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The future of energy generation and storage

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and has the prices been passed down? your power bills cheaper?
 
Which is exactly what I've being saying for some time, if large storage is going to be charged to charge up and only get paid when required there will be no money in it, so will probably have to be public owned.
The return on equity will be crap, but you need as much storage as generation installed in the system, but no business will want to pay for it unless there is a guaranteed rate of return it would be dumb.
The government's will have to pay some form of capacity factor, or put the storage in themselves.
The generators aren't going to pump up the dams or charge up the batteries for free, the transmission networks aren't going to let them sell their output over the grid for free, so it's either a large surcharge to pay the storage company enough to make it worthwhile, the government's install the storage and just accept a poor rate of return. Or make it a pre condition that solar/wind project's have to include a storage component.
 
Same with things like gas stations that might be used 3% of the time to fill in the gaps, they won't make money but if you don't have them, you could get caught short. No private operator would be interested so it has to be government.
 
SirRumpole said:
Same with things like gas stations that might be used 3% of the time to fill in the gaps, they won't make money but if you don't have them, you could get caught short. No private operator would be interested so it has to be government.
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There will be a lot of issues that no one has even dreamt of, will crop up during this period and really is what the future technologies statement is about.
As the problems present, the way to overcome it has to be developed, it is these periods of massive change where most of our technical knowledge advances.
It's like during war times one side comes up with a clever weapon, the other side comes up with technology to nullify or minimise its impact e.g sonar and radar.
From reading what smurf and others have said, we are already making world leading advances in the field of high renewable grid penetration, the inverter instability issues and circulating current and stability problems in remotely located solar/wind farms in close proximity to each other. There will be many, many more issues e.g the synchronous condensers installed in S.A, for an electrical background person, this is like a kid watching the Christmas tree go up. Lol
 
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SirRumpole said:
No private operator would be interested so it has to be government.
Click to expand...

Indeed and same goes for anything that's in the category of backup.

Google street view image of Lonsdale / Port Stanvac power stations here (it's technically two plants but right next to each other so the same place in practice):

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
www.google.com.au

Zoom in and take a close look at the sign on the fence to see who owns it.....

This is a diesel (internal combustion engines not turbines) power station comprising multiple small units, total about 80 MW. Location = outer suburban Adelaide. It's a peaking and backup facility in practice in terms of usage. It's sitting idle 99% of the time but if it didn't exist then on occasion there'd be blackouts yes.
 
Snowy Hydro gets around dont they?
 
It looks as though the retirement of coal is locked in for the current period, I guess it can change with changing events and technologies, but have a consensus is a great starting point and map of what need to be done when.
And as I said years ago, the more the politicians and Government keep their nose out the better, they would know about as much about power generation and transmission, as I know about how they can sleep at night. ?

Industry, investors bank on no coal power by 2043, market operator says

Coal is becoming commercially uncompetitive due to the influx of cheap wind and solar power flooding the energy market.
www.smh.com.au
From the article:
The equivalent of NSW and Victoria’s combined fleet of coal-fired power plants will shut in the next 10 years according to the latest plans from the Australian Energy Market Operator, which show 60 per cent of fossil fuel power generation closing by 2030.

AEMO manages the electricity system across the country and has spent the past 18 months consulting 1500 stakeholders on what the energy grid will look like out to 2050.

It presented four plausible scenarios to the energy industry and investors and said the outcome selected by a “strong consensus” assumed 14 gigawatts of coal power would exit the National Electricity Market by 2030 – a scenario dubbed the “step change” model – with a complete exit of coal by 2043.

Fourteen gigawatts represents the combined capacity of NSW’s five plants and Victoria’s three plants and that exit is much faster than the plans coal plant operators have lodged with AEMO, which has been officially notified these companies will shut just five gigawatts of capacity by 2030.

AEMO’s step change scenario shows coal closures rolling out even faster than under the upgraded climate policies of both major political parties.

AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman said the step change scenario outstripped previous expectations but its model showed the transition could run smoothly with a “substantial increase” of dispatchable power to prepare for when the grid is completely coal-free.

AEMO said its step change model shows a need for 9 gigawatts of gas-fired power and an extra 620 gigawatt hours worth of battery or pumped-hydro power. I did keep saying storage is the issue what is Snowy 2.0? 350 gigawatt hours.

It said a $12.5 billion investment to build the coal-free grid of the future, which needs much more high voltage power lines to link the vast array of new wind and solar farms, battery, gas and pumped-hydro power assets, would deliver $29 billion in net market investments.
Significant investment is also needed so the transmissions network can efficiently accommodate the rise in what’s known as distributed energy resources, including households with rooftop solar panels that can feed power back into the grid, and store power in batteries.

