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The future of energy generation and storage

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Until battery storage becomes viable, and wind farms supply an adjoining H2 plant, they are really novelty value.
The requirement to have fossil fired reserve generation, to at least equal the installed solar /wind, will be with us for a long time

If nuclear wasn't viable, or required, it wouldn't be built.
 
It's important to note the difference between energy and power in this discussion.

Wind and solar can certainly deliver energy into the grid, that is beyond doubt and they generated about 40% of the electricity used in SA over the past 12 months. They absolutely do work as a means of producing energy.

Where the problem lies is with power, as distinct from energy. If you want however many MW at 6:15pm on a cold Winter evening then no amount of solar is going to help given that it's dark. What's needed is something that works under all conditions, the options there being to use a stored source of energy (fossil fuels, nuclear, water in a dam) or to in some way store energy produced intermittently by means such as wind and solar. That brings us to batteries, pumped storage, heat storage, compressed air and so on.

I have no doubt that solar can operate as reliably fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear with proper design. I've built such things myself and am very familiar with them. Where the trouble lies is an economic one rather than a technical one.

Go forward 100 years and nobody's going to be arguing about coal. Either we'll have burnt all that can be economically mined or we'll have long ago adopted some alternative technology. Either way, we won't be using coal in 2115 to generate electricity. At most, we might still be using it for a few metallurgical and chemical purposes but coal-fired power stations will be as dead as whale oil lamps are today.

So far as intermittent energy yield is concerned, the absolute worst technology there is hydro. Drought, flood, whatever - inflow basically never matches the need for electricity other than by pure chance. But it works with the highest reliability of any generation technology in commercial use for one very simple reason. First thing you do in building a hydro scheme is work out where to put the dam, and the dam is ultimately just a means of storing the highly variable inflow of water such that it can be released as and when required. Storage is inherent in most hydro systems and that's what makes them work. The actual energy inflow, that is water, is incredibly intermittent - far more so than solar or wind.

Now, if we can find a cheap and easy way to store lots of energy from wind and solar then that fixes everything. But you're not going to put 1,000 GWh into a battery anytime soon.

To put storage into perspective, we'd need about 12 - 15 million of those Tesla batteries just to get Victoria through a single cold day without being recharged. And that's just Victoria - a place where most heating is done with gas anyway. Now realise that if we're going to rely on wind and solar, then we need more than one day's worth of storage - there's the problem.
 

I'll agree 100% with that analysis.
 
For what it's worth, wind is currently supplying 78% of SA's electricity. Plus gas 33%, coal 13% = 124% in total, with the surplus going into Victoria.

Wind certainly can generate electricity, just not constantly.
 
sptrawler said:
If nuclear wasn't viable, or required, it wouldn't be built.
Click to expand...
SP-> nuclear is never built to create energy, it is built to keep the ability to have a bomb and have an independence on fossil fuel providers.
Even in Japan
Otherwise all reactor would be thorium. A nuclear plant is not economically valid on a life cycle;
you only make money if you built it with government help, then make profit, thenclose it after 30y and leave the crap behing to be paid by public purse after folding your company
We can argue if Australia needs or not the bomb and so a nuclear plant, but that has not much to do with actual energy production.
 
qldfrog said:
SP-> nuclear is never built to create energy, it is built to keep the ability to have a bomb and have an independence on fossil fuel providers.
Click to expand...

+1

Not everything that is done, is done because it's profitable. No doubt some are, but the US nuclear industry collapsed in the early 70's in terms of new plant construction - before the oil shock (1973) and well before Three Mile Island (1979) or Chernobyl (1986). It didn't collapse due to anything about the environment or waste disposal, it was pure economics that killed it.

If you look around the world then places which have nuclear power generally have it for some non-economic reason, generally either military-related, to showcase the nation's supposed technological capabilities or to avoid reliance on imports of fossil fuels.

France - avoids import of fossil fuels. Also historically some military related reasons.

UK - they're well past peak production of coal, oil and gas so it's about avoiding fuel imports. Also historically military reasons.

