The future of energy generation and storage

[rederob]

AEMO data current as of October 2021 shows two generating units in Snowy 2.0 operating for the 2025-26 summer season, 4 operating for the 2026 winter season and 6 operating for the 2026-27 summer. There are 6 generating units being installed in the power station in total.

Some 2 years ago I was pessimistic about Snowy 2.0 and copped lots of criticisms.
So as most here now know:

Snowy 2.0 lacks transparency to this day, has experienced massive delays and cost blowouts, and will not be in place when it's first needed - probably this summer based on climate forecasts - if it's needed at all.
On the other hand we now see Arena funding BESS projects with a value of $2.7 billion and a capacity of 2.0 GW / 4.2 GWh to plug into the National Electricity Market. While 2GW is the same generation output of Snowy 2.0 the projects won't have the ability to support long-duration needs. However, we really don't know how much of a duration will be needed to stop-gap intermittency as more and more wind and solar is being added to the grid, as well as home battery storage.
The projects ARENA is supporting include:

• AGL: a new 250 MW / 500 MWh battery in Liddell, NSW.
• FRV: a new 250 MW / 550 MWh battery in Gnarwarre, VIC.
• Neoen: retrofitting the 300 MW / 450 MWh Victorian Big Battery in Moorabool, VIC to enable grid-forming capability.
• Neoen: a new 200 MW / 400 MWh battery in Hopeland, QLD.
• Neoen: a new 200 MW / 400 MWh battery in Blyth, SA.
• Origin: a new 300 MW / 900 MWh battery in Mortlake, VIC
• Risen: a new 200 MW / 400 MWh battery in Bungama, SA.
• TagEnergy: a new 300 MW / 600 MWh battery in Mount Fox QLD.

All the above will be fully operational by 2025 at latest.
On the home battery storage front we saw installations linked to solar systems in 2022 grow by 55% (47,100 residential energy storage systems) compared to 2021. The cumulative total number of Australian homes and businesses with solar and batteries hit 180,000 almost a year ago, so we know it's significantly more today as the economics of ownership have since improved. The interesting takeaway from this is that via VPP/DER it would be enough to prevent curtailment in many times that number of households. Should we be asking why we don't have VPP/DER penetration that would allow this, especially as only a small fraction of the over 3.5 million households with rooftop solar have battery storage?

The transition to renewables is inevitable, while Snowy 2.0 is looking more and more like a white elephant that needs putting down. The probable $10B in ongoing future expenditure to get Snowy 2.0 operational for summers 6 years out (will they get that right?) could be better spent.

(I never covered V2L or V2G possibilities which could be mandated for all imported electric vehicles, and which would render Snowy 2.0 an unmitigated economic disaster.)

 

[sptrawler]

Some 2 years ago I was pessimistic about Snowy 2.0 and copped lots of criticisms.
So as most here now know:
View attachment 164798
Snowy 2.0 lacks transparency to this day, has experienced massive delays and cost blowouts, and will not be in place when it's first needed - probably this summer based on climate forecasts - if it's needed at all.
On the other hand we now see Arena funding BESS projects with a value of $2.7 billion and a capacity of 2.0 GW / 4.2 GWh to plug into the National Electricity Market. While 2GW is the same generation output of Snowy 2.0 the projects won't have the ability to support long-duration needs. However, we really don't know how much of a duration will be needed to stop-gap intermittency as more and more wind and solar is being added to the grid, as well as home battery storage.
The projects ARENA is supporting include:

• AGL: a new 250 MW / 500 MWh battery in Liddell, NSW.
• FRV: a new 250 MW / 550 MWh battery in Gnarwarre, VIC.
• Neoen: retrofitting the 300 MW / 450 MWh Victorian Big Battery in Moorabool, VIC to enable grid-forming capability.
• Neoen: a new 200 MW / 400 MWh battery in Hopeland, QLD.
• Neoen: a new 200 MW / 400 MWh battery in Blyth, SA.
• Origin: a new 300 MW / 900 MWh battery in Mortlake, VIC
• Risen: a new 200 MW / 400 MWh battery in Bungama, SA.
• TagEnergy: a new 300 MW / 600 MWh battery in Mount Fox QLD.

