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The future of energy generation and storage

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Thursday 24th January looks like it's going to be an interesting day.

Melbourne is forecast to be warm with a top of 38 whilst Adelaide will enjoy a pleasant 44 degrees.

SA forecast electricity consumption peak is 2978 MW with available supply within SA of 2894 MW.

Vic forecast consumption peak is 8992 MW with available supply within Vic of 7961 MW.

In addition to that forecasts show that critical power generation and supply infrastructure in Adelaide will be subject to slightly higher temperatures, forecast to reach 46 degrees, than the city's official weather station near the CBD. Such temperatures reduce the capacity of gas turbine generating plant in particular. These effects are included in the capacity forecast.

Allowing for the Vic and SA peak expected to be about an hour apart (yes, an hour not 30 minutes) overall the combined shortfall of the two states is roughly 900 MW.

Tasmania can fill 478 MW of that gap, that being the limit of transmission capacity across Bass Strait.

That leaves ~450 MW needing to come from NSW to Vic. Given that a number of power stations in Vic share the same transmission lines, which were built for them not specifically to interconnect with NSW, that's pushing the limits really indeed it's considerably higher than the typical spare capacity on those lines under such conditions which is around 250 MW.

Forecasts aren't precise but hmm, yeah, it all looks a bit fragile for the 24th really especially in Vic.

Note that the supply figures include generation from coal, gas, hydro, liquid fuels, wind, solar and also the large battery storage systems. Not included is a bit over 300 MW of diesel plant across both states that isn't normally offered to the market but which should be available.

Consumption figures are the forecast actual consumption assuming no network faults cause localised blackouts etc and assuming there's actually sufficient supply available.

The 25th also looks problematic in Vic but I won't comment on that yet to reduce the chances of a changed weather forecast making it all wrong.
 
Darc Knight said:
So Qld powering other States again.
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Basically yes.

The situation's looking increasingly dire for the 24th and now also the 25th.

Unit 3 at Loy Yang A power station (Victoria) failed on Tuesday afternoon so that's 560 MW of supply gone just like that.

The forecast maximum temperature for Adelaide has been increased to 45 degrees and the Bureau of Meteorology has publicly acknowledged that even higher temperatures are a possibility.

The end result is that SA needs an estimated 45 MW at a minimum from Vic to meet peak demand of 3038 MW and Vic needs a rather large 1583 MW from other states to meet it's forecast peak of 8862 MW.

Tasmania can supply 478 MW, the limit being transmission Tas to Vic rather than generation.

Qld and NSW between them could cover the rest but getting that from NSW to Vic is going to be pushing the limits in a big way that's for sure.

On AEMO's official scale of 0 (normal) to 3 (lights go out) it's a 2 and that's for both SA and Vic. If nothing else goes wrong and the weather and load forecasts don't get any worse then it seems doable but it only needs a bit more load, a bit less supply or anything to go wrong and then there's a problem.

The SA government's controversial diesel-fired gas turbines might finally be used "in anger" after all.
 
Smurf1976 said:
The situation's looking increasingly dire for the 24th and now also the 25th.
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Bringing this all back to the topic proper, "future" energy demand can be forecast with a good degree of predictability based on weather and known energy use patterns, as Smurf's posts show.
Fitting renewables into the energy mix is often touted as throwing some great unpredictability of weather, viz. wind and solar, into the equation. However, insolation and wind speeds are not so difficult to forecast - just as Smurf is using a temperature proxy for differential demand - so we have a pretty good idea of what generation capacity can be anticipated from these sources. Moreover, as more data becomes available from solar and wind farms, the easier it gets to hone the numbers.
As battery storage prices continue to decline in coming years, data on its effects on necessary generation requirements will no doubt continue to inform energy regulators.
I see the incremental changes as occasionally confounding but very manageable.
What I don't see is a national energy policy that allows infrastructure decisions on large scale capacity to occur so that we are insulated from electricity supply meltdowns.
 
rederob said:
What I don't see is a national energy policy that allows infrastructure decisions on large scale capacity to occur so that we are insulated from electricity supply meltdowns.
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I think that will be the norm for quite some time, untill the technical experts in the field, are left to decide on the correct path to follow.
While it is being driven by political policy, to facilitate political outcomes, duplication and disasters will be the norm. IMO
 
To clarify, the AEMO forecasts I'm quoting do include forecast wind and large scale solar generation in addition to available generation from more traditional sources.

Small scale solar generation is in practice captured via a reduced demand forecast compared to what it would otherwise be. That's since it's not measured directly and simply "appears" as reduced load on the distribution networks and thus transmission and generation.

So it's all captured yes.

In terms of the future, there's no one "silver bullet" that fixes everything but I certainly agree that if you combine wind + solar + hydro + batteries + anything else you happen to have (eg landfill gas etc) then from a technical perspective there's no reason why that can't work reliably.

The problem at present is simply a failure to actually do what needs to be done. Politics and economic arguments have become dominant and engineering has been pushed aside in what is very obviously an engineering focused industry. It's akin to running an airline with all you need except planes and pilots.

