The future of energy generation and storage

[sptrawler]

I'm still waiting for this -

View attachment 149744

Who knows what the future holds, 150 years ago, they wouldn't have even dreamt of what we have available to us today.
Generally speaking humans technical development is only limited by our imagination.
At present nuclear acceptance and development is being limited by preconceived and outdated ideology, but fear not technology moves on, despite the pessimists and flat earth crew.

April 22, 2021

Micro-nuclear reactors: up to 20MW, portable, safer - Energy Post

Scientists are working on micro-nuclear reactors that are so small they can fit on the back of a truck or a standard 40-foot shipping container, explains Christina Nunez writing for the Argonne National Laboratory. Deliberately small, generating up to 20MW, they could provide zero-carbon power...

energypost.eu

From the article:
Deliberately small, generating up to 20MW, they could provide zero-carbon power in remote settings or supplement electrical power grid recovery. Another idea would be to locate them on remote highways for re-charging long distance electric trucks. Passive cooling with heat pipes makes them safer as well as more compact. Improved neutron “moderation” enables the use of low-enriched uranium fuel, which is difficult to weaponise should they fall into the wrong hands.

 

[sptrawler]

@SirRumpole as I said years ago, the Feds dont own the system and cant tell the States what to do. It is going to be really interesting over the next 5 years.

‘Hands off our generators’: States clash over federal power plan

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has taken a swipe at the federal government’s plan to ease power prices, indicating states may need compensation.

www.smh.com.au

 

[mullokintyre]

@wayneL , it seems that your state owned energy authority may have been a little naughty.

State-owned West Australian power provider Synergy has been handed a stinging rebuke by the independent energy umpire, which found the utility unlawfully gouged customers tens of millions of dollars.

Key points:​

• Synergy was found to have artificially inflated its prices more than 11,000 times
• This resulted in overall extra costs to consumers of up to $192 million
• The retailer's market dominance allowed it to get away with the overcharging

In a decision described as "extraordinary" by a leading energy observer, the Electricity Review Board upheld allegations by WA's economic watchdog that Synergy used market power to artificially inflate its prices more than 11,000 times between 2016 and 2017.

The Economic Regulation Authority (ERA) claimed Synergy's actions wrongfully swelled the utility's revenues between $40 million and $102 million during the period.

It also claimed they allowed all other generators that provided electricity during those times to benefit as well, leading to overall extra costs to consumers of up to $192 million.

At the heart of the ERA's investigation was Synergy's use of gas contracts to set prices in the spot, or wholesale, electricity market in WA.

Under market rules, generators are required to offer their production at what's known as the short run marginal cost, which is supposed to encourage the lowest-cost bids.

The ERA alleged Synergy made thousands of artificially high bids using gas prices set in a long-term contract with the giant Gorgon project rather than the cheaper gas available at the time on the spot market.
Furthermore, the ERA claimed Synergy's dominance of the wholesale market, in which it provides about half of the generating capacity, allowed the company to get away with the overcharging.

​

Publishing its decision, the review board broadly supported the ERA's arguments, finding Synergy had acted unreasonably and without regard for the effects of its behaviour on consumers.

"The board is satisfied the conduct in question was 'profitable' because it likely had the effect of increasing the price at which sales were made, without increasing costs or significantly decreasing the amount of electricity sold," the ERB wrote in its decision.

"The respondent persisted in the conduct for a substantial period.
"The board is also satisfied that the respondent's conduct 'related to' market power because it inflated the input costs...without consideration of the impact of those changes on its profitability or the market and for a substantial period of time."

Perhaps those who want to push for a return to state owned energy generation and supply might remember the old saying, follow the money.
Mick

 

[IFocus]

@wayneL , it seems that your state owned energy authority may have been a little naughty.

Perhaps those who want to push for a return to state owned energy generation and supply might remember the old saying, follow the money.
Mick

Ahh that was a Liberal Government.... ?

All jokes aside selling critical infrastructure was a total cluster.

 

[SirRumpole]

@SirRumpole as I said years ago, the Feds dont own the system and cant tell the States what to do. It is going to be really interesting over the next 5 years.

