Nuclear Power For Australia?

[sptrawler]

THAT SIMPLY ISNT ACCURATE. If in fact Nuclear Power stations were become more cost effective and easier to build - then we wouldn't be seeing the lived examples of current Nuclear Power builds running wildly over cost and time.

A far as the "massive footprint" of other renewable power sources ? What is the relevance to Australia ? Of all places we have sufficient space to build these systems. That's an irrelevant distraction.

Did you actually read the post about the recently commissioned UAE nuclear plant, that I posted yesterday?
Or does information just go straight in and out with you?

As I've also asked before, can you tell us how many pumped storage facilities similar size to Snowy 2.0, we are going to require if they don't decide to use nuclear?

Then maybe we can have a debate, at the moment it is all just a one sided barrage of white noise.

Another FACT to support my reasoning, not just an opinion, which you are so fond of posting.

If insufficient energy storage (GWh) is built by 2035, existing energy intensive industries such as Tomago Aluminium smelter (12% of NSW power) that require low-cost firm power supply contracts (>90% capacity factor) may close. Future decarbonisation of steel production (1,500MW) is also dependent upon securing low-cost firm power supply contracts. Without sufficient VRE and large capacity energy storage, the attendant decarbonised “Superpower” economy is jeopardised.

 

[mullokintyre]

Long term energy storage

News Listing | Clean Energy Council

The Clean Energy Council is Australia's renewable energy association. Read about latest news and updates on our website.

www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au

THAT SIMPLY ISNT ACCURATE. If in fact Nuclear Power stations were become more cost effective and easier to build - then we wouldn't be seeing the lived examples of current Nuclear Power builds running wildly over cost and time.

As I pointed out at least twice recently, why is it that so many other countries are turning to or already turned to nuclear supply?
Why are we so out of step with the other major nations?
Are they all so inept compared with our technocrats?
They are costly, they are technically difficult, but they have a long life cycle and have proven to work.
And yet despite the cost overruns and the time scales, other countries are still building and planning to build them.



Mick

 

[IFocus]

There is no reason they would shut down renewable investment, the only suggestion is firming capacity, which either comes from hydro or nuclear as you yourself have already acknowledged.

Ok i'll pose another question, if Australia's economic base is to grow, the load grows with it.
Therefore where do we get the further firming that is required as it grows, more and more hydro dams? Think about 50 years time if we do build a manufacturing base again and we do process more and more minerals, the load growth and with it the firming requirement growth will be exponential. So what do we do? put in 50 Snowy 2.0's.
Let's get real, this isn't a static issue, our population has grown by a couple of million recently, that wont stay static. We are talking about processing green hydrogen, green steel, green iron ore, green aluminium FFS as that grows so does the firming demand and we haven't got any serious long duration firming at all yet.
Let's be honest there are heaps of people against Snowy 2.0 and we will need lot's and lot's more, what are people not understanding? It is dumb $hit, I can understand some going on about nuclear because they have skin in the game, but no one is mentioning where the alternative is coming from.
Even Japan has re started its nuclear programme, look I'm not all for nuclear, I just want someone to fess up where the long duration firming is coming from, that will enable our economy to grow.

FFS it wont come from nuclear Duttons plans are for 3% to 15% of the power required how is that going to firm up storage?

Answer is wont.

As the article above states its a gas plan but then where is that gas coming from?

But Duttons plan cost zillions for what?

Get over the Coalition love in and get real

 

[SirRumpole]

You seem to be full quids on nuclear technology, hydro is a lot easier, so you shouldn't have any trouble explaining how much we need.

Well, I have asked an expert, and will be interested in his reply.

Can you actually tell me how many nuclear reactors will be needed to satisfy demand WITHOUT the continuation of renewables and how much they will cost?

 

[SirRumpole]

There is no reason they would shut down renewable investment, the only suggestion is firming capacity, which either comes from hydro or nuclear as you yourself have already acknowledged.

No, actually the reason the LNP is going nuclear is to placate the farmers who don't want wind farms or power lines in their neighbourhoods, so it's pretty obvious that those renewable plans will be scrapped, so it's really spending all our money to satisfy a few.

BTW , one or 2 reactors to satisfy energy intensive industries could be beneficial, but for the whole grid, I don't think so.

