Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Australian Energy Market Operator, the government body responsible for ensuring the stability of Australia’s energy supply, has issued a stark warning that closure of coal plants will dramatically increase the risk of widespread blackouts – that building additional renewable capacity will not compensate for the loss of coal capacity.
MEDIA RELEASE
THURSDAY, 11 August 2016
Strategic, efficient investment required to support Australia’s energy transformation
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) 2016 Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) report released today illustrates the growing importance of network and non-network developments to securely manage an evolving, lower carbon electricity generation future.
The 2016 ESOO provides National Electricity Market (NEM) participants, investors, and policy-makers with a projected 10-year outlook to 2025-26 of supply adequacy under a number of scenarios, and this year further generation withdrawals have been modelled in response to the COP21 emission abatement commitment1.
“As the NEM generation mix continues to keep pace with new technology and policy changes, future supply adequacy will depend on the availability and capability of new supply options providing electricity services when needed,” said AEMO Chief Operating Officer Mike Cleary.
From the information provided by industry, and assuming no additional generation withdrawals to occur between now and 2025-26, the only projected supply shortfall in the 2016 ESOO occurs towards the end of the outlook period in New South Wales.
“The 2015 ESOO identified New South Wales (NSW), South Australia and Victoria as potentially being at risk of breaching the reliability standard at various points over the next decade. The latest information suggesting only a shortfall in NSW in 2025-26 takes into account a reduction in demand forecasts, and illustrates a market response with some planned plant withdrawals deferred and an additional 537 MW of wind generation capacity announced,” said Mr Cleary.
However, additional to the information already announced by market participants, AEMO has modelled scenarios that assume the COP21 commitment is achieved, investigating the impact of potential, but not announced, generation withdrawals to meet the electricity sector target agreed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Energy Council.
“AEMO has modelled the impact of withdrawing a further 1,360 MW of coal-fired generation capacity to meet the COP21 commitment under AEMO’s neutral scenario, with results suggesting potential reliability breaches occurring in South Australia from 2019-20, and New South Wales and Victoria from 2025 onwards.
“These breaches would most likely occur when demand is high (usually between 3-8pm), coinciding with low wind and rooftop photovoltaic (PV) generation, and low levels of electricity supply imported from neighbouring regions.
“In this scenario, the majority of coal-fired generation withdrawals are assumed to come from Victoria, which would reduce that State’s generation output to support South Australia and New South Wales via the interconnected network,” said Mr Cleary.
The 2016 ESOO report outlines the importance of maintaining power system security during this period of rapid transformation, and with the potential withdrawal of coal-fired generation across the NEM, a number of support services will need to be provided by other resources.
“The secure operation of the NEM’s 40,000 km transmission network – which transports generated electricity to demand points – is reliant on support services that manage the rate of change of frequency and system restart services.
“AEMO is signalling potential future supply gaps in providing these important stability services, gaps which could be met through prospective new forms of electricity generation, or alternative technologies.”
“To maintain a secure electricity supply demand balance during peak demand periods, AEMO is working closely with industry to identify both network and non-network developments. Possible solutions could include an increased interconnection across NEM regions, battery storage, and demand side management services,” said Mr Cleary.
AEMO’s 2016 ESOO follows the recent release of the 2016 National Electricity Forecasting Report, which looks at forecast electricity demand trends over a 20-year horizon. The ESOO analyses these demand trends against future generation availability to identify any potential breaches of the NEM reliability standard, which requires that no more than 0.002% of annual operational electricity consumption should go unserved for any region in any year.
AEMO will be hosting a roadshow for industry participants to critically examine and discuss options to maintain the high security and reliability standards that most Australians have become accustomed.
Ends
2016 ESOO scenario reference table
a) A centralised source for electricity refers to the national electricity transmission grid.
b) “Engagement” refers to the extent to which consumers proactively exercise choice of energy sources
and usage patterns.
For more information:
AEMO Media
Mobile: 0409 382 121
Email: media@aemo.com.au
This warning confirms my assertion in a previous post that South Australia cannot provide stable electricity grid supply without access to Victorian coal power, supplied via the interstate interconnector. South Australian political pretensions to renewable policy success are nonsense.
The report leaves open the possibility that more battery capacity, massive investment in more interconnectors, or supply management might reduce instability.
In my opinion arguing that more connectedness will lead to stability doesn’t pass the smell test.
Imagine if all the interconnections anyone could want were available. Imagine say half of Australia was covered in clouds. The solar arrays in the sunny parts of Australia would have to produce not only enough power for local needs, they would also have to produce enough power to supply the parts of Australia which weren’t able to carry their own load.