‘Hands off our generators’: States clash over federal power plan

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has taken a swipe at the federal government’s plan to ease power prices, indicating states may need compensation.

www.smh.com.au

Yes, the States own the coal and gas but the Feds control export out of the country.

As I said before, an export tax on coal and gas linked to the prices that local consumers pay. Higher local prices , higher export taxes.

Benefits :-

* more revenue to the Feds to pay for the budget deficit,
* no need to negotiate with the States,
* provides an incentive to gas and coal companies to reduce local prices,
* is damned hard to avoid an export tax compared to profits tax.

Why they are stuffing around on this I don't know.

Andrew Probyn pointed out that Origin Energy told its shareholders that break even point for gas exports is $3.50 a gigajoule, and what are the charging consumers ? $35 per gJ . They are just profiteering.

Wholesale gas prices to be capped under government plan to intervene in market

Anthony Albanese and his cabinet are set to endorse a multi-pronged strategy to curb sky-high power prices, as pressure mounts on the government to urgently intervene in the market.

www.abc.net.au

 

[wayneL]

@wayneL , it seems that your state owned energy authority may have been a little naughty.

Perhaps those who want to push for a return to state owned energy generation and supply might remember the old saying, follow the money.
Mick

It's basically the same group of people whether public or private infrastructure. We are going to get screwed either way.

Yes indeed, follow the money.

Working towards being *completely* off grid.... As much as possible anyway.

 

[sptrawler]

Ahh that was a Liberal Government.... ?

All jokes aside selling critical infrastructure was a total cluster.

W.A didnt.
Yes the selling off of the eastern seaboard electrical infrastructure was a huge mistake.
Much like getting rid of tariffs and sending our manufacturing to China, ahh thats down to Labor.
Neither side of politics can hold the moral high ground IMO.
Its certainly time to focus on Australias long term future, rather than the next election cycle.
This Labor Govt might be the new dawn, it certainly has been a long time coming.

 

[Smurf1976]

It's basically the same group of people whether public or private infrastructure. We are going to get screwed either way.

I could make a very long and detailed argument for radically reforming the industry's structure and market operation.

Structure and operation as distinct from ownership as that's less important beyond saying it's far too fragmented at present.

Fragmented?

We'll I'll put it this way.

AGL is the largest player in generation.

AGL's market cap is less than the cost of building one major pumped hydro scheme eg Snowy 2.0 and it's just 15% of the budget for the United Arab Emirates nuclear plant, of which there's only one, they've just about finished building. So no, AGL isn't large and nor are any of the others. What we've got is a lot of companies none of which can achieve efficient scale of economy. Solution = mergers and consolidation in a big way.

Now I'm sure the competition advocates will have the knives out with that suggestion but my response there is really quite simple.

AGL charges more for gas in Sydney in a competitive market than the same AGL charged the same customers in the same location as a monopoly. That's not the only such example. The notion that competition lowers prices is true only if the means of achieving that competition doesn't add more costs than the competition itself can remove.

Regardless of the generation technology, be it fossil fuel, nuclear or renewable, there are very real hindrances with the present market design. Hindrances both in terms of building and owning it, we lack companies that can take on $10 billion+ projects easily, and hindrances in terms of operation.

That latter point's getting into technical detail but if we want to build nuclear, renewables or even run coal efficiently then we need certainty of dispatch outcomes and the present market just doesn't do that. There's a lot of the problem.

 

[Smurf1976]

Following is something I wrote for a different purpose but I'll post it here as it has some relevance. Context is nuclear power and comparing the United Arab Emirates, which is nearing completion of its first nuclear power station, with Australia.

Comparing the UAE to Australia there's a few lessons as to how they're making it work. Much of this will sound familiar, since it's basically the same way we made coal work in Australia in the past and likewise applies to most forms of electricity generation. That we're not doing it now is the ultimate cause of much of our difficulties.