In Vic in recent years we've seen the closure of Anglesea (160 MW), Morwell (190 MW) and Hazelwood (1680 MW) power stations meanwhile all that has been built, apart from some very minor things, is intermittent renewables (wind and solar).

Wind and solar can certainly generate electricity, no argument there, but where the problem lies is that they don't necessarily do so when you most need it. Eg looking at SA today, at 5am (SA time) wind was generating 935 MW and total system demand in SA was 1588 MW so that's 59% from wind. By 13:20 wind output had fallen to 187 MW and is still falling meanwhile demand has almost doubled to 2991 MW. That basic pattern where wind works well overnight then gradually dies out during the day as load increases is unfortunately a common one.

So by all means build wind and solar but what we need to go with that is a means of storage that works on demand. Generate lots of energy from wind and solar, store it when there's a surplus, generate from that storage when required.

Batteries have a role especially for meeting short term peaks and variations. They're incredibly good at that. Pumped hydro is however the big "grunt" option when it comes to bulk storage and realistically the sensible way forward will involve both.

The barrier isn't a technical one, that's all solvable, or even really an economic one since the costs aren't massive. The problem is a political one - creating constant uncertainty, trying to push ideas that aren't based on sound practices and letting various ideologies get in the way of actually making things work.

My updates on the situation is really just to highlight with real, practical examples how close to the edge all this really is. It's not some academic exercise, we really are staring down the barrel of failure at this point. That this is happening with weather that's not extreme in Vic and with only two significant generating units not running is the really alarming bit since it would be perfectly reasonable to expect a higher generation outage rate to occur at some point in the future given how old and tired some of this stuff is getting.

Then there's the financial aspect to it all. Average spot prices used to be around $40 but they're around $100 these days typically. Tomorrow they're forecast to reach $14,500 in both SA and Vic. Over 5 hours that makes grid electricity a roughly $800 million industry across those two states. Any business or retailer buying from the spot market is about to be burned in a big way but for everyone else, well ultimately contract rates are a reflection of average spot prices so there's a consequence.
 
I'll post some further details later but in short:

*The situation has continued to deteriorate in Victoria and South Australia.

*AEMO has officially declared this a 3 out of 3 on the scale for both states. In layman's terms that means blackouts are now the expected outcome around 18:00 market time (which is 19:00 Vic local time and 18:30 SA local time) in both states.

*Assuming no improvement AEMO will issue the appropriate directions tomorrow morning. In simple terms if anyone's sitting on generating plant not being run then their management will be overridden and it gets run. If there's nothing to direct in that sense then the alternative is to direct that load be turned off (someone loses power).

 

When does Liddell Power station shutdown?
 
qldfrog said:
At least this is now common knowledge yet the emphasis is on the exceptional weather.
good for Basilio thread but leave our politicians free of blame...
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Not sure what that means.
Thanks to Smurf and articles like this we can get an idea of what's happening, even before it happens.
Industry needs a degree of certainty if it is going to invest billions in major supply capacity. The present government has firmly sat on its hands in the face of almost guaranteed blackouts across the past few summers - even on the basis of availability of supply at full capacity (ie no "breakdowns").
Little wonder affordable and cost effective smaller scale renewable projects are ramping up. These can at least guarantee a payback without stretching into borrowings.
 
Remember when Enron went into the Energy business and they were deliberately shutting down supply to drive up the cost of Electricity.
 
Anyway, with limitlrss solsr and voal gas, we still pay among the most expensive power on earth, not that reliable and not even green
What a shamble but what can you expect when neither side of the politics can even maintain the same leader for 3y...how can we achieve anything in this country but popup shops?
 
You do realise the electricity supply is a function of the States, not Federal.

The situation S.A finds itself in is a result of renewables at any cost, the fact the Federal Government now takes the blame, is a result of reckless pursuit by the States. IMO

To highlight this, the S.A Government was offered the North Power Station for a song, and refused it so it was blown up.
If they had picked it up they wouldn't find themselves in the predicament they are now in, and would have the necessary base load to underpin the system, while they march on toward fully renewable.
The way they are doing it, shows a degree of immaturity, irresponsibilty and or ignorance. IMO
 
First, if the North Power station was such a good deal it would still be operating.
Secondly, States do not make national energy policy, and these decisions affect investment in capacity. The States have been trying to get something coherent from the feds in meetings of Ministers, to no avail.
We are also in a national energy market situation, albeit confined to States other than WA.
The SA government changed last year, so exactly what is it they are they doing? Well, they are not stupidly planning a coal powered generator, but are actually trying to lead the world in renewables.
As to SA's predicament, it's no different to that of Vic or NSW in terms of blackouts, depending on demand and capacity.
In the 2017 "SA blackout" Frydenberg and others were very quick to condemn the march to renewables, while they sat on their hands. In the meantime SA got Tesla involved in the largest battery project of our time to solve a problem that the feds had no interest in. The big Tesla battery continues to show the rest of the world what can be done, and how effective the unit is in meeting a range of supply issues.
The feds to this day want to attract investment in coal power. It seems no amount of evidence that coal is uneconomical (aside from CO2 issues) will sway them. And this is a government priding itself on its economic credentials - what irony
 
Well that is journalistic license at its best.
 
