Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

It looks as though the first of the major coal fired stations has come up on the radar.

Lights to stay on if biggest 'coal clunker' powers down (msn.com)

There was mention in the article of approvals for batteries and while these batteries were large it did not state their duration ability. It mentioned both an 850MW and 700MW battery. Typically these have a 0ne to two hour capability at that level and sometimes less than their full rated power. Such batteries are a very small partial replacement for Eraring's 2880MW capability each hour and every hour. I noted that Eraring currently supplies up to a quarter of NSW's power.

However, it is a start.

Regards
Paul

I always chuckle when I see this line in articles

After two years of bill shock, wholesale prices and retail costs are tipped to fall as renewable energy supply increases.

because all the renewables so far have really helped to lower bill prices




My hot take on the Eraring issue...
the won't shut it down... it'll get sold back to the government or the government will force the sale to another mob who will be more then happy to keep it chugging away. (someone like this who already power stations and coal mines in australia and all over the world Portfolio | Sev.en Global Investments)

I've talked to a couple of people that work at Eraring and they're spending heaps of money on the place. When they first announced the closure Origin started paying for people to do training to start looking for outside work, that is all starting to stop and they're actually hiring people. I've be VERY... VERY surprised if the place turns off.

Originally Posted by havabeer69

I've talked to a couple of people that work at Eraring and they're spending heaps of money on the place. When they first announced the closure Origin started paying for people to do training to start looking for outside work, that is all starting to stop and they're actually hiring people. I've be VERY... VERY surprised if the place turns off.

HAB

Thanks for that additional information. It had seemed strange to me that the largest station in Oz, which had been upgraded from 660MW units to 720MW units would be shutting down just yet. However, much depends on their economic viability and in particular their cost of fuel about which I have no idea other than it is probably not cheap coal because of where they are located.


As far as buying Eraring out is concerned, Sev.en, which is Czech based and owned, is exclusively focused on coal fired entities in power generation and coal mining itself and would be a prime contender if the opportunity presented. I think that some government intervention in the form of guarantees may have to be in place to make it sufficiently attractive as that Czech company is a tough negotiator.

I would also add that it is difficult to envisage a quarter of NSW's power being removed from the grid at one fell swoop without it having a negative effect. Unless, that is, there was something to replace it.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

• An El Niño was forecast, but so far it is the exact opposite. BOM is yet to explain what is going on, but I'm sure they will when they can figure it out properly – and that's the whole point: their forecasts these days are pretty reliable, so there must be some new "curve ball" going on to make that forecast so ridiculously wrong. I'm awaiting the update eagerly.

Here'''s what'''s been pulling the strings on Australia'''s weather recently — and it'''s not just El Nino - ABC News


"The event is still underway, which means it may be contributing to the warmer-than-average temperatures that have continued into summer too, along with climate change, according to Dr Reid.
El Niño doesn't have much of an influence on rainfall during summer months, which she said made the recent rainfall over eastern Australia less surprising.
However, there have been some signs El Niño is not playing by its normal rule book this year, which Dr Reid said may have softened its overall influence."

I would be interested to know what is happening in S. America at this time as when we have an El Nino, they have a La Nina: Usually and vice versa.

I have mentioned before that weather forecasting is historical in that it is based on records of similar patterns. In other words, we look back and compare what happened under the same conditions previously. In recent times weather forecasting has improved markedly because there are more instances on which to compare. However, it relies on underlying conditions remaining reasonably constant. My guess is that the underlying conditions are changing so comparisons are no longer as predictable.

For example, last week we received 90mm of rain overnight. A day ahead of this event there was no rain forecast and in this part of the world 90mm is a big deal.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I would be interested to know what is happening in S. America at this time as when we have an El Nino, they have a La Nina: Usually and vice versa.

I have mentioned before that weather forecasting is historical in that it is based on records of similar patterns. In other words, we look back and compare what happened under the same conditions previously. In recent times weather forecasting has improved markedly because there are more instances on which to compare. However, it relies on underlying conditions remaining reasonably constant. My guess is that the underlying conditions are changing so comparisons are no longer as predictable.

