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The future of energy generation and storage

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Suffice to say this one shook the entire SA grid around, constantly, for 4 hours or so.

Any light not supplied by an electronic ballast, so basically that's all filament lamps, all streetlights other than LED's, magnetic ballasted fluorescents in shops that were open (service stations etc) and so on were visibly pulsing. Open the fridge or microwave at home and you'd get a light show....

Best way to describe it is a major dip in the lights, a big one the kind you'd normally associate with an imminent failure, occurring several times each second constantly and across the entire system throughout SA.

Flick, flick, flick, flick, flick.... constantly for 4 hours and I mean big dips not minor.

Some vision here:
The downlight at the start of that report is exactly what it looked like yes, right across the state.

There's an investigation to be done as to what happened but at present it seems to have originated from the wind farm.
 
sptrawler said:
For it to have happened over an extended period, my guess would be something tripped or a transmission fault occurred and didn't disconnect from the grid, so it became a load on the grid. A protection failure? Just a guess.
Click to expand...
Cause was at a wind farm.

A factor in the timing was identifying where it was coming from. Public reports of lights flickering in Adelaide, heavy industry at Whyalla and Olympic Dam confirmed they could measure it and so on but with no immediately known cause.

There's a bit of reluctance from ElectraNet (owner and operator of transmission in SA) and government to name them but the "third party" has been identified in terms of who it is.

Now just need to determine the technical aspects but the wind farm's disconnected in the meantime.
 
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Some interesting thoughts from Cadogan regarding energy generation in this:

 
These are the very issues we keep mentioning, when we say Australia's East Coast is going into unknown territory and incidents like this one will need to be engineered out before we can move on.
Obviously the protection system couldn't recognise the fault and react appropriately, it wont be the first or the last incident that is an unforeseen outcome, as renewable penetration increases IMO.
The good thing IMO is that S.A is actually leading the way and identifying these problems, it probably would be a lot more dramatic if the issues happened near Sydney on a heavily loaded section of the grid, @Smurf it sounds a lot like a pole slipping incident I had at Meeka.?
 

Electricity grid chaos to charge up power bills

The cost of ending last week’s chaos in the energy grid will be borne by consumers.
www.smh.com.au

Extra price pain is coming to households and businesses after weeks of chaos in the electricity grid, with special payments made by the market operator to prop up power companies set to flow through to electricity bills.
Rolling blackout warnings were issued from Monday last week when power generators said the rising cost of gas and coal had made it unprofitable for them to run their plants.
 
What worries me a lot, is we seem to be heading down the same path with this solar farm development, as we did with the gas development.
Giving the private sector the rights to the land use, the product it generates and all we expect in return is a pittance in a bit of income tax off the workers and whatever they consume on site.
It is all fine at the moment because we have a huge amount of land, but when a fair amount of it is in foreign ownership and supplying foreign countries with electricity, we at some time in the future may need , it just seems to me that safeguards need to be put in place early.
To me it just has a feeling of a gas like scenario in the making, whether it be because at some stage more renewable farms are stopped because of environmental or for habitat issues or whatever, to be just letting the generation to offshored with minimal return seems like another recipe for disaster.
There should be a clause, that a certain percentage of its generation be reserved for Australian consumption if required now or in the future, it is obvious this could eventually become an issue. History will repeat as usual.
It is like the gas issue, this sort of stuff is hard to fix retrospectively, just dumb short term politics IMO.
But in 30 years time, the media will be blaming whoever is in Government then, because the media people are as dumb as the politicians IMO.
As with the gas situation, they are all experts in hindsight, it is just a shame they have no sodding foresight.


Sun Cable reveals full extent of its giant solar-plus-storage project in Australia​

Singapore-based Sun Cable has submitted its Environmental Impact Statement to the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority. The document reveals the full extent of the project’s enormity, specifically a 17-20 GW solar farm tied to 36-42 GWh of battery energy storage, which is set to...
www.pv-magazine.com

Singapore-based Sun Cable, the company planning on building the world’s biggest solar and battery energy storage project in the Northern Territory (NT) and exporting it to Singapore, has lodged an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Summary revealing the full extent of its enormity.

