Letter: Green generation

From Roger Clifton

Pam Lunn proposes that all new houses must have photovoltaic and wind generators and so forth (4 June, p 28). Without storage, the fluctuation in energy produced by this scheme would exacerbate the need for the centralised generation of power to cope with times of peak demand, which is nowadays usually fuelled by gas, while only the cheaper coal or nuclear base-load generation would be reduced.

A variable price for buy-back of home-generated electricity could motivate householders to invest in enough storage to time their supply to when the grid demands it. The timing could be signalled by the local voltage, which shows the balance of local supply and demand.

Then home generation of power could be maximised according to the strength of the sun and wind, while delaying its resupply to the grid to times of peak demand. In this way peak generation might be reduced. Conceivably the suburbs could contain enough storage and generation capacity to buy power from the grid during periods of low demand and sell it back at peak demand.

In that scenario, base generation could be increased in winter and peak generation would need not be a daily event.

Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia