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The future of energy generation and storage

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It sounds as though there will be a major outage to strip the alternator @Smurf1976


reneweconomy.com.au

Loy Yang A coal generator unit offline for second time in three years

AGL says a unit at Loy Yang A has been sent offline, perhaps until August, its second major fault in just three years.
reneweconomy.com.au reneweconomy.com.au
From the article:
AGL Energy says a troubled generator unit at the Loy Yang A coal fired power station has been taken offline, possibly until August, due to an electrical fault within the generator.

It is the second time the ‘Unit 2’ generator at the Loy Yang A power station has been shut down due to an electrical fault, with a similar incident occurring in 2019 that shut down the same generator unit for more than seven months.
 
sptrawler said:
It sounds as though there will be a major outage to strip the alternator @Smurf1976
Click to expand...

The alternator was rewound in 2019, given a test run starting on 24 December that year at partial capacity followed by further work and intermittent operation during January and February 2020. Full return to service for sustained running was on 6 March 2020.

Whatever's gone wrong here I'm not sure but I can see this getting seriously painful in terms of the "who's to blame?" aspect.

For the record the other three units in Loy Yang A station and both B station units are not the same, indeed they're a different manufacturer. Unit 2 in A station, the one that has failed, was originally ordered for installation at Newport D station (Melbourne) however the scale of that was reduced from the originally planned two machines down to one so the other turbine and alternator ended up being the first installed at Loy Yang instead.

Newport has been in operation since 1980 whilst Loy Yang commenced operation in 1984.

Newport, now owned by Energy Australia, hasn't had any comparable incidents to my knowledge although it does have a different operating regime. Newport uses a gas-fired boiler and runs intermittently whereas Loy Yang runs constantly. Since 1999 Newport has an average capacity factor if 13.7%, that is an average output of 13.7% of peak output, which is a product of that intermittent operation and generally varying output when it's running. :2twocents
 
Considering the correlation between inreasingly high coal prices/continuing breakdown of coal fired electricity generation and the increasing wholesale price of electricity generation across NEM over the past year, causation is implied.

Those wedded to coal have nowhere to move. Electricity generation from wind/solar might be intermittent, but predicatble in the short term, which is good enough for the market. Breakdown of coal fired electricity generation is unpredicatble and common. The fuel source for renewables, when available, is free. Coal and gas, as fuel sources, are becoming more expensive.

Retail electricity will become cheaper the more that coal is dumped.
 
Eager said:
Electricity generation from wind/solar might be intermittent, but predicatble in the short term, which is good enough for the market
Click to expand...
It's good enough provided that there's an adequate storage system, or alternatively backup, to go with it.

Without that the ability to predict what's going to happen doesn't change the outcome. Knowing that the wind's going to blow for the next x hours then stop is helpful only if you're able to deal with it when it happens.

That's not a political, ideological or economic argument but simply an engineering one. Load on the NEM right now is 20,555 MW and either that's supplied in real time or it isn't. If it isn't well then the lights go out, literally so.

Where the debate lies is with how to do it. Few disagree with the idea of wind, solar and shallow storage using batteries. That's the easy bit.

It's the bulk storage aspect where the serious debate exists. :2twocents
 
The weird part is @Smurf1976 that people think that generators would rather run coal than renewables, it shows the level of ignorance in the general public IMO.
As you know if it was as easy as just building a 1000MW solar/wind farm and shut down the 1,00MW power station, AGL, Origin etc would jump at it, then when everyone is sitting in the dark with the toilet overflowing people would wonder why.

New AGL unit outage adds to energy pain​

Wholesale power prices have jumped by 150 per cent amid soaring coal and gas costs while heavy rain dampened solar output, Origin Energy warns.
 
sptrawler said:
The weird part is @Smurf1976 that people think that generators would rather run coal than renewables, it shows the level of ignorance in the general public IMO.
As you know if it was as easy as just building a 1000MW solar/wind farm and shut down the 1,00MW power station, AGL, Origin etc would jump at it, then when everyone is sitting in the dark with the toilet overflowing people would wonder why.

New AGL unit outage adds to energy pain​

Wholesale power prices have jumped by 150 per cent amid soaring coal and gas costs while heavy rain dampened solar output, Origin Energy warns.
Click to expand...

A government with guts would require that OUR coal and gas is delivered for local use at reasonable prices and then let the rest of the world haggle over the price they want to pay for the remainder.
 
