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The future of energy generation and storage

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farmerge said:
And these are/were the muppets who should have known better.
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All comes down to the difference in timeframe.

Big energy projects span decades or more. Years to investigate it, a decade to build it, then it runs for 40+ years. The whole thing takes place over an extended period.

So energy planning necessarily looks far into the future. Firstly to make sure enough is built but secondly because there's no point building something if the resource isn't there to support it. There's no point building a coal, gas or whatever generating plant if you don't have the fuel to support its operation over its lifetime.

Versus politics which looks no further ahead than the next election.

Therein lies the problem. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
All comes down to the difference in timeframe.

Big energy projects span decades or more. Years to investigate it, a decade to build it, then it runs for 40+ years. The whole thing takes place over an extended period.

So energy planning necessarily looks far into the future. Firstly to make sure enough is built but secondly because there's no point building something if the resource isn't there to support it. There's no point building a coal, gas or whatever generating plant if you don't have the fuel to support its operation over its lifetime.

Versus politics which looks no further ahead than the next election.

Therein lies the problem. :2twocents
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I agree , but once governments are in "the market", they are usually in it for the long haul. If they own the facilities it's in their interest whether they be either side of the fence to make the operations work otherwise their political future is on the line.

Private companies , especially foreign ones, on the other hand can just walk away when things get a bit tough as in Hazlewood fiasco.
 
SirRumpole said:
I think we need all of the above, it depends on the time scale.

Hydro will take decades, wind and solar a less amount of time, but these require storage which will take longer.

Imo the priority should be gas turbines (that can run on multi fuels), nothing else gives the despatchable power of coal in a reasonably short time frame.

No doubt people will argue this. :cool:
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I should have said priority for government investment should be gas turbines. Eventually if things go well with wind and solar GT's will be peaking plants and private enterprise is not interested in assets that stand idle.

Private enterprise should be encouraged to build as much solar and wind as they want to, necessary hydro should proceed, and more subsidies should be offered for rooftop solar, in other words is not this OR that, it's everything, everywhere all at once to coin a phrase. :cool:
 
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SirRumpole said:
I should have said priority for government investment should be gas turbines. Eventually if things go well with wind and solar GT's will be peaking plants and private enterprise is not interested in assets that stand idle.

Private enterprise should be encouraged to build as much solar and wind as they want to, necessary hydro should proceed, and more subsidies should be offered for rooftop solar, in other words is not this OR that, it's everything, everywhere all at once to coin a phrase. :cool:
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Don't forget the grid also!
I am confident we will get there. Won't be fun for a few years though.
 
Knobby22 said:
I am confident we will get there. Won't be fun for a few years though.
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Likewise. Go forward far enough and all this will be a curious footnote in history - someone will no doubt learn of it and be wondering why so much fuss? Didn't they understand maths and physics well enough back in the 2020's? What was so hard?

In the meantime though, it seems we have another incoming bullet to try and dodge:

112427RESERVE NOTICE16/12/2023 03:34:00 PM

STPASA - Update to the Forecast Lack Of Reserve Level 2 (LOR2) in the NSW Region on 19/12/2023​

AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE

The Forecast LOR2 condition in the NSW region advised in AEMO Electricity Market Notice No. 112392 has been updated at 1530 hrs 16/12/2023 to the following:

From 1330 hrs to 1600 hrs 19/12/2023.
The forecast capacity reserve requirement is 685 MW.
The minimum capacity reserve available is 128 MW.

AEMO is seeking a market response.

AEMO estimates that the latest time at which permission can be given for a planned outage to proceed is 0530 hrs on 19/12/2023.

Manager NEM RTO
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So forecast maximum demand 12,056 MW and a reserve of barely 1%.