Carry the game a little further. Say 4/5 of Australia was covered in clouds. Or 7/8 of Australia was covered in clouds.
As you explore increasingly unlikely but still very possible adverse conditions, you quickly reach a point where a significant chunk of Australia would have to be covered in expensive renewable installations, to provide the massive supply overcapacity required to achieve partial stability through interconnectedness.
Batteries are also not a real solution, at least with today’s technology. Storage systems such as organic redox batteries, which in theory might one day provide energy storage on the scale required, are still very much a laboratory toy.
The third possible solution, “supply management” – South Australians have already had a taste of that. I doubt a “supply management” policy of deliberately encouraging spot power prices to spike up to $14 / KWh when renewable generation fails will attract many supporters.
Of course, the obvious solution is to keep the coal generators running – but this would require an outbreak of political common sense.
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An actual government agency is saying stuff that has been said on this site for years and years?? Is this the beginning of the end?
Eugene WR Gallun
Not quite. NSW has the best supply at present from its coal power plants. This load of codswallop assumes that NSW is going to abandon its reliable cheap supply of electricity to depend on something else.
Won’t happen!
Wait until an incoming Labor government needs to buy votes from the Green Blob. I assure you it will happen, and quite soon.
At least Australia does not have to worry about severe winters like most countries in the West.
It is inevitable blind adherence to Green Blob strategies is going to end in tears, with hundreds of thousands dying from hypothermia the next time there is a severe winter in some countries (step forward the UK) in the Northern Hemisphere.
It happened in Ontario, where the greens closed down 2 thermal coal plants – these plants were in the process of being upgraded to better contend with pollution, but that was not good enough for the Liberals, who got their advice from certain green organizations. Now the same advisor to the Ontario Liberals is an advisor to the Liberal PM in Ottawa and he has deep connections to the greens.
It is noted also that the Green party has decided to go anti-Israel in Canada.
I thought the Einstein quote was, in full:
“Only two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not even sure about the universe.”
Auto – thinking it should have been, anyway . . . . . .
Reminds me of the Company that produced Idiot-Proof Gizmos.
Turned out they hadn’t realised that the Universe is building bigger and better idiots.
There is an old Navy saying along those lines: “You can build it idiot proof but you can’t build it sailor proof”
Works for navies of all nations.
auto; There’s another saying “You Can’t Fix Stupid” , cAGW is the very definition of “Stupid”. Think Donald Drumpf, that man really can’t be fixed, along with cAGW. I’m desperately looking for hope and the only glimmer of intelligence I’m clinging to is the new British P.M.
By 2020, the Landscheidt Mini-IceAge will be so obvious that any references to “Carbon” controlling weather will be met with Skepticism. (Ironically). Instead, ALL sources of energy and energy conservation will be required to provide heating and food production in a deadly cold environment through 2050. 2030 – 2040 could be the coldest. See Pauulitely.com for all the details.
https://paullitely.wordpress.com/ is the correct address.
Paullitely.com is a URL that simply points to that address for convenience…
power will fail
heads will roll
cronies will be installed
excuses will be common currency
dependent people will be screwed blue.
look to venezuela to see how bad it can get before anybody really says NO and means it.
How right you are Gnomish. Despite years of increasing misery it is only recently that Venezuelan’s have woken up to the fact that no government can go on supplying free stuff. Despite that realisation, President Maduro intends to cling onto power even if it means the total destruction of the country. Socialism at its finest.
Unfortunately, no matter how bad it gets, there will always be a significant minority who will remain convinced that socialism can work. It’s just being sabotaged by moneyed interests who don’t want to pay their fair share.
In the US, the top 10% of earners earn approximately 30% of all the income, but pay about 70% of all taxes.
Yet Hillary has a commercial out proclaiming that she is going to make the rich pay their fair share.
MarkW,
And with the help of many Republicans and the media, she is ahead in the polls.
you mean blackouts are in the air?
https://youtu.be/Q5COAi6KM8o
emitting a lot of carbon there…..
“For years, Nevada taxpayers have spent millions subsidizing homeowners who install rooftop solar panels – but that’s about to end.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/11/nevada-starts-to-pull-plug-on-solar-subsidies.html
Everyone should read (or re-read, as I did recently after 40 odd years) Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. She wrote this far-sighted novel in the 1950s, and predicted with uncanny prescience this sort of nonsense, calling the government apparatchicks who promoted (no – mandated and enforced) this kind of bollocks ‘the looters’. An apt description! .
