The future of energy generation and storage

[sptrawler]

Well it looks as though what was said on here,was fairly close, to what happened in S.A.
If this article is correct.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-...lackout-report-finds/7947478?section=analysis

 

[qldfrog]

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-just-accidentally-discovered-a-process-that-turns-co2-directly-into-ethanol
was all over the news yesterday

if it works as explained, would be a nice way to convert extra electricity into ethanol and reuse it on peak demand/as a base load; either with ethanol cell or with significant loss in a burner;
a new type of "battery"/power storage

 

[Tisme]

Well it looks as though what was said on here,was fairly close, to what happened in S.A.
If this article is correct.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-...lackout-report-finds/7947478?section=analysis

There was a very apt quip from one of the telly journoes yesterday saying that the partisan politicking is so invasive these days, no matter the honesty of truth it will suffer.

 

[Tisme]

This is probably Labor's fault:

thank goodness my backup generator is magneto spark. I just need to start stockpiling fuel

http://www.blackoutusa.org/vsl/index.php?r=562&r=5547&hop=69news

 

[drsmith]

This is probably Labor's fault:

thank goodness my backup generator is magneto spark. I just need to start stockpiling fuel

http://www.blackoutusa.org/vsl/index.php?r=562&r=5547&hop=69news

That's the last time I'll click on one of your web links.

I expected it to be something unrelated but that page takes control of web browser commands. Clicking X to close for example results in a new pop-up window asking "Do you want to leave this page" etc. Upon seeing that, I closed IE from Task Manager.

 

[Tisme]

That's the last time I'll click on one of your web links.

I expected it to be something unrelated but that page takes control of web browser commands. Clicking X to close for example results in a new pop-up window asking "Do you want to leave this page" etc. Upon seeing that, I closed IE from Task Manager.

No problem my end. I run some fairly heavy duty defensive programs, so I would suspect it was merely e.g. a java thing.

 

[drsmith]

No problem my end. I run some fairly heavy duty defensive programs, so I would suspect it was merely e.g. a java thing.

No. It was a new pop up browser trying to encourage me to explore the site after clicking X in on the top right hand corner of IE to close the page.

 

[noco]

More cover up by Jay Weatherill to keep the true facts from the people of SA regarding power generation.

Wearthrill tried hard to stop the letter from Alinta going public.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...p/news-story/0145f400984356fefa8881e23b173de7


The Weatherill Labor government has released a letter *detail*ing negotiations with the last coal-fired power station in South Australia, after a 16-month battle to keep it secret.

It was released only under the threat of court action and shows that, five months before announcing the closure of its Port Augusta power station, Alinta Energy wrote to the government​ seeking help to increase shareholder confidence for capital investment in the face of a deteriorating wholesale energy market.

It builds on revelations by The Australian that Alinta had *approached the government in January last year for help, with plans to expand the life of the power plant and mine to 2028.

But the government rejected its *approach and the power station closed in May, with South Austral*ians being hit with immed*iate electricity price rises of *almost 75 per cent.

Premier Jay Weatherill revealed on October 7 that he was pursuing legal avenues to block the release of the letter, which South Australian Ombudsman Wayne Lines ruled should be *released in the public interest after a Freedom of Information application by the Liberal Party more than 16 months ago.

But the government released the letter late yesterday, meeting the final deadline set by Mr Lines.

The January 22, 2015, letter from Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery to Ener*gy Minister and Treasurer ​ ​Tom Koutsantonis said that while the company had invested more than $150 million in upgrades and maintenance of the coalmine and power station since taking ownership in March 2011, the wholesale electricity market in the state had continued to deter*iorate.

Is it any wonder SA is paying a higher price for power against anywhere in Australia......Queensland is heading the same way under the Palaszxzuk Green/Labor socialist left wing coalition.

 

[Tisme]

More cover up .........

I'm not sure what the complaint is and what smoking gun the Murdoch Liberal Party is looking for, but if Govts holding back information from the public is a coverup, the e.g. Newman Govt would be a lead lined box.

Every Govt withholds information, especially when the fourth estate and fifth column are intent on bringing down that govt. The public interest is always a reason/excuse, as is probity,good governance, competition, etc .

 

[CanOz]

No. It was a new pop up browser trying to encourage me to explore the site after clicking X in on the top right hand corner of IE to close the page.

Yeah, I got the same thing....ridiculous prepper site....

 

[CanOz]

Tesla announces solar tiles.....more things to wait for....

These are Tesla’s stunning new solar roof tiles for homes

 

[SirRumpole]

I don't know how people make the connection between smart meters and diconnections, but some have.

