The future of energy generation and storage

[Smurf1976]

Tasmania to get into hydrogen production.

Bell Bay has an advantage for the location for several reasons.

It's an existing strong point in the transmission network with 4 x 220kV lines leading there. 2 lines from Palmerston switchyard (Poatina power station) which along the way also connect at Hadspen (Launceston) and from Palmerston connect to the south of the state (including the Derwent stations and Gordon power station). Plus two lines from Sheffield switchyard which connects the Mersey-Forth hydro stations and then on to Farrell switchyard which connects the Pieman stations plus John Butters PS and wind generation. George Town substation (Bell Bay) is also the connection point for Tas - Vic power transmission.

Also it's the point where all natural gas, literally 100% of it, enters the state. So if there's to be any blending of hydrogen into the natural gas supply then a single injection point would cover the entire state from Bell Bay.

Also the land is zoned "Major Impact Heavy Industrial" and presently located there is Bell Bay Aluminium (aluminium smelter), Ecka Granules (aluminium powder), TEMCO (manganese alloy smelter and sinter plant), Tamar Valley power station (gas), the shipping port and a few timber-related mills etc. Historically there used to be an automotive wheel casting plant there too - that's long gone but Mazda alloy wheels were being made there at one point many years ago along with various others.

TEMCO is very marginal economically, the writing has been on the wall for a long time now and I doubt it will survive too much longer unless a steel company buys it out for reasons of vertical integration (noting that it's the only such plant in Australia so if it does close then Whyalla and Port Kembla will be dependent on imports for alloys), but the other things there are reasonably sound businesses.

Bell Bay is almost directly opposite the infamous Beaconsfield gold mine on the other side of the river by the way.

A very old photo of the now closed Bell Bay power station which is a short distance south of the other factories etc. Tamar Valley PS and various gas infrastructure has since been built behind it. Good thing about hydrogen = no smoke.

 

[sptrawler]

Another example of the cart before the horse, solar/wind farms are quick and easy to build, to re configure the HV grid to be able to take them is time consuming.
It's a bit like going out and buying a load of cheap chinese BEV's, then opening up a sales yard in outback Queensland and asking the Government to put in more generation and charging infrastructure in the Town so you can sell the cars.
Wouldn't it be best to get the o.k from the Government, before buying the cars?
Just my opinion.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2...ransmission-failure/12021082?section=business

A renewable energy park developer will write down up to $20 million from its half-share of a major investment following months of problems connecting the facility to the power grid.

Key points:

• The throttled Kennedy Energy Park combines 12 wind turbines, 55,000 solar panels, and 4MW hours of battery storage, all designed to power 35,000 homes
• A professor of engineering at ANU says authorising new transmission lines was slow and antiquated right across Australian states
• He says without that investment "we're stuck with old, unreliable power stations that frequently go offline"

Canberra-based company Windlab told the ASX it was planning to downgrade the value of its stake in north Queensland's Kennedy Energy Park.

The Australia-first facility combines 12 wind turbines, 55,000 solar panels, and four megawatt hours of battery storage, all designed to power 35,000 homes.

Located east of the town of Hughenden the project was completed in early 2019, but problems receiving Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) standards mean it has generated a fraction of its capacity.

"AEMO's core responsibility is power system security, which includes the safe integration of all new generation into the broader power transmission system."

The spokesman said AEMO had noticed a spike in remote regions hosting electricity generators and integrating such capacity to the grid could be problematic.

"There is a high interest in renewable connections ... and these are increasingly requiring detailed technical assessments to confirm ability to safely operate without adversely impacting power system stability.

 

[sptrawler]

Looks as though the penny has dropped with Mr Andrews and they are going to reserve any gas found. Ah the light dawns.
But not everyone is happy.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03...n-but-bans-fracking/12063196?section=business
From the article:
Premier Daniel Andrews said the new gas supplies would be reserved for Victorian households and businesses first and companies that wanted to drill for gas on private land would have to strike agreements with landholders.

