Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The South Australian Government been forced to beg fossil fuel operators to bring mothballed plants back online, to contain wild swings in electricity spot price caused by unstable renewable production, prices which last month peaked at $14,000 / MWh – up from more normal prices of $100 / MWh which prevailed before political favouritism towards renewables messed up the market.
South Australia intervenes in electricity market as prices hit $14,000MWh
Turmoil in South Australia’s heavily wind-reliant electricity market has forced the state government to plead with the owner of a mothballed gas-fired power station to turn it back on.
The emergency measures are needed to ease punishing costs for South Australian industry as National Electricity Market (NEM) prices in the state have frequently surged above $1000 a megawatt hour this month and at one point on Tuesday hit the $14,000MWh maximum price.
Complaints from business about the extreme prices – in normal times they are below $100 – prompted the state government to ask energy company ENGIE to switch its mothballed Pelican Point gas power station back on.
The extraordinary intervention – first foreshadowed in December when the government of premier Jay Weatherill hosted an energy crisis meeting – comes as electricity prices soar to near record levels across the nation.
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It also comes as the wider national energy market is in upheaval. Gas prices are surging thanks to a brutal cold snap in the southeast that means electricity price relief from bringing more gas generation back into service could be limited.
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Cold weather and the closure of South Australia’s Northern and Playford coal-fired power stations as wind provides an increasing share of the state’s power have combined to send NEM prices to their highest average levels since the 2007 drought.
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“A planned outage of the Heywood Interconnector to Victoria, coupled with higher than expected gas prices and severe weather conditions have contributed to large-scale price volatility in the energy spot market in recent days,” Mr Koutsantonis said.
“The failure in the energy market has led the Government to ask ENGIE, the owner of Pelican Point Power Station, to run the plant for a short period, providing 239MW of additional supply into the energy market.
“It is believed the increased base-load supply from the previously mothballed plant will lead to improved system security.”
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Once again renewables are demonstrating their total inability to cope without backup from real power generation systems.
The fallout from this disaster may extend much further than a month of insane electricity bills.
Australia is currently struggling with an ongoing trend for heavy industry to translocate business operations to other countries in Asia, countries which provide stable regulatory environments and costs, lower taxes, cheaper wages, and less red tape. The ongoing renewables madness, which afflicts every state in Australia to some extent, may convince even more large employers that it simply isn’t worth waiting for Australian politicians to stop messing around with fashionable non-solutions to the nation’s energy needs.
grid scale batteries are what is needed I hear
http://www.bpva.org.uk/members/bpva/news/uks-largest-battery-energy-storage-array-comes-online/
http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2014/dec/uk-power-networks-battery-storage.cfm
but dont ask me about their carbon footprint, running costs life expectancy, waste products, chemicals used or efficiency or….
Grid scale batteries to store the excess. W0w! Now how about some numbers that reveal how much excess is normally produced. If the excess isn’t equal or greater than the deficit it ain’t a solution. It’s a can kick down the road. And this well intentioned road heads right to hell.
You would need 100 of these facilities for each hour of nuke plant operation.
thats about 500 homes for 1 day or 250 for 2 or 125 for 4 , totally useless if the wind dont blow
jono1066. Look before you leap.
Grid scale batteries sound like a great idea, it will make lots of money for the batteries make manufacturer and ding the consumers who will pay through the nose.
Here is the real problem with these battery arrays big and small the HIGH cost of replacing degrading battery packs down the road
Battery-testing firm Cadex Electronics.
The problem of longevity. Lithium-ion and even newer lithium-polymer batteries have a nasty habit of losing capacity over time or, worse, dying altogether.
Any battery issue is by definition a chemistry problem. In a healthy battery, ions flow freely between a cathode and an anode. Charging a battery forces ions from the cathode to the anode; using the battery reverses the flow.
Over time, this process wears out the cathode, which results in reduced capacity. A high-end lithium-polymer battery can lose about 20 percent of its capacity after 1000 charge cycles. Another way to think of this is to imagine that every time you recharge your laptop, you shave a few seconds off its maximum battery life. Erratic charging and heat speed up this degradation.
And batteries degrade even if you don’t use them. According to battery-testing firm Cadex Electronics, a fully charged lithium-ion battery will lose about 20 percent of its capacity after a year of typical storage. followed by further annual capacity loss.
What is the environmental impact of recycling these batteries?
I am surprised that a type of battery that is cheap, has a low rate of deterioration – life in excess of 20 years is common – is resilient enough to stand overcharge, standing discharged and short circuits, not to mention being constructed from cheap, environmentally friendly materials – the nickel-iron battery – appears to have been completely overlooked.