SirRumpole said:
A government with guts would require that OUR coal and gas is delivered for local use at reasonable prices and then let the rest of the world haggle over the price they want to pay for the remainder.
Click to expand...
Yes the export parity pricing should be reviewed, but then the media would be screaming that the Government are making coal and gas cheaper because they don't like renewables.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The only answer IMO, is the State Governments and Feds need to buy back some of this coal generation and have an orderly closure.
I just can't see how the privates can keep running these plants and spend the amounts needed to keep them going, while still making a ROE. It just isn't going to work IMO, sooner or later they are just going to walk away from the coal stations and say it isn't in our best interest to keep running like this.
Lets be honest, if we can spend $50b putting in the NBN so that the telcos can charge taxpayers more for the internet, we could spend the same buying back all the stations that are required to support the transition to renewables. At least then the running cost and maintenance cost can be amortised into consolidated revenue and the closures can be carried out in an orderly manner.
The way it is at the moment, eventually the taxpayer is going to be paying the generators a standby allowance, just to keep them available anyway.
It will come to a head in the next 10 years IMO. :2twocents
 
sptrawler said:
It will come to a head in the next 10 years IMO. :2twocents
Click to expand...
No doubt telling you what you already know here but for the benefit of others..... :)

An integrated utility, either government or privately owned, would take a very different view of all this. In short:

1. Have a plan. What to build, in what order to build it and so on.

2. Build the new things then go through a thorough testing and commissioning process.

3. Old stuff ceases to be used and is retained on standby for a time "just in case" until there's absolute confidence that it's not needed.

Trouble is, we don't now have integrated utilities that can simply carry the cost of doing that. Now we have numerous entities all competing on price alone and without the ability to carry the cost of having plant sitting there just in case. Hence the rush to demolish, in some cases literally blow up with explosives, anything that isn't being run.

Northern, Playford B, Anglesea, Morwell, Hazelwood, Munmorah and so on. All you'll find there today is some flat land and in some cases a concrete pad where it's rather obvious something used to be there but there's nothing left of them in terms of being a power station. Gone.

Only stuff that's mothballed as such is the Tamar Valley CCGT in Tasmania which is properly mothballed for future use if needed. Plus the not in service units at Torrens Island in SA - the 4 x 120 MW are being properly mothballed although I'll be seriously surprised if they're ever returned to service in practice. There's also a 200 MW unit that's out of service but that one I expect probably will be returned someday - needs some work done however but it's not stuffed. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
No doubt telling you what you already know here but for the benefit of others..... :)

An integrated utility, either government or privately owned, would take a very different view of all this. In short:

1. Have a plan. What to build, in what order to build it and so on.

2. Build the new things then go through a thorough testing and commissioning process.

3. Old stuff ceases to be used and is retained on standby for a time "just in case" until there's absolute confidence that it's not needed.

Trouble is, we don't now have integrated utilities that can simply carry the cost of doing that. Now we have numerous entities all competing on price alone and without the ability to carry the cost of having plant sitting there just in case. Hence the rush to demolish, in some cases literally blow up with explosives, anything that isn't being run.

Northern, Playford B, Anglesea, Morwell, Hazelwood, Munmorah and so on. All you'll find there today is some flat land and in some cases a concrete pad where it's rather obvious something used to be there but there's nothing left of them in terms of being a power station. Gone.

Only stuff that's mothballed as such is the Tamar Valley CCGT in Tasmania which is properly mothballed for future use if needed. Plus the not in service units at Torrens Island in SA - the 4 x 120 MW are being properly mothballed although I'll be seriously surprised if they're ever returned to service in practice. There's also a 200 MW unit that's out of service but that one I expect probably will be returned someday - needs some work done however but it's not stuffed. :2twocents
Click to expand...

Exactly. A plan for the future is needed , not just continual brain farts about what looks good or is politically correct at the time.

OK , the first approach may be less flexible , but at least it provides some certainty, not a continual fear among consumers that the lights will go out...
 
SirRumpole said:
Exactly. A plan for the future is needed , not just continual brain farts about what looks good or is politically correct at the time.

OK , the first approach may be less flexible , but at least it provides some certainty, not a continual fear among consumers that the lights will go out...
Click to expand...

Or that prices will go through the roof.
 
@SirRumpole I posted this article in the uranium thread, but the last point highlights what you and I have been saying for a long time.

Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom​

(Updated April 2022)

  • The UK generates about 15% of its electricity from about 7 GW of nuclear capacity.
  • Most existing capacity is to be retired by the end of the decade, but the first of a new generation of nuclear plants is under construction.
  • Government plans call for up to 24 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2050 to provide about 25% of electricity.
  • The UK has implemented a thorough assessment process for new reactor designs and their siting.
  • The UK has privatized power generation and liberalized its electricity market, which together make major capital investments problematic.
 
The single biggest thing about the UK's decision to build more nuclear isn't about the reactors themselves or anything relating to them.