All the above will be fully operational by 2025 at latest.
On the home battery storage front we saw installations linked to solar systems in 2022 grow by 55% (47,100 residential energy storage systems) compared to 2021. The cumulative total number of Australian homes and businesses with solar and batteries hit 180,000 almost a year ago, so we know it's significantly more today as the economics of ownership have since improved. The interesting takeaway from this is that via VPP/DER it would be enough to prevent curtailment in many times that number of households. Should we be asking why we don't have VPP/DER penetration that would allow this, especially as only a small fraction of the over 3.5 million households with rooftop solar have battery storage?

The transition to renewables is inevitable, while Snowy 2.0 is looking more and more like a white elephant that needs putting down. The probable $10B in ongoing future expenditure to get Snowy 2.0 operational for summers 6 years out (will they get that right?) could be better spent.

(I never covered V2L or V2G possibilities which could be mandated for all imported electric vehicles, and which would render Snowy 2.0 an unmitigated economic disaster.)

It sounds as though the Government is still committed to the Snowy project, despite the cost and time blow-outs. The major difference with the project now is, it has gone from a fixed cost basis, to a cost plus contract, which basically means the Govt is committed to build it whatever the cost basis.

In W.A however as I mentioned a few years ago, the lack of elevated sites in W.A will make batteries the go to solution here.

World’s biggest standalone grid says pumped hydro too hard, all in with battery storage

Western Australia says pumped hydro may be too hard, and it will have to focus on battery storage to support its switch from coal to renewables.

reneweconomy.com.au

 

[Smurf1976]

we really don't know how much of a duration will be needed to stop-gap intermittency

AEMO has crunched the numbers and so have various others independently (energy companies, universities, random individuals).

There are similarities in all of them but using AEMO's as the most credible, they came up with a bit under double Snowy 2.0's energy storage capacity being required plus a permanent 10GW fleet of gas turbines and enough fuel to run them without constraints plus all existing on river hydro with the ability to operate it unconstrained when required.

AEMO hasn't detailed it publicly but I'll add that achieving that latter point, unconstrained operation of existing hydro, does require construction of some additional infrastructure which may be contentious due to location. The alternative is simply scale up the gas.

That said, in defence of the critics of Snowy 2.0 there's two basic issues:

1. The federal government doesn't seem particularly good at running major projects in any field. The states aren't perfect but they're generally a lot better than the feds when it comes to getting things done.

2. Most technical people, myself included, are at least somewhat guilty of taking things too literally and had assumed the goal of eliminating fossil fuels would be taken considerably more seriously than it's actually being taken.

That latter point, assuming there'd be a serious effort to get fossil fuel use as low as possible, is what gave rise to the thinking that we'd need hydro to do all the deep firming. If fossil fuels are out, that's the real world alternative.

However it now seems to be the case that we'll still be using oil and gas beyond 2050, indeed the IEA forecasts ongoing worldwide oil and gas use at roughly the same level as today's, and that being so there's still room for gas turbines in power generation, they can be used for the deep firming task. EV's and so on will free up fuel for that purpose.

So today we have a situation where there's quite a long list of "shovel ready" gas / diesel generation projects, including many from the companies you mention in regard to batteries. Some of those have gone as far as the company owns the land and has all government approvals in place - they could start construction immediately, without telling anyone, if they wanted to.

Quite a few of the same companies also have hydro projects on the books and in some cases they do have the land and a full design done.

Where it gets "interesting" is the politics.

That neither option is being built is because there's no immediate need, the existing hydro, gas, diesel and coal fleet is sufficient for the task of deep firming and it's cheaper to simply build batteries for peak power. Bearing in mind there's no real technology bias there - even one of the hydro companies is planning an actual battery, it's a purely technical and financial decision not an ideological one.

The real game though is waiting for government to panic then being able to walk in, say "here's one we prepared earlier...." and plonk the solution in front of them "just sign here". There's more than a few companies playing that game right now.