Any drawbacks it has I’m sure could be greatly ameliorated if even a tenth of the money was spent on its development as has been spent on the fragile, problematical lithium batteries.
I didnt realise how brilliant the uk was in terms of stored energy. the attached link to the uk map showing installed and under construction energy storage systems, some are big enough to boil a few litres of water…. some are even bigger in a small sort of way but I guess its limited by the amount of lead (Pb) they can get
http://energystoragedrupalfs.s3.amazonaws.com/jason_ukmarket.png
My caravan has 600 watt solar a 3000 watt inverter and runs 4 x110 amp gel cel batteries , almost as much as a small pommie town .
Robert: Taking into account the capex for such a system, it’s on-going maintenance costs (batteries etc), what do you calculate the cost per kWhr for your caravan? (Don’t tell us that your power is ‘free’.)
Robert just set off my BS meter. So what did cost? How does it work? Had any fires lately?
My $88, 800 watt, Harbor Freight generator works great for charging batteries in motorhome. Just skipped hauling around overpriced solar PV. Sure I have seen them on camping rigs but no one can tell me how well they work without setting off my BS meter.
Most folks are totally ignorant of how electrical things work.
In case it hasn’t been mentioned: Follow the money. Someone somewhere is making a mint out of this. Nothing to do with being Green or saving the planet.
+10
Harry it’s expensive but ok for a van if you want to save on park fees , won’t run the aircon for long but everything else seems to work ok .
I would estimate I saved money in the long run when going round the block not having to stay in caravan parks .
Would this be the way of the future for households I doubt it , there is no such thing as free energy somewhere somehow the piper has to paid .
Greed is a constant in human life, while this variety (and extent) of madness in the modern world is something new. (Although we’ve seen things like this in the past, e.g. the European witch craze – or do you think that that was all about money?)
Retired kit p
Your bs meter must be set too high , cost of panels ,inverter ,batteries , wires and controller just under two grand . Install was done by me , while I was enjoying 240 quiet volts and having to listen to idiots with their Generators going made me realise a thing or two about your sort .
I am no greenie and don’t give a crap how much Co2 gets up there , it was simply a set up to save on caravan parks because we had 240 / 98% of the time and used it for basically everything the van had and we bought along except aircon.
In case your wondering about the 98% , batteries started going flat in the middle of the night half way round WA coast , turned out one battery was Suss but after replacing it system was ok again .
But this stuffs not really for this site .
I checked my BS meter is calibrated just fine. First when someone spends ‘just under two grand’ to save money and I accoplished the same thing I did for $100, my BS meter goes off. Second, ‘240 quiet volts’ is major BS. Power not voltage is the concern.
Clueless!
Since retiring from the power industry, we have been full time living in a 20 year old 32 foot motorhome. We rerarely stay in RV parks. Too many people, too noisey. We also have a 35 year old sail boat that is big enough to live aboard. Did that many years ago but government does not allow it in our current location. Love the quiet of sailing and the sound of camping near the ocean or mountain stream.
The point is that I have lots of experience with batteries. The first rule is to always have enough reserve capacity to start and internal combustion engine. My small generator is pull start.
The second rule is know how much power your partially discharged batteries will draw when charging. Mine take 200-300 watts. So 600 watt PV panels are hauling around expensive dead weight.
The third rule is to reduce the load on the batteries when dry camping (aks, boondocking). I have replace the TV with 12 V LED model that draws 30 watts (28 watts measured). Also put in some 1 watt LED lights. Our 800 watt inverter is a parasitic load just sitting idle. It is nice to have 120 Vac but we try to keep the loads at 100 watts less heats up and starts the cooling fan.
The fourth rule is that battery voltage drops with load. If voltage drops the protective circuit on the inverter will trip. When using my inverter and hot plate on the boat to make coffee when anchored out, I have to start the engine so that the alternator can maintain voltage.
Finally there is gel batteries? Did you research them or do you like spending money for dubious performance claims that you do not need anyway.
And of course, the real problem with solar. It does not work! Last week were were dry camping in the Blue Mountains. We were camped beside a beutiful stream but it rained for three days. We stayed inside and watched old movies. As a result I had to run the small generator two hours a day. At one point my wife asked if I had turned it off. Between the TV and rushing water, you could not hear the generator.
Once again, PV to save money is BS.
