The future of energy generation and storage

[Tisme]

I came across this article his morning.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-...ables-transform-climate-change-leader/8316660

Looks like the worlds biggest polluter is cutting it's coal consumption. Why would you pay up to $9 billion to build one nuclear plant when you can have multiple redundant sources of renewables around the country all feeding into the grid or into pumped storage (which China is also taking on in a big way).

Nuclear is on the way out imo, but then I'm not an engineer. What do you think ?

Your opinion is considered and valued as usual Rumpole

Yes from what I have gleened I have a suspicion nuclear plants are being closed at a faster rate than builds. Germany, France, Japan, etc should drive new technology.

Australia will probably do what it has always done under it's umbrella of cultural cringe and be a late majority buyer into whatever becomes the dominant model.

 

[SirRumpole]

Your opinion is considered and valued as usual Rumpole

Yes from what I have gleened I have a suspicion nuclear plants are being closed at a faster rate than builds. Germany, France, Japan, etc should drive new technology.

Australia will probably do what it has always done under it's umbrella of cultural cringe and be a late majority buyer into whatever becomes the dominant model.

Gracias Senor.

Any talk of Thorium reactors seems to have died in the ass. I recall they were big news a few years ago.

 

[explod]

Found this on New Science today:-
A Forgotten War Tech Could Could Safely Power Earth for Millions of Years

Called a molten-salt reactor, the technology was conceived during the Cold War and forgoes solid nuclear fuel for a liquid one, which it can "burn" with far greater efficiency than any power technology in existence.

It also generates a small fraction of the radioactive waste that today's commercial reactors - which all rely on solid fuel - do. And, in theory, molten-salt reactors can never melt down.

"It's reliable, it's clean, it basically does everything fossil fuel does today," Kirk Sorensen, the chief technology officer of nuclear-energy startup Flibe Energy, told Business Insider.

Sorensen was speaking during an episode of Business Insider's podcast Codebreaker, which is produced with National Public Radio's 'Marketplace'.

"And it does a whole bunch of things it doesn't do today, like make energy without emitting carbon," he added, though the same could be said of any nuclear reactor technology.

What's more, feeding a molten-salt reactor a radioactive waste from mining, called thorium (which is three to four times more abundant than uranium), can 'breed' as much nuclear fuel as it burns up.

Manhattan Project scientist Alvin Weinberg calculated in 1959 that if we could somehow harvest all the thorium in the Earth's crust and use it in this way, we could power civilisation for tens of billions of years.

"The technology is viable, the science has been demonstrated," Hans Gougar, a nuclear engineer at INL, told Business Insider.

Demonstrated, because government scientists built two complementary prototypes during the 1950s and '60s.

They weren't good for making nuclear weapons, though, among other reasons, so bureaucrats pulled funding for the revolutionary energy technology. The last working molten-salt reactor shut down in 1969.

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-forgo...il&utm_term=0_fe5632fb09-0491165915-365530661

 

[explod]

Interesting to see the facts on power by States. ABC news just now showing China is very concerned at the damage being done by coal and are leading the world in the manufacture of clean alternatives.

Graph of the Day: Electricity prices rises not driven by renewables
CEC chart illustrates the fact that Australian states with less new renewable energy (and more coal) have seen higher electricity price increases.
RENEWECONOMY.COM.AU

 

[SirRumpole]

Interesting to see the facts on power by States. ABC news just now showing China is very concerned at the damage being done by coal and are leading the world in the manufacture of clean alternatives.

Graph of the Day: Electricity prices rises not driven by renewables
CEC chart illustrates the fact that Australian states with less new renewable energy (and more coal) have seen higher electricity price increases.
RENEWECONOMY.COM.AU

Thanks plod.

There is a lot that the voters are being kept in the dark about (sometimes literally).

It's about time the politicians stopped trying to design energy grids and let the experts to it.

 

[Smurf1976]

It's about time the politicians stopped trying to design energy grids and let the experts to it.

That chart doesn't just reflect the reality of wind and solar not being the cause but something else that will just about give the political Right and economists in general a heart attack.