According to the EIS, the $30 billion-plus Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPL), which already has financial support from Australian billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest, is set to generate its renewable energy via a 17-20 GW solar farm with 36-42 GWh of battery energy storage called the Powell Creek Solar Precinct, occupying 12,000 hectares in the NT’s Barkly region


Legislation increases certainty for $30 billion Sun Cable megaproject​

The Northern Territory government has doubled down on its support for the world’s biggest solar PV and storage project with parliament passing legislation that will facilitate the $30 billion-plus Sun Cable Australia-Asia PowerLink project which is expected to transform the region into a green...
www.pv-magazine-australia.com

“This is another significant milestone, facilitating Sun Cable’s AAPowerLink pathway as we work with the Northern Territory to realise the potential of this world-class solar asset, creating jobs, investment, large-scale green industry development and lower emissions,” the company said in a social media post.

Once operational, the AAPowerLink will supply power to Darwin and to Singapore via a 4,200-kilometre transmission network, including a 750km overhead transmission line from the solar farm to Darwin and a 3,800km submarine cable from Darwin to Singapore. The project is expected to generate enough renewable electricity to power more than 3 million homes a year.

The project, which is anticipated will provide 800MW of renewable energy capacity to the Darwin region from 2026 and up to 15% of Singapore’s electricity needs from 2027, has already secured key approvals with the Australian federal government awarding it Major Project Status while the Indonesian government has approved the submarine transmission cable route.

Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said the $30-plus billion project will deliver an economic and employment bonanza for the Top End.

“Sun Cable’s AAPowerLink will invest $8 billion in Australia, with the majority invested here in the Territory,” she said. “That means more local jobs, more opportunities for local businesses, and a strong and diversified economy.”

Sun Cable has said construction for the project will begin immediately after financial close in October 2023 with commercial operations to commence in 2027.
 
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Well they are supplying Darwin, whether 800MW out of 17GW is a good enough return for Australia is up for debate, but it seems some has been reserved anyway.

Should we have an export tax on electricity ? There's a thought.
 
SirRumpole said:
Well they are supplying Darwin, whether 800MW out of 17GW is a good enough return for Australia is up for debate, but it seems some has been reserved anyway.

Should we have an export tax on electricity ? There's a thought.
Click to expand...
Yes I read 800MW, that isn't much and if the green energy does cause a surge of manufacturing demand, it could be insufficient.
I would just like to see a percentage amount, as that is future proofing, if technology improves and they get increased output, we get an increased share.
It is just dumb if they haven't done it, at the end of the day it is our land and with the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund helping to finance it, it just would be mind bogglingly stupid not to reserve a percentage of the output.
We may not ever call on it, but if we need it and don't have it, who will be to blame?
The FEDS? It's the NT that are making these rules and conditions by what I've read.
 
I agree that there should be some percentage like WA's 15% gas reservation.

Main problem i suppose is storage, if our reserved supply exceeds demand, where does the excess go ?

Would be good if a hydrogen/ammonia storage system was set up at the same time, but that would require State and Federal pollies to be on the same wavelength .
 
Any excess goes to Singapore, like I said have a reserve amount, that is available IF required, that then means if industry does increase up there power is available for it. If it doesn't happen it is available for export.
For example if the MCR (maximum continuous rating) of the plant is 30GW, say 10% has to be available for domestic consumption, that would be 3GW max, at the moment it sounds like 800MW is required, so that would leave 2.2GW of available domestic demand growth from that plant as it currently stands.
 
That doesn't rule out some degree of storage, if that makes up part of our percentage allocation over current demand, so be it.

It would be silly to use less than our 10% if we could store it for future use or sell ammonia to Japan.
 
SirRumpole said:
That doesn't rule out some degree of storage, if that makes up part of our percentage allocation over current demand, so be it.

It would be silly to use less than our 10% if we could store it for future use or sell ammonia to Japan.
Click to expand...
Yes anything is better than our normal begging and groveling to get business to rip us off, just so we can pick up the crumbs off the floor.
 
Another gas pipeline going in to strengthen supply to the mid west.

Work starts on $460 million gas pipeline in outback Western Australia

Construction has started on a 580-kilometre, $460 million pipeline in Western Australia that will take natural gas from the Perth basin out to resources projects in the state's Goldfields.
www.abc.net.au
Construction has started on a 580-kilometre, $460 million pipeline in Western Australia that will take natural gas from the Perth basin out to resources projects in the state's Goldfields.
The Northern Goldfields Interconnect pipeline will form a 2,690km gas pipeline network in WA and significantly increase the volume of gas available inland.
He said the gas would help to further stimulate economic development in the eastern Goldfields region and support a range of new projects.

"That will support more employment in the region and the WA government has been very supportive of that project," Mr Coggan said.
 
SirRumpole said:
Interesting video on micro hydro generators.

