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When too much solar is more than enough
The WA government-run electricity provider (Horizon Energy) has called a halt to new solar installations in Broome, a town in Northwest WA that is not connected to the national grid, or even the main WA grid. (It’s 2,000km north of Perth). About 10% of the town’s power comes from solar* but apparently the little grid can’t handle the fluctuations, so the early birds got the subsidies, and the rest got grumpy.
June 3rd, ABC:
Broome residents tire of cap on solar power installations Horizon Power only allows 10 per cent of the town’s power to come from solar due to issues with grid fluctuations This leaves some residents unable to install a solar system that connects to the grid Horizon is trialling battery storage technology in other WA towns and hopes to expand this to Broome
Residents in the Kimberley town of Broome have said they are fed up with being prevented from accessing solar power despite living in one of Western Australia’s sunniest towns.
State-owned energy utility Horizon Power allows just 10 per cent of the town’s power to be generated from solar to protect the grid […]
The new phrase that must be neutered is “base load”. It’s like kryptonite for renewables!
Nick Kilvert at the ABC helpfully provides a no-hard-questions mouthpiece and tells us Base load power is the dinosaur in the energy debate.
To serve the Australian taxpayer he quotes a Professor Vassallo, Chair of Sustainable Energy Development (USyd), and CSIRO Energy Director Dr Glenn Platt. Just in case they weren’t green and biased enough he also interviewed Professor Blakers, director of the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems. Finally he turns to Dr Mark Diesendorf, who is apparently just some guy at UNSW with a team of modelers. (Kilvert doesn’t give us his title, but a two second search suggests he works at the “Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets“. Perhaps it was an oversight, or maybe Kilvert was feeling guilty that every single person he quoted has a career in sustainable energy). Glenn Platt — by the way, is not just “Energy Director” but is described at The Conversation as leading the Energy Transformed Flagship research centre at CSIRO. So that’s four green academics, no one from the coal industry, no skeptics, no other engineers, and no one involved in managing a grid.
[…]
We are creatures of habit. Look at the spike caused at 11:32pm as something like 27,000 hot water tanks in South Australia suddenly switch on to use cheaper off-peak electricity. This spike is entirely due to pricing plans. It’s entirely avoidable too, but at least it’s predictable. “Scheduled”.
This peak, allegedly, is only a problem if SA is “islanded” — meaning if it can’t rely on the coal generators in Victoria.
Yesterday people were asking why the South Australian demand was peaking at 1am (and why two hours were strangely missing from that graph). “Hot water” is the answer (at least to the first part).
SA Hot water systems add sudden 250MW of demand at 11:30pm. Graph.
This graph comes from the AEMO report in Feb 2016. What follows is their electro-nitty-gritty:
Based on previous experience, and as demonstrated in a separation event on 1 November 2015, maintaining the SA power system in a secure operating state is challenging if there are large changes to the supply-demand balance during a period of islanding.
There is a risk of automatic under frequency load shedding if SA is being operated as an island during the hot water demand peak, […]
What other heavily subsidized industry brags about its ability to provide a product for one quarter of the time it’s needed? Vale sunny-day-solar!
Pick a day, an hour, and what are the chances solar will be there for you? A lot less than one in four, because last Monday’s peak in South Australia was an all time record. Every day in the last year was worse.
And so much for cheap… the price when solar power peaked was still close to $50/MWh. Compare that to most of the years of the national electricity market operating when average prices were $30/Mwh.
The price dip at 6am (the black-line bottomless gully), has nothing to do with solar, but was caused by wind power. Far from being useful, essential, or productive, solar and wind power are playing havoc with a normal market, destroying the chance for cheap, reliable energy to find a place. As long as we force the market to accept this non-dispatchable supply, we are actively punishing reliable power. What investor in reliable energy would look at this and head to South Australia?”
Giles Parkinson was excited at Reneweconomy: Rooftop solar provides 48% of South Australia power, pushing grid […]
The cost of Going Green, The Australian, Cover, September 1, 2017.
The Australian calculates the total bill will be in the order of $60b for green electricity.
It’s not like we could have done something better with that.
Read it all (if you can), then write to your MP and Senator. Ask why — if they are serious about helping reduce CO2 — we don’t have a USC coal plant like so many other countries, and why we don’t have nuclear power. Then ask why, if they are concerned about the poor, about health, about education, we are wasting $60b dollars to try to change the weather in 2100 that we could be spending on these critical areas right now?
