Essay by Eric Worrall
Greens have claimed Aussie entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest in battery storage, because they are not sure of the timeline for shutting down coal.
Green energy backers attack capacity market proposal, saying we ‘shouldn’t be paying to keep coal and gas’
By energy reporter Daniel Mercer
Posted Thu 21 Jul 2022 at 4:05pmKey points:
- Greens leader Adam Bandt says a proposed capacity market risks pushing out investment in wind and solar power
- Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen wants the scheme to pay energy providers to be available when the system needs them
- Renewable energy advocates say a fix must not subsidise coal and are instead backing an electricity storage target
Renewable energy advocates are urging state and federal governments to avoid extra payments to coal- and gas-fired power plants to ease Australia’s energy woes, warning they could derail the move away from fossil fuels.
…
Storage target a ‘better fix’
Instead, the centre called for the federal government to channel its efforts into the need for storage capacity that could help to deal with the fluctuations in output from renewable energy sources.
It cited the renewable energy target as a template for the scheme, which has driven much of the investment in wind and solar over the past 20 years.
…
Coal exit plan ‘essential’
Tristan Edis, who runs the research and advisory firm Green Energy Markets, agrees a capacity market will be more likely to hinder than help the transition to renewable energy.
Mr Edis said one of the most important things governments at a state and federal level could do was provide a clear timeline and plan to manage the departure of coal from the system.
“The capacity market as has been outlined so far by ESB may help delay exit but doesn’t do anything to coordinate the timing of exit with entry or facilitate entry of capacity before the exit of capacity,” Mr Edis said.
“That’s the crux of the potential problem we have at present.”
…
Cheaper than coal? This renewable revolution seems to need an awful lot of government help.
Obviously it is ridiculous to expect renewable operators to deliver energy when people actually need it. But it is funny that even with the government in their corner, battery backup investors are so frightened of the possibility of a coal plant being switched on, they refuse to enter the market until they have a firm timetable for getting rid of coal.
Everyone who does the math for a grid dependent on wind and solar determines storage is the largest expense.
…and, it would help if the long-duration storage required were actually available.
It doesn’t matter in the least to the crony capitalists whether their snake oil actually works, or could ever scale to the true needs of society.
All that the crony cares about is that governments get in the way of free markets to guarantee them an easy profit, for as long as they can keep the grift going. Once they have cashed out a few billion dollars, most of them will be happy to retire on their ill-gotten gains. It’s not as if they will be around to actually face the impossible engineering problems after all.
Yep, Still waiting for the magic battery that seems to crop up in the news every so often then then disappears.
They have a new cunning plan. Flog off tired EV batteries for desperately needed grid storage and they can deal with the problem when they’re useless-
Volkswagen Presents Power Storage Container With Reused Batteries (msn.com)
PS: Pass the parcel presents a better PR face for the Gretaheads than the wind turbine scam-
Permanent Legacy: Wind Industry Plans to Abandon Millions of 500 Tonne Concrete Wind Turbine Bases – STOP THESE THINGS
Even if the batteries were free, battery storage is still too expensive because the site prep, labor, enclosures, overcurrent protection, switchgear, fire suppression and more costs $200,000 per mWh, $20,000,000 for a 100 hours of cloudy and calm (some say, that it never gets so cloudy and calm that output has ever, anywhere been less than 15% of nameplate, but that’s trivia and not germane to this discussion). A typical “fossil fuel generating station is rated1,000 mw. Such a plant for 4 days (100 hours rounded) of storage costs $20,000,000,000 $20 billion, batteries not included. Well, maybe as much as 15% less, if you believe the wind aficionados.
Also, the blight factor in operation obscured with myths and privacy, environmental and ecological waste from recovery to reclamation, and animal and plant lives that are no longer viable.
Any investor considering putting capital into eagle choppers or slaver panels would immediately recognize that the return on investment depends on harvesting direct government subsidies or indirect subsidies based on mandates that block competition from lower-cost providers. The next government could choose to cut subsidies or to deregulate.
A less risky scenario for the crony capitalists would be the case where fossil fuel-fired generation had already been dismantled and banned so that the market has no substitutes for ruinable intermittent power backed up by outrageously expensive (and itself fire-risky) batteries.
It goes without saying that the end-user’s cost would be many multiples of the cost being paid in China and India for power generated from coal.