As with the last one, odds are it'll scrape through but at some point we're going to lose this game of Russian roulette big time. It'll be like one of those aircraft crash or building collapse investigations - the warnings are writ large for all to see and have been for quite some time but it's anyone's guess as to exactly when it goes wrong. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
Big energy projects span decades or more. Years to investigate it, a decade to build it, then it runs for 40+ years. The whole thing takes place over an extended period.
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Plus getting things through the Land and Environment and Native Title Courts.

Really, governments have to pass legislation allowing them to declare projects of national importance that can by-pass the courts, otherwise nothing will ever be done.
 
SirRumpole said:
Plus getting things through the Land and Environment and Native Title Courts.

Really, governments have to pass legislation allowing them to declare projects of national importance that can by-pass the courts, otherwise nothing will ever be done.
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Where there is Government money involved, there are people trying to find a way to milk it. :xyxthumbs
 
This bloke might read ASF

<<A top Australian engineer has warned the country’s power grid is unstable and incapable of coping with surging demand – and has proposed a controversial solution.
Adi Paterson is the former chief of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and has written to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese demanding urgent action to keep the nation’s lights on.

“Your electricity plan, for a massive expansion of the grid with wind and solar sources is deeply flawed, and expensive. It will fail to deliver quality, 24-hour electricity,” Dr Paterson warned.

Mass blackouts in rural areas last Friday, sparked by strain on the eastern power grid, should serve as a warning signal to the public and businesses – and are a sign of things to come, he added.>>

 
macca said:
This bloke might read ASF

<<A top Australian engineer has warned the country’s power grid is unstable and incapable of coping with surging demand – and has proposed a controversial solution.
Adi Paterson is the former chief of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and has written to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese demanding urgent action to keep the nation’s lights on.

“Your electricity plan, for a massive expansion of the grid with wind and solar sources is deeply flawed, and expensive. It will fail to deliver quality, 24-hour electricity,” Dr Paterson warned.

Mass blackouts in rural areas last Friday, sparked by strain on the eastern power grid, should serve as a warning signal to the public and businesses – and are a sign of things to come, he added.>>

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Someone is talking his own book it seems, but nuclear shouldn't be banned forever. One thing is sure, we are getting closer to the precipice and I think the public is starting to think that the government thinks that emissions reduction is more important than keeping the lights on.

That will change very quickly when a few dinners are spoiled due to blackouts.
 
SirRumpole said:
Someone is talking his own book it seems, but nuclear shouldn't be banned forever. One thing is sure, we are getting closer to the precipice and I think the public is starting to think that the government thinks that emissions reduction is more important than keeping the lights on.

That will change very quickly when a few dinners are spoiled due to blackouts.
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It will take a Big blackout in Sydney to start the Social media storm that is required for it to become "urgent"

If a storm over the Blue Mountains cuts the power from one of the few remaining coal fired plants and then there is a blackout until the sun comes up that will cause a stir.

No charged phones or cars, no AC for the heat pool of Western Sydney, no hot breaky, lots of hot, cranky people on Social media should do the job
 
macca said:
It will take a Big blackout in Sydney to start the Social media storm that is required for it to become "urgent"

If a storm over the Blue Mountains cuts the power from one of the few remaining coal fired plants and then there is a blackout until the sun comes up that will cause a stir.

No charged phones or cars, no AC for the heat pool of Western Sydney, no hot breaky, lots of hot, cranky people on Social media should do the job
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No traffic lights, no petrol stations, or at least on a rolling blackout roster.
FUn, fun, fun.
 
Question for Smurf when the system on the East Coast gets overwhel who gets cut off 1st industry or domestic, is there a choice?
 
Well W.A's released its thought bubble, I mean plan.
www.watoday.com.au

Future planning: Is this the year petrol will disappear from WA?

