that leads you to believe we're short of space in Australia?

If it's economically viable in California, we should be all over it.

It needs to be placed on useless land, else the opportunity cost is too high. IE you would not put solar panels all over our prime farming land and halve our food production, would you?


That useless land is a long way away in Oz. Therefore transmission distance is a cost that other countries don't have to bear, but we do.

much of the 400kms of "farmland" i drive past on the way to Perth would be better off as a solar farm. . massive paddocks that havent seen a crop in 5 or more years. massive power lines over the top,going BACK to Muja. we often send excess power the other way. massive windfarm 80 kms away next to the same transmission line.
raise the panels up and create shade perhaps they could start growing some fodder and put sheep back on. this part of the world used to support massive sheep herds and regular crops but has long since been useless. its just that the farmers cant see it

On the east coast is fairly easy to store excess power generated at off peak times. Water is pumped uphill in the Snowy Mountain Hydro using cheap of peak power. The water is then released to spin the turbines at peak times.

landyacht said..
much of the 400kms of "farmland" i drive past on the way to Perth would be better off as a solar farm. . massive paddocks that havent seen a crop in 5 or more years. massive power lines over the top,going BACK to Muja. we often send excess power the other way. massive windfarm 80 kms away next to the same transmission line.
raise the panels up and create shade perhaps they could start growing some fodder and put sheep back on. this part of the world used to support massive sheep herds and regular crops but has long since been useless. its just that the farmers cant see it

This is what I've been saying for years. Solar farm is actually a dual use facility.
I used to notice how much better the grass grew on the footpath beside where my truck was parked, which I put down to extra shade in the morning provided by the truck. With the extra shade the dew lasts longer on the ground and a bit of evaporation is reduced. The soil is a bit cooler and the grass grows better. With a solar farm that effect would only be magnified because all those panels tilted at the appropriate angle are also cutting down the wind and further reducing evaporation. On top of that, the panels form a hard surface for rain to run off and be collected in dams for use at some future time.
Against that, I imagine it would be pretty hard to muster sheep in among all those panels. Or maybe it would be very easy to chase them along a straight line between 2 rows of panels.