One of my favourite books.
Actually the 3 movie series, although plagued by flaws (and the fact that the 2nd movie is an entirely different cast), are still pretty good at getting the gist of the story for those who are intimidated by the sheer size of the novel.
A good try, considering that “Hollywood” was unlikely to bankroll or produce a story that they consider subversive and poisonous.
BfT,
I read Atlas Shrugged again six months ago after 50-year hiatus, when I read it twice in the summer of 1966. The book is far more chilling today.
Have to agree about the presience of Atlas Shrugged. “Animal Farm” the same, and much shorter.
“Everyone should read (or re-read, as I did recently after 40 odd years) Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.”
I read it in the late ’60s. I found it ponderous, bloated, and preachy, but having previously read about the woes of China, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, I also found the villains all too plausible. With time, Rand’s scenario has come to seem almost clairvoyant. The IPCC should have such predictive skill! 🙂
I liked Part 1 of the film series, probably because even in the novel I saw Hank Rearden as a more believable character than John Galt (in my career, I’ve actually worked for at least three Rearden-like entrepreneurs, but no Galts).
Favorite line from the film:
Larkin: They say you’re intractable, you’re ruthless, your only goal is to make money.
Rearden: My only goal IS to make money.
Thanks for reminding us about one of the most influential books of the 20th Century. It may be long, but Ayn Rand has a great deal to explain. The 60 pages of the ‘radio broadcast’ towards the end of Atlas Shrugged, in my view, summarizes her philosophy very well.
Yeah, 60 pages. There has to be an “elevator speech” version. 🙂
Well, here’s an alternative viewpoint:
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/09/south-australia-heralds-death-base-load-generation/
The demand pattern charts in the above are certainly worth a look…
Note that the advent of lower cost battery storage will massively reduce the evening peak load in the next decade…
And see also:
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/27/west-australia-energy-minister-concedes-solar-is-the-way-to-go/
Yes griff, alternative….. but not appropriate; again you demonstrate your lack of knowledge in energy matters.
I know you’re not a complete idiot, you still have bits missing.
“I know you’re not a complete idiot”
ROFLAMO..
Where the heck did you ever get that impression !!!!!
His ability to type clearly without resorting AOLisms or falacies, Andy.
If some people want to cut themselves off from the grid and rely on unsubsidised solar panels and unsubsidised batteries — good for them — that’s freedom of choice in a free open un-distorted market.
Yeah but the greenies hardly ever practice what they preach. The primitive life is for anyone but them.
And in Australia it could be doable in some places, but not in England.
Yes, doable provided you’re willing to prioritize. There’s no sunlight at night, so what do you do when there’s also no wind – quite a common occurrence. You have to select which essential services to receive the scarce electricity from the few remaining coal/gas fired power stations. At some stage, unless you’re willing to build new ones, you’ll be deciding which hospitals have more important patients, to receive the few remaining volts.
There’s a guy in South Africa who’s gone off the grid in a purpose built house. With at least one wind-driven generator, the roof covered with photo-electric panels, and a well. And a ROOM FULL OF BATTERIES! Apparently doing all of this more than doubled the cost of the house. And he still has to buy petrol for his car and pick-up truck. So it CAN be done, but at what cost?
Griff, from your link
‘Indeed, South Australia’s experiment – as premier Jay Weatherill has described it – in pursuing the world’ highest level of wind and solar generation is rapidly evolving into a whole bunch of world-leading projects.
These include AGL’s (described the world’s biggest virtual power plant)’
I am sure that virtual energy will one day take over the world. /sarc
“World leading” = equals panic stricken search for solutions because we plunged of the renewables cliff without a real plan for a reliable overall system. Strangely smugness, rainbows and unicorns just didnt deliver.
Ah yes, the magic battery. Eagerly anticipated for over 100 years, yet as far off as ever.
Anyone who has tried to get their vehicle to start in cold weather (or with no electrics) will know exactly how long a battery will last :¬)
here’s an alternative viewpoint:
The advent of aliens from Beta Reticuli teaching us how to make tabletop fusion generators making energy too cheap to meter will also massively reduce the evening peak load. But planning on the assumption that either will happen would be stupid. The potential market for reaelly good batteries is *amazing*. I for one would like to be able to run my laptop untethered for days at a time. If it was easy to make really good batteries, we’d already have them.
