The future of energy generation and storage

[sptrawler]

As opposed to solar panels with about the same lifetime ?

Well the problem is, that obviously has been done to death, now we need the hangover remedy. Lol

 

[qldfrog]

As opposed to solar panels with about the same lifetime ?

Both my solar panels installation were in the black in less than 5y
Battery do not make sense yet economically.i am moving and the big idea is going battery AND include an EV battery as part of the new place
Leverage battery of ev for domestic use and power the lot via panels
I am retired now and can always use the ice car if ev battery flat
Will see how it goes but need to sell current place first

 

[qldfrog]

An info @Smurf1976 will be interested in as he kindly raised the shipping fuel issue with us
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ships-set-burn-raw-crude-230100180.html
Ships are not going ev yet..well for containers at least

 

[basilio]

Common sense in dealing with maintaining long power lines in the outback.
Standalone solar replaces power lines in remote WA farming community
A deadly bushfire in a remote West Australian farming community has led to a renewable energy first in Australia.

Key points:

• Hundreds of power poles were damaged or destroyed when deadly bushfires swept through the Esperance region four years ago
  
  • 450 locals were without electricity for months, prompting many to rely on generators
  • Horizon Power has been trialling standalone solar panels on some farms, with more to follow

A government-owned electricity company is taking customers off the grid by giving them standalone solar units, so they can pull down ageing and costly power lines.
In November 2015, bushfires swept through the Esperance region, 800 kilometres south-east of Perth.
Four people lost their lives, thousands of livestock perished, and 30,000 hectares of crops were destroyed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-05/standalone-solar-replaces-power-lines/11572762

 

[SirRumpole]

Common sense in dealing with maintaining long power lines in the outback.
Standalone solar replaces power lines in remote WA farming community
A deadly bushfire in a remote West Australian farming community has led to a renewable energy first in Australia.

Key points:

• Hundreds of power poles were damaged or destroyed when deadly bushfires swept through the Esperance region four years ago
  
  • 450 locals were without electricity for months, prompting many to rely on generators
  • Horizon Power has been trialling standalone solar panels on some farms, with more to follow

A government-owned electricity company is taking customers off the grid by giving them standalone solar units, so they can pull down ageing and costly power lines.
In November 2015, bushfires swept through the Esperance region, 800 kilometres south-east of Perth.
Four people lost their lives, thousands of livestock perished, and 30,000 hectares of crops were destroyed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-05/standalone-solar-replaces-power-lines/11572762

Will be interesting to see if these customers can go totally off grid. Interesting that they still need a backup generator for when the sun doesn't shine.

 

[sptrawler]

It isn't all sunshine and lolltpops in W.A.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10...d-to-bill-hikes-or-taxpayer-bailouts/11579864

From the article:
The cost of keeping the lights on
A bigger issue for Mr McHugh was the need for reform in the South West electricity market.

He said the rules and regulations governing the market were designed for a 20th century electricity system, which was rapidly changing into something different.

Key to the required changes was appropriately rewarding and providing incentives for services that stabilised the grid and ensured there was always enough back-up power supply to keep the lights on.
At the moment, Mr McHugh said those essential services were largely provided by Synergy as a matter of course — and often by the traditional power plants that were increasingly uneconomic.

But he said Synergy was barely paid for those services, if at all.

Mr McHugh said plans to modernise WA's electricity system and make the switch to renewable energy depended on such "ancillary" services being properly recognised.

"There is a sense of urgency," he said.

"We're seeing the demand hollow out in the middle of the day. That's the major issue at the moment … the imminent threat in a sense.

"And that then starts to force generators off the system that currently provide various services like voltage and inertia … that keep the system stable.

"Those services have been provided for free for a long period of time. They've never really been thought about until we've got to this situation where we're starting to see less and less of them on the grid in the middle of the day.

"We've now got to rethink how those services are provided and, most importantly, at least cost."

Reform timing uncertain
With the McGowan Government more than halfway through its first term, Mr Johnston insisted such reforms were at the top of his agenda.

He said the Government's "energy transformation strategy" was aimed at ensuring ancillary services were properly rewarded and that companies in the market which contributed to costs — including renewable energy projects — paid for them.

But the Minister was unable to say when the Government would implement the changes.

"We'll know where we're going by the middle of next year, absolutely," he said.

