Getting a better Energy deal - WHAT A JOKE!

[ian]

... just another point of caution. All of the countries/societies that we admire and hold up as examples of already solving this parlous situation, have load profiles where WINTER is their peak load period. Copper/aluminium wired networks can deliver anywhere up to 20% more power in winter than they can in SUMMER. WHEN we solve it (because we have to!), we will be the first SUMMER PEAKING society to do so. Others society's successful paradigm changes often don't work here.
So, should we get back on subject now?
Well it is Brett's thread, and so far he's not complaining about the digression.

To which digression I'll add -- possibly the least expensive "fix" to SA's and the Eastern States' power woes might be to mandate that for every 10 MWh of solar and wind electricity bid into the market the bidding organisation must be able to supply 5 MWh of "dark time" reserve: battery, pumped hydro, coal generation. This should change the generator pricing equation enough to provide some measure of market certainty to the existing base load stations.

[ian]

just another point of caution. All of the countries/societies that we admire and hold up as examples of already solving this parlous situation, have load profiles where WINTER is their peak load period. Copper/aluminium wired networks can deliver anywhere up to 20% more power in winter than they can in SUMMER. WHEN we solve it (because we have to!), we will be the first SUMMER PEAKING society to do so. Others society's successful paradigm changes often don't work here.
Now that you are retired are you "permitted" to provide that insight more generally?

Thank you

[woodPixel]

I think it's OK. I read Flettys good response and at first I'll admit to being pretty inflamed about it. I don't take criticism or condescension easily (people who know me would say "not at all"!) but its important to say. Not for "balance", but it keeps me thinking - quite hard. It ensures Im not being a nutter and my thoughts are reasoned. I took some time out from the shed and hung out the washing, it's a good warm spring day for it :rolleyes:

Its a good conversation, for this thread I've learned quite a lot.

One thing that did inflame to to apoplexy though is the speech given by our former PM yesterday: Tony Abbott says climate change action is like trying to 'appease the volcano gods' (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-10/tony-abbott-says-action-on-climate-change-is-like-killing-goats/9033090)

Wow, does that guy grill my grits.

One thing I might point out, but there are no articles, that Canberra is whacking up Solar farms like crazy. There are two stupendous ones near where I live. All previous sheep farms. Now, more so, for they now keep the grass short saving some poor serf from whipper snipping the poles of 350 football fields 24x7! These were built in weeks.

-- 'Australia's largest' solar farm opens at Royalla south of Canberra (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-03/royalla-solar-farm-opens-south-of-canberra/5716500)
-- Mugga Lane solar farm opens, bringing ACT to 35 per cent renewable energy (http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/mugga-lane-solar-farm-opens-bringing-act-to-35-per-cent-renewable-energy-20170302-gup673.html)

Its amazing how toxic the Liberal party has been on this subject. Their opinions and opposition to alternatives are like a religious conviction. Its like they are invested in coal or something.... :wink:

[FenceFurniture]

Unfortunately that's not the complete answer either but it is usually at this point in the discussion that hysteria takes over and fact and physics takes a back seat.. The only hysteria allowed is my own, as be-fitting the long suffering position I am in. :DEssentially I agree with WP, that coal is not the solution, or at least should not be the solution. I would be extremely surprised if there are not better ways to solve the problem for the long term (in all senses of long term like financial, environmental, the bequeath to our kids etc) that do not involve coal. However, I am not qualified to venture what they might be. A clue might be to look at what other non-China non-India and non-nuclear advanced economies are doing to ensure their energy needs are met. How many of them are building for coal burning?



In Australia, by far our greatest load centres ( Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra, Geelong) are aligned North to South and so 'suffer' peak loads at identical timesThat is very astutely observed. However, I'm not sure how much value there is in trying out different time zones for two reasons. Firstly, you could only get a spread of 1 hour at most (which would bring its own chaos in other ways). Secondly, if it's hot then it's hot and the aircon will be on. Maybe we don't get heatwaves in Syd & Melb on the same days.....but maybe we do, and maybe that will become more frequent. Staggered "daylight saving" might be better for the nation's curtains, but not much for energy demands. It might be interesting to look at how Qld copes with summer demand, as surely the aircon is always on everywhere up there?



so, whichever way we go, we are going to run out of power. We need 'human engineering' decisions and actions NOWIndeed we do. And a nano-second before that we need real leadership from the very top. Enough of this Fizza stagnation - the country is kinda paralysed - business certainly is. Businesses don't know what to invest in because of this stupid indecision, lack of leadership, and flip flopping policy changes for the last 10 or more years.


