The future of energy generation and storage

[sptrawler]

Thanks @Smurf1976.
No, I would have made the suggestion about full-scale conversion but I know that the federal government has failed to lock down a policy requiring that a proportion of Australia's gas reserves be quarantined from export so that it could be used for domestic energy.
.

Hi Rob, how come Western Australia has a domestic reserve for Australian gas?
Could that be because the State Government did it.

 

[rederob]

Hi Rob, how come Western Australia has a domestic reserve for Australian gas?
Could that be because the State Government did it.

You keep missing the point and add your strawmen.
But yes, Labor in WA introduced the policy in 2006.
The Coalition are more keen to ensure the big corporates bankroll their elections so would never do that.

 

[sptrawler]

You keep missing the point and add your strawmen.
But yes, Labor in WA introduced the policy in 2006.
The Coalition are more keen to ensure the big corporates bankroll their elections so would never do that.

I was just wondering why the States fidnt do it, when you consider they have the gas turbines and domestic usage?
I dont think anyone misses your point Rob.lol

 

[Smurf1976]

Thanks @Smurf1976.
No, I would have made the suggestion about full-scale conversion but I know that the federal government has failed to lock down a policy requiring that a proportion of Australia's gas reserves be quarantined from export so that it could be used for domestic energy

Another aspect is that having a coal-fired power station intentionally located where the coal is but ending up without any coal to run it with is itself a prime example of the lack of foresight.

Environmental issues aside, if you’re going to burn coal well then at the risk of stating the obvious you need coal to burn. Exporting it all until there’s nothing left isn’t particularly smart.

This is the third time it has happened by the way. A coal-fired power station surrounded by coal mines ending up without any coal because the mines were over worked, the coal exported, and it ran out thus leaving the power station without any fuel.

Same thing happened at Munmorah in NSW and at Swanbank A and B in Queensland. All ended up being knocked down although the latter was road hauling (yep, trucks not trains) coal from about 200km away for a while.

The whole thing needs some planning and foresight.

 

[IFocus]

I was just wondering why the States fidnt do it, when you consider they have the gas turbines and domestic usage?
I dont think anyone misses your point Rob.lol

The Liberals Australia wide are big on free markets, in Australia that's the title they give to monopolies clearly the East Coast is a major fail regarding domestic gas supplies particularly when states are scrambling to build import terminals.

The electricty prices are another complete disaster (that free market again) but note I know off a proposal to build a high tech facility here in WA with power supplied cheaper than China.........

 

[sptrawler]

You keep missing the point and add your strawmen.
But yes, Labor in WA introduced the policy in 2006.
The Coalition are more keen to ensure the big corporates bankroll their elections so would never do that.

Collin Barnett (Coalition) also made the gas reservation conditions on the W.A gas discoveries, Alan Carpenter was the Labour Party Premier who introduced the policy.

Here is a old news article for you Rob, just to add a bit of balance, to cover your comment above, that I highlighted.
http://www.miningweekly.com/article...gas-reservation-policy-2016-04-12/rep_id:3650
From the article:
Speaking at the opening of the eighteenth liquefied natural gas (LNG) conference, in Perth, on Tuesday, Barnett noted that gas reservation had been in place in Western Australia since the 1980s, and had more recently been defined as an equivalent of 15% of LNG exports to be made available to the domestic market.

There you go Rob, maybe you can do a bit of checking.

The other interesting thing is Federal Labour didn't back Barnett when he pushed for onshore processing of the Browse Basin gas, so now we have a ship sitting 100klm offshore processing our gas and sending it away.

 

[sptrawler]

The Liberals Australia wide are big on free markets, in Australia that's the title they give to monopolies clearly the East Coast is a major fail regarding domestic gas supplies particularly when states are scrambling to build import terminals.

The electricty prices are another complete disaster (that free market again) but note I know off a proposal to build a high tech facility here in WA with power supplied cheaper than China.........

