"The Secretariat,
Queensland Renewable Energy Panel
We as a State and Federation need to move to Renewables as soon as we can.
The rapid increase of CO2 in the atmosphere only holds danger for the
whole of humanity and the environment. This increasing trend needs to be halted now.
To achieve this we need a real plan, a pathway if you like, that creates this outcome for our State. We should be leaders not followers. What do we need to get there?
We need to generate at least 600 MW per annum of renewable energy by 2020. Some say 400 MW but this figure should be the “basement” not the “living room”.
We need the target to be legislated so we have both the certainty and commitment enshrined in law.
We need to plan the retirement of carbon generating power plants and to support the power generation workers and their communities so that the closure does not negatively impact their lives. Using the current transmission infrastructure from these power plants for renewable generated power transmission and using the area that these plants once occupied as Renewable Energy Plants eg Solar is a good start.
We need this target to be Qld owned and based not some foreign ownership or out of State ownership.
I would like to point you to Tesla’s innovations in America and even a home based application of their technology. Of particular interest to power utility infrastructure would be the first link:
I’m not really sure you mean by this- as of 13:10 today nearly 600MW was being generated by rooftop PV solar in Qld, update 666MW @ 13:15 and I know that’s down on what it can be when there isn’t much cloud about, right now there is a fair bit of it in SEQ.
MW is a rate of power, or output rating, MWh are units of energy (energy = power X time). At the moment, I think there is somewhere around 1GW of rooftop solar in Qld.
Based on typical capacity factors, if you were talking about extra installed capacity, then 600MW of PV could produce over 1000GWh or 1TWh per year, enough energy to supply about 140000 homes, assuming 20kWh/day usage.
At least the Qld government is making the right noises about more renewables, its a real pity they are so keen on digging up vast areas of the state for coal! There were plans for a 2GW solar farm in Qld, but I’m not sure where they are up to with that- the misinformation about renewables from the Federal Govt. isn’t helping with investor confidence.
Thank you for picking up my error. The figures should have been 6000 MW and 4000 MW respectively. I have amended my submission to the panel to reflect the correct figures.
Please note from the Draft Report from the Committee:
“In the short-term, there is an opportunity for the Government to leverage existing Federal funding to attract projects to Queensland, given the potential challenges in meeting the national Large Scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) in the period up to 2020. This could occur via a competitive reverse auction process, with the Panel recommending an indicative target of up to 400 MW prior to 2020, with the target to be reviewed based on the level of renewables developed by the market.”
The 400 MW is for Large Scale Renewables eg Solar Farm not Small Scale eg Roof Top.