Federal coalition governments at times have provided financial incentives for states to privatise. I don't see how a political party nationally and in most states have decided it is good to sell off such assets and fail to acknowledge that if such assets were left fully in state control there would be suitable scale and also a centralised organisation that could be pressured to fix such issues.

NSW Labor messed up. Tas Labor was saved from itself by losing a state election.
 
rederob said:
First, if the North Power station was such a good deal it would still be operating.
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The big problem in all of this is too much influence of ideology and not enough pragmatism.

Or to be more specific politicians and free market ideologues need to be reined in and engineers, scientists (including environmental roles) and their associated army of blue collar workers left to get on with the job.

Northern PS is a classic case of that. Was if financially viable as a stand alone operation? No, it was losing $ millions a year.

Without Northern however SA consumers have paid $600 million for some generators and are paying a broadly similar amount again every year (as with any market, precision is difficult since "what's normal?") through increased wholesale prices which one way or another ultimately are passed onto consumers.

That's an order of magnitude more than what it would have cost to continue operating Northern PS.

Don't assume it's an environmental winner either. Northern was one of the better plants and what's happened in practice is that power not being produced there is produced at something older and less efficient instead. Closing Northern didn't make the wind blow more strongly or the sun shine brighter, it just transferred production from a mid-1980's plant to stuff from the early 70's and late 60's.

None of that is an argument saying we should build a new coal-fired power station. How we manage what's already built and which has a useful remaining life is a very different question to whether we should or shouldn't build the same thing from scratch. Much like nobody's sensibly going to build a 1980's house from scratch today but that doesn't mean it's sensible to knock all the present ones down.

It must be considered however that having prematurely closed Northern as well as a number of other coal-fired plants and doubling the wholesale price of electricity has, combined with politics, created a situation where the chance of a building a new coal plant probably isn't zero. I'm not advocating it, just assessing that the chance doesn't seem to be zero.

If we do end up with a new coal plant then suffice to say that another decade operating an existing plant would have emitted far less CO2 than a 40 - 50 year commitment to running a new one.

All this is a bit like saying my budget can't afford a few nights at the caravan park given I'll still have the costs of the house I already own. So in a stroke of pure genius I've fixed that problem by cancelling the booking of a cabin at the park and having booked a few nights in a 5 star hotel instead.

You'd need a pretty pedantic accounting system for that to make any sense and it's the same with Northern PS.

What all this needs is an orderly plan rather than constant chaos and lopsided accounting which says $ millions is too expensive but spending an order of magnitude more is just fine because it's coming out of a different bucket of money. That's bean counting gone crazy.

I don't dispute that we're moving away from coal but the way we're doing it thus far is a ludicrously expensive way to go about it. Even if you put the unions in charge you'd get a cheaper outcome (I mean that literally by the way - one of the great problems in all of this is that labour productivity across the industry is lower now than it was decades ago back when unions ruled the roost).

My view on all this is really very simple:

1. Build renewables and build hydro and battery storage certainly but do it in a planned, orderly manner that puts the right things in the right place. Otherwise we're going to end up with a lot of stuff that's close to useless in practice.

2. Close existing coal plant only when there's no further need for it and do so in a lagging manner such that there's some spare plant sitting around "just in case" because reality is things can and do go wrong.

3. When closing existing plant obviously close first what's worn out instead of this silly idea of closing mid-1980's plant, and even plant from 2001 in one case, whilst trying to patch up stuff from 1971 as we're doing at the moment. The reverse approach makes far more rational sense.

4. Keep the politicians and ideologues well away.
 
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Not wanting to be antagonistic smurph, but no matter how many times you explain the issue, in a perfectly worded logical manner.
Five minutes later the ideologists, start spouting the same illogical, emotionally driven arguments all over again.
I take my hat off to your patience, as you will obviously have many years, of explaining the limitations and technical difficulties with a large interconnected grid.
Unfortunately it is given to an audience that listens and nods, then continue on with their ill informed opinion, that is backed by very limited knowledge.
 
Smurf1976 said:
Closing Northern didn't make the wind blow more strongly or the sun shine brighter, it just transferred production from a mid-1980's plant to stuff from the early 70's and late 60's.
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Northern was closed by Alinta on commercial grounds - that's the reality.
It's all good and well to talk about an "orderly plan", but there's no underpinning energy policy to work off.
As I said earlier, we are talking about massive investment decisions when it comes to dispatchable energy. With a NEM we need all parties to get together after they have some certainty from the federal government on a wide range of issues affecting the market. What needs to be done has been outlined for some time. Attempts to get agreement at COAG Energy Council meetings continue to be futile: the present federal Minister is a troglodyte and his predecessor bowed to fossil fuel interests.
 
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