Environment Victoria chief executive Jono La Nauze said the Government's decision would expose everyone to a greater risk of climate change.

"It's extraordinary that after such a horror bushfire season any government would be considering increasing fossil fuel use in the state," Mr La Nauze said.

"Increasing gas use in Victoria will expose Victorians to a greater risk of climate change including worse droughts and worse bushfires.

The Victorian Greens said opening more drilling for gas would be "terrible for farmers, the environment and the climate".

"In the face of a climate crisis we shouldn't be looking for and burning more fossil fuels," Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam said.

 

[sptrawler]

Genex gets funding for Kidston pumped storage project.
It is good to see the transition to renewables hasn't come to a halt, due to the virus.

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.c...ent-for-kidston-pumped-storage-hydro-project/
From the article:
Under the ESSA, EnergyAustralia, which is owned by Hong Kong-based China Light and Power Group (CLP), will have full operational dispatch rights for the hydro plant, in exchange for a fixed annual rental payment that will increase over the term of the agreement.

The 30-year agreement for operation of the asset is divided into 10-year terms, with two options to extend after the first 10-year period; and should EnergyAustralia take the agreement to its full extension, it will have the right to acquire Genex’s holding in the project which has an expected life of at least 80 years.
The original proposal was for a full 30-year contract with EnergyAustralia under which the gentailer would own 50% of the pumped-hydro component of the hub, and guarantee revenues for the first 30 years of the joint venture.

“We were very close to finalising the deal in October of last year, but for CLP it was too big an exposure for them to take in one transaction,” says Kidston.

EnergyAustralia’s request to renegotiate could have had a fatal-to-the-project domino effect, jeopardising finance arranged with the Federal Government’s NAIF; putting major investment by Japan’s J-Power, whose commitment was contingent on federal funding, in doubt; and causing Genex to call a halt to trading of its securities.

When NAIF extended its financing opportunity to June 2020, the funding stack reassembled like a film on rewind.
With finances in place, construction will begin: first the upper Wises Pit reservoir will be enlarged; then water currently in the lower Eldridge Pit will be pumped into the upper reservoir to allow tunnelling, caverning, and installation of turbines before linking the two pits.

Completion of the three-year project, at a capital cost of $700 million, will then enable expansion, by up to 270 MW, of Kidston Solar; and potential development of the 150 MW Kidston Wind Project, which is currently undergoing feasibility studies and showing a strong consistent wind resource.

“Up in North Queensland, you’ve got a lot of solar,” says Kidston. “Some would say a little bit too much solar…”

Long live ARENA!
Kidston says that support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has been “critical” to initiating and advancing Genex’s vision for its Clean Energy Hub:

• ARENA has provided development funding for the pumped-hydro project since 2015; “they’ve helped us fund all the studies, all the technical works and now some of the legal costs associated with the project development,” says Kidston. Of $30 million needed to bring the project to this stage, ARENA has provided $9 million.
• CEFC was one of two original financiers on the Kidston 1 Solar Farm, which has since been refinanced; and the CEFC is now providing debt funding for the Jemalong Solar Project, which is scheduled to be completed at the end of this year.

 

[sptrawler]

Victoria's plan to install big renewable solar and wind farms, hits a hurdle, with the States H.V transmission system.
An interesting article.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/victorias-big-renewable-energy-plans-face-major-network-hurdle-50930/
From the article:
Victoria’s ambitious renewable energy plans – to source 40 per cent of its demand from renewables by 2025 – face a potential significant hurdle because of network constraints in the west of the state.

The AEMO report notes that western Victoria is a rich resource for wind and solar resources, and for cheap land. The electrical infrastructure, however, is “insufficient to allow unconstrained access to all of the new renewable generation” seeking to connect to it.

This map to the right illustrates where the problem lies. The purple lines represent the 220kV lines, while the yellow one is the 500kV transmission line.