That also goes back to the plethora of black, panel-less rooves in Oran Park. There was a perfect opportunity to address a minor but growing part of the problem, but nothing happened. That beggars belief.


The only generation and network capacity 'surplus' that we have to work with is lopping off our peak loads.Which again goes back to solving the problem locally with a vast injection of Solar panels immediately. Ok, there'll be some panel supply shortages until we build the factories etc etc but the point is that it will start providing a solution much earlier than huge power station et al constructions.

This is also why I think we should be getting serious about putting batteries in - ahead of the tech being right. The more income the battery suppliers have the more they can sink into R&D. Yes the first few years of batteries won't be as good as subsequent models and might be a bit more wasteful of resources, but they will have gotten us out of gaol, right? (hopefully).

I mean, what other short term solution is there? The coming summer may just be a tipping point to shake out some decision making from within the deep folds of the Prime Ministerial cloth. If it's a stinker - and that's the forecast - and there are power outages, the electorate is going to get very thirsty for blood, methinks.

If the next summer after that is the same, and even worse for outages as things get older, the next Fed election will be just a few short months after the end of that summer. Crikey, who knows, we might be in for an early election thanks to Section 44, or if someone to the Speaker's right develops some backbone and crosses the floor.

And won't all the critics of SA look like idiots if SA sails through with few problems while the rest of the country is enduring outages at critical times.......

[BobL]

And just to add to the mix we have this going on.
The construction loophole leaving home buyers with higher energy bills - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-10/construction-loophole-leaving-buyers-with-higher-energy-bills/9033916)

[FenceFurniture]

Well it is Brett's thread, and so far he's not complaining about the digression. Yep, all good, as long as I can still whinge when my fourth AGL for the week comes in....

To which digression I'll add -- possibly the least expensive "fix" to SA's and the Eastern States' power woes might be to mandate that for every 10 MWh of solar and wind electricity bid into the market the bidding organisation must be able to supply 5 MWh of "dark time" reserve: battery, pumped hydro, coal generation. This should change the generator pricing equation enough to provide some measure of market certainty to the existing base load stations.I don't know how that would work, but it sounds like a reasonable idea if it's practical.

That prompts me to wonder the following: how do the outages occur? Is it from lack of enough power being generated at the time of peak demand, or is it because the mathematicians have forecast the right demand, and the grid - i.e. after the generation - gets fried by so much power being put into or drawn from it? I would have thought there would be preventative measures against this scenario.

If it's the former, then Ian's (latest) idea would have great merit indeed.

And if it's the latter, and the mathematicians have stuffed it up on one occasion and asked for a huge load of power which is not taken up by the consumers, can we still have an outage even though the demand was not that high? This might perhaps be brought about by a sudden and unforeseen change in the weather (prolly fairly unlikely I guess).

[ian]

So the ACT is at 35% renewable energy.
That just GREAT not.

Canberra's denizens can feel all warm and fuzzy for 2 hours either side of mid day, while sucking the juice out of NSW the rest of the time.

[FenceFurniture]

Yes I just read that before Bob.

[FenceFurniture]

There has to be something deeply wrong with that article about Mugga Lane (not the article itself, but the agreement).

"The Mugga Lane Solar Farm is being paid $178 per Megawatt hour of elec that it produces"

A Megawatt is 1000x a Kilowatt, is it not? (unless they do something radical with the terminology in elec, then that is correct)

That means they are paid $178/1000 = 17.8 cents per kWh as the generator. I don't know if there is a wholesaler involved, but my point is that the generator is being paid just 1.7 cents per kWh less than I am paying for peak juice as a consumer (I pay 19.5 + GST).

So either the elec is charge out at a phenomenally high price, or the retailer makes no margin at all.

Or I'm missing something completely....

[woodPixel]

I'm not defending Canberra, for it's like a microcosm of socialist utopia (i.e. everyone else pays for it) but on the case of solar, they are right onto it.

The city is close to two huge dams (one just finished) and no doubt pumped hydro is part of this.

The government's mission is "The ACT Government said the cost of reaching its renewable energy target of 90 per cent by 2020 was expected to peak at about $4 per household per week in 2020 before declining."

90% for $4 a week is not a high price.

There are many businesses here who will install ground-thermal exchange and quite a few buildings here have it too. Its regularly in the local rag. I've a friend in Red Hill (a bit posh) who has one in his house. It is 20° day and night, summer and winter. It runs from a single solar panel on the roof and four car batteries. This is impressive, as in winter it gets to -10°C (with cold days) and summers are often 35+ (often over 40) and hot nights.

Obviously there is a cost. But there is a vision for the future.

