The future of energy generation and storage

[Smurf1976]

I’ll post some more about the other stuff mentioned here in due course but for now, well it seems that Loy Yang are having trouble with coal again.

They were down to 3 - 4 hours worth in the bunkers the other night, then got it all going again, but seem to be having more trouble since yesterday afternoon.

No immediate problems due to that, generation is just transferred to hydro and gas in practice, but it’s never good to have major stuff not working well. Apart from the cost and using up water it just leaves the whole system more vulnerable should anything else fail.

 

[SirRumpole]

Here's one for sptrawler. Hydrogen technology breakthrough by CSIRO.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-...-csiro-game-changer-export-potential/10082514

 

[sptrawler]

Here's one for sptrawler. Hydrogen technology breakthrough by CSIRO.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-...-csiro-game-changer-export-potential/10082514

I should have read this post, before making mine in the electric car thread, my appologies Rumpy.

 

[SirRumpole]

I should have read this post, before making mine in the electric car thread, my appologies Rumpy.

No problem, it was a toss up which thread I was going to post it in.

 

[Smurf1976]

Liddell power station has attracted much attention in recent times.

Just thought I'd mention that unit 3 hasn't been running for a while and unit 4 failed suddenly whilst at full load last night.

That leaves unit 1 running at 300 MW max and unit 2 is running at 420 MW max.

All were originally rated at 500 MW but are presently rated at 420 MW due to condition etc.

There's supply from other sources without problems at the moment so no panic but it would be fair to say that Liddell isn't going too well. 1 out of 4 units fully operational, 1 out of 4 running with issues, 2 out of 4 not running at all.

 

[Wysiwyg]

Interesting recent video on the battery technologies at present.

 

[Tisme]

It's been almost 60 year since Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit all by his lonesome and we are still just efficiency tweeking old tech instead of breakout innovation.

 

[Smurf1976]

A lot of technical issues with coal-fired plant in NSW at the moment. Of the 16 major coal-fired generating units:

7 are fully operational

4 are running with reduced capability due to problems

5 are out of service completely

For the total fleet that's 63% of design capacity actually available to run. Of the other 37% there's some planned maintenance in there but there's also some that's simply broken or in a rather sad state.

As of right now, supply into NSW:

Coal = 56%
From Victoria* = 13%
From Queensland = 10%
Hydro = 10%
Gas = 9%
Wind = 2%
Oil = 0.2%

*Noting that both Tas and SA are feeding into Vic at present.

All OK at the moment but one of these days luck's going to run out with all this increasingly old equipment parts of Australia are relying on.

 

[sptrawler]

A lot of technical issues with coal-fired plant in NSW at the moment. Of the 16 major coal-fired generating units:

7 are fully operational

4 are running with reduced capability due to problems

5 are out of service completely

For the total fleet that's 63% of design capacity actually available to run. Of the other 37% there's some planned maintenance in there but there's also some that's simply broken or in a rather sad state.

As of right now, supply into NSW:

Coal = 56%
From Victoria* = 13%
From Queensland = 10%
Hydro = 10%
Gas = 9%
Wind = 2%
Oil = 0.2%

*Noting that both Tas and SA are feeding into Vic at present.

All OK at the moment but one of these days luck's going to run out with all this increasingly old equipment Australia is relying on.

Meanwhile the games continue, regarding the future and system reliability.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-24/no-resolution-on-energy-after-coag-meeting/9189104

 

[explod]

"Last week, Massachusetts utilities disclosed in filings the prices they will pay for electricity from the Vineyard Wind project, an offshore wind farm that will be largest in the country.

The initial number is so low that a nation of energy experts did a spit-take.

The price is $74 per megawatt-hour in the first year and then increases 2.5 percent each subsequent year of the 20-year deal.

“I don’t know anyone who was expecting prices to be this low,” said Michael O’Boyle, electricity policy manager for Energy Innovation, a think tank. “I was extremely excited.”

For some perspective, let’s look at a report issued this March by Moody’s Investors Service about the promise of offshore wind in the Northeast. It said prices could fall to $80 per megawatt-hour in “the longer term,” citing several forecasts.

As the report noted, the country’s only operating offshore wind farm, Block Island in Rhode Island, was selling power for $244 per megawatt-hour. Meanwhile, two projects being built in Maryland had contracts to sell power for $132.

At $74, Vineyard Wind is competitive with other forms of renewable energy in a region where solar and wind can be difficult to build because of high population density and challenges in getting approval for power lines.

Massachusetts officials say Vineyard’s prices are projected to save consumers up to 1.5 percent on their bills, compared to energy sources that otherwise would be used.

Keep in mind that almost nobody was expecting offshore wind to be even close to cost competitive at this point. The idea of consumers saving money is remarkable.

Some caveats: Massachusetts has substantial wind resources and so the Vineyard project, with 800 megawatts, has economies of scale that will not exist for other projects. I would not be surprised if new projects off of New York, New Jersey and other states come in at higher prices. Also, the competitive bidding process being used in Massachusetts likely contributed to lower prices than if the state had used some other method to select projects.

Vineyard Wind is being developed by Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. It is a history-making project in many ways, as I noted when writing about it a few months ago.