 

[sptrawler]

The problem W.A has is just the same as the East Coast, where renewables push fossil fueled units off the grid, then they have to be brought back on as the renewable generation falls away which wears out the generators.
To me this is where nuclear actually makes sense, if the underlying base load is say 1GW and a 1GW nuclear station was built to underpin that load.
Firstly all the coal fired could be taken off line, the other thing that could be done is a huge hydrogen plant could be built alongside the nuclear station, then when the renewable output increased the nuclear plant would stay at full load making hydrogen instead of feeding the load.
As the renewables output falls off, the hydrogen production is reduced and the load is supplied by the power station.
That would get rid of the emissions problem, produce $hit loads of hydrogen and keep the generators online to stop the wear and tear from cycling and also allow more renewables and storage to be installed which would allow more hydrogen to be produced a win/win.
It wont happen because the emotional road show would get wound up and glue themselves to the road.
Just my opinion.

 

[Smurf1976]

It isn't all sunshine and lolltpops in W.A.

All things considered, WA is in better shape than NSW / ACT / Vic / SA but is ultimately heading the same way just more slowly and with a later starting date.

What they do in the next few years will determine which way it all goes really. Biggest problem is that fundamentally WA's economy isn't particularly electrified with electricity accounting for only about 15% of all energy supplied to end users. Fossil fuels, particularly gas, are absolutely entrenched for direct use as well as accounting for 60% of electricity generation. Ultimately that's not sustainable.

 

[rederob]

The problem W.A has is just the same as the East Coast, where renewables push fossil fueled units off the grid, then they have to be brought back on as the renewable generation falls away which wears out the generators.
To me this is where nuclear actually makes sense, if the underlying base load is say 1GW and a 1GW nuclear station was built to underpin that load.
Firstly all the coal fired could be taken off line, the other thing that could be done is a huge hydrogen plant could be built alongside the nuclear station, then when the renewable output increased the nuclear plant would stay at full load making hydrogen instead of feeding the load.
As the renewables output falls off, the hydrogen production is reduced and the load is supplied by the power station.
That would get rid of the emissions problem, produce $hit loads of hydrogen and keep the generators online to stop the wear and tear from cycling and also allow more renewables and storage to be installed which would allow more hydrogen to be produced a win/win.
It wont happen because the emotional road show would get wound up and glue themselves to the road.
Just my opinion.

The USA must be streets ahead of us, with a recent solar+battery project coming in at about $US22/MWh or about $A33/MWh. Admittedly its not large scale storage, but only last year CSIRO projected that on an LCOE basis batteries with 2 hours storage would cost in the range $A100-150/MWh by 2020.
By the way, small scale nuclear comes in as the most expensive option by a very long margin.

 

[sptrawler]

The USA must be streets ahead of us, with a recent solar+battery project coming in at about $US22/MWh or about $A33/MWh. Admittedly its not large scale storage, but only last year CSIRO projected that on an LCOE basis batteries with 2 hours storage would cost in the range $A100-150/MWh by 2020.
By the way, small scale nuclear comes in as the most expensive option by a very long margin.

Yes, I wasn't commenting on the cost just the practical application, it would resolve a lot of the emission problems while renewables build to the critical mass required and would also kick start the H2 industry.
A nuclear plant will never be built here, but if all the negatives are ignored (cost, waste etc), as i said it would resolve a lot of the current issues.

 

[Value Collector]

I think if you have a large north facing section of roof that isn't shaded, solar panels are one of the best low risk investments you can make.

Even allowing for a 12 year depreciation of the system, my system is earning about 15% return on investment, and that's a tax free return pretty much risk free.

And I am not talking about the sweet heart government deal from a few years back.
-------

My house is now 100% electric eg. Air con, Hot water, Kitchen, Car, Mower, whipper snipper etc all electric, and all powered by my 8.23KWH system, not a single petrol or gas piece of equipment in site.

My bills have gone from circa $650 for 90days to a net credit, and now I drive a Tesla my weekly petrol bill has disappeared same with the mower etc

 

[Smurf1976]

The USA must be streets ahead of us

In short they're much more able to "just do it".

They have red tape yes but seem to have become better at busting through it. Australia today is where the US was with this stuff 20 or so years ago. Everything gets bogged down and grinds to a halt in some parts especially.

Victoria in particular has a lot in common with where California was in the late 1990's with it being rather hard to get things done. The Americans moved on in due course, as no doubt will we, but that's where it's at right now not for everything but with a lot of it.

 

[Value Collector]

In short they're much more able to "just do it".

They have red tape yes but seem to have become better at busting through it. Australia today is where the US was with this stuff 20 or so years ago. Everything gets bogged down and grinds to a halt in some parts especially.

Victoria in particular has a lot in common with where California was in the late 1990's with it being rather hard to get things done. The Americans moved on in due course, as no doubt will we, but that's where it's at right now not for everything but with a lot of it.

They have Berkshire Hathaway investing there for a start, thats a huge plus, installing massive amounts of renewables, and closing coal while also reducing prices.