The most congested line is 220 kV transmission path that loops between Ballarat – Horsham – Red Cliffs – Kerang. But all parts of the line are expected to have “weak” system strength over time.

 

[sptrawler]

The holy grail of power generation, still as illusive as ever. Some interesting comments in the article.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04...nable-power-promise/12114948?section=business
From the article:
Future focused or fantastic folly?
Proponents of nuclear fusion believe it will end the world's dependence on fossil fuels once and forever.

But the catch is that no-one involved in the research believes a fully operational, commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor will be operating before at least 2050.

That fact has seen some question the level of financial investment, including Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, the director of Energy Research at Oxford University and a former director general of CERN.

He once managed the UK's fusion program, but two years ago, in an interview with the Simons Centre for Geometry and Physics, he expressed doubts about ITER and the viability of the industry in general.

"I used to think that there was a reasonably good chance that fusion could compete with other low carbon sources of power, but while I would not say that it's impossible, the situation has changed," he said.

"The cost of wind and solar power has decreased faster than anyone could have dreamed. Meanwhile ITER has gone way over budget. Fusion reactors will be intrinsically more expensive than we thought a decade ago."
He argues that ITER needs to go ahead, but that a final cost comparison with renewables should be conducted before any construction on a full-scale reactor is begun.

Dr Kingham understands the argument, but he believes the long-term economics still make sense.

"The point with renewables is that large-scale transmission of power across the world is not necessarily going to be feasible, and extremely large-scale storage looks prohibitively expensive and perhaps even technically not feasible," he says.

"So, I think fusion in the long-term sits alongside renewables as part of the low carbon solution we need to be developing and deploying.
Professor Wilson adds that all projections indicate global energy needs are likely to dramatically increase as more and more people are lifted out of poverty in the developing world.

"Even now, Delhi consumes something like seven gigawatts of power," he says.

"That is a very high power density. It's hard to imagine delivering that through wind and solar."

Planning now for the mass energy requirements of the future, he argues, makes for prudent policy.

"We need to develop technologies, otherwise all we're doing is delaying the problem… leaving a problem for the next generation to try and fix," he says.

"Fusion is really the only clean reliable way of doing that. That's the gap that fusion is aiming to fill.

 

[Smurf1976]

Probably the best illustration of the problem of network constraints and insufficient demand at times of high renewable generation I've seen:

That was Saturday 11th April 2020 in South Australia with the chart showing wind generation only. The red line marks 11:00am (SA time) for reference.

As is very clearly visible, it became highly erratic from 11am to 2pm - that's due to network constraints and lack of demand, wind farms fighting it out on price versus other generation (in other states as well as SA), leading to that large fluctuation in output. The wind didn't stop and start blowing, its potential power output was simply wasted.

Addressing that via a combination of network upgrades (eg the SA - NSW transmission line), more storage (pumped hydro and/or batteries) and shifting the time of some loads (eg off-peak storage water heating) are keys to progressing further the use of renewables.

Incidentally - my hot water service does indeed switch on at 11am and typically runs until about 2pm although power remains available to it until 3pm. So nailed it today - not every day will be perfect but yes those times are calculated with the aim of putting to use a bit of that wind and solar. It's better to be heating my shower with it than having it go to waste. Obviously at the level of a single household it's more about proof of concept etc (and yes I can assure you the water's still up to temperature the following morning, no issues there it's all working as intended).

Also around the same time in Victoria there was a serious incident although the lights remained on:

At 13:26 (Vic time) the Macarthur Wind Farm and Yallourn power station unit 3 tripped. In layman's terms that means they unintentionally stopped working very suddenly. Normal straight to zero literally in an instant, dead.

Two minutes later at 13:28 Yallourn units 1 and 4 also tripped leaving unit 2 as the only one running at Yallourn.

