The future of energy generation and storage

[Tisme]

You shouldn't be self self deprecating, we don't think less of you.

That was a great antidote for the AMS you must have been hit with after the great compliment you gave Smurph.

 

[SirRumpole]

Maybe this failure, may bring some degree of rationale to the debate, and bring about a holistic approach.

Yes, we need a holistic approach. A national energy grid needs management by the national government under the guidance of engineers who actually have to make it work, not a hotch potch of State governments with their own agendas and corporate players who are in it for a fast buck.

I can't see this privatisation crazy Federal government providing that leadership, they only seem interested in blaming someone else when things go wrong, not their own lack of foresight.

 

[macca]

thank you Smurf, your post deserves a wider audience

 

[qldfrog]

Thanks indeed Smurf.Great complete piece!

 

[SirRumpole]

Thanks indeed Smurf.Great complete piece!

Agreed. Very tolerant of those with lesser knowledge.

 

[noco]

I can tell you up front I never hurt when truth is talking Noco. That piece you posted is akin to a dung beetle that collects a bit of sh17e here a bit of sh17e there and rolls it all into a ball of sh17e to create a masterpiece that will surely impress those who appreciate sh17e as the centre of their world. Give a halfwit the opportunity to choose between Force Majeure and sensationalist fishwifery, a journo will invariably choose the later for those with a tin ear who lap up their master's voice (i.e. Murdoch).

etc.

What a load of codswaddle you post......Typical of your usual debauch comments when something does not suit you......Those comments are lower than a rattle snakes belly.

I hope the moderator gives a reprimand.....you will deserve it.

 

[SirRumpole]

The Science Show will be discussing the possibilities of geothermal power in the Latrobe valley, this Saturday 12noon ABC RN or on their website.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/

 

[explod]

To Smurph and Sprawler

Quality information

 

[noco]

The Science Show will be discussing the possibilities of geothermal power in the Latrobe valley, this Saturday 12noon ABC RN or on their website.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/

I hope Tim Flannery is not in charge as cost the Government some $80 million in subsidies for the last disaster ....It all went belly up.

 

[basilio]

Really fascinating to see Smurfs analysis of the intricacies of the power grid and the necessary connectedness of the various supply systems. A critical element in the whole discussion is that the privatisation of the grid has been a body blow to the overall integrity of power supply in Australia. The creation of the SEC (which overtook a motley crew of private power companies) gave Victoria stable and flexible power for many years.

The saddest part of Smurphs story is reflecting on how wilfully ignorant many politicians are on the issue. Stable, secure, clean power is a non-negotiable part of our existence as a industrial society. It's about time it was treated like that.

 

[Tisme]

What a load of codswaddle you post......Typical of your usual debauch comments when something does not suit you......Those comments are lower than a rattle snakes belly.


I hope the moderator gives a reprimand.....you will deserve it.

For what...telling the truth? It must indeed hurt some people afterall

Not sure what a codswaddle is, sounds like a codswallop word to me. Also not sure what debauchery has taken place??!!!

Not my fault I have a vocabulary that exceeds your own, but I'll try to dumb it down in the future.

 

[Smurf1976]

Thanks for the positive comments.

As a bit more info, here's the basics of how the grid is operated under normal circumstances and why failures such as that in SA are rare events.

As a basic principle, the system is at all times (unless it's just not possible) operated such that sudden failure of any transmission line or generating unit does not result in supply interruption to consumers. At worst, a local area might lose supply if there's only one line supplying it but the grid remains stable overall upon the loss of any individual line or up to two generators in any region (in practice a region is generally an entire state under normal circumstances if everything's working normally).

So we can lose one of the transmission lines from the Latrobe Valley (Loy Yang, Hazelwood, Yallourn, Valley Power and Jeeralang power stations) to Melbourne and that alone won't put the lights out. We can lose the largest generating unit in the system, a 744MW unit at Kogan Creek power station (Qld) and also lose one of the 700MW generators at Mt Piper power station (NSW) at the same time and the lights will stay on. There will be a short term frequency drop and the lights might dip briefly at home but the system remains sound and continues to operate.

