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The future of energy generation and storage

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Smurf1976 said:
You are confusing energy and power. :)

Back to Snowy 2.0

Building a 2000 MW power station most certainly does add generating capacity so long as it works and the storage isn't empty. It doesn't add energy*, it's a net consumer of that, but that's not a problem assuming more wind and solar will be built + there's at least some periods when thermal plant operates below capacity. It adds generating capacity, lack of which is the immediate problem. :2twocents

*In a strict physics sense a coal or gas power station also adds no energy, it simply turns 20 - 55% of the energy in fuel into electricity and the rest into heat, but that's being a bit pedantic. For simplicity I'll take it that it adds electrical enery to the system since it does.
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I never confused anything, but thanks for the explanations.
With Snowy 2.0 your explanations are deceptive. Capacity and energy are inextricably linked, even by your own definition. To avoid confusion I will just use electricity.
You cannot generate electricity from Snowy 2.0 unless you keep using electricity from the grid to replenish Tantangara dam. Fortunately Snowy 2.0 will be able to dip into (that is remove some of the) 888MW of new capacity that it has tendered out to assist in that.
The simple bottom line here is that Snowy 2.0 in net terms reduces the amount of electricity available.
The advantage of Snowy 2.0 is that it acts as a gigantic battery.
The nature of Snowy 2.0's battery effect is very different from an actual battery attached to a wind turbine. No electricity is used by a wind turbine to generate the stored electricity in its batteries. Accordingly, wind turbines are electricity accretive.
 
sptrawler said:
I think what you are explaining smurf, is what some people don't seem to grasp, in their debated position.
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Do you know how to construct an argument?
If you did, and given your experience in the electricity market, it should have been dead easy to show that your referenced remarks from Finkel stood up.
 
So the take away from these conversations is that constructing storage capacity for wind and solar power is essential and that nominal energy capacities should be treated with care.
 
basilio said:
I don't believe so. I would guess it doesn't have a catchment area actually feeding it. It is more of a storage dam.
If anything evaporation would diminish it's capacities.
Click to expand...

Pretty poor design if that's the case.

Why wouldn't you take advantage of natural inflow ?
 
rederob said:
Do you know how to construct an argument?
If you did, and given your experience in the electricity market, it should have been dead easy to show that your referenced remarks from Finkel stood up.
Click to expand...
What has become obvious is ,you have a great understanding of the politics of the grid and very little knowledge of mechanics and dynamics of it.
IMO ,it is a waste my time, debating it with you any further.
 
sptrawler said:
What has become obvious is ,you have a great understanding of the politics of the grid and very little knowledge of mechanics and dynamics of it.
IMO ,it is a waste my time, debating it with you any further.
Click to expand...
You offer nothing to debate, so you have wasted a lot of effort on nothing particularly important.
And I do not go on pretending that a net loss of electricity can somehow add to the grid.
There's lots of very relevant stuff that you could link to or work off. For example, this explains AGL's rationale for Liddell's closure. It includes a number of themes I have covered and tends to dispel the notional importance of baseload to a generator.
Here's another option. In a fashion it's a small scale variant of Snowy 2.0 but, I suspect, far more efficient in that spinning power is not wasted. Instead, it has borrowed from Hornsdale's Tesla battery approach.
But the elephant in the room is a price on carbon.
Not many posting here want to see it.
 
basilio said:
I suspect the placement of this dam would be somewhere far uphill of a current dam. It would necessarily be downstream of good river catchment.