 

[sptrawler]

No, actually the reason the LNP is going nuclear is to placate the farmers who don't want wind farms or power lines in their neighbourhoods, so it's pretty obvious that those renewable plans will be scrapped, so it's really spending all our money to satisfy a few.

BTW , one or 2 reactors to satisfy energy intensive industries could be beneficial, but for the whole grid, I don't think so.

You could be right, but just on a technical basis, using nuclear as firming for the grid and a replacement for coal/gas is very doable (forgetting politics, costs, waste, ideology etc).
I really would like to see the Government come out with an actual technical plan, as to how the renewable transition is going to work, including long term firming, lets not forget electricity only accounts for about 30% of emissions and it is looking shaky just trying to mitigate those emissions.
There really needs to be a honest disclosure on all this, not just private sector backed media, whipping up public sentiment.

 

[mullokintyre]

Well, I have asked an expert, and will be interested in his reply.

Can you actually tell me how many nuclear reactors will be needed to satisfy demand WITHOUT the continuation of renewables and how much they will cost?

Once again the politics cloud the waters.
Why do you insist there that there will be no more renewables, other than your obvious dislike for the LNP?
Why must they be mutually exclusive?
Firstly, the problem is not so much the renewables, its the new transmission lines across their land that are getting up the noses of famers.
Why not put a nuclear plant were to be placed at Yallourn where the infrastructure for upping to high voltage transmission is already in place.
Like everyone else, farmers need consistent supply like everyone else.
Its just that as so often happens, they are the ones who end up having to make the comprises.
Mick

 

[sptrawler]

FFS it wont come from nuclear Duttons plans are for 3% to 15% of the power required how is that going to firm up storage?

Answer is wont.

As the article above states its a gas plan but then where is that gas coming from?

But Duttons plan cost zillions for what?

Get over the Coalition love in and get real

Ok where is Albo's firming going to come from, gas isn't a long term option, so where is it going to come from.

Get over your Labor love fest and be honest.

 

[SirRumpole]

Once again the politics cloud the waters.
Why do you insist there that there will be no more renewables, other than your obvious dislike for the LNP?
Why must they be mutually exclusive?
Firstly, the problem is not so much the renewables, its the new transmission lines across their land that are getting up the noses of famers.
Why not put a nuclear plant were to be placed at Yallourn where the infrastructure for upping to high voltage transmission is already in place.
Like everyone else, farmers need consistent supply like everyone else.
Its just that as so often happens, they are the ones who end up having to make the comprises.
Mick

There are some farmers who get paid for having wind farms on their land who are all in favour of them, it's the ones that don't who are complaining on "visual pollution" issues.

 

[sptrawler]

Well, I have asked an expert, and will be interested in his reply.

Can you actually tell me how many nuclear reactors will be needed to satisfy demand WITHOUT the continuation of renewables and how much they will cost?

I will go back through @Smurf1976 numbers and come up with a back of the napkin for you. Got to head out back soon.

 

[mullokintyre]

There are some farmers who get paid for having wind farms on their land who are all in favour of them, it's the ones that don't who are complaining on "visual pollution" issues.

I would like to see some evidence of the visual pollution meme.
Some of the proposals require an 80 metre easement across properties.
They are more likely to be complaining because of loss of available productive land, disagreements over liability, access issues, and fears of fire hazard risksf rom sparking power lines.
For some farmers raising bio secure livestock or running certified organic produce, it would make them unviable.
Mick

 

[SirRumpole]

I would like to see some evidence of the visual pollution meme.
Some of the proposals require an 80 metre easement across properties.
They are more likely to be complaining because of loss of available productive land, disagreements over liability, access issues, and fears of fire hazard risksf rom sparking power lines.
For some farmers raising bio secure livestock or running certified organic produce, it would make them unviable.
Mick

Watch 4Corners on 10th June to see some evidence.

 

[orr]

Love the bigg numbers Smurf #110...
Average Eastern demand circa 580 gw/h

If Australian car fleet is in ten years is what it is today, So maybe 21 million on the East coast by 2035 and one third is an EV with an average battery of 50kw/h.
That would be 350 gw/h of potential stored capacity more or less avalible at the point where it is going to be used in the Bi-directional future. A percentage just in the vehical fleet and one that will only get bigger.
Capacity that comes free of charge to the network players for those operaters to on-sell; unlike grid scale batteries, pumped hydro, compressed air, molten salt, hot graphite and whatever else, all of which will or may exsist in ever larger quantity adding the reserved GW's when 'the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine'...

