The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
According to a study prepared for a federal government agency, wind power could generate 20% of the energy used by the Eastern Interconnection by 2024. But achieving that goal would require extensive infrastructure improvements.
The conclusion was the result of a two-and-a-half-year study sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a research organization affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (Executive Summary PDF download) was carried out to answer questions about the impact of achieving "20-30% energy penetration of wind" in the eastern United States.
Specifically, the study focused on the Eastern Interconnnection, one of the three grids covering the lower 48 states. The Eastern Interconnection handles power from the Eastern Seaboard through the Great Plains states (Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, the Dakotas). It also covers parts of Canada.
The study focused on four scenarios, the simplest being based on "high-quality wind resources" in the Plains states, on up through scenarios involving the aggressive development of East Coast offshore resources.
The conclusion was that achieving the 20-30% figure is technically feasible but would require significant expansion of the existing transmission infrastructure.
Estimates of the annualized cost of generating that much wind power, exclusive of direct production-related costs like fuel, range from about US$90 billion to $125 billion.
But a previous study by the Department of Energy found that reaching the 20% target by 2030 would produce "substantial benefits [that] overcome the costs."
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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