UAE per capita electricity consumption is higher than most Australian states. Annual MWh per capita comparing the UAE with the NEM:

UAE = 14.9

Tasmania = 21.0
Queensland = 11.6
NT (Darwin-Katherine System) = 11.2
NSW = 9.0
WA (SWIS) = 8.2
SA = 8.0
Victoria = 7.2

Iceland = 50.4
Norway = 20.4
Kuwait = 19.3
Bahrain = 17.3
Qatar = 15.2
Finland = 14.9
Canada = 13.9
Sweden = 13.1
USA = 11.7

UAE has an imperfect but reasonable system load factor of about 60%. In the Australian context Queensland and Tasmania exceed this, WA is comparable to UAE, the other NEM states are lower (and very substantially so in the case of SA especially).

The UAE is building a single great big nuclear power station. 5.4GW at one site and with 100% certainty of day to day dispatch. That's exactly why it's possible economically. The NEM fundamentally lacks both of these attributes and that there is much of the trouble.
Next is the financing. UAE has an industry structure able to take on an AUD 36 billion project and get it done.

In contrast in Australia we pretend that AGL, Origin etc are "large" when in truth it's the opposite. The entire market capitalisation of both those companies combined is just over half the cost of UAE's one nuclear power station. There's no way either would contemplate taking something like that on, and the other companies are even less able to.

Let that point sink in as it's a crucial one. The NEM just isn't big enough for so many companies to be involved, that aspect alone is killing the economics. We've got too many bit players and not a single company that could take on a large project of that scale. Indeed other than Snowy Hydro itself, which is of course backed by the federal government, there's no company that could take on a project the size of Snowy 2.0 either.

That's why we're not building, or even considering, this stuff. When you're limited to small things well then gas turbines and batteries it is so that's what we're doing. No surprises there. We couldn't build Loy Yang or Eraring today either for the same reason.

Then there's the bit that UAE isn't taking an "all or nothing approach".

Yes they're building a major nuclear power station.

UAE is also developing solar and, even though it's still only a few % of their electricity supply, already have their first pumped hydro scheme (250MW) under construction. That's a planned and orderly approach – they're getting on with the hard bits rather than leaving them in the "too hard basket" and they're doing it all at once with nuclear, solar, hydro all happening. They're not taking the approach of doing one thing, waiting for it to become a problem, then thinking they'd better do the next bit. Rather, it's all at once.

Then there's gas.

UAE does have quite a bit of gas indeed based on OPEC data they've got about 92% more than Australia so almost double.

UAE is however running a gas production rate 57% lower than Australia's (2020 data) and prior to the nuclear plant was in fact a net importer of gas from Qatar.

Now that's not because UAE is technically incompetent and can't get gas out of the ground. Rather, it's because they're not foolish enough to try and deplete the entire reserve base over the next 22 years as Australia's doing. Rather, they're seeing it as valuable petrochemical feedstock for the long term that's best not to be burning in power stations.

And finally, economic diversification.

UAE, like Australia, has an economy built upon resource wealth but that's where the similarities end.

UAE has pursued downstream refining of resources and it's pursued alternative industries in tourism, finance and so on. Ending up with two major airlines, Emirates and Etihad, flying internationally and bringing tourists for a stopover in your own country is the ultimate in leveraging your own cheap fuel now isn't it?

We could learn quite a lot from their approach and if we did, well then nuclear would be a much more serious option for Australia as would 100% renewables. Both are actively thwarted by our market design, industry structure, ideological blinkers and chronic short-termism.

 

[SirRumpole]

In contrast in Australia we pretend that AGL, Origin etc are "large" when in truth it's the opposite. The entire market capitalisation of both those companies combined is just over half the cost of UAE's one nuclear power station. There's no way either would contemplate taking something like that on, and the other companies are even less able to.

From that, is seems like we should throw out the illusion of competition in our market and go back to either a government controlled monopoly or a heavily regulated commercial monopoly that has the required resources and the capacity to think in the long term ?

Is it worth pointing out that the UAE State owns its oil and gas reserves and has complete control over their production ?

Any lessons there ?

 

[sptrawler]

The plot thickens with regard the Origin takeover.

Origin Energy to be split in half and invest in renewables under new $18.4bn takeover bid

The energy giant would be divided into electricity generation and gas firms in order to hit Australia’s climate targets

www.theguardian.com

Origin’s US suitor warns Canberra over gas intervention​

Long-term contracts cannot be broken by the federal government if it intervenes in the domestic gas market, says MidOcean.

