Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

Gentlemen

I am loathe to issue any restrictions on this thread, particularly as I started it and more importantly because I see electricity generation as one of the crucial issues of the future, but, we need to keep the specific political comment to a minium other than factual documentation of policy or the lack of it. I know it is extremely difficult to separate the politics and the science here and given a free reign I would probably be the worst offender. However, there has been no intervention in any way whatsoever by the moderators on this thread. I am grateful for that, because the Forum rules are "No politics" and I would like to keep the thread as apolitical as possible.

Most contributors here have acknowledged that previous governments could have and should have done more and did not. We really need to focus on the remedys and see if the new government can step up to the task. I take on board that all politicians of all persuasions can be slippery. We need to give them a chance to do the right thing and then lay into them if they fall short on the task.

So, what is the right thing? The latest comments that the coal fired stations need to get back on line and the gas companies need to assure continued supply is a defining acknowledgement that we cannot do without either for the moment. Here on this thread we knew that. The chorous of the market finding the solution is rubbish. The problem is that market is primarily privatisied and even the government stations are obliged under the competitive market regulations to act as if they were private companies. The problem is that the industry has been privatised and their focus is the bottom line: There is no going back from this position so the only option I see for the moment is for the government to pursue research into solutions. I heard even today of restoring coal and gas fired power so the renemables could be further developed. They still don't understand the issue. The issue is the night and other "sunless" hours. Also "windless" hours and maybe down the track "waterless" hours should drought strike again (it will).

The effect of more renewables though the day without that generation channeled into storage would mean the coal and gas fired units either would not generate at all or would have to go to their absolute minimum loads and probably not only run uneconomically but more likely at a huge loss. The problem there is they are needed for the time when the renewables cannot deliver. It may be that generation through the night is insufficient for them to be viable. If they close down prematurely because they are unviable the country has a big problem.

Storage is the crucial issue that must be solved and that needs to happen sooner rather than later: Everything hangs on it. More renewables before storage is solved will actually only exacerbate the problem.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Storage is the crucial issue that must be solved and that needs to happen sooner rather than later: Everything hangs on it. More renewables before storage is solved will actually only exacerbate the problem.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

As an aside and to give some insight into one operation of the Lucas Heights which is close to me, when they are transporting used material for export all the roads south of the reactor are closed to all traffic between the reactor and Port Kembla. I have been caught twice by this in the last few years and it lasts for the best part of an hour and there is no advanced warning of it happening until just before they do it.

Chris
You do realise that the unannounced road closures around Lucas Heights have nothing to do about the safety or otherwise of the reactor at Lucas Heights?
Their purpose is to make it difficult -- if not impossible -- for anti-nuclear protesters to disrupt the shipment of the nuclear waste.

The reason becomes unimportant when I am stuck in the middle of it late at night. The root reason is they are moving export material and everything revolves around that.

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

Snowy Hydro will not produce power until end of the decade, adding more pain to energy market woes - ABC News

Having worked briefly on Snowy 2.0 in the early stages, I'm not surprised it is running late. The project is a shambles IMHO - consortium lead by a large offshore entity. Want to place bets on how far over budget it will end up?

It's basically a big water-based battery, but you get the feeling that other storage technologies (e.g. Tesla megabatteries) could be deployed faster and cheaper?

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

Snowy Hydro will not produce power until end of the decade, adding more pain to energy market woes - ABC News

Having worked briefly on Snowy 2.0 in the early stages, I'm not surprised it is running late. The project is a shambles IMHO - consortium lead by a large offshore entity. Want to place bets on how far over budget it will end up?

It's basically a big water-based battery, but you get the feeling that other storage technologies (e.g. Tesla megabatteries) could be deployed faster and cheaper?

Mr B

You are right in that it is a large "battery." My concern is that the system has been talked up and the "pumped" aspect has been overstated. The time taken to complete the project and the probable blowout of the budget just rub salt into the wound. The main proponent of the Snowy 2.0 scheme was the same person that saddled us with the NBN. I am stuggling to find any grounds for confidence. I too was astounded at how little progress had been made.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

... Snowy 2.0 ... is basically a big water-based battery, but you get the feeling that other storage technologies (e.g. Tesla megabatteries) could be deployed faster and cheaper?

Good analogy - pumped hydro is just a great big water based battery.

It is certainly true that abattery system could be installed quicker than Snowy 2.0 - but whether it would be cheaper is, at best, very debatable. I have just run the numbers on a Tesla Powerwall installation - the cost of storing power in terms of $'s per kilowatt hour is comparable with the current retail prices of electricity.