How far would, over a decade, a few lousy Billion$ of Federal money seeding through policy go to incentivise people to empower themselves?
It's possilbe soon but only, it appears, if there's a minorty Government. Lead by people with Idea's not in the pockets of lobbists...and 'Better Is Possilble'

Nuclear at any scale in Australia has the whiff of Unicorn fart ( aplogises; George Christianson) ... and Hydrogens not far behind.
And a fart is big percentage methane or Natural Gas. And the whole Nuclear 'putsch' has a strong whiff of Gas interests.
All over the business news is our friend Nippon now onselling Oz sourced gas. Why ? diminishing demand. And that change is only going to accelerate.
Enough to put a cryogenic shiver up the back of cryogenic gas plant owners.

I wonder if the Japs will sell us back our own gas to help with our domestic issues?
There's a charater going begging in the Mavel Universe.... 'Capt Absurdity'.

 

[IFocus]

You could be right, but just on a technical basis, using nuclear as firming for the grid and a replacement for coal/gas is very doable (forgetting politics, costs, waste, ideology etc).

How?

What size units are you talking about?

It's just a nonsense in today's terms.

The problem now and has been for decades is the Coalitions politics not the engineering solutions.

 

[sptrawler]

Well, I have asked an expert, and will be interested in his reply.

Can you actually tell me how many nuclear reactors will be needed to satisfy demand WITHOUT the continuation of renewables and how much they will cost?

I'm going to plagiarise the info to try and get it as accurate a picture as possible.

Right using the UAE nuclear plant built by (South Korea) as an example, because we have some firm figures to work from, of a station that would be a good fit for the East coast.
This is only one power station and consists of 4 units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates:

Units operational	4 x 1345 MW
Make and model	APR-1400
Nameplate capacity	5600 MW

From what I can find out Barakah runs at 5,348MW ( let's say 5GW) and gives an annual output of 40TWh (or 3.3TWH/mth), from what @Smurf has mentioned Eraring is listed at 16TWh but nameplate is 20TWh. So the Barakah is two Eraring's .

Back of the napkin forecast demand:
The AEMO says the NEM is forecast to need 33 GW / 514 GWh of storage capacity in 2034-35, rising to 57 GW / 642 GWh of storage capacity in 2049-50.
That is all storage, consumer, shallow storage, medium storage and deep storage.

In total, approximately 12.7 GW of utility-scale storage is forecast to be needed by 2030, with an optimal mix of 2.4 GW as deep, 3.6 GW as medium and 6.7 GW as shallow storage

A number of government programs support the development of new deep (or medium) storage, but at this stage only Snowy 2.0 (serving New South Wales and Victoria), and Borumba and Kidston (Queensland) are committed or anticipated. Queensland is also considering a deep PioneerBurdekin project, Hydro Tasmania is investigating a new pumped hydro Battery of the Nation initiative at Cethana, and New South Wales has legislated a 2 GW target for storage of at least 8 hours duration by 2030.

In June 2040 it is expected, storage and hydro generation would supply almost 4 TWh of electricity across the NEM, drawing down water reservoirs to low levels. Through August and into spring, snowmelt and higher rainfalls replenish those dams. Solar starts to generate again more than is consumed, bringing the system back into balance

Sound planning and energy management seek to minimise the need for deep storage and gas back up. However, forecasting both energy demand and weather can never be perfect. It is prudent to provide a buffer of deeper solutions to add resilience against known yet unpredictable risks. Market and policy settings will need to evolve to enable deep storage solutions with cost recovery mechanisms that are not limited to actual usage.

