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.
You can monitor SA’s wind output at this site.
http://energy.anero.id.au/wind-energy
Is having to switch on a backup generator briefly, and having a temporary spike in prices while a power link was repaired, that large energy consumers were warned about in advance, really a omg the sky is falling event?
I think some people are struggling a bit hard to find evidence of the renewable energy apocalypse. At least this article doesn’t contain the outright rubbish claims the article about Tasmania had. On that occasion it was obvious that the author hadn’t even bothered to do some basic googling on the issue, as it only took me a few minutes to find that most of what was presented was wrong.
Northfield Mountain in Massachusetts is a pumped storage system with 12,000 acre-feet of water with a 900 foot head. The generators can put out 1 GW or I guess draw about as much in pumped mode at a 75-80% overall efficiency.
I had a tour there once when the power source was the excess nighttime power from the Yankee Rowe Atomic plant and various hydro plants. Now it’s just hydro.
http://www.yankeerowe.com/
http://www.northfieldrelicensing.com/Pages/Northfield.aspx
http://www.northfieldrelicensing.com/SiteAssets/Map3small.jpg
“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.”
Fiirstly I think the reporter has their wires crossed as Pelican Point is a modern gas fired cogen plant providing 25% of SA power-
http://www.gdfsuezau.com/about-us/asset/Pelican-Point-Power-Station
So I suspect the Govt really asked ENGIE to cut in one or more of their gas peaking plants-
http://www.gdfsuezau.com/about-us/asset/Synergen-Peaking-Units
which are usually called up for a few weeks of the year with peak summer airconditioner loads in heat waves, bearing in mind Victoria cops the same weather as South Australia within a day as large high pressure cells move across the southern part of the continent from west to east pouring inland desert heat toward the cities of Adelaide and Melbourne.
Bear in mind it’s that summer peak load that requires an overbuild of generating and distribution capacity to the tune of 25% for SA and Victoria at least, but nevertheless you wouldn’t want to fire up those plants for just a day or so. Astronomical day spikes are a worry but more importantly is the overall trend in power prices-
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2016/06/exceptional-pricing-during-q2-hurting-major-energy-users/
and ignoring the newsvertisement dribble for the ‘Big Switch’ you can see how the renewable energy chickens are coming home to roost for Australians now-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/big-energy-switch-campaign-to-help-save-aussies-on-their-power-bills-as-some-could-be-hit-with-an-extra-240-a-year/news-story/81e97085194064ad2d8b6f9caaaeac3e
These air-headed, emotional watermelons are about to get a sound lesson in rational science, engineering and economics and already the State Treasurer is running about like a headless chook blaming a lack of competitive supply and a lack of interconnection throughput to the other states ( ostensibly so they can share the pain of his pet wind power would you believe?)
It’s like this Treasurer. The entire history of mankind’s ability to store energy is pitiful, except for pumping water uphill and in the form of calories and in case you haven’t noticed Tom, we live in the driest State in the driest continent but I don’t want to be too classist here but perhaps operating a pedicab for a week or two might cure you-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-28/premier-says-attack-on-treasurer-was-27borderline-racist27/5351546
Here’s typical Tom before his power shock epiphany-
http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/Home/Full_newsevents_listing/News_Events_Listing/151201-investment-jobs-low-carbon-future
‘Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the State Government is aiming for $10 billion of investment in low carbon energy generation by 2025 and 50 per cent of electricity production to be generated by renewable energy by 2025.
“We are already well on our way towards achieving this goal,” Mr Koutsantonis said.
“We have worked decisively to set a clear policy and a regulatory environment to inform investment, and we’ve achieved a $6.6 billion investment in renewable energy thus far, of which 40 per cent is in regional areas.
“We’re now leading by example by using our energy procurement to support innovative proposals that will deliver reliable and affordable low carbon electricity to meet up to 100 per cent of the State Government’s electricity usage.”‘
and here’s the headless chook after he runs out of power for the punters (via Michael Edge, The Australian July 16 2016)-
‘South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis, who is also the Energy Minister, yesterday put the eastern states on notice, vowing to “smash the national electricity market into a thousand pieces and start again”.
He warned other states that the energy crisis was “coming to get them”.
“This is coming to Victoria, this is coming to NSW … every jurisdiction is facing what we’re facing now,” the Treasurer said.
South Australian Labor’s admission that it needed urgent reform of the national energy market rules, so that in addition to upgrading connection with Victoria it also could tap into NSW baseload power, reveals the vulnerability of its reliance on renewables. The last coal-fired power stations in South Australia closed in May.
Wind and solar make up more than 40 per cent of the state’s energy mix under a green policy agenda driven by Labor, in power in South Australia since 2002.
Several major companies, including BHP Billiton and Arrium, this week warned Mr Koutsantonis of possible shutdowns because of high energy prices, forcing him to plead for a temporary power spike from a private owner of a mothballed gas-fired power plant. Private energy supplier ENGIE fired up its Pelican Point plant near Port Adelaide for a short time yesterday, bringing an extra 239 megawatts of power into the grid.
Mr Koutsantonis said the federal government had encouraged South Australia, which has the best conditions for wind farms, to chase the energy source as part of Australia’s renewable energy target of about 24 per cent by 2020.
“Wind is paid by the commonwealth to produce power … if you are going to pay wind farms to produce electricity regardless of demand, you better make sure that is distributed equally across the country because you can’t have a national policy implicating just one state,” he said.
