The future of energy generation and storage

[qldfrog]

Argentina is jumping on the bandwagon according to the website you posted @qldfrog , Argentina would have a better chance than us of going renewables, I would have thought with the mountains etc.
It certainly will become obvious how long reactors take to build, as there are many countries going to be building them, interesting times.

Milei Unveils Ambitious Nuclear Plan To Position Argentina As Global Energy Player | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

"After years of stagnation, nuclear energy is making a powerful comeback, and we are determined to lead, not follow," Milei declared confidently, emphasizing the country's abundant natural resources, skilled workforce, and Patagonia's cold climate, which he described as ideal for housing energy-intensive technologies like AI. "Nuclear energy is the only source that is sufficiently efficient, abundant and rapidly scalable to cope with the development of our civilization," he added.

The project will have the backing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi joining Milei and his key advisor, Demian Reidel, during the plan's official launch. Reidel stressed that the increasing demand for energy, particularly from AI advancements, makes nuclear power crucial to Argentina's energy strategy, jpost.com reports.

The first phase of the plan will focus on the construction of a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) at the Atucha Nuclear Power Plant. The reactor is expected to help meet rising energy demands and alleviate power shortages throughout Argentina.

Reidel emphasized the significant contribution of Argentine nuclear engineers to the initiative. "We will do so with 100% Argentine technology, developed by our nuclear engineers, who are recognized among the best in the world," he stated, according to Rosario3. He added that the plan "will give us energy sovereignty, will allow us to export this technology to the world," and assured that "blackouts will be just a bad memory," according to La Nación.

In the second phase of the initiative, Argentina aims to capitalize on its untapped uranium reserves to meet domestic needs and establish itself as a leading exporter of nuclear fuel. The government envisions positioning Argentina as a global leader in the peaceful use of atomic energy, while also advancing its aspirations to become an international hub for AI innovation.

Currently, Argentina operates three nuclear power facilities—Atucha I, Atucha II, and Embalse—which together supply around 9% of the nation's electricity consumption, according to government data from July 2023.

The announcement comes as Argentina has officially emerged from a severe recession, a milestone that marks a major success for Milei and his bold economic reforms. According to data from Argentina's statistics agency, GDP grew 3.9% in the July-to-September quarter compared to the previous three months. This growth was driven by robust performances in agriculture, mining, and consumer spending, signaling a recovery in key sectors of the economy, the Financial Post reports.

The advantage they have is already established 3 small plants producing 9% of their need AND ensure they have the knowhow, and the ability to train new engineers.
Plus they have a can do president,for the time being at least.

 

[Smurf1976]

Always remember that Mr Smurf does not really care about the actual technology cost, nor challenge the CO2 net zero aim.

Generic answer for anyone looking at generation for supply to a major grid is they're looking for the cheapest option that works reliably and doesn't come with some other serious problem.

Lowest cost has always been a core focus and that goes back a very long way. It's the actual reason rather a lot of "obvious" things were never done, since despite being "obvious" they weren't economic. Among those are the coal that exists in the inner metropolitan areas of Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart. Plus the hydro scheme that exists 40km from Hobart with not only a road going to it but a transmission line running straight past as well. Then there's the oil shale found in substantial quantity in Qld, NSW and Tas. All technically viable, all uneconomic.

So the assumption very much is that low cost is the priority objective subject to it being technically workable and not coming with some other serious flaw.

Technical viability is the first step. If that isn't there then forget the rest.

Cost and any specific problems comes next, bearing in mind the decision may well be to live with those problems if the economics are good enough so it's a balancing act basically.

On CO2 well I'm not qualified to comment. Logic tells me that altering the composition of the earth's atmosphere ought cause some effect, and that temperature change would be a very likely outcome, but beyond that I can only judge based on the work of others.

What I can say though is CO2 either of itself or the idea that emissions of it ought be reduced isn't the biggest problem we have in Australia that's driving up electricity prices. A point perhaps best explained by saying that price was getting out of hand as far back as 2007, about two years prior to any significant use of wind and solar generation.

The idea that fossil fuels produce cheap electricity is true only if a number of things apply:

First requirement is a low cost supply of fuel. Historically we had that in Australia but in the present era we've adopted international market pricing for oil, black coal and increasingly natural gas.