So where is Roger Sowell or the usual suspect tr@lls to tell us how wind is saving the aussies from no elec., or how it’s really cost competitive (when you only consider the cost they choose to consider), blah blah. This story is the real effect of renewables, and (to coin a phrase), “it’s worse than we thought!”
Great to see someone highlighting S.A.’s energy predicament. Too many South Australian’s are asleep politically, and cannot fathom the extent to which green policy will ultimately destroy our economy (if we are not already there). Hoping recent electricity fails, and this post will wake up a few more zombies. I live in SA and am not a supporter of our incompetent, lying, parasitic politicians. From 2005 to 2013 our electricity rates increased more than 90%. Yep, nearly double. https://eyesonbrowne.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/why-we-have-to-pay-so-much-for-electricity/. So thanks for posting.
Ps. SA is a great place to live, as long as you don’t need lights, or heating, or cooking, or money or……..
Have you tried monorail power storage? I hear it works well in Shelbyville.
Ontario was consuming 16GW at 7am this morning. The heavily subsidized solar plants were producing 0.002GW. The heavily subsidized wind plants were producing 0.9GW.
Many many years ago I discovered the very best view of south Australia. It was in the rear view mirror of my car as I was driving away.
Trailing facts and details like this are why promoters and their legislative friends need to stay on the move and out of harms way when the bill arrives.
Californian’s get ready. When Diablo Canyon shuts down the prices in the article will seem like a bargain. What industry or power intensive service will stay in CA?
I think they are long gone.
Hang on a second. What is the average price, and how long was the price $14,000 per MWh? If we are to have a sensible discussion on the issue, there needs to be a lot more information that just what the peak figure was. The article presented doesn’t even pretend to actually look at the issue, and instead simply states a peak price, and leaves it at that. Is that real skepticism?
BZ Phil. While infrequent, power prices go through the roof and it nothing to do with wind. The grid operator is looking for large user to drop load. Being paid to dumping product on the ground is smart if a rolling blackout is coming soon.
Eric has an agenda, not an understanding of the grid.
Please read my comment below on market bidding, Kit. If you can expand on it, that would be great.
Eric is being misleading by not painting the full picture in the headline but the fundamental fact is that pricing spikes are much more common now than pre wind farms and PV
No fun dealing with unstable prices if you are a heavy user who can’t drop load, such as an Aluminium smelter.
This is called testing the consumer. If the consumer complains about $14/kWh electricity then you lower the price to $0.60/kWh as a responsible operator and quietly collect your money and laugh to yourself that you’re getting three times the average price for electricity and the consumers are once again happy. The companies getting $0.20/kWh are also laughing because they used to make money at $0.08/kWh and the consumer has long forgotten those prices. Plus you place a value added tax (VAT or HST) onto electricity and the government is happy/laughing knowing that, with a percentage tax, as prices rise so does their revenue. And people think their governments are stupid. It’s the other way around folks.
No, the problem is that the renewables bypass the “day ahead” market bids placed by the “normal” electricity sources so it doesn’t pay for all the based load generators to run because their output may not be needed or may need to be paid for it’s generation (since viable storage for the quantities we are talking about do not exist in Sth Aust).
What ends up happening is that enough baseload generators bid in for around the AVERAGE of the wind farms’ output for the times of day and if the wind output is less than this, then peaking plants start coming on-line. Naturally, the peaking plants are not as efficient to run (mainly as consequence of their fast start and ramping ability but also because they are not continuously operated) so their bid price is higher. At the very high end are small peaking plants built for very occasional use so they have a very high bid price to cover the fact that they are (normally) rarely used.
The A$14,000 MWh rate is the highest bid price allowed by the national authority so the government actually caps the price below what it could be for pure market rates
You need to read how electricity markets actually work – the system was designed for competitive but profitable operations to meet varying demand without gaming the price (which is still possible if enough generators get together but they get investigated and fined). The renewables are distorting the market by their ability to barge in whenever they are producing and get paid fixed rates that bear no relation to market pricing, This leads to massive unplanned and sudden variations in the requirement for normal generation making the overall market more volatile and to hedge against this, most generators also have to increase their bid prices.
@Analitik
In general, your observations are pretty good. Power company executives think 10-60 years into the future and like to err on the side of excess capacity. Regulated and deregulated (still highly regulated as to profits) both work well if properly designed.
For every major grid problem in the US in the last 30 years, I will show you a neighboring grid and group of utilities that avoided the problem by educating regulators and politicians for the reasons for spending the money to ensure reliability.
It is too late after the ice storm, hurricane, tornado, forest fire, ect; to stock the warehouse, clear the right of way, train linemen and so on.