Smart meters will lead to more disconnections in SA, social advocates warn

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-...lead-to-disconnections-advocates-warn/7986516

 

[sptrawler]

Tesla announces solar tiles.....more things to wait for....

These are Tesla’s stunning new solar roof tiles for homes

Yep, and now Tesla are ramping up charges to reflect the cost of recharging a 90Kw/Hr battery.

Wow, It doesn't cost nothing to run an electric car, and what do you mean it cost to replace the batteries.

http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/...its-supercharger-network-20161108-gskggx.html

Somebody has to pay to rapid charge a 90Kw/Hr battery, that is a lot of electricity, it would run your split system for several days.

Maybe better to cycle to work.lol

Just my opinion, but nothing is for nothing, except your own energy. All you have to do is feed it, which we seem to be doing in excess.lol

 

[basilio]

Excellent story on Carnegie Wave energy system. Fully integrated system. Cheaper than diesal and idxeal for island communities.

Wave energy: Carnegie launches world-leading hub in Cornwall

The Australian wave energy company’s new hub is the world’s largest and most advanced for developing offshore renewable energy technology
CETO 5 being towed to the Garden Island site in Western Australia, where Carnegie deployed the world’s first grid-connected wave energy array.

Myles Gough
@MylesGough

Tuesday 15 November 2016 09.40 AEDT

Carnegie Wave Energy’s offshore energy-generating infrastructure is purposefully inconspicuous. Its patented CETO buoys, which resemble large circular tanks, are tethered to an anchor in the seafloor and remain fully submerged, out of sight.

It’s a design feature that prioritises long-term survival in the ocean over efficiency in converting energy, says Michael Ottaviano, Carnegie’s managing director.

“You could have the most efficient technology, but if it dies after the first big storm then it’s worth nothing,” he says. “We never breach the surface. We can simply ride under a large wave as it comes through, and we follow the peak and the trough up and down.”

This rise and fall movement is the basis of Carnegie’s world-leading wave energy technology. The movement, in harmony with ocean swells, drives a pump attached to the tether. In its next-generation CETO 6 buoys, a system contained inside the tank will convert that pressurised fluid into clean electricity, which is carried onshore by a cable.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustain...rnegie-launches-world-leading-hub-in-cornwall

 

[sptrawler]

Excellent story on Carnegie Wave energy system. Fully integrated system. Cheaper than diesal and idxeal for island communities.



https://www.theguardian.com/sustain...rnegie-launches-world-leading-hub-in-cornwall

It has been around for a long time, and still hasn't got traction, somebody isn't telling the whole story.IMO

It sounds a bit like Sarich orbital engine, which became orbital fuel injection, which became Sarich property developments from my memory of the morphing.
Just became a complete muddle of ideas, from my memory.

 

[SirRumpole]

Are you back yet Smurph ?

Some of us are waiting with baited breath for the inside story on Hazelwood.

 

[qldfrog]

Are you back yet Smurph ?

Some of us are waiting with baited breath for the inside story on Hazelwood.

But in the meantime, enjoy your break!!!

 

[basilio]

It has been around for a long time, and still hasn't got traction, somebody isn't telling the whole story.IMO

It sounds a bit like Sarich orbital engine, which became orbital fuel injection, which became Sarich property developments from my memory of the morphing.
Just became a complete muddle of ideas, from my memory.

It's in successful operation in West Australia. The continual development process has ironed out many engineering issues. Did you read the story ?

 

[Smurf1976]

Are you back yet Smurph ?

Some of us are waiting with baited breath for the inside story on Hazelwood.

Yep I'm back but pretty much exhausted at the moment. Long story here but in short came home to find a disaster at home - a stray cat had got inside and let's just say I was up until 2:30am the following morning cleaning things to get the place reasonable to live in. Roughly 4 hours sleep on the boat, 4 hours the next night due to all that cleaning, been catching up on sleep ever since so I haven't been online much at all.

Now for Hazelwood.

In short, it's not in good shape. There's some uncertainties since management and staff have done a pretty good job of keeping things under wraps until the closure announcement but there's a lot of problems. What I know is:

Unit 3 - has boiler problems such that it was shut down prior to the closure announcement due to being unsafe. Too many leaks and the risk of it going "boom" which could easily injure or kill someone. I'm not sure if workplace safety regulators formally ordered it shut or if it was a case of "shut it voluntarily if you want to avoid a formal order" but either way it's shut. This reality was a trigger event in the overall closure decision.