The state with the lowest increases is Tasmania. Yep, that place which has 100% publicly owned generation and networks and minimal competition with retail. Businesses have a choice but Aurora (publicly owned retailer) is dominant. For households you get one choice only and that's Aurora.

Competition? Well we sort of tried that but it was just too expensive. Long story short, Hydro now owns the power station Alinta / Babcock and Brown tried to build (they got it half built then went broke.....). And what did Hydro do once it took that over? Well prices were cut of course due to the technical and operational efficiency gained, the outcome that every engineer, technician and so on understands very well but which has economists scratching their heads to this day.

At the other end of the scale well Victoria is among the most "competitive" electricity markets anywhere on earth. Seems to be working well - prices up, up and up some more.

Theories are all well and good and I do understand the logic behind the argument that competition drives efficiencies and cuts costs. Trouble is, when you're spending a fortune adding new costs that didn't previously exist, in order to try and reduce them through competition, at best you'll get half way back to where you started but it won't be cheaper. The added costs will never go below zero and therein lies the inherent flaw with that approach. The theory doesn't work when you're dealing with what will always be a single thing, that being the power grid and everything that makes it work.

 

[SirRumpole]

The state with the lowest increases is Tasmania. Yep, that place which has 100% publicly owned generation and networks and minimal competition with retail. Businesses have a choice but Aurora (publicly owned retailer) is dominant. For households you get one choice only and that's Aurora.

It seems a philosophical argument as to whether power is just another commodity that the private sector can supply or an essential service like police or fire brigades that is best run (at a loss) by governments.

I take the latter view, and if people call me socialist, tough luck. There are some things that governments are better at doing even with the supposed bureaucratic inefficiency and red tape. I can remember very few blackouts when I was growing up in the sixties or seventies and few seemed to complain about power prices either.

There were some electricity shortages in NSW in Neville Wran's time. I remember people taking 25% of flouro light tubes out of action in offices, but can't really remember the cause and it blew over in a few months.

 

[Smurf1976]

It seems a philosophical argument as to whether power is just another commodity that the private sector can supply or an essential service like police or fire brigades that is best run (at a loss) by governments.

I don't have a strong view on public versus private ownership but I do see a problem with the current model which focuses on short term profit rather than long term planning.

A single utility, be it public or privately owned, can make long term plans for the future and put them into action. Give them some appropriate direction, eg to reduce CO2 emissions whilst maintaining supply reliability, let them get on with it and they will come up with plans and implement them in an orderly manner.

But as it stands today, well I'll point out that Torrens Island A (SA) is now 50 years old and units 1 & 2 at Yallourn (Vic) are 44 years old. Both are still fully operational and are key parts of the system in those states but for how much longer? I don't think anyone expects either to still be around 20 years from now.

A single utility would have plans on what to replace them with and when to do it. They'd monitor plant condition and move those replacement plans forward or back as necessary but they'd certainly have a well thought out plan.

In contrast, with multiple operators (either public or private though it's private in this case) it's nobody's actual job to replace them at all and there's the problem. A replacement will only happen when profit is guaranteed and then it's too late. Likewise plant won't be retained for reasons of supply reliability if it's not profitable to do so, another problem we have right now with the closure of Northern (SA) an example. There was nothing wrong with it, it wasn't worn out, it just wasn't profitable and so the owners (private) closed it. Same with half of Pelican Point (SA) not running.

So I don't really care who owns it just so long as they've got some certainty to plan and can operate at a sufficient scale to achieve the inherent economies of scale which are very fundamental in the power industry more so than with most other things. So far as conventional (coal, gas, nuclear etc) generation is concerned, NSW, Qld or Vic are each only big enough to support one operator and that's it. SA, WA or NT aren't big enough for even one company to operate efficiently but you can't really change that unless the population of those states drastically increases.

You can spend serious $ billions on transmission to make the whole thing big enough to support 3 operators across Qld, NSW / ACT, Vic and SA but how much is such competition really going to save versus the cost of all those transmission lines? Don't forget that prior to industry "reforms" Qld and NSW were the global leaders when it came to efficiency with black coal and Vic was the leader with brown coal so we were starting from a low cost base with not a lot to be gained. The industry is far less efficient today when compared to other countries so we haven't gained thus far.