The problem is not renewable energy it is bad management. One good management practice is to trade a small renewable requirement for a big unpopular power plant. When a new coal/nuke plants is needed, have a few pictures of PV panels or wind turbines with a dairy cow next to it. 60 years later the coal/nuke plant will still serving customers.
The favoritism necessary to expand renewables to the scale necessary to be a majority source makes it too costly for the established and reliable energy production methods to be sustainable. In short, robust renewable subsidies ensure the need for subsidy for all sources. Cost upon cost for less effectiveness and less efficiency. Ensuring the need for more government. To a watermelon, it looks so very, [horribly] sustainable.
At yet another tragedy has befallen France, this time on the most revered national holiday the 14th of July, our sympathy is with the people of the beautiful and cosmopolitan city of Nice.
Trump could make the US the #1 destination for business by utilizing all of our fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, forests, slashing regulations (get rid of quotas, throttle the EPA) and utilizing our abundant cheap labor sitting on welfare.
If you listen to him, he’s got something in mind to get the economy running again, probably a lot of the above will be included.
Reducing corporate taxes will also bring a lot of busineeses and jobs into the U.S. The U.S. currently has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Companies go to countries that have the lowest taxes in the world, so the U.S. has to compete for that business by offering competitive tax rates.
Please use this example and help me to make the case that most Aussies aren’t stupid.
Maybe not, but enough of them that vote are. Same here in Canada, in Alberta and Ontario in particular.
The greenest energy will have are oil, gas and coal. Who is going to pay to take down all the windmills after they fall into maintenance disrepair.
[The usual things that stop all perpetual motion machines in the real world outside of academia and the political mythology: Greed, envy, jealousy, entropy, rust, gravity, corrosion, friction, resistance, lube oil contamination. Permanent monuments to a liberal mindset. .mod]
What do they call all of those people in those MadMax movies?
Morlock, doesn’t seem appropriate.
Coulee:
Chiefly Western U.S. and Western Canada. a deep ravine or gulch, usually dry, that has been formed by running water.
In this case it is not dry it contained a river.
Surely there must be a planet someplace, in a galaxy far, far away, where Unaffordable Unreliables make sense. Perhaps the planet Wonderlanus would be a good candidate.
“Surely there must be a planet someplace, in a galaxy far, far away, where Unaffordable Unreliables make sense.”
Bizarro World.
I’d demand an iron clad, multi-year contract before agreeing to take that plant out of mothballs.
Cash up front. No “promissary” notes.
“you would need to cover the SF peninsula with Wind and solar farms from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way down to an imaginary line from Palo Alto to the coast and from the coast to the bay.”
Bad example Bryan. Fog dominates that area. There is also a rule against siting wind farms where anti-nukes live. It is a not in my backyard thing
>> run the plant for a short period.
There are no short periods in power generation. If the government want to keep this gas plant on standby, they are going to have to pay a hefty retainer to keep it open. So we end up paying triple the cost for the wind power, and then you have to pay once again to keep the gas plant on standby. So quadruple the cost overall.
And all this because the BBC, amongst others, failed to adequately research and question the wind lobby. In several interviews, more than a decade ago, the wind lobby repeatedly said ‘the wind always blows’. And not once did the BBC debate or question this vital issue. Had they done so, they could have squashed the wind bandwagon before it even got rolling. But now, a trillion dollars later, they are just beginning to see their error.
(And yes, I did see the error more than a decade ago, and wrote a lengthy article about it, which was published in a magazine in 2004. It was eventually published in WUWT in 2007, I think.)
Ralph
The listed cost of $14,000 per MWh is $14 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). By comparison, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Electric Power Monthly lists the U.S.cost per kWh for all sectors (commercial, industrial, and transportation) at about 10 cents per kWh (1/140 of $14 per kWh). According to the EIA, renewable energy accounted for about 13% of the total in 2015.
Facts reveal that all renewable energy receives substantial government subsidy, and does not compete with coal, gas, etc. Moreover, sound science reveals that human activities are not measurably contributing to global temperature.
The savings from hydroelectric storage come from not having to build and maintain new power plants or upgrade existing ones for additional capacity which is only needed to produce power at peak times. Los Angeles Dept. Of Water & Power has such a facility.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castaic_Power_Plant
Water is pumped uphill at night when usage is low and released during peak usage times.
Though only 80% efficient it saves billions of dollars that would have to be spent otherwise to produce the capacity during peak usage times.
Re: Noooo Ah! Balls
that’s my view.