A close look at the WA government’s new 40-page emissions reductions strategy has found some bold predictions of what the state could look like in 26 years’ time.
www.watoday.com.au www.watoday.com.au
These are key predictions from the Sectoral Emissions Reduction Strategy released by the Cook government with little fanfare last week after two years, following a promise to chart a course towards WA’s legislated 2050 net-zero target by informing non-binding, five-yearly goals.
It contains emissions modelling in a level of detail never seen before, focusing on the state’s biggest polluting sectors including industry (resources and manufacturing), electricity, transport and agriculture.
The strategy lacked detail and targets on the pathway from 2024 to 2050, but an analysis of the 40-page document by this masthead found some bold predictions of what the state could look like in 26 years’ time – and who would be the state’s biggest emitter.

The biggest and earliest change would be visible in the transport sector, which aimed to drop from 15.8 million tonnes of carbon emitted annually to 4.2 million tonnes in 2050.

This would largely be driven by an incredibly bullish prediction on EV uptake that would ramp up over the next few years.

The strategy suggested EV sales would jump from 6.6 per cent of all new car sales in WA in 2023 to 10 per cent by 2025, then a whopping 56 per cent by 2030.
By 2050, virtually no internal combustion engine vehicles would be sold in WA.
These statistics also reflected the strategy’s petroleum predictions.
Currently, petroleum constitutes about 7 per cent of the state’s energy mix, but would be less than 1 per cent by 2050.

Electricity as an energy source, which includes powering vehicles, would jump from about 15 per cent of the state’s total energy mix in 2024 to 50 per cent in 2050.

Remaining on the energy mix, the strategy also predicted gas would plummet from more than 30 per cent to less than 5 per cent, while coal would be wiped out completely as promised by the WA government.
Hydrogen – which has yet to be proven as an energy source at scale – would make up about 7 per cent of the mix in 2050 while biofuel would make up about 5 per cent.
Heavy vehicles including some trucks, shipping and planes would continue to use fossil fuels.

In contrast, the state’s biggest emitters – collectively known in the strategy as “industry” – are predicted to drop carbon emissions from 36 million tonnes annually to 4.7 million tonnes.

Businesses in the manufacturing, gas extraction, mining and chemicals space account for about 50 per cent of WA’s current emissions.
Despite the importance of this sector to WA’s path to net-zero, the strategy contained scant details on how emissions would be reduced so dramatically.
However, it noted many of the facilities under the industry umbrella were covered by the Australian Government’s safeguard mechanism.
Premier Roger Cook has previously said WA’s emissions would likely grow over the next few years before they declined as big polluters, particularly gas companies, ramped up operations that created fuel and technologies for other countries to decarbonise.
 
IFocus said:
Question for Smurf when the system on the East Coast gets overwhel who gets cut off 1st industry or domestic, is there a choice?
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For an unplanned incident, the kind of thing that would occur if a major generation failure unexpectedly occurs, UFLS (Under Frequency Load Shedding) will disconnect load in blocks once frequency thresholds are breached.

In theory that should work in a pre-determined order, but you won't find anyone willing to state categorically that it'll always go to plan. Depending on the magnitude of supply loss, in practice load disconnection can end up somewhat of a mess.

For a planned load shedding, or for restoration of supply after an unplanned trip in a situation where it's not actually possible to put everything back on (due to an overall lack of available supply) there's really two stages:

First is RERT (Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader) which in simple terms are industrial loads and private generation (eg backup generators that aren't actual power stations and which aren't normally operated - eg backup diesels at TV stations for example). This involves payment to disconnect load or to generate.

Beyond that it's involuntary load shedding as such or in industry terms an LOR3. In layman's terms that's blackouts.

What load to shed, and in what order, is based on a pre-determined list set by government. Whilst the requirement is a technical one as such, the priority order isn't important in a technical sense and is thus a political decision.

SA's load shedding list is public and is here: https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/852827/Manual-load-shedding-list.pdf

A key point about the SA list being it doesn't reset to No.1 on each occasion but rather, continues from the most recent incident. So if load shedding were to become routine, everyone on the list would be affected equally over time - the only ones who wouldn't are those not on the list at all.