Second requirement is the efficient conversion of fuel into electricity. That's partly technical, partly human in nature but what it does require is very large scale plant and the efficient operation of that plant. The modern focus on competition kills that completely in two ways.

The market-driven process of dispatch in 5 minute intervals, often with wildly different outcomes from one interval to the next, directly lowers technical efficiency and increases cost. It also necessarily results in high cost plant displacing low cost plant, directly increasing costs.

Also relevant is the present industry structure, brought about by politics, makes it very difficult to actually build fossil fuel or nuclear plant at efficient scale. To illustrate that point, to replace the Loy Yang A power station, just "A" station not including "B" station next to it, from scratch today would cost in excess of $20 billion. Now AGL has a market cap of $7.4 billion, so it's really going to struggle to sink ~ triple that into a single project that required a decade's worth of investigation and design, then another decade's construction then followed by spending, in today's money, another ~$10 billion on B station and with all of that being engineering-heavy due to the unique properties of the coal. Neither AGL nor anyone else could realistically pull that off today, especially in a market where they don't even have guaranteed physical dispatch once it's built.

If we look at places that are doing it cheaply then the common characteristic is a large monolithic entity, government or a utility (either government owned or shareholder owned but with tenure), with the ability to take on megaprojects and build them. Then once built operate them optimally.

The present industry structure in Australia is a very long way removed from that, and that's key to the difficulties we now face.

Why do we not have long term planning? Well that's because no individual company knows how much it's going to be generating or what their retail market share will be. And even if they did, they can't readily take on megaprojects worth far more than the company itself.

Even with plant that exists, they can't be sure how it'll be operated. That's a flaw in both the Coalition's nuclear proposal and Labor's renewables proposal - in neither case will the market likely operate them efficiently, indeed there's no guarantee they'll be run at all.

And so on. The market structure at present is a hindrance to any generation technology being deployed economically, but it's far more of a hindrance to some than to others. In order from most impacted to least it's basically brown coal, nuclear, black coal, hydro, gas / diesel, wind, solar, batteries.

Therein lies a key to the reason why the companies are keen on wind and solar. It's not because of climate, it's largely because the present industry structure has turned men into boys and limited what they can reasonably get done.

When you know you don't have and can't likely get the resources to build nuclear, coal or even hydro then it's unsurprising that you don't spend time investigating nuclear, coal or hydro. Instead you look at what you can do, which is gas / diesel, wind, solar and batteries and that's what you build.

It's like being whatever age you are and going back to age ~18. Cast your mind back and put yourself in that mindset. You don't apply for professional jobs because you know you don't have the required qualifications. You don't apply for management roles because you know there's no chance. You don't look at new cars because you know you can't afford one. And so on, you're effectively locked out of all that so instead of wasting time on it, you instead look for a cheap but reliable second hand car that you can afford, you look for jobs in retail or entry level office work, and so on. You pitch yourself at something where you've actually got a chance of success.

Or for a more pointy example of the concept, if you're a pretty average man or woman in terms of appearance, not overly fit, and work a run of the mill job then are you really going to ask an A-list celebrity out on a date? Or do you just know it's a complete waste of time to the point the thought doesn't even occur? I think we all know the answer there.

Now to the AEMO Integrated System Plan, well here's the important bit. It's not a ground up document, it isn't done by a board of engineers, cost estimators, accountants and so on sitting in a room with serious looks on their faces pouring over volumes of information on every possible option and crunching the numbers, double checking each other's work to make sure it's right. That's the kind of thing the state utilities actually did do back in the day but it's not what happens now.

Today the process is very different and it's not like that at all. Rather, the ISP is more like a weather or financial market forecast than anything prescriptive, it's forecasting the market and based on that drawing some conclusions about what else is required to make it work. What it's not is prescriptive from the ground up.

In practice if the industry isn't proposing nuclear, coal or hydro then the ISP won't be based on nuclear, coal or hydro. Because it starts by asking the industry what it's doing. That's where the coal closure dates come from - it's not AEMO doing a detailed engineering investigation of each facility to determine its remaining technical life. What it actually is, in practice, is the answer given by the owners heavily based on expected profitability.

