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The future of energy generation and storage

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luutzu said:
So you said they paid some $20B over the past 11 years, right?!
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I said more than $20 Billion, I was estimating.

But it turns out its alot more, it's $59 Billion in the last 11 years.

And the ATO is disputing $667 Million, Which is 0.01% of the total.

For every $59 they paid already, the ATO wants another 67cents, thats hardly a sign of a massive tax dodge, you can't say they aren't paying a lot of their tax here.

So your claim that,

the likes of BHP and RIO don't book their real profit in Australia do they? .
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Is totally false, Turns out you pay to much attention to headlines.

The fact that the dividends are franked is a clear sign that those dividends are being paid from taxed income.


But lets not clog this thread, Start another one if you want to discuss more.
 
Value Collector said:
I said more than $20 Billion, I was estimating.

But it turns out its alot more, it's $59 Billion in the last 11 years.

And the ATO is disputing $667 Million, Which is 0.01% of the total.

For every $59 they paid already, the ATO wants another 67cents, thats hardly a sign of a massive tax dodge, you can't say they aren't paying a lot of their tax here.

So your claim that,



Is totally false, Turns out you pay to much attention to headlines.

The fact that the dividends are franked is a clear sign that those dividends are being paid from taxed income.


But lets not clog this thread, Start another one if you want to discuss more.
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Alright, I take your word for it man.
 
Ive seen that video before. It's quite interesting. The focus on nuclear waste may actually help its cause in the long run. There's no clear waste bank right now and I know some U miners silo their waste in 100 year containment chambers until a better methodology surfaces. Of course theres concepts around using up various elements in the fuel cycle that only leave short half lives left as waste, but I think we can all agree its definitely bloody complex.

The reason I think the scrutiny serves a purpose is because its probably one of the few energy sources that really must have inscrutable regulation around storage/emissions. Coal as an example obviously releases its waste into the atmosphere in un uncontrolled manner (of course, you cant compare the two from a safety perspective) including mercury.

There are initiatives to deal with nuclear waste outside of storage. Probably the most mature is Bill Gate's Travelling Wave Reactor (needs about 8 tonnes of waste to power 2.5 million homes for a year).
ITs another Gen IV reactor and ANSTO are part of the framework. Once again China is getting on with it...

http://www.smh.com.au/business/ener...first-nuclear-technology-20171106-gzfrf0.html

I dont know...I love a world that's shifting to renewables but we need to consider that peak demand for EVs and charging will probably start kicking in in the mid 2030s. As well just as global temperatures rise another 0.5C by 2040 - our population gets home at 6pm. We all start charging our EVs and crank up the air con. Thats a lot of peak Electricity.

The UK has forecast their peak energy demands to rise by an additional 25GW by 2050 including a peak hour requirement for up to 8GW additional. They are already constructing energy sources with Steady State targets to achieve by 2050. They are aiming for pumped storage to reach 10.7GW by 2050, whereas Hinckley's plants will provide 20GW Steady State by 2033. The UK are also expecting to increase the number of required gas plants going beyond 2050.

If you ever want to take on a project guaranteed to run over time and over budget, and be fraught with technical difficulty, build a nuclear power plant. That said, these still a lot of interest in it:

South Africa grants environmental permit for new 4,000 MW nuclear plant-letter OCt 2017

Argentina to start building two new nuclear reactors in 2018 (SNC) - Nov 2017

Russia bidding to construct 16 nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia - Nov 2017

And of course China is going all out on both renewables and nuclear. They seem to have a stockpile of > 7 years worth of U308 for over 50 nuclear plants (constructed or being constructed). They started buying it heavily following fukushima and will be enriching their own fuel.

And to be honest, I jsut love this live graph of ontario's emissions:

http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html

As I am writing this they released 140 tonnes of emissions for the day.
Victoria releases about 220,000 tonnes per day
 
Sorry that should read that utilities would store their waste in silos - not miners of course.
But waste is indeed another economic consideration. Not cheap, and potentially not safe.
 
That the Saudi's are suddenly so keen on solar, nuclear and indeed anything other than oil meanwhile starting to sell off Aramco says an awful lot. There's really only two plausible explanations which make any sense:

1. Those who've long suspected they've got less oil than they claim are correct and the Saudi's now see oil as too valuable to burn for power generation.

2. The Saudi's seriously expect international action on CO2 to the point that oil becomes worthless and they're not even allowed to burn it themselves without sparking some sort of conflict internationally.