 

[mullokintyre]

The plot thickens with regard the Origin takeover.

Origin Energy to be split in half and invest in renewables under new $18.4bn takeover bid

The energy giant would be divided into electricity generation and gas firms in order to hit Australia’s climate targets

www.theguardian.com

Origin’s US suitor warns Canberra over gas intervention​

Long-term contracts cannot be broken by the federal government if it intervenes in the domestic gas market, says MidOcean.

There is absolutely no reason why the Feds cannot achieve the same aims by increasing gas royalties to the point that it becomes unviable.
Mick

 

[Smurf1976]

From that, is seems like we should throw out the illusion of competition in our market and go back to either a government controlled monopoly or a heavily regulated commercial monopoly that has the required resources and the capacity to think in the long term ?

Putting some detail around the "why" aspect of that, there's three basic issues with the present market relating to the competition aspect which explain why it's not leading to the lower prices economists would argue it ought to.

1. Generation dispatch outcomes.

In layman's terms that's which power stations are running at any given time bearing in mind that, unless demand is at maximum, they won't all be needed. Eg demand in Victoria peaks at about 10.4GW but right now it's just 4.4GW so there's simply no need to run all the generation.

Some forms of generation are virtually free to operate once built and are "use it or lose it". Eg solar.

Some are almost free to operate but are volume limited over time. Eg hydro. There's only so much water entering the system, total production over time is constrained.

Some are not free but they're medium price to operate. Eg coal or the more efficient gas plants.

Some are massively expensive to operate, eg diesel and the less efficient gas plants.

Now from that it ought be obvious that the different forms of generation aren't really competing. It's never rational to run the diesel in preference to anything else that's sitting there unused but able to run. It's never rational to run anything in preference to using the solar.

When to run the hydro depends how much water's available but as a concept the idea is to run it instead of diesel first, then gas, then coal. You don't sensibly run it instead of the solar, drain the lake, then end up burning diesel since that would be silly.

So the different forms of generation aren't competing in any rational world but the NEM design insists that they do in fact compete and provides no option to do otherwise. End result is we do in fact end up with diesel being run and coal turned down. We do in fact end up turning solar off and burning gas. And so on. Serious $ wasted there, that's the first major flaw in the market.

2. Second major flaw is that retail costs far more than it really ought to.

Fundamentally it's reading meters, sending out bills and making sure they're paid. That's what a consumer needs a retailer to do.

However.....

Since we have a highly volatile market with pricing set every 5 minutes, whereas consumers prefer prices that are more stable, retailers hedge their market exposure via assorted hedging contracts.

So we have big $ spent on hedging contracts to hedge against the risk of price moving. Bearing in mind that the price movement is, of course, simply a product of what the traders do, it's not some fundamental thing driven by crop harvests or something as is the case with agriculture.

So we have manufactured volatility and a hefty price charged to hedge against that volatility. It's the equivalent of insurers going around smashing windows just to make sure you buy their rather expensive insurance.

Now add in that every retailer has a management, overheads and so on plus the big one, they need billing systems which comply with all the rules, they need procedures to facilitate efficient transfer of customers between retailers and so on. End result is a substantial portion of the customer's bill has nothing at all to do with any physical aspect of generating, transmitting or distributing electricity, being simply the cost to administer the whole thing and send the bills out.

Now that cost is, in % terms, higher than the total administrative budget of one of the state electricity authorities in 1962. Yes I've checked the figures. So back in the days of having to manually type out each invoice, having physical shopfronts taking cash payments and so on it was actually cheaper.

Competition can lower prices yes, but not when the means of having that competition is itself costing a fortune.

3. Scale of economy in generation.

Electricity generation is a somewhat extreme example of scale of economy, driven by the reality that operating a machine 10 times the size doesn't need 10 times as many people or even remotely close to it.

Go back 70 years and the largest steam turbines were 50MW. By about 1967 there were 500MW machines going into service. Today GE has a standard "off the shelf" 1900MW design available to be manufactured for anyone who wants to buy one.