Electricity from gas-powered generation (GPG) is forecast to continue its important role in the NEM. After coal-fired generators retire, gas will be needed to support energy supply during periods of renewable drought (see Section 6.5) and of extreme peak demand (see below). Gas supply and potentially a hydrogen alternative also need consideration

In total, the NEM is forecast to need 16.2 GW of gas-powered generation. Of the existing 11.2 GW capacity, about 8 GW is forecast or announced to retire, so that capacity would be replaced and another 5 GW added. This may be either as greenfield or brownfield development, but the gas generation must be flexible

Gas for electricity generation is expected to be needed most during winter, when gas demand for heating is also high. Its availability depends on gas supplies through the East Coast gas system. AEMO forecasts that if gas and electricity demands peak simultaneously, particularly during extreme conditions in winter affecting both electricity and gas demand, then there is a risk that gas supply to gas-powered generation may be curtailed by pipeline infrastructure constraints.
During such conditions, use of locally stored secondary fuels (such as diesel or hydrogen), demand response, or other firming resources may be used to maintain reliable electricity supply. More onsite gas, diesel or hydrogen storages may be needed to secure this strategic reserve. Avoiding gas network bottlenecks should also be considered in siting new gas-powered generation. Location decisions for new generators will need to consider availability of gas infrastructure (including pipelines and gas storages), future gas supplies, secondary fuels and proximity to electrical loads.

Summary @Smurf1976 can correct me, if I'm way off the mark.

Going off the AEMO prognosis and using the Barakah project as a guide as the units are a sensible size for the East Coast IMO.
(Eraring was built in the 1980's with 720MW units, so with a much bigger grid and allowing for future growth 1,345MW units would be a good fit) :

It looks as though the NEM optimum deep storage, is 20% of total storage, therefore the nuclear would have to replace the need for more Snowy 2.0's and replace the gas turbine generators.

Therefore from the AEMO document:
DEEP STORAGE:
In total, the NEM is forecast to need 33 GW / 514 GWh of storage capacity in 2034-35, rising to 57 GW / 642 GWh of storage capacity in 2049-50.

So from the above 6.6GW(20% of 33GW) of deep storage is required by 2034-35 and about 12GW(20% of 57GW) of deep storage by 2049-50 would be required

So if Snowy 2.0 is finished and it is about 2GW, one Barkah 4 unit 5.3GW station would cover it, but two would be more sensible, to cover redundancy.
GAS TURBINES:
In total, the NEM is forecast to need 16.2 GW of gas-powered generation.

This will be required for peaking and drought periods, that is a lot of gas turbines and gas infrastructure, 200MW is a big gas turbine so that is 81 gas turbines if you were using 200MW GT's.

So if we are just talking about using the Nuclear stations, just to reduce the requirement for more deep storage and replace the need for the gas turbines two maybe two and a half of the nuclear stations the same as the Barakah ones would be required.
You have to remember, this is just talking about replacing deep firming like massive pumped hydro and gas, for our existing electrical power stations.

THE CATCH:
As @Smurf1976 has pointed out to go to zero emissions, electricity generation at the moment only makes up 30% of emissions, the above is only talking about replacing our existing power stations.

If we negate all fossil fuel emissions between now and 2050, that requires heaps more because 70% of the emissions come from industry, transport etc, so the above is a pizz in the ocean of what will be required to get rid of fossil fuel.

Everything that doesn't use electricity at the moment, will have to be made to run on electricity, so 70% more electricity will have to be produced than estimated above.

Get your head around that, we would then probably need instead of 3 nuclear power stations, maybe 10 or so.

But if not think how many Snowy 2.0's you would need, plus 70% more gas turbine generation, it is a crazy number.

As I keep saying, the enormity of the issue is only dawning on Countries, that is why if they are serious about getting rid of fossil fuel, I keep saying it all boils back to energy density, the most amount of energy for the least amount of size.

As @orr says there may be things like V2G technology, that reduces the requirement for medium term storage, but just with the technology we are dealing with today, the hill to climb to become emission free is huge.

 

[JohnDe]

 

[Smurf1976]

So far as having periods of "surplus" electricity and trying to find a use for it is concerned, the idea's nothing new.

Over the years plenty of attempts have been made at putting otherwise surplus "off peak" electricity to use. Water heating is the best known example but also it's been used for space heating, swimming pool heating, bulk water pumping, farm irrigation and the Tasmanian regulations have stated "battery charging" as a suggested use since at least the 1960's and possibly longer (though I never did work out what sort of batteries that was intended to be for).

Those uses have something in common however, they all work only because the occurrence of the off-peak period is a certainty, indeed it's literally controlled by actual clockwork in Vic, Tas and SA, and by ripple control (remote control) in Qld and NSW. It happens each and every night without fail.

Now trying to make that work when it's reliant on the weather is considerably harder. Having a remote control system so as to be able to shift the actual time of when the water is heated yes, that's one thing I'm actively advocating in order to make better use of wind and solar, but it's a given it still has to be heated no matter what. Otherwise get set for a flood of angry consumers and outright rejection of the idea.

So it works over a short time period, it works to shift demand to midday and it works to be able to say OK, wind's blowing strongly right now so just leave it on through the morning or whatever but it doesn't work for dealing with days of low yield, the load still needs to operate at some point on those days.

For industry I'm far more sceptical.

There's a report written about 60 years ago in the context of WA that notes the state's then emerging mining industry and also that, since peak electricity demand was rapidly increasing, a lot of new generating capacity was planned that would mean hundreds of MW were surplus to requirements overnight, since WA's load profile is relatively peaky.

Well guess what? Muja A and B were both built as were Kwinana A and B and all those are now permanently shut, having served their functional lives, meanwhile the rest of the generating system as it existed at the time is long gone. Still no real interest from industry in using off-peak electricity to process minerals or refine metals however and I can't think of a single example anywhere else in the world either.

The basic problem is that having a hugely expensive smelter, refinery etc sitting around half the time doing nothing is an economic deal breaker. Even more so when it takes hours to get it started up and running properly (and often with various pollution breaches during that process). Stable operation 24/7 is the desired situation.

Hydrogen production is theoretically easier but commercially perhaps not. Fortescue tried pretty hard to get a hydrogen facility built in Brisbane, and the site they had was just 750m from a former power station, and about 1.3km from another former power station, so no problem with electricity transmission or land zoning and so on. They had a customer for the hydrogen, they even had bulk supply of electricity from renewables sorted out and in case all that wasn't enough, Andrew Forrest is about as enthusiastic as it gets within the big business community.

So what went wrong? Why has it stalled?

Well the problem is firming. To make the project viable financially, they don't need an intermittent electricity supply but rather, a constant one. It was the inability to secure firming at an acceptable price that tripped the whole thing up. Financially that didn't simply put a dent in profit but it made the whole thing totally unviable so that's it, no-go unless someone can resolve that.

Now I'm going to have to be intentionally vague here. Suffice to say I'm aware of the price the various hydrogen companies are looking for in order to attain financial viability but I'm not sure how public that's intended to be. That being so, I'm not going to state a figure here but I'll say that it's a long way below the costs of nuclear and it's a long way below the cost of gas. Neither are financially viable for hydrogen production and that's largely also true for any kind of smelting, refining, bulk processing etc. They all need low cost electricity in order to compete internationally.

Only way they'll work is with heavy taxpayer subsidies and suffice to say business generally isn't keen on that since, not unreasonably, they assume some future government will probably walk away from paying that subsidy at some point which leaves them with a rather expensive industrial facility that's uneconomic to continue operating. Plus it makes the business a political target when someone realises where their tax $ are going and for obvious reasons most businesses prefer to not be in that situation.

As an example of the economics of all this, I'll use aluminium and specifically the smelter at Bell Bay, Tasmania.

Production ~185,000 tonnes a year give or take a few %.

Aluminium spot price at present is USD 2450 per tonne so that's AUD 3650 per tonne x 185,000 = $675 million a year.

Electricity consumption of this smelter is about 3100 GWh per annum.

Without disclosing any actual prices, I'll say that depending on the industry in question the limit for commercial viability is generally in the range $55 - $90 per MWh.

At $55 this smelter would spend $170 million a year on electricity, 25% of total revenue.

At $90 they'd spend $279 million on electricity, 41% of total revenue.

Now add in the cost of the alumina being smelted, anode material, labour, other utilities eg water, transport and shipping, and that the investors of course want to make a profit on the whole operation and the situation's fairly clear. A high electricity price simply dooms any such industry to guaranteed failure, it puts them out of business and sends production to some other country.

Noting there that there's nothing particularly inefficient about the Bell Bay smelter. It's not the best one on the planet that's true, but it's by no means the worst either and the best will only be using a few % less energy for what is an inherently energy-intensive process. Nothing the company could reasonably do would mitigate high energy prices.