FF talking about black roofs on treeless deserts in new suburbs. These defy all logic. I also see whole new McMansion suburbs here bought with 100% LIAR loans, not one solar panel, not one tree, but they boast imported european granite bathrooms. Jesus H Christ, talk about priorities.

The violence of opposition to alternative energy supply is amazing. It is also irrational and devoid of reason. Boohoo, a few coal power stations are utterly doomed. So frackin what.

[ian]

There has to be something deeply wrong with that article about Mugga Lane (not the article itself, but the agreement).

"The Mugga Lane Solar Farm is being paid $178 per Megawatt hour of elec that it produces"

A Megawatt is 1000x a Kilowatt, is it not? (unless they do something radical with the terminology in elec, then that is correct)

That means they are paid $178/1000 = 17.8 cents per kWh as the generator. I don't know if there is a wholesaler involved, but my point is that the generator is being paid just 1.7 cents per kWh less than I am paying for peak juice as a consumer (I pay 19.5 + GST).

So either the elec is charge out at a phenomenally high price, or the retailer makes no margin at all.

Or I'm missing something completely....you pay a price per kWh averaged over the period of your contract. The Mugga Lane generator is paid 17.8 cents/kWh averaged over perhaps [a long term average of] 4 hours each day. The rest of the time, the ACT is supplied with coal generated power from NSW at maybe 8 cents/kWh.

The real problem I see with what you are reporting is not the minimal margin between your domestic rate and what Mugga Lane are "promised", but that the guarantee is 17.8 cents/kWh, regardless of what the market may be offering -- which on a sunny day might be as little as 6 cents/kWh.
To me it begs the question, just what additional incentives did the ACT Government (a Labor/Green alliance) offer the investors, just so the government could boast 35% solar?

[woodPixel]

That means they are paid $178/1000 = 17.8 cents per kWh as the generator. I don't know if there is a wholesaler involved, but my point is that the generator is being paid just 1.7 cents per kWh less than I am paying for peak juice as a consumer (I pay 19.5 + GST).

So either the elec is charge out at a phenomenally high price, or the retailer makes no margin at all.

Or I'm missing something completely....

We pay 21.7 cents per kWh and 96.14 cents per day supply charge.

There are base load options and whatnot, but thats a bog standard residential.

[Chris Parks]

421752

Burn more coal. Thats the answer. Lets not pursue alternatives, cos CO2 isn't a problem...

BOM drops a special climate statement explaining why it was so hot in September (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-05/september-was-a-scorcher-according-to-bom-special-memo/9018402) and
Spring heatwave hits east coast, with temperatures soaring in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-23/parts-of-australia-to-swelter-through-spring-heat-wave/8977640)

and a clanger from yesterday: Its all too late, the runaway heat buildup may be irreverasable and cascade: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05102017/forest-soil-co2-carbon-global-warming-climate-change-study

We will argue about "cost" of solar, but what is the real cost? I'd argue the cost is the very planet itself. The cost is our grandchildren going through 50 degree days in Sydney: 'Really awful': 50-degree days possible for Sydney, Melbourne, as warming worsens (http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/really-awful-50degree-days-possible-for-sydney-melbourne-as-warming-worsens-20171002-gyt512.html)

Its time we started getting 100% serious about reforestation and planning enormous carbon sinks. We need to stop producing CO2 - TODAY.

Coal plants are not the answer. Reduced consumption and alternative generation is.

It won't happen while our present political leaders are in power and have thinking like this....

Tony Abbott says climate change 'could be beneficial' because people die in the cold (http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-says-climate-change-could-be-beneficial-because-more-people-die-20171009-gyxi9y.html)

Does he understand what he did by spouting this stuff, he made this country look like we are all congenital idiots. To make matters worse he is not the only flat earther in federal govt who has similar views. Sorry to move to political comment but I had to post this as an indicator of how politicians are approaching the issues threatening us.

Edit: the link is a repeat with different headlines but it goes with my comments.

[FenceFurniture]

One thing that did inflame to to apoplexy though is the speech given by our former PM yesterday: Tony Abbott says climate change action is like trying to 'appease the volcano gods' (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-10/tony-abbott-says-action-on-climate-change-is-like-killing-goats/9033090)

Wow, does that guy grill my grits.I dunno Ev, he was preaching to the converted (incidentally, that foundation was started by Nigella Lawson's father), and he has already done his damage to the Liberal Party (in creating and prolonging disunity). I'm not sure there has been any change, or would be any change, in the support/lack of for Climate Change within the Libs. At the same time I think that the general population is slowly coming around to it more fully, so that would just mean that Abbott is grist to the mill for the Libs falling on their sword at the next election, after which we will hopefully get some decent action.