Once a fault, for example if Kogan Creek really does trip offline, like that occurs then the response is to restore the system to a stable condition as soon as possible. Start up another power station such that we're back to having spare capacity up and running in case something else suddenly fails. In the case of transmission it may require ramping down production at one or more power stations and increasing it somewhere else to limit power flows on the remaining lines in case there's another failure but that's done in an orderly manner - everyone's lights stay on while it happens and nobody outside the industry knows that anything happened.

A point here is that faults do occur. Generators do fail unexpectedly from time to time and transmission lines do trip. No matter how much maintenance is done, when you've got so many systems in a power station there's always a chance that something will fail unexpectedly and it does happen. Likewise a transmission line out in the open over a vast distance will always be subject to the risk that something goes wrong. Hence the system is operated to remain stable if something does happen.

In some situations risks that are normally considered minimal (non-credible contingency in industry terminology) become more likely.

To pick one example that's reasonably common, the Farrel to Sheffield 220kV (220,000 Volts) transmission lines in Tasmania. There are two lines connecting the Farrell sub-station (West Coast of Tas) to Sheffiled sub-station (in the North-West) however both follow the exact same route indeed they're held up by the same towers. Under normal circumstances any fault will only affect one line but under severe weather conditions (usually lightning) it's plausible that both lines could fail at the same time if lightning were to strike.

On one side of those lines we've got about 640MW of conventional generation (all of it hydro) and a relatively small local load around 80 MW (primarily mining and a few small towns). On the other side we've got the rest of the Tasmanian grid which is also connected to Victoria (and in turn connects to SA, NSW / ACT and via NSW to Qld).

So when the risk of both lines failing is increased (a "credible contingency") due to weather, the system is operated to remain stable if both do fail at once. In practical terms that means having enough generation online to supply the local West Coast load if the lines are lost but not so much as to become a threat to the rest of the system if that supply is suddenly lost. So depending on how much power is being generated at those power stations, this may require either increasing or decreasing production on the West Coast and decreasing or increasing it elsewhere in the system so as to keep flow on those lines down to an acceptable limit. That doesn't mean zero flow, the system can cope with some loss of supply due to both lines failing just as it copes if a generator fails, but it means keeping flow to a limit that the rest of the system, on both sides of the potential fault, can cope with if it really does happen.

How often does that happen? It depends on the weather but we're talking many times each year for that situation alone. We can go months without severe weather and then have multiple occurrences in the space of a few days. Each time the weather poses a threat, system operation is adjusted "just in case" the worst does happen. Usually there's no actual incident, just because there's lightning nearby doesn't mean it will necessarily strike the lines, but it could happen and it has happened in the past.

To do all this rescheduling of generation to keep the system robust in the event that failures occur does, of course, require that there's enough generation available in the first place to be able to limit output as some power stations and increase it elsewhere. You can't do that without putting the lights out if you don't have any spare capacity and need to run everything flat out. In that situation there's no option to do anything to avoid the risk (well, apart from simply initiating a partial blackout and that's not done in practice).

Back to the situation in SA there's a few relevant issues here.

In the context of last week's failure it was simply a case of too many things failing in quick succession. There was simply no time to bring power stations online or meaningfully increase output of those already running so as to work around line faults as they occurred. Plus the transmission system simply isn't designed to operate with that many lines in the same area all missing at once. So in defence of AEMO, there's little if anything they could have done once the failures started as there simply wasn't enough time. Any action would have needed to be taken hours earlier in order to warm boilers up, put generators online and so on.

Looking ahead, there are ongoing constraints in both Victoria and SA which do create a level of vulnerability.

SA simply doesn't have enough conventional generation to meet peak demand in full even if it all works perfectly (and that itself is an unreasonable expectation - machines do have downtime either planned or unplanned). So on a high demand day either the wind is blowing, SA obtains power from Victoria, or the lights go out. Those are the three options and that becomes two options if the wind isn't blowing (and there have certainly been high demand days with minimal wind in the past so that situation will almost certainly happen again).

