Dear Editor,

Further to David Hulme's letter (November 7), readers still tempted to believe the oft repeated furphy that "solar can't do baseload" are urged to visit www.ausra.com and to listen to expatriate Australian Dr David Mills on Youtube.

Ausra's designs are so beautifully simple – little more than mirrors, pipes, hot water and steam, one wonders how we arrived at 2007 so hopelessly reliant on coal with its associated greenhouse gas byproduct. Ausra's first 177 megawatt production scale plant was announced on November 5. It's in central California. It could so easily have been in central NSW.

Regards,
Carl Sparre
Eastwood