If nothing is almost immediately delivered then (by what would surely have to be a Labor Govt), we will be in very serious trouble.

To be clear, it's not so much that I want Shorten in or Fizza out - I just want some bloody action! I don't give a tinker's cusp who takes the action.

Actually the person I blame the most for the current mess is Kevin Rudd. He had an opportunity to go to a DD Election over the ETS, and he would have crapped it in. He just didn't have the bottle for it. Business may have been gnashing its teeth over it, but they would chow down on it now if it gave them some certainty.

[fletty]

Typing with one finger is hindering me from replying to edited quotes from other posts so I'll just add a few more points to fuel the fire and the reader will have to work out IF and WHERE they fit in but firstly I apologise if WP thought my 'hysteria' remarks were aimed at him and were condescending. My comment related to my experience "from this point" not from his point. Also I am trying to be as balanced as I can, not condescending to anyone. I haven't AND won't even table my preferred solution/s.
Now, back to the controversy

Re time zones, even a 1 hour time shift would make a huge difference. Studies that I've been involved in here in Australia shows that on the first 40 degree day, there is a huge spike between 4 and 6 when people come home and turn their aircon on AND their work aircon is still on. On the second consecutive 40 degree day, that spike is a bit bigger but later because many people stay in the work aircon rather than travel in the heat BUT, on the third consecutive 40 degree day there is a much lower spike because the whole day has been at a much higher level because people leave their aircon on ALL DAY! This is known in the industry as 'cool pet syndrome' If this can be modified and or time phased between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane by their peaks being separated by +/- (say)45 minutes then this can be covered by base load stations being able to predict and having time to react.
Re solar generators without storage, this is huge issue as Ian notes, because let's say Canberra powers its load when the Sun shines but then demands that base load is immediately available when it clouds over, well the base load stations can't respond that quickly and our peaking plants will rake the money in?
I also note that the ANU report referred to in WP's link states that pumped storage will solve all of our problems in installing point of time generators! Well, we couldn't even increase the height of Warragamba Dam for Sydneys DRINKING WATER! I'm not aware of anyone screaming out "quick, please come and dam my river/coastal inlet/tidal gorge?
California edicted a few years back that air conditioners could only be powered by your own solar panels. The idea was that you are only hot when the Sun shines. We sent their power utilities our own data that showed it might work in Sydney if you are within 3 km of the coast BUT, for those of us who experience 38 degree nights in Western Sydney ...... it would lead to riots here, and was quietly dropped there as well!

I will now retire for a while and return to my unairconditioned shed!

[FenceFurniture]

He made this country look like we are all congenital idiots.He's been doing that for years though. I really think that people in general are smart enough to work out who the congenital idiot is, in his case. Mind you, the ABC could help by not reporting it at all - starve the mongrel of oxygen, at home anyway.

Remember that this debate is a bit like voting in general Chris - it's only the swingers whose vote counts for anything at all. Those who are rusted on to either side only achieve background white noise - they don't affect the outcome at all (unless they can convince some of the swingers).

And at this point, even business accepts that coal is not the future.

[Chris Parks]

Is green power from PV roof systems going to add a significant amount of ergs to the system? Canberra obviously think not as they are reducing the carbon credits over the next decade and a half which seems to be backward thinking to say the least. There should be an increase of incentives for even the poorest of households to be able to install a significant solar system, if they don't those least able to afford it are going to cop it in the neck properly. I can see some time next year a move to make Solar systems compulsory for new builds but that is not going to sort out all the existing houses.

The biggest issue with putting a solar system up now is the amount of rip off merchants telling lies and BS and the carbon credit rebate system is the big problem. As soon as an industry has government rebates and subsidies thrown at it prices go up and every shyster south of the equator gets involved, even bigger companies are part of this. You want a quote sir, give me your address and I will do that while we chat on the phone via Google Earth straight from the aerial overheads. There should be other methods of rebate but I can't think what it is.

[FenceFurniture]

Re time zones, even a 1 hour time shift would make a huge difference. If this can be modified and or time phased between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane by their peaks being separated by +/- (say)45 minutes then this can be covered by base load stations being able to predict and having time to react.Yebbut, Brisbane is already phase shifted by one hour in summer (ok, they are the smallest of the 3, and by a fair margin, but they are also the hottest...).

So to shift the time of Syd or Melb will either result in 30 or 60 minutes extra Daylight saving (cos a 15 or 45 minute time shift is NEVER going to work) and I very much doubt that extra daylight saving will ever get up. Shifting one place's time back towards Brisbane time would be self-defeating.