All well and good Griff but you are still dependent on future developments with dewy eyed optimism that battery technology arrives, is effective, is affordable. What do you suggest people do in the meantime? buy candles and firewood? In my country one state has gone down the large scale wind route and is now dependent on the neighbouring coal fired state whenever the wind she dont blow. I’m not sure just smiling and saying batteries are coming is a good enough answer.
Griff, not a dollar sign in sight in the article. As a mechanical engineer by training and as an South Australia paying the highest electricity bills in the developed world that article leaves me cold and enraged. This is a socialist experiment which they were not given licence to conduct on the people of SA. Money doesn’t enter the socialists’ equations. It is just so easy to spend other peoples’ money and let someone else wear the blame in a few years time.
this is ‘egriff’ who used to haunt the environment pages of the Daily Telegraph, till they fired all their environmental journalists because the alternative energy companies weren’t prepared to pay for adverts any more.
he is a troll, and probably a paid one, because his denial of facts is simply too awesome for even an idiot.
“New Concentrating Solar Tower Is Worth Its Salt with 24/7 Power: A California firm is converting sunlight to heat and storing it in molten salt so it can supply electricity when the wind is calm or the sun isn’t shining,” Scientific American, 7/14/16
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating-solar-tower-is-worth-its-salt-with-24-7-power/
Yeah, let me know when the thing has produced more power than it took to build and maintain it – if ever. How people think that power plants which have a negative EROI are a good idea, I don’t have a clue.
Not forgetting the amount of gas it needs to melt the salt before the solar bit can do its thing.
If it’s anything like Ivanpah, that will be a very significant proportion of the amount of electricity it ends up generating.
Until it self-immolates, of course.
Then there is the small matter of the number of birds it incinerates, not as that will bother a rabid Watermelon like Apple, after all, he’s out to ‘Save the World™’, so that’s OK.
Every wind-turbine has to provide enough energy to “replicate itself” before producing actual useful power. Think about it – each one has to produce enough power to mine the raw materials to manufacture the actual wind turbine and generator, concrete for the anchor and transport all of that and erect it – otherwise you are only using more oil, gas and coal. Only then will a turbine produce useful power.
Norbert Twether said:
“Every wind-turbine has to provide enough energy to “replicate itself” before producing actual useful power. Think about it – each one has to produce enough power to mine the raw materials to manufacture the actual wind turbine and generator, concrete for the anchor and transport all of that and erect it – otherwise you are only using more oil, gas and coal. Only then will a turbine produce useful power.”
OK, well, don’t leave us guessing. What are the actual figures?
Leonidas of Rhodes won total of 12 individual Olympic crowns in the four Olympiads from 164 BC to 152 BC.
Has Michael Phelps beaten this ancient record yet?
if so (or when), Mr. Phelps should be declared the best athlete/sportsman of all times !
At this moment, Michael Phelps has tied with Leonidas record 12 individual wins, but has the overall record for wins with 21 so far, when team events are included. He may yet surpass Leonidas record, as he has advanced to the final race in one more event and has heat races in two more individual events.
correction: Michael Phelps has advanced to the finals in one event- the 200 meter individual medley but has heat races remaining for just one more event, the 100 meter butterfly. Two more chances to beat Leonidas of Rhodes’ ancient record.
Thanks. It would be nice to see him do it, since it is unlikely that anyone else might do it in the near future.
Wind Turbines, alone, cannot act as the essential base load units needed when base load units are being replaced, and need necessary 100% Gas Turbine Standby’s to meet power demands during typical no/low wind conditions. You also have to add in the necessary massive additional cost of enhanced and additional Power Transmission and Control Works needed to connect the remote WT’s to areas of actual Power Demand together with the costs, and even subsidies needed, for having to operate these Gas Turbines inefficiently as standby units. These total costs need to be compared with the total costs of the same capacity of Gas Turbines acting alone as base load units.
The result of this proper professional engineering investment analysis is a no brainer: the WT/GT/Power Line System’s power is, and always will be, massively more expensive than the same capacity of GT’s acting alone as base load units, even when allowing for savings of the costs of measures needed in the future – if any, to remedy the effects of CO2 increases. This is regardless of how much money is spent on R&D in any attempt to improve on the massive inbuilt engineering inefficiencies of WT’s and within WT/GT standby Total Windfarm Systems.
WT supporters and suppliers never mention the minimal CO2 savings provided by WT’s, even supposing that was a critical requirement. This results from the standby GT’s, with their own CO2 emissions, generating at least 70-75% of the base load Wind Farm Total System’s power output. The fuel and CO2 savings compared to GT’s acting as base load units are therefore only 25-30% at most!
