May 2010 Meeting “Concentrating Solar Thermal with Heat Storage (e.g. molten salt)”
This meeting was held at 5:45pm on Wednesday May 19th at the offices of URS, level 6 no 1 Southbank boulevard, Southbank (Click here for a map)
Topic: Concentrating Solar Thermal with heat storage (e.g. molten salt)
Convener: Jim Lambert
Speaker: Patrick Hearps (Technical Director for the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 project)
Concentrating Solar Thermal has exciting capabilities for large scale renewable electricity generation. We are often told that coal is the only reliable source of ‘baseload’ electricity, and that renewable energy will never be able to replace coal, because wind and solar are always unreliable. Well, solar thermal power has some remarkable capabilities, and we heard tonight what the story is. But this was not just the story of solar thermal with storage. Instead it was a whole, detailed plan for conversion of our stationary energy system to renewables – in 10 years, with available technology. This plan has been developed by the volunteers at Beyond Zero Emissions.
Patrick showed that it is possible. Other parts of the world are moving into this new age of renewable energy, and we are being left behind – even though we have solar resources are second to none.
This was an action-packed evening, with a most informative, in-depth and comprehensive coverage of the topic. This generated plenty of questions and lively discussions.
Click here for part 1 of the PowerPoint slides.
Click here for part 2 of the PowerPoint slides.
Click here for the background notes that go with the PowerPoint slides.