Taxpayers hit with a $60bn power bill
The Australian, Adam Creighton
Taxpayers will have paid more than $60 billion through federal renewable energy subsidies by 2030, about twice what the crumbling car industry received over 15 years and enough to build about 10 large nuclear reactors.
The government’s large and small-scale renewable energy targets, which will compel energy retailers to buy 33 terawatt hours of wind, solar and hydro energy by 2030, will […]
In a genius move, Victoria, which has “soaring” electricity prices, now announces plan to copy South Australia where people pay more for electricity than anywhere:
The Andrews government this morning unveiled a new renewable energy target with a commitment to power up to 25 per cent of the state from renewables by 2020 and 40 per cent by 2025.
The government has backed the construction of two large scale solar farms in regional Victoria which will provide another 140MW to the state’s supply, and has set up a reverse energy auction system to bring forward an additional 650MW to the state’s supply.
Meanwhile the trams will run on sunshine.
Legislation creates savings, how?
Victorian households will allegedly each save around $30 annually on power bills under the new plan, while medium sized businesses have been projected to save up to $2400 a year under the legislation which will be introduced to parliament today.
It’s almost like Victoria plans to make electricity from legislation (hey, it’s renewable, and will never run out). By making electricity shockingly expensive, Government ministers can talk of “savings”, even though prices will be far higher than the average price […]
It’s not even close: If South Australia seceded it would have the highest electricity price of any nation on Earth.
Australian Households pay highest power prices in the World, AFR.
South Australian households are paying the highest prices in the world at 47.13¢ per kilowatt hour, more than Germany, Denmark and Italy which heavily tax energy, after the huge increases on July 1, Carbon + Energy Markets’ MarkIntell data service says.
When the eastern states’ National Electricity Market was formed in the late 1990s, Australia had the lowest retail prices in the world along with the United States and Canada, CME director Bruce Mountain said.
The Markintell report graph:
…
Hmm — odd coincidence of Price with Wind Energy Penetration:
Wind energy is “free” but countries with the most wind power are also the most likely to get to the top of the Prize Pool for exorbitant electricity. Wind energy penetration is highest in Denmark (1st), Portugul (8th), Ireland (6th), Spain (11th), Germany (3rd). Conversely, renewable energy penetration is low in places at the tail end of the price curve like Luxemburg 6%, Estonia 15%, Hungary 7%, Lithuania 15.5%. In the low mid price […]
It’s a creative South Australian solution to an unstable, expensive grid: close large factories and have less blackouts. If they can close enough, it’s guaranteed to succeed:
Holden closure will help Energy Market Operator manage SA’s blackout risk, report finds
Part of the soon-to-be vacated Holden factory in Adelaide is about to be transformed into a temporary power station to help stave off load-shedding blackouts this summer.
But the car industry’s closure will help the authorities manage the risk of blackouts in another way.
The exit of a once powerful manufacturing sector will see the state using less electricity, particularly during the all-important summer peak.
The information is contained in the latest Electricity Forecasting Insights published by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).
From a story last year:
The closure of Holden’s Elizabeth plant is expected to result in 13,000 job losses across the company and its supply chain.
Energy use in SA is set to fall from 3,116MW to 3,035MW in summer peaks. Even so, they’ll still need more temporary generators (time to cut more jobs?):
Nevertheless, AEMO is forecasting widespread shortfalls of reserve power over […]
Australia is a wonderful living experiment for nations worldwide of how a people with more energy resources per capita than anywhere else in the world can sabotage a perfectly good electricity grid in the hope of appeasing the Weather Gods.
At the request of Senator Malcolm Roberts, Alan Moran slices up our “Chief Scientists” report (known as the Finkel Review) and gives us some home truths. Electricity costs have doubled in Australia, Finkel’s plan would take what isn’t working, and do more of it — in the process pretty much destroying one fifth of our manufacturing base, costing us thousands of jobs, and adding almost $588-$768 per household annually to energy bills. Let’s ask Australian voters if they want cheap coal power or if they’d rather spend $600 a year to make the weather unmeasureably nicer in 2100? Why don’t we have a plebescite on that?
In other basic truths Moran points out that while Finkel seems to think new coal fired plants are uneconomic, everyone else is building them around the world. Old plants don’t have to be blown up on their 50th Birthday either. They can be maintained instead, like lots of other perfectly good 50 year old […]
Something very “seismic” has happened to our electricity prices.