Which brings the next obvious problem. If Australia can't sustain some sort of large scale industry then we have a brutal reality to face - we're trying to sell as much coal as we can until that changes. The ability to sustain heavy industry etc is crucial to an overall move away from fossil fuels - a point that, to my surprise, even the Greens have publicly acknowledged is true. My surprise since big industrial things guzzling up huge amounts of energy aren't exactly core Greens philosophy, but credit where it's due for acknowledging the reality we face.

Therein lies the cold hard reality of the situation. From a purely technical perspective a lot of things can work. Heck we can go 100% solar and battery if the only criteria is that it works. Doing it in a manner that produces energy at an internationally competitive price however, well that's drastically harder and requires a seriously sharp focus.

It's not a new situation though. Victoria, Tasmania and SA all realised they had this exact problem after WW2 and all set about solving it using creative approaches. SA never quite got there due to scale and resources although it came pretty close but Vic and Tas both nailed it and they did it with much the same overall approach despite having very different resources neither of which are high grade. Key things being scale of economy, genuine innovation in engineering, raising system load factor as high as possible and ruthless assessment of all the options available. Plus in Tasmania's case doing pretty much everything "in house" considerably cut the cost of construction.

A similar mindset is needed if there's to be any chance of fixing it this time. Just looking for "silver bullet" solutions copied from somewhere else isn't going to work. No matter how well Australia does nuclear, we're not going to be the Americans on cost using a US reactor design built by a US company. Same with France or anywhere else, they're not going to come here and enable us to beat them at their own game.

What's needed is pragmatism, focus, technical competency and so on. Not politics and ideology.

 

[Smurf1976]

From what @Smurf has mentioned Eraring is listed at 16TWh but nameplate is 20TWh.

Eraring:

Original as built is 4 x 660MW conventional steam units with coal-fired boilers.

They've since been upgraded and tweaked and can be pushed to 720MW as long as "good" coal is used and everything works perfectly. In real world use they're often slightly under 700 and that's the practical limit.

There's a separate 41.5MW diesel-fired gas turbine that was added later. Historically there were 4 x 25MW gas turbines (diesel-fired) just up the road which were there before Eraring itself. Those were never officially part of it however, they were regarded as being a separate station for accounting etc purposes, and have since been removed. The current gas turbine, whilst at the Eraring site, is operationally independent of the rest.

 

[Smurf1976]

I would prefer a mix.
Hydro is fine if there is enough water.
There have been periods of prolonged drought, some like the millenium drought in 2001 to 2009 lasting multiple seasons.
Tasmania, which has a large resource of hydro, in both 2007 and 2016 had severe drought that threatened to curtail power supplies.

Two things about this one really.

First is simply conservative operation within technical limits. I say that since the Tasmanian system has, using inflow data back to 1916, been 100% reliable if operated within its firm capacity rating. That it has on occasions failed in practice being ultimately a failure of humans rather than engineering.

4 incidents during the 1950's and 60's simply due to very rapid demand growth, consistently running at 10% per annum compounding, and construction struggling to keep up due to shortages of materials and labour. The system as it existed at the time was pushed hard, mostly coped but did fall flat on four separate occasions.

2007 simply because system load surpassed sustainable capacity in late 1997 and continued rising with no easy fix at the time for political reasons. By the time a fix was implemented, it was too late to recover storages before a serious drought turned up.

2016 simply because "just in time" prevailed over "just in case" as a management strategy, that being a fundamental aspect of how the market runs these days in all states.

Regarding the latter, well the companies get paid to generate, they're not paid to hold reserves "just in case", so that creates a conflict between the technical aspects of operation and the financial aspects of running a business. Bearing in mind that in Tas as well as Snowy, hydro might be government owned but it's run as a "private" business in practice and required to make a profit. That's where it all went wrong, I know the story all too well. It was a failure of humans, it wasn't a failure of maths and science.

In the medium term though, what I'd do is very much a mix.

Nationally there's already a considerable fleet of fuel burning plant of various descriptions that could be used for deep firming. Long term that might not be acceptable on environmental grounds but it's there right now, it exists, and we're in no place to be getting rid of things that are perfectly useable.

