Jennifer Marohasy

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Cloncurry to go Solar

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Summers in Cloncurry seem to last forever and there is always a sunny side to the street, making it an ideal place to become the first town to run entirely on solar power.

ABC News: ‘Cloncurry set for solar revolution’

In 1889, the Queensland town of Cloncurry recorded Australia’s hottest day – 53 degrees Celsius in the shade. It’s a record of which the town is very proud.

According to State record temperatures “There are also numerous extreme high temperatures which have been recorded prior to about 1910 using non-standard instrumentation, most notably a reading of 53.1 at Cloncurry in January 1889. It is likely that this will be struck from the official record in the near future.”

Thanks to Luke Walker for this one.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Louis Hissink says

    Rio Tinto unofficially asked me in 1989 to do a back of envelope calculation to cost the conversion of the diesel powerstation at their Argyle Project to solar power. This was as a consequence of the Wilderness Society suggesting Rio use solar power to supply energy to the Argyle diamond mine.

    I made an initial estimate that quite a few hectares of land would need to be allocated to house all the solar panels, and would have been a visual blight in addition.

    And then I pondered over one small detail – as a mining operation works 24 hours per day, the how would the mill get its energy requirements during the night?

    Well, cutting to the chase, Rio would have had to find an additional large copper and lead mine to supply the lead for the storage batteries to power the mine during night, and sufficient copper to make the busbars and other electrical wiring to complete all the electrical circuits to make it work.

    The cost of this extra infrastructure made the conversion to solar power totally uneconomic.

    So in terms of Concurry’s dream of being totally solar powered, I will wait with anticipation when, during the hours of darkness, the local hospital will suddenly run out of electrical power, thereby possibly causing unexpected deaths that will be followed by litigation by the lawyers from hell.

  4. Louis Hissink says

    Oh, how nice, Luke uses my name again, but distracted by his temporary courtesy he then blundera into some additional fallacies.

    Like: Whom thought what? The hospital? If one is basing one’s energy requirements on solar, then that means an absence of other energy sources.

    Like: diamond MineS ? as long as I can remember, there is only one diamond mine there.

    I suspect the Canadian Beaver would be deemed ecologically irresponsible if it were human.

    Strange that.

  5. Luke says

    Louis don’t tell anyone as I have shares in the company but you can actually have a little backup power with your solar at Cloncurry – we don’t normally tell people that – but you can. Shhhh now. We’ve told the hospital on the quiet you know – wink wink nudge nudge. Say no more !

  6. Ender says

    Louis – “I made an initial estimate that quite a few hectares of land would need to be allocated to house all the solar panels, and would have been a visual blight in addition.”

    And land is in such short supply out that way isn’t it? A mine is also a real feature on the landscape blending with the natural beauty.

    BTW these back of the envelope calculations – did you use the Australian standards or just make up some figure?

    Cloncurry could use David Mills solar technology from Ausra at http://www.ausra.com/. It can include heat storage for overnight power demand so lead acid batteries would not be required. Or they could use another Australian, now Canadian technology of redox flow batteries.

    Do you think enough Australian invention and technical brilliance has been ignored and forced offshore yet Louis? Or should Cloncurry just import diesel generators from Europe or America and fuel from Malaysia and sit comfortably in the early 1900s where people like you belong.

    Perhaps the Argyle Mine should have got someone competent to design their solar installation.

  7. Lawrie says

    Ender,
    Does AUSRA actually have any working prototypes? Or is this system just a desk top concept.
    (BTW before doing a Luke and getting on a high horse I believe this could be a workable concept – so my query is genuine.)

  9. Lawrie says

    Thanks Ender.
    Shame we cannot get vwenture capital in OZ. I know. I tried years ago to give development contracts in Communicaton Satellite Technology to Australian Industry. It just wouldn’t happen unless the taxpayer came to the party.

    My view is solar and hot rock is where we should be putting our effort – not because of any CO2 threat but it just makes sense to have many sources of abundant energy. This included Nuclear
    too for me.

  11. Mike says

    Oh if only it were true the ausra site gives storage capacity as 1 hour. All so called alternatives are decades away to be viable. China alone will build about 750 coal fired power stations in that time. I think it is something like the entire capacity of Australia every year.

  12. Sylvia Else says

    I hope they realise that they still need a backup system. Despite the suggestion that there’s always a sunny side to the street, it is sometimes overcast in Cloncurry, and the storage capacity of the proposed solar plant is limited.