I think...
Click to expand...
That would have a lot to do with it I think bas, the higher the head of water, the smaller the size of the turbine for a given output. Smurf will be able to explain it, he has had a lot to do with hydro.
 
rederob said:
You offer nothing to debate, so you have wasted a lot of effort on nothing particularly important.
And I do not go on pretending that a net loss of electricity can somehow add to the grid.
There's lots of very relevant stuff that you could link to or work off. For example, this explains AGL's rationale for Liddell's closure. It includes a number of themes I have covered and tends to dispel the notional importance of baseload to a generator.
Here's another option. In a fashion it's a small scale variant of Snowy 2.0 but, I suspect, far more efficient in that spinning power is not wasted. Instead, it has borrowed from Hornsdale's Tesla battery approach.
But the elephant in the room is a price on carbon.
Not many posting here want to see it.
Click to expand...
I've wasted very little effort, I'm time poor, so i look at the forum when I have a bit of spare time. I answer what I think i can with my current knowledge and belief's and ask questions, get opinions just a general chat.
You asked a few posts back, can't I construct an argument, I don't want an argument. I just want to have a chat share a few opinions.
Take today, I'm in sunny Mandurah, holiday weekend with my lovely wife, the youngest daughter brought down the grandkids, life's great.
Why would I be sitting on the computer constructing an argument, about the Eastern States Power Grid, firstly I'm in W.A. secondly I really don't give a $hit, thirdly I retired a few years ago at 55 and really am over arguing.
If someone wants to discuss it, fine i will respond, if someone is looking for an argument, I really can't be bothered.
 
A simple description of Snowy 2.0

Uses two existing reservoirs which were built as part of the existing Snowy Hydro scheme. That is Talbingo Dam as the lower storage (elevation 546m ASL) and Tantangara Dam as the upper storage (elevation 1222m ASL).

There's no need to fill the reservoirs - they're already there right now.

Electrical specifications are a generating capacity of 2000 MW with energy storage of 350 GWh. So that's enough to operate at constant full load for 175 hours (or half load for 350 hours etc).

In operation it's essentially a battery. Take electricity from the grid (generated from solar, wind, coal, gas or anything else) when there's a surplus available and use that to run the pumps transferring water from Talbingo to Tantangara. Then when there's a need to operate the power station run the water back down the other way by gravity.

There's no magic here and it's all absolutely proven technology with many comparable schemes in operation worldwide. In Australia we have Tumut 3 (1800 MW generating / 600 MW pumping, Snowy Hydro), Wivenhoe (500 MW, Qld government) and Shoalhaven (240 MW, Origin Energy).

We also have other proposals in Australia including a 300 MW scheme on the edge of suburban Adelaide with storage for about 4.5 hours (Tilt Renewables), the 250 MW Kidston project in Qld with storage for 8 hours (Genex Power), an additional 160 - 240 MW capacity at Shoalhaven (Origin Energy) and an assortment of projects totaling 5000 MW, of which the intention is to build approximately half, in Tasmania collectively known as "Battery of the Nation" (Hydro Tasmania). For the record with the exception of Snowy Hydro and Hydro Tas which are government owned, the rest are listed companies. AGL and Energy Australia have also publicly disclosed their interest in building similar schemes, likely to be on a smaller scale comparable to the other privately owned ones.

So do we have surplus power with which to pump the water?

The short answer is yes. In the short term that would be unused capacity from existing coal or gas plants but in the longer term it will be renewables.

If we look at Victoria during the past week for example then total demand, supplied or not supplied, has ranged from a bit under 4000 MW to a bit over 10,000 MW. Generation from solar, including small scale on houses, has ranged from literally 0 up to about 1200 MW and wind has had approximately the same range during the past week.

Or to be somewhat more blunt, there was a pretty decent surplus in Victoria just a few hours before the lights went out and there was once again a surplus that night after all the drama.

Now consider that SA already has periods when wind + solar exceeds total consumption. Consider also that Victoria is about to triple its wind generating capacity. NSW and Vic between them are about to add another 1500 MW of large scale solar farms. Qld is adding about 500 MW more wind and also increasing large scale solar. And that's just the firmly committed projects 100% certain to be built in the next two years. Plus there is small scale solar being installed nationally by homeowners and others.

So on the energy side we have an increasing supply from renewables and there's nothing to say we have to stop building 2 years from now so those figures can be pushed higher, the only obstacle there is government policy.

