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Scotland for sun?A good article on the state of play in the W.A grid and also discusses and confirms what we have talked about in this thread, worth a read for those interested in an overview of the W.A system.
I worked alongside Andy Wearmouth for a lot of my career, he is a honest straight shooter and has worked as a senior electrical engineer in power production all of his career. So he does know what he is talking about and his assessment will be pretty well on the money.
As are Mr Fyfe's comments, a very open and frank article.
A monument to storage
Indeed, WA is placing big bets on big batteries on a monumental scale.
In Kwinana, two sit side by side.
The first was built during the depths of COVID.
With a size of 100 megawatts and a capacity to run for two hours, the battery was for a time one of the biggest in Australia.
But last month it was eclipsed by the commissioning of a second, sister battery, which can run at 200MW for four hours.
Further down the road near Collie — the traditional home of coal mining and coal-fired power production in WA — there are batteries that are vastly bigger still.
Late last year, French renewable energy player Neoen cut the ribbon at a gargantuan 560MW/2240MWh installation just outside the town.
By this October, Synergy is scheduled to bring online a similarly massive facility just around the corner.
And there's more to come.
Gavin Mooney, the Australian general manager of smart energy platform Kaluza, says what's happening in WA is remarkable.
"The average demand on that grid in WA is about 2800MW," Mr Mooney explains.
"By the end of this year, the state's going to have more than 1,500 megawatts of batteries installed.
"And by the end of next year, it's going to be over 2,000.
"So relative to the average demand of 2,800, this is a really big chunk."
WA's gambit on big batteries is aimed at solving a raft of the problems posed by the shift towards renewable energy — and away from fossil fuels.
Shifting the load
Arguably, however, it's centred on something little-known outside of the energy industry — a phenomenon called load shifting.
The term refers to shifting demand for electricity — load — to those times of the day when supply might be more abundant.
In an Australian context, Mr Fyfe says, it means shifting demand to when solar output is greatest.
"Western Australia now has over 40 per cent of households with solar panels on the roof," Mr Fyfe notes.
"In the middle of the day, a 23-degree day, maybe on a Sunday, for example, we end up in a situation where there's more energy coming into the system than there are people to use it."
Mr Mooney echoed the comments.
He says rooftop solar is increasingly defining Australia's electricity supply and the design of the system needs to reflect this.
"It all comes back to rooftop solar," Mr Mooney argues.
"That is where batteries come in.
"By charging up in the middle of the day, the batteries can start to soak up some of that rooftop solar and actually increase demand in the middle of the day.
"They can then start discharging in the evening when we have a peak in demand, people get home from work, they turn on the air conditioning, they turn on the oven, and so on."
Mr Fyfe says using batteries in this way avoids placing the burden on households to shift their own demand to the middle of the day.
He notes many consumers can — and do — change their behaviour to capitalise on cheap solar power when it's available.
But he argues many others can't.
"There's two ways to fix the issue," he says.
"You build more generation or you change behaviour.
"Sometimes building more generation … is a more efficient way of doing it.
'Sun still has to shine'
For all the optimism about batteries and their benefits to the system, others aren't so sure.
Andy Wearmouth is the former chief engineer at Synergy.
He says batteries are "very useful", particularly in shifting energy around on a day-to-day basis, but they are not a panacea because they don't generate electricity themselves.
"The difference is batteries don't make the stuff," Mr Wearmouth says.
"All they can do is store energy that they've taken from somewhere. The vision is that that will be taken from rooftop solar or wind and stored.
"But the problem is the coal-fired power station can bang away for days and weeks on end producing its energy at its name-plate rating.
"A battery can't do that. The premise is that the Sun must have shone or the wind must have blown the previous day so you can recharge the things."
Batteries 'no silver bullet'
Mr Wearmouth says there will always be instances where the wind does not blow for days on end and solar output is much-diminished.
"I think they're being seen as a bit of a silver bullet," he says.
"And that is not my experience and judgement on what they actually are.
"Unless you can guarantee you've something to recharge it with, you've got a problem because the sugar hit isn't there tomorrow.
Mr Wearmouth says while renewable energy coupled with batteries will be able to meet some, or even much of the state's conventional generation, it needs an "insurance".
And that insurance, he stresses, is most probably going to be gas-fired power.
With it would come logistical challenges, he says, such as ensuring there is sufficient pipeline and storage capacity to meet occasional intense demand.
Then there is the economic challenge posed by it all — namely how to pay for all that gas capacity while using lower volumes of the stuff across a typical year.
Regardless of how it plays out, Mr Wearmouth is sure of one thing — the rest of the energy world will be keeping one eye on WA.
"If we take seriously the requirement to decarbonise, which we should, then getting it wrong sets back the cause an awfully long way," he says.
"People are very intolerant of sitting in the dark, particularly on hot days.
"So getting it wrong really challenges your ability to move forward in any direction.
"You've got to get it right."
World's eyes watching
On that point, Mr Fyfe from Synergy agrees.
He says WA is blazing a trail that others may well follow.
"Battery storage, you'll find, will be an essential cog in the energy system and it will play an incredible role allowing additional renewable energy to come on in the system," Mr Fyfe says.
"And as we transition away from coal, that's really important."
Mr Mooney acknowledges that batteries are not — and cannot be — the solution to all of the problems that are facing the energy transition.
He concedes the question of "deep storage" — or energy capacity that can last for days or weeks at a time — is vexing and, as yet, without answer.
But he says it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of batteries — to overlook what they will do and they are, in fact, already doing.
[Battery revolution — California graph]
For example, he says that while rooftop solar is squeezing out coal power in the middle of the day, batteries would allow it to increasingly displace gas generation in the peak.
In any case, he says the size of WA's bet on batteries would have profound effects.
"There are other regions of the world where we have significant numbers of batteries being installed, such as California, Texas, you know, sunny places with lots of rooftop solar.
"Also, places where there's just a lot of variable renewables, wind and solar.
"In the United Kingdom, for example, it was announced … two of the biggest batteries in Europe are going to be built in Scotland.
Just kidding plenty of wind there