That's the problem with long term projects; competing technologies can advance in the same timescale to make the original proposal uncompetitive. Lots of incremental improvements to battery metallurgy/chemistry and energy density are happening right now. I have 5kW solar on the roof, but don't expect home storage batteries to be cost effective (for me) for at least another couple of years.

Re. NBN, since I have worked in the field of fibre optics for about 40 years now, I can confidently tell you that just about everyone working in the technology thought that Malcolm's idea was utterly stupid (...."but he invented the internet !!"). If they had fibre all the way to the premises, bandwidth could then scale almost indefinitely as demand went up. Current capacity of a single trunk fibre pair (Tx/Rx) using DWDM technology is 96 x 400Gb/s.......so let's put a piece of crappy old copper on the end of it? About the time Malcolm put his kibosh on the NBN, I predicted that it would have a useful service life shorter than the time it took to build it. Thanks to the advent of 5G and Starlink (which I have), even that estimate might prove optimistic.

Tesla Power Walls etc have a limited life (15 years??). Snowy Hydro 2.0 should have at least 50 years, based on the original still going strong after 60 years. So on the assumption that those numbers are reasonable, you get 3-4 times the life out of Snowy Hydro compared to a Power Wall. (actually, 15 years sounds like a helluva lot for a bunch of the same cells that are in my Makita & Festool cordless tools....that don't last much more than 5 years, with much, much less frequent charging than a Power Wall gets).

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

... compared to a Power Wall. (actually, 15 years sounds like a helluva lot for a bunch of the same cells that are in my Makita & Festool cordless tools....that don't last much more than 5 years, with much, much less frequent charging than a Power Wall gets).

But your Makita and Festool toys do not have a built in refrigerator to keep things cool during charging.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

But your Makita and Festool toys do not have a built in refrigerator to keep things cool during charging.

Yeah they do...this is Katoomba....as cool as Hobart

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

But your Makita and Festool toys do not have a built in refrigerator to keep things cool during charging.

Funny, my Festool batteries have a cooling fan built into the charger.

If Tesla's "promise" that their Power wall battery has a 15 years life, is based on a similar warranty as Tesla applies to its cars, the 15 year life means that after 15 years, the Power wall battery has not degraded by more than about 60% of it's original capacity.

For comparison, Snowy-2 should still be producing near 100% of its rated capacity after 20 years.
And near 98% of its rated capacity at 100 years.

To my way of thinking, Snowy-2 won't be a dud.
There is just not enough lithium around to go close to fully backing up a renewable grid for the world.


However, thermal storage linked to IR "photocells" are showing efficiencies over 40% -- the best solar cells are under 30% efficiency.
A thermal "battery" can be built out of dirt -- well graphite, which is a similar price to dirt -- and the IR radiation converted to electricity using a photocell.

'I don't think pumped hydro is the sole answer, but it may be a start amongst a dearth of solutions: The main issue is the suitability of sites and the long time before becoming operational (as we have observed with Snowy 2.0).

Qld plans second pumped hydro project (msn.com)

I took this from the article:

"Electricity storage is crucial for Queensland to wean itself off coal-fired generation, which provides about 70 per cent of the state's power."

Has somebody been reading this thread?

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by ian

Funny, my Festool batteries have a cooling fan built into the charger. ...

But the fan is not refrigerated!

... If Tesla's "promise" that their Power wall battery has a 15 years life, is based on a similar warranty as Tesla applies to its cars, the 15 year life means that after 15 years, the Power wall battery has not degraded by more than about 60% of it's original capacity. ...

Just had a look at the Tesla Powerwall 2 warranty for ANZ:

• Nominal storage capacity is 13.5 kWh, but
• Warranted initial storage capacity is 13.2 kWh,
• Warranted storage capacity at 10 years is 70% (9.24 kWh) for self consumption, only,
• If connected to the grid aggregate throughput is capped at 37 mWh - note mega,
• Then 5 pages of legalise escape clauses!
• This is better than the original Powerwall which only had a 7 year warranty.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...ebsYQpCKWI470I

But in 10 years the batteries will probably have been superceded technologically. Ten years ago we mainly had NiMH and NiCd - who knows the future?

And Li-Ion batteries in tools seem to retain their charge capacity very well for about 7 or 8 years, and then they enter the death spiral and die quite quickly. Will tesla's do the same?