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The future of energy generation and storage

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I've long thought that who owns what was all cyclical and that someday we'd see nationalisation of utilities again. And after that they'll be privatised again and around it goes.

Looks like it might be happening a bit sooner than I'd expected though if this is any indication. Notable is that the Opposition in SA doesn't seem to be really opposed to it.

http://indaily.com.au/news/local/2017/03/07/take-over-power-station-edb-advises-state-govt/

The only real difficulty with the idea proposed, buying half of Pelican Point, is that there are actually 3 generating units at the power station. Two gas turbines the heat from which drives a single steam turbine (combined cycle plant). So you could have different owners of both gas turbine but what then do you do about the steam turbine which uses heat from both gas turbines? That could get rather complex given that turning on either gas turbine then generates revenue for whoever owns the steam turbine. It would be a lot easier to have one owner of the whole thing.

It won't guarantee that the lights stay on in SA but it would be a help to at least have the plant fully operational. Only 24 days to go now until Hazelwood shuts.
 
Interesting times smurph, it will be entertaining watching the finger pointing, as the general public sit there in the darkness. lol
We saw the results of impending generation shortfall in Tasmania, when the Bass link failed, Tasmania could cope due to the small grid load.
The situation developing on the Eastern Australian grid, won't be so easy to cope with, flying in diesel skid mounts and firing up a couple of old gas units won't cut it.
I am looking forward to watching the way the Governments, reverse their way out of the situation, they find themselves in.
 
sptrawler said:
Interesting times smurph, it will be entertaining watching the finger pointing, as the general public sit there in the darkness.
Click to expand...

AGL have now admitted publicly what many have been thinking for a while. Torrens Island power station is pretty much stuffed.

http://www.thebull.com.au/articles/a/65908-future-of-major-sa-power-station-uncertain.html

AGL Energy's wholesale markets general manager Richard Wrightson on Tuesday told the senate committee the station has not run at full capacity for more than a year and that it never would again.
Click to expand...

Excluding intermittent sources (wind, solar) Torrens Island is literally 50% of SA's total generating capacity so today's acknowledgement from AGL about its poor condition is about as big as it gets so far as news in the power industry is concerned. Capacity at the plant is nominally 1280 MW.

A Station unit 1 hasn't been running for quite a while now. Boiler leaks I'm told.

I'd better not name them since this isn't in the public domain and relates to a private company but let's just say Torrens Island isn't the only one in Vic / SA not in great shape.

Not that Torrens Island falling apart is the only problem. Having a power station doesn't really help when you haven't got any gas to run it with, a point that AGL has also noted publicly.

All this could get rather interesting it seems.
 

Jay Weatherill tonight blamed Tony Abbott for dropping the carbon dioxide tax....He is now asking big business to install their own diesel generators which will defeat the purpose of going green......The diesel generators will pump out more green house gases and combined may emit more than a coal fired power station....It does not make sense.
 
The closing of Hazelwood, will force a lot of generators sitting on the sidelines, to disclose their actual capacity.
What did Warren Buffett say, "only when the tide goes out, do you see, who has been swimming nude". lol
I think, there will be a lot of home truths coming out, very soon.
Hazelwood, may be a blessing in disguise, 1600MW is a lot of capacity to lose, it isn't easily covered.
.
 
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When has, what Labor does, make sense?
Must edit that, when since Hawke and Keating, has Labor done anything sensible?
 
Perhaps one of the options is to follow the Californian example and establish massive battery banks. They too have had a calamitous experience with failing power supplies and had to craete a solution very quickly.

California’s Power Grid Is Running on Batteries

When a natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, California sprung a leak in 2015, it was seen by most as an environmental disaster. After all, it released massive quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. But it was also calamitous to California’s energy security, and it prompted utilities in the state to contract companies—Tesla notable among them—to create a number of ad-hoc energy storage options. Now, as Bloomberg reports, those oversized battery packs are ready to go live:

Three massive battery storage plants—built by Tesla, AES Corp., and Altagas Ltd.—are all officially going live in southern California at about the same time. Any one of these projects would have been the largest battery storage facility ever built. Combined, they amount to 15 percent of the battery storage installed planet-wide last year.

These new facilities will help store electricity during times of the day when supply surges, and will release that power back to the grid when demand spikes. It’s an especially necessary complement to renewable technologies like wind and solar power, whose intermittent nature can wreak havoc on grid stability and make the task of matching supply with demand especially difficult. California’s reliance on solar farms for power makes these storage facilities especially important.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/01/31/californias-power-grid-is-running-on-batteries/
 
It will be interesting to see the outcome, if it is tested, there is a definite place for battery storage.
I'm yet to see any outcomes, where it has been tested on a large scale grid disruption.
Smurph may be able to explain, how the batteries will cope, with load rejection.
He loves the challenge.
 