Tasmania is and will always be a different case due to a number of factors. Being an island with the high cost of links to the mainland, a second cable would cost around $1 billion for 600 MW or so, is one reason. That the state has a large number of individually small to medium sized hydro power stations, necessary since the resource at any one location isn't overly large but there's a lot of spots where they could be and were actually built, as the basis of the whole power system is the other factor. Economies of scale don't apply to hydro when the primary resource locations preclude scaling up. Neither of those can realistically be changed so Tas will always be a unique case in that sense.

For the record whilst it's publicly owned the industry in Tas is run for profit not at a loss so there's another model apart from public service as such versus private. The Hydro is run as a business as such, has a board of directors and a CEO, it's employees are not public servants (and are not covered by PS conditions) and so on. It aims to make a profit (and usually does so, last year was bit of a drama obviously but any business will have its ups and downs) and does so competing in a national market against others both public (eg Snowy Hydro) and private (eg AGL, Origin, Engie).

Some of that profit comes about through the generation and trading (key point there - trading) of electricity in the market and some comes about via other things such as consultancy work (eg the Kidston pumped storage project in Qld is one recent example - Entura (Hydro Tas) is doing the engineering work on a commercial for-profit basis but is not the owner of that project). Likewise plenty of people from overseas have come down here for practical training on how best to operate their hydro facilities and yes they're paying for that. For that matter, Entura also does work for BHP in South Australia, designed the flood control system in Kuala Lumpur, did the water supply for a coal-fired power station in Mozambique and informed the owners of a damaged (pretty much wrecked) hydro plant in India how to go about restoration. Plus a lot of other projects on an ongoing basis.

All of that work is on a commercial for-profit basis but the other key aspect is that it keeps the knowledge base here in Tasmania. You can't really keep that if you're not building things so the solution is to do work for others. Anyone who's got the $ and wants something done.

Snowy Hydro is another one that isn't as it may seem. Yes they generate electricity in a physical sense and they've got some seriously impressive physical infrastructure but their trading operations are a very major part of what they do. There's a lot of deals between Snowy and the private generators certainly and that aspect is actually bigger as a business for Snowy than the physical production of electricity. That one party is government (Snowy) and the other is private hasn't been a major problem thus far despite what politicians might like you to think.

The underlying reason for all those deals and trading does, of course, come down to the issue of having multiple operators in the market most of whom aren't that big. Snowy has thus ended up as a sort-of insurer as well as a physical generator of electricity and they've acquired a number of gas and diesel power stations in order to back that position.

I think the general public would be stunned if they knew what a complex web it really has become. Just because you have your electricity account with (say) Origin Energy doesn't mean that Origin are physically generating the same amount of power as they're selling. Etc.

Part of the issue for the remaining publicly owned generators is that if they don't make money then reality is that politicians of a certain persuasion will be all to keen to point that out to the public and propose privatisation as the "solution". Not good but that's the reality of the situation.

 

[noco]

Interesting to see the facts on power by States. ABC news just now showing China is very concerned at the damage being done by coal and are leading the world in the manufacture of clean alternatives.

Graph of the Day: Electricity prices rises not driven by renewables
CEC chart illustrates the fact that Australian states with less new renewable energy (and more coal) have seen higher electricity price increases.
RENEWECONOMY.COM.AU

Perhaps you would like to view this link for ccomparison.


http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...s/news-story/18d9236449dd7ee6c63b39841b401ce9

 

[Tisme]

Germany must be a basket case if power determines competitiveness:

https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/worldwide-electricity-prices-how-does-australia-compare/

 

[Tisme]

Worth listening too if you want a clarity of SA Australia's capacity versus availability, and directions in Oz

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/nightlife/national-power-grid/8316732

 

[noco]

Germany must be a basket case if power determines competitiveness:


View attachment 70162

https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/worldwide-electricity-prices-how-does-australia-compare/

That is the reason Germany is moving away from renewables and building more coal fired power stations for cheaper energy......Solar and wind have let them down just as it has done in South Australia

 

[noco]

That is the reason Germany is moving away from renewables and building more coal fired power stations for cheaper energy......Solar and wind have let them down just as it has done in South Australia

Canada is second lowest, the reason being :-
Hydro 59%
Nuclear 16.6 %
Renewables 11% ( includes 4% wind power).
And I guess the rest is from coal fired power.
Canada is in the process of building two more nuclear power stations.