The harsh reality however is that with the peak demand late in the afternoon solar is of limited (most states) or close to zero (SA) effectiveness at supplying it directly unless by pure chance the peak happens to come earlier in the day (as it did on Friday in Victoria but that isn't usually the case). Likewise the wind also frequently dies late in the afternoon. Meanwhile we have periods, for example very commonly on weekends during daytime, when existing hydro and gas plant is shut down, coal is operating well below capacity and there's plenty of wind and sun. That's before we build all the new wind and solar farms....

That's not to say we could never be lacking in energy. If we stop building wind and solar and let the coal plants fall in a heap, or if we run out of coal or gas to run them with, then absolutely we could be seriously short on energy and it must be said that the gas supply situation is indeed problematic.

That's sort of a different issue though and applies regardless of whether or not we build Snowy 2.0 given that any realistic alternative also requires that we obtain energy from wind, solar, coal or gas. Nobody's seriously proposing nuclear or geothermal at this point, it's really just a question about the relative shares of coal, gas, wind and solar and the technology used in conjunction with them.

What about emissions?

Short term it's really no benefit. More efficient running of fossil fuel plant offset by pumping losses. Longer term though it avoids investing in new fossil fuel plant with a long lifespan and is very long lived infrastructure of use in a predominantly or totally renewable system. It could in that sense thus be considered an investment that pays dividends down the track but not from day one (unless of course we build enough wind and solar by 2024 which is possible).

Snowy 2.0 is not a silver bullet however. It provides 2000 MW of firm generating capacity assuming there's energy to pump the water with at other times. So it does rely on the assumption that we keep running existing coal and gas until we've built more wind and solar and that we actually do build more wind and solar.

It is also only 2000 MW. That's a lot but consider that NSW peak demand is about 14,500 MW and Victoria's is about 10,500 MW and it's clear that it's ultimately not enough. It's the first big step but it won't be the only one we need to take, not by any means.

In a practical operational sense it's all fairly even really in that the peak generating capacity of Snowy 2.0 is roughly equal to that being closed elsewhere (coal and gas). So it stops the problem getting worse more than fixing it as such. Got to start somewhere though.

What are the alternatives? Realistically considering time, politics and so on:

*Other pumped storage schemes of which Battery of the Nation (Hydro Tas) is the only large scale advanced proposal.

*Coal

*Gas but only if someone can work out a sufficient source of gas which is problematic.

*Diesel or other petroleum fuels if someone's keen to burn money.

Anything else either doesn't have major energy storage potential at an economic price (batteries are economic for a few hours but not a week although there's certainly a role for them), would in practice take far too long to be up and running (nuclear) or will give us a very hit and miss power supply (more wind and solar without storage).

For the record I have no association with Snowy Hydro unless you count being a taxpayer. :2twocents
 
Just to clarify Smurf, if there was a water inflow into Tantangara from natural runoff in excess of releases needed to generate power (+ environmental and other releases) there would be no need to pump water back from Talbingo would there, so a saving could be made ? Or is it the case that water gets pumped anyway to suck up excess power from the coal generators ?
 
rederob said:
First, I have never seen anywhere that renewables need to rate at twice the capacity of fossil fuels in the energy mix. Do you have a reference?
As I see it, you can only arrive at that number if you dodgy the maths.
Wind and solar plus storage potentially allow a lesser total capacity than the former fossil fuel equivalents. The simple reason is that excessive storage capacity could be available to smooth the peaks. Storage capacity is not yet cost effective, but the cost curve is continually reducing so it may well be a viable option in the next decade.
Click to expand...

http://energy.anu.edu.au/files/renewable electricity in Australia.pdf

A summary of the contents below:
In the absence of long-range planning by authorities for a high-renewable grid, the best studies have come from universities.35 In February 2017, the ANU published a clear vision for our future grid.36 Its researchers found the most economic combination for a fully-renewable grid comprises: • wind farms (45,000 MW) • solar farms (23,000 MW) • rooftop solar (17,000 MW) • existing hydroelectric and biomass generators (10,800 MW)37 • pumped hydro energy storage • extra transmission lines.
Total generation capacity is 93,300 MW, nearly double our grid’s generation capacity of 48,000 MW38 in 2017. This is due to “over-building” wind and solar to cater for their intermittent nature. Generators are spread widely to ensure that some of them are always generating well regardless of weather conditions, as the whole continent is never calm and cloudy simultaneously.