Now that's not a criticism of AEMO because fundamentally we don't have a centrally planned system but rather, in theory at least we have a market. Hence AEMO isn't telling Origin (etc) what to do but rather, AEMO's asking Origin what they intend doing then seeing if it works. To the extent there's any problem AEMO then raises the alarm via the Statement Of Opportunities (SOO) reports (publicly available) or does so more quietly to the politicians 'hey we've got a problem....'.

Now thing about those SOO reports is they're not aiming to achieve lowest price, because AEMO's role isn't about low price but rather it's about running the market. Much like the ASX doesn't have a role to ensure share prices rise or that your investments are profitable, it just runs the market.

See where this is going? If the industry can't build x then it doesn't focus on x. When asked what it plans doing, the answer will not be x and will instead by y. AEMO when producing reports notes that the industry's doing y and seeks to make y work. Nobody's actually evaluating whether or not x would be better, because x isn't on the table if nobody can in practice get it built.

Related to all this are capital requirements and that's key given the fragmented nature of the industry and lack of large enough companies. From CSIRO figures, $ per kW of installed capacity:

Low grade coal (brown coal) = $9321
Nuclear (conventional large scale) = $8984
High grade coal (black coal) = $6037
Wind = $3233
Gas combined cycle = $2455
Gas internal combustion = $1980
Large scale solar = $1463
Gas open cycle = $1310

Battery 8 hour = $2752
Battery 4 hour = $1692
Battery 2 hour = $1216
Battery 1 hour = $910

Bottom line is forget brown coal, nuclear and black coal as just too capital intensive and whilst project specific, same goes for hydro at circa $6000 per kW. The industry in its present form just can't fund that sort of upfront investment even if it does work out cheaper in the long run.

Risk has a lot to do with that. Eg even the relatively small state utilities in the past had no trouble funding capital-intensive plant because it's not a problem borrowing serious $ from banks when you've got an effectively guaranteed market for what you produce and you're regarded as not just competent at producing it but are literally an authority on the subject both legally and practically.

Today that's very different, the market and industry structure's far too risky for anyone to be investing that sort of capital. Hence if we look at what's actually being built then it's wind, solar, open cycle gas and batteries in the 1 - 4 hour range. Because:

1. Low upfront cost, critical when you don't have the capital.

2. Technically capable of rapidly changing output. A necessary feature in a market where negative prices are a thing and you want to be able to shut down real quick, then restart again easily.

Regarding the latter point, even if someone comes up with the capital (eg government steps in) then nuclear isn't going to go at all well in a market where, in NSW, price was negative constantly for about 8.5 hours earlier today. That murders the economics of nuclear and it hits coal real hard too. Versus wind, solar or gas that can at least shut down to avoid it, and for batteries well hey, it's hard to lose when you get paid to charge.

From there my view is very simple. The point of administration is to facilitate production, not the reverse, and the market arrangements absolutely should be up for negotiation with an "all options on the table" approach.

That is, we should be evaluating nuclear, hydro etc in the context of a market optimised to suit it and same goes for fossil fuels, wind, solar etc, they should be evaluated in the context of having market arrangements that get the best possible result from them.

To instead see the market as fixed, adopting an attitude that it's up to generating companies to make the best of it and invest within the known bounds of the market, is arrogance in the extreme. It's completely overlooking any concept of international competitiveness.

The big problem is simply that it's naturally a system but our political class insists it's a market. Instead of having a room full of boring geeks working out what's cheapest within the bounds of technical practicality, instead we've got rooms full of people working out how to maximise revenue. That's the crux of the whole thing.

