SA power - a plan at last

[Greenswale (Wren)]

Ummmm, don't forget that both the SA and Vic governments have banned searching for gas deposits on land. So SA will import and Vic probably will too, because to find and set up infrastructure will take time.

On the SA battery, the Grattan Institute determined that the proposed battery has the capacity to run the state for just 4 minutes.

[lazjen (Chris)]

Originally Posted by Greenswale

On the SA battery, the Grattan Institute determined that the proposed battery has the capacity to run the state for just 4 minutes.

Why has the battery system got to run the whole state? Surely if everything else is gone there's something seriously wrong?

And to me, I think a battery system needs to be 2 fold: these farm(s), plus individual units at homes/businesses, etc. Start somewhere and expand.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

agree, a battery adds the "synchronous" bit to wind and solar generators - it doesn't take the place of other generation and the Grattan Institute has mislead if they are implying that such a small capacity is useless.

If SA had a battery in place during the statewide blackout, it would have helped stabilise the majority of the grid through the few minutes of severe instability when the towers were being blown down, the wind generators would not have sensed a grid condition that forced them to disconnect and there would have been no blackout at all. Battery storage acts like a shock absorber and changes the game entirely when wind generators are used.

[JA]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

If a power system allows brownouts and unused capacity to co-exist, it needs to be changed.

Very well said !

Best
JA

[The_bluester (Paul)]

I agree Ray. Implying that a battery system is useless as it could only "Run the state" for a short period would be very misleading. Solar with battery storage may be a long term plan for individual households but it would never be the intent at a grid level.

Battery storage provides an instant buffer to allow the spin up of still relatively quick reacting alternatives, like pumped hydro, which can not be switched on instantly but can certainly be spun up in a matter of minutes. Otherwise as you said. It provides a buffer to allow for planned reactions to extraordinary events like the towers blowing over, in that situation, load shedding is still the most likely outcome but at least battery storage would allow time to do it instead of the whole system collapsing over a matter of seconds.

[Greenswale (Wren)]

I considered the 4 minutes a positive.

I'm out of here.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

the messages coming out of Canberra are somewhat varied. over the past fortnight the message has been

clean coal is the answer
gas security is the answer
pumped hydro is the answer

Pumped hydro is a great idea, since it is a technology that is an excellent complement to renewables - so does this latest announcement really indicate an acceptance of a renewable future and does the preceding announcement indicate that renewables will be paired with new gas capability? (which sort of sounds like the SA plan)

It would be nice to have a clear National strategy like the SA government put out - then there would be something concrete and self consistent to discuss and argue about.

[AussieTrooper (Ben)]

Optimistic Ben says that the government has seen a problem and is acting on it.
Cynical Ben says that the government is using this issue to force through the coal seam gas plants that their party donors want to build.

I'd like to see the full details on what is proposed for the snowy scheme though.

[AndrewJ]

Pumped hydro is a great idea, since it is a technology that is an excellent complement to renewables

True, but one listener who obviously knew the full process and had thought it through indicated that it does provide an insurance backup, but is very inefficient.
When pushed about it, he mentioned a lot of the "spare/off peak" electricity used to pump the water back up the hill would actually be coming from coal, not renewables, ( as the pumps will be near the snowy system ) and there arent many nearby renewables.
When you factor in all of the transmission/mechanical losses, the carbon footprint per KWhr for the final product goes through the roof.
Be interesting to see what those numbers really are, and if they could affect our emissions targets.

Andrew

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

True, but one listener who obviously knew the full process and had thought it through indicated that it does provide an insurance backup, but is very inefficient.
When pushed about it, he mentioned a lot of the "spare/off peak" electricity used to pump the water back up the hill would actually be coming from coal, not renewables, ( as the pumps will be near the snowy system ) and there arent many nearby renewables.
When you factor in all of the transmission/mechanical losses, the carbon footprint per KWhr for the final product goes through the roof.
Be interesting to see what those numbers really are, and if they could affect our emissions targets.

Andrew

I don't know Andrew, but everything I read suggests that round trip efficiency is maybe as high as an excellent 80% http://energystorage.org/energy-stor...ectric-storage. The other side of the efficiency equation may possibly be that thermal plants do not have to be operating with excess capacity in place (just in case), if there is pumped hydro to smooth out the load - pumped hydro may thus make operation of even coal powered generators more efficient - but that is just conjecture. must see if there is any info on the effect of pumped hydro on Queensland power generation.

power it from renewables and the carbon footprint is surely going to be small. If you cannot get any renewable energy from the grid, then you are right - it does not make so much sense. I guess that it should only be considered for a future high-renewables grid - maybe that is what the Government is anticipating.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Ray
I suspect 80% is way too high if the electricity supply is not local.
Be interesting to see what the real losses are.