Crony capitalists will still certainly push to sell their worthless wares to governments so that they make their profits immediately and governments bear all the risk.
Except for the communists encouraging this in order to destroy the West, all of this colossal scam is about lining crony pockets.
Thanks Rich, nice summary. All precisely correct.
By this logic, Henry Ford would not have started mass producing cars until after the government gave a date certain about banning horse drawn carriages in cities.
The light bulb would not have been produced until there was a drop dead date for the elimination of the coal oil lamp.
Central heating for homes would not have happened until after wood burners or coal burners had been banned.
These things were left behind only after there was a better idea that had been produced and proven better than the older alternative. Only then were the old alternatives abandoned. Even now almost all houses still have candles for when the power goes down.
I even have a fireplace with a chimney for when the energy source goes down, like when the gas was cut off for a few days by a technical failure a couple of years ago.
I even have a fire place and candles for when I want to switch off the power and just unwind for an evening, the hum of the cables and lights will never be as nice a crackling log fire a warm candlelight
Gas and solar have not been left behind because there is no “better idea that had been produced and proven better than the older alternative.”
Demand pull is the orderly way to move to advanced technologies, since the existing technologies remain available until they are replaced.
Bingo! Gas has not been left behind because so far there are no better alternatives. Including solar.
Solar and wind can displace the output of gas generators, when they are available, but they cannot replace gas generation without long-duration storage.
Require renewable generation to be dispatchable, then let’s see if it is cheaper than conventional generation.
Why don’t they just install heaps more solar & wind farms to act as reserve capacity?
Oh yeah, I remember now . . .
🤔😳
Solar & wind are unreliable intermittent. PV can’t provide power when the sun ain’t shinning. Wind turbines don’t generate power when the wind velocity isn’t high enough to operate them. Either fast start-up fossil fueled power generation and/or energy storage systems are required to back-up the renewable power generation. Utility scale energy storage systems are very expensive compare to generation assets.
…and the “all-electric everything” future would require a grid of approximately 4 times greater capacity than today’s grid.
Time to get real. Democratically elected governments cannot and will not achieve climate solutions through net zero ideology. Putting all our climate eggs in the emissions basket from kindergarten, to academic research grants, to mass media, and political talking points is net damaging from any perspective.
The myopic view of emission to describe environmental change is disingenuous from any notion of science. Children have been lied to. There will never be consensus on these issues. The emission solution will require absolute authoritarian clampdown on all sectors and an end to society as we know it. If that is the only solution proposed by universities it will require dissolving democratic institutions today, implementing global authoritarian rule, and handling the subsequent societal fallout.
The alternative is to communicate the very real and complex factors that drive regional climate extremes, where solutions are highly localized and variable. It requires getting back to basics, where water cycles and ecosystems control 90% of climate dynamics. 40 years now have been wasted, and landscapes continue to dry and degrade as we’ve been completely enamored with the emission solution. Local environmental factors of climate have all but been forgotten rendering society to near ignorance.
At what point will somebody stand up and reset the narrative. Today’s climate scientists, politicians, and crony capitalists are driving us towards a cliff with this stuff. Politics is more divided than ever, with climate driving a wedge chasm. As the false green sector delivers no tangible value, as with any Ponzi like scheme, an ongoing and increasing influx of pubic funds must be diverted to sustain the sector and ensure returns promised to investors. There is no value assigned to reducing invisible gases in any concept of economics, normal economic theory does not apply to the green tech sector. The public wealth transfer will need to rise 100 fold within a decade.
It is now reaching a critical stage already where inflationary pressure is tipping to massive inequality. These tactics are completely unsustainable. The options are straightforward and stark: 1) dissolve democracy and implement authoritarian clampdowns for climate from a central globally coordinated chamber, or 2) get real.
Democracy cannot, and will not, achieve net zero. Sovereign nation states will not, and cannot, achieve net zero within the allotted timelines and within the constraints of their responsibilities to their electorate and true democratic systems. No amount of activism or fear will dissolve the wedge in politics. A democracy based on a single issue for humanity is not a choice, and is no democracy at all. A democracy based on centrally controlled information and complicit media is false. The wedge will only drive deeper and deeper.
Getting real means getting back to basics on environment, or to admit the age of democracy and sovereign nation states is over due to its inability to handle the global net zero tactic. Either way, reality will hit home in dangerous and unexpected ways unless we get real. People are tired of the façade. They crave a sense of honesty.