 

[SirRumpole]

I don't have a strong view on public versus private ownership but I do see a problem with the current model which focuses on short term profit rather than long term planning.

Thanks Smurph, I should add that I meant to write that publicly owned utilities could be run at a loss some of the time, as befitted the wider national interest.

Someone else is thinking of deprivatisation.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...s/news-story/cf002b6f66e14e313f661786a50a6931

 

[Smurf1976]

Canada is second lowest

We used to be third on that list and for the reasons you mention. Australia as a whole couldn't get costs lower than those with lots of cheap hydro but we were the cheapest "developed" country when it came to power from coal or gas.

For what it's worth, if the Australian states were separate countries then Tasmania would historically have been No.1 on that list easily. Admittedly not too hard when you've got the second highest per capita use of electricity in the world and are doing just about all of it with cheap hydro. But then Victoria would have come in second place back in the 1960's and 70's too since Hazelwood and Yallourn W were also incredibly cheap.

Energy ought to be a key economic strength for Australia. We've got the resources (coal, gas, renewable and nuclear - we're very well placed with everything except oil) and we've got the engineering skills to make it happen. All that stands in the way is politics.

 

[SirRumpole]

Energy ought to be a key economic strength for Australia. We've got the resources (coal, gas, renewable and nuclear

I thought you had written nuclear off for us ?

Although with plentiful supplies of thorium we could become leaders in the molten salt reactor that plod linked to. I believe there already is some Australian interest in that concept.

 

[Smurf1976]

Thanks Smurph, I should add that I meant to write that publicly owned utilities could be run at a loss some of the time, as befitted the wider national interest.

Someone else is thinking of deprivatisation.

There used to be some occasional discussion about things in the US and their approach with large privately owned utilities that worked in much the same manner as Australia's former state-run utilities. Being privately owned didn't really make much difference to how they worked apart from adding a profit margin to their prices. They did long term planning, they had a decent engineering capability and so on.

There was also more co-operation between those US privately owned utilities and others than you might expect. When one of them became interested in using low grade coal they simply sent their engineers to Australia to see first hand what the SECV was doing with Loy Yang A having just been built and B station under construction. End result is they built what amounted to pretty much an exact clone, only differences would be in the detail of mining and that their machines would run faster since their grid is at 60 Hz versus Australia's at 50 Hz. But certainly plenty of knowledge was exchanged.

Likewise there's a lot of technical similarity between Gordon (Tas) and a large hydro station in NZ. That's no coincidence. Only real difference is that Gordon's machines run harder (higher output) than those in NZ but other than that it's pretty much the same. Reason for the difference is an environmental operating constraint at the NZ plant.

Also no coincidence that when we built Bell Bay (oil-fired) in Tas (commissioned 1971, no longer in use) it was a copy of what WA had done at Kwinana A and B, SA at Torrens Island A (though theirs has twice as many machines) and NZ at Marsden Point. No point reinventing the wheel when someone else has already done what you want to do yourself, it's cheaper to just ask nicely for the plans and then build it.

Likewise no surprise that when we looked at coal in Tas it was all based on Muja C station in WA which had just been built. SECWA literally sent all the detailed plans over and all that needed to be done in Tas was work out where to put it and where to get the coal from. And for the idea of converting Bell Bay to coal that was based on what WA had just done at Kwinana (built for oil but modified to be able fire coal, oil or gas and for that matter they could switch fuels pretty easily when the need arose). Coal never went ahead in Tas but certainly there was sensible preparation to be ready in case the need arose which was considered plausible at the time (would have if industry had needed more power). We did end up running Bell Bay on gas for a few years though.

Meanwhile in SA ETSA built units 3 and 4 at Torrens Island B based on what WA had done at the technically almost identical Kwinana C (now closed) just in case they ever needed to run them on coal. They still haven't burnt a single piece of coal there but back in the early 1980's it was considered quite likely they'd need to at some point and so plans were made.