Labour in W.A are proving to be really good, not so much in Queensland, they helped put in the gas export terminal now they probably have to help with an import terminal.

 

[SirRumpole]

Environmental issues aside, if you’re going to burn coal well then at the risk of stating the obvious you need coal to burn. Exporting it all until there’s nothing left isn’t particularly smart.

And then they made the same mistake with gas.

What morons.

 

[Smurf1976]

As an update on the situation in south-west Victoria and in SA:

*All load is being supplied business as usual. Nobody's in the dark, industry is running and so on. This SA + south-west Vic system represents approximately a one third increase on normal load in SA so combined with the electrical separation of SA from the other states, apart from via a low capacity DC link, is a very significant abruptly forced change.

*This power system is currently in a configuration for which there is zero prior operating experience but so far, so good. AEMO is continuing to monitor and evaluate the situation and may well make changes.

*Compared to normal the current configuration has unavoidable fragility in parts, has a reduced ability to meet peak demands, a restricted ability to utilise wind and solar generation, substantially higher operating costs and higher CO2 emissions. AEMO is looking to see if it can be improved but bottom line is that it was up and running within 3 hours of the unexpected incident on Friday and so far it's working.

*Best estimate is mid-February to return one of the two damaged transmission lines to service. Restoring one line will not resolve all the issues, there's a valid reason for having two, but it'll be a vast improvement on the current arrangement and at least partially resolves every aspect of the situation.

*More work will then follow to make permanent repairs and do the second line. No set date as yet but it's the sort of thing that won't be delayed any longer than it has to be.

*The Bureau of Meteorology has examined the situation and concluded that a "convective downburst" occurred. This is a weather phenomenon not an electrical one so I won't claim to know much about it other than that in layman's terms it means seriously strong wind occurred over a localised area and this wind is the almost certain cause of the towers falling over.

*Analysis thus far shows that a large volume of rooftop solar in SA temporarily shut down on Friday immediately following the incident and restarted later as system frequency returned to normal. This was the desired response, removing supply from the system following the loss of load (flow on the lines was at high levels SA into Vic when it occurred), and it's good to see that these systems worked as intended under a real major incident scenario.

There's a photo showing some of the damage here (link to Channel 10 news Twitter) :

 

[sptrawler]

A very good article on the ABC website today, explaining the technical difficulties that the AEMO is experiencing, with the solar Farms in the mid West of NSW.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02...duce-output-to-grid/11912848?section=business
From the article:
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) says the scale and pace of solar and wind generators being connected in remote areas of the national grid is "presenting unprecedented technical issues" affecting the grid's performance and operational stability.

The five solar farms in the so-called the West Murray region — which spans north-west Victoria and the far west of NSW taking in Broken Hill, Bannerton, Wemen, Gannawarra and Karadoc — were ordered by AEMO to cut their energy output after a technical fault in September put the stability of the entire national grid at risk.
Work is under way to come up with a solution to the problem but the exact nature, causes, and extent of it are still becoming apparent.
Complications a surprise
According to the market operator, its decision to cut the farms' output was made to "protect the integrity of the electricity system".

It followed a transmission fault in September traced back to the solar farms which had produced "voltage oscillations" that exceeded regulated limits, an AEMO spokesman said.

Mr Grant said there was "clearly a need to reconfigure the network" from what he called the "hub and spoke model" — where large thermal generators in Victoria's Latrobe Valley and the NSW Hunter Valley are linked to major urban centres on the east coast via "transmission backbones".

While planning for that was well under way, Mr Grant said the problems that forced the curtailment were not entirely anticipated.

"It wasn't clear that there would be this level of technical problem in the early stages," Mr Grant said.

"So all of these projects were built, they were commissioned, they received a registration from AEMO and were operating quite normally, until the third quarter of last year when AEMO decided that collectively they were posing a problem to the system's security.
I think AEMO have been using the West Murray as a bit of a laboratory on how to look at bringing on clusters of projects.

