The real cost of back up
Imagine building and maintaining a perfectly good gas plant and then having it sit around for five whole years “just in case”?
There’s been a wind drought in the last three months in Australia, which meant hydro power had been used more than expected to fill the gap. But wouldn’t you know it, it’s been dry spell for most of the last year in Tasmania too and the dams were getting low. So on June 6th, the Combined Cycle Gas plant at Tamar Valley was set up to run for the first time since 2019.
Back in 2016 the maintenance costs of the keeping the CCGT at Tamar Valley on “30 day” standby was $12 to $24 million a year, depending on who you asked. So the five year cost of gas backup is in the order of $100 million, but those costs will be slapped on the gas plant bill, when really they’re a weather dependent renewables cost. What we need is reliable energy, not random electricity. If energy companies were only paid for reliable dispatchable power, the wind and solar plants would have to build their own “back up gas plants” that sit around idle for years, and juggle their own generators. So they’d all go out of business by breakfast. Why build a perfectly good gas plant with vast wind and hydro complex, when you could just build the gas plant and get what you need? Fossil fuels are essential, renewables are superfluous weather-changing talismen.
From WattClarity: This confirms that it’s the first time in just over 5 years that the combined cycle unit has seen a run!
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Naturally Hydro Tasmania blame the drought, not the failing wind farms. But when the wind doesn’t blow, hydro likes to make profits from the price spikes, and there have been plenty of those lately.
In 2009 the whole gas plant was built for $230 million dollars. But the 2016 power debacle where the Basslink cable broke during a drought, cost the state $560 million dollars.
The only thing worse than the cost of back up power, is the cost of blackouts.
The Tamar Valley Power Station has four units, three are peaking gas units (adding up to 178MW), and one more efficient baseload turbine (CCGT) of 210MW.
[UPDATE: CCGT corrected to “Combined Cycle”. Apologies. – Jo]
Photo from: Tas Hydro