Paul McArdle of WattClarity goes through each state looking at quarterly trends and prices, and remarks that things are going “off the chart”. We had some electricity crises in Australia in the last 12 months, and 2016 was a significantly more expensive than all previous years bar the major drought year of 2007. But ominously, prices haven’t come down in what should be a “normal” quarter. In Tasmania there was a crisis last year when dams ran dry, and the undersea Bass cable broke. But this quarter, prices are only $3.20/MWh lower than the crisis levels of Q2 2016 despite water in dams and a working cable to Victoria. Something has gone seriously wrong with our electrical grid and market. In both Victoria and South Australia prices are higher on average than any previous April-June quarter in the 19 year history of the National Electricity Market. In Queensland and New South Wales, prices are at the “second highest”.
McArdle goes to some length to explain that this is not “one factor”, which seems obvious and fair — Its the combination of the closure of Hazelwood and Port Augusta coal generators; the […]
“End-Coal” Global Coal Tracker does a magnificent job of showing how essential coal is around the world, and which countries are pathetically backwards in developing new coal plants. It’s probably not what the “CoalSwarm” team was hoping to achieve, but this map is a real asset to those of us who want to show how tiny Australia’s coal fired assets are compared to the rest of the world. The site itself is a fancy-pants high gloss major database and website that also shows how much money is in the “anti-coal” movement. Oh, that skeptics should have even 2% of these funds. Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald, which created the maps, calls it a “cycle of coal dependency”. Normal people call it “freedom and wealth”.
Chinese companies build coal plants — NY Times
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are […]
South Australia has the largest uranium deposit in the world, which it digs up to sell to other countries to make electricity. It also has lots of sun and wind and empty space. If any state can make solar and wind power work, surely it’s there.
And renewables are working for SA, working to put it in top place for Global Electricity Bills.
South Australia power prices to rise to highest in the world on Saturday, energy expert warns
South Australia will overtake Denmark as having the world’s most expensive electricity when the country’s major energy retailers jack up their prices this Saturday.
AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy will all increase their electricity prices from July 1, adding hundreds of dollars to annual household bills. Residential customers will see an average rise of 18 per cent under AGL, 19.9 per cent from EnergyAustralia, 16.1 per cent with Origin Energy. Bruce Mountain, the head of a private energy consultancy firm, said the increases would see South Australia take the lead on world power prices — but for all the wrong reasons.
“After taxes, the [typical] household in South Australia will be paying slightly more than […]
The numbers are breathtaking. On the east coast of Australia (which means most households in the nation) they are looking at 15 – 20% increases next month on electricity bills which are already at bleeding point.
Get a grip on these numbers:
Charis Chang, News.com —
POWER prices are set to rocket after three major retailers announced increases of up to 20 per cent and $600 a year for the average customer in some states.
Origin, EnergyAustralia and AGL have all announced price increases for electricity and gas starting from July 1.
Small businesses may be the hardest hit, especially Origin customers in South Australia, which will see prices rise by a whopping $1453 a year when increases to gas and electricity bills are combined.
The biggest increase for residential customers will be for AGL customers in ACT, who will pay an extra $579 a year for a combined electricity and gas rise.
In NSW, residential EnergyAustralia customers will see electricity prices increase by up to 19.6 per cent. Origin Energy customers will get a 16.1 per cent rise.
The price hikes will take effect […]
Demand enough renewables and you might as well ban coal
There’s a lesson Australia needs to learn from South Australia. When intermittent renewables reach a certain percentage of daily average supply they make baseload power unfeasible. The situation develops into an impossible dead end that can only be solved with container-ships of cash.
The intermittent supply of wind and solar is the immoveable problem. It eats into the daily chart of the cheapest stable electricity supply — which is coal fired. Coal can’t be ramped in and out in minutes. It is a creature that runs best non-stop, efficiently, smoothly, at a high capacity factor (meaning it works best when it is producing around 90% of it’s design limit continuously).
Tom Quirk points out that sometime after these intermittent renewables hit 30% of the average daily supply, as they have in South Australia — locally sourced coal power becomes uneconomic. There are times during the daily cycle when renewables are providing almost all the demand. There is little demand left for the massive coal turbines to supply, so they spin on pointlessly, but costs remain, and profits are zero.
In […]
It’s hard to believe Turnbull could fall for this one twice.
Dennis Shannahan warns us:
There is a revolt in the Coalition ranks and there are those prepared to say that Finkel is dead or worse.