For example, last week we received 90mm of rain overnight. A day ahead of this event there was no rain forecast and in this part of the world 90mm is a big deal.

Regards
Paul

The South American weather should be available on eg Weatherzone. What you say is not quite right. We have El Niño, they have El Niño, we have La Niña they have La Niña. It’s just they (usually) have opposite effects on rainfall in the two regions.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

As far as buying Eraring out is concerned, Sev.en, which is Czech based and owned, is exclusively focused on coal fired entities in power generation and coal mining itself and would be a prime contender if the opportunity presented. I think that some government intervention in the form of guarantees may have to be in place to make it sufficiently attractive as that Czech company is a tough negotiator.
l

WA is lucky that it gets gas from the NW self at guaranteed prices so can continue to provide reasonable electrical power prices using gas but it has still managed to stuff up its coal power transition caused in part by the rapid uptake of home solar.

Blue Waters Power station (400MW) in Collie in WA is privately owned, and is Australia' youngest coal fired power station built in 2009. in 2010 it received approval to double its size but in 2020 its value was written down by the owners to "Zero" as it simply cannot make money without a significant Govt subsidy which the WA Govt has been doing since 2022. I think it still supplies around 12% of the South West Grid but once sufficient gas and wind power generation is up and running it will be shut down. The WA Govt also heavily subsidises the Collie Coal miner (Griffin) that supplies coal for the Bluewaters power plant. The two other njpr coal fire plants are scheduled for closure by 2029.

During last week, a major storm knocked down a bunch of HV towers running power out to Kalgoorlie and unfortunately the back up diesel generators failed - typical maintenance cock up. Given the year round searing sunshine and huge mineral royalties the Govt pulls in from around Kalgoorlie why there aren't several renewable energy farms with huge effin batteries servicing that area is beyond me. Horizon Power is in the process off installing some 50 remote Solar Community Power systems for small towns all over WA as it's increasingly cheaper than maintaining the long distance transmission infrastructures. Now they need to step it up a level to cater for larger towns. One of the major blockers to all this is lack of people power. 6 months ago it took me 4 weeks to get 3 quotes for my 7kW wall charger for my eV and once I selected the sparky it took 4 weeks for him to do the job as he was installing remote Standalone electrical power systems in the boonies. Today I believe its taking even longer to get a decent sparky.

Originally Posted by mic-d

The South American weather should be available on eg Weatherzone. What you say is not quite right. We have El Niño, they have El Niño, we have La Niña they have La Niña. It’s just they (usually) have opposite effects on rainfall in the two regions.

Mic

Thanks for the correction. I did read that when we are having a dry spell, the other side of the world is having a wet one, but I may have interpreted it wrong in attributing it to El Nino and La Nina. As you have said, El Nino will be on both sides of the world, but over there the effect is different and they welcome El Nino. Whereas we in Oz despair, sell our livestock, go bankrupt handfeeding and small towns run out of water while people in cities tend not to notice anything.

Regards
Paul

PS: One theory for the Mayan civilisation collapse was one of those drought events caused by a La Nina event, which for them was bad news.

There were some ugly temps and prices yesterday on the spot market. Unusual for a Sunday.

spot prices up to Jan 21.png

Huge demand with elevated temps were responsible for this: $16,600 is "Voll," which is the maximum.

The forecast for today is only a slightly lower maximum, although the average may be higher.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Warb

A bit more info here Waratah Super Battery | EnergyCo

Remember, a coal fired power station is heavy industry, very heavy industry.

The defunct Munmorah Power Station had a capacity of 1,400 MW (Infallible Wiki) and its theoretical maximum daily output was 33,600 mWh. The proposed battery farm has a capacity of 700 mWh - about 2% of the daily output of the defunct plant. And look at the scale, the old Munmorah Power Station is in the background:

Munmorah Power Station.jpg Proposed Munmorah Battery Farm

I presume that the market for this stored electricity is largely in Sydney which is about 100 kms away, with inherent transmission losses. If the battery farm is commercially viable, would it not be even more viable if located closer to its market?