A notable exception being that Hydro Tasmania is doing some pretty serious, on-site, geotechnical work at present indeed they're going as far as building some minor supporting infrastructure for projects that aren't committed to proceed so as to remove future construction risk. If you're going to build a tunnel then you really need a very thorough understanding of what's underground since, among other things, this determines the method of construction. You can't just assume a tunnel boring machine will do the job, depending on geology that may be totally unsuitable and won't be used at all. In other cases it's the right tool for the job.

Cutting across all that it's a reality that the coal fleet is ageing, so is much of the gas generation fleet, and nowhere near enough is actually being built to replace it. That's not only my view but also AEMO has said it publicly and so have multiple industry participants including majors. That being so, it's a given we'll see a very serious acceleration of effort - it's just a question of how we get to that point, whether the lights go out first or not, and how much the CO2 issue really matters in political decision making when it comes to the crunch.

General industry consensus is we're going to mostly but not fully renewable. That's the path of least resistance. There's a desire to do something about the CO2 issue, but not to the point it raises costs.

Beyond that, the rest of the politics is more dramatic.....

 

[SirRumpole]

Beyond that, the rest of the politics is more dramatic...

With the Greens having the balance of power in the Senate, it will be lights out for sure.

 

[Smurf1976]

With the Greens having the balance of power in the Senate, it will be lights out for sure.

The Greens as with all sides of politics are somewhat backed into a corner over all this.

Firstly they have their own priorities which, in the case of the Greens, includes environmental issues.

Second anyone in politics will be very consciously aware that every recent opinion poll puts "cost of living" at the top of the list of public concerns by a considerable margin and that within this subject "electricity bills" are a top 3 problem.

Third it's pretty much a given that a major energy crisis will see the political demise of whoever the public considers responsible.

Fourth there's the "be careful what you wish for" aspect and that has particular relevance to the Greens.

Regarding the latter, various surveys have been done and whilst the results aren't public, suffice to say the top three options favoured by the general public are solar, wind and batteries in that order. So the political battle is the Greens' to lose, they have the public on side thus far.

But if the lights go out, or the price issue isn't fixed, well that's when the public starts to seriously question the whole thing and looks for a solution. So rationally the Greens would want to avoid a crisis at least so far as deep firming is concerned.

As for Snowy, another point is simply timing. Politicians often forget that they don't do the work, the real work only begins once they've made the decision and as a generic answer, one would expect a project of that nature to be about a decade from start to completion. Now someone at Snowy may well have said otherwise, and politicians and others, including engineers, not working for Snowy assumed it must've been properly worked out but as a broad concept a decade is a reasonable time.

Hence people like me screaming that it's not just Liddell power station that requires replacing. Add to that Eraring, Yallourn, Vales Point, Gladstone, Torrens Island, Osborne and so on all in the relatively near future. Then add to that the diminishing gas supply from Bass Strait which also needs a solution in the near future.

A big part of the problem is politicians seem to live in a world where they see the paperwork as the task and the physical just happens. For the rest of us, the paperwork's the easy bit - the real work starts after that, after the political stuff is done that's when the clock starts counting down.

Eraring won't be the only coal station with its life extended for that reason, it's already past time to be focusing on what comes next.

 

[sptrawler]

@Smurf19 do you realise how many times you've explained this and do you also realise the same questions that you have answered keep getting asked?
It tells you some you something, either people don't believe you, or they feel they have the answers.
Time will tell, but unlike climate change, electrical distribution and generation is a very precise science, as the politicians will find out IMO.

 

[SirRumpole]

@Smurf19 do you realise how many times you've explained this and do you also realise the same questions that you have answered keep getting asked?
It tells you some you something, either people don't believe you, or they feel they have the answers.
Time will tell, but unlike climate change, electrical distribution and generation is a very precise science, as the politicians will find out IMO.

Every post from @Smurf1976 is a wealth of information and commonsense.

 

[rederob]

AEMO has crunched the numbers and so have various others independently (energy companies, universities, random individuals).

Duration = period of time.

There are similarities in all of them but using AEMO's as the most credible, they came up with a bit under double Snowy 2.0's energy storage capacity being required plus a permanent 10GW fleet of gas turbines and enough fuel to run them without constraints plus all existing on river hydro with the ability to operate it unconstrained when required.