We now have the ridiculous and obscene situation in the UK where WT power is given priority use and provided with massive subsidies. Subsidies are then needed by the GT standby supplier/operators to cover their increased costs of supplying and operating GT’s as standby’s operating way off optimum efficiency loading to meet the WT’s ever varying shortfall in power compared to current power demands.
There is increasing talk of using state of the art, more efficient batteries to provide a WT system not needing GT standby’s and emitting zero CO2, but this is still a pipe dream, even if such a new high capacity battery big enough to accommodate individual domestic, commercial and industrial power demands was available. All the batteries do is make certain that all power generated by the WT’s can be used when needed, but based on the above figures, replacing a 100 units capacity of a Coal Fired or Gas Fired Power Plant would require 400 units of WT capacity – a massive increase. Regardless of this monstrous and grossly over-expensive installed capacity, there would be very extended periods when there is very low/no wind at all – particularly in cold winter periods of maximum power demand. The batteries would have to have an enormous storage capacity to accommodate such prolonged no wind periods, i.e. 100% GT standby’s would still be needed as well as the 400% WT’s replacing 100% CFPS’s and GTPS’s, and with the GT standby ponly producing minimum amounts of its annual capacity, i.e. operating even far less efficiently and at far higher subsidised low annual outputs.
You just couldn’t dream up a more idiotic and crazy situation. Yet the politicians here still wonder why our steel industry and many other strategic industries are losing the battle with foreign competitors, exports are failing and why our power costs, affecting all our other costs, keep rising.
We desperately need professional engineers in Government and the HOC to ensure that such proper infrastructure works cost benefit analyses are carried out! The UK Professional Engineering Institutions also have a great deal to answer for in not only condoning, but even promoting, this failing over-expensive infrastructure situation – totally contrary to their Charters which expressly require them to work in the interests of the UK and UK citizens.
Eric Worrall said: “AEMO: Replacing Coal with Renewables will Cause Blackouts”
Actually, that isn’t what they said.
“future supply adequacy will depend on the availability and capability of new supply options providing electricity services when needed,”
That’s not the same thing, regardless of your position on this issue.
The sentence you quoted roughly translates to “we need dispatchable power”, which wind and solar are not. When they talk about a “reliability breach”, which they mention more than once, they are talking about potential blackouts. So yes, if you read between the lines the headline is an accurate summary.
Saying “we need a plan and systems to deal with this” isn’t the same thing as saying “this can’t be made to work”. “Potential blackouts if we don’t come up with a plan” isn’t the same thing as “We will have blackouts”
“future supply adequacy will depend on the availability and capability of new supply options providing electricity services when needed,”
AKA thermal generating plant, burning fossil fuels.
Blackout.
New term needed. Blackout is too finite. Yeah, the power is out, but it will be back on in an hour or two. Maybe tomorrow.
Need a term that means it may not be back on for weeks.
Meanwhile, the populace will buy, install, and use their own generators, as the power utility fails to meet its basic objective, as their rates skyrocket to pay for all the absurd investment. Living off the grid will become common.
Since it is related to renewable energy it should be called a green-out.
Green out – I love it 🙂
South Australia makes some interesting case studies about general energy policy. A few points:
1. It has the largest uranium, and possibly the largest mineral deposit, in the world, the Olympic Dam (U-Cu-Au-Ag) Mine. It has at least 100-200 years left of resources. It is an IOCG (iron oxide copper gold) style deposit, that when found was the first major deposit of this style known in the world. Plans to expand the mine recently have been shelved partly due to unreliable energy supply from the state’s focus on renewables. So a major source of world U is currently dependent on ideologically -driven renewable energy policies.
There are other significant U, Cu, Au mines and gas fields. Some estimates also quote very large amounts of potentially recoverable shale gas resources. BP is also currently in the process of applying to drill deep offshore oil wells.
2. The state is the driest in Australia, most of which is desert. It gets lots of wind and solar energy, but still can’t make these produce reliable base load power. Most of the renewable energy policies and developments are funded by profits from the state’s mineral and fossil fuel resources.
3. Plans to utilise ‘hot rock’ energy (whereby water is pumped deep underground to tap into ‘hotter’ rocks kilometres beneath the surface, before returning to the surface and utilizing the heat energy) have so far not met with success. South Australia has some high heat gradients, with abundant amounts of relatively radioactive granites which produce background heat which has been modelled to potentially be able to supply significant amounts of electricity using ‘hot rock’ technology, but so far these plans haven’t met with success.
