renewable energy
25 May 2009
Leading A Dumb Horse To Water
If you invented a revolutionary source of renewable energy, you'd think Australian authorities would be very interested. But you'd be wrong, writes Nick Toscano
If an economist had a fail-safe strategy to alleviate the financial crisis, world leaders would be falling over each other to get to it. If a mining company announced it had struck enough oil to end the global shortage, government licences and co-investment contracts would be jamming their letterbox.So why is it that when Gippsland farmer and inventor, Fred Sundermann, devised a breakthrough renewable energy alternative which could be used to help tackle a similarly serious global problem, our governments apparently don't want to know about it?
Global warming is no far-away problem, and presents us with some very specific and unavoidable challenges: "We need a program to replace existing coal plants with zero-carbon energy sources," warns the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The failure of state and federal governments to capitalise upon (or at least investigate) Sundermann's invention is one sign that they are not doing nearly enough.
The biggest hurdles we face in moving to renewables are the problems (some actual, some merely perceived) with their ability to cope with our power demands, relying as many of them do on sometimes unpredictable power sources like wind, water flows or sunshine.
Although still largely unknown, for over a year now the Sundermann Water Turbine has been considered an exception. Where it differs from other water turbines is its simple practicality.
Typical models are built like a fan, which, in a low-pressure flow suffers a lot of drag, reducing its efficiency. In the Sundermann turbine, each blade pivots on its own axis as it rotates around the central hub, like a planet, presenting its whole face to the full force of the water for more of its cycle. After being pushed downstream with the flow, each blade revolves back to the top of the cycle through a narrow slit, minimising the drag it suffers during the part of the cycle when it is moving against the flow. The individual pivoting of each blade creates the lowest possible overall resistance by the turbine, and allows the turbine to trap the water.
"The water has nowhere to go but out," explains Mr Sundermann, "it can't escape without being turned into energy." The turbine is cost-efficient, able to extract power from low-head, low-velocity water (6–12 knots), ocean tidal movements and, most importantly, has the capacity to generate electricity constantly.
One of these turbines has the capacity to continuously power 30 households. Sundermann Water Power has drafted a proposal for 36 larger and more powerful models of the turbine to be installed 25 metres underwater in Port Phillip Bay, which could produce 1260 megawatts — the equivalent of a medium-sized coal-fired power station.
"Fred's idea is brilliant," was the response from Don Walters, the company's consulting engineer. That's the typical reaction from experts worldwide, too, prompting many to wonder why such a simple, effective design had not been thought of before.
John Gould, for instance, a consultant at SKM and a lecturer in water-turbine technology, believes that the turbine will work, and will work well. It has even attracted the attention of one of Australia's most decorated industry professionals, Don Fry — a recipient of Engineers Australia's most prestigious awards and inductee to their hall-of-fame. Fry has such confidence in the design that he has opted to join the company's board of directors.
But that same excitement is not shared by government. The engineering company manufacturing the turbine has had talks with the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), which indicated that while it is keen on the idea, it's not willing to contribute any funding for research and development.
With the aid of Victorian MLC Peter Hall, Sundermann Water Power subsequently wrote to the State Minister for Energy and Resources, Peter Batchelor, only to be palmed off to a junior public servant.
Mr Sundermann says he is frustrated that the rhetoric about the necessity of renewable energy is not reflected by action. It seems to him that government is more interested in ways it can make dirty coal cleaner than in actually adopting anything in its place.
Not only has the Victorian Government so far declined to provide any financial support, but bureaucracy has blocked them almost every step of the way.
When Sundermann Water Power was denied funding, it hired a company that specialises in obtaining government grants — a company which only takes on clients who they believe will be successful. But the DSE advised that a test-run needs to be conducted before a grant would be considered.
Now, as Sundermann prepares to trial a prototype at Port Albert in coming weeks, State Government officials have intervened. The test-run requires a Government-appointed engineer to attend and inspect, and he costs $350 per hour, along with $1000 per night for accommodation to go to Port Albert — a minimum of $10,000 in total.
