Watts in the Desert Pioneering Solar Farming in Australia&39s Outback [Paperback]

Lex Fullarton helped pioneer solar farming in western Australia and is the author of Heat, Dust, and Taxes: A Story of Tax Schemes in Australia's Outback.Solar power has taken a journey from what was once considered the lunatic fringe to mainstream society and industry. Looking specifically at the Solex project in Carnarvon, Western Australia, which pioneered the harvest of solar energy, this book offers an introduction to the development of renewable energy and the rise of dispersed, embedded solar energy systems in Australia in the early 2000s. Fullarton shows how a practical demonstration of innovative existing technology can have an incredible impact on a national scale. The ideas behind the Solex project were adopted by the broader community and were eventually taken up enthusiastically by the general population of Australia. Analyzing government and utility policies throughout the 2000s, the book traces how ambivalence was followed by wholehearted incentives to the roll-out of alternative energy and then by active opposition to alternative energy in favor of traditional fossil fuel as government philosophies changed.I do not know of any other critique of [Australia's Renewable Energy Target] scheme as in-depth as this. Not only is it comprehensive and incisive but, in Fullarton's usual inimitable way, what he has produced is entertaining reading to boot!Pioneer is a title earnt, while visionary is a title often claimed, but in reality can only be ascribed by others. Lex Fullarton's efforts in a remote part of Australia reveal him as pioneer of the renewable energy sector Down Under, while his visionary efforts to deliver a solar project in Australia's Outback flew in the face of the conventional wisdom espoused in the Australian Government's 2003 Renewable Energy Target that mostly ruled out the value of solar, and pushed instead in favor of biomass and wind. 'Fully' was right?the future is clean, and making tl3©