Either way it suggests that it's not a wise move for anyone to be relying too much on oil into the future.
 
Yallourn power station (Vic) is back to full production with unit 1 started up this morning. A slightly chaotic startup by the looks of it but it's up and running with the whole station (4 units) at full output right now.

Loy Yang A is still having problems. There was a major failure of unit 1, quite a bit of damage it seems, back in October and it's still being fixed. Units 2 and 4 also have some issues and are down in output about 10% each. Unit 3 is running normally and so is Loy Yang B station next door.

Tomorrow looks to be a very tight supply situation in Victoria.

Forecast demand = 9274 MW

Available generation in Vic = 8467 MW

Available supply from Tas, SA and NSW combined = 1277 MW.

Reserve (total available supply - forecast demand) = 471 MW

So it will only take one fault to tip the system over the edge tomorrow. Loss of any of the 5 currently operating units at Loy Yang A & B would do it as would loss of Newport D power station's single machine or loss of supply from Tasmania.

So there's 7 things which, if any of them actually fail, will individually bring about a supply shortage since there's not a lot of room to move.

Loss of any 1 of the 4 generators at Yallourn wouldn't tip the system over the edge but would reduce the reserve to a trivial amount. Or it could be enough if load is even slightly higher than forecast.

So all pretty fragile really.
 
Smurf1976 said:
Yallourn power station (Vic) is back to full production with unit 1 started up this morning. A slightly chaotic startup by the looks of it but it's up and running with the whole station (4 units) at full output right now.

Loy Yang A is still having problems. There was a major failure of unit 1, quite a bit of damage it seems, back in October and it's still being fixed. Units 2 and 4 also have some issues and are down in output about 10% each. Unit 3 is running normally and so is Loy Yang B station next door.

Tomorrow looks to be a very tight supply situation in Victoria.

Forecast demand = 9274 MW

Available generation in Vic = 8467 MW

Available supply from Tas, SA and NSW combined = 1277 MW.

Reserve (total available supply - forecast demand) = 471 MW

So it will only take one fault to tip the system over the edge tomorrow. Loss of any of the 5 currently operating units at Loy Yang A & B would do it as would loss of Newport D power station's single machine or loss of supply from Tasmania.

So there's 7 things which, if any of them actually fail, will individually bring about a supply shortage since there's not a lot of room to move.

Loss of any 1 of the 4 generators at Yallourn wouldn't tip the system over the edge but would reduce the reserve to a trivial amount. Or it could be enough if load is even slightly higher than forecast.

So all pretty fragile really.
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So true smurph, when you consider summer isn't here yet.
 
Smurf1976 said:
30 MW being supplied by Hornsdale Power Reserve (SA big battery) into the grid at the moment.
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Just interested if there is an on-line diagram of all the power stations in the country and how much they are producing at the moment and what the demand is. Or is that commercial in-confidence ?
 
SirRumpole said:
Just interested if there is an on-line diagram of all the power stations in the country and how much they are producing at the moment and what the demand is. Or is that commercial in-confidence ?
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There are paid services which show exactly that but access requires paying $$$ as they're provided by third parties.

Typical users are electricity generation companies to explain it all to the board etc (many of whom will have business or finance backgrounds) and in some cases visitors (school or university groups, media etc).

AEMO does publish all the data, updated every 5 minutes, on their website however and that's free for anyone to access. That's live output data for every scheduled (over 30 MW) generator and a few others (smaller ones) who choose to be included updated every 5 minutes. It's just an Excel spreadsheet however and requires some background knowledge of what's what but it's here: http://www.nemweb.com.au/REPORTS/CURRENT/Dispatch_SCADA/

Total demand, generation capacity, generation output and interconnector (between states) flows are also on the AEMO website updated every 5 minutes. This is aggregated at a whole of state level however not for individual power stations. Here: http://www.nemweb.com.au/REPORTS/CURRENT/DispatchIS_Reports/

Current bids are not published for all to see in real time but historic data is publicly available at no cost. This spreadsheet shows actual output and available capacity for the previous day if you look at columns E (time), G (name of power station or generating unit), O (actual output) and AE (available capacity at that time from that generator).

Note that time is always Qld time for all locations, so no adjustment is made for Daylight Saving or the 30 minute difference in SA.