China - showcasing technological ability and industrial might is one reason, the problems they're having with coal and associated air pollution is another.

US - it pretty much died out for new construction because the US has cheap coal and gas. The US ranks #1 for coal reserves and #2 for production whilst they've always been the technological leader when it comes to oil and gas. No real reason to bother with more nukes at the national level (though there are a few states where it still stacks up).

Australia - if we did it then it would be for political reasons not economic. Between coal, gas, hydro, wind, solar etc we've got more than enough power from other sources available, the only constraint being politics.
 
Some wave/tidal articles...



 
For people based in W.A.








 
If you were to pick a few images to symbolise the 20th Century then most of them would be in some way energy related. Aircraft, cars, freeways, cities lit up at night, TV and so on. Comparing life in the second half of the 20th Century with all prior human history, there's a huge transformation and energy is absolutely intertwined in that.

Fundamentally though, what we did in the 20th Century was to simply deploy a relatively small number of technologies on a massive scale. Internal combustion engines, gas turbines, incandescent and discharge lamps, electric motors, resistive elements, cathode ray tubes and a few others lie at the technological heart of practically everything that was different in 1980 versus 1880.

Most of those 20th Century technologies aren't particularly efficient in their use of energy. But that didn't stop us, we just worked around it by building power stations and oil infrastructure, plus an associated distribution system, on a scale that few in 1900 would have comprehended as ever being possible. 2,000,000,000 Watts of electric power all coming out of just one power station. Loy Yang alone is bigger than the entire national energy industry was a century earlier. And Loy Yang isn't the only one, indeed it's not even the biggest (though it's probably better known to the public than Eraring or Bayswater).

But I come back to that point about the 20th Century being about a few things scaled up massively. That even comes down to entertainment - it wasn't that long ago that basically everyone watched the same TV programs, read the same news and listened to mainstream music. A few basic inputs were scaled up massively for everyone's consumption.

In the 21st Century however there is a fundamental shift in just about everything and that is diversity. That goes for everything from the choice of car you drive, or whether to drive one at all, through to entertainment. There's a lot more choice these days in practically everything than there was even one generation ago.

This same basic trend is now impacting energy production and use. It is no longer the case that all cars have petrol engines, all homes in Hobart have electric hot water and everyone in Melbourne heats with gas. On the supply side, not all oil now comes from conventional sources, not all electricity in Brisbane is from coal and further afield, the UK's once mighty coal industry is all but dead.

Wind, Solar and going off-grid fit within this basic pattern. We're not going to see all energy, or even just all electricity, coming from wind and solar anytime soon and we won't likely see the death of the grid either. But we'll have some wind and solar in the mix along with other sources and some users will indeed go off-grid. There's the basic pattern of diversity again. 20th Century = big coal or big hydro produced the power and consumers used it. That was it. It's far more complex in the 21st Century with more sources of supply, many consumers generating some of their own power, and changes in the way it is used.

On a less serious note, it's June and down here in Hobart that means it's time for some "electric" artwork once again. Dark Mofo has, amongst other things, a fire breathing organ (gas powered) this year and apparently you can be "chased" by quite a few kilowatts of electricity too (in the form of 1000 power hungry light bulbs each with its' own sensor - and no they're not LED). All that won't likely warm the place up too much, but it'll brighten the depths of winter that's for sure. If it's electric (and gas too this year) then that's got to be a better kind of art than hanging pictures on the wall, right....
 

So why not use solar or wind to refresh the storage of hydro systems by pumping water from the outlet level back into the storage ? This would even out the variability of the stream inflow and keep the "battery" topped up.
 
SirRumpole said:
So why not use solar or wind to refresh the storage of hydro systems by pumping water from the outlet level back into the storage ? This would even out the variability of the stream inflow and keep the "battery" topped up.
Click to expand...

Theoretically that's very possible as long as there's somewhere to store the water near the tailrace (outlet). Energy in to pump up hill, energy out when the water is run back the other way.

