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Tasmania
Some places are better situated to use renewable forms
of energy than others. Tasmania
is well situated to use several types, which together generate most of Tasmania’s electrical power.
Tasmania's Population
One of the major things in Tasmania's favour is the relatively low Human population. This allows the island to have large wilderness areas and there have been less extinctions in Tasmania than in any other Australian state.
Tasmania's population is a little too high, but is probably sustainable.
As far as power is concerned, less people will tend to use less power, so Tasmania is well situated to produce all its power from renewable sources.
Tasmania (2010) has just over half a million people. Unfortunately this happy state is threatened by the policies of the major Australian political parties of deliberately encouraging people to have more children than they were choosing to have before 2004.
Renewable Energy
The Australian government has set the ridiculously
modest target of 20 percent of Australia’s
electricity to be from renewable sources by 2020. Currently the island state of Tasmania has 87 percent
of its electricity coming from renewable sources.
Hydroelectricity
About 66 percent of Tasmania’s power is Hydroelectric. Of course, this form of power is subject to
rain and in drought periods the output is reduced.
Wind
Tasmania is in the path of the roaring forties. These are belts of mostly strong westerly
winds on both sides of the equator about the latitude of forty degrees north
and south.
Around 20 percent of Tasmania’s electricity comes from wind
turbines.
Geothermal
Power
The potential for Hot Rock Geothermal power in Tasmania is very
large. This type of power promises to be
very cheap, abundant and suitable for providing base load power.
Tidal and Wave electrical generation also have
considerable potential.
Solar Power is
not as suitable for Tasmania as for mainland Australia.
There is also some potential for power generation by Osmosis, but personally I doubt if this will become competitive in price to the other forms of power available.
Fossil Fuels
Tasmania has a gas fired power station. It also, at times, imports power from
mainland Australia
through Basslink. Most of this power is
generated using fossil fuels including Brown Coal.
Basslink
Basslink is a 290 kilometre undersea cable linking Tasmania to the Mainland state of Victoria.
Since this became operational in April 2006, the Tasmanian electricity
grid has become part of the mainland one, allowing electricity to flow either
way as is needed.
Basslink is a 400,000 volt DC cable capable of
carrying up to 480 Megawatts continuously and up to 630 Megawatts for short
periods.
The Future
Tasmania is quite close to using only renewable fuels. There is no reason why renewable fuels cannot
make up 100 percent of Tasmania’s
electricity generation.
The biggest danger is that the Human population will continue to rise. This could create the same sort of problems over population has in so many parts of the world.
Sources
Hydro Tasmania
http://www.hydro.com.au/home/
http://www.dier.tas.gov.au/energy/renewable_energy
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Tasmania
