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The future of energy generation and storage

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sptrawler said:
The biggest problem with pumped hydro, in W.A, is there isn't many suitable places for the storage.
It is a pretty flat landscape over here, and most places that are suitable for a dam, have one for drinking water or irrigation.
I would think battery banks, would take some working out as to location and current capacity, the grid connected inverter would be something else.
I wonder if a completely different protection system would be required, with the advent of battery storage, what do you think smurph?
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Prohibiting domestic bore pumps sucking all the water out of the Gnangara water mound and surrounding aquifers would save heaps on energy use.
 
Turns out that I was wrong there.

Playford B has been undergoing demolition for quite some time but last week they let some explosives off at Northern.

So remove any consideration or returning Northern to service from the range of options.

I do find the ability to demolish somewhat interesting given that the SA government still owns both plants with Alinta simply having a 99 year lease.

Since when did leasing something entitle you to demolish it, sell the valuable bits and keep the money? Sounds like an awfully dodgy deal to me.
 
Smurf1976 said:
The unanswered question is "at what price?" and also with what, if any, conditions attached?
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One would suppose that seeing Brendan Grylls done over like Julia Gillard by the same miners, that no price is too great to keep his top public service job.
 
One thing about fixing the gas supply problem, is that it fixes the gas supply problem.

You can turn gas into electricity certainly, but you need power stations to do that and no matter how much gas we've got available it won't keep the lights on without sufficient generating capacity which SA and Vic don't have.

I do hear however that the SA government is looking at the "Tasmanian solution" to the imminent crisis next Summer. Down here we got about 150 diesel generators + 3 diesel-fired gas turbines, all rented from various sources Australia and international, up and running real quick to feed the grid when we had 3 major issues all at once last summer - worst drought on record, Basslink broke and also a gas turbine had to go back to the manufacturer to fix problems dating from the original design.

We don't have all that gear any more, it was all removed once no longer required, but for the record Hydro Tas did offer the gas turbines to SA available immediately, could have had them there as soon as they could be transported (and the RAAF said they could fly them over no worries or alternatively we could have shipped them across and road freight Vic to SA), but the offer was knocked back.

Now SA is looking to do much the same it seems. Looks like it took them a while to realise how serious the problem is but at least they're doing something now.

Which leaves Victoria still just waiting for disaster....

PS - My apologies for getting it wrong about Northern power station. I didn't realise they'd started demolition yet, thought they'd only started on Playford B which is next door but seems not. Sorry about that.....
 
Smurf1976 said:
PS - My apologies for getting it wrong about Northern power station. I didn't realise they'd started demolition yet, thought they'd only started on Playford B which is next door but seems not. Sorry about that....
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You did bring up an interesting question about demolition of a leased property.

Maybe it was in the lease contract that the company would be responsible for removing the plant when no longer required, but 99 year leases in principle are absurd as it virtually says that the original owner doesn't give a stuff what happens to their property so they may as well just sell it outright.
 
Tisme said:
Prohibiting domestic bore pumps sucking all the water out of the Gnangara water mound and surrounding aquifers would save heaps on energy use.
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Appologies Tisme, I misread your post, but totally agree with you. It would also leave more reserves for drinking water.
 
I think S.A is getting a bit ahead of itself with the solution. My call would be two gas turbines and wait on the batteries.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-13/battery-companies-say-they-are-ahead-of-tesla/8349724
Battery technology is screaming ahead, but it is still in its infancy IMO, the time/chemical based degradation is a huge issue.
Anyway, it will be very interesting and at the cutting edge of grid design, we will no doubt learn from it.
 
sptrawler said:
Battery technology is screaming ahead, but it is still in its infancy IMO, the time/chemical based degradation is a huge issue.
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i think Redflow is getting over these issues - better than Tesla/LG Chem (Li Ion batteries)




What is ZCell?
​
The Australian-designed ZCell is a storage system built around a unique zinc-bromine flow battery.

ZCell can deliver 10 kilowatt hours (kWh) of stored energy each day, harvesting energy from solar panels or lower-cost off-peak power, for use when you need it.

Installing ZCell with a suitable inverter as part of your energy management system can lower your power costs, provide resilience during grid power cuts and increase your energy independence.

Can do 100% DoD no problem sptrawler.
 
SirRumpole said:
You did bring up an interesting question about demolition of a leased property.

Maybe it was in the lease contract that the company would be responsible for removing the plant when no longer required, but 99 year leases in principle are absurd as it virtually says that the original owner doesn't give a stuff what happens to their property so they may as well just sell it outright.
Click to expand...
What has surprised me is the speed. Getting on with demolition pretty much straight away.

Given all the circumstances that are widely known, I can't help but think there's an element of making sure that nobody else acquires the plant and runs it. If you've got a power shortage and you've got a perfectly good power station sitting there doing nothing then it's not rocket science for even a purely financial (non-engineering / energy) company to come up with the idea of buying the proven, working plant and putting it back into service. Can't do that if it's knocked down however.

As for the 99 year lease, well that was just a political stunt to convince the public it wasn't really a sale. It's a sale in practice given that nobody alive when it was done will care about it 99 years later and that the assets will be worn out before then anyway.
 
Smurf1976 said:
What has surprised me is the speed. Getting on with demolition pretty much straight away.

Given all the circumstances that are widely known, I can't help but think there's an element of making sure that nobody else acquires the plant and runs it. If you've got a power shortage and you've got a perfectly good power station sitting there doing nothing then it's not rocket science for even a purely financial (non-engineering / energy) company to come up with the idea of buying the proven, working plant and putting it back into service. Can't do that if it's knocked down however.
Click to expand...