4. The state has also been studied on several occasions for potential nuclear waste storage sites, since it is mostly uninhabited, flat, and seismically stable. Developing various carbon capture technologies using available nuclear energy largely hasn’t been discussed. The Australian Federal government policy is largely anti-nuclear, although exceptions and occasional policy changes do occur within individual states.
Ideologically, a priority/funding debate between fossil fuels, U, as well as copper-gold and other minerals plays out against various renewables largely within urbanised circles, since there is only a relatively small population within the mostly desert state that doesn’t live within urbanised areas. It is significant that the state derives a relatively high proportion of its wealth from minerals and fossil fuels, that are in sparsely inhabited, and therefore areas with few votes and little representation.
Correct on every point, thingo.
Thingodonta. “The state has also been studied on several occasions for potential nuclear waste storage sites, since it is mostly uninhabited, flat, and seismically stable. ”
I read somewhere that Australia has 2/3 of the world’s known reserves of uranium. It seems to me if Australia provided a storage place for the radioactive waste that a major concern for nuclear power plants would be removed.
“Australia has 2/3 of the world’s known reserves of uranium” – so long as they don’t do like we did here in the US, thanks to the Clintons, and sell it off to Russia as in this New York Times story last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0
Australia has 2/3 of the world’s known reserves of uranium. It seems to me if Australia provided a storage place for the radioactive waste that a major concern for nuclear power plants would be removed.
Oh the irony!
The first sentence indicates that Australia already is a storage place for radioactive waste…jus not man made radioactive waste.
“with abundant amounts of relatively radioactive granites…”
So lots and lots of lovely radon in the hot water…
Lots of diesel generators are expected to be installed in residential and business districts, so not only costs will skyrocket, but pollution as well.
I am not a firm believer in the Law of Unintended Consequences. No one can be stupid enough to overlook it in advance, therefore increasing pollution must be welcome by those responsible for fighting coal.
One can only wonder why.
Berényi Péter August 11, 2016 at 4:01 am
Are you sure about that?
However, if you are correct, it’s not the pollution that concerns the powers that be. Rather, it’s how to steer the contracts for diesel generators to the corporations they own or will get a kickback from without it being too obvious that the legislator or bureaucrat will benefit personally.
Diesel generators are used at large “server farms” (computer-related data storage systems) to keep things going when grid electrons are not available. In the case in the link below the grid is supplied by hydro from the Columbia River of Washington State. The story is four years old. Washington State imports some coal produced electricity although the current government intends to stop doing so. Solar is a poor choice here, wind is used, but it doesn’t always blow. [Link at the bottom shows a 5 minute chart of power for a big swath of Oregon & WA.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers-in-rural-washington-state-gobble-power.html
“But for some in Quincy, the gee-whiz factor of such a prominent high-tech neighbor wore off quickly. First, a citizens group initiated a legal challenge over pollution from some of nearly 40 giant diesel generators that Microsoft’s facility — near an elementary school — is allowed to use for backup power.
————–Bonneville Power Administration (BPA)
… at the moment, no wind
http://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
Individuals buying generators to generate their own electricity? I’m sure the politicians can come up with some regulations to “fix” that.
Leave it to the H & S boys & girls in the EU, they will come up with installationsnot being properly installedtothe right safety specs & therefore we must all employ electricians, & only those certified by the EU!
Alan another Brit
Your comment has a pH below zero.
Appreciated!
Auto
Patrick B,
I have used my generator 10 times in the last two years due to outages caused by windturbines. Those previous years ? not much ( literally maybe 6 times in 15 yrs of owning a generator)
But, you can have a generator and if you have no gasoline, no generator.
The peak demand drop in the middle of the day is because you have no factories and jobs in manufacturing in SA your economy is built on mining wine production tourism and lots of public sector jobs per capita . Please note that also the high early July demand loads were not from still conditions but from strong storms that deliver both cloud cover and the need to protect windmills from high winds.
Please try to purchase energy contracts forward for this Summer for delivery in SA and compare the costs to the rest of Australia and see what the market thinks about the capacity of renewables to keep the joint running.
SA politicians have installed too much of a good thing and created massive issues . Please remember that SA winter loads aren’t that bad compared to 40degree summers so look out later in the year.
Final point ,the coal fired plants shut in SA are significantly cleaner and more efficient than poor old hazelwwod in Vic that will have to run flat out to keep the SA economy going.