Tumut 3 (Snowy) is both a conventional hydro scheme (that is, it generates energy from natural water flow without the need for pumping) but also has the ability to run in pumping mode so as to reuse some of the water.

Other hydro schemes in Australia are either a pure pumped storage operation (eg Wivehoe) or are conventional hydro which produces energy from a single direction of water flow (eg the entire system in Tas and most others in Australia work this way).

A key point about conventional hydro is that, unless the scheme has literally no storage, there should always be enough water available to operate at times of extreme high demand and price. With normal operation, there's always enough water to run for those few hours when price goes through the roof.

So any pumping operation added to existing schemes won't increase production at times of highest demand and price. Rather, it would be about pumping at times of low price and generating more at times of low to moderate price. At present that's not economic although if enough wind and solar is built then that situation may well change since then, both supply and demand would be changing versus with coal/gas/hydro where it's really only demand that changes not supply.

One thing about hydro is that no two schemes are the same, and any similarity is coincidental. Somewhere like Poatina (Great Lake, Tas) there is truly massive storage - equivalent to about 5 years' worth of normal production. On the other hand, there are stations such as Wilmot (Tas) where the storage is equivalent to just 10 days' worth of average production (and only about 5 days if the power station was running baseload).

Practical operation of such a system is driven by weather. In simplified terms, the stations with limited storage capacity run hard when it's wet and are backed right off, running only at the peaks, when its' dry. So Wilmot, for example, may run baseload all Winter but that 10 days worth of stored water will, if used only to generate when demand peaks, last the whole Summer without problem (and even in Summer it does get a bit of water coming in).

Why not build more storage at those sites with limited storage capacity? It comes down to topography and one or more of three basic limitations. Raising the dam would either (1) result in the water leaking out of some other low point around the lake (2) require a dam that gets ridiculously wide at the top as the valley broadens out above the present dam height or (3) would flood something we don't want to flood - towns, farms etc.

The workaround there is in many cases to build multiple dams on the same river. This image explains the problem and the solution pretty well. It wasn't practical to build one big dam, but 7 smaller dams, and 7 associated power stations (plus another tiny one for environmental flow reasons) is the solution in this case (Mersey-Forth scheme, Tas). http://www.hydro.com.au/system/files/images/Mersey-Forth_draftthree.jpg

So overall, the limitations and issues surrounding turning an existing hydro scheme into pumped storage are:

1. Is there somewhere downstream where the water could be stored? In many cases it's already there (eg a multi-dammed catchment) but on the other hand, there are places where it's either impractical to build a second storage and/or unacceptable for some reason (eg environmental).

2. Would it be more practical and economic to just increase generating capacity and not worry about the pumping. Eg if you have a 150 MW plant that runs on average to 60 MW (limited by inflow), so that's running 40% of the time in simple terms, then you could always just make it a 300 MW plant that runs 20% of the time using the water you already have and not bother with the pumps. If it's only needed for peak load operation then that could well be a sensible solution.

3. Economics of both the pumped storage itself, and the infrastructure required to make it work. Technically it's very doable as long as there's somewhere to have a storage below the power station. The limitation is thus economic rather than technical.

To the extent that intermittent energy sources, such as wind and solar, produce a greater share of total supply they are likely to eventually swing the economic balance so as to make storage schemes economic. We aren't at that point yet, but if wind etc is the future then at some point storage becomes a must.

I'll add a comment about pumped diversions, as distinct from pumped storage. A pumped diversion is a one-way flow and is net energy positive, versus pumped storage which returns less than it consumes.

For example, water is pumped from Arthurs Lake (Tas) 140m up to the top of the hill using considerable energy to do so. (Note - all distances here are the straight vertical rise or fall, the actual pipelines are far longer since they're sitting on the ground not going straight up in the air).

Some of that energy used for pumping is is recovered by running it down the other side of the hill through Tods Corner power station, a fall of about 41 metres (vertical). After that, the water is then sitting in Great Lake.

From Great Lake, itself a very major storage with large natural inflows, this water runs through Poatina with a huge drop of 835m into the power station.