So a pretty decent shake to the system but it held up OK given the low demand at the time. Macarthur wind farm and Yallourn #1 are now back up and running normally, Yallourn #3 and #4 are still off.

No comment as to the cause because I don't know the details beyond saying it was certainly not an intended occurrence and is the sort of thing that if it occurred under different circumstances could have left the community in the dark. That demand in Vic was less than 40% of peak at the time (due to Easter, COVID-19, weather, etc) left plenty of room to cope basically.

At a whole of system (all states except WA and NT) level there was a period around midday where total output from renewables did top 50% of demand by the way. Note that was unrelated to the incident described above and occurred prior to it.

 

[sptrawler]

As I said a long time back, I think W.A will be the first grid to go completely coal free and may actually be the first grid completely renewables, time will tell.
W.A is in the enviable position of being a small grid, the coal generation is mainly Government owned and they do have a gas reservation policy, so it is a bit of an advantage.
Here is a pod cast by the W.A minister for energy, a bit boring but covers the issues, for anyone interested.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/energy-...ke-lead-in-renewable-energy-transition-62987/

 

[Dona Ferentes]

W.A will be the first grid to go completely coal free

W.A is in the enviable position of being a small grid, the coal generation is mainly Government owned and they do have a gas reservation policy, so it is a bit of an advantage.

WA coal was always crap. Collie coal has a high fines content, low thermal efficiency, they never pursued it in a big way. A few smelters in the SW Pinjarra and the like were there, but it wasn't attractive thermal coal that Hunter and Qld had/ has.

 

[sptrawler]

WA coal was always crap. Collie coal has a high fines content, low thermal efficiency, they never pursued it in a big way. A few smelters in the SW Pinjarra and the like were there, but it wasn't attractive thermal coal that Hunter and Qld had/ has.

That may be so, but it has run power stations in W.A for a long time, as for never pursuing it in a big way, it was and still is by far the biggest source of generation in W.A.
Up untill recently, Kwinana 4 coal fired units of the six installed, Muja 8 coal fired units, Collie 1x 340MW coal fired unit, Blue Waters power station 2 coal fired units.
Gas generation was far smaller untill approx 8 years ago, when Kwinana commenced closing steam generators and installing gas turbines.
I could be too prescriptive about it, but suffice to say, coal generation was far and away the biggest source of energy in W.A.

 

[Smurf1976]

That may be so, but it has run power stations in W.A for a long time

By all means correct me if I'm wrong, it's your end of the country not mine , but if I recall correctly then so far as Perth is concerned 100% of electricity supply was from coal from the opening of East Perth Power Station (1916, closed 1981) to sometime in the 1960's when East Perth and South Fremantle (opened 1951, closed 1985) switched to burning fuel oil shortly followed by the opening of Kwinana A & B stations as oil-fired plant plus the oil-fired gas turbine out the back in the early 1970's.

In the space of just a few years WA went from 100% coal to having 360 MW on coal (Bunbury + Muja A & B) and 656 MW on oil (Kwinana A & B plus the gas turbine, South Fremantle, East Perth).

That worked nicely until the 1973-74 oil crisis which prompted East Perth and South Fremantle to go back to coal in a hurry and Kwinana C, then under construction, to be modified as dual fuel coal and oil fired plant with the later conversion of Kwinana A to be likewise. Then the whole Kwinana complex, including B station, was converted to also use natural gas in the 1980's when the pipeline from the NW Shelf was built.

Muja C opened in 1981 using coal and Muja D in 1985. By that time oil was pretty much removed from the system other than as a backup fuel at Kwinana, coal was the main fuel and gas did most of the rest.

Since that time new coal plant has been built at Collie and Bluewaters plus various gas-fired facilities including at the Kwinana site and and elsewhere. The original Kwinana plants are now permanently shut as are Muja A & B, Bunbury is demolished, South Fremantle is a derelict shell and East Perth is a listed historic site that seems to have been problematic working out what to do with it.