Rather, it's about who made the decision - government.

The actual champion of the cause for "liberalised" electricity markets is back into central planning in a big way and they won't be the last because, quite frankly, the idea just doesn't work particularly well due to its inherent lack of long term planning. Competing businesses can do the short term stuff, that with a lifespan of 25 or so years, quite easily but they do tend to baulk at the idea of first revenue being 15 years away and a 200 year project lifecycle and doing that in a competitive market with zero guarantees.

Government getting back into it, in the country which championed the cause of doing the opposite, is big news. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
The single biggest thing about the UK's decision to build more nuclear isn't about the reactors themselves or anything relating to them.

Rather, it's about who made the decision - government.

The actual champion of the cause for "liberalised" electricity markets is back into central planning in a big way and they won't be the last because, quite frankly, the idea just doesn't work particularly well due to its inherent lack of long term planning. Competing businesses can do the short term stuff, that with a lifespan of 25 or so years, quite easily but they do tend to baulk at the idea of first revenue being 15 years away and a 200 year project lifecycle and doing that in a competitive market with zero guarantees.

Government getting back into it, in the country which championed the cause of doing the opposite, is big news. :2twocents
Click to expand...

Yes, even our 'champions of liberalisation' , the LNP realised the place of governments in the power industry with the expansion of Snowy Hydro and the Kurri Kurri gas turbines.

That's not to say it has to be all government owned, as you pointed out there is room for both public and private, but they have to come to an agreement as to who does what based on pragmatism not ideology.
 

Power price surge slugs big users​

The Australian Energy Regulator is investigating after wholesale electricity tariffs rose above $5000 per megawatt hour.
 
"The quest for grid inertia, then, is an example of the nitty-gritty adjustments needed to accommodate the shift in energy production and use that is now going on. Other technologies, from electric cars to hydrogen-gas supplies, may have higher profiles. But what is happening down in the engine room of the green economy is just as important—if not more so."

Green power needs more than just solar panels and wind turbines​

Electricity grids themselves must be tweaked to cope​

1651913776770.png


No good deed, an old saying has it, goes unpunished. That is certainly true of the introduction of green energy. The unreliability of solar and wind power compared with that generated by fossil fuels is well known—and with it the concomitant need for storage facilities such as large battery packs to smooth things over.

But green energy brings another, more subtle, problem. Modern electrical grids operate on alternating currents (ac), and these need to be of a fixed and reliable frequency (usually either 50hz or 60hz). This frequency’s stability is maintained by a phenomenon called grid inertia, which results from the real, physical inertia (as described by Isaac Newton’s first law of motion) embodied in the power-generating turbines of fossil-fuel (and also nuclear and hydroelectric) power stations.

Going for a spin​

These turbines act as massive, inertia-storing flywheels. As long as their outputs are in synchrony (and one important part of grid management is to keep them that way), the resistance to change which their inertia provides stabilises the whole grid. The fewer the number of these turbines (as opposed to wind turbines, which rotate out of sync with the grid, and solar panels, which do not rotate at all), the less inertia a grid has. And in some particularly green countries this is getting to be a problem, to the extent that non-power-generating flywheels are being added to the system to provide the missing inertia.

One such place is Britain, which generates about 30% of its electrical power from wind and sunlight. On March 17th, for example, National Grid eso—the firm that, as its name suggests, operates the country’s electricity grid—cut the opening ribbon on a plant built near Keith, in northern Scotland, by Statkraft, a Norwegian renewable-energy firm. The inertia in this plant is stored by a pair of steel flywheels (see picture of the road train required to deliver them). Each of these flywheels weighs 194 tonnes and rotates at up to 500 revolutions per minute (rpm).

A second Statkraft plant should open in the autumn, near Liverpool. Instead of large masses rotating relatively slowly, this will rely on smaller ones spinning fast (1,500rpm). Both approaches embody about the same amount of inertia, and in combination the pair will store around 2% of the inertia currently required to support Britain’s grid. That is equivalent to the inertial contribution of a conventional coal-fired station. Moreover, later in the year National Grid esoplans to add two more systems, built by Siemens, to increase its inertia-storing potential still further.

There is, though, an alternative to building new flywheels, and that is to repurpose old ones—in other words, to redesign existing fossil-fuel stations simply to store inertia, rather than generating electricity. National Grid eso is testing that idea, too, in a former gas-fired station in north Wales. This has been open for business as an inertia store since 2021.

The firm hopes, as well as all this, to develop ways of stabilising the network without spinning lumps of metal for their own sake. That will involve the use of what are known as grid-forming inverters.

