Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

The future of energy generation and storage

This morning the grid was hauling out nearly 7kw from my system, including 1 kw from my battery backup.
Really pissed off with the way orign/powercor control everything.
The bastards take power from my batteries overnight and pay me 3 cents per KWhr.
Then in the wee hours of the morning when the batteries get really low, nstead of being able to use the previous days energy to cater for the requirments, they charge me 29 cents per KWhr for the privelege.
Screwed.
Mick
Why can't you isolate your battery from the grid?
 
This morning the grid was hauling out nearly 7kw from my system, including 1 kw from my battery backup.
Really pissed off with the way orign/powercor control everything.
The bastards take power from my batteries overnight and pay me 3 cents per KWhr.
Then in the wee hours of the morning when the batteries get really low, nstead of being able to use the previous days energy to cater for the requirments, they charge me 29 cents per KWhr for the privelege.
Screwed.
Mick
Yes in the U.K, from what I've read, that is the problem causing low take up of V2G by EV owners.
They want to use the battery stored energy themselves and also they don't want the grid reducing the cycle life of their batteries.
 
This morning the grid was hauling out nearly 7kw from my system, including 1 kw from my battery backup.
Really pissed off with the way orign/powercor control everything.
Unless you're part of VPP (Virtual Power Plant) scheme then this shouldn't be happening.

The only mandatory control for solar is that it can be switched off if required for technical reasons as directed by AEMO. That is in a situation where, in layman's terms, there's too much power and nowhere for it to go either locally due to network constraints or at a state or whole of system level. That only applies to recent installations however.

Plus in SA there's a reverse engineered kludge to force them off as a last resort if all else fails. That doesn't require any communications to the inverter and is backwards compatible with old installations. It's done in a technically uncomfortable way via network voltage manipulation but it achieves the desired result in an emergency situation. Can't remember exactly how many times it's been used in practice, but you could count the number of incidents on your fingers easily, it's not something that's routinely applied. Main actual use was following the major storm that hit in November 2022 causing significant network damage, rooftop solar had to be reduced (not stopped entirely) on a number of occasions over the following days simply due to the lack of functional network capacity to accommodate it.

So unless you're on a VPP, or have manually configured it to do so, your battery shouldn't be discharging into the network overnight. And even if you are on a VPP that would be an unusual mode of operation in practice.

Curtailment of large scale solar is very different however and quite routine. A reasons I'm a strong advocate for load shifting to the middle of the day - it can put that otherwise wasted energy, that ultimately someone is already paying for, to use. :2twocents
 
Some pretty extensive testing has been done including inspection of consumer appliances, analysing the gas in the pipe at consumer premises, etc.

At a technical level the basic conclusion was that the gas does stay mixed in the distribution network under real world operating conditions. A mix of up to 5% going in, will result in a mix of up to 5% at the appliance.
As an update, this has since been increased to 10% hydrogen in the gas mix and is now being supplied to about 3700 customers, mostly households but also some business use, and so far it's all working.

From the consumer's perspective there's no difference, it works the same as conventional natural gas and no action is required to do anything differently. So a gas appliance in a home or business works exactly the same as it normally would, no change is required.

The relevant area being Mitchell Park, Clovelly Park and parts of Marion - these are adjacent suburbs of Adelaide, so it's effectively one project that stretches across suburb boundaries. :2twocents
 
Power troubles in WA.

I don't know all the details in WA so I'll comment with caution but something seems very wrong to me with the idea that they don't want to start gas turbines up when the alternative is consumers having no power.

I mean in other states this is just normal operation.

Chart below shows internal combustion and open cycle gas turbine plant (only) in SA (SA not WA) over past 7 days. Does not show generation from other sources.

Red = internal combustion plant burning diesel
Darker orange colour = gas turbines
Light orange colour = internal combustion plant burning gas

Point being starting gas turbines or internal combustion plant for relatively short periods isn't an unusual thing, it's routinely done to meet peak demand and to back up other generation, it's routine operation. So I'm not seeing what the problem is in Kalgoorlie - if transmission's out well run the gas turbines then, what's the problem there?

1724501895397.png
 
Well it looks as though the decarbonising of process industries has commenced, as I said a while back, there will be a lot of process indjstries that wont be viable in a renewable energy Australia.
My guess is, there will a lot more closures announced between now and 2030.

 
I thought this was pretty cool -a page from Engineers Australia magazine.
WA has put a battery set up on an old power station that takes the overcapacity of the many house solar installations and provides up to 4 hours of power (I assume peak lopping) at evenings and mornings.
 

Attachments

  • DOC290824-002.pdf
    843.5 KB · Views: 8
Well it looks as though the decarbonising of process industries has commenced, as I said a while back, there will be a lot of process indjstries that wont be viable in a renewable energy Australia.
My guess is, there will a lot more closures announced between now and 2030.

As I said, the ruler will be well and truly out, measuring up the viability of energy intensive process industries.
Have to wait and see how long before Alcoa make an announcement on Pinjarra and Wagerup.
Shouldn't be too long, is my guess, the EPA and forrestry management are putting pessure on them so there is a ready made out for them.

 
Last edited:
Funny they are worrked about Chinese control over EV computers and not about Chinese control of grid batteries.


Waves of electric vehicles from China could soon hit Australian shores in massive numbers, but grim questions have been raised over possible security concerns.
 
Funny they are worrked about Chinese control over EV computers and not about Chinese control of grid batteries.


Waves of electric vehicles from China could soon hit Australian shores in massive numbers, but grim questions have been raised over possible security concerns.
How long before we impose 100% duty on Chinese EV..just to ensure our grid stays up, but obviously with democracy saving pretext, or pretending to play strong man a la US?
 
Top