And how much will it all cost?
 
noco said:
And how much will it all cost?
Click to expand...
It isn't so much about what it costs, it is about the amount of current(ampere) demand placed on the system, and how battery banks near the fault would cope with that.
With an interconnected grid, the generators(turbines) have a droop factor, this ensures each generator picks up the sudden load, proportional to its ability to cope.
God knows how you would do that, with batteries scattered around the place, it would be interesting to say the least, how many claims for battery fires would be claimed due to power failures?
This renewable push is great, but it would be nice, if those who were pushing it knew what they were talking about.IMO
 
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SirRumpole said:
Another example of deplorable lack of policy at all levels of government.
Click to expand...

At the risk of a bit of chest beating, Smurf saw this coming quite a long long time ago (1997) and it wasn't difficult. Hydro Tas made some comments publicly about long term gas prices about 15 years ago too.

Have no doubt that if Smurf could work it out and if a state-owned business primarily involved with hydro power could work it out then those actually involved with the gas industry must surely have known how this would end up a very long time ago.

Sadly there's no easy way out of the mess.

It'll be even worse once the Bass Strait and Copper Basin (SA) gas fields are drained in order to feed this monster LNG export industry. I'll say it now - that's going to happen a lot more quickly than most seem to be thinking, well within the lifetime of most who will be reading this, and then we've got a truly massive problem indeed. One thing's a given - once it's gone, it's gone forever.

Economists and politicians have failed miserably when it comes to power. It's time to put the engineers back in charge and let them get on with fixing the mess.

In the meantime, one of these might relieve some stress (no it's not me in the photo): http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/5816174-3x2-700x467.jpg

It was put there a very long time ago, by a mining company incidentally, and a few years ago Hydro restored it using the original design for reasons of historical preservation etc.
 
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Well Tesla have the answer (I think not), install batteries, they can supply.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/e...rgy-problems-in-100-days-20170309-guum3v.html

The only part, I thought hit the spot, was this.

Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said batteries would play a role at a household level, but was sceptical about larger-scale proposals.

"If Tesla think they can do that, what's stopping them? Providing they aren't asking the government for some sort of subsidy and want to risk their own money, fantastic," he said.

Mr Wood said the electricity grid needed reliability and flexibility. That could potentially come from batteries, gas, pumped hydro storage, stronger connections between states and managing demand at peak times. The Turnbull government has earmarked pumped hydro, recently announcing $20 million in research funding.

He warned against putting too much faith in predictions about which energy technologies would prove viable, citing past hype about geothermal energy.

"The one thing you can say about technology forecasts is they're all wrong. The only question is which are going to be less wrong and by how much," he said.
 
It's worth recognising just how advanced 3rd generation thin film solar technology is at the moment.
This is solar cells created on a roll of very thin film, at low cost with high efficiency outputs. These are currently 12.6% with 22% achieved in a lab.

When these come off the factory lines in 2-3 years time we can see low cost PV become a part of the fabric of every new building or car.

Solliance Sets World Record for Roll -to-Roll Perovskites of 12.6%
Queanbeyan,
10 March 2017 -
Dyesol Limited (ASX: DYE)
is very pleased to announce that Solliance has achieved a world record for perovskite solar cell photovoltaic (PSC PV) technology demonstrated on industrially applicable Roll-to-Roll (R2R)
processes of 12.6% conversion efficiency at cell level.

Eindhoven (the Netherlands), Leuven (Belgium),
March
10, 2017
– Solliance announces the demonstration of an industrially applicable roll-to-roll process for the production of solar cells, achieving a record 12,6% conversion efficiency on cell level. This breakthrough result paves the way towards an accelerated market introduction of this attractive new source of renewable energy. Perovskite microcrystals are a promising material to make high-yielding, thin -film solar cells. They can be processed into thin, light-weight and potentially semitransparent modules that could eventually beintegrated in building materials such as windows or curved construction elements. Solliance and its research partners focus on using scalable, industrial processes towards the fabrication of large-area modules, eventually suitable for seamless integration in a broad variety of PV systems.


http://www.dyesol.com/media/wysiwyg/asx/2017/DYE0418_-_Solliance_release_10-03-2017.pdf

:
 
Yes some excellent advances of lat Bas, read awhile back that our highway surfaces will also have these flexible solar collecting thingo's.
 
Musk has offered to supply a solution to SAs power problem within 100 days or its free! On Twitter!
 
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