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The future of energy generation and storage

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This move by West Australia will address the problems of shifting domestic solar power to supplying peak usage.
It would be a clever move to use electric cars as "vehicles" to store excess daytime consumption and the release it back to the grid a few hours later.

Daytime solar subsidies to be slashed as WA moves to head off grid overload
Subsidies to West Australian households that pump solar power to the grid during the middle of the day are set to be slashed in a bid to avoid the risk of renewable energy overloading the state's electricity system.

Key points:
  • More than 300,000 households in WA's south-west have solar panels
  • A new subsidy scheme will slash daytime payments for excess solar but boost those at peak times
  • The changes come into effect from August 31
The WA Government, however, will boost payments to customers exporting solar power into the network during peak times under a long-awaited shakeup of a key green energy incentive scheme.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2...sidy-overhaul-to-avoid-grid-overload/12608036
 

Talk about being a victim of your own success !
 
SirRumpole said:
Talk about being a victim of your own success !
Click to expand...
Yes, when Barnett suggested it there was a public outcry.
It will be interesting to see if it slows the uptake of solar, my guess is it will, but that isn't a bad thing as it will allow the system to catch up with the deployment.
What will be worth watching, is if the State Government start to subsidies house batteries, I doubt the 10c being offered will encourage the investment required.
 

The value of the time shift for solar energy production may be useful for large commercial organizations.

Think about a school/supermarket with an extensive solar array set up. If it can store excess power from the peak solar production times and then use it from 4-7 pm the economics may be well worth the investment.

There may be an opportunity to co-develop such projects with big battery investments which power companies can use to balance their power production.
 
I think schools don't need an incentive, as they are Government owned, so the rebate means little and the Government can put batteries and solar on.
As for supermarkets, the saving for the owner eg Westfield will depend on how their contracts with the shops are structured.
I think the W.A Government is trying to give itself some breathing space, they own the major coal fired generation and it is being thrashed to death.
So storage is required and W.A is very flat, so hydro is out, therefore batteries/H2 will be the goto storage.
It just depends on how much they want to pay for it.
The people who have solar, are getting 7c to export it to the Government, who are then on selling it for 26c.
To take that 7c off them and tell them they can now get 10c if they spend $7,000 on a battery ain't going to cut IMO.
IMO what is more likely with labor is, as they did when they first attained office, they nearly doubled the service fee. My guess is they will introduce time of day billing and 3pm-9pm will be very expensive and will hurt those who can least afford it, but Labor will get away with it.
Time will tell.
 
Apparently those with the existing 7c deal keep it, article updated 6 hrs ago.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-31/wa-solar-subsidy-overhaul-to-avoid-grid-overload/12608036
main points form article:
Subsidies to West Australian households that pump solar power to the grid during the middle of the day are set to be slashed in a bid to avoid the risk of renewable energy overloading the state's electricity system.
The WA revamp follows escalating warnings from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) that the state's biggest grid risked becoming "inoperable" unless the flood of solar was better managed.

There are now more than 300,000 – or one in three – households with solar on the South West Interconnected System, which spans the continent's southwestern corner, up from practically zero 10 years ago.

Combined, rooftop solar accounts for more than 1,200 megawatts of generation capacity, compared with an overall system capacity of about 6,000MW.
"WA is incredibly important," Mr Warren said.

"It's probably, if not the most important, then one of the most important grids in the world.

"That's because it has a very high level of rooftop solar penetration and it's completely isolated.

"So, in a sense [WA is] getting there first.
Under the changes, a new program will replace the Renewable Energy Buyback Scheme (REBS), which pays eligible customers a flat rate of 7.13 cents for every unit of electricity their solar panels export.

Instead of the flat rate, customers will be paid just 3c per kilowatt hour for their excess solar throughout most of the day as part of the new "distributed energy buyback scheme".

But in an effort to encourage people to invest in batteries or use more of the power their panels generate, the Government will boost to 10c/kWh exports into the grid between 3:00pm and 9:00pm.

The changes come into effect from Monday August 31.
State Energy Minister Bill Johnston stressed the changes would only apply to new solar customers or those upgrading their systems and that everyone else could remain on the old scheme if they chose.

Despite this, Mr Johnston said the revamp was desperately needed to put the electricity system on a more secure footing and make sure the benefits of abundant renewable energy were more equitably distributed.

"In January of 2019, [the AEMO] said that if there was nothing done about the uncontrolled growth of solar power then there would be blackouts in Western Australia starting in 2023," he said.

"So no change is not an option
 
SirRumpole said:
Talk about being a victim of your own success !
Click to expand...
It's a problem that has been coming for a long time. Go back quite a few pages on this thread and the warning was sounded that some fingers would be burned financially with the large solar farms as is now occurring.

Looking at solutions though, there's a bit of a tendency to focus on big and exciting solutions but the simple ones are often overlooked.

*Some appliances can be run at any time of the day and it makes no real difference to consumers. Dishwashers are the most obvious example but typically clothes dryers and pool filters are in the same category where used.

*To the extent someone's already charging batteries for whatever reason, that's another use where what time it's done is pretty flexible usually.

