{"id":3903,"date":"2020-01-06T07:07:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-06T07:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/?p=3903"},"modified":"2020-01-06T07:07:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T07:07:44","slug":"bound-for-south-australia-the-sun-seems-to-shine-brighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/bound-for-south-australia-the-sun-seems-to-shine-brighter\/","title":{"rendered":"Bound for South Australia \u2013 the Sun seems to Shine brighter?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Garry Baverstock AM, former President of\nthe WA branch of the ISES and ANZSES, founder of solar-e.com.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State of Western Australia has many\nattractions and in many ways provides a great lifestyle, though a little dull\nat times due mainly to a lack of population, business action and strategic\nplacement of higher density living.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mining-opia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is changing for the better slowly in most cases, but in the non-mining sector many industries have gone to the wall, closed down or moved overseas. My father was a lead confectioner with Plaistowe and Co, a WA company which was renowned for their sugared almonds, chocolates and licorice products, many supplied to the East Coast as well as overseas. It didn’t survive the wage hikes of the 1970s and closed down in 1983 or so. Many other healthy WA industries in all fields seemed to have died on the vine since, due to wage costs, globalization, or a lack of WA government support for innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

WA\nSolar History<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1940s -1960s solar industry entrepreneurs such as Ron Brown of Sola-Ray, and Clarry Small of \u2018Smalls Solaheeta\u2019 were leaders establishing the industry concurrently with and eventual domination by Solahart, Edwards hot water systems. I was involved with copper systems for 2010 to 2012 an evolution of the Smalls systems. I started by investigating Sola-Kleen in detail and eventually involved as a joint owner before closing it down due to a lack of viability. It was an attempt to save the industry and keep solar water heaters being made in WA. Since then most WA based manufacturing for solar water heating has disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Federal\nGovernment Rebate Scheme<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the brilliant and very effective Commonwealth\nTax rebate scheme we were able to reinvent the product for application to the\nPV industry. This was seen as the only way to keep the industry alive.  It meant greatly improving the performance\nand reducing manufacturing costs. While at this process we as a team invented a\nnew solar air conditioning system that also runs on PV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to a lack of interest in WA which I put\ndown to an overly and unhealthy emphasis on mining innovation, I have had not\nbeen able to easily attract capital, nor any innovation grants for IP\nregistration etc. Also there has been no obvious interest for manufacturing\ninterest here.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

UniSA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My colleague Em Prof Wasim Saman, head of R&D at the School of Engineering at UniSA saw merit in the inventions in built form and backed by physics, engineering calculations and data collected. In 2017 we contracted the university to do independent testing. Since then further improvements have followed. Since 2014 three peer reviewed papers were produced that analyzed the state of solar water heater industry in Australia. This information assisted with not only infirming the whole industry but help our R&D program with useful feedback on the state of the industry and consumer sentiment towards it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Colleagues in SA including Prof Wasim Saman of UniSA centre, former world Solar energy Society President Monica Oliphant, plus Rick Carter of the Space centre and high ranking EPA officer Roscoe Shelton in May 2019 discussing Climate Change and solar energy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patent\nProcess<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Patent Cooperation Treaty approval for\nnovelty, inventiveness and industrial applicability we have proceeded with\nregistering our patents globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January we will be meeting the UniSA\nagain to progress with the commercialization phase for both products as well as\nmeeting potential JV manufacturing partners in Adelaide and in Melbourne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of thermal inertia storage is the\nkey to both technologies and will avoid the current high costs of battery\nstorage added to PV which will eventually come down to 15c\/kWh once the long\nlife Li \u2013 ion batteries come on stream and will be equal to of peak grid supply\ncosts. Thermal inertia storage will be below 2 c\/kWh so it will always be a\nprecursor for determining when to use battery storage, even at the lowest life\ncycle cost as presented in my WREN Conference paper in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning\nPoint for the Solar Industry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2020 looks like being a turning point or\nsolar becoming more mainstream and more importantly much smarter.  There are issues such us quality which need\nto be addressed. But solar energy and wind has an unhindered path to be\nsupplying 25 \u2013 50% of global electrical energy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We predict that the next generation of householders\nwill finally adopt passive solar design principles for their houses and\nretrofitting existing plus use smart technologies such as \u2018SolaTank\u2019 hot water\nsystems and \u2018MassLinc\u2019 air conditioning. This will save about 25% emissions in\nthe total building sector by the end of the century, preferably sooner.  With adoption of solar powered cars and heavy\ntransport it looks like another 15% could be added to possible emissions\nsavings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate\nChange Consequences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Ross Garnaut (in Australia) predicted\n90% savings were needed by the end of this century, but the impacts of Climate\nChange is hitting harder and earlier than thought. Therefore we need to move\nmuch faster now. Achieving 40% savings for the total built environment is\nhighly possible and easy actually (say by 2050). Of course so many other\nmeasures for farming, population growth, regenerating natural environments\nincluding the oceans should make the end of century target possible but much\nearlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t blame the solar industries. We are\nthe heavy hitters providing a clean energy future for the next generations.\nWith entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk taking over it is time for old fogies,\nincluding, laggards, luddites, and Climate Action deniers to get out of the way\nand let smart industries take control and save life (including humanity) as we\nknow it on planet earth. The Solar Council has a big job from hereon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JV\nVision<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020 a JV for manufacturing between WA\nand South Australia or Victoria is our goal. As they say 50% of something is\nbetter than 100% of nothing. I am happy to be able to contribute 25% of the\nglobal solution using our technologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Garry Baverstock AM, former President of the WA branch of the ISES and ANZSES, founder of solar-e.com. The State of Western Australia has many attractions and in many ways provides a great lifestyle, though a little dull at times due mainly to a lack of population, business action and strategic placement of higher density living.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[5,503,238,518],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3903"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3910,"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions\/3910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solar-e.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}