If at the very least for someone to admit to net zero is gonna hurt, all other public services will suffer. There will be massive winners and massive losers from a financial standpoint, and that many many many people will be sacrificed and die along the way to the net zero goals. That net zero will do nothing to reduce flood, drought, and temperature extremes. That it is only promised to slow the longterm trend in climate averages. That is the harsh reality. Any other narrative is a lie.
There is a universal law of nature called in the US Murphy’s law , which in the US states “in any human or natural system Anything which can go wrong will go wrong”. The same law in the UK is Sodd’s Law which simply states “Murphy was an optimist” Like Sodd, JCM, you enunciate a bleak and pessimistic understanding of the utter shambles that our leaders in media, politics, business and academia are creating. I can think of only one piece of consolation. When it gets really, really bad there must come a stage at which it can only get better. Let us hope that all our children and grandchildren are not sacrificed on the altar of green dogma before we get there.
I propose we are a way from rock bottom. However, we see the decline already. Where the neo activism today is driven purely by materials produced by the very institutions they are protesting against. Where their every issue, that makes them take to the streets, is presented daily in mass media, education, politics, and big business. A circular breakdown in logic. Where traditionally activists took to the streets because their cause was invisible, never discussed by politicians, nor in school nor media. Where today the activists feel they are ‘sticking it to the man’, but in reality it’s exactly what ‘the man’ wants them to do. They are completely oblivious, and don’t seem to understand the difference. Today they don’t seem to know who they are mad at, because everyone in power agrees. So they rage at anyone who might stand in their way.
The chasm is so extreme that even family relationships are breaking down. If we keep this Net Zero course society as we know it will end, …it is ending even now.
If the intelligencia is serious that the world is ending they should just pull off the bandaid now and do it, why nibble around the edges? No more countries, a total disenfranchisement of the individual. Pitting neighbor and family members against one another is shameful. Viewing your political opponents as subhuman or deranged for having an opposing view is the mark of decline. The relentless pressure to think less, to repress your instincts, to be shouted down for having an opinion, to be shamed for questioning, and to be mocked for making scientific based arguments is truly remarkable.
Yup, and here’s Good Ol’ Auntie Beeb in full flow without actually realising what they’re saying..
Headline:”Climate change: How to talk to a denier”link
You could not ‘make it up’ – within that article it advises ‘not to be sanctimonious and aloof‘ – while the headline introducing it is exactly that.
Too late:
And because there is now nothing else to eat except sugar:
<fill in the blank> ‘__________’
That is considered a feature, not a bug.
Eliminate useful things so people will have no other choice than to pay more for less. If it’s a business model it’s not a good one.
On the contrary, it’s an excellent business model. You get paid for delivering virtually nothing.
The proponents of renewables who are pushing battery solutions ignore the problem of recharging the batteries when they have gone flat during a wind drought.
Looking at the Gridwatch figures for the UK over the past month it would have needed double the number of wind generators to recharge the batteries (as the existing windmills would be busy supplying the grid), (not forgetting to allow for inefficiencies in recharging), if they wanted to keep a level supply of electricity from wind/batteries.
Forget the cost of keeping existing fossil fuel plants open, what about the cost of the batteries and extra wind generation needed?
AND the periodic replacement of both the wind choppers, at 15 to 20 years, and the batteries at less than 10 years, and the rare earths needed in both are not recyclable.
Storage solutions on the scale required by eastern AUS or UK grids simple do not exist. Wishing otherwise is pure green fantasy. There are only two stark choices: an unreliable grid with random blackouts, or a capacity market for standby fossil fueled backup generation.
Germany so far has cobbled together a very costly ‘solution’: export excess renewable electricity at zero value to Norway and Sweden (allowing them to reduce hydro), then buy it back at high cost (increased Scandinavian hydro) when needed to backfill intermittancy. Germany also has a capacity market supporting underutilized standby CCGT and coal. This ‘cobbled’ system may fall apart next winter with likely natgas shortages induced by Russia.
If the Greens are right, that we face the end of life soon, then in self defence the “Western” countries will have to declare War on those countries such as India & China who are endangering us by their ” Emissions”.
Under International law we have a right to take such measures to protect ourself.
So let’s put this proposition to the Greens & see what they would do.
Getting back to today’s World, expect the renewable lobby to expect taxpayers money to provide the giant batteries required.