What is at issue with ongoing transition is the potential for VRE droughts and the concomitant need for compensatory energy/electricity. In other words, what is the probability distribution of total energy provided over any given interval - across an hour, a day, or a week - in a developing VRE system such that we have enough firming to mitigate such events.
There are quite a few academic papers on VRE droughts and compensatory scenarios, but none can or does cater for sequential planning of future energy needs by way of holistic approaches to planning and implementation. Instead they tend to assume a 100% VRE without integrating the many present and future storage and delivery options. AEMO's 2023 Inputs, Assumptions and Scenarios Report provides a number of scenarios that could be in play by 2040 and the most optimistic suggests clean energy resources plus hydrogen generation could counter any VRE drought.
Snowy 2.0 is puny compared to battery energy potential of the 70% electrical vehicle fleet in AEMO's 2040 Green Energy Export Scenario, and that does not include the additional capacity of home storage batteries.
My point is that there is an incremental increase in storage potential which is occurring with minimal government intervention, so ramping this up to incorporate mechanisms that release that potential energy into the grid seems an obvious policy step.
That said, our transmission infrastructure needs massive revamping to not only accommodate the technical issues relating to transition but also their integrated distribution from source (ie. type and geography).
A scorching upcoming summer in south eastern Australia might be the first pressure test of the NEM since curtailments a number of years back. If so it will give AEMO and policy makers the real world ammunition they need to determine which paths need to be immediately followed in our various generation regions.

 

[sptrawler]

Duration = period of time.

What is at issue with ongoing transition is the potential for VRE droughts and the concomitant need for compensatory energy/electricity. In other words, what is the probability distribution of total energy provided over any given interval - across an hour, a day, or a week - in a developing VRE system such that we have enough firming to mitigate such events.
There are quite a few academic papers on VRE droughts and compensatory scenarios, but none can or does cater for sequential planning of future energy needs by way of holistic approaches to planning and implementation. Instead they tend to assume a 100% VRE without integrating the many present and future storage and delivery options. AEMO's 2023 Inputs, Assumptions and Scenarios Report provides a number of scenarios that could be in play by 2040 and the most optimistic suggests clean energy resources plus hydrogen generation could counter any VRE drought.
Snowy 2.0 is puny compared to battery energy potential of the 70% electrical vehicle fleet in AEMO's 2040 Green Energy Export Scenario, and that does not include the additional capacity of home storage batteries.
My point is that there is an incremental increase in storage potential which is occurring with minimal government intervention, so ramping this up to incorporate mechanisms that release that potential energy into the grid seems an obvious policy step.
That said, our transmission infrastructure needs massive revamping to not only accommodate the technical issues relating to transition but also their integrated distribution from source (ie. type and geography).
A scorching upcoming summer in south eastern Australia might be the first pressure test of the NEM since curtailments a number of years back. If so it will give AEMO and policy makers the real world ammunition they need to determine which paths need to be immediately followed in our various generation regions.

W.A will be a real world test bed for battery storage as it will be the major source of our storage.
I personally am not completely sold on V2G as a solution, firstly will it have any affect on the manufacturers warranty and the life and durability of the battery, secondly will most people sign up for it. In my situation, I would prefer V2L as it then is my business how much and how often I use the vehicle battery to mitigate my domestic usage.
EV's are a bit like the old cassette player, then the cd player, then the dvd player, they are new technology that can and probably will be superceded.
I'm not convinced batteries are here to stay, so to design your electricity network around them as the storage source, I think is premature.
Somewhat like the NBN, people in general will move away from a wired telecommunication network, to a more flexible over the air model, that they can use anywhere and is the very reason the Govt have acknowledged it will probably never make a profit.
Using your EV battery as grid storage, is a bit like having a battery swap out system like Nio have, how keen would you be to drive into a battery swap station, if the battery they swapped out was yours which you had nursed and the battery they put in was out of a taxi and had been charged and discharged endlessly.
With electricity it has to have multiple options and it will be interesting to see what the grid landscape looks like in 2040, my guess,H2, batteries, hydro and smr's installed alongside massive wind/solar farms.

