I did not realise wind could provide so much energy. It is spoken about these days as "old technology". Any rough ideas on on the size of the land that would needed.
All the options we have are either "old technology" or are far too expensive.
Nuclear power is a 1950's technology in commercial use, based on ideas from the 1940's. It's an old technology too, just like the others.
Wind and solar are the only "new" forms of large scale generation, in that they are the only things being used on a significant scale today which haven't been around for at least 40 years in this country. Everything else is either too small and not capable of scaling up, still at the R&D stage, or too expensive.
It must be very inefficient pumping water up a hill as a storage method, cant believe that's the best we have come up with haha
It is not the technically best method but it's the cheapest and most proven. Hydro is inherently efficient by its' very nature, and pumped storage returns to the grid at least 70% of the energy taken out for storage (and it can be pushed a bit higher than that).
The oldest working power station on a major grid in Australia is the Lake Margaret hydro-electric scheme in Tasmania. But, and here's the point, this "working museum" complete with its' 99 year old equipment is still more than twice as efficient technically as a modern nuclear plant. And needless to say, a modern hydro turbine and alternator set is more efficient than one built a century ago.
There are certainly other options for storing energy as heat, chemically (batteries), compressed air and the like. But at present, large scale hydro pumped storage is generally the cheapest when we're talking about storing enough energy to run entire cities etc. The other technologies are certainly getting better however.
There are lots of sites in NSW and Tas where such things could be built, and a fair amount of engineering investigation has actually been done into them at various times. But there is at present no real point in building them, and of course doing so would mean a battle since greens and dams don't mix well.
So this system is technically viable but not cost competitive (yet) or politically viable. What in your opinion is the best place to start? For example if Gillard or Abott came out with something to take to the election, what would make you think, well at least we are on the correct path? Might be a carbon policy change, further R&D, the beginnings of infrastructure, aything? or are you happy with the current set up?
Public and political acceptance that (1) it needs to happen and (2) that renewables are a legitimate option which can be made to work reliably and (3) there will be economic and environmental trade offs in doing it - there's no such thing as zero environmental impact.
Get that in place and then it's fairly straightforward to make a transition gradually over a period of time. But it won't happen as long as a protest group springs up every time someone tries to build a wind farm, dam or even just a transmission line.
In terms of actual physical infrastructure, the places to start are:
1. Development of hydro generation in PNG with a cable link to Queensland. Origin Energy has been pursuing this. In the absence of large scale geothermal, this represents the single largest "magic bullet" for renewable energy supply in Australia.
2. Additional transmission capacity between SA and Vic / NSW. There have been various proposals, but thus far the actual capacity is still fairly limited particularly in the direction of exporting energy from SA (capacity being higher in the opposite direction).
3. The TasWind project on King Island is effectively the first stage of what eventually becomes a baseload source to supply 600 MW into Victoria. Hydro Tas is pursuing it, although there's well organised opposition from the usual suspects who will quite likely kill the idea.
4. Get on and prove (or otherwise) hot dry rocks as a generating technology. The saga of this one is pretty much following the steps of the brown coal industry a century ago - it's taking far too long due to unwillingness to take on the technical risk. There's a need for someone to take charge and get the job done - if that's government then so be it but it needs to happen and happen quickly.