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The future of energy generation and storage

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Ah a man after my own heart.

The real problem is, if it is left untill the "big red panic button is pressed", we all known what happens, any crap is installed it is flung in costs 10 times more than it should.
It becomes another pink batts disaster, but hey everyone seems to love crisis management, politics is an absolute disaster in Australia.
Yet they all sit there in Parliament looking smug, it makes you want to vomit.

They sit there trying to pretend, they are there looking after our best interests, when that is obviously the furthest thing from their minds. IMO

My rant for the month.
 
SirRumpole said:
Whether or not its the fault of the power companies for not maintaining THEIR equipment properly ?
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Looking at the technical side I just see a crisis waiting to happen and the masses won't be happy when it does. For that matter most businesses won't be happy either.

What concerns me more though is that it would be an amazing coincidence if the thing I know most about just happened to be the only area where there's a problem. Possible but that seems very unlikely so I suspect there's a lot of other infrastructure and other "physical" type of problems brewing.

One that comes to mind is urban public transport. I don't live in Sydney but suffice to say I keep hearing about the trains being in chaos. Last time, a few days ago, that was quite literally "the trains are running but we don't know where they are". I know nothing about running a train system but that rings an awful lot of alarm bells to me if you've got trains running on tracks and you've got no idea where they are.

And so on. Regardless of who owns it or should be fixing things our nation's infrastructure does look to have some issues.
 
SA as of right now:

Small scale solar is estimated to be supplying just over 25% of total consumption.

Gas-fired generation is either at minimum output to efficiently stay running (Osborne, Pelican Point, Torrens Island B) or is shut down altogether (all the others). All liquid fulled plant is shut down.

Exports to Vic are at maximum and equivalent to about 45% of SA consumption or 31% of production in SA at the moment. That's the limit, can't push any more down the lines.

Some large scale solar and wind is going to waste. Nowhere for it to go so no choice.

Come back in 4 hours and it'll be the opposite with no solar, demand substantially higher and gas-fired plants running hard.

Therein lies much of the problem. The mismatch between when the wind blows and the sun shines versus consumption of electricity.
 

What's the status of Elon's battery ?
 
How much does it cost to change all the batteries after 10 years or so?
 
moXJO said:
How much does it cost to change all the batteries after 10 years or so?
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(Initial installation costs + Inflation)*3 for hook, line and sinker.

I'm no electrical surgeon but the idea of literal battery packs on an industrial scale just doesn't sound right.

There's wind, solar, hydro as "batteries"; there's the national grid I imagine you could shift power around.

To store excess power generated in batteries that aren't exactly cheap, and won't last too long.. a decade is practically nothing in utilities right? Doesn't sound like a lot of serious long term thought were used.
 
It isn't a good long term solution, but it's great food for the chooks.
 
So the batteries are used mainly to soak up excess energy from renewables?

So larger scale RE you would eventually need pumped hydro to soak up the excess?
 
Smurf1976 said:
It was charging this afternoon when I posted.

So it was soaking up some electricity from renewables that would otherwise have gone to waste, only problem being scale.
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So smurph, at lunch time S.A was exporting 31% of its production, because it couldn't use it.

Now you're saying the battery was charging this afternoon and it was soaking up electricity that would otherwise have gone to waste.

Your sounding very huggy huggy, feely feely, don't want to say it as it is.

The battery was charged at 10 minutes after 9 this morning, and did sod all for the rest of the day.
They will discharge it to 80% overnight, so as not to damage the battery and it will soak up another 20MW by 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, then sit there most of the day.
Only my guess, it may differ slightly in reality, but no one appears to care about the reality, so it should go through to the keeper.lol
 
moXJO said:
So the batteries are used mainly to soak up excess energy from renewables?

So larger scale RE you would eventually need pumped hydro to soak up the excess?
Click to expand...

Woo... maybe they should use the excess to pump water back up the dam. Store it there then release it as needed.
 
sptrawler said:
Your sounding very huggy huggy, feely feely, don't want to say it as it is.
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I always aim to be factual whether I "like" the answers or not.

At the time of my previous post the battery was indeed charging and, since renewable energy was going to waste in SA, it would be a fair comment to say that the energy going into the battery was otherwise useless in practice. That's not to say they don't also charge it using power originating from fossil fuels at other times.

There are undeniably limitations to what batteries can do but in the case of the Hornsdale Power Reserve in SA it does what it's claimed to do. Peak capacity 100 MW, run in practice to 30 MW for generation due to contractual requirements, and with a storage of 129 MWh.

So as a source of peaking generation it works in the same way that a 30 MW gas, hydro or steam unit works if it's got a limited supply of fuel on hand. It runs but not for too long but as a peaking plant that's not necessarily a problem although depending on circumstances it could be.

The other 70MW (or more if the battery isn't discharging 30 MW at the time) is for practical purposes spinning reserve in conventional terminology and also works.

There's nowhere near enough storage in SA, or indeed any mainland state, go facilitate a transition to intermittent renewables in a reliable manner but the big Tesla battery in SA certainly does seem to be working as promised thus far.

I don't see that as sugar coating anything, just being neutral and saying that yes the equipment does work but also that there's a lot of broader system limitations.

It's a bit like saying my Victa lawn mower runs fine and does exactly what the manufacturer said it would whilst at the same time acknowledging that it's nowhere near big enough to be a practical way of mowing the entire MCG indeed even mowing the local sports field would be a challenge. But the blades turn and it cuts grass yes so it works as designed. Same concept.
 
Thinking about all this, I think the biggest issue isn’t coal versus solar or that certain power stations are gradually falling in a heap but politics.

It’s not necessarily a question of what Australia’s policy is going to be but when, or perhaps even if, we’re going to have one at all.

I won’t be surprised if one consequence of this week’s goings on in federal politics is that in practice it’s now up to the states and that’s it.

In that context it’s anyone’s guess what’s going to be done physically.

It’s hard to see the private sector investing amidst all the uncertainty and at this point I wouldn’t be betting on government investing either until such time as the situation is clarified.
 

I would hope that the SA government only saw the battery as a short term, easily built solution while they got on with building something more permanent.

But then, that's a rational approach which may not apply in the real world.
 
In my view the issue is not that we do not want renewables and to get rid of fossil fuels type energy but we are destroying businesses that rely on the cheaper power prices using the old technology before we have a chance to get there.
I am no expert but to develop the renewables to power the whole of Australia will probably take another 40 or 50 years in the meantime we continue to lose jobs and businesses close down or move o/seas.......????
 
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