I mention all this because there's a fundamental change which has taken place. All that planning didn't cost much at all but it meant that the state utilities were well prepared for whatever situation arose. The future is always uncertain but if you're going to plan then it's better to do it before you're faced with an urgent need to implement it.

Now does anyone think that if Origin (for example) wants to copy what AGL (for example) are doing then AGL are just going to send them the plans and give them some tips on how best to go about it, where would be a suitable place to put it and so on? Hell no they're not! No chance of that happening these days. The focus has shifted from cost minimisation to profit maximisation and that's a huge difference.

As for nationalisation, I do think that recent events with power supply combined with international political factors (Brexit, Trump, etc) are such that the pendulum is now swinging back the other way. It'll quite likely happen at some point, the question being in the detail and how we get there but further privatisation at this point would be a bit like expecting the temperature to go up in Autumn. The seasons have changed and slowly but surely I do think we're heading down that track but it will take a while.

 

[Smurf1976]

I thought you had written nuclear off for us ?

I have in so far as I don't think we'd be able to do it well.

Nuclear is high capital cost and something that, in practice, is largely built on site with a huge labour input. It can generate reasonably cheap power if you've got cheap labour to build it with but we certainly don't. That combined with lack of experience and smaller scale would put any Australian nuclear plant right at the top of the list globally so far as cost is concerned. The UK can't do it at a price that's anywhere close to being cheap enough and we'd be hard pressed to even match that and certainly not beat it.

Plus I just don't think we're well enough set up to regulate such a facility. Lack of practical experience combined with a "she'll be right, just leave it to the market" attitude is just asking for trouble really.

Plus it would take too long. We're in trouble with power right now and it's going to get worse. 4 weeks from today, almost down to the minute, Hazelwood will be grinding to a halt. Given that any nuclear plant is going to take until at least 2030 before it generates power it's just not a workable solution.

All that said, it's a fact that we're blessed with an abundance of energy resources in Australia and I included nuclear in that for reasons of completeness rather than suggesting that we're actually going to use it. We might, but if we do it will be for political reasons and not because it's the most sensible solution.

 

[Smurf1976]

Major incident today at Torrens Island Power Station (Adelaide). This is by far the largest power station of any type in SA, being about half the state's non-intermittent generating capacity.

About 15:33 local time fire occurred at the power station and this resulted in the simultaneous trip of 3 generating units at Torrens Island B and also the loss of generation from the nearby Pelican Point power station.

Apparently power station staff managed to put the fire out quickly, before the fire brigade arrived.

I don't know the extent of damage but Units 2, 3 and 4 all tripped at Torrens Island B with Unit 1 remaining operational. Torrens Island A station, which is physically right next to B station, was not running at the time.

Since then Unit 2 at B station has returned to service along with Unit 1 which remained operational. Meanwhile 3 (of 4) units at A station have been brought into operation. Pelican Point has also returned 1 (of 2) unit to operation (the owners only want to run half the plant anyway so it's back to business as usual).

The immediate response did not involve forced load shedding but a significant reduction in load did occur for a period due to (1) price response from some users exposed to the spot price which increased when the fire occurred and (2) voluntary load shedding by households and small business following media reports of the fire and requests to minimise electricity consumption.

Loss of generation from Torrens Island following the fire was covered by increased supply from Vic, increasing the output of the remaining generator still running at Torrens Island B and generation from a number of smaller gas turbine and diesel power stations in SA which thankfully had spare capacity at the time since overall system load wasn't high. They have now mostly shut down as supply from Torrens Island has increased with the A station units brought online.

Supply in SA looks reasonably OK for the next week based on the weather forecast and assuming nothing else goes wrong. But that's pure luck really that it's not going to be overly hot or cold and the wind speed is reasonable.

What happens next depends literally on the weather and the extent of damage at Torrens Island and how long it takes to get all machines back in service.

 

[SirRumpole]

Good discussion of the grid in general. Technicalities and economics.

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/nightlife/national-power-grid/8316732