"Individually, all these projects met their registration and commissioning requirements with AEMO. It was only when they looked at them as a group they decided there was something they didn't like.

"So the process now for other projects, as they come to completion of construction and into commissioning, is they will bring them on one-by-one and look at them as a cluster or a wide area network of generation."
"In fairness to [AEMO], they are very busy in trying to manage this very rapid transition and resourcing up their organisation and bringing in the right technical capacities to be able to assess the impact of multiple new generators joining the market in a relatively short period of time, with relatively new technology — particularly in the solar space where the system control capabilities of the inverters that sit within the solar farms is quite sophisticated.

"I think there is a fair bit of learning by doing at AEMO as well."
An AEMO spokesman said the West Murray area was still attracting significant new investment interest "despite being a remote and electrically weak part of the electricity network".

"Thermal and stability limits mean it will not be possible for many of these projects to connect or generate at full output ahead of significant investment in network infrastructure," the spokesman said.
In its latest integrated system plan, the market operator has identified two infrastructure projects it says would help alleviate the issues in the area — a new interconnector between South Australia and NSW which is likely to be delivered within the next five years, and another longer term project to build an interconnector linking Victoria and NSW near Kerang.

"This is an emerging phenomenon that has not been seen at scale in other developed power systems around the world," the AEMO spokesman said.

"The nature, extent, and causes of these issues are only becoming apparent with advanced and detailed modelling capability that is now essential for technical assessments in remote and weak areas of the grid.

"NEM requirements are leading the development of this capability."

As you said smurf sounds like a lot of technical effort will be required, big job, by the sounds of it.

 

[Smurf1976]

One problem with inverters, and they're present in every solar or other DC system feeding the grid, is that they can be a bit like humans. Fine individually but they don't always play nicely together and "strange things happen" which can have rather nasty consequences.

At the extreme, I'm aware of the existence of a few ~1 kW inverters which reliably pick a fight with a 478,000 kW one. They lose every battle, reset and restart, then try again next time the big one's in the 0 - 50,000 kW output range. They'll never win but suffer no harm engaging in a twice daily punch up which they've been doing for over a decade now.

Have a few big ones on the same end of the line generating serious power and then it's far more of a concern if they don't play nicely which it seems they don't in the case you're referring to.

 

[macca]

I find this interesting, are we that far ahead of the world with bulk solar power output that we need to invent a way of managing the energy produced. It would seem that the SA/NSW link could have an extra benefit if we can link that to the farms

"This is an emerging phenomenon that has not been seen at scale in other developed power systems around the world," the AEMO spokesman said.

 

[SirRumpole]

I find this interesting, are we that far ahead of the world with bulk solar power output that we need to invent a way of managing the energy produced. It would seem that the SA/NSW link could have an extra benefit if we can link that to the farms

"This is an emerging phenomenon that has not been seen at scale in other developed power systems around the world," the AEMO spokesman said.

Well, Turnbull had the right idea with Snowy Hydro 2.0, but the current government doesn't seem interested in doing much of anything in the area of storage.

Didn't Morrison once describe SA's battery as a "big banana" ?

 

[sptrawler]

Well, Turnbull had the right idea with Snowy Hydro 2.0, but the current government doesn't seem interested in doing much of anything in the area of storage.

Didn't Morrison once describe SA's battery as a "big banana" ?

Is that a 2017 in the corner of the clip?
Also the Government has put money in, to increase the SA battery size by 50%, smurf said it is actually happening ATM.
With regard the Snowy 2.0, I posted up an article that said their workshop and vehicles were hit by the fires, so it sounds as though there is work happening on the ground there.
But I personally think the Federal Government should be focusing on storage, the ROE on storage will be nowhere near as good as generation, so the Government should be heavily subsidising it IMO.
As you say, they don't appear to be doing a lot in that space.