This smells like a political solution ... and undisclosed mates.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

I presume that the market for this stored electricity is largely in Sydney which is about 100 kms away

The smart move would be to use those sparks on the Central Coast.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

This smells like a political solution ... and undisclosed mates.

Indeed. OTOH, do we have any real idea of what storage capacity might be required?

My assumption has always been that we'd have a massive oversupply of renewables, such that (very simplistically) we'd have enough solar to cover the windless days, and enough wind to cover the cloudy days. With sufficient oversupply, and excellent distribution across the country, the storage only needs to cover windless (over large areas of the country) nights, and geographically widespread windless, cloudy days.

The real difficulty here, I suspect, is that the "needs to make huge profits 24/7" motive means that nobody will ever build the massive oversupply of generation capacity, because much of the time it won' be needed and will therefore not be profitable. This is why I can't see how it will ever come to fruition, because it's not profitable to make either storage or generation capacity that is only needed sporadically under certain circumstances. But that seems to be part of the very fabric of a renewable power environment.

It's also why I'm constantly amazed that we're not pushing the "use less power" angle.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Remember, a coal fired power station is heavy industry, very heavy industry.

The defunct Munmorah Power Staion had a capacity of 1,400 MW (Infallible Wiki) and its theoretical maximum daily output was 33,600 kWh. The proposed battery farm has a capacity of 700 kWh - about 2% of the daily output of the defunct plant. And look at the scale, the old Munmorah Power Staion is in the background:.

BTW, 1400 MW x 24 = 33,600 MWh not kWh

Its easy to get tangled up in maximums and leave out the big picture like what else is making power.

When there's nothing but a coal fired power plant making juice then that's all you have.
But
When there's other processes making power then all that's really needed is enough storage to fill in the gaps. That battery farm is also not intended to be the the end of the storage on that (or other) site but just the beginning, and in terms of space on the site there's plenty of room including going upwards still to be used.

It's foolish to immediately completely replace coal fired plants with massive storage because;
1) there's unlikely to be enough excess renewable power to fill the storage and
2) In due course there will be more of other generation options like Wind and Hydro that means the cost of installing huge amounts of storage may be wasted.

The scale in that the photo is over blown because of the photo's perspective.
This image is a better indicator of scale.

I'll bet those people living in the surrounding suburbs are very pleased the plant is shut down.

Screenshot 2024-01-22 at 1.59.22 pm.jpg

FWIW at Collie in the South West of WA a 220MW/880 MWh battery is being installed and while approval has been granted for up to 1GW/4GWh whenever this is ever achieved will depend on those things I mentioned above. Even now batteries mostly about short term generation stability rather than complete replacement.

Originally Posted by BobL

Screenshot 2024-01-22 at 1.59.22 pm.jpg

I should just point out that Lake Macquarie State Con Area (top right) is NOT a prison.
Nor is it anything to do with Clive Palmer.

Originally Posted by Warb

Indeed.

It's also why I'm constantly amazed that we're not pushing the "use less power" angle.

Generally speaking, the vast majority see it as a right to use as much power as they want when they want. It is only when they can't afford it, which is for most people when the bill comes in, do they start to regulate their use. I would suggest that the Amber company's system that Fence Furniture uses could be much more widespread over the next few years (providing they still remain viable).

As far as renewable generation is concerned, solar only operates for, say, one third of the day. Wind is less easy again to nail down. I think that solar is probably double the generation of wind, but even if it isn't, I think you can start to see the problem. Until now the solar farms have only put in place their panels. Even today the amount of storage capacity, which is primarliy batteries, is miserably small. Really, any future solar or wind should be accompanied by a minimum of equal storage facilities.

It is not an easy balancing act and investors want to go with the easy money.

Regards
Paul