 

[SirRumpole]

With electricity it has to have multiple options and it will be interesting to see what the grid landscape looks like in 2040, my guess,H2, batteries, hydro and smr's installed alongside massive wind/solar farms.

If there is a political will to do anything that is.

 

[Smurf1976]

My point is that there is an incremental increase in storage potential which is occurring with minimal government intervention, so ramping this up to incorporate mechanisms that release that potential energy into the grid seems an obvious policy step.

A key issue here is the gap between academic / engineering approaches versus what works in the financial / business world versus what can be achieved politically.

There's plenty of examples of things relating to fossil fuels or hydro that were technically obvious but which didn't work either financially or politically and were thus never built.

In terms of energy storage options, in all honesty I wouldn't dispute that SH2 is a long way down the list of good ones if the criteria is technical and economic. It involves 27km of waterway tunnels, plus 10km of access tunnels, and an operating head of about 620m. The scheme is a "pure" pumped storage operation, it adds no net energy beyond that provided by the existing scheme.

There's an alternative scheme in NSW that involves 2km of tunnels in total and achieves a net head of about 800m. It also comes with 490GWh per annum of net generation, due to natural inflow to the upper storage, in addition to pumped operation.

As an engineer would see it, the second one is the obvious first choice to pursue. It's inherently easier to build and with the much shorter tunnel length involves far lower risk. Bonus that it's net energy positive.

Financially the second one is likely to be very much cheaper, both in total and on a per MW basis, and comes with far lower risk.

Those points aren't new. There's a reason why SH2 was rejected back in the 1960's whilst the other scheme was seen as far more favourable and work was done to fully assess it with a view to future development.

Just one minor detail that might make the alternative monumentally difficult.

It involves building a dam on a river you see. And yep, it's located completely within a World Heritage Area.

Ahh, now there's the problem.

In a rational world an objective scientific assessment would be undertaken to evaluate in detail the impact of the scheme, the impact of alternatives, and make a decision on that basis. Bearing in mind the possibility of varying construction approaches to mitigate identified impacts.

In the political world however the use of the words "dam" and "World Heritage Area" in the same sentence isn't just dynamite, it's more akin to an atomic bomb being detonated. No politician's going anywhere near that one and nor will any energy company want anything to do with the idea.

Now I'm not necessarily arguing to build that scheme, my point's about the political difficulty of rationally considering all the options and making informed decisions. Some things just can't be said, rational discussions just aren't possible in the public political arena.

SH2 needs to be considered in that context. For all its shortcomings, and I agree it's not the ideal scheme, at the time it was proposed it came in the context of no other new large scale firm dispatchable electricity source, other than a few gas turbines, having been proposed and subsequently built in NSW in approximately 35 years. When you've been screaming that something needs to be done, and someone offers to do something and that's the only offer on the table, you're going to take it even if it's a long way short of perfect.

I'll speculate that we'll see very similar issues with getting any sort of distributed storage working properly. What's technically possible and what's achieved in reality will likely end up very different things.

That's already an issue right now with the comparatively simple task of heating water. Electric storage hot water is dead simple technology, absolutely proven beyond all doubt, with plenty of manufacturers. But as someone who does a lot of walking and sees a lot of homes being built or renovated, and who pays attention to what's visible from the street in general, I can tell you that gas is overwhelmingly dominant here in SA and that's despite being the state with the highest portion of wind and solar generated electricity. Walk past a house and if the water heater's visible from the street, which is often the case due to placement at the side, the overwhelming majority, including practically new installations, are gas.

That comes about partly due to the actions of consumers but it's heavily influenced by building regulations strongly skewed toward gas as the preferred choice. Never mind that we had a major curtailment of VRE (wind and/or solar) on 5 of the past 7 days, and at least some curtailment on the other 2 days, that could've been used to heat water with zero use of fossil fuels.

Chart shows large solar farms only. As can be seen, they're being routinely curtailed, virtually shut down, during much of the day as there's simply no use for the output. One reason investors have lost interest in building more of them. Meanwhile gas is burned to heat water - madness yes.

