Does anyone know if there is adequate transmission capacity for 500MW from Cooper Basin to a viable customer base or will this have to be built?

[Reposted from Gav's blog]

Australia's emissions due to coal-fired electricity generation are currently around 195Mt CO_2e annually. There are a few projects going on that'll take it up to 215Mt.

So Santos' storage for "a billion tonnes" would take it all up for a bit under five years.

After that...?

Our natural gas reserves are, nationmaster says, about 2.4 trillion cubic feet. This is 68 billion cubic metres. Natural gas gives us 38.8MJ/m3, and 38.8MJ are 10.78Kwh. So our natural gas reserves are equivalent to 733 billion kWh if we got 100% conversion.

In practice, we're lucky to end up with 30% conversion - natural gas usually manages 35-40% in the turbines, but 5-10% of the stuff leaks out before it ever gets to a machine.

So, call it 220 billion kWh as a generous figure.

Aussie electricity use is about 11,000kWh each. So, 21 million people will use 230 billion kWh annually.

Thus if all electricity generation in Australia were natural gas, our reserves would last us a year at our current electricity rate of use.

PS: so the CO₂ can be stored up for five years, and the natural gas supply electricity for one year; spreading it out over a decade or two of buggerising about in the usual government and corporate fashion gives us about ten years where the company gets to make big $$$. And really that's the question they ask themselves, "how long can we make heaps of money from it?"

Pumping it underground... whatever Tim Flannery reckons this week (he keeps changing his mind, hard to keep track of), I don't fancy any Lake Nyos events in my country, thanks very much.

I have a wondrous new technique to deal with carbon emissions. Monbiot came up with it first but the lazy bastard didn't patent it, so I claim it. It's this: quit burning stuff.

It's amazing, isn't it? Such a simple invention. If we stop burning fossil fuels, then 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions stop instantly.

If we're really stupid and stingy and slow about it, it might take us until 2050 to achieve this.

I s'pose life's too simple for some people.

I think there are good reasons why neither Innamincka hot rocks nor Cooper Basin CO2 storage may 'get off the ground'. Just on hot rocks I'd point out the global mean geothermal near-surface conductive flux is something like 0.2 watts per square metre while deserts can get over 850 w/m2 daytime solar radiation. Here's a rehash of earlier comments on hot rock problems;

small and declining temperature difference
The starting temperature difference might be 200K which is low for a steam cycle plant hence the need for the less efficient Kalina cycle. As the rock cools (ie sucks out trapped heat) new holes will need to be drilled within piping distance of the original surface plant. A dust storm could smother the cooling towers, though nights might be OK.
remoteness from transmission lines
The nearest heavy line appears to be the 275 kva from Pt Augusta - Adelaide, some 300 km away. Budget tens of millions for a feeder line.
water must be closed loop
The steam contains radon gas from radioactive decay. It would also be expensive to vent for pressure regulation as mud free replacement clean water will have to brought in to the site.
lack of control of undergound water passages
You hope the dynamite will open up fractures between the down and up pipes. Too big and they don't warm enough, too small and they create back pressure. Plastic creep can also squeeze cavities shut like a sphincter.
equivalent kwh used in re-drilling
I'd guess a 200kw rig operating for a fortnight with reused pipe casing might use more than 20 Mwh of energy. This will be needed on a repeat basis to reopen unsatisfactory holes or shift the whole shebang sideways. I wouldn't let the rig out of sight.
dependence on 'carbon credits'
Something will be seriously wrong if sale of credits is a necessary revenue item. Politicians can't see the idiocy of 'clean development' offsets whereby cleantech entitles someone else to burn coal. Moreover they may not be compatible with Garnaut's full auction system.

In short I would be very surprised if hot rocks is a goer without massive subsidies.

Here is a link to the European Hot Dry Rock project:
http://www.soultz.net/version-en.htm

They drilled three holes, two to get the water in and one out, but unfortunately one of the 'in' wells did not connect up - they hope when they do these things that the rock will fraction and allow the water to flow through, and so at the moment they look like getting half the power they had hoped for - similar problems led to the end of an earlier English HDR project.

The precise geology of the area is very important.

Hey did you see the "network of pipelines" that Santos is proposing (about 3:27 into the 7:30 report video)? Hilarious! How much solar thermal and wind capacity would that buy us? We'd never have to worry about escalating coal and gas prices, and we'd never have to worry about a few megatonnes of C02 burping out centuries from now, Lake Nyos style.

When oh when will TPTB knock CCS on the head? I heard Garnaut last night saying that he was "optimistic" about CCS?

Well to continue the "put things in perspective" theme, with the low efficiency from the HDR scheme, even a 2% rate of water loss would lead to unacceptable water requirements deep in the desert. I believe the best that been achieved elsewhere in the world is around 5%.

As for piping supercritical CO2 from the Eastern Seaboard to the Cooper basin, they can't be serious!

Finally a few hundred k's down the down the road Olympic Dam will supply 15,000 tonnes of Uranium per year to the rest of the world for something like a century. That would supply well over all Australia's electrical needs. But we're no longer allowed to mention Nuclear in Australia. It's politically incorrect again.

My guess is that all these attempts have to allowed to fail until the Greenies will admit it. We need nuclear power or coal to keep oz running. Which do they want?

I'm not an Aussie and I'm not altogether clear about what "a Snowy scheme" is, as used above to mean a measure of power output. One allusion above said 500 MW, another said

a resource that will support 10,000 mega watts of generating capacity with an annual output of around 15 snowy schemes

..but the Snowyhydro fact sheet says:

3756 megawatt (MW) Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme

How many megawatts are we talking here, for the Snowy scheme or the potential of this formation, or both?

Back in the 60s when the hydro schemes were built the renewable percentage of installed electrical capacity was bigger than today, even with the current wind and solar which didn't exist then. It's just that King Coal has grown even mightier.

The interesting thing is that hydro is the one energy resource that wasn't frittered away in Australia. We export 80% of our coal and 100% of our uranium. In return we get plasma TVs. By the time the Australian public decides they want a crash building program for other renewables or nukes there may not be enough spare cash. Unlike Cuba the country is too big and barren for a soft energy descent.

Not sure if Gav had this link in his Geothermia article...

This is reproduced from the Geothermal Resources website.
The indicated hot areas are to a depth of 5 km.
You can see from the lumpy smoothing (in places) that there are unexplored areas...

There are some areas closer to both water and main transmission lines.
The small site at Portland on the border between Vic and SA provides hot water for the towns pool and some heating

Curiously Boof, George Town may also be located near a hotspot!

(NB I don't vouch for the accuracy of this map)