Also note that the capacity shown is what was available to run at that time and offered to the market - a value of zero doesn't necessarily mean the plant was broken, it could just mean it isn't being offered to the market at that time (eg it is shut down but could be started up if needed). AEMO can and will direct generation owners to make plant available if it's capable of running and there's a need for more supply although most of the time that's not necessary but it does occur. Obviously they can't direct someone to run if it's broken etc.

This spreadsheet is here (one file for each day and the list goes back over a year): http://www.nemweb.com.au/Reports/CURRENT/Next_Day_Dispatch/

Following is a third party website with a single, easy to understand graph showing total generation by fuel type in each state. It shows that only and does not show load or interconnector flows, just how much is coming from what fuel (coal, wind, gas, hydro etc) including an estimate of generation from small scale (household) solar systems. It's pretty widely looked at by the way and the simplest way to get a "big picture" view of where power is coming from at any given time. Most data is sourced from AEMO and the solar estimates are generally regarded as pretty accurate. Note that since it doesn't show interconnector flows the figures for each state are generation only which may be quite different to consumption if there's a large transfer between states occurring at the time.

Most of it is self explanatory (coal, gas, hydro, wind etc) but "other" generally means biomass largely (Eg waste from sugar processing burnt to generate power is a modest but big enoug to be worth measuring source in Qld).

Note that the "large solar" is referring to big solar installations such as at Broken Hill and this data is measured and sourced from AEMO. Panels on roofs etc are "small solar" and that data is estimated.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/

The other generating companies generally don't have anything comparable but Hydro Tas has a simplified line diagram showing the main water storages, their current level, where the water flows and the capacity of each power station. Note that this is station capacity not current output. Water level figures are in GWh (how much energy they hold) and not water volume (litres etc) as such and are updated weekly. Note also that the power station rated outputs are conservative "as designed" ratings - most of them can be pushed a bit harder if really necessary. Here: https://www.hydro.com.au/system/files/water-storage/storage.pdf

Hydro also publishes key storage level data for the past 5 years as a spreadsheet updated weekly. This is partly to enable public scrutiny but also saves rival generators the hassle of having someone driving around the state looking at the dams trying to work out how full they are (yep, one of the interstate privately owned companies did just that some years ago). Here: https://www.hydro.com.au/system/files/water-storage/storage_summary-4.xls

Not so related to energy as such but Hydro Tas meteorological data is here. This is in most cases collected to proper meteorological standards (same as what the Bureau of Meteorology does) and the BOM does use it as a legitimate data source in addition to their own observations. https://www.hydro.com.au/water/water-levels-and-flows-map

Back to electricity as such, AEMO publishes these graphs looking forward the next 2 years for each state. The basis is the highest demand likely for that time of year since obviously they don't know exactly which days will be hot etc. Also generation capacity is based on what's known at this time and subject to change since obviously it's only planned outages that are shown that far in advance not any breakdowns etc. The red bars on the charts for Vic and SA are supply shortfalls (in layman's terms that means someone loses power aka blackouts). http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/...Market-NEM/Data-dashboard#medium-term-outlook

There's a lot more data available (free of charge) from AEMO via their website bit most of it would be incomprehensible or misleading to anyone without a lot of background knowledge so I've just pointed to the stuff that's in sort-of layman's terms here.

The link to the Reneweconomy site above is the simplest way to get your mind around what's powering your computer or toaster right now. It doesn't show what the limits are but it shows where it's coming from in real time.
 
AEMO are now showing reserve capacity in Vic tomorrow at 434 MW so less than previously.

At that level it will only take a single problem or for demand to be a tad higher than forecast and there's a shortfall.

It wouldn't surprise me if AEMO drops some load off anyway in order to keep the overall system stable in case something does fail since with such low reserve the vulnerability is uncomfortably high.

The danger there is that with total reserve capacity less than the 7 largest sources of supply and only marginally higher than 4 others, if any one of those suddenly failed that would immediately produce a shortfall and if that's not fixed real quick then it ends with an SA style collapse real quick.

It's one of those things where whatever they do will be wrong in hindsight. Shed some load and nothing fails = media gets excited and so on. Or don't drop some load and something does fail = everyone's angry when it all falls in a heap. So they can't win there, whatever they do will likely be less than optimal in hindsight since we're dealing with risks not certainties.
 
Smurf1976 said:
AEMO are now showing reserve capacity in Vic tomorrow at 434 MW so less than previously.

At that level it will only take a single problem or for demand to be a tad higher than forecast and there's a shortfall.