More than 20 Coalition MPs spoke against the Finkel report last night, including Tony Abbott, all concerned that the priority is for cutting emissions and not electricity prices.
History repeats?
David Crowe on what he’s heard about the same liberal party room meeting:
Former prime minister Tony Abbott was a sharp critic of the clean energy target and made interjections throughout the discussions.
“He was the most sceptical about it — he said it wasn’t going to cut prices or provide certainty for consumers,” one Liberal said.
“He was probably the strongest critic throughout the whole meeting.”
One of the senior Liberal figures who took notes on the meeting said last night that about 32 people spoke and about one-third of them were not in favour of the Finkel proposal, while one-third supported the clean energy target and another third asked questions or had suggestions for changes. Victorian Liberal MP Russell Broadbent, […]
In one of the most massaged spin-doctor sales messages in Australian history, the Finkel Report is here to “take the politics out” and solve our energy instability and out-of-control prices. But it’s actually an aggressive green-left weather-control program where cost and stability are secondary to the unspoken but main aim which is to slow storms in 2100. If Finkel were really aiming for stability and price control he’d let the free market run, get the government out of our electricity grid and look at the evidence that shows that solar-panels and wind farms don’t, won’t and can’t work as global air-conditioners for us or our grandchildren.
Australians, read this line and weep:
“Modelling for the Review estimates that by 2030, 42 per cent of electricity demand will be met by renewable generation.”
This is where South Australia is currently at, but it has a lifeline to coal power in Victoria whenever it needs it. What happens when the whole National Grid needs a lifeline? Pull out your wallet…
How much does an undersea cable to New Zealand cost? It’s only 2,000km.
For the same price we might be able to afford a new ultra-supercritical coal plant and catch […]
Three days to go: The Hazelwood shut down begins
The situation in Australia right now:
The total fossil fuel output compared to total wind power generation, NEM, Australian electricity market, 21 March 2017
One old coal plant makes more electricity than all the wind farms
Guest Post by TonyfromOZ and Jo Nova
I’ve been watching the output of all eight generators at Hazelwood closely all month and comparing it to the total wind farm generation across the National Electricity Market (NEM). The old warhorse is a remarkable engineering and economic success.
I’ve kept a total of the power output each day from midnight to midnight and a running cumulative total. So far, the running total output from Hazelwood has always stayed ahead of the total from wind farms. So this 53 year old coal fired plant that is being shut down next week has produced more energy than the 43 wind plants on the National Energy Market. Even if we could store the energy from the wind farms, it still doesn’t add up to the same as one very ancient coal plant. The shut down starts in three days time on Friday March 24th.
Over […]
Japan will use Australian coal to build 45 modern coal fired plants:
Japan is the largest overseas market for Australian coal producers, taking more than a third of all exports.
Why coal? It’s cheaper than gas:
Tom O’Sullivan, a Tokyo based energy consultant with Mathyos Global Advisory, said in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Japan started importing more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Australia.
But he said the move to more coal fired power was because coal was cheaper than LNG, and the energy security was priority for the government.
The new ultra super critical coal plants burn hotter and are more efficient (hence, high energy, low emissions = HELE).
Finally, after blackouts and scandalously high electricity bills, Malcolm Turnbull is just starting to float the idea of building, maybe, one. China has them, even Indonesia will get one before us.
Japan needs to import 95% of its energy. Australia is the largest exporter of coal in the world, and has the largest known uranium resources in the world, but we voluntarily wear a hair shirt to appease GAIA. We sacrifice our cheap energy advantage for fear that loud ill-mannered […]
Australians are going to be talking about this for weeks. Indeed, the SA Blackout is the stuff of legend.
The Greens are blaming coal (what else?) for causing bad storms and blackouts. Forget that Queensland gets hit with cyclones all the time and the whole state grid doesn’t break. Some greenies are also raging against “the politicization” of the storms. Yes, Indeedy. Go tell that to Will Steffen.
We are not being told the whole story. We do know that South Australia has the highest emphasis on renewables in the world. It also has a fragile electricity network, and wild price spikes to boot. (Coincidence?) The death of a few transmission towers should not knock out a whole state, nor should it take so long to recover from. The storm struck worst north of Adelaide near Port Augusta but the juicy interconnector from Victoria runs in from the south, and goes right up past Adelaide and most of the population. Why couldn’t the broken parts of the system be isolated?
Digging around I find ominous warnings that while the lightning and winds probably caused the blackout, the state of the South Australian grid appeared to be teetering on the brink, […]
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