 

[sptrawler]

I find this interesting, are we that far ahead of the world with bulk solar power output that we need to invent a way of managing the energy produced. It would seem that the SA/NSW link could have an extra benefit if we can link that to the farms

"This is an emerging phenomenon that has not been seen at scale in other developed power systems around the world," the AEMO spokesman said.

Our HV grid is pretty unusual as it covers a massive area, and in a lot of the areas are lightly loaded, this causes a lot of problems with stability.
The other issue is the power lines as they go further out get smaller, because they are carrying less load, now we are putting in solar generators and connecting to these small lines, this also cause stability and heating problems.
In reality a lot of our H.V transmission has to be re built and sizes increased, to be able to accept this extra power being injected, it is being done but it takes time.
Smurf will probably explain it better.
Here is an article including a diagram showing our H.V transmission system, it is a bit old, but gives an idea of the layout.
https://electrical-engineering-port...-australias-electricity-transmission-networks

 

[IFocus]

Sounds like AEMO are under funded or under resourced to look at the engineering over all.

Have seen that repeatedly in industry where there simply are not enough eyes looking at detail.

The engineering here is not that technical but clearly outside of the AEMO experience.

 

[sptrawler]

Sounds like AEMO are under funded or under resourced to look at the engineering over all.

Have seen that repeatedly in industry where there simply are not enough eyes looking at detail.

The engineering here is not that technical but clearly outside of the AEMO experience.

I'm not sure, but maybe the AEMO started as more of a regulatory body than a technical body, but obviously as you say they need to pick up the pace on the technical side even if that means outsourcing it.
I suppose then though you end up with the same situation as the NSW building problems, with things falling to bits, catch 22 really under investment in technical people situation normal.

 

[Smurf1976]

I find this interesting, are we that far ahead of the world with bulk solar power output that we need to invent a way of managing the energy produced.

SA is at the extreme globally so far as any substantial power system is concerned in that wind + solar can at times go well over 100% of consumption with the rest sent to Victoria. Household systems alone can and do meet over 50% of total system load on occasion.

The basic issues which come from all this are many:

Small solar systems are not under any form of central control, they keep generating regardless of consumption. That's fine if they're only 1% of the total but when they are collectively supplying more than half the load then that's an issue if a major load (eg mines, factories, the CBD) is lost due to a fault. Can't stop all that solar without pushing system frequency up and that's akin to slowing the car down by deliberately running off the road.

That power flows in the network have greatly changed means there are a lot of bottlenecks that weren't previously an issue. What was of adequate capacity becomes inadequate if someone sticks a great big wind or solar farm at the end of it. It's akin to someone opening up a freight depot at the end of a quiet suburban street - all of sudden there's a problem now that you've got road trains going past on a road that just wasn't built to take them.

That production doesn't follow demand well is another one. Midday is peak solar output but has never been a time of high demand - it's always been somewhere in the middle. That problem can however be fixed by a combination of batteries and small pumped hydro (daily storage to soak up the midday surplus and use it during the evening etc) and large scale pumped hydro (longer term storage because not every day is windy or has a lot of sun). The "big Tesla battery" in SA is an example of the former as are AGL's planned batteries in NSW whilst Snowy 2.0 is an example of the latter. Ultimately more will be needed but they represent a step forward, they give some capacity to fix this part of the issue.

Where there's more concern and a lack of practical experience in the real world is with how all this responds under fault conditions. The entire grid and the concepts surrounding it all rely on the notion that a short circuit = extremely high current flow which trips the circuit breaker and disconnects the problem. Everything from the wiring in your house to major transmission lines all rely on that principle. To work though that requires that the source of generation can deliver that huge current when required and there's the difficulty.

Hydro and steam plant is very much like a freight train - it just plows on ahead no matter what, you won't stop it easily. If you've got a few hundred tonnes of metal spinning and being pushed along by 100,000 litres of water per second going through a turbine or steam at over 500 degrees and with a pressure of 16,000 kPa well then you're not going to be stopping that too easily. There's a lot of sheer mechanical grunt there - if anything gets in the way then rest assured that the machine will barely slow down.

