This is a mobile optimized page that loads fast, if you want to load the real page, click this text.

The future of energy generation and storage

Jump to new
sptrawler said:
Not at all, I was just pointing out, that my information came from the article.
Your information, came from your interpretation.
Click to expand...
Whereas in fact I copied directly from an article to show that you hid that breakdowns were the main problems. I offered no interpretation.
You continue to attribute blame, as in this quote from you "Yep, keep blowing up those coal fired stations boys."
sptrawler said:
You certainly seem to take anything, that doesn't agree with your interpretation, as a personal affront.
We are just giving our opinions, they are worth what they cost, neither of us has the answers or the ear of anyone that does. IMO.
Click to expand...
I seldom offer opinions, and nearly always state clearly when I do.
I continue to clarify or correct your remarks - it's no skin off my nose so don't presume things you know nothing about.
You said, "You do realise the electricity supply is a function of the States, not Federal."
I don't know how far in the past you live, but this is how the market nowadays operates.
You clearly offer opinions regularly, as in:
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​
That's fine.
But I look at the evidence.
All the States have been pressing the feds for clear policy on a national energy plan. The COAG energy Council has met over 20 times and as recently as December 2018 nothing happened. I linked to an article where State Ministers showed their displeasure.
sptrawler said:
The only viable renewable of size ATM is windfarms, the molten salt is still fairly untested technology.
Click to expand...
That is not true. China had a 1 GW PV array back in 2016 and larger ones have been built since especially in India. Solar concentrators date back to first commercial installation in 1984
and the technology has only improved since.
IRENA's latest data shows that both solar PV and CSP - your molten salt - " is now the most competitive form of power generation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region"; that's a region similar to South Australia.
Back to solar PV for a moment. Using LCOE data, battery and storage prices compare favorably with CCGT. However, it makes no commercial sense at the moment to add batteries unless the market receives certainty on a policy direction which will actually tap into what is stored.
AEMO has proven that by tapping into every conceivable supply at its disposal, domestic demand can be catered for in the harshest of circumstances.
But at a national level the Business Council of Australia regard this is inadequate, because what they acknowledge we do not have is generation capacity to simultaneously also meet the demands of industry.

 
Because They do.


If as you say they are waiting for Federal Government direction.
South Australia wouldn't already have 60% renewables installed, they have done so, not at the request of the Federal Government.
That's because it is a function of the State FFS.
They didn't have to ask permission of the Federal Government, before going ahead, because it's a function of the FFing State.
In W.A the Government has recently shut down the second largest Power Station, do you think they asked the Federal Gov for permission, NO, because they don't have to it is a State decission.
I don't know how many ways I can put it so you understand it.
I think it is obvious you are very happy with your own opinion, and are no doubt an expert on most things, it is pointless continuing I'll let you get back to your mirror.
 
Last edited:
sptrawler said:
My comments are in blue
Click to expand...
If as you say they are waiting for Federal Government direction.
South Australia wouldn't already have 60% renewables installed, completely FALSE - wind accounts for maybe 10% of capacity (Smurf will have more accurate figures) and commercial solar about 5% they have done so, not at the request of the Federal Government.
That's because it is a function of the State FFS. Whereas this has been a slow build of capacity for renewables and is based on sound commercial principles. ...read on...
They didn't have to ask permission of the Federal Government, before going ahead, because it's a function of the FFing State. FALSE. States serve to facilitate the market. A friend recently bought acreage near Beaudesert and was going to be charged about $30000 to get poles and wire to their new home. They spent less going completely off-grid and have never since had to pay a penny more for electricity. I suggest you read the link I provided about how the market works.
In W.A the Government has recently shut down the second largest Power Station, do you think they asked the Federal Gov for permission, NO, because they don't have to it is a State decission. Yes, a decision made in 2016 by former (Liberal) State energy minister Mike Nahan to shut down 380MW of fossil fuel capacity. Did you forget to say this was about Muja's then 52 year old power station which some years earlier had over a $300m blowout on refurbishment costs?
I don't know how many ways I can put it so you understand it. Maybe get your facts right and you might work out how the system operates rather than have me inform you all the time.
I think it is obvious you are very happy with your own opinion, I do not have one here, so you need to learn how to distinguish opinions from evidence. and are no doubt an expert on most things, it is pointless continuing I'll let you get back to your mirror. Again, when you do not know things, best you keep opinions to yourself.
 
Melbourne affected by power outages. Basically load shedding to protect the whole system


Here is more from AEMO chief Audrey Zibelman about what load shedding actually means and how it works in practice.