So if we look at the nuclear plants being built overseas, practically all use units 1000MW or above for that reason, scale of economy. In the UK they're up around 1600MW. That's per machine not for the entire power station.

Same in the UAE. 4 x 1400MW at a single site. Done because that gets the cost down per unit of production.

It's fundamentally cheaper to have a few large power stations than to have lots of little ones. Hence (for examples) why WA ended up with most generation focused at Muja and Kwinana, why SA did it with Port Augusta and Torrens Island and why Victoria got the vast majority of supply from the Yallourn, Hazelwood (now gone) and Loy Yang complexes.

Large scale is the means of getting the cost down. Hence Victoria went from 50MW machines at Yallourn D, to 120MW in the next station Yallourn E, to 200MW at Hazelwood, to 350MW at Yallourn W to 500MW at Loy Yang. All about lowering costs.

For hydro natural topography does limit the scale of any individual station but the same basic concept applies, scale wins. Hence if we look at Tasmania as an example, the approach was unavoidably to build a large number of individually small power stations but they were very intentionally built in groups all at once. Eg the 7 Mersey-Forth stations were all built as a single project, they weren't built one at a time. Same with the others, they were grouped and done together so far as practical in order to economise on construction costs. There's still that benefit of scale to an extent.

Same with Snowy 2.0, it's far cheaper to store 350GWh at one site than to build 175 little 2GWh sites. The latter is technically viable sure, it's just a lot more expensive to have 175 tunnels, 175 power stations, 175 access roads and so on versus one big tunnel, one big power station, etc.

One consequence of that, of course, is it limits the number of owners. If you're only going to have a small number of individually large facilities then you simply can't have more than a few owners, and the owners you do have need to be financially and physically capable of taking on such huge projects.

The idea that we ought have a vast number of individually small companies competing against each other is totally at odds with that fundamental aspect of scale of economy. Add that to the issues with dispatch and retail and the result is prices going up not down despite competition, in theory, driving innovation and so on.

Where competition would work is with competition to decide what gets built in the first place, who builds and who owns. Have competing projects tendering, competing companies offering to own them at whatever cost of finance, and so on. In that case the economic fundamentals of competition aren't being undone by introduced technical inefficiencies.

 

[SirRumpole]

2. Second major flaw is that retail costs far more than it really ought to.

Is it possible to have automatic metering where the meters themselves telemeter their readings back to the accounts department and therefore save reading fees ?

 

[Smurf1976]

Is it possible to have automatic metering where the meters themselves telemeter their readings back to the accounts department and therefore save reading fees ?

Sure is indeed I've got one at home as are all recent installations.

But it's still the case that ~13% of the total bill for a residential consumer (will vary with location and consumption level) is for retail. Because it's not simply the metering and so on but all the other things I mention - management, overheads, hedging, compliant billing systems (and those can run to $100 million plus) and so on. There's a lot of costs being incurred that I'd argue really shouldn't be necessary, a better way ought be found.

 

[sptrawler]

Is it possible to have automatic metering where the meters themselves telemeter their readings back to the accounts department and therefore save reading fees ?

In W.A they are currently upgrading the meters to be able to do exactly that.
Also with the advent of E.V's and V2G technologies being developed, advanced metering will be required also IMO.

 

[sptrawler]

@SirRumpole as I said years ago, the Feds dont own the system and cant tell the States what to do. It is going to be really interesting over the next 5 years.

‘Hands off our generators’: States clash over federal power plan

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has taken a swipe at the federal government’s plan to ease power prices, indicating states may need compensation.

www.smh.com.au

States abandon federal government to face the energy crisis alone

Declaring the energy crisis to be a national problem, states appear to be abandoning the Albanese government to face the financial and political cost.

www.theage.com.au

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing a revolt from the states over energy policy with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet declaring the federal government would have to repay the state’s taxpayers if it sought to cut skyrocketing energy costs by imposing a cap on coal prices.
Albanese is expected to announce a suite of measures to reduce soaring energy costs next week in what has become a key test of his government. Among the measures being sought by industry and unions are caps on the price of gas and coal.