Now we do have some electric controlled load water heating in SA, but it mostly turns on at 11pm local time and thus uses electricity produced from good old natural gas.

That may seem like madness, and it is, but it comes down to the world of rules, regulations and bureaucracy. An engineer or tradesman would just get a list of all the homes with timers needing adjustment on site and send a few people out to do them. That sounds really simple, indeed Tasmania actually did that back in 1994 when a timing change was warranted (and the HEC moved those timers all of 30 minutes - some may see that as pedantic, others see it as optimisation).

Can't do it these days though. Not with the NEM and everything split between several different regulators, then there's the issue of the distributor owning the timers but not being responsible for generation or retail, and so on. Who pays? And who would authorise spending the money? And who would fund the very substantial cost of trying to get authorisation for the money? Cooking the planet is far easier and the path of least resistance.

Trust me, personally I've tried fixing that one. Bureaucracy trumps uncommon sense yes. Nobody disagrees at the technical level but oh wow there's some hurdles. It'll get done only by means of physically replacing all the meters - and that means it's a very long term thing.

Now I can't prove that anything similar is going to go wrong with ideas of using vehicle batteries and so on, but there's plenty of technical people who do hold a lot of concerns there. Concerns that rational technical outcomes will be lost to bureaucracy and ideology in practice. I mean if we can't get it right with the comparably simple task of heating water then that doesn't bode well.

 

[sptrawler]

Spot on smurf as usual.
When the amount of pumped hydro that is going to be required is taken into account, the first one is the key.
Once it is up and running and the benefits it adds to the renewable roadmap are shown, politically it will add a huge amount of weight and credibility to the transition argument, if it doesn't work well that will probably have the reverse effect.
The importance is obvious, by the current Govt writing a blank cheque, if it could be dumped it would have been the obvious time to do it and blame it on the previous Govt as a brain fart.
Never a dull moment.

 

[moXJO]

I like the idea of using tunnels for pumped hydro.

 

[rederob]

I personally am not completely sold on V2G as a solution, firstly will it have any affect on the manufacturers warranty and the life and durability of the battery,

Unlikely an issue for batteries as the need for AEMO intervention would be seldom and short.

secondly will most people sign up for it. In my situation, I would prefer V2L as it then is my business how much and how often I use the vehicle battery to mitigate my domestic usage.

I see the issue as one where a small part of the EV owning public are incentivised to participate. Let's say 500k people in total - 200k in each of Mel/Syd and 100k in Bris (about one in twenty cars in these cities) - add 11kW/vehicle. That's an instantaneous 5.75GW output potential nicely spread around the NEM.

EV's are a bit like the old cassette player, then the cd player, then the dvd player, they are new technology that can and probably will be superceded.
I'm not convinced batteries are here to stay, so to design your electricity network around them as the storage source, I think is premature.

As your sentences note, each of those technologies were part of an ongoing transition. So what's the problem if batteries are stepping stone to a better solution? What we know for certain is that there will be more potential EV battery storage available, and that battery costs are decreasing, especially in the home storage market.

I realise there is no electrical infrastructure supporting the above, and that there are very few EVs that can return energy to the grid. But this is no different to saying we have massive pumped hydro potential, and we have, so each of these options is plausible.

Just as batteries are getting cheaper, so is green hydrogen. But that's 5-10 years away, and then there's it's distribution network to sort out... unless solar/wind curtailment feeds green hydrogen, and then the ballgame gets driven by economics.

 

[SirRumpole]

Playing the wholesale power market could benefit consumers, with a risk of course.

Households playing the spot power market potentially slashing bills — but not without risk

While most Australians are stuck with inflated fixed-rate power prices, some are saving money by playing the spot market. So how are they doing it, and why isn't it for everyone?

www.abc.net.au

 

[rederob]

While there is every chance Snowy 2.0 will be a financial white elephant, its Queensland peer - in potential generation terms - won't suffer the geological problems of tunnelling, and would be significantly cheaper and faster to become operational. As shown in the link, it proposes to repurpose Mt Rawdon's mining operations into a pumped hydro power station:

Summarising its intentions:

There's the necessary hurdles to jump and a number of local concerns to address, but nothing different to any other major project.