What they do is based on the maximum amount that they can take off in an area ... it’s an equitable distribution across the entire region. So, everyone does their fair share. But they’re looking to make sure it’s sort of the maximum benefit in terms of reduction, they look at the amount of demand in a particular area, and they’ll take that off first, and then it rolls through.

Zibelman says that these “short breaks” are to “top the entire system straining”. The loadshedding – that is, outages – will be rotated around.

It’s up to two hours, is what we’ve asked for. So, hopefully what we’ll do is we’ll see it through, it will be for a temporary period of time, they’ll restore it. And if we do additional load shedding, usually the process is they go to different areas. So, it is – we call it rotating brown-outs for that very reason. As I said, you try to get people off for a short period, and then get them back on so, you know, because to give people relief.

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...eme-heatwave-victoria-tasmania-bushfires-live
 
An update on the current situation:

Firstly - well I got it wrong in my thinking that load shedding might be avoidable in Victoria today. In my defence, well I didn't expect Yallourn Unit 3 to fall in a heap last night and Loy Yang A unit 2 to be operating at ~75% capacity due to problems but fact is there are problems and a power shortage.

The present supply situation in Vic is as follows:
Coal = 3076 MW (AGL, Alinta, Energy Australia)
Hydro = 2137 MW (Snowy Hydro, AGL)
Gas = 2086 MW (Energy Australia, Origin, Snowy Hydro, AGL, Alinta)
From SA = 596 MW (Various)
From Tas = 478 MW (Hydro Tasmania)
Wind = 419 MW (Various)
Solar = 193 MW for large scale solar plus an estimated 518 MW of small scale (households etc).

Everything that works is at maximum and significant load shedding is now occurring. This affects industry as well as the general community with the following areas targeted:

Epping, Mill Park, Lysterfield, Rowville, Clyde, Cranbourne East; Southbank, Armadale, Toorak, Camberwell, Fairfield, Northcote, Caulfield, Elwood, Beaumaris, Bulleen, Burwood, Riversdale, Bentleigh, Heathdale, Balaclava, Malvern, Balwyn, Surrey Hills, Essendon, Essendon North, Strathmore, Glenroy, Oak Park, Kalkallo, Broadmeadows, West Footscray, Fairfield, Ivanhoe, Alphington, Airport West, East Keilor, Niddrie, Ascot Vale, and Moonee Pond, Camperdown, Weerite, Yarrawonga, Bundalong, Castlemaine Muckleford, Lara, Corio, Norlan, Herne Hill, Hamplyn Heights, Balmoral, Haven, Woolsthorpe, Grassmere and Mailers Flat.

I'm not overly familiar with Victorian geography, that's just a cut and paste not my list as such. For any given location the blackout duration should be about two hours. After that, if there's still a need to load shed, other areas are turned off and those above are turned back on hence the layman's term "rolling blackouts".

Reason those areas were targeted is simply that someone has to go, there's no option there. The details of what is priority and what isn't comes from a pre-determined list which is set by government not the industry. That list is confidential but in short it's voluntary cuts by industry > forced cuts of specific large loads > residential in that order with the intent being that the capital city CBD and any sort of critical infrastructure, especially hospitals, are never cut.

No doubt on the news you will hear many people coming up with all manner of excuses as to why this has occurred. I'm not overly keen on political nonsense but I'll simply note that I and others have warned for quite some time that this day would come. Not because I'm some sort of genius, I'm not, but because the warning signs have been readily visible to those paying attention.

I'll add to that that unless something radically changes then this will not be the last time and it will not be by any means the biggest problem. There's far more pain than this on the way, the only unknown being exactly when it turns up but it will.

Generating plant outages in Victoria:

Loy Yang A unit 3 - 560 MW (coal, AGL)

Loy Yang A unit 2 - 130 MW (capacity reduction from 530 to 400 MW) (coal, AGL)

Valley Power unit 6 - 50 MW failed a short time ago (gas, Snowy Hydro)

Yallourn W unit 3 - 380 MW (failed last night) (coal, Energy Australia)

Yallourn W unit 4 - 380 MW (coal, Energy Australia)

Overall that outage rate of just over 15% is about what would be expected. On an individual plant basis some is obviously doing much better than others but across the entire system, that is all generation, it's about the outage rate that would normally be used as a basis for design. So it's not good but it's not bad as such if viewed in terms of the total installed generating capacity.