It would appear, the S.A Government has an ideological mission, and it is going to see it through come hell or high water.
Lucky they are connected to an interstate grid, because if it fails, some else has to bail them out.
 
sptrawler said:
I would think battery banks, would take some working out as to location and current capacity, the grid connected inverter would be something else.
I wonder if a completely different protection system would be required, with the advent of battery storage, what do you think smurph?
Click to expand...

Well I guess David Green has answered my question.

"Before you get to the stage of being able to sign a contract to deliver a project there's about nine months worth of work that goes into identifying the land, going through the network connection process, extensive assessment of network flows and identifying the appropriate configuration of your project.
 
So far as batteries and the grid are concerned, that's a difficult one really in terms of the technical aspects.

Ultimately a charge battery is just a DC voltage and current source so it's the inverter which is relevant so far as meeting grid technical requirements are concerned. That being so I'd expect a battery based system to have similar issues to Basslink (Vic - Tas), Murraylink (Vic - SA) or Directlink (NSW - Qld) all of which are DC interconnectors.

Inverters feeding the grid does work, it's the same thing used with solar just on a bigger scale in this case, but practical experience is that they can and do trip pretty easily when a system disturbance occurs. I've seen it happen more than once with my solar inverters at home, tripped for no real reason just a very minor grid disturbance (and they're decent quality stuff not cheap and nasty) and for that matter we had a sudden Basslink trip only a couple of days ago which gave the Tas grid a pretty good kick (though all fully contained as designed, no blackouts etc).

So a battery system could certainly act to stabilise the system by taking out / putting in energy but I'd be very cautious about any claim of it preventing blackouts. Inverters trip far more easily than synchronous generators (coal, gas, diesel, hydro) do that's for sure. So it addresses one issue but also introduces a new vulnerability, that of the inverter tripping either first or immediately following some other problem in the grid. If it is at high load and then trips following something else tripping then it makes the problem worse rather than better so far as the risk of a system collapse is concerned.

That said, 100 MW isn't huge and I can see the political and potential economic (overall benefits to the state etc) reasons why SA want's to get in early and give it a go. There's some risks yes, but then past risk taking in the power industry by getting into new ideas has paid off pretty well. Victoria with brown coal back in the 1920's worked out pretty well in the end and Tasmania with the first proper transmission system in the country (and for a short period the largest in the world) being among the more notable historic ones. Both were technically daunting projects at the time but we made them work (and both were built by governments by the way).

But if grid stability is the aim well then big rotating machines win for sure. They are to power generation what a fully loaded freight train is to transport. Takes a lot to bring it to a halt. In contrast anything using inverters is more akin to a bicycle - works fine until there's a bump and then it's all over before anyone knows what's happening.
 
As a smaller scale example of what's possible, King Island.

The system incorporates wind, large scale solar, battery storage, flywheel for storage coupled to a dedicated diesel engine, a great big heater to "burn off" any surplus power, plus conventional diesel generators. All of this is located at the power station site.

There is also a smart grid system in use with automated switching of certain consumer loads (primarily water heating). This isn't your regular off-peak approach, since the on and off periods can be as short as a second or two if required to balance the system.

As of right now the island is being powered by literally 100% wind energy. The diesels are completely idle, not even turning, and it's working just fine. Surplus energy is going into both the battery and the fly wheel.

You can see live data here: http://www.kingislandrenewableenergy.com.au/

In terms of scale, it's big enough to properly evaluate the technologies but it's a small system as such, being approximately one thousandth the size of the SA grid in terms of capacity. That said, there's no real technical barrier to scaling up.

Also building similar systems for:

Flinders Island: https://www.hydro.com.au/system/fil...f_Grid_Solutions_CaseStudy_FlindersIsland.pdf

Rottnest Island: https://www.hydro.com.au/system/fil...f_Grid_Solutions_CaseStudy_RottnestIsland.pdf

Coober Pedy: https://www.hydro.com.au/system/fil...d_Off_Grid_Solutions_CaseStudy_CooberPedy.pdf

Underlying reason for the module approach is for easier installation, since it can all be built indoors in a factory which reduces the work required on site, and the commercial (marketing) aspects for the system also benefit from that approach given that it keeps everything reasonably straightforward from their perspective.
 
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It is definitely the way of the future, and S.A going this approach will be a great test bed, I'm sure the other States will be watching with interest.
S.A must be commended for their sink or swim mentality, it will certainly the yardstick, for which the S.A Government will be measured.
If it works, its sunshine and lollypops, if next summer is a disaster, a lot of questions will be asked about blowing up North Power Station.
The longer term viability, of large scale grid connected batteries, is yet to be assessed.
 
DB008 said:
i think Redflow is getting over these issues - better than Tesla/LG Chem (Li Ion batteries)




What is ZCell?
​
The Australian-designed ZCell is a storage system built around a unique zinc-bromine flow battery.

ZCell can deliver 10 kilowatt hours (kWh) of stored energy each day, harvesting energy from solar panels or lower-cost off-peak power, for use when you need it.

Installing ZCell with a suitable inverter as part of your energy management system can lower your power costs, provide resilience during grid power cuts and increase your energy independence.

Can do 100% DoD no problem sptrawler.
Click to expand...

Yes batteries are definitely where the money is, we did talk about this a while back.

It isn't all about DoD, energy density, cycle ability, cost of manufacture, cost of cooling, chemical degradation rate, internal resistance/age, rate of resistance increase/cycle, charge capacity/age.

But DoD is definitely an advantage, zinc bromide has over lithium, IMO we are on the start of a ski slope.
we haven't taken off yet.

I'm still to be convinced EV's are the answer, rather than H2 power.
Time will tell, interesting times, capacitors seem to have stalled on energy density.
 

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