Both solar power, which is a direct current (dc) when it comes out of the generating panel, and wind power, which is ac but still needs to be tweaked before being fed into a grid, are first processed by semiconductor-based devices called inverters. This is also true of the dc drawn from storage devices such as batteries, which are employed to smooth out irregularities in solar and wind power.

Existing inverters are described as “grid following”. This means they monitor and fit in with the established frequency of the grid they are feeding into. That suits grid managers well enough when solar and wind contribute only a small fraction of a grid’s total power, but is progressively less suitable as that contribution rises. However, inverters can be designed to be “grid forming” instead—meaning the current they put out mimics the external stabilising effect of mechanical inertia. Using grid-forming inverters rather than grid-following ones should allow much more wind and solar power to be integrated easily into a grid.

Until recently, grid-forming inverters had been tested only at small scale. In January, however, Britain’s energy regulator, Ofgem, signed off on a technical standard acceptable to both manufacturers and service providers. That will permit their large-scale deployment, and Julian Leslie, National Grid eso’s chief engineer, says he expects big grid-forming inverters to be providing inertia within two years.

Grid lock​

Being an island, Britain has a more or less self-contained electricity grid. This makes it a good place to try such an experiment. Success would encourage other island grids, both real (Australia’s and Ireland’s, for example) and metaphorical (such as Texas’s, which has few links with the rest of North America) to try. Larger grids in North America and Europe will no doubt be watching from the wings.

The quest for grid inertia, then, is an example of the nitty-gritty adjustments needed to accommodate the shift in energy production and use that is now going on. Other technologies, from electric cars to hydrogen-gas supplies, may have higher profiles. But what is happening down in the engine room of the green economy is just as important—if not more so. ■

www.economist.com

Green power needs more than just solar panels and wind turbines

Electricity grids themselves must be tweaked to cope
www.economist.com www.economist.com
Click to expand...
 
sptrawler said:

Power price surge slugs big users​

The Australian Energy Regulator is investigating after wholesale electricity tariffs rose above $5000 per megawatt hour.
Click to expand...
There's a huge amount of pain coming on the price front that's for sure.

Even at off-peak times we're seeing ridiculous prices, it's over $200 in Qld, NSW and SA right now in the middle of the night.

Financially I can only think that something's going to break. It wouldn't surprise me if someone ended up going broke at this rate in much the same manner as has occurred overseas, most notably the UK where 31 energy retailers, out of about 70 in the market, have failed over the past year or so.

Suffice to say none of this comes as a surprise to those involved, it's been coming for a long time and won't be fixed quickly. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
There's a huge amount of pain coming on the price front that's for sure.

Even at off-peak times we're seeing ridiculous prices, it's over $200 in Qld, NSW and SA right now in the middle of the night.

Financially I can only think that something's going to break. It wouldn't surprise me if someone ended up going broke at this rate in much the same manner as has occurred overseas, most notably the UK where 31 energy retailers, out of about 70 in the market, have failed over the past year or so.

Suffice to say none of this comes as a surprise to those involved, it's been coming for a long time and won't be fixed quickly. :2twocents
Click to expand...

@Smurf1976, I know you don't like talking politics, but can you see anything in any Party policy that would help fix the problems you have been detailing for some time ?
 
SirRumpole said:
@Smurf1976, I know you don't like talking politics, but can you see anything in any Party policy that would help fix the problems you have been detailing for some time ?
Click to expand...
Primary reason I've lost interest in politics is broader than this one issue.

Politics itself, at least at the federal level, has ceased to be something that engages in constructive, intellectual debate and has descended into nothing more than a forum in which religious-like dogma is repeated over and over with no intent of actually resolving anything.

In contrast if we put a group of engineers, economists and ecologists together well they'll find plenty of things to disagree on as one would expect given their different perspectives. They should however be able to have a rational, constructive discussion about it, identify all the issues, assess the importance of each and so on. That's way beyond the ability of federal politics at this point.

Same goes for the general public. Even the newspapers have started blocking comments on articles relating to the subject since it simply descends into an entirely predictable tit for tat exchange of BS dogma with no actual thinking going on.

There is however some real dishonesty at one level and that's the delaying of the Default Market Offer until May 25, so that's the Wednesday straight after the election. That delay was a federal government decision and I don't think one needs to be Einstein to work out why it's been delayed. The draft version had price rises for not all customers but many and there's been an upwards price revision since then.

If there's one thing I'd like to see the next federal government do then it's to de-politicise the issue. Face the reality that there are issues, put competent people in charge with a suitable brief and take the issue out of the public spotlight and media. Get on with it and get things done.

Otherwise, well I expect there's going to be more than a few unhappy when they see prices rising. :2twocents
 

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