For other states:

No issues as such in SA. There's not a lot of gas around, so about 400 MW of gas-fired plant is running on oil and some other oil-fired plant has been run in preference to gas only plant, but no problems beyond that. There's enough generation to supply local load and maximum transfer to Vic.

Some fire threats to various parts of the transmission system in Tas but it's all working at least for the moment. Given the fire and weather situation in Tasmania at present, parts of Hobart have reached 40 degrees which is truly extreme weather by local standards, it's difficult to know how it will all play out.
 
Temperature is dropping in Melbourne and AEMO has authorised the reconnection of power to approximately 130,000 blacked out properties.
 

As per usual, what you have written says nothing, installation of generating capacity, is a State function, not a Federal function.
The States do not have to get federal permission to change their fuel mix and or installations. Your claim that the States are hamstrung waiting for a Federal directive, is utter nonsense, same as most of your points. As I said South Australia, is installing a molten salt generator this year, yet you say they can't do anything because the Feds are sitting on their hands.
You go on about commercial decisions, being the correct way to make a judgement on viability. Well the Muja A/B $300m stuff up, was another commercial decision gone wrong.

As for wind power in South Australia.
Wind energy is a popular alternative to the fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil in terms of better sustainability, economically feasible and environmental friendly. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) 2010 SA Supply Demand Outlook estimates that in 2009-10, 18% of the state’s energy production came from wind power.[27] In July 2014, South Australian wind farms produced enough power to meet 43% of the state's electricity needs, up from the previous record of 38% in August 2013.[28]
What did you say 10%, obviously truth isn't a high priority in you waffle.
That isn't including solar.

As you say, when you don't know things, best you keep your opinion to yourself.
When you present some evidence, people might respond to it, currently it is obvious you know very little on the subject. By the way evidence doesn't just mean, because you said it, unless you have some qualifications in the subject.
It has actually got bear some semblance to the truth, try presenting some.
 
Last edited:

Now lets get onto this problem you have, differentiating between opinion and evidence.
Point 1, absolute rubbish:
The 2017 South Australian Renewable Energy Report (SARER) focuses on the performance of wind and rooftop photovoltaic (PV) generation in South Australia over the last five financial years (2012–13 to 2016–17).  South Australia had the highest penetration of renewable generation of all NEM regions in the last five years.  Total renewable generation in South Australia (including wind and rooftop PV) for 2016–17 was 5,359 gigawatt hours (GWh), the highest production in the last five years.  Both wind generation capacity and rooftop PV capacity have increased in the five years to 2016–17:  Rooftop PV installed capacity rapidly increased from 402 megawatts (MW) in 2012–13 to 781 MW in 2016–17. More than 30% of dwellings in South Australia now have rooftop PV systems installed. 1  Registered wind capacity increased about 41%, from 1,203 MW in 2012–13 to 1,698 MW in 2016–17.

And here is a link, so that you can supply EVEDENCE next time.

https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Fil...h-Australian-Renewable-Energy-Report-2017.pdf

2. Gobledegook-

3. Your mates hobby farm, has nothing to do with the issue.

4. Nonsense, there was an over capacity situation, whereby standby generators were getting capacity payments, and not being required to run. Both Kwinana and Muja A/B have been de commissioned, in the last 4 years.
The Muja cost blow out was due to the Station being taken over by a private firm, with the condition that they refurbished it and then Synergy would buy generation from them.
The company went broke during the refurbishment, and Western Power took on the completion of the project.

5. You are the one have trouble with facts, not I.

6. So now to address your problem, with understanding the difference, between opinion and evidence.

Evidence: available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid

Opinion: a view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

Your remarks, definitely fall into the opinion category, the lack of facts or information, preclude it from being evidence.
But you do spin a great yarn.
 