Michael VK5ELL
See my reply to Rud about the cost disparities between batteries and diesel back up pointed out by Prof Kelly.
It will also fall apart because the Germans will find that Norwegian supply may not be available because the reservoirs run out, and French supply may not be available because they don’t fix enough nuclear reactors in time. Expect shutdowns in Italy too – a major power importer. These maps of the flows last year are going to change a lot in the current stressed conditions.
http://pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/news_2022_1_e.htm
Prof Michael Kelly gives an example in his Report Delivering Net Zero for GWPF
“the 100MW (128 MWh) battery installed near Adelaide in 2018 at a cost of £45m would power the emergency wards – 30% of total wards – at Addenbrooks Hospital in Cambridge for 24 hours on a single charge. If the outage lasted a week you would need 7 such batteries. The back up today is supplied by two 1500 kVA diesel generators that run for as long as there is fuel and cost £0.25m. This is a capital cost ratio of 180:1 per day or 1300:1 per week for battery versus diesel. This economic mismatch applies to all other suggested applications of batteries”
Prof Kelly is a former Prof of Technology at Cambridge University, Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering and ex Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Communities and Local Government.
Continuing on this path will ultimately lead to the collapse of organized society. This is so obvious to anyone with half a brain that we must assume that the collapse of organized society is the point of the exercise. Proponents of net zero who don’t grasp it (i.e. our political leaders) are just the useful idiots.
Their mistake is believing they will still be in charge after society is transformed…
Coal is the battery
“It’s not difficult to see that with vision and leadership from government, renewables and storage can be the answer to the problems created by unreliable coal and gas“ (Adam Bandt).
Adam is employing Orwell as instructor: “Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts” (1984).
Bandt is right, the coal and gas is unreliable – but only because operators are running their plants into the ground, to squeeze what profits they can before politicians force a final shutdown.
I took it that he was claiming coal and gas were inherently unreliable.
Correction … “coal and gas are becoming unreliable” … they are inherently not unreliable.
“ Mr Edis said one of the most important things governments at a state and federal level could do was provide a clear timeline and plan to manage the departure of coal from the system”
Storage cost now is too high so timeline is Never. That doesn’t even take into account the huge cap ex of building renewables without the storage.
Solar, wind and battery storage, reminds me of a nursery rhyme . Three blind mice….. you know how it goes.
South Australia is a great example of a “ruinable” State, with wind sometimes providing 100% of electricity demand, yet when the wind doesn’t blow, the lights stay on because of gas and diesel generators and imports from Victoria. Add solar to the mix and spot wholesale prices go from negative $40/MWhr to highs of $400/Mwhr. Oh, and they do have a big battery that can deliver about 3% of demand for about an hour.
From what I read the SA battery provides 20 minutes of non-peak demand. I’ll search around and see if I can find that source.
I’ve heard 30,000 homes for an hour quoted but who knows if that’s peak or non-peak but either way it’s academic. South Australia will be in trouble when the Eastern States have played catch up with unreliables and they’re short of FF insurance. That’s when the NEM grid fallacy of composition really kicks in.
The ‘capacity market’ is analogous to a business through ESG requirements being forced to employ permanent salaried people who randomly turn up for work on average only 30% of the time and then having to pay retainers to equivalent workers to step in on short notice when required the other 70% of the time on full salary.
Nice analogy, and that added cost is most difficult on the poor.
So the greens HATE poor people.
“Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen wants the scheme to pay energy providers to be available when the system needs them”
I confess that Chris Bowen is one of my least-favourite politicians. But – credit where credit is due – then I wish to say that in this matter Chris Bowen is getting something right. Lack of payment for energy to be available was a major factor in bringing down the Texas system in Feb 2021. BTW you can tell that the statement is right because green leader Adam Bandt opposes it.
It’s not as good as a level playing field but it is at least a step in the right direction.
Bowen couldn’t possibly ignore some quiet backgrounding reality from the AEMO but he’s sticking with the more connected unreliables story while mumbling about a ‘capacity mechanism’. He can continue straddling the fence with his balls but they’re fair game for the Greens and Teals because capacity payments inevitably means dough for gas and coal generators.
It’s the same deal as the Lib/Nats trying to play the technology middle game and straddling the fence. BS inevitably hangs them all by the balls while carbon taxing is political suicide in order to claw back any FF generator subsidies. Labor will have a hard enough time sticking 22c/litre fuel excise back on.