It wouldn't surprise me if AEMO drops some load off anyway in order to keep the overall system stable in case something does fail since with such low reserve the vulnerability is uncomfortably high.

The danger there is that with total reserve capacity less than the 7 largest sources of supply and only marginally higher than 4 others, if any one of those suddenly failed that would immediately produce a shortfall and if that's not fixed real quick then it ends with an SA style collapse real quick.

It's one of those things where whatever they do will be wrong in hindsight. Shed some load and nothing fails = media gets excited and so on. Or don't drop some load and something does fail = everyone's angry when it all falls in a heap. So they can't win there, whatever they do will likely be less than optimal in hindsight since we're dealing with risks not certainties.
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So what is the long term prognosys ?
 
sptrawler said:
So what is the long term prognosys ?
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Long term as in how long?

If you mean "next 24 hours" then the latest update now has Vic reserve down to 427 MW tomorrow. So as weather etc inputs are updated it's getting a bit worse each time.

If you mean longer term as such, well suffice to say that with the generation availability of just a few days ago tomorrow's forecast load simply couldn't have been supplied. So if the system scrapes through tomorrow then the proverbial bullet will have been dodged THIS TIME.

What should be ringing some serious alarm bells is that tomorrow isn't forecast to be an extreme weather day by any means. 35 degrees in Melbourne, 34 in Adelaide, 33 in Hobart, 30 in Canberra, 27 in Sydney.

So supply is stretched under circumstances where it shouldn't even be an issue. 35 degrees in Melbourne isn't extreme by any means.
 
Smurf1976 said:
Long term as in how long?

If you mean "next 24 hours" then the latest update now has Vic reserve down to 427 MW tomorrow. So as weather etc inputs are updated it's getting a bit worse each time.

If you mean longer term as such, well suffice to say that with the generation availability of just a few days ago tomorrow's forecast load simply couldn't have been supplied. So if the system scrapes through tomorrow then the proverbial bullet will have been dodged THIS TIME.

What should be ringing some serious alarm bells is that tomorrow isn't forecast to be an extreme weather day by any means. 35 degrees in Melbourne, 34 in Adelaide, 33 in Hobart, 30 in Canberra, 27 in Sydney.

So supply is stretched under circumstances where it shouldn't even be an issue. 35 degrees in Melbourne isn't extreme by any means.
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Yes smurph, I meant long term, in respect to getting some long term viable solutions in place that will mitigate the problem.
I would think with the impending closure of more coal plant, the issues are going to get far worse, before they get better.
As you have said, major generating plant takes years to design and implement, yet the current issues seem dire.
So will the bullet be dodged this summer, and if so how will the problem compound next summer?
 
Looks like the bullet has been dodged today in Victoria.

Ended up with about 500 MW spare within Vic + 400 MW from NSW and 500 MW from SA.

Reasons = cool change came through in Melbourne a bit after 5pm and Adelaide also cooling down. Plus wind generation worked better than expected and is producing about 900 MW between Vic and SA at the moment.

For the record:

Coal-fired plant in Vic is running flat out to the limit of available capacity. Yallourn is working fine as is Loy Yang B. Loy Yang A has 2 units with reduced capacity and 1 not running at all due to October's failure.

Supply from Tasmania is running at the absolute limit of Basslink's capacity (the constraint being transmission Tas to Vic rather than a generation limit as such).

Vic hydro plant not quite fully utilised but very close.

Vic gas-fired plant is mostly running but some isn't and that accounts for most of the unused capacity available within Vic.

SA diesel generation not being used and there's a bit of spare gas-fired capacity also but not a huge amount.

Now, if the wind hadn't worked as well as it did and/or it had been a bit hotter then it would be a very different story but the bullet was dodged this time.

PS - In case anyone noticed that the open cycle gas turbines in Tas are being run today and wondered why, there's a few reasons.

1. Extra capacity online ensures that supply to Vic won't be disrupted if something failed.

2. No point running the hydro stations to their limit when you've got the option to instead run them at their optimum efficiency point which is below full capacity.

3. Avoided the need to disrupt planned maintenance work. The water will be kept for use later and with the power going to Vic someone else is in practice paying for the cost of running them anyway so no big deal. Costs $ today but saves money overall in the long term using that approach.

4. Bastyan power station is being run only if there's no alternative at the moment since maintenance works have unavoidably cut off the upstream water supply. It can still run if needed, there's some water stored there, but the aim is to only run it if there really is no other option due to the limit on water availability. :2twocents
 
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