Government Policies First of all, a couple of new questions. What about geothermal, wave energy, hydrogen etc and the regular one, is coal cheaper than wind? Geothermal has not proved effective in SA, despite many attempts and hundreds of millions … Read More
Author Archives: Andy McGee
SA Elections – Energy (other) Part 3
Additional Energy So we have renewables with storage backed up by gas, but can we do better? Connect to Interstate We currently have two electricity interconnectors to Victoria (Heywood and Murraylands) and these were a major part of the breakdown … Read More
SA Elections – Energy (Renewables) Part 2
So we only produce small amount of oil and have to import it, we have no good quality, easily accessible coal but we have plenty of gas. Why don’t we just use gas for everything? We could generate electricity, … Read More
SA Elections – Energy (Fossil Fuels) Part 1
With the elections coming up in South Australia, energy issues are a big ticket item with politics obfuscating informed knowledge. I will attempt a non-political review of the options for SA and their pros and cons. Many of the basics … Read More
Tags: coal, fossil fuels, natural gas, renewables, SA elections
Virtual Power Plant
South Australia’s planned Virtual Power Plant appears to be largely misunderstood, as these things always are. It is basically a system that creates an energy supply from solar and batteries which is tied together by software. This allows the … Read More
Sublime Murder – Chapter 1
Sublime Murder has now been published as a digital novel on Kobo and Kindle https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/sublime-murder https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B076CFNDJC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1507686398&sr=1-1&keywords=sublime+murder Chapter 1 The Mount “I was told that you are a seismologist. So then, how did you get into forensics?” Ferg thought about … Read More
Nuclear(Con)fusion – 024
Just over a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein came up with the notion that mass and energy are equivalent in his theory of Special Relativity. About twenty years later the idea that the sun was a nuclear reactor and provided … Read More
Tags: ITER, JET, nuclear fusion, nuclear radiation, stellarator, tokamak
Are logs natural? – Maths 009
If you start with 1 dollar and compound it with 100% continuous annual growth for 3 years, how much would you have? Complex Space and Euler’s Identity We ended up in a pretty strange place last time. It’s a bit … Read More
Dimensions and Domains – 008
Which has the largest land area out of DR Congo, Greenland and Saudi Arabia? They are in order of size with Congo the largest, but all three are similar. Why don’t our maps seem to show that – read on. Can we … Read More
Odds are Not Even – Maths 007
Get even by knowing the odds – or the odds will be against you. If I toss a well weighted coin in random conditions (ie no cheating) the probability of it falling heads or tails are half each way or … Read More