I'm told (inside info) that they're doing a patch up that should get it going for this Summer but that's only a patch up really and not a proper fix.

Units 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 are being run but below full capacity. They have an assortment of problems including boiler tube corrosion (as with unit 3) but not to the point of being critical yet but it's not good.

Unit 7 has been running at close to full output. That had a major rebuild about 20 years ago following catastrophic failure (major boiler damage) on start up. One consequence of that is that it does have newer parts in the boiler than the others now but I'm told that it too does have some issues of the same nature.

So overall one unit is not running at all, six are running at around 85 - 90% capacity and one is fully operational.

They'd need to spend many $ hundreds of millions to bring the whole plant up to scratch and have decided to close instead.

Another factor, albeit a lesser one, is that the Vic government has tripled the royalty on brown coal mining thus increasing operating costs for Hazelwood and others. Plus the owner has an ideological view which is to sell (or close) the plant anyway and to not invest further into coal-fired generation. Add that all up and there's no chance of Hazelwood staying in business unless someone with deep pockets bought it which seems unlikely in practice.

Hazelwood was privatised 20 years with an expected 40 year remaining life following major refurbishment work and that time was still being quoted in various contexts until recently. 20 years later it's in a sad state indeed.

So what happened? Well under private ownership it was far more "efficient" than when the SEC ran it. Constant running at full output with far less staff, less maintenance, less everything. Plus various tweaks to push output up beyond the original design of the plant and keep it there, often going flat out 24/7 at above 100% of design capacity. Pretty clearly this has taken its toll on the equipment and now the inevitable has happened.

A key unanswered question is what other surprises may be on the way with unexpected power station closures?

AGL has been pretty open about Liddell not being in great shape. They plant to close it in 2022 and have this year done a patch up on the boilers to keep it going until then.

Hydro Tasmania certainly hasn't kept it quiet that the P&W gas turbines at Bell Bay aren't too good (and that was before they were run flat out 24/7 during the Basslink failure). As with AGL that information is in the public domain for anyone who wants it.

But there's a definite question as to what's no being said given that Engie (owners of Hazelwood) kept things pretty quiet until just a few months before the end. You can't build a major new power station (of whatever type be it coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro etc) in a few months so there's a real issue if more surprises like the Hazelwood closure come up without warning.

What are the consequences of the closure? Apart from obvious things like workers losing their jobs,

1. Hazelwood's base load energy contribution will in practice now be sourced primarily from coal-fired plant in NSW and gas-fired plant in SA with some contribution also likely from coal and gas-fired plant in Qld, gas in NSW, Vic and Tas and one particular coal-fired plant in Vic.

2. Wholesale prices will rise, indeed future contracts have already shot up in a big way. Consumers lose but just about all generators will benefit financially.

3. Spot market price volatility is likely to greatly increase at times of high demand due to the removal of Hazelwood's 1600 MW capacity. No direct impact on most small consumers, the average price is more relevant there, but it has a direct impact on some large consumers. From the generation side, Snowy Hydro and Hydro Tas are the obvious winners from increased volatility but also the various owners of gas-fired peaking plants.

4. The big one is that there is no longer adequate capacity to meet peak demand in Victoria + SA if the wind isn't blowing.

Even if literally every coal, gas and hydro plant works perfectly (itself an optimistic assumption since generation outages are common), Basslink also works perfectly and there's maximum transmission from NSW into Vic then there's still not enough to meet peak demand if there's no wind.

We might not get the right (or you could say "wrong") combination of temperature and wind speed in 2017-18 but at some point it will happen (has in the past) and on that day things are going to get very interesting. Even more interesting if anything breaks down on that day (and there's a good chance it will - thermal power stations are highly complex and prone to faults especially given the age of some plant in those states and considering we're talking about running flat out when it's 45 degrees).

So Morwell (Vic, 170 MW) is gone, Anglesea (Vic, 160 MW) is gone too, so is Playford B (SA, 240 MW) and Northern (SA, 540 MW) and now Hazelwood (1600 MW) is about to shut. Put all that together and power supply in those two states is an awful lot less robust than it was not too long ago.

I'll post some more in a day or two.

 

[basilio]

Welcome back Smurf !

What a cat story. Segues nicely into the catastrophe that is our power plants. I have had some strong misgivings about our coal fired power stations along the lines you have described and for the reasons you run. Basically private ownership thrashes it's assets (human and mechanical) to death and then moves on.

Really think your analysis needs to broadened and brought to public focus as a matter of urgency. This is very big.

Thanks.