*There's an ongoing need for hot water and that occurs 365 days a year. Heating it with electricity during the middle of the day is an incredibly cheap, easy and low tech way to put that otherwise wasted energy to use and in doing so it's directly replacing fossil fuels either gas used to heat water directly or some fuel used to generate electricity at peak times.

*Route service buses are an electric vehicle possibility. I'm no expert on bus fleets but it has come to my attention that a substantial portion of city public transport buses are returned to the depot after the morning run and sit there until being used again in the afternoon. That makes them outright perfect candidates for soaking up electricity during the middle of the day noting that electric buses as a concept are inherently far easier than electric cars. Greater physical size means batteries can be easily placed under the floor etc and public transport buses have a known, fixed travel distance each day such that "range anxiety" isn't an issue. Additionally these vehicles are used almost entirely in urban areas, including typically within the CBD, such that there's a definite air quality benefit to be had by switching from diesel to electric.

Note that this does not require generating power at bus depots - the idea is to use the surplus that's in the grid noting that this seems to correlate extremely well to lots of buses being parked. Not all obviously, some are on the road all day, but it seems that there's plenty parked during the period when excess solar is an issue so it's an obvious use.

All that won't happen overnight of course but if we change pricing to encourage consumers to shift load where that's a sensible thing to do, if we change building codes and strongly encourage heat pump water heaters, if we commence what will realistically be a ~25 year transition of the city bus fleet well then all that's a way of putting this increasing abundance of solar power to good use in a way that replaces fossil fuels either directly or for power generation at peak times and in some cases brings other benefits such as better urban air quality.

All this is doable technically, it just needs the will to get on with it.
 
Smurf1976 said:
All this is doable technically, it just needs the will to get on with it.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised that there isn't a least the option to divert the power to water heating before it goes back into the grid. Or maybe there is but people preferred the feed in tariff ?
 
SirRumpole said:
I'm surprised that there isn't a least the option to divert the power to water heating before it goes back into the grid. Or maybe there is but people preferred the feed in tariff ?
Click to expand...
I think a substantial amount of people who initially installed PV panels were already using solar HWS.so their water is already hot for free. New setups would be different now
 
SirRumpole said:
I'm surprised that there isn't a least the option to divert the power to water heating before it goes back into the grid. Or maybe there is but people preferred the feed in tariff ?
Click to expand...
A simple way would be to put a timer on the hot water, so that it only switches on during the daylight hours, a bypass switch could be fitted for the odd occasion it needed to be switched on after daylight hours.
 
sptrawler said:
A simple way would be to put a timer on the hot water, so that it only switches on during the daylight hours, a bypass switch could be fitted for the odd occasion it needed to be switched on after daylight hours.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it's easy to do technically. If such a thing can be programmable which I'm sure it can be then the user could select their preferences; ie home appliances first, then battery charging, then hot water , then EV charging, or whatever they prefer.
 
Very easy, Bunnings have programmable inline switches ($20), that can be operated from an app on your mobile phone, all pretty simple these days. I use them to control the HWS and security at our unit.
 
and there we have, at the top of the thread, an ad for programmable inline switches (from Bunnings), while below is a Tesla battery solution
 
This story is BIG. A 6 seater plane that is cheaper to run that a competing commercial airliner.

The big deal is the fuel use.
What we're looking at is a six-person private craft that promises to fly at jet speeds, but with eight times lower fuel consumption, and a range that's twice that of a comparably sized craft.

With that sort of economy I think it would be ideal to use batteries as the power source.

Long-awaited Celera 500L 'bullet' plane is finally revealed
Maureen O'Hare, CNN • Updated 29th August 2020
FacebookTwitterEmail

(CNN) — The whispers started three years ago.
A mysterious bullet-shaped plane was spotted at the Southern California Logistics Airport near Victorville in April 2017. Its unusual design prompted immediate speculation, with military website The War Zone being the first to report that the aircraft was the work of California-based Otto Aviation -- and that development was very much under wraps.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/celera-500l-plane/index.html
 
Fortescue Metals has already expressed interest in hydrogen technology via an initial investment in the CSIRO's Hydrogen storage research, but today they announced they are looking to invest in developing PNG's Hydro resources.



https://www.fmgl.com.au/docs/defaul...stries-deed-of-agreement.pdf?sfvrsn=8274399_4
 
I just found an interesting article from the International hydro association that mentions PNG has untapped Hydro sources of potentially 15,000 MWH, and currently only has 250 MWH of installed capacity.

With a local population of only 7 Million, if hydrogen based or electricity exports are a viable thing from PNG, Fortescue may be on to something (albeit a way down the road.

https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/papua-new-guinea
 
There is a lot of potential, but as Oktedi and Bougainville proved, PNG isn't without its challenges.
 
The Big Battery in SA is getting 50% bigger.
Good story and rediscusses the issues around grid stability and the role of batteries in acting shock absorbers for supply fluctuations .

Tesla battery in South Australia expanded by 50 per cent, energy minister lauds benefits
Key points:
 
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