“This transformation will efficiently deliver secure, reliable and affordable electricity while substantially contributing to national emissions objectives,” Mr Westerman said.

AEMO’s step change model showed the amount of electricity across the energy grid would nearly double by 2050 from 180 to 330 terawatt hours, as coal exits, petrol and diesel cars are replaced by electric vehicles and gas-fired industrial processes are electrified.
 
What we have been talking about for a long time, now the AEMO has put a line in the sand, hopefully the States and grid operators make a concerted effort to upgrade the various HV transmission grids.

Renewable energy hotspot grinds to a halt through lack of transmission infrastructure

With Queensland lagging on its 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030 target, businesses and residents of the state's solar and wind-rich north wait for reliable transmission lines.
www.abc.net.au
 
sptrawler said:
AEMO said its step change model shows a need for 9 gigawatts of gas-fired power and an extra 620 gigawatt hours worth of battery or pumped-hydro power.
Click to expand...
To the extent there's an ideological divide, that's the main one.

That 9GW of gas could be replaced with even more large scale hydro for example, it's entirely possible to do so and end up with a 100% renewable system.

Or alternatively we could scrap any thought of building more hydro and have more gas instead.

Personally I'd choose hydro but others will strongly disagree. My reasoning is that when compared to gas, hydro:

*Is far more durable in terms of the physical assets. Once built it'll outlast anyone alive at the time.

*Doesn't require the ongoing exploration for gas, drilling, fracking, building pipelines and so on.

*Need not emit ongoing CO2 past the initial construction stage assuming vegetation is first removed from the reservoir area.

Those on the other side will be quick to point out that the downside of hydro is that, to do it with the depth of storage required, is that it means putting land under water. That's a concept traditionally despised by conservationists, indeed it was literally the trigger for the formation of what is today known as The Greens.

But then I'd point out that there are people opposed to gas too, quite a few in fact.

In practice there'll be some of both that's a given. Snowy 2.0 is physically under construction and there's ongoing investment into gas so both are part of the future in practice.
 
Does it have to be either/or or is their room for both?

Just thinking of the construction time for pumped hydro and the fact that you can put in some gas turbines a pretty quickly (my assumption I stand to be corrected), so maybe GT's could fill a short term gap?
 
As you say ATM gas is quick to install, very flexible in operation and can be retired easily if not required at a later date, unlike steam plant which has a lot of infrastructure. My guess is pumped hydro will be continually installed ad infinitum, and eventually be the major bulk storage medium, because as smurf says it lasts a long time, is super reliable and perfectly clean.
 
SirRumpole said:
Does it have to be either/or or is their room for both?
Click to expand...
What matters is the total capacity of generating plant that, whilst it won't be running most of the time, is technically capable of running constantly when required.

Hydro with decent storage capacity can do that. So can anything based on burning fuel so long as there's an adequate supply of fuel available either in real time (eg coal mine right next to the power station that can mine the coal as fast as it's burned) or produced more slowly in advance and stockpiled.

So they're interchangeable.

What isn't interchangeable and performs a different role is short duration storage. So large scale batteries, home batteries, short duration pumped hydro that stores a few hours worth and so on. Those have a very real role to play with meeting peak demand and raising minimum load on a daily basis but they simply can't shift energy from a windy week to a calm week or from one season to another.

Hydrogen? The round trip storage efficiency is poor compared to hydro or batteries but it could well be another option, especially if it does become a tradeable commodity. It's not something anyone's likely to commit to right now, given the uncertainties of cost and so on, but it may sell end up as part of the mix too.
 
sptrawler said:
As you say ATM gas is quick to install, very flexible in operation and can be retired easily if not required at a later date
Click to expand...
I'm sure you're aware but for others, one thing about open cycle gas turbines is they're readily relocatable.

The 6 x 50 MW units at Valley Power (Vic) are second hand from two power stations originally built in NZ in the 1970's for example.

Another is Hallett (SA) which comprises a rather odd bunch of random second hand gas turbines of various sizes and efficiencies.

Another example is the 3 x 25 MW installed in Tasmania in 2016. They were rented, never intended to be a permanent installation, and have long since been returned to their owner in the US.

So they're quite sellable second hand. Versus say a coal plant where site works, boilers etc you can't really recover any money there, once it's built that's where it's staying.
 
Sunday's chart for SA explains it all pretty well:



Last night the wind (green) was going nicely and during the day solar (yellow) carried most of the load. Once late afternoon came though it's down to batteries (blue), gas (orange), diesel (red) and supply from Victoria (purple) to carry the load.

With the wind still well down at midnight, therein lies the need for either longer duration storage than batteries can at present economically provide or alternatively backup from gas, diesel etc. Long term that might change, if batteries become a lot cheaper, but for the moment that's the situation - they're economic to build for peaks (short duration) but not to run for an extended period.
 
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