Shepparton is near ideally placed to resolve a problem explained, and answered, by Professor Mark Z. Jacobson.
By following his prescription, we can help resolve the climate crisis and make breathing a more pleasant and safer experience.
The professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University outlined the problem and suggested the answer in his book No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air.
And it comes with a bonus, as we end up with an independent, safer, more flexible and a cheaper electrical energy system.
Yes, it is a win-win.
The good professor argues that without creating any new technologies, we can employ wind, water and solar as the basis of an energy system with sufficient capacity to answer all our needs.
But of course the Goulburn Valley, and Shepparton, is far from the ideal place for wind, and what water we have is prioritised for largely food production, but we do have a generous and reliable source of sunshine, hence the availability of solar power.
Writing about Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in 2017 and knocked out power to its 1.5 million people for nearly 11 months, he said the hurricane toppled 80 per cent of the island’s utility poles and transmission lines.
With 10 oil-fired power plants, two natural gas plants and one coal plant, the island’s energy supply was all but wiped out by the loss of transmission.
Prof Jacobson noted that a more distributed energy system with rooftop solar photovoltaics, distributed onshore and offshore wind turbines, and local battery storage would have allowed hospitals, fire stations and homes to maintain at least partial power during the entire blackout period and would have reduced the time required to restore power to most customers.
Shepparton, of course, is not Puerto Rico and doesn’t have access to abundant wind, but it is blessed with copious sunshine and so solar PV linked to an array of batteries would free the city from the umbilical chord of the centralised power grid and so rather than raiding the public fund to build a centralised and ultimately wasteful power system, our Federal Government should be looking to a decentralised, distributed system.
That is, for argument’s sake, a city such as Shepparton would be serviced by a series of community-based, battery backed-up micro-grids that were each interlinked and so able to support each other during difficult times.
Fuel for such a service would be effectively free, the government could cover its establishment costs through a small ongoing annual fee, which would also cover the 10-year replacement of batteries and the two-decade replacement of solar panels, and general maintenance.
Of course the micro-grid system would be state- and nation-wide and through technology could be interlinked, with each supporting the other.
Australia is so big that when the sun is not shining here, it is shining there, as is the case for wind, and so an Australia-wide integrated, interlinked system would give us 24-hour coverage.
It’s all part of the “electrifying everything” idea proposed by Australian engineer and entrepreneur Saul Griffith, and that’s a concept that will be explored and discussed at the Tatura Transition Towns annual film festival in August this year.