In addition to this, the engineer will need to be positioned above the turbine to examine the process in action. Therefore, it must be tested and certified as a vessel. A raft of safety checks will have to be conducted, and a naval engineer will need to be engaged to determine its centre of gravity and ensure it won't topple over during inspection.
It seems to be one thing after another. And it raises questions over why determined innovators with so much to contribute are made to jump through hoops, delaying or jeopardising potentially vital innovations. Why isn't government establishing agencies that can go out and proactively evaluate up-and-coming technologies? Instead, the Victorian Government is standing in its way the same way a local council might stand in the way of high-rise development.
This lack of constructive action from government isn't limited to Victoria. As Greens Senator Christine Milne said six months ago, "The Australian renewable energy industry, which thought it faced such a bright future when the Rudd Government was elected, is increasingly alarmed by 12 months of inaction."
After 18 months of the Rudd federal Government, solar, wind and water power alternatives have still not been implemented widely enough for them to be considered much more than environmental tokenism.
Internationally, however, other water turbine projects have received private investment and are beginning to get underway. One Australian company, Atlantis Resources, for example, has recently received US$14 million for a similar turbine from overseas investors, but early testing suggests that the Sundermann model betters it by leaps and bounds.
The Electric Energy Society Australia held a seminar on tidal power at Monash University earlier this year, which heard that Atlantis's Nereus turbine is computer-operated and, along with all requisite infrastructure, costs around $800,000 to manufacture. The Sundermann turbine, on the other hand, costs only $60,000, and engineers anticipate that its output will be able to match that of the Nereus model.
But Sundermann says they don't have the money for the same publicity, and without government backing, it is proving a long and drawn-out process just to test a prototype. "We thought it would be months ago," he says. "We keep having to put it off and put it off."
In spite of it all, he remains determined to see the turbine put into action. He is already looking into specific applications for the turbines where its particular advantages will be most valuable.
Sundermann Water Power's initial target markets will be isolated communities in Australia, and in developing countries which lack cheap and reliable power. In Australia, they have already had interest from representatives of the remote Indigenous communities in the north west of Western Australia. As enormous amounts of diesel have to be freighted 200 kilometres from Broome every three months, even with some government subsidy, certain communities are paying up to 62 cents per kilowatt more than everyone else.
A representative from the Kimberly Enterprises Aboriginal Corporation, Victor Hunter, says he is seeking a sustainable alternative which the community could part-own, and at this point, the turbine seems to fit all his criteria.
Some of these sites northwest of Broome, like One-Arm Point, have excellent tidal-flows of up to 18–20 knots, which would allow the turbine to generate at least 100 kilowatts. At this efficiency, compared to what they're currently paying for diesel power, the turbine would benefit the communities by achieving considerable savings, as well as by providing a reliable and greener source of energy.
Sundermann is far from alone in losing patience with government on this issue. Australia's six leading climate scientists, following the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, have said that while they would normally refrain from proposing policy, the direction we continue to take in this country is "so clearly at odds with the scientific evidence. We are at a key point in history and failure to act decisively now will have severe ramifications for generations to come."
In the meantime, the manufacturing company hired by Sundermann to build the turbine will soon be busy on a project for a different client — fabricating machinery for one of the big coal companies.
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Luckily Aboriginal Australians developed the boomerang before the bureaucracy arrived.