 

[rederob]

As this thread has pointed out ad nauseum, the lack of an actual plan to move seamlessly to renewables, as distinct from a moving feast of "scenarios" has hampered the NEM's functional transition.
A recent submission by IEEFA aims to map out a path that's easy to understand and follow:

Why it's important to act asap becomes clear when just a few things are understood.
For example, while the electrification of just 20% of Australia's car fleet is roughly equal to the total storage capacity of Snowy 2.0 it might come as a surprise that only South Australia has laws that allow for V2G in practice.
Next, without an appropriate VPP/DER infrastructure there is no flexibility in demand response. For example, tapping into electrical hot water systems and pool pumps (and even EV charging) to prevent solar pv curtailment, rather than the typical approach today whereby consumers take advantage of cheaper nighttime tariffs, isn't just grid smart but also stands to significantly reduce household electricity costs.

What is clear is that government and/or commercial sector investment in new generation capacity can be reduced to a comparative pittance because ordinary citizens are instead progressively building it into their households via rooftop solar and home battery and BEV ownership. Where investment needs to occur is in the physical (mostly technical) infrastructure to make it work in a way that fairly compensates all parties for their respective ebbs and flows.

Financially speaking, diverting (via deferral) funds from building a single nuclear sub under the pompous AUKUS project to grid stabilisation gives us the more urgent energy security we need. But Albo gets more media brownie points from brown nosing than green keeping.

 

[SirRumpole]

As this thread has pointed out ad nauseum, the lack of an actual plan to move seamlessly to renewables, as distinct from a moving feast of "scenarios" has hampered the NEM's functional transition.
A recent submission by IEEFA aims to map out a path that's easy to understand and follow:
View attachment 165209
Why it's important to act asap becomes clear when just a few things are understood.
For example, while the electrification of just 20% of Australia's car fleet is roughly equal to the total storage capacity of Snowy 2.0 it might come as a surprise that only South Australia has laws that allow for V2G in practice.
Next, without an appropriate VPP/DER infrastructure there is no flexibility in demand response. For example, tapping into electrical hot water systems and pool pumps (and even EV charging) to prevent solar pv curtailment, rather than the typical approach today whereby consumers take advantage of cheaper nighttime tariffs, isn't just grid smart but also stands to significantly reduce household electricity costs.

What is clear is that government and/or commercial sector investment in new generation capacity can be reduced to a comparative pittance because ordinary citizens are instead progressively building it into their households via rooftop solar and home battery and BEV ownership. Where investment needs to occur is in the physical (mostly technical) infrastructure to make it work in a way that fairly compensates all parties for their respective ebbs and flows.

Financially speaking, diverting (via deferral) funds from building a single nuclear sub under the pompous AUKUS project to grid stabilisation gives us the more urgent energy security we need. But Albo gets more media brownie points from brown nosing than green keeping.

As you say, there is no plan.

We can sit here and write what we like, but the wrong people are making the decisions or in most cases not making any decisions.

What is needed is to get the plans out of the hands of politicians and into the hands of a dedicated panel of scientists and engineers who will look at the national needs and not the sectional interests.

The government's role should be to pass any legislation necessary, then come up with the money.

 

[sptrawler]

Meanwhile the cost of electricity keeps climbing, @SirRumpole do you know what the cost of a unit of electricity is over East? In W.A we are heading toward 30 cents.

Electricity bill shocks generate a record number of complaints

The NSW energy ombudsman received over 5000 complaints about power bills this winter, as cost of living pressures bite.

www.smh.com.au

A record number of people complained to the state’s ombudsman about their power bill this winter, forcing it to hire additional dispute resolution staff to manage the workload.

The Energy & Water Ombudsman NSW (EWON) received 5456 complaints about electricity bills between July and September, up 70 per cent from the same period in 2022, as cost of living pressures hit households.
Residential customers in NSW experienced energy price increases of between 20.8 and 21.4 per cent from July 1.

 

[SirRumpole]

Meanwhile the cost of electricity keeps climbing, @SirRumpole do you know what the cost of a unit of electricity is over East? In W.A we are heading toward 30 cents.

32 c/kwH