It’s not on the market yet, but scientists have invented a material that’s cheap to produce, lightweight, and can cool a surface against the heat of the sun without using energy.
AFP reported on Thursday that a study published in the journal Science found a glass-polymer hybrid material, only slightly thicker than aluminium foil, could be “transformative” in radiative cooling technology.
Uses for the product could include keeping buildings and other objects cool, as well as extending the life of solar panels.
In field tests the material showed a cooling power roughly equivalent to the electricity generated using solar cells for a similar area, and could cool continuously both day and night.
“Just 10 to 20 square metres of this material on the rooftop could nicely cool down a single-family house in summer,” said co-author Gang Tan, an associate professor in the University of Wyoming’s department of civil and architectural engineering.
Researchers say the material is lightweight, easy to fit to curved surfaces, and fairly simple to mass produce.
As heat rises, more electricity is needed to be used by appliances around the state, especially by air-conditioners that need to work harder to keep offices and homes cool.
On Thursday the Australian Energy Market Operator sent out several increasingly dire warnings about the likely shortfall of electricity supply. The first said there would be a 19MW deficit in NSW about 3pm.
As it does in these situations, it asked the market to respond. In other words, it asked generators to get ready to fire up their turbines and bid into the electricity market. But that request seemed to go unheeded.
Throughout the afternoon on Thursday the forecast deficit when from 19MW to over 250MW, to as much as 419MW at the last update a little after 5pm yesterday.
To put that in context, that’s about as much energy as the total a large gas power plant can produce, and about a third of the maximum capacity of a coal power plant. It’s a lot of energy.
The crazy thing is that the demand for electricity is forecast to be significantly less than the full capacity of the electricity generators in the state.
Even if you exclude all the wind and solar, the state has about 15,500MW. And that’s not even including the electricity that can be imported from Queensland.
So why there’s a shortage is not totally clear. And why electricity generators aren’t offering to bid into the market, even though wholesale electricity prices are going to be very high, is rather confounding.
Whatever the case is, with NSW having relatively little renewable energy capacity, the desperate rush from the coal lobby and the Coalition to blame renewables will be a little hard to maintain.
It’s a little after noon AEDT and here’s how the heatwave-affected cities are shaping up.
Canberra 36.3C (forecast high: 41C)
Adelaide 34.8C (39)
Sydney 31.9C (38)
Brisbane 29.6C (32)
Meanwhile, a climate and health expert at the Australian National University’s climate change institute has warned that extreme high temperatures across NSW and the ACT could set temperature records.
Dr Liz Hanna, president of the Climate and Health Alliance, says the extreme heat in these regions could set records for the number of consecutive days above 35C. It is rare for Sydney to record three days in a row of 35C. There have been only four occasions in history, the most recent in early January 1994.
Four consecutive days in January 1960 topped 39C; two of them were above 41C.
Penrith and Richmond, in Sydney’s western suburbs, have not had three consecutive days above 42C in 22 years and 64 years respectively – but that could change this weekend.
As of 5 February, the northern NSW town of Moree had endured more than a month of days at or above 35C, more than double the number of consecutive days the previous record set in 1981.
The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast two days of 41C in Canberra, close to the record for the city’s hottest day, set at 42.2C in 1968.
In a statement published this morning, the Australian Energy Market Operator has warned of “tight” electricity supply conditions for NSW and the ACT. It says it’s as simple as people using more electricity – on air-conditioning and fans – because of the hot weather.
It says shortfalls could be possible during the afternoon peak from about 1530 AEDT to 1730, “which may trigger the need for localised load shedding to rebalance the power system” to protect the network from damage, meaning households would be deliberately disconnected.
It says it will aim for “rotational load shedding” to reduce the burden on its network but minimise the impact on any one group of customers.
The question – particularly in SA where 90,000 households were without power – is whether something can be done, or we’ve just got to put up with shortfalls in future. Remember, all the signs point to even hotter summers to come. (I’m not happy about it either.)
While we’re on the subject of energy, construction on the Silverton windfarm in western NSW is finally set to begin, after the sale of the project from AGL to its Powering Australian Renewables Fund.
The deal will see AGL pay just $65 a megawatt hour for the first five years of the windfarm’s operation, effectively undercutting current prices for coal-generated electricity.
“It’s a very low price, which demonstrates the amazing innovation and cost curve that renewable energy is on,” says Alicia Webb, director of large-scale energy at the Clean Energy Council, the clean energy industry’s peak body.
The Senate committee in Canberra is inquiring into the resilience of electricity infrastructure, in part because everyone is sticking their air con on owing to global warming.
While One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts has spent most of the morning trying to get witnesses to say that you can’t power an aluminium smelter off solar energy, the Greens’ Sarah Hanson Young wants witnesses to bite back on the federal government’s tendency to blame power outages on renewables.
In relation to South Australia’s outages in recent days because of the heatwave John Bradley, the chief executive of Energy Networks Australia, said the “rush to blame after an operational event that occurred a few days ago is part of the problem”.
“There are clearly issues with extreme weather events since last year contributing to outages. But the lessons of individual operational events need to be worked through in a clear way rather than engage in a rush to judgment.”
He didn’t pin the all blame on the federal government, because all governments, state and federal, are responsible for aspects of energy policy.
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