Amazing,
When I moved to Tassie 24 years ago I went saw the Hydro about a similar idea. Seems to be still on the drawing board waiting for an engineer to whip up and get rolling. It costs about $40 a unit and is able to be installed into any water source. I have tried 3 times to re visit the concept with them. They now have a Micro Hydro unit set up and I can only guess why my idea, which was GIVEN to them, has not be taken up. Funny too that the micro hydro generation units were designed to be made of recyled plastic and the low hanging fruit is the water flowing out of existing generators. Take a typical river with no salt water, say the Derwent…every farmer has a pumphouse taking water out of the river. The generation units ( think mistral fan ) sit on the top of the water flow and generate away and send current to the grid connected to the farmers pumhouse. There, the idea is in the public domain. I’ll go back to sleep like so many Government departments who are entrusted with assessing good ideas. If the assessor was any good they would NOT work for the Government. Good luck Fred, you may need to sell it to the US and then we can import it back to OZ at some stage. Of course you could just go see the power companies and offer it to them for a set sum and say $1 per kilowatt hour, for life. See you in the Riveria and no doubt your Yacht will be the solar powered one.
I have dealt with Sustainability Victoria for solar hot water rebates. They are the most nit picking bureaucracy that I have ever come across. They must have 99% of their staff working on ways to reject applications and only one to pay. The paperwork would require the levelling of a small forest.
Unbelievable. Yes you do have to go overseas to make any headway with good ideas and it sounds like a ripper.
I can only believe that the apparent crass stupidity of our politicians is down to graft.
By the way - I love the photo but who got Rudd to remove his toupee? Christopher
Every New Matilda reader should write to their Federal or State Labor members to encourage them to move from rhetoric about climate change to action and to support the wide range of locally developed technologies that currently are allowed to die or move overseas for lack of local funding support.
Australia is particularly good at technologies that operate in the medium to smaller size range - this is a classic example. It is a field in which we should be building world dominance. Instead we are drowning it in political speechifying and bureaucratic obstruction
I really do think that Rudd and most of his mob are Global Warming Deniers. Never mind the few little ‘gestures’, like Kyoto, to get a few green votes, they really never have and never will do anything to upset BIG COAL, and the relevant Unions.
With State Governments such as Victoria, NSW and Queensland totally OWNED by BIG COAL, and the NT and WA and Tassy and SA so "Development of Mining and Coal and Uranium at all costs" oriented. even if Elmer Rudd and Wrong Wong and Waste-of-Space Garrett WERE even slightly interested in REAL action, they would not be allowed to do so by the vested interests, and probably their ‘main man’, Martin Ferguson.
So many of these Governments obtain a real big smack of their budgets from these vested interests, and the BIG COAL and BIG MINING LOBBIES, so entrenched in Canberra (and in the Bureaucracy), used to actually WRITE the legislation for the Howard Government, and I have not heard that this situation has changed. They had the name of the Green Mafia, I think, or something similar.
I would suggest that the Rudd/Wong CRS legislation has also been written by these BIG interests, it is just SO accomodating to them.
I agree with the Greens that if this legislation can not be vastly improved, it should NOT proceed.
In the meantime, quite incredibly amounts of Taxpayers money is being handed to the BIG EMITTERS to supposedly support research into "clean coal", a total furphy, and would have to be a bloody BIG SCAM!
And no more than a token amount is being put into renewable energy. And certainly, none of these corrupted Governments will do anything to assist any invention that may threaten these vested interests.
All of these Governments are totally lacking in any intelligence, their Bureaucracies are totally hidebound, steeped in the tradition of blocking innovation, as always, and I do not see any way, other than some massive catastrophe, that these people, Rudd and Wong included, will be shocked into action. So far, the Victorian Fires and the Queensland and NSW Flooding have done nothing to budge them, so I am not sure what would.
They suffer from the disease of being POLITICIANS of the OLD SCHOOL, pretty much rigid, mindless morons (I have not seen any indication yet of the suggested Rudd intelligence, only gross political cunning, and Wong is an unthinking Robot), only reacting to Polls, and certainly NOT the majority Public Opinion in this case, which DOES want ACTION, NOW, on Global Warming, and not insipid gestures! Dazza.
I want to forward this article to my local politicians but I can’t figure out how to do it. I press email and it tells me " no path was selected forward’ Can anyone tell me how to do it? Christopher
The Victorian government should refer its responsibility for renewable energy policy to the federal government. What a bunch of incompetent w*nkers. Mabye if it had a poker machine attached they would pay more attention. Speaking about flashing lights… the Commonwealth could legislate that all buoys need to have one of these turbines attached and ta-da: instant market.