What they need to do is cut down all the forests in the high country around the lakes and replace it with wind turbines and solar panels that are only tasked with pumping water????
Lots of wind/sun up there, and no transmission losses.

Andrew

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Ray

What they need to do is cut down all the forests in the high country around the lakes and replace it with wind turbines and solar panels that are only tasked with pumping water????
Lots of wind/sun up there, and no transmission losses.

Andrew

yeah that'l work

[Shiraz (Ray)]

curiouser and curiouser. Just read that we very nearly had another Statewide blackout a fortnight ago. Seems a transformer blew up and 610MW of gas thermal power suddenly tripped off line.

The wind farms and the Heywood connector to Victoria just managed to make up the shortfall. Didn't hear much about that episode from the "renewables are the problem" brigade in the Federal Govt!

The planned fast reaction gas generator and a battery would have been useful - can't come soon enough. Apart from correcting major losses in generation, one analysis suggests that the planned gas generator will pay for itself even if it is never switched on - it will no longer be open slather on price spikes and the state could possibly even save the cost of the plant over a year if the threat of it being run up stops the most outrageous price gouging (which may be as much as $400m a year)

[AndrewJ]

Gday Ray
That made the nightly news here, so no idea why you lot missed it.
It was reported as "a fire" in the Torrens island station that tripped out several units. This then knocked out Pelican point.

Andrew

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

the messages coming out of Canberra are somewhat varied. over the past fortnight the message has been

clean coal is the answer
gas security is the answer
pumped hydro is the answer

You can summarise that as:

We don't have the faintest idea what to do,
We don't the vision to do whats required and
We want to continue building our portfolios which are all heavily invested in fossil fuels.

Thats ok, the public will making the decision for them.

[AussieTrooper (Ben)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

True, but one listener who obviously knew the full process and had thought it through indicated that it does provide an insurance backup, but is very inefficient.
When pushed about it, he mentioned a lot of the "spare/off peak" electricity used to pump the water back up the hill would actually be coming from coal, not renewables, ( as the pumps will be near the snowy system ) and there arent many nearby renewables.
Andrew

Pumped Hydro doesn't need to be efficient to work. The market price during the day is generally at least 10 times what it is at night, so you only need a 10% system efficiency to make it viable.
The listener was correct though. At night, hydro and gas generally shut down. So you are left with (at a guess) 90%+ coal driving the pumps.
What is does do is allow the hydro systems to run for longer during the day, without the need to build new dams.

[AussieTrooper (Ben)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Ray
I suspect 80% is way too high if the electricity supply is not local.
Be interesting to see what the real losses are.
Andrew

The losses between the average generator and consumer is around 6-10% That doesn't account for losses during generation itself.
I would be extremely surprised if pumped hydro got even remotely close to 80% efficiency.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Ray
That made the nightly news here, so no idea why you lot missed it.
It was reported as "a fire" in the Torrens island station that tripped out several units. This then knocked out Pelican point.

Andrew

thanks Andrew. it was reported here as "fires" at Torrens Island from memory, but nothing I saw mentioned that a transformer exploded, explained how much capacity went down and that it very nearly blacked out the state, or indicated that wind power kept everything going (presumably).

I guess that it didn't suit any agendas to draw attention to the event - the State govt didn't want to acknowledge just how fragile our system is and the Feds didn't want to acknowledge that wind turbines can provide "base load" power.

The big worry is that energy security is going to become a National problem in the near future and there doesn't appear to be anyone doing any National planning to deal with it - hopefully I am wrong and the Minister is on top of it, but all I see at present is a lot of pre-emptive blame shifting and good impressions of startled rabbits running hither and thither in the headlights.

[AussieTrooper (Ben)]

Wind turbines cannot reliably provide base load. Being lucky and having them generating at the right time is one thing, but to call it base load is pushing it too far.
Watching the Fed energy minister and the SA premier face off yesterday seemed to show that there is no real plan to fix this. The snowy plan can actually help SA, but only if the Vic-SA interconnector capacity is increased by about 30%. This is not a part of any plan I have heard.

[sn1987a (Barry)]

The energy market is an Enron style racket. Actually the whole economy is based on racketeering, scams and swindles. Especially banks, insurance, education, food, 457s, telecommunications - everything! .