Guest essay by Eric Worrall
High Drama in Australian Green Politics – The Premier of the failed energy state of South Australia has publicly clashed with Federal Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg at a joint news conference, accusing the Federal minister to his face of being part of the most “anti” South Australian government in living memory.
Watch SA Premier Jay Weatherill shirtfront Josh Frydenberg over energy policy
By political reporter Jane Norman
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill have clashed during a bizarre press conference that descended into a slanging match over energy policy.
The Federal Government has been relentlessly attacking South Australia’s approach to energy and its over-reliance on renewable sources, since last year’s state-wide black out.
Mr Weatherill this week announced a half-a-billion dollar plan to shore up the state’s fragile power supply, which was dismissed as a “$550 million admission of failure” by Mr Frydenberg, who accused the state of trying to “go it alone”.
In Adelaide to launch a federally funded “virtual power plant”, Mr Frydenberg found himself seated awkwardly between Mr Weatherill and South Australia’s Treasurer, Tim Koutsantonis, and then conducting a joint press conference with the Premier.
…
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/josh-frydenberg-jay-weatherill-verbal-biff/8359056
The video of the clash;
Regardless of your views on renewable energy, I can’t help feeling none of this would have happened if South Australia’s grid was sourced from reliable, dispatchable energy sources.
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Oz is just shooting itself in the foot. More of this to come when they realize that the billions and billions they are/have wasted won’t come back and brown outs and black outs become common with sky high electrical prices and industry in the dumps.
There are places one should not live in. Maybe good for dry land agriculture, but not housing developments. People who CHOOSE to live in an area not suitable for utility-hog cities should bear the burden of their choice. That is not to say they should not be allowed to live there, but an off-the-grid ability is necessary.
That press conference (and all of Australia) needs a good healthy dose of Alex Epstein.
BTW, are duels illegal in Australia? The insult to Frydenberg seems to require a good slap, and pistols at dawn. Then the Feds who pushed S. Australia to build wind mills need to slap the locals who allowed the blackouts. Then the locals need to slap the remaining Feds, and everyone needs to slap J. Gillard and challenge her to a belated duel.
Then after all their offenses have been resolved, the poor South Australians can lock up the last survivor and then build 4 or 5 cheap, reliable coal fired generating stations.
/half-sarc
The irony is that the big blackout in SA was accelerated by the large fraction of wind power. In an ideal world, wind turbines would provide both real and reactive power. In a possible (not necessarily feasible) world, a wind farm would connect to the grid with the reverse of a Ward-Leonard set (each turbine has a DC generator connected to the bus that powers a DC motor driving a synchronous generator tied to the grid. The excitation of the DC generators and the DC motor keeps the synchronous generator at the right speed), but this requires a large, massive, and expensive piece of rotating machinery.
In the real world, wind farms are connected to the grid by a large amount of power electronics excited with reactive power from the grid. The grid pulls real power from the wind farm as the wind farm pulls reactive power from the grid. During an episode when there is more demand than supply, all of the spinning machines directly tied to the grid start slowing down. As the frequency drops, less reactive power is available to pull real power from the wind farm and the consequent drop in power to the grid accelerates the frequency decrease. As there is less energy going to the grid, all of the wind turbines at the wind farm speed up. Although capable of running at maximum the wind velocity will allow, the wind turbines cannot get that power to the grid, so they hit their over speed trip and the wind turbine operators share the impotent rage of the power dispatchers as available power drops off the grid.
The rotational inertia of the Ward-Leonard system would power the grid for longer than a power electronic connection.
You do realize that none of the greenies that even bothered to read your entire (excellent) comment even understood it? Which is too bad, because this is one of the key reasons why wind and solar are not appropriate for grid-scale base-load power production.
I am not Australian so please forgive the ignorance here, but I am assuming the gentleman talking in the video is Mr. Weatherill and the one standing next to him is the Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg. If that is not the case please feel free to correct me.
What I find most interesting/entertaining is the straight face kept by Mr. Frydenberg. You could tell the entire time he is standing there repeating the words “don’t laugh, he’s being serious” in his head. I have been to stand up comedian shows that were less funny to watch. The only way to top it off would have been for Mr. Frydenberg to hand Mr. Weatherill a sucker and pat him on the head.
perhaps the voters of south Australia should read this https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/15/south-australia-a-renewable-state/
A ClaytonPower 400Ah Lithium-ion battery will store 617 kJ/kg
= 617 KW-sec/kg
= 0.171 KWH / kg of battery.
or 7.1 KW-Day per TON of battery.
We need 140,000,000 kg of 400Ah Lithium Batteries just to store 1 GW-day.
That would be the mass of about TEN coal unit trains.
1 coal unit train, filled from Black Thunder and delivered to St. Louis costs about $300,000.
A lithium-ion battery bank big enough to store a GW-day would cost $60,000,000,000. [Note 1]
From: June 30, 2013 “Getting Energy from the Energy Store”
1 GW-day boils down to the electrical energy provided by a 100 car coal unit train, which are quite common.
It is also fun to think about how BIG this battery bank would be. Volumetrically, purely packed closest spacing, it would be the size of 14 coal unit trains filled with Li-ion batteries. Add space for wiring. Add A LOT of space for fire suppression and containment.
Note 1: The $60 billion figure was derived with a 2013 Wikipedia price reference of $2.50/whr. Four years later, we can make a justifiable $0.30/whr for wholesale gigawatt scale battery banks. This drives the price of a GW-day Li-ion battery bank down to only $7,000,000,000. On the order of 20,000 times the price of the cheapest on-demand electrical energy storage on the planet — a ton of coal.
Ok, you say. you can only use the coal ONCE. All too true. But you cannot use a Li-ion battery bank for ever either. It is still good for about 10,000 cycles — provided you don’t drain them totally. So, every 30 years or so, you must replace the entire bank.
This political so called ‘green’ tug of war between the States and Federal is only going to result in one thing, a continuing increase in the costs of electricity – simply put someone has to pay for all of this and its either the tax payer or electricity consumer (or both – there is no escape from people spending others people’s money).
Myself I’m watching the whole solar battery home storage section very closely, although at the moment no off the shelf solution is financially viable on its own merits (see my link) – but it won’t take much for an increase in prices to tip into being viable I reckon; combine that with the decreasing costs of the batteries (as the manufacturers that survive achieve scale; Aquion just went to the wall and took $190m of VC money with it, some of it Bill Gates..) and its looking viable I reckon within a year…
Geoff Sherrington,
I’m well aware that The Conversation stinks.
But a scientist judges each argument on its merits, not on the source.
Australians DO PAY MORE than Chinese and Japanese for OUR OWN GAS, regardless of your dismissive ad hominem.
That’s an anti-Australian racist policy.