So any hydro or hydrogen projects won't be the only things around anytime soon. They'll be part of the means of deep firming but by no means the only means and that does provide a very simple solution operationally.

Take the existing gas turbines etc and where possible add a second fuel, and don't use the same second fuel for all of them. So that is add diesel or add propane or whatever but the idea is we get an overall fleet with considerable fuel flexibility. That mitigates both physical supply and price risks.

From there it's straightforward to simply list them all on the basis of operational cost at any given time from cheapest to most expensive. That'll shift as relative fuel prices shift but it's not rocket science, it only needs a couple of people employed to keep on top of that.

So we have a list that, at any time, is cheapest through most costly to run and which as part of that includes any constraints - eg being able to run only 5 hours per day on gas, then having to switch to diesel, etc (and yes that's a real, actual constraint that exists at an existing facility).

For the hydro or other storage, it's then a case of not using actual cost, since that's effectively zero, but simply deciding where they need to be placed in that list. That is, if more water's available then place them toward the cheaper end, if less water's available then move them toward the more expensive end. Doing that scientifically based on forecast weather, current water levels, expected utilisation at any given point in the list (more about that in a moment) and so on.

Now here's the clever bit....

Since on most occasions when there's any need for it at all, only a portion of the deep firming fleet will actually be used. Only under the most extreme conditions will all of it run at once. That being so, that toward the cheaper end will do the vast majority of the work in practice and that makes the management of it reliable.

Eg real world example, Koombooloomba Dam in Qld, the Kareeya hydro scheme, is presently 87.2% full and that's despite heavy use in recent times. So it would sit at the very cheapest end of the list.

On the other hand Lake Echo in Tas is 44.1% full. Unless the BOM's forecasting a flood, it would thus be placed more toward the expensive end of the list. That's a human task, preparing forecasts and deciding where it needs to be put, and reviewing that on an ongoing basis - if the rain starts pouring down then move it accordingly on the list.

Noting that all wind and solar always goes in before any of the firming, it's always the first priority to be used.

From there, actually operating it is actually simpler than it sounds because we already have something known as the NEM Dispatch Engine (NEMDE). To be clear that's software running on a computer, not a physical engine of any sort, but that's extremely well proven to work - it's been in use for over 25 years now.

What NEMDE can and does do, is take into account all the constraints. Eg it takes into account transmission power limits and stability limits and so on. So it'll follow the preferred order subject to compliance with all the other requirements. Eg it won't try to run the whole country from Queensland, it knows not to try that because the transmission ratings will be a constraint.

And yes it copes just fine with outages, there's already a team of people who simply put those in as needed and it works around that.

How that differs from the present is it's a shift from financial to physical. At present the basis is prices, which are simply numbers essentially made up by traders chasing profit, and that drives physical dispatch. That's how we end up with lakes drawn right down and so on, it's financial trading that's determining what's running at any given time and what's not.

Versus the alternative approach is basing it on real, actual costs and with a "team of stereotypical geeks" deciding where to put the hydro or other storage based on weather forecasts, known outages of plant and so on. A lot of number crunching but it's about the physical, it's not chasing profit. Pay said geeks for their skills and expertise, not based on how quickly they can drain a dam.

So that is, separate the financial from the physical. Pay (for example) Snowy to provide and maintain the assets and use those assets as required for the overall operation of the system. Don't pay them only when they let water out and incentivise them to do so unnecessarily. Remove that incentive to run storage down and replace it with a strictly science-based approach.

As a practical example of this working, Origin Energy owns the Quarantine generating site in Adelaide. All up there's 5 gas turbines at the site, all using the same gas, sending electricity out on the same lines and owned by the same company. So whilst Origin will certainly compete financially against other companies, and that may lead to irrational outcomes, they're not going to compete within those 5 turbines at that one site.

That's relevant because they're not all the same. 2 x 29 MW are the most fuel efficient, the single 128 MW unit is the second most efficient, and the 2 x 24 MW are the least efficient. Which gives rise to the following output over the past 12 months:

The 2 x 29MW units comprise 24.8% of capacity at the site but generated 74.8% of total output.

The 128MW unit is 54.7% of capacity and generated 23.5% of total output.

The 2 x 24MW are 20.5% of capacity and generated 1.7% of output.