Albo is yet to have a run in with Dan down in Victoria yet, now that will be the interesting one IMO.

 

[sptrawler]

More problems as we march on toward 2030, it is going to be a very interesting journey for Chris Bowen IMO.
It will be interesting to know if "the voice to parliament", gives the indigenous any vetoing rights, time will tell, but it certainly is interesting and exciting times in the power industry space.

Shock court gas ruling poses risk to wind farms

The Albanese government could be forced to overhaul the laws governing offshore energy projects after a court ruling slowed the approval of new gas developments.

www.afr.com

The Albanese government could be forced to overhaul the laws governing offshore energy projects after a court ruling slowed the approval of new gas developments, and raised doubts about how quickly wind farms, considered vital to the energy transition, can be built off the Australian coast.

The decision to uphold a landmark win in September by Tiwi Island senior lawman Dennis Tipakalippa against the regulatory approval given to Santos’ $5.3 billion Barossa gas project in the Timor Sea has crystallised fears inside the government that the benchmark for new projects is becoming too high.

Santos was forced to halt drilling at the Timor Sea site following the original decision, which also sent shockwaves across other oil and gas projects and is expected to cause huge consternation among Australia’s already unsettled LNG customers in Japan and Korea, where gas from the field is earmarked to be sent.
It could also set precedents for far wider consultation required for other offshore projects such as wind – which the Victorian and federal governments are counting on to meet climate targets – in addition to onshore mining, solar and wind projects.
“The government acknowledges the Federal Court’s decision and will consider its implications in relation to Australia’s offshore environment and safety regulatory regime,” a spokeswoman for Resources Minister Madeleine King said.

​

 

[sptrawler]

W.A's coal crisis deepens, coals ain't coals Sol.
Changing from one type of coal to another can take some setting up, not only do the burners have to be tuned, but the type of boiler can have a huge difference to boiler erosion and ash formation.
I wonder if the State Govt will take over one of the coal mines, the plot thickens.

Fears grow over WA energy crisis this summer amid botched importation of NSW coal

State-owned West Australian power provider Synergy is facing questions about whether it paid millions of dollars to import the wrong type of coal as it scrambles to keep the lights on this summer.

www.abc.net.au

From the article:
Later this month, Synergy will take delivery of the first of two 50,000-tonne shipments of New South Wales coal, believed to be costing the utility tens of millions of dollars.

Synergy was left scrambling for the imports in October when it emerged that a deepening crisis in the coal mining and power generation hub of Collie, south of Perth, would leave it short of supplies.

At the time, Premier Mark McGowan blamed a wettish winter and operating difficulties at one of the town's two coal mines for the unprecedented decision, which Energy Minister Bill Johnston also said was "not ideal".

There are growing fears about the security of the state's biggest electricity grid heading into what is forecast to be a scorching summer.
Major coal supply shortages have combined with a gas crunch caused by last week's leak at a critical offshore well and outages at several big plants to put pressure on the system.
In a further blow, it is believed the coal due to arrive at Bunbury port next week is unsuited for use in Synergy's coal plants at Collie because of its high ash content.
A Synergy spokesman insisted the utility had known about and accounted for the content of ash in the coal and planned to "blend" imported product with local supplies, which typically have far lower levels.

But Synergy's former chief engineer has cast doubt over those claims, saying the ash content of the NSW coal was likely to be a major problem at the company's Muja and Collie power stations.

Andrew Wearmouth, also a former manager at Muja, said Synergy's plants were designed to run on coal with an ash content of between six and eight per cent but could "reasonably" handle up to 10 per cent.
However, he said the imported NSW coal was likely to have an ash content of about 20 per cent, which he argued would pose big headaches for power station operators.
For starters, Mr Wearmouth said Synergy may not have the "milling capacity" to blend the imported coal at sufficient rates, there was a risk of "emissions breaches" if it was used in large quantities, and it could also cause "erosion" and "fouling" problems.

 

[wayneL]

An energy cliff, the view from Steve St Angelo and it's implications for precious metals and real estate.

I am stocking up on Digitalis ?