 

[Smurf1976]

They have Berkshire Hathaway investing there for a start, thats a huge plus, installing massive amounts of renewables, and closing coal while also reducing prices.

The big hurdle in Australia is regulators.

By that I'm referring to the variety which sit in offices not the sort which maintain a stable frequency or voltage.

The frequency governors have been mostly disabled anyway, a comment that will cause alarm for those familiar with the concept and no I'm not joking. Regulators of the suited variety kept trying to fine the owners of generating plant when the governors kept the frequency stable by ramping output up or down automatically. So they decided they'd just stop doing it then, disable primary frequency control on the machines, and end result is the system's far less stable and more prone to collapse as a result.

The problems with all this are mostly not technical ones. There are issues but there are solutions too. To some extent there are real economic issues but far more significant is the regulatory obstacles. In contrast the Americans don't have that problem, they're not placing artificial barriers in the way of getting things done. End result = they can do it far more easily and cheaply hence they are.

 

[bi-polar]

Don't get it. Why? And does the Official Regulator Grade I (a 3.2) have a frequency dial on his desk and how frequently would he enforce his authority?

 

[Smurf1976]

Don't get it. Why?

Simplest layman's terms way to explain it is this:

Most people would have used a lawn mower with a petrol engine at some point so would be familiar with how it works. The engine runs at a constant speed, you push the mower into the grass, and the engine slows down only very slightly under load.

Reason it does that is there's a simple mechanical governor on the engine. You put it under more load, it slows down, the governor opens up the throttle. Vice versa when there's less load and it speeds up.

Now with a mower that's a very simple arrangement since it's not critical that the engine maintains a constant speed. If it's 10% out then that's not really going to matter all that much - worst case you've got to push it a bit more slowly etc but it's no big deal.

With the power grid the same basic concept applies, a governor on the machines (steam / hydro / gas turbines driving alternators) with the only real difference being it's far more precise since even a 1% speed variation is a big deal. Not a problem there though, having accurate governors isn't out of the question when you're dealing with $100 million+ sets of equipment you can afford to put proper controls on it (versus the mower that's intentionally kept down in cost).

Now for the painful bit.

If there's an incident in the grid, something causes frequency to drop a bit, then the natural response of the machines is to increase their output so as to return frequency to where it should be. That's what the governor does.

A typical cause of that is either a sudden change in load, eg industry turned something big on, or failure of a generator which isn't overly uncommon. So more power needed = all machines able to do so ramp up which restores system frequency then human intervention brings another generator online if one's failed or otherwise acts to shift production around to the preferred arrangement with the aim of being ready as soon as possible for another incident lest one occurs.

Trouble is, those looking at the financial and rules side of all this realised that anyone generating more power than they should have was also being paid for doing so. Well yes they are but the power has to come from somewhere, right?

Slowly but surely the various generating companies got fed up with being fined, or threatened with fines, and simply disabled primary frequency control on the machines to the point where most ended up being disabled. End result is that frequency wobbles all over the place in a manner that's akin to having a car wandering from the left to right hand side of the road constantly. Bump left, bump right, bump left, bump right, bump left.......

Suffice to say the engineers would have the governors back on in an instant but unfortunately it's economics and bureaucracy which carry more weight these days.

There was a near miss with all this a while ago. A single transmission issue ended up splitting the mainland grid in to three with Qld disconnecting from NSW and SA disconnecting from Vic and quite a few blackouts in NSW because of that. That rang some serious alarm bells in quite a few minds yes.

Some experiments have also been conducted in Tasmania in regard to all this. Reason for doing it in Tas is two fold. First because of the ability to isolate the state from anywhere else pretty easily but critically because nobody was actually going to get in trouble. One generating company runs the lot so to the extent there's a crime of sorts, the victim and the perpetrator just happen to be the same entity so nobody's going to pursue it in practice. Those experiments with changing the way things work and so on produced the expected results by the way - everything was very closely monitored and logged as this was intended to be proper research not just someone mucking about.

Now all that's a very simplified layman's summary but ultimately the crux of it is that we've got all manner of rules and red tape standing in the way of getting things done.

A more recent example is there's a fuss about solar and network congestion which seems to have reached the media and there's a few people getting excited and so on. What's probably been missed is that some of what the regulators are demanding the networks do ASAP is literally the exact same things the regulators refused to allow the networks to do when they wanted to do it proactively.

I could go on with many more examples but ultimately it all comes back to the problem that legal, financial and politics is in charge and anything technical runs a very distant second to all that.

With a bit of luck from 1 July 2020 we might be able to start addressing the solar energy that's going to waste during the daytime in SA. Might but don't get too excited because there's the problem of regulations, who pays, who benefits and all that.

