Peter D Leith-Wybrow
Renewable Energy a Life long Engagement
Peter D Leith-Wybrow
I have been associated with renewable energy since I can remember growing up in NZ. In the 50's. Renewable energy in the form of biomass was the fuel of choice. When I was 7 I had a school holiday job at the family mill, driving a little Caterpillar D1 crawler tractor, pulling logs out of the stockpile and dragging them into the breaking down bench. My family owned a pine forest in the South Island of New Zealand. Felling trees and chopping them up for timber was a good business but it is one of the most wasteful uses of a tree because 60% of the tree, not including the branches that are left in the forest is waste. The Scottish side of my family,
That is the Leith side of the Leith-Whybrow name, is of course very averse to waste.
We decided we would do something about it first by picking up all of the Sawdust and off cuts, putting them through a grinder, turning these rubbish products into bio fuels to make steam to drive a turbine generator. This produced enough electricity to drive the mill.
It was so successful that we generated excess energy which we dispatched into the network and got a couple of half pennies per KWH. [It was so long ago we were on Pounds Shilling and Pence.] We did the same thing with the branches left in the forest. Bringing them into the Sawmill to put through the grinder. We sold all this to the local companies, the hospitals, manufacturing companies to produce steam and to dozens of schools in the region that had boilers for central heating.
The CO2 released is absorbed by all the young pine trees which makes them grow very fast.
I got involved with PV while on holiday and a chance meeting in Germany with the director of an 80 year old Austrian company. I have therefore been developing PV (photovoltaic) renewable energy power station projects since 2008. I learnt how to take a large field and deliver a turn key power-station with offtakers, contracted commercial and industrial clients plus residential subscribers,
then turning it over to the owner as a turn key asset.
I always buy the land as it is going to be occupied with a money making machine for some decades. PV renewable energy power stations have one big advantage over all others in that all the parts are getting cheaper and are easy to replace to keep it going.
The panels can be replaced every 15 years. As an example, The REPS ( Renewable Energy Power Stations) built near Tripoli in 2008 are having their panels replaced now in 2023. The panels are being replaced with panels that fit into the same space as the old ones but the new panels are 30% to 40% more efficient. Plus thanks to the Chinese companies involved in a war of cutting each other's throats, they are much cheaper.
Inverters are readily available and can be replaced by a local electrical contractor contracted to do so. The batteries can also be replaced very easily. By doing this a utility grade power station can be kept alive for decades. And making the original investment worthwhile as it continues to make capital returns every year.
I am now doing this in Australia. Developing these units for local and international merchant type banks. Many of these have investors who want to get their money out of their home country and invest it somewhere else where they not only get control of their money they can also apply for Australian Business Visas that allows them to open a bank account to manage their business, come and go as they please, with their families.
Peter D Leith-Wybrow.