Gas turbines aren't quite in the same league, in layman's terms they're a jet engine sitting on the ground turning an alternator, but there's still some decent mechanical grunt involved there. Same with diesel engines.

An inverter however has far more in common with a computer indeed it is in fact a bunch of electronics. That's where some of the difficulty arises - as anyone who's used computers will know, they're far more fussy than something that's purely mechanical and if things aren't right then there's a good chance that they throw in the towel completely and just don't go. That's not a desirable response in a power system reliant on huge fault currents being delivered with the generation source being "dumb" and just plowing ahead akin to the freight train.

There are workarounds to all that yes but, and here's the pointy bit of the argument, that comes down to proper design, testing and operational experience and there's a couple of issues there.

First is that what we're doing, particularly in SA, is akin to someone circa 1920 deciding that they'd build a huge airplane comparable to an A380. The rest of the world's putting fairly modest amounts of wind and solar into existing strong grids whereas in SA we're in a situation of having wind and solar at times able to supply literally the entire load and that's in a system that's rather weak (electrically) to start with. There's not a lot of experience to draw upon here, we're making it up as we go to some extent.

Lack of big industrial loads in SA is a problem in that regard. The presence of the separate aluminium, manganese and zinc smelters in Tasmania for example is a huge benefit in stabilising the system since they can and do vary load immediately in response to any disturbance.

Likewise the presence of the large aluminium smelter in Victoria is rather critical in operating the rest of the system - take that out and it becomes far more difficult to accommodate the movement of electricity between Victoria and NSW for example, since the smelter's providing a lot of frequency control services back into the grid. etc.

Can't vary the input to big electrolytic smelting loads in SA since in order to do that you need to have such a thing in the first place.

Finally there's the dilemma of AEMO in all this and the problem's explained in the name. Australian Energy Market Operator.

In function it's not overly dissimilar to the ASX. It operates a market. What the politicians forgot about in setting it up though is that it really also needs to perform a lot more functions than just that - engineering for example.

A problem when the utilities were split up and mostly privatised is that there used to be lots of people doing technical things both day to day and of a forward planning or purely research nature. Most of that was simply abandoned completely since it just didn't fit with any one company and in any event, doing it requires full access to the details of everything regardless of who owns it.

To cut a long story short there's been a pretty major ramping up of that sort of thing following the 2016 system black in SA but there's a lot of hands tied due partly to politics and partly the ownership structure. AEMO can't go and build anything for example but they can and do make the issues known with the intent that someone else picks up the idea and builds. AEMO can write a lot of reports, they can be very specific and they can make sure the right people know those reports exist but they can't force someone to build a $100 million asset.

As for the politics well that's just a pain. It's all down to tip toeing around issues lest it gets anyone offside. So they can't say that the intent is to close coal but they can do a hypothetical exercise as to what would happen if someone built lots of wind and solar and it just so happens that the outcome of that is using less coal. Same thing just a different way of saying it.

The politics is far easier in Tas and SA than elsewhere however and for much the same reason in both states. SA has a small oil and gas industry, Tas has a small coal mining industry, but in both states renewables development offers a far more likely path to an economic boom than do fossil fuels and that's readily apparent to the public so it's a losing game for any side of state politics to argue otherwise. Both states thus have the somewhat intriguing situation of a Liberal government that's pro-renewables and says so publicly.

 

[sptrawler]

Absolutely brilliant write up smurf. Priceless mate.

 

[IFocus]

Labour in W.A are proving to be really good,

Pretty much similar to Barnett Gov except for Metronet and a hand full of other issues thankfully no scandals from either governments, shezzas if only the federal government be 1/2 of a Barnett government instead of the over top BS politics played by this mob.