Then the water is used again at Trevallyn (in suburban Launceston) with a drop of 127m, at which point it leaves the power station virtually at sea level.

So overall that's a 140m pump up the hill (energy loss), recovered many times over by the drops of 41, 835 and 127 metres through 3 power stations. This isn't pumped storage, it's a pumped diversion, but it represents a net energy gain rather than a loss. It's by no means a unique arrangement, although 835m is pretty serious pressure.
 
Wind and solar are doing pretty well right now in some areas, again highlighting that they work but are intermittent.

Figures are % of electrical load within each state and where it's being supplied from. They don't add to 100% due to (1) Qld, SA and Vic are all producing more than they are using and (2) rounding to the nearest whole % for figures 1% and above.

SA - Wind 82%, Gas 19%, Solar 7%. Surplus is going into Vic.

Vic - Coal 97%, Wind 21%, Solar 5%, Hydro = 3%. Surplus is going into NSW and Tas.

Tas - Hydro 74%, Wind 10%, Solar 1%. 14% of load is being supplied from Vic.

NSW - Coal 68%, Wind 7%. Solar 5%, Gas 3%. 11% of load is being supplied from Vic and 9% from Qld.

Qld - Coal 96%, Gas 14%, Solar 12%. Hydro 0.7%. Biomass 0.1%. Surplus is going into NSW.

So, wind and solar are producing 89% of SA's electricity right now. It works, just not constantly.

All states combined, the figures are Coal 69%, Wind 13%, Solar 7%, Gas 6%, Hydro 6%.

As for the operation of hydro schemes and storage, well the spot price in Vic is 2.3 cents / kWh at the moment so for those dams which are not in danger of spilling (noting that it's the wet season for most hydro catchments in Australia so some are in a "use it or lose it" situation), there's no point running the hydro stations too hard in that price environment. Better to save the water now and generate at higher levels when the price is higher.
 
Smurf,

As a question of curiosity, does the above include grid connected rooftop solar ?

One can imagine that it could potentially include rooftop solar fed into the grid but not the component that's used directly by the household (not fed into the grid).
 
drsmith said:
Smurf,

As a question of curiosity, does the above include grid connected rooftop solar ?
Click to expand...

Yes, the solar energy going into the grid is primarily from small scale systems (mostly on house roofs).

Figures for solar are calculated based on the voluntary automatic uploading of data by a relatively small proportion of users and extrapolating that to the surrounding region based on the capacity of systems installed in the area. It's not perfect but the general thought in the industry is that it's reasonably accurate. If you look at the load on conventional power generation versus the ups and downs of distributed solar, then it does appear that the solar figures are about right.

Figures for coal, gas, hydro, wind, biomass and oil are based on measurement at power stations.

Not included is small scale distributed generation other than solar although this is generally a small amount in total due to the small number of such facilities and their small size.

My point in posting these figures periodically is simply to highlight that wind and solar most certainly can produce large amounts of electricity, it's just that they do so intermittently. The wind is still blowing at roughly the same level it was when I posted those figures earlier such that for SA, wind has easily been the dominant source of electricity in the grid today.
 
Great news for consumers...

Mercedes-Benz takes on Tesla with a home battery of its own​


 
Smurf,

Would you care to make a comment on the viability of geo-thermal power in Australia which we don't appear to have discussed yet?
 
SirRumpole said:
Smurf,

Would you care to make a comment on the viability of geo-thermal power in Australia which we don't appear to have discussed yet?
Click to expand...

+1
I'd love to know more about that as well.
Years ago, I took an interest in PTR. Whatever happened to their "flagship" deep bore at Paralana? Last info I have dates from mid 2014: the Canberra Vandals pulled the pin on ARENA, and Petratherm were left with a $13M funding gap, which forced them to put Paralana on hold. Has the project been mothballed or completely abandoned?
And weren't they going to tap into the Teide volcano on Tenerife?
 
Geothermal.