To transport electricity around the NEM, the ANU proposes a new transmission “backbone”, roughly following the Great Dividing Range and onward into South Australia and Tassie. The ANU’s study only considered the National Electricity Market, so the separate grids in WA and NT were excluded.

Energy storage requirements are relatively modest – enough to supply average grid demand for 30 hours without any generation. Off-grid households know this concept as “days of autonomy”. Such families typically have batteries large enough to supply 3 to 5 days of average electricity demand with no generation. An off-grid house requires a relatively large amount of storage because it can harvest solar and wind energy from only a single location, so it’s vulnerable to localised stretches of cloudy, calm weather.

Detailed simulations determined that this combination of generation and energy storage keeps the grid reliable even under rare weather conditions. This includes supplying heavy industry such as smelters. Existing hydroelectric power stations (e.g. the Snowy hydro scheme) and existing biomass generation (e.g. burning sugar cane residue) are used when the weather is particularly unfavourable.

34 Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market, June 2017, Alan Finkel. Recommendations 5.1 and 5.2. http://www.environment.gov.au/syste...es/electricity-market-review-final-report.pdf 35 For a list of previous studies, refer to ATA’s paper “100% renewable electricity grid – feasible?” 36 “100% renewable electricity in Australia”, Andrew Blakers, Bin Lu and Matthew Stocks, Australian National University. http://energy.anu.edu.au/files/100% renewable electricity in Australia.pdf 37 AEMO generator registration list, accessed 18/10/17, type “generato

Now for how long it will take according to Alan Finkel:
https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/scien...australias-new-chief-scientist-dr-alan-finkel

From the transcript:

So you think we can get there?
We can, but it's a very, very long term effort. The current energy industry is massive, most people don't appreciate the enormous scale – turning it around is more difficult than turning around the proverbial supertanker. We can get there, but there's going to be a 20-30 year time-frame to get where you, and I, and others want to be.

But my most important point about the 30-year time frame is that the slower we start, the longer it will take. We have started, but it needs to be done even more effectively. To do that, we need to develop more cost-effective, highly efficient technology and develop storage that goes with solar and wind.
 
Current operation is that Tantangara is a natural catchment with the lake formed by a dam. Water from this is diverted via a tunnel to Lake Eucumbene, the largest storage in the Snowy scheme at 1200m ASL so only slightly lower elevation than Tantangara.

Water then flows Lake Eucumbene > Tumut 1 power station > Tumut 2 power station > Talbingo Reservoir > Tumut 3 power station > Jounama pond > Jounama power station (small) > Blowering Reservoir > Blowering power station into the river.

Water also separately flows from Lake Eucumbene via Murray 1 power station > Murray 2 power station > Khancoban Pondage > Murray River. Allocation of how much water from Lake Eucumbene goes via this route and how much goes via the Tumut stations is an arbitrary one not an actual hydraulic or electrical constraint (within reason) and comes down to where the water ends up since they're discharging into different rivers.

Building Snowy 2.0 thus effectively "short circuits" the existing route from Tantangara via Lake Eucumbene and Tumut 1 & 2 power stations into Talbingo Reservoir. Note that this doesn't prevent simultaneous operation of Tumut 1 & 2, it just provides an alternative pathway for the water to the same end point at Talbingo.

Now, being creative, it should be noted that whilst pumping can only occur via via the new station, generation can occur via either route or both. That is, some of the water that currently goes via Tumut 1 & 2 could instead be sent as net flow via the new station. Or some of the water pumped from Talbingo could be then sent into Lake Eucumbene and via Tumut 1 and 2 to come back down.