And, it shows some of the benefits that Massachusetts will reap by setting ambitious targets for offshore wind, O’Boyle said. Indeed, the Vineyard Wind project was proposed as part of a larger effort to develop 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind, a target that will double under legislation I wrote about last week."


Clean Economy Weekly <newsletters@insideclimatenews.org>

 

[SirRumpole]

Sorry to bring politics into this thread, but if we are going to have a power guarantee system which aims to reduce prices, then why isn't there a price guarantee built into the system, instead of just modelling that estimates what might happen to prices ?

 

[Value Collector]

why isn't there a price guarantee built into the system, instead of just modelling that estimates what might happen to prices ?

The are to many variables that factor into price that can't be fixed, you can aim to reduce costs where it is possible, but things such as inflation and interest rates affect prices and can't really be predicted accurately.

for example the regulators put limits on what the companies can earn, and they use the prevailing interest rates as a guide to what is the fair compensation for the risk the company is taking.

They may say X company is allowed to charge a price that will ensure a return on the capital invested is 3% higher than a government 5 year bond etc, considering they could invest risk free in the government bond they will earn 3% more for the extra risk and effort to put that money into infrastructure.

But as the Bond interest rate goes up, so will the amount the have to charge to earn the regulated return.

 

[SirRumpole]

The are to many variables that factor into price that can't be fixed, you can aim to reduce costs where it is possible, but things such as inflation and interest rates affect prices and can't really be predicted accurately.

You could just use the average OECD price, that would smooth out all the cost factors.

 

[Value Collector]

You could just use the average OECD price, that would smooth out all the cost factors.

I don't think that would work, it wouldn't actually be smoothing out any of the costs, it would just be picking an arbitrary number to charge.

 

[SirRumpole]

I don't think that would work, it wouldn't actually be smoothing out any of the costs, it would just be picking an arbitrary number to charge.

It's not arbitrary, it's realistic based on the cost that other countries can deliver power for .

 

[Smurf1976]

To be fair to all players in the industry, the basic structure imposed by government precludes any of them operating as efficiently as they otherwise could.

So if you go to SA, as the smallest mainland state in electrical terms, then you'll find that there isn't a single retailer able to come anywhere near matching prices in Darwin or Hobart and for the record that includes Momentum (Hydro Tas) who as with the rest simply can't do it without going broke. The reasons come down to industry structure and the fundamental cost base not profits or how much the staff are being paid.

There are huge structural inefficiencies embedded at every level. Retail is one, it ends up costing $ hundreds per year for something that should be straightforward, and it's no better at the technical level.

As someone in regional Victoria just pointed out to me, they've just realised that a proposed new transmission line crosses another line and the end result is one carries power one way and the other carries it the other way. Should that not be confusing enough, the line is being built by governments as part of an associated wind farm development. Not the Victorian state government of course, they flogged off the SEC years ago, but a joint venture of the Chinese government and the Tasmanian state government via corporations owned by them (Shenhua and Hydro Tasmania respectively). Why? Well it's an investment opportunity and business is business - and it probably beats sitting in the dark from the perspective of Victorians since they're not exactly having to fight anyone else wanting to build it that's for sure. It's hard to see it as a logical process though because it isn't and nobody would sensibly pretend it was.

So it's all a big mess really and whilst profits are being made they're not the primary cause of such. Embedded inefficiency is costing far more than that.

My real concern though is engineering more than it is price. Using NSW as the example, there's 17 large generating units intended for base load operation, 16 coal and 1 gas, and of those 6 are out of service at the present time and another one has issues restricting its output. Some of that is planned maintenance yes but not all of it is that's for sure. And of course not too long ago there were 6 more of them which have since closed either totally (5) or partially closed and converted to peaking operation (1) and needless to say those who like explosives have been busily blowing them up just to be sure.

That's not good and one of these days Australians will rue the day economics took precedence over engineering. At some point it's not going to be price but actually keeping the lights on that matters indeed if it wasn't for mild weather things would be really "interesting" at the moment in NSW.

More engineering and less politicians and economic types with their ideologies that invariably fail is what's needed.

On the positive side, well those of us who have seen this whole process right from the start were effectively given a fantastic insight into a way of thinking we otherwise wouldn't have been aware of. Reverse engineer the process, apply the same logic to investing, and take the profits. So far, so good at a purely personal level.

 

[Smurf1976]

You could just use the average OECD price, that would smooth out all the cost factors.

For reference Australia was third cheapest in the OECD before all the "reforms" came along to make things more efficient.

Being third was a pretty good achievement when you consider the low population density and lower share of cheap hydro generation when compared to other countries.

 

[SirRumpole]

Being third was a pretty good achievement when you consider the low population density and lower share of cheap hydro generation when compared to other countries.

So we should be able to do even better now, considering our current population and natural resources.

 

[sptrawler]

So we should be able to do even better now, considering our current population and natural resources.

I don't think our population density, on a national per unit area has changed much, we still hang around the cities on the South coast.
Also I don't think the natural resources have increased our ability to produce hydro, we haven't made many more mountains, but the resources boom are taking a few down. lol

 

[SirRumpole]

Also I don't think the natural resources have increased our ability to produce hydro, we haven't made many more mountains, but the resources boom are taking a few down. lol

Yes, but 50 years ago there wasn't the technology for solar and wind power.