 

[qldfrog]

As long as we take CSIRO data as a version of truth, we are doomed..so twisted it is not funny
Solar cost low but at most 12h a day.. actually far less..the obvious but ...
The fact a wind farm or solar farm has to be fully rebuilt every 15y vs decades and decades of running for coal , gas or nuclear.
But you are right Mr Smurf on the point it is a system sadly, Csiro put these figures out with an agenda,and some dumwits build a policy out of that garbage....
Note
I was surprised by your statement a coal plant cost would be $20 billions..seriously, have we become so incompetent?
Just getting numbers:
Eraring in nsw provides 25% of nsw power with a capacity of (rounding up ) 3000mwh.
the cost of building a modern coal-fired power plant can range from $1.8 million to $4.5 million per megawatt of installed capacity.
Source: https://esfccompany.com/en/articles...l-fired power plant,around 45% or even higher.
So going with that with the highest cost at 4m, we got a cost of roughly 12 billions USD for a power station providing a quarter of NSW need.4 of these on existing grid:
50 billions USD and NSW is running smoothly day and night for the next 40y or so just on that..
There is just a problem of crazy coal avoidance, a flat earth religious fanaticism imho .
That power could still be expensive here to the users: as you mentioned the marketplace scheme, cost of grid, inefficiency, etc..but we should not care so much, initially , first issue to sort is we are going into a blackout ridden system .

Note: the reason i checked the cost here is that I participated to a mining plant building project, with its own coal power plant , and the cost of the small power plant was negligible vs the rest of the project.
The power plant was shipped in, prebuilt..
Anyway, no coal plant will be built.all our renewables will be in shambles in 10y and the ALP will leave the **** to the next kid in the block with enough debt to ensure ongoing misery.
nothing new
I am out

 

[Smurf1976]

I was surprised by your statement a coal plant cost would be $20 billions..seriously, have we become so incompetent?

I'm not the original source of that number, I'm just quoting CSIRO's published figures, but in the case of Loy Yang that cost includes developing the mine as well as the power station.

Bearing in mind that's low grade coal with a 62.8% moisture content so it's a lot of physical material dug up and moved (by conveyor) to the power station the majority of which is nuisance (the water content).

That also requires physically large boilers to burn that coal, that's a key additional cost compared to plant designed for higher grade coal.

Then there's the incidental stuff eg it wouldn't have been a major item but the cost of putting the coal conveyors under a 4 lane dual carriageway public highway that separates the power station from the mine wouldn't have been zero. Minor but another item on the list. Etc.

But yes, I do think other countries could do it cheaper. The costs bandied about today in Australia are, after all, somewhat higher than actual historic costs adjusted for inflation whereas rationally one would think with better construction methods and equipment costs ought to have fallen in real terms.

Adjusted for inflation Tasmania came up with a figure of about $5000/kW for coal in the 1980's and that was for a one-off relatively small (2 x 200MW) facility in a place with no prior experience building coal plant. One reason it went no further is that cost was totally uneconomic at the time, the other states could do it far cheaper due to scale, and that made it useless as a basis for industry (since the relevant industries would themselves just relocate rather than use expensive energy).

So the idea that the big states can't even achieve that price today, when they could easily beat it back then, says an awful lot and not in a good way.

I do think though that's more about Australian construction projects in general. Everything seems to be incredibly expensive, everything from minor roadworks to a hospital are extraordinarily expensive in Australia compared to international standards.

 

[Smurf1976]

This sums it up and not just with electricity, same applies to basically all public works:



Been there, run works like this in exactly the way he's describing. It does push the staff along, because there is indeed constant work, but bottom line it gets the job done reasonably cheaply.

Now instead of that we've got a much larger pool of workers, intermittently working and charging a high hourly rate to offset that, and a myriad of legal and administrative middlemen.

 

[qldfrog]

I'm not the original source of that number, I'm just quoting CSIRO's published figures, but in the case of Loy Yang that cost includes developing the mine as well as the power station.

Bearing in mind that's low grade coal with a 62.8% moisture content so it's a lot of physical material dug up and moved (by conveyor) to the power station the majority of which is nuisance (the water content).

That also requires physically large boilers to burn that coal, that's a key additional cost compared to plant designed for higher grade coal.

Then there's the incidental stuff eg it wouldn't have been a major item but the cost of putting the coal conveyors under a 4 lane dual carriageway public highway that separates the power station from the mine wouldn't have been zero. Minor but another item on the list. Etc.

But yes, I do think other countries could do it cheaper. The costs bandied about today in Australia are, after all, somewhat higher than actual historic costs adjusted for inflation whereas rationally one would think with better construction methods and equipment costs ought to have fallen in real terms.