Without wishing to blind anyone with maths or science, that means there's an option to modify the operation of Tumut 1 & 2 in addition to the new scheme. They could be run less often, thus reducing the amount of pumping with water sent directly via the new station, or the amount of pumping could be increased such that the new station pumps more water than it discharges, the rest coming back down via Tumut 1 & 2.

How to operate in practice will depend on external factors. That is the supply and demand balance for electricity from other sources and would likely change over time as the generation mix changes.

There would also be seasonal variations in operation. The likely scenario there is that pumping would exceed generation in Spring and Autumn with the reverse in Summer and especially Winter. That aspect, the large storage capacity and potential for seasonal variation, is where a scheme like this leaves batteries for dead.

Capacities of the relevant power stations:
Tumut 1 = 330 MW
Tumut 2 = 287 MW
Tumut 3 = 1800 MW generating / 600 MW pumping
Jounama = 14 MW
Blowering = 80 MW
New station Snowy 2.0 = 2000 MW

In practice Blowering is used primarily to re-regulate water flow into the river and as such does not normally operate at full capacity since the primary focus is water flow rather than electricity. The others operate independently of that consideration due to their water ending up in Blowering Reservoir.

Other power stations in the scheme not directly relevant to the Snowy 2.0 proposal:

Guthega = 60 MW
Murray 1 = 950 MW
Murray 2 = 550 MW
Jindabyne = 1 MW (the flow from which is environmental release out of the scheme)

Note that Murray 1 & 2 are electrically in Victoria whilst the rest are in NSW. Electrical boundaries don't strictly follow state actual boundaries.

For reference Tumut 1 & 2 are located underground but the rest are above ground (on the ground). :2twocents
 
sptrawler said:
You asked a few posts back, can't I construct an argument, I don't want an argument. I just want to have a chat share a few opinions.
Take today, I'm in sunny Mandurah, holiday weekend with my lovely wife, the youngest daughter brought down the grandkids, life's great.
Why would I be sitting on the computer constructing an argument, about the Eastern States Power Grid, firstly I'm in W.A. secondly I really don't give a $hit, thirdly I retired a few years ago at 55 and really am over arguing.
If someone wants to discuss it, fine i will respond, if someone is looking for an argument, I really can't be bothered.
Click to expand...
An argument here is not a "fight".
And it's not an "opinion".
It's about how what you say is reasonable.
You can go an facebook and talk about the weather or your family to people who value knowing about that.
I prefer to keep a thread on topic.
Thank you for the linked article - again it covers a lot of what we are discussing. Here's its major caveat:
We exclude batteries. Batteries located in homes and electric cars may contribute very substantially to future energy storage, either directly through bi-directional energy flow or indirectly through control of the timing of battery charging.​
It further notes:
If the future fleet of cars is of a similar size but entirely electric, with an average of 50 kWh of useable storage per car, then the usable storage is 900 GWh. This is twice the storage envisaged in our modelling.​
Finally, it notes:
Our cost estimates do not include a carbon price or subsidies. PV and wind costs are very likely to continue to fall.​
 
rederob said:
An argument here is not a "fight".
And it's not an "opinion".
It's about how what you say is reasonable.
You can go an facebook and talk about the weather or your family to people who value knowing about that.
I prefer to keep a thread on topic.
Thank you for the linked article - again it covers a lot of what we are discussing. Here's its major caveat:
We exclude batteries. Batteries located in homes and electric cars may contribute very substantially to future energy storage, either directly through bi-directional energy flow or indirectly through control of the timing of battery charging.​
It further notes:
If the future fleet of cars is of a similar size but entirely electric, with an average of 50 kWh of useable storage per car, then the usable storage is 900 GWh. This is twice the storage envisaged in our modelling.​
Finally, it notes:
Our cost estimates do not include a carbon price or subsidies. PV and wind costs are very likely to continue to fall.​
Click to expand...
I am not on Facebook, never will be.
 

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