sptrawler said:
As per usual, what you have written says nothing, installation of generating capacity, is a State function, not a Federal function.
Click to expand...
States do not have that role but work in the NEM to facilitate it. You still have not read the link explaining how the system works. If any entity satisfies AEMO that it is a generator in accordance with the National Electricity Rules (under a federal law) then it is available to supply the market. Nothing prevents SA from becoming a renewables behemoth and selling its energy to the eastern seaboard via additional interconnectors, if that what market participants agree on.
sptrawler said:
The States do not have to get federal permission to change their fuel mix and or installations.
Click to expand...
I have never made that claim.
sptrawler said:
Your claim that the States are hamstrung waiting for a Federal directive, is utter nonsense, same as most of your points.
Click to expand...
That is not my claim.
There is a commercial environment for energy supply.
Industry will not act in a climate where a policy void prevents them from making sound business decisions.
sptrawler said:
As I said South Australia, is installing a molten salt generator this year, yet you say they can't do anything because the Feds are sitting on their hands.
Click to expand...
I never made that claim. In fact the very reverse. Because the feds are sitting on their hands the SA government went this one alone, as they did with the Tesla battery project.
sptrawler said:
You go on about commercial decisions, being the correct way to make a judgement on viability. Well the Muja A/B $300m stuff up, was another commercial decision gone wrong.
Click to expand...
I guess that makes sense to you. A decision was made about 3 years ago to close a then 52 year old power station that was costing more to repair than was possible to recoup. AGL will be closing Liddell in several years on commercial grounds. The feds have made repeated overtures to AGL to get them to reverse their decision, and pulled a range of other stunts, but to no avail.
sptrawler said:
As for wind power in South Australia. ...
Click to expand...
I admit to not having the information at hand when I quickly posted a reply - my bad, but your 60% claim was way off. I also should have been a lot more careful with my language. I used installed capacity, whereas capacity and supply, are very different. So is where supply comes from as on average about 20% of supply is not local to SA. Using financial year 2017 data wind accounts for about a third (33%) of total supply. However registered capacity for wind under AEMO is about 15% of supply - so there is a massive difference between the two. Private solar PV accounted for about 8% of total supply, but just 5% of registered capacity.
So when I said 10% wind and 5% solar capacity, I was off by 5 percentage points. My apologies.
 
Last edited:
Smurfs,
Woukd not it make sense that we see more outages and breakdowns afterbperiod like this where the system is pushed to the limits.i would also assume maintenance shutdown need is low low priority right now
Si can all this not cascade in an unpleasant way if the heat stays
 
As per usual another load of waffle , to cover your lack of knowledge.
I stated a fact on installed capacity, you said it was false, now your thrashing around in your nonsense.
Mate you are full of it.
 
You've hit the nail on the head there. A bit of detail about the problems which occurred:

Loy Yang A #3, Yallourn #3 and Valley Power #6 were all unplanned events. That is, equipment failed. Valley Power #6 has since been fixed and is running at the moment.

Yallourn #4 had two prior attempts at planned maintenance postponed and it came to the point where there was simply no option other than to take it offline. That's the sort of scenario you're referring to.

Loy Yang A #2 was de-rated yesterday due to a problem and has been shut down completely not long ago. In better circumstances they'd have shut it yesterday but they limped along until this afternoon in practice at about three quarters of normal output.

Note for those not aware regarding all this "#2" or "#4" etc stuff. In short if you've got 4 separate generating units at the one power station then accepted convention (in most countries at least) is to simply number them for easy reference. So units 1, 2, 3 and 4 are four completely separate generating units at the one physical power station at Yallourn for example.

For outages in SA:

Quarantine in Adelaide has unit #1 on a long term outage. It would have only produced about 19 MW during the hot weather though so nothing major. Origin Energy owns this facility.

Snuggery has 3 small gas turbines fueled only by diesel. They had them all running yesterday until something went amiss with one of them but I've no info as to what the problem was. They had all 3 machines running for a while today so whatever the trouble is they seem to have fixed it. Capacity is about 16 MW for each turbine if it's seriously hot but they'll go to about 21 MW in cooler weather. Plant owner is Engie.

In addition to that there's also the problem that gas was getting scarce in SA. You can suck it out of the pipe faster than it's going in the other end but only for so long. Quite a bit of the SA gas-fired plant can use oil as a backup which frees up gas for the rest but that too has a limit in that there's only so much oil in storage and it all has to be shipped in and for some cases then trucked to the power station (via normal road tankers like those used for petrol). That's oil as in heavy fuel oil and diesel depending on the plant in question.

So ultimately yes if the heat continued then more problems would develop.
 
sptrawler said:
As per usual another load of waffle , to cover your lack of knowledge.
I stated a fact on installed capacity, you said it was false, now your thrashing around in your nonsense.
Mate you are full of it.
Click to expand...

Are you well pleased at being "absolutely right" ? And totally sure you can prove it (in your mind)?
Was it worth it SP?
Your call..
 
basilio said:
Are you well pleased at being "absolutely right" ? And totally sure you can prove it (in your mind)?
Was it worth it SP?
Your call..
Click to expand...
No it wasn't worth it, it is a forum, not a place to have a slanging match.
But it is difficult to not respond, when someone is constantly accusing you, of supplying false information. Especially when you are posting official data to substantiate it. I also spent my whole working career in power generation, so do have a basic idea of how it works.
Next time I will say nothing, as is expected, by those who have a barrow to push.
I should have responded as smurf did to the#2870 post, and not get drawn in, my bad.
 