Click to expand...

Excellent idea, many places would not have reliable water flow but even if generators were still used occasionally, a turbo generator would be a good investment long term.

If they can build them to withstand floods, dirt and flotsam perhaps they could build them to withstand salt water, there are plenty of coastal tidal races that could generate power if they can
 
SirRumpole said:
Interesting video on micro hydro generators.
Click to expand...
No problem with the small stuff but I think he's being a bit over the top negative in discussing large hydro projects.

There's an element of it that's comparable to discussing the concept of aviation focusing on nothing other than plane crashes. Yes there are bad examples of hydro development but there are bad examples of anything - the majority haven't caused a disaster.

A dam silting up isn't a failure of the dam per se, it's a failure of land management upstream to be losing that irreplaceable topsoil in the first place. For the record there's one hydro scheme in Australia where siltation is a massive problem, major efforts are made to flush it out of the dams, but there are others where it has been properly measured at well under 1mm per decade.

As for the one that suffers from big problems, well suffice to say I'm no fan of forestry.....
 
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Tassie hydro and the new undersea cable in the news and it hasn't even started yet.
Maybe someone could mention that batteries don't supply the same sort of storage as hydro and also that they don't have a long life expectancy.
I see the anti hydro rhetoric is already cranking up, it isn't as though it wasn't expected. ?
Coal wont be going anywhere, if Victoria gets its way IMO.

Does Australia need Tasmania to become a multi-billion-dollar 'Battery of the Nation'?

As coal-fired power stations close down, there is a push for the renewables-rich state of Tasmania to become the "Battery of the Nation". The problem is, no one knows who will foot the multi-billion-dollar bill.
www.abc.net.au
The renewables-rich island state of Tasmania has big plans to become a green battery for the mainland, however, the project is set to cost billions and not everyone's convinced that the economics stack up.
  • Tasmania wants to double its current 100 per cent renewable energy production by 2040
  • A second undersea cable would first be needed to supply the mainland at a cost of $3.8 billion
  • Critics argue there are cheaper alternatives, such as batteries
Tasmania's project, however, is still at the feasibility study stage.

The island state's ambition to become the so-called "Battery of the Nation" hinges on someone funding two undersea Bass Strait cables, the Marinus Link, connecting it to Victoria.

"What Marinus Link is doing is, it's unlocking Tasmania's fantastic renewable energy results," Battery of the Nation chief executive Bess Clark told ABC News.
Click to expand...
She said this included the state's variable wind resource, "and the hydro resource we've got here and the pumped hydro potential we've got here".

While there is already an undersea cable connecting the island state to Victoria, called Basslink, it is running close to capacity and cannot carry any additional power.
When the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) releases its latest plan to improve the grid on Thursday it's expected to again list Marinus Link as one of five key "actionable" projects.

The cables would have a combined, 1,500-MW capacity, which is enough to power up to 1.5 million homes and is roughly the equivalent output of the former Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria.

Marinus Link is now expected to cost around $3.8 billion, after its price tag was recently revised upwards.
According to AEMO, the first cable could be built as soon as 2028, and the second from 2030, and would allow Tasmania to double the amount of electricity it exports.

"Australia is going to need a lot more energy if our coal plants continue to retire, so we're going to need to replace that energy," Ms Clark said.
Click to expand...
"But we're also going to need what's called dispatchable energy, because a lot of the new energy will come from wind, it will come from solar."

"And that's great a lot of the time, but some of the time, it's not windy, and it's not sunny, so we'll need to store that energy. And that's where we can turn on hydro, and pumped hydro."
"The second cable relies on us constructing a pumped hydro power scheme and, again, we've done all the work to position ourselves to be ready to go with that," Mr Molnar said.

But the projects do not come cheap.

The estimated cost has already gone up. It could end up costing a combined $10 billion, including $2.25 billion for Battery of the Nation and $3.5 billion for Marinus Link. That price does not include wind development either.

Bruce Mountain from the Victoria Energy Policy Centre is critical of Snowy 2.0 and Tasmania's plans to become the Battery of the Nation.
Mr Mountain's research, which was commissioned by the Bob Brown Foundation, found there were cheaper alternatives.
The Victorian government — which would likely have to share the cost of Marinus Link — has instead identified the $4 billion KerangLink, which would connect the state to New South Wales, as its priority project.
 
I wonder if anyone has done a cost comparison of big hydro vs solar/wind/batteries at a household or community level ?

Would be interesting to see how they stack up.
 
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