Adjusted for inflation Tasmania came up with a figure of about $5000/kW for coal in the 1980's and that was for a one-off relatively small (2 x 200MW) facility in a place with no prior experience building coal plant. One reason it went no further is that cost was totally uneconomic at the time, the other states could do it far cheaper due to scale, and that made it useless as a basis for industry (since the relevant industries would themselves just relocate rather than use expensive energy).

So the idea that the big states can't even achieve that price today, when they could easily beat it back then, says an awful lot and not in a good way.

I do think though that's more about Australian construction projects in general. Everything seems to be incredibly expensive, everything from minor roadworks to a hospital are extraordinarily expensive in Australia compared to international standards.

I am afraid we agree and always end up with the items keeping poping up in the Australian economy state threads:
Abysmal productivity, idiotic decision makers with vested interests on both political sides be it business/money, CFMEU, or migrant/green/welfare lobby, and a below par education and skill force glued in endless regulations and coloured tapes
12y of economics downfall ticking and ongoing and dire outlooks

 

[sptrawler]

Interesting things happening in the sunshine State.
From the Courier mail newspaper.

Air con: 8000 Qld homes sweat in ‘Big Brother’ power cut-off​

Thousands of sweltering Queenslanders have had the cooling function on their airconditioners turned off remotely by their energy provider. See the map to find out if you were affected.

 

[sptrawler]

More on the same issue and showing a sign of the times.

Almost 170,000 air conditioners remotely turned down six times during blistering summer heat

Queensland’s state-owned power grid quietly forced almost 170,000 air-conditioners in homes and businesses into low-power mode six times over summer.

www.abc.net.au

 

[qldfrog]

More on the same issue and showing a sign of the times.

Almost 170,000 air conditioners remotely turned down six times during blistering summer heat

Queensland’s state-owned power grid quietly forced almost 170,000 air-conditioners in homes and businesses into low-power mode six times over summer.

www.abc.net.au

And we are not yet in January...

 

[Smurf1976]

More on the same issue and showing a sign of the times.

Almost 170,000 air conditioners remotely turned down six times during blistering summer heat

Queensland’s state-owned power grid quietly forced almost 170,000 air-conditioners in homes and businesses into low-power mode six times over summer.

www.abc.net.au

Classic case of a reasonable idea stuffed up by humans.

Being able to promptly switch off non-critical loads in an emergency situation has a lot of logic to it. It beats having people stick in lifts and on trains, the traffic signals going out, hospitals losing power, sewage pumps failing and so on. As a line of defence in a crisis it's a useful tool to maintain supply to more critical things.

The trouble is when someone then decides they can use it other than in a genuine emergency as a means of avoiding investing in adequate capacity. That's the point where it becomes a bad thing. First for the nuisance value. Second because if it's being used routinely then it's not there as a tool in an emergency.

 

[qldfrog]

Classic case of a reasonable idea stuffed up by humans.

Being able to promptly switch off non-critical loads in an emergency situation has a lot of logic to it. It beats having people stick in lifts and on trains, the traffic signals going out, hospitals losing power, sewage pumps failing and so on. As a line of defence in a crisis it's a useful tool to maintain supply to more critical things.

The trouble is when someone then decides they can use it other than in a genuine emergency as a means of avoiding investing in adequate capacity. That's the point where it becomes a bad thing. First for the nuisance value. Second because if it's being used routinely then it's not there as a tool in an emergency.

My thoughts exactly, living in the se qld corner, i do not see how we could have had any real emergency in the last month unless i am unaware of plant failure.
probably just a way not to buy premium cost kwh at a loss for resale.
And so making sure no one will be keen to sign such deal anymore

 

[SirRumpole]

The trouble is when someone then decides they can use it other than in a genuine emergency as a means of avoiding investing in adequate capacity. That's the point where it becomes a bad thing. First for the nuisance value. Second because if it's being used routinely then it's not there as a tool in an emergency.

It shouldn't have come to this and shows negligence by governments in allowing an essential service to sink to this level.

 

[sptrawler]

It shouldn't have come to this and shows negligence by governments in allowing an essential service to sink to this level.

My gut feeling is, it has a way to go, before it gets any better.

 

[sptrawler]

My gut feeling is, it has a way to go, before it gets any better.