The resource is certainly there, no doubt about that as such. Even with relatively limited exploration there's inferred resources of about 2,700,000 PJ spread across WA, SA, Vic and Tas. To put that into perspective, we could generate the whole country's electricity for about the next 1000 years if we used all of it.

On a state by state basis, about 77% of the inferred resource is in SA and 13% is in Tas. So geothermal just happens to be concentrated in the already dominant clean energy states. Vic has about 9% of the resource and WA about 1%.

But even in Vic, that 9% could keep the lights on in that state for the next 400+ years so it's a very significant resource.

Without getting company specific, much of the interest thus far has focused on SA for two primary reasons. First is that it's where the bulk of the known resource is, secondly because SA traditionally has higher electricity prices (wholesale) than the eastern states. More broadly, the economic situation in SA isn't good and it's fair to assume that the state government would welcome anything new that promised jobs in an ongoing industry.

Practically however, costs in SA are also likely to be higher since most of the resource is either at the edge of the current grid (which has capacity limits) or is in the middle of nowhere thus requiring new infrastructure to be usable. Water also tends to be a problem in SA.

In contrast to that situation, there's basically nowhere in Vic and Tas that aren't near the grid. Whilst the scale of any geothermal development in Tas would probably be smaller, it would also be cheap - grid nearby and water generally isn't a problem either.

As such, any large scale (1000+ MW) development would be far more likely in Vic than anywhere else. The load is nearby, Vic has a need to replace over 90% of its' current electricity production over the next 35 years (and half of it within the next 20 years) so there's definitely a market. And whilst they've only got 9% of the resource, that's more than enough given the scale of it.

A smaller scale, say 200 MW initially, development in Tas also isn't out of the question. It's a good place in terms of having things nearby, and Tas is of course electrically connected to Vic (and there are ideas to duplicate this connection at some future time). There is also very strong political (including Liberal) and public support for renewable energy development in Tas which helps too.

The real question is about practicality and economics rather than the resource. The resource is there, there's a demand for energy, those two things are beyond question especially in Vic and to some extent in the other states. Where it gets more difficult is with how to actually extract that resource and whether it can be done in a manner that's price competitive with other energy sources?

I'm no expert on the economics of geothermal extraction, so I've kept these comments fairly broad to saying where it's likely to happen. The middle of nowhere in SA might have plenty of resource but Vic and to a lesser extent Tas are far more logical places to actually develop it.

Note that I'm only referring to resources into which some degree of effort to quantify them has been put. There's going to be more in practice.

As for whether or not it will actually happen, thus far it has always been one of those "just around the corner" things so far as dry geothermal resources are concerned. It's a more risky technology than just building wind farms, hydro, coal etc in the minds of investors (though the CO2 issue arguably makes coal high risk these days). Hence the bulk of renewable energy to meet RET requirements is, in practice, coming from wind and hydro rather than geothermal. Nobody has really been willing to take the risk in a big way thus far - it hasn't stacked up from an investment perspective versus the proven technologies in wind etc.

Personally I do think that we need to determine technical viability once and for all on this one. Put some decent money in and build, say, a 100MW plant and actually put it into production. It's potentially a real game changer but it needs a public investment to get it going it seems, private investors having found it too risky thus far. For the record, the exact same things happened in the early days of brown coal - private investors failed in Vic and wouldn't go near it in SA as it was just too capital intensive with an uncertainty that it would even work. But with public investment to get it going we've had a century of cheap power thus far and we'll probably get 130 years before it's over at least in Vic.

As for how economic it would be, most estimates suggest a cost that's higher than present electricity prices but lower than the cost of generation from wind, nuclear or gas (once gas price go up in the next 2 years). So it does seem to be in the ballpark of viability, it just needs someone to take the risk and build a decent size plant to prove it. If private won't or can't, then it's not a bad use of taxpayers funds in my view given the game changing potential of it.

 
Thanks Smurf, very informative.

I can't see any funding coming from the current Federal government, and the SA government is strapped for cash, and seeing power stations are closing down due to lack of demand it's difficult to see investment in this area any time soon.

Good to know the resource is there though.
 
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