Victoria is in much the same situation of having very little generating capacity to spare within the state. Adding in the need to supply SA, Victoria depends on supply from NSW and Tasmania if wind generation is minimal at a time of high electricity demand.

There's a number of risks there. The obvious ones being if transmission is lost from NSW or Tas (and it was indeed lost from Tas throughout last Summer - it was pure luck that Vic and SA generation held up well, demand wasn't extreme and nothing else broke). The other one is that something happens in NSW or Tas such that they don't have power to spare in the first place. That risk is fairly low for Tas, since peak demand in Tas is at a very different time to Vic and SA, but is more significant for NSW if all three states (NSW, Vic, SA) experience high demand simultaneously (generally that doesn't happen but it has done in the past and someday it will happen again).

Putting this into practical perspective, there has been talk recently about closing Hazelwood power station (Vic). Ignoring the politics surrounding that and focusing on the technical issues, if Hazelwood does close then in order to meet peak demand in Vic and SA:

1. Every single conventional generator needs to work perfectly. The whole lot need to run at 100% of capacity with literally nothing going wrong.

2. Transmission from NSW and Tas both needs to be able to run at maximum capacity with sufficient power available in those states.

3. Wind generation in SA and Vic needs to run at about three quarters of its rated capacity.

How likely is it to work?

Conventional generation might be able to do it. It's possible that everything will work perfectly when needed but that's definitely a gamble since power stations do have significant downtime. Machines do break and we're talking about relying on plant that's nearly 50 years old in some cases (well past its original design life). But it might work OK. Or it might not. Gamble.

Transmission will either work or it won't. There won't be a loss of a bit of capacity, either it's working or it isn't. The chance is very high that it will work just fine but it's not 100% certain.

Wind is the real killer here since the vast majority of the time wind runs well below that level. Maybe it will be windy when it needs to be but the chance is very high that it won't. Wind farms with an average output around 35% of capacity and we're going to need double that. AEMO isn't God, they don't control the weather, and expecting something to work twice as well as it normally does is going to end badly sooner or later.

That's not a negative comment about wind energy by the way. It's simply reflecting that if something is designed to do x then it's unwise to rely on it doing twice that and the same applies to any means of generation. Just because we know that gas turbines can be overloaded a bit (quite safely by the way) when the weather conditions are right doesn't mean we should count on doing that all the time. Just because hydro can run flat out 24/7 in a flood doesn't mean we should count on getting a flood every week. Just because your last share trade returned 1000% in a month doesn't mean you can sensibly expect that all the time. Etc.

So if Hazelwood does close and nothing is done to replace it then either there isn't a heatwave in SA and Vic at the same time. Or any such heatwave doesn't occur on a working weekday. Or the rest of the transmission and generation system works almost perfectly. Politics aside I think most would agree that sooner or later that's not going to happen and then we've got a crisis.

Some may be aware that AEMO have said that the system can cope without Hazelwood. Indeed it can provided that the community accepts the level of supply shortfall assumed in that statement.

There's the difficult bit - AEMO are quite right in saying that 99.9% of the time the lights will stay on without Hazelwood. But then I could say that SA has had a working power grid 99.97% of the time over the past decade. But that other 0.03% has caused rather a lot of fuss over the past week and I fully expect that any generation shortfall in Vic / SA due to Hazelwood closing would produce an even greater response at the political and public level given that it's an intentional decision and not something that can be blamed on unusual weather.

So AEMO aren't wrong, they're just assessing based on an agreed national standard and that's fine as such. But Smurf thinks that in view of the recent situation in SA, politicians and the public likely won't accept that standards as good enough when supply really does fail however infrequent that may be.