To put it another way, if they are curtailing usage already and the only Govt owned plant currently being built is Snowy2.0 and Kurri Kurri, there is obviously a lot of wishing and praying going on.
These projects take years and the only (Hydo/Gas) ones in development are the ones the last Govt started, so obviously there is a lot of hoping the private sector put in the required generation and storage.
Which then leaves the Govt open to exploitation by the private sector, because they will want a return on investment and as we keep saying a lot more will have to be put in than is actually required, to cover extended periods of low generation.

Interesting period of time, can't wait for another 3 years, it should be really exciting by then.

 

[SirRumpole]

To put it another way, if they are curtailing usage already and the only Govt owned plant currently being built is Snowy2.0 and Kurri Kurri, there is obviously a lot of wishing and praying going on.
These projects take years and the only ones in development are the ones the last Govt started, so obviously there is a lot of hoping the private sector put in the required generation and storage.
Which then leaves the Govt open to exploitation by the private sector, because they will want a return on investment and as we keep saying a lot more will have to be put in than is actually required to cover extended periods of low generation.

Interesting period of time, can't wait for another 3 years, it should be really exciting by then.

I don't think we can afford to rely on private investment, I think the government needs to put an export tax on all natural resources and build and run the required infrastructure themselves, otherwise it gets very messy trying to keep private companies happy.

 

[sptrawler]

I don't think we can afford to rely on private investment, I think the government needs to put an export tax on all natural resources and build and run the required infrastructure themselves, otherwise it gets very messy trying to keep private companies happy.

Well private companies are there to make money, they will only put in plant if they can be guaranteed a return, that's why Kurri Kurri is getting built by the Govt, the privates weren't interested so the Govt told Snowy to build it.

So now we get to a point where we are paying clapped out coal generators to prop up the system, to replace them will take a lot of gas and then to replace that gas generation by 2050, will take a huge amount of renewables and storage.

We really do need to get the skates on, rather than just talking about it and I can't see the private sector wanting to put in anymore renewables and storage than they will get a return from.

So who puts in the extra that is required and whether it gets done in a timely manner if at all, will be very interesting.

These are the issues that need debating, rather than this finger pointing and costing, as I said cost wont come into it if thousands of old people and children on the East Coast are dying from heat stroke, in their multi story shoe boxes.

I don't think W.A has the same degree of problems that the East Coast has, there is a few back up options in W.A, the East Coast not so many IMO, but smurf may have a better idea.

It is interesting stuff, too much emotion and not enough factual debate IMO.

 

[qldfrog]

Of interest, from the renew lobby

But i still believe that as much as you can optimise usage vs generation , and that is welcome, you still need the bloody kwh generated somewhere when you need it

 

[sptrawler]

On the subject of solar, I'm not really familiar with the topgraphy of Queensland, but this situation would have to be taken into consideration, that's a lot of flooded areas that wont be accessible.

Drivers and campers rescued as record rain hits Queensland

Several people had to be rescued from floodwaters overnight after record rain fell on parts of Queensland.

www.abc.net.au

 

[qldfrog]

On the subject of solar, I'm not really familiar with the topgraphy of Queensland, but this situation would have to be taken into consideration, that's a lot of flooded areas that wont be accessible.

Drivers and campers rescued as record rain hits Queensland

Several people had to be rescued from floodwaters overnight after record rain fell on parts of Queensland.

www.abc.net.au

To give you an idea how it is taken into account, the sunshine coast council decided a while back to install its own solar farm to be net zero (teal style).
Once completed, it took 3 (three) years for it to be connected as it was flooded every summer.
The Widgee area not too far from the borumba hydro project, is where the massive farms are, and is often cut off.
These will be just setback, of significance obviously as during peak time, but not a deadly issue.
Huge hail storms frequent in the area is what will turn millions of $ into toxic glass shards, and disable whole farm for months

 

[qldfrog]

And even recently, after being connected

Council defends location of flooded $50 million solar farm

Sunshine Coast Council has defended the location of its solar farm after the $50.4 million facility was inundated with floodwaters, despite being built above the 1-in-100-year flood level. The Valdora farm was taken offline for 11 days after rising waters from extreme rainfall lapped the rows of...

www.sunshinecoastnews.com.au