Christopher,
Copy and paste the article into your own email programme and you can send it off to all the politicians you want to.
However, when it comes to issues such as coal and uranium mining as against renewable energies, bear in mind that governments aren’t interested in renewables because they are bought by big business and respond accordingly.
In 1980 I worked for the NSW Energy Authority where we were doing a research project of alternative energy in vehicles. This project was initially funded by the NSW and federal governments and had been instituted because in the mid to late 70s it was feared that the world was going to run out of oil.
By the mid 80s that fear had disappeared, and the electric vehicle project collapsed. The final report on the 5-year funded project was completed and never submitted to the NSW parliament as it was supposed to be.
We had a fleet of 10 electric vehicles which we were evaluating and then - project abandoned! Now there is renewed interest - on and off - in electric vehicles, just in case we DO run out of oil. Is anybody really interested in pursuing this option? In the 1980s we were involved with inventors who had all sorts of ideas similar to the one discussed in the above article, but again, nobody took the inventors seriously and the whole scheme just collapsed.
So, I am not holding my breath. At a time when we should be heavily involved in renewable energy projects - solar, wind, wave and others come to mind - governments aren’t interested. There is too much money in brown coal and uranium - ask Martin Ferguson, the Dr Strangelove of the Rudd government.
But governments should be pressured and not allowed to forget that people vote.
You answered the question of your story when you stated that coal was expensive. The thing that governments do not want to get away from, is coal power or fossil fuels. There is too much money at stake & in turn employment prospects as well. Unless this turbine product has the potential to create long term employment & financial income which is communally beneficial, the government will continue to be deaf dumb & blind.
My advice to Sundermann Water Power is to get on a plane to California!!
That’s where the action is. Forget Australia, it is hopeless - just think about:
Black Box recorder
Solar hot water and power
The only well known inventions that stayed here (at least in part) are the Plastic Bank Note and the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer. They had the strength and reputation of CSIRO behind them 20 years or more ago, when it was free from having to raise funds from Australian Industry to operate. (I confess to having thought that policy was a good idea until I found that that Australian industry’s time frame was impossibly short for real research). It also enabled them to sack their own R&D departments!
CSIRO SPRS (retired)
The list of renewables in Austr. gets longer -
Solar systems’s concentrated photovoltaic
Geodynamics - hot fractured rock geothermal in the cooper basin
Lylod energy systems.
Now if we could have the rebates that are currently applied to second rate technologies like flat panel photovoltaic applied to something like a Sundermann Turbine , that would float the idea.
Hi Christopher
Digital Eskimo are endeavoring to resolve the current problem with our "Email to a Friend" facility.
In the interim, I suggest you follow ‘josken1s’ advice, cut & paste the web address and send through your email program.
Thanks for your patience and we hope to have this fixed shortly.
Regards
Rod McGuinness
Managing Editor
newmatilda.com
Thanks to both joskens1 and Rod - I have followed the former’s advice with considerable aplomb!! Christopher
Nick,
The swiveling turbine blades sound great, pity, Sundermann beat me to the idea.
But what I really want to know is , how do I get a job that pays 350 bucks an hour and $1000 a night.?
That’s even more than Mr Rudd’s NewYork lap dancers make. But not as much as Mrs Rudd’s employment agency, remember the one that robbed it’s employees under work choices agreements.
Ah is’nt technology great! Oli
"Every New Matilda reader should write to their Federal or State Labor members"
Exactly Bill, consider it done.
Tidal or water pressure has it all over Wind and Solar at any level.
Thanks for the Article, Nick and Rod.
wunjbana
unlike in the private sector, public servants are trained to demonstrate and tell members of the public why they cannot do something.
we need them to receive training so that they can assist us in achieving outcomes quickly, economically and safely so that the Australian public can gain access to new technology before it is taken overseas.