He called on Malcolm Turnbull to immediately appoint an energy minister and schedule an urgent meeting of federal and state ministers to undertake energy market reform.
“If you want a true national electricity market, you really need to have all of the states interconnected.
“What we have is a series of state-based markets with very poor interconnection between them,’’ Mr Koutsantonis said.’
Suddenly Tom wants to share all his cutting edge, State renewable power around 😉
When I read about SA wanting to solve their problem with new interconnects, between regions, it seems pretty obvious he does really understand how much power you lose over a thousand miles of wire.
I can’t wait for superconducting power wires, but we don’t have them. And the more peak power, the worse it is, and that’s the intended purpose, the amount of stupidity in charge of tgings, is getting dangerous. Maybe that’s what happened to Rome, death by stupid people using leverage to get corruptible government jobs, and everyone drive it into the ditch.
You need to understand we already have an interconnector to Victoria’s brown coal fired backup power in the Latrobe valley-
https://stopthesethings.com/2016/06/05/south-australias-wind-power-chaos-victorias-coal-fired-plant-its-only-salvation/
but that has to have the capacity to deliver that backup power when the wind don’t blow with all our wind generation capacity-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/widespread-power-blackout-hits-adelaide/news-story/f43beca5199964b6d9666ca16c58ea03
What Tom in a tiz wants now is much larger interconnector capacity so all his pet windmills can feed power into the national grid and enjoy the benefit of plundering peak power prices, while at the same time having access to Victorian brown coal backup. Furthermore he’s effectively calling for the other States and the Feds to cover the cost of that interconnection so their consumers can help subsidise the true cost of wind power that is now becoming self evident. Notice how he was happy to privatise the political gain initially (Green bragging rights), but now wants to socialise the inevitable losses any undergrad power engineer could tell him was coming his way.
Well, it all comes down to whether or not you believe we need to move to more renewable energy. If we do, then the system needs to make sure that cost burden is spread evenly. State borders shouldn’t have anything to do with it. If one state is better for wind than another, then build the wind turbines where they work best. The grid needs to be planned and managed, but these aren’t impossible problems, just things that need to be done.
The shorter Tom- We’ll grab the Green cream off the top while you carboniferous trogs supply all the yucky milk and howsabout some more equipment to effect that?
Awareness that there are several factors involved here, and a somewhat less triumphalist response by some commentators is probably advisable if more than just “preaching to the choir” is intended.
While the variability of ‘renewables’ was a relevant factor here, cost per unit variations of this sort and occasional ‘utterly immense’ price peaks are ‘common enough’ in systems which do not include solar or wind energy sources. A long used ‘renewable’ is hydroelectric energy generation which is subject to much longer longer term fluctuations (months to years) in energy availability. When this is combined with sudden load and energy availability variations it can (and does) lead to cost variations of the order mentioned here.
I have observed the same effect. A large plant trips or a transmission line is lost and power prices spike. It takes a day or so to bring a more efficiency steam plant on line. Power prices return to normal.
However, it the loss of generating capacity is caused by weather condition that increases demand concurrently, it constitutes an emergency.
Update from The Australian July 20 by Michael Owen headed-
“Business blows up as turbines suck more power than they generate”
the money quote-
“An analysis of data from the Australian Energy Market Operator, responsible for the administration and operation of the wholesale NEM, shows the turbines’ down time on July 7 coincided with NEM prices for South Australia reaching almost $14,000 per MWh
NEM prices in other markets have been as low as $40 per MWh with the AI Group estimating this month’s power surge in South Australian electricity prices had cost $155 million.
While all wind farms in South Australia were producing about 5780MW between 6am and 7am, by 1pm the energy generation was in deficit as the turbines consumed more power than they created. By mid-afternoon, energy generation by all wind farms was minus-50MW. The situation forced several major companies, including BHP Billiton and Arrium, to warn the state government of possible shutdowns because of higher energy prices, forcing Treasurer and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis to intervene by asking a private operator of a mothballed gas-fired plant in Adelaide for a temporary power spike.”
Why do they go minus you may well ask? http://www.aweo.org/windconsumption.html
But as further reported-
‘Not everyone is unhappy — farmer Peter Ebsary hosts four turbines from the Snowtown wind farm in South Australia’s mid north. The wind farm, owned by TrustPower, is the state’s largest.
“We get a financial return and don’t have to do anything … we just sit back and collect the money as long as the wind blows,” he said.’
Not hard to see why Watt, Stevenson, Tesla and Co didn’t exactly have to twist our ancestors’ arms to give up the horse, windmill and millstream but apparently history is not our strong point nowadays. In that regard the history of mankind’s ability to store energy is equally pitiful, mainly in the form of calories and pumping water uphill, but hope springs eternal with the huge technological hurdles of electrochemical storage they tell me-
http://www.msn.com/en-au/money/company-news/is-teslas-elon-musk-the-willy-wonka-of-the-car-making-world/ar-BBtPDHG?ocid=spartandhp
This is all a bit silly, given that South Australia is home to a monster copper – uranium mine!
Yes we have been called the Saudi Arabia of uranium but like the politician asked whether he ever smoked drugs he replied yes but I never inhaled.
You can have an interesting play with Australia’s total and State wind energy output as a percentage of installed capacity here – http://energy.anero.id.au/wind-energy/
Interesting reaction showing a relative how wind works after he was somewhat perturbed at where our power prices are going. ‘Why weren’t we effing well told!’ seemed to sum it up nicely and sadly he’s not alone although the watermelon media can’t ignore it any longer.