Other states it's strictly confidential but broadly speaking, the lowest priority for load shedding (highest priority to maintain supply) will be hospitals and next comes the CBD, important infrastructure such as water treatment plants and so on. Any industrial facility that'll suffer equipment damage or cause a pollution incident will also be a priority to maintain supply to.

Note regarding industry - there are examples of facilities which are effectively split into two loads, one that's much higher priority than the other, at the same site. The high priority being the one that, if interrupted, will bring about serious consequences and the low priority one being the rest of the plant. That discrimination being done on site with the UFLS settings and, in the case of manual load shedding, operating procedures. Physically both groups would typically be supplied via the same physical transmission lines so it's about turning the low priority one off on site, not about it outright losing supply as such.

So broadly speaking the order is:

Voluntary industrial load and those with their own backup generators (RERT).

Non-harmful industrial load.

Mass market consumers - residential, general business etc.

Aiming to avoid critical infrastructure, industry where major impacts will result, plus the CBD.

And definitely aiming to not disconnect hospitals and anything else deemed particularly critical.

Note for reference that traffic signals are nothing special, they're simply fed from the nearest supply and will get the same level of reliability as the general area (so CBD higher than suburban). A minority do have backup, there's a battery backup system at the intersection, but for most if mains is lost then the lights simply go out. Rail signals have backup however. At least I'm not aware of any that don't.

Putting that into practical terms:

Minor shortfall = RERT can likely contain it.

Medium shortfall for an hour or two = industry will likely contain it if in Qld, NSW, Vic or Tas. In SA it would spread to residential and commercial.

Larger shortfall = it's going to hit residential and small business no avoiding it.

With all bets being off in the event of an actual system collapse. In that case even hospitals may well be load shed as there's simply no choice and no time to react.

A complication in all that being what happens with a serious shortfall over time:

Industry that can load shed once can't do it again until x hours (typically at least 24) have passed since the conclusion of the last load shedding, which precludes doing it at the same time each day.

Batteries are short term generation no more than 4 hours.

Diesel generation that can keep running only if adequate fuel is delivered since on-site storage isn't that much.

etc.
 
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Regarding that last point about diesel, well for an example there's one particular facility that's on the grid but in practice doesn't operate most days, being purely peaking and backup plant.

Go to the site and there's 2 x 50,000 litre diesel fuel tanks.

Sounds like plenty?

Well it does until I point out that fuel consumption with all units on is circa 6.25 litres per second.

So a bit over 4 hours and those tanks go from full to empty.

Given fuel delivery is by road only, it's highly doubtful this facility could operate constantly in practice. Getting the fuel to it, and getting the tankers unloaded quickly enough, would be somewhat problematic.

Normally no issue, it's not intended to operate constantly, but in a serious supply shortfall situation the basic issue is that after a period supply falls off. Facilities like this one that would likely run short on fuel, batteries discharging, etc.

That's a new problem that historically didn't exist since, back in the old days, conservative "what if?" thinking by engineers would've insisted on a much larger fuel tank at a minimum. :2twocents
 
Great info as usual smurf.

@IFocus on a local note, they have done a lot of distribution splitting in Mandurah's CBD, if you come into town from the station down Peel St, have a look at the pole on the corner of Sholl St.
Also the CBD residential is quietly getting remote read and operate meters, so I would say they are getting ready for the unexpected.
 
sptrawler said:
Great info as usual smurf.

@IFocus on a local note, they have done a lot of distribution splitting in Mandurah's CBD, if you come into town from the station down Peel St, have a look at the pole on the corner of Sholl St.
Also the CBD residential is quietly getting remote read and operate meters, so I would say they are getting ready for the unexpected.
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Cheers SP will do I asked the question wondering where the pain will go to hide the problems suspect it will cost a motsa regardless.

Disappointed WA is heading down the tubes energy wise still a tiny amount of wriggle room but not for long.
 
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