That's a classic example of what happens when it's done that way. The lowest cost plant gets run hardest, the highest cost plant is used only at the extremes. Bearing in mind this is a peaking plant so it's a good example, it's a plant that would be retained long term for deep firming purposes. Capacity factor on the 29MW units was 18.0%, for the 128MW it was 2.6%, for the 24MW machines it was just 0.5% over the past 12 months.

Apply that same logic across the whole fleet and, so long as it's based on real actual costs and a proper, scientific approach to deciding where to put the hydro in, then I've zero concerns about it working. I'd be willing to place a very large bet on that, as an approach it's a well proven concept.

The key is basing it on real engineering criteria, separating that from someone trying to make money out of it. That doesn't mean nationalisation, it just means changing how the market works. Get paid to provide the facilities, rather than being paid only when they run which incentivises draining them out.

 

[Smurf1976]

An example of the hydro I have in mind.

Here's an existing scheme. Image from AGL who owns it:

This is a conventional scheme, there's no pumping. Water enters at the top, goes through the power stations, and leaves at the bottom.

Now for some detail, note the upper storages hold 30GL of water.

Now I'll add that the long term average flow through the McKay Creek and Bogong stations immediately below them is three times that volume.

Now I'll add that most of the inflow is snow melt during spring.

See the problem? It has a large amount of "use it or lose it" generation at a time, spring, when it's not needed due to typically strong wind and solar and moderate demand. Then when running for peak power is required over summer, that uses up a portion of the 30GL that's stored. End result, it's not much use for dealing with wind and solar "droughts" which typically occur during the April to July period.

So what could be done? Well there's two things.

One is to convert it to pumped storage operation using the existing reservoirs. This would enable use for shorter durations, daily peak power at times when the overall supply of wind and solar is good just not right at that exact moment, without letting water out. That enables water to be stored for later use in.....

A new dam to replace the Pretty Valley Pondage. The design work was done on that a long time ago and it increases storage to 197GL. So the total of the two upper storages goes from 30GL at present to a new 225GL thus giving complete control over the incoming water flow, it's holding more than two years' worth. This also adds another small generator, 20MW, between the upper storages.

So when a wind and solar drought occurs, that's when the scheme can be run "in anger" with constant high output to fill the deficit from the lack of wind and sun. It's not a bottomless pit obviously, but the data shows it's an adequate one, with those modifications it can be run heavily, even constantly, during those periods when they occur and not fail, it won't run out of water. Especially not given it can be moved up and down the list as previously discussed.

Now I won't deny that comes with an environmental impact. Pretty Valley Pond already is dammed, it's not natural, but the very much higher new dam does flood about 10km2 of land but I'll argue for rational approaches in considering that. Metropolitan Melbourne is 9992km2, the overall land area of Victoria is 227,444km2 so it's not exactly huge and there's that issue about fossil fuels to bear in mind.

Now this scheme is nowhere near enough, it's only 397MW at present and even when maxed out it would still only be about 432MW (upgrade to Clover PS, addition of new small one at the top), but that's 432MW of deep firming that doesn't need to come from gas and it's mostly based on repurposing existing assets. 4 of the 5 dams are already built, 4 of the 5 power stations are already built just need modifying, the road to the site for the new works is already there, etc. It's low hanging fruit.

Trouble is, the politics of any such proposal would be outright toxic. AGL are testing the waters politically at the moment with the pumping bit but they've unsurprisingly said nothing about any new dam. The pumping would bring some benefit by itself of course, but it really needs the new dam to realise the full potential of it to replace gas.

Now there's plenty more like this where existing assets can be repurposed or enhanced and the environmental footprint, whilst not zero, is modest. My argument being not to just rush in and build them but that a proper, scientific not political, assessment of the ecological impacts ought be done. What's there, what are the consequences of the dam, how does that compare to the indefinite ongoing use of an equivalent quantity of fossil oil or gas? Do that with them all and the likely outcome is some are off limits for legitimate ecological reasons, but others would be a better option than fossils for deep firming and rationally ought be built.

Economically well one thing about such projects is it's a one-off cost and it's an almost entirely local one, the money mostly stays in Australia since it's civil works and so on. Those aspects don't remove the need to be economical but they do make any subsidy somewhat more palatable and beneficial versus subsidising something that sends the money overseas.