Australia is going to have to go through the EU energy catastrophe before our politicians give up on Renewables. There is a huge amount money bankrolling politicians of all persuasions. There are a number of wealthy family dynasties making a lot of money from the subsidies. There are a range of things that are not allowed to be discussed in the Australian media if they contradict the green narritive
Australia is usually semi-isolated from world trends. On back tracking from moving to Renewables, it will be several years.
The remark that””Coal is the battery is so true.
A large pile of coal at a power station can sit there for years.
Come rain hail & snow, it just sits there, no problems at all.
When required it easily gives up its stored energy.
So what is the pro blem with burning fossel fuel ? Only one thing, it gives off ” Emissions” , they used to be known as Carbon dioxide.
Yet the highly qualified scientist such
as William Harper, & many others, say that CO2 is not a problem.
So what is the problem ?
It has to be the Politicians.
As the Chinese say ” Wind blows, grass bends””.
As energy prices continue to rise, hopefully some Politicians will Smell the sent of unhappy people, & despite their Dreams, to keep their well paid jobs will start to ask the difficult questions about the likes of Net Zero.
Hopefully the coming winter in Europe plus the November half term elections in the US, will see sanity return to the Western World.
Michael VK5ELL
Large coal stocks built up at the power stations by Margaret Thatcher’s government enabled them to keep going during the miner’s strike, which in turn was as much a political as opposed to an industrial dispute.
In Australia doing the battery thing would require around 46,000 football fields covered with batteries … do we even have the resources for this and all the EVs that they espouse ?
No and certainly not when everyone else is trying to do it.
Have they costed 10+TWh of batteries? Especially since lithium and cobalt prices soared last year?
IEA foresees worldwide shortages of lithium and cobalt as early as 2025.
If Bandt and his ilk are hanging out for the green-saviour of a new cheap and super-efficient battery storage technology (new chemistry/physics) then so am I for an affordable anti-gravity machine so I can scoot around like George Jetson!
The numpties don’t understand this is their constraint problem and they’re already at its extremes-
Periodic Table of Elements – PubChem (nih.gov)
We can’t invest in backup batteries while you keep the 24/7 power on .
Turn it off .
Now ! , so we can save the world .
With subsidies of course .
Just tell the peasants it’s the right thing to do and u will be a hero too .
While the capital cost is crippling, I think the main issue is that while one battery can be profitable for frequency control, the sums just don’t add up for a battery that is going to make money from buying electricity when cheap and releasing it when electricity is expensive. Once you have sufficient batteries (say a few weeks storage), electricity will never be so expensive that they can make a profit, and so there will never be a case for a business to build that many batteries. Coal or no coal.
The only thing that needs to be phased out is all of these green devils at all government levels.
Is there any hindrance to Australia rolling out grid scale storage?
when I see news items like these:
Australia shortlists 12 grid-scale battery storage projects for $100m funding
and
World’s biggest battery storage project announced by Australian renewables fund
1) Money
The first story says “100 million (Australian) dollars” in government subsidies, while the Grauniad version of the second says the battery with “a power capacity of up to 1,200 megawatts” will cost 2.4 billion AUD …
2) Time
3) Money
4) The journalists / editors reporting on this subject think “capacity” is measured in “MW” or “GW”
It isn’t, but I’m not going to spend “hours” explaining why …
5) Money
– – – – –
PS : The second story dates from February last year (2021), and includes the following (in the “energy-storage.news” version I came across in addition to the Graun‘s).
The 100MW (128 MWh) battery installed in Adelaide at a cost of £45m would power the emergency wards -30% – of total wards at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge for 24 hours from a single charge. The backup today is provided by two 1500kVA diesel generators that run for as long as fuel is available at a cost of £250,000.
So given the real cost of the Adelaide battery not sure how you are going to get 12 for $100m and unlikely they will be anywhere near “grid scale”
At what cost griff?
The cost to negatively impact the poor the most. Drive them to use charcoal to heat their homes, causing CO poisoning.
Why do you hate the poor so much griff?
No hindrance. In fact, there are various incentives to do so.
I’m not sure what your point was…
Let there be no barriers to the elites siphoning off the tax dollars of the workers for their own luxurious uses. The only issue they have top-of-mind is how fast they can arrive at their desired state of wealth and comfort while the masses dwindle away to a nagging memory of crying hungry children in dark, cold shacks well out of sight.