My personal opinion is that Hazelwood won't actually close in April 2017 (as rumoured and widely reported) for that reason. Some combination of the Vic, SA and Commonwealth governments will do whatever deal to keep it open for a while yet. That's not about emissions or cost, it's about no government wanting a repeat of the SA situation on their watch however likely or unlikely it may actually be in practice.

 

[noco]

For what...telling the truth? It must indeed hurt some people afterall

Not sure what a codswaddle is, sounds like a codswallop word to me. Also not sure what debauchery has taken place??!!!

Not my fault I have a vocabulary that exceeds your own, but I'll try to dumb it down in the future.

There obviously a clown in every circus.

 

[SirRumpole]

Smurph, you are God, so what would be your ideal nationwide grid design technology mix ? ie what should we be building/ reconditioning/ extending now to give a stable grid in say 2 years, 5 years , 10-15 years ?

 

[basilio]

Keeping power supplies up is complex isn't it ? I can see a total overhaul of our national power and energy storage systems.

1) There will be a rapid reduction in the use of base load coal fired power stations. With the Paris climate treaty about to be ratified within a month Australia will (should ?) be looking for big picture ways to permanently reduce GG emissions. Coal fired power stations are at the top of the list

2) One option to consider will be solar thermal power stations using molten salt as a heat bank

3) The development of local battery banks or energy storage options like pump up hydro

4) Consideration of how to synchronise energy supplies more effectively. Smurph identified the problems with incompatible electric power sources. Are there solutions to this ?

5) Widespread improvements in energy efficiency to reduce the overall need for need plant

6) Consideration of a National energy framework that is not dominated/directed by purely profit considerations. This obviously goes totally against the last 25 years of Privatization but I think it has to be seriously considered if we are going to sensibly invest many, many billions of dollars into a sustainable, secure, clean energy framework.

And there is no way on earth I would trust the free market to undertake such a venture.

__________________________________________

Just saw an article in The Age that explores this question quite well.

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/whats-really-going-wrong-with-electricity-20161005-grvyih.html

 

[sptrawler]

That was a great antidote for the AMS you must have been hit with after the great compliment you gave Smurph.

Don't have any idea what that means, but coming from you, it couldn't have been good.

 

[sptrawler]

Keeping power supplies up is complex isn't it ? I can see a total overhaul of our national power and energy storage systems.

1) There will be a rapid reduction in the use of base load coal fired power stations. With the Paris climate treaty about to be ratified within a month Australia will (should ?) be looking for big picture ways to permanently reduce GG emissions. Coal fired power stations are at the top of the list

2) One option to consider will be solar thermal power stations using molten salt as a heat bank

3) The development of local battery banks or energy storage options like pump up hydro

4) Consideration of how to synchronise energy supplies more effectively. Smurph identified the problems with incompatible electric power sources. Are there solutions to this ?

5) Widespread improvements in energy efficiency to reduce the overall need for need plant

6) Consideration of a National energy framework that is not dominated/directed by purely profit considerations. This obviously goes totally against the last 25 years of Privatization but I think it has to be seriously considered if we are going to sensibly invest many, many billions of dollars into a sustainable, secure, clean energy framework.

And there is no way on earth I would trust the free market to undertake such a venture.

__________________________________________

Just saw an article in The Age that explores this question quite well.

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/whats-really-going-wrong-with-electricity-20161005-grvyih.html

Your first paragraph was spot on, then you went on to show you have no concept of the issues, but love your enthusiasm.
People with your enthusiasm, keep the issues front and centre, which is the most important thing.

 

[Tisme]

Don't have any idea what that means, but coming from you, it couldn't have been good.

I think your sarcastic attack on Rumpole contrasted poorly on the impressive compliments you and Rumpole gave Smurph that's all. A fleeting moment of bipartisan goodwill.

 

[Tisme]

There obviously a clown in every circus.

You referring to Andrew Bolt or Newscorp in general?

 

[noco]

Don't have any idea what that means, but coming from you, it couldn't have been good.

Tisme gets carried away with his own ego which is higher than Mt Everest.