Last edited:
basilio said:
Are you well pleased at being "absolutely right" ? And totally sure you can prove it (in your mind)?
Was it worth it SP?
Your call..
Click to expand...
Basilio,
Some people are so full of BS it is often better to just add them to ignore.
What is the point to even discuss?
PS
As you can see, you are not in my ignore list
 
I'm keeping out of the politics but I'll say that all this does reflect something far broader, which extends well beyond anything involving energy supply.

As a society we've become far too focused on regulations, law and ideology and nowhere near enough focused on science and making things happen.

We've become a country with "tick a box" safety inspections which are good at identifying that there should be a line painted on the ground but which fail to identify things which pose a real danger.

We're good at regulating just about everything to the point of strangulation except the one thing that really has shown it needs heavy regulation, that being banks and finance.

We've got an aggressively pursued illusion of competition in utilities whilst neglecting to make sure there's any power in the first place.

And so on. So long as Australia keeps neglecting science, engineering and so on in favour of an obsession with laws, regulations and theories we'll continue heading down this track.

The ultimate consequence, so far as the power grid is concerned, will likely unfold in one of two ways:

1. A major incident which leaves NSW and/or Victoria completely blacked out.

2. A serious failure of infrastructure which results in multiple load shedding incidents over a relatively short period to the point that the normal functioning of society is significantly impacted.

Which one is detail but keep doing what we're doing and we'll get one or the other outcome in due course.

To further illustrate the problems, look at what government itself is doing:

In SA the new state government did a review of the backup gas turbines which found they weren't needed. Who did the review? A lawyer. Yes, seriously, a LAWYER!

Now I've nothing against lawyers but of all possible professions or backgrounds to evaluate a power system they'd be an extremely long way down the list. Rather, what you want is preferably an electrical power engineer.

If you can't get that then get someone with experience in power generation as an operator or technician who understands from experience what goes wrong or get some other sort of engineer, eg civil, who will at least realise what they don't know.

Failing that, at least get someone with experience with complex systems and numbers.

Choosing a lawyer makes about as much sense as choosing a horticulturalist or surgeon, it's completely the wrong background. They're probably fine as a lawyer but no surprise they got their engineering assessment wrong.

Or in Victoria and with the other side of politics guess what the Minister's background is? Yep, you guessed it, unions and politics.

So there we have it. The unionists and lawyers strike once again. As I've said previously, there's a role for them and I intend no disrespect but there's far too many of both involved with things they know nothing about.

So long as the focus of all this remains politics, point scoring and ideology rather than sound practices it's inevitable we'll end up with a major incident which makes today's seem trivial.
 
And this is in the area you know.in IT, startup and mining, 3 areas i have a decent background, same story, latest being the requirements to break privacy on government request and have prepared holes in security..here goes our software industry orvehat is left of it.no atlasian #2
In a world with more and more sophisticated technology, we have a population more and more ignorant, and leaders hardly better.
What can go wrong?
 
qldfrog said:
And this is in the area you know.in IT, startup and mining, 3 areas i have a decent background, same story
Click to expand...
What concerns me is that if the area I know about is in such a mess then that seems an amazing coincidence. Almost certainly rather a lot of other things are in a similar state it's just that I'm unaware of the details.

As a broad generalisation, if you're having minor incidents then that's a pretty strong warning that there are problems and you're vulnerable to a major incident. That goes for anything really from human health to the safety of airlines to the operation of complex things like the power grid. If you're having more incidents than you'd reasonably expect then that's a major warning that things aren't as they should be. Look what happens to stock markets near a major top and it's the same story - volatility goes up.
 
You need to learn to read for understanding.
I have shown that you made claims which do not stack up.
You say things without evidence, or hide information that does not support your case.
You probably, at best, have a basic idea of how the system works.
The issue of supply is clearly a massive problem.
What needs to be discussed is how to address this problem.
And in case you have not been watching, where has the federal Minister been during this supply debacle, or for that matter what has the PM had to say?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Gen Alpha
Replies
13
Views
853
moXJO
M
Electricity investments
Replies
8
Views
628
Smurf1976
The Effect of Deepseek on Australian Stocks
Replies
7
Views
721
Smurf1976
SS1 - Sun Silver
2
Replies
27
Views
5K
Sean K
How to totally xuck the worlds largest economy with a chainsaw
Replies
14
Views
532
basilio
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more...