Cheers Cavey
The charts here show SA demand from 2009, 2012, 2015 – and you can see from 12 to 14.00 being a peak nearly equivalent to early evening, it clearly descends into a low point in demand.
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/09/south-australia-heralds-death-base-load-generation/
Unless you are alleging SA lost all its industry etc in the last 6 years, your statements are clearly wrong: solar has shifted peak middle of the day demand…
It is because nothing is done in SA anymore. You really are an uninformed!
Everyone has to have something they are good at.
Griff , I think you see what you want to see. You see the gap between aggregate demand and attribute it to solar. No doubt is is a factor but its never that black and white. The continual shutdown of manufacturing in SA has played a major role , as it has in VIC with manufacturing and aluminium production.
Yes but they’ll say that when the distribution system collapses due to 40C summer AC load, that it is just more proof that we need more renewable energy to reduce CO2 driven Global Warming!
This is a perfect example of how common sense goes out the window when you pour government money into anything. Your average citizen realized a century ago that wind and solar were far inferior to oil and coal. However, let the government say “Wind is good” and start tossing $1000 dollar bills out the window to people and “Wind is good” slogan replaces the knowledge that “Wind is NOT good”. Will it take blackouts? Maybe. Money is a powerful incentive and wind operators are not going to give up the millions easily. Nor are the welfare landowners who get the five and six figure annual rentals. I doubt they care if everyone else ends up in the dark as long as those checks keep coming.
idiocy, hypocrisy or just muddle headed green duplicity? Australia exports 180 million tonnes of thermal coal to be burned and emit Co2 around the rest of the planet so why the local hysteria about Australia causing climate change? Or is Australia like Anna Soubry MP who answering a question in the UK about China burning more coal, she said, “well that’s a worry but we just have to make sure that their emissions done come here”. I asked her if she was going to recruit celestial border guards to make sure but I regret to say that she did not reply. I wonder why?
Now it exports coal, but with India about to ban foreign imports and china’s coal use declining…
More idiocy from the uninformed.
He’s been corrected on both points several times.
It’s almost as if he is impervious to any data that doesn’t fit into his preferred religion.
“He’s been corrected on both points several times.”
And on several other blogs apart from this one too, of course, going back years.
You want to see the mendacious rubbish he posts on the Grauniad (er, well, probably not, actually…).
What the boneheads don’t get with their bleatings about the cost of solar panels coming down is it has little to do with capital cost but marginal cost. Let the cost of a 10KW solar panel and inverter system be zero and recall that currently they are around 16% efficient in turning the sun’s energy into electricity. Now assume the bonehead nirvana of 100% efficiency and hold that thought HS physics students. What do you get? Now the maximum installed capacity jumps around 6 fold to 60KW but so does the variability increase 6 fold. Easy to see how you’d want the system capital cost to be zero when the sun goes down boneheads because that’s all it’s worth all night and very close to zero on cloudy days to boot.
These boneheads need to be strictly restricted to electric cars that are covered in solar panels (high tech solar paint?) so they can experience the joys of driving like Toad of Toad Hall around midday on a lovely sunny day and then walking home at sundown. Yeah I know it would all be lost on them as they’d naturally expect Gummint provided gasoline cabs at their beck and call to run them home.
They can’t blame it on the Chinese either…..
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37044762
Your technological future awaits you boneheads-
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/05/16/chinese-farmer-invents-wind-powered-car/
I love that clip.
The really worrying part is how enthusiastic the reporter is about it all.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha….. really all that needs to be said.
Along the same lines – on Monday Texas for the first time ever had demand exceed 70,000 MW. Texas has 18,000 MW of wind capacity (which required a $7 BILLION long distance transmission line to take the wind power to the distant cities). So during record demand on Monday of 70,000 MW, how much wind power was available? about 6,000 MW of the installed 18,000MW.
“Texas has 18,000 MW of wind capacity (which required a $7 BILLION long distance transmission line to take the wind power to the distant cities).”
Wow! Who paid for that?
TA
Well, Ross Perot – he who ran with Bill Clinton (twice) so Bill and Hillary Clinton would get elected – DID buy the Texas lands between his future windfarms and the actual TX and LA electrical markets so that 7 billion in power lines would have to be built on and across his lands and right-of-ways by companies that Bill and Hillary’s and Bush’s and Pelosi’s and Oboma’s government taxes would pay to have him build ….
I like the bit about 6,000 MW available out of 18,000 MW installed capacity during record peal demand. This pretty much says everything you need to know about wind power.