I don't hate any regulators personally by the way, heck I know some such people and they're acting in good faith, but I'm very much of the "get it done" mentality. Regulation and administration should meet the needs of production not the reverse. Dog wags the tail, not tail wags the dog.

I'm no climate scientist but given all the concern about that issue I just don't think we can spend a decade deciding on whether or not to pick a piece of low hanging fruit. We need to go faster, much faster, than that. If something's actually difficult or expensive then that's one thing but if it's staring us in the face, and would save money too, well stuff the red tape just get it done is my view.

That the Americans have gone that way explains much of the difference there. If it stacks up and saves money then nobody really stops it happening.

To be clear though, my comments are for explanation and that's it. I'm not whinging about it, there's no point doing that, but we do have a situation where we're trying to run with our feet tied together pretty much and the rather odd situation where everyone from small consumers through to the big energy companies isn't happy with current circumstances.

 

[bi-polar]

Yes that's what you said. It's the middle bit about "getting paid for more power" that stumped me. Loads vary but there's a fine for it. Still don't get it. 'Lucky country' they say which means the opposite of what it's supposed to mean.

 

[Smurf1976]

Yes that's what you said. It's the middle bit about "getting paid for more power" that stumped me. Loads vary but there's a fine for it. Still don't get it. 'Lucky country' they say which means the opposite of what it's supposed to mean.

Simple version:

1. Generator (company that owns the plant) offers supply at $x

2. AEMO directs the physical dispatch of generation according to price (cheapest first) subject to meeting technical constraints.

3. Something goes wrong. Whatever - eg a generating unit trips.

4. If primary frequency enabled then machines will of their own accord increase output to maintain system frequency.

5. Those looking to regulate economic things get seriously unhappy that someone who was supposed to generate 200 MW generated 220 MW. They get really, really unhappy about this.

6. After realising it was going to make life miserable, the owners of generation simply disabled the governors rather than keep being belted over the head for keeping the system stable.

7. End result is the electricity system is now far less robust and stable than it was previously.

That's a simplified version but it's how it has all gone. If anyone wants a more technical understanding of the issue then see here:

Be aware it's over an hour and goes into detail - it's not aimed at a general public audience but it's probably the best explanation I've seen and it's a comprehensible one for those keen to understand.

My real lament though isn't the technical detail but the reality that there's something in common with a lot of things in all this. Electricity is one, hospitals are another, climate change is another.

What??? I hear you say! Hospitals? Climate change?

The common link is that engineering is the practical application of science and trades are the practical application of engineering. Equivalents to that exist in medicine and many other fields - there's the underlying science, there's a white collar profession based around it and there are all sorts of people who do physical things based around what that profession has determined need to be done.

The common theme with energy, climate, hospitals and so on is that as a society we're choosing to ignore the science in favour of an ideological debate. In order to do that we have various political constructs and other things which ensure that we don't have engineers, doctors, climate scientists and so on making the decisions but rather, it's passed to someone in a completely unrelated field.

So the details differ but the same fundamental issues exist across multiple fields. Have a proper chat to someone in medicine who grasps the big picture there and it's alarmingly familiar.

With regard to the energy debate I'll observe that those who I'll put in the "engineering" camp and those who I'll put in the "environmental" camp have a lot more in common than may seem apparent. Put aside the extreme ones with hard line ideological views and focus on the future without disrespecting the past and there's an awful lot in common. Both are ultimately lamenting the same fundamental problem - a society which chooses to ignore the science.

Note that I said engineering not energy and I said environmental not climate. That's because the same concept applies far more widely than just energy and climate change. Those certainly aren't the only issues where the science is being ignored with building things or when it comes to the natural world. And of course there's those trying to run hospitals who face the same basic issue too as do others.

All this stuff used to worry me somewhat but it doesn't so much today. It's so widespread, across so many seemingly unrelated fields, that it's way out of my hands to do anything about it. Beyond sensible preparation at the personal level and investing to make a profit, that's about it really. There's not much chance that I'll be reversing something which has spanned multiple governments of both persuasions and to which the significant minor parties haven't effectively opposed either.

Once there's a big enough problem, only then will it be possible to go forward but we're not at that point yet. It'll happen, and we'll only know when in hindsight, but we're not at that point yet.

 

[sptrawler]

So true smurf, so many "experts", so little clue.

 

[bi-polar]

It recalls communist planning where good and services were allocated by Moscow to the furthest regions without regard to reality. One example was a bicycle pump shop at Murmansk which was stacked with pumps, in Solzhenitsyn's book. The Aral sea is an example , people were penalised for saying there was a problem.