Muja C's days are also numbered and it's the next to go. That leaves Muja D, Collie, Bluewaters 1 & 2 as operating coal plant in WA apart from co-generation in heavy industry.

Happy to be corrected if I've got anything wrong there - all that's from memory and I've never had any actual need to know it so might be a year or two out somewhere.

 

[sptrawler]

Spot on smurf, I was just pointing out to Donna that the claim coal was never pursued in a big way, was slightly incorrect.
Up untill recent times, there was over 2GW of installed coal generation in W.A and it was by far the biggest source of fuel.
It actually was always a lot cheaper to run coal than gas, but in order to get the gas pipeline built, the Government had to sign a take or pay contract which for many years it couldn't use. Lots of weird and wonderfull deals were done to try and meet the gas commitment.

 

[Humid]

Is there a power station equivalent to train spotting?
I remember the South Freo power station stacks were used by local boaties as a wind sock to see if fishing was on the cards

 

[sptrawler]

Is there a power station equivalent to train spotting?
I remember the South Freo power station stacks were used by local boaties as a wind sock to see if fishing was on the cards

They were the days, the Cockburn Shire president was always complaining about the stack emissions, no precips soot all over the suburb, ah puts hairs on your chest .
He used to say, his missus didn't need hairs on her chest.
One of my mates father was on the construction of it, apparently they used cement mixers and barrows, terrific old building going to wrack and ruin.

 

[Humid]

On top of that Robbs Jetty,Anchorage and the skin drying sheds....now there’s a collection of smells

 

[sptrawler]

On top of that Robbs Jetty,Anchorage and the skin drying sheds....now there’s a collection of smells

You used to hold your breath when drove past the scourers skin drying sheds, what a stink.

 

[Smurf1976]

Is there a power station equivalent to train spotting?

Well there used to be something pretty close in Victoria . From what I've been assured is correct by someone who would know:

Newport 'A' station opened 1918 and was built by the Victorian Railways. The SECV built Newport 'B' station right next to it, physically joined to the same building, in 1923 and later Newport 'C' station was added in 1947 with 'A' station partially redeveloped in the 1950's.

It has a further connection to railways in that virtually all coal used at the site was railed in and it's only about 1km from the railway workshops. So it always had a strong connection to the railways even after the SECV took over running it.

The old stations were shut by 1983 and demolished shortly afterward. The land is now a public park and outdoor sporting facility.

Still operating today is Newport D, in operation since 1980 and whilst a physically separate structure it's built right next to the old A,B,C complex. Construction of D station was highly controversial at the time over environmental, resource and industrial matters and only half of it was ever built. It is now owned by Energy Australia.

A, B and C were built to fire black coal but in practice due to persistent fuel shortages used an assortment of black coal, brown coal briquettes, raw brown coal, wood, oil and during various emergencies anything else which could be obtained that burned. D station uses natural gas with oil as backup - it has no technical capability to burn anything else.

 

[basilio]

The collapse of demand for oil is playing havoc with the fossil fuel industry. I think the next 6-12 months will see an acceleration of renewable energy projects and then electric cars.
Not a good time to be holding oil stocks IMV. Also serious implications for economies dependent on oil/gas revenue.

Oil prices slump as market faces lowest demand in 25 years
World energy watchdog forecast comes amid global attempt to contain Covid-19
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...rket-faces-lowest-demand-in-25-years-covid-19

 

[sptrawler]

Terrific news for solar/wind farms, the stability issues causing the AEMO to restrict the output, appears to have been solved by technical experts.
This could be a massive breakthrough for the renewable industry, it sounds as though they have succeeded, in getting the inverters to play nicely together.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/...nergy-output-after-tests-20200420-p54lf0.html

 

[sptrawler]

Perenjori in Country W.A to get battery backup, it is a town on the grid, but fed by a 75klm small feeder line.

https://westernpower.com.au/communi...ons&utm_content=article-perenjori-bess-b10420