But wait . . . they’re going to store it in batteries. Like there’s a surplus.
At least the way I figure it, that’s also over $1 of capital equipment per watt just to deliver it.
Batteries are not really a solution for unreliability, unless they have gigantic capacit, low leakage rates and the abiiity to recharge them very quickly. Only greenies believe in the ridculous proposition that batteries transforms an unreliable power source into a reliable one. And the cost is not simply in the batteries – storing power in a battery and retrieving it later involves not insignificant losses. Note that excessive overcapacity is required to reduce the possibility of power losses where renewables are concerned.
Note also the misleading power production quotes – wind power “capacity” of X normally refers not to its capacity, but to its nameplate capacity, which is rarely achieved and never for long. Typical onshore wind
machines operate at actual capacities 20 to 30% of nameplate capacity, while a coal plant (or nuclear plant) can run at 100% (and more) of its nameplate capacity. To compare two power generators, you NEVER use nameplate capacities as a yardstick. Actual, typical operating capacities are what one must use.
A little off topic — I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if the government mandated that all motorcycles had to be electric powered — yeah, tell that to the Hell’s Angels.
Eugene WR Gallun
I’m surprised California hasn’t already done that. They’re getting close to outlawing the internal combustion engine for transportation with their CARB (and now federal 2025 CAFE) standards. I’m waiting for them to get serious and decide to change it from mile per gallon to ton-miles per gallon. Then we’ll all be riding bicycles.
Another problem with inter-connects is that electricity loses power the further it is transmitted.
Overall transmission losses in the grid are on the order of 7% or less.
D. J. Hawkins
ONLY in yesterday’s grid of local power plants and very, very little regional current exchange. That is, when local power is generated locally (within 200-250 miles of the user) there is a 4-7% loss in transmitted energy.
When the current is transmitted more than 500 miles, those losses go up to 7-10 percent.
When currents are transmitted more than 500-1000 miles, the losses go up to as much as half the generated power.
Want to send current (NOT VOLTAGE!) from Arizona to New York? You lose 50-75% of the energy to heat and circulating currents.
IF you have a superconducting-supermagnetic DC line from AZ to NY you could do it. Then again, what was the price of that little SSSC superconducting loop only 75 miles long underneath Texas back in the 90’s?
To illustrate the error people make between “the national grid” and “transmitting current” cross-country, remember that “electric voltage present” does NOT = “useful “electric power” present.
Electrical voltage is comparable to water hose pressure.
volts = “pressure” in the hose, and in a well-regulated electrical system, voltage (water pressure) will be virtually constant regardless of electrical current (water flow) through the wires (pipe).
Energy requires current however. In a water hose, “flow” is required, NOT “pressure’ (Properly, it is the “pressure difference” between the source (the pump ) and outlet (the end of the hose and its fittings and atmospheric backpressure) that causes flow.
Voltage losses (pressure losses) occur only with flow, and they increase with flow in either system. No flow, no losses. No transfer of energy either!
So, if I cap off a garden hose, connect that garden hose up to the faucet, and open the faucet, I get 80 psig water pressure at the end of the hose. Regardless of the length of the hose, I get 80psig water pressure (5.5 barr). Regardless of the diameter of the hose, I get 80 psig water pressure. As long as i have no flow, I get 80 psig water pressure.
Thus, if I have a fire in front of my garage, a 5 meter, 12 mm diameter garden hose might transfer enough water (energy) to put the fire out. The hose is short, line resistance is little, and backpressure is little. Flow might be adequate. A 5 meter 150 mm diameter hose (6 inch diameter) might not even fill up entirely, but might still “splash” out water to put the fire out if it were held above the fire.
If I run that 12 mm garden hose to my neighbor’s front yard (100 meters away), I could cap off the end and still measure 5.5 barr (80 psig). But when I open the spray nozzle, I get very little water flow. The internal resistance of a tiny hose and a long distance of hose mean water flow = very little volume out. Capped off (no demand, no current) is still high pressure. (High voltage!)
Now, if I try to run that 12 mm garden hose 1000 meters, I still can measure 80 psig with no flow. But opening the spray nozzle means near-zero flow. And, if the spray nozzle is uphill far enough, I may not be able to get any flow at all.
Being on “the grid” improves your reliability to get voltage (water pressure) from multiple sources. (As long as you have a maximum of only 3-5% wind turbines.) But your “power” comes locally.
The vast majority of electricity is consumed within a hundred miles or so of where it is generated.
Regardless, your post does not even address my point, much less refute it.
Insane.