That leaves the only other time shift option to be changing the working hours by an hour for one complete city. I can't see that working either.

Which leaves us with what option/s?

[tonzeyd]

The issue that many governments won't tell you is that they are quite schizo on the matter, particularly in WA. As they are major stakeholders in the infrastructure and retail. So on one hand they want to sell you electricity, whilst on the other hand they want to be see as "customer centric" Obviously loads of funds have been used over the years to build power plants, electricity infrastructure etc and therefore they want to see a return on their investment. Having customers less reliant on the infrastructure isn't good for their business.

Plus the infrastructure is required not only services the residential sector but commercial businesses who cannot simply go off the grid/solar as easily (many don't own the building for eg to install solar). Which is the other sad truth, electricity retailers don't care about residential customers as residential customers are the crumbs compared to commercial businesses. Plus they already subsidise the cost of electricity for residential customers so providing further rebates to help consumers become less reliant isn't good business.

[FenceFurniture]

Is green power from PV roof systems going to add a significant amount of ergs to the system? You just wanted to use that term :D

There should be an increase of incentives for even the poorest of households to be able to install a significant solar system, if they don't those least able to afford it are going to cop it in the neck properly. I can see some time next year a move to make Solar systems compulsory for new builds but that is not going to sort out all the existing houses.

The biggest issue with putting a solar system up now is the amount of rip off merchants telling lies and BS and the Energy retailers don't? At least when purchasing a system you can get a few quotes that will hopefully be apples and apples.Remember that the poorest households will almost certainly be tenants, so they won't have much chance of talking the landlord into it. Just recently I attempted to do exactly that with my excellent and reasonable landlord. My argument was very well reasoned and cogent, with the correct -ve gearing figures put in, and it showed a very low longer term investment (esp considering that this is her retirement home in 8-10 years from now). The answer was a flat "No" - even with a modest rent increase thrown in to help, so I reckon I know how virtually all landlords would react.

As I said in a previous post, not all houses have a roof shape/aspect etc that is suitable, so those people miss out too, through no fault of their own. That is another reason why it has to be a community based approach.

[FenceFurniture]

Having customers less reliant on the infrastructure isn't good for their business. But it does mean they don't have to build as much new infrastructure, which is really where we are with elec - we need some new stuff urgently. We have to play the long AND the short game here.


Plus the infrastructure is required not only services the residential sector but commercial businesses who cannot simply go off the grid/solar as easily (many don't own the building for eg to install solar). Which is the other sad truth, electricity retailers don't care about residential customers as residential customers are the crumbs compared to commercial businesses. Plus they already subsidise the cost of electricity for residential customers so providing further rebates to help consumers become less reliant isn't good business.I imagine that the vast majority of businesses are in rented properties, which is different to residential (maybe not opposite, but certainly skewed that way). Furthermore, the cost is a tax-ded for a business, which is a considerable help to affordability.

I don't disagree that electricity retailers don't care about residential customers, but not for the reasons you cite. I would have thought that residential elec consumption would be the backbone of the retailers business (ignoring the relatively small amount of super-consumers like Alcoa, BHP etc) because of the sheer numbers involved. Residences use elec 24/7 but businesses are often/mostly just for 8-10 hours for five days, with no showers/baths/washing/drying/pools using the vast majority of juice.

[woodPixel]

I wonder why there aren't long term investment funds, like Super schemes, that invest in solar panels on other people's roofs? (should be rooves, stupid english).

Dont want to put them on yourself? No problem, Solar Super will do it for you! They are ours and when you sell, the rights stay with us for the life of the building.

If needed, the panels and inverters can be moved back into the pool and put on other homes if it is demolished.

Im sure the Chinese would do a deal on 30 million panels!

Maybe, just maybe, as super schemes start losing colossal dollars (as they are soon to report, given negative bond yields) that they dont start investing in direct revenue streams (not company shares). This scheme may just be mandated... e.g all funds must invest X% in this, this and that.....

[tonzeyd]

[/B]

I don't disagree that electricity retailers don't care about residential customers, but not for the reasons you cite. I would have thought that residential elec consumption would be the backbone of the retailers business (ignoring the relatively small amount of super-consumers like Alcoa, BHP etc) because of the sheer numbers involved. Residences use elec 24/7 but businesses are often/mostly just for 8-10 hours for five days, with no showers/baths/washing/drying/pools using the vast majority of juice.

I used to think this was the case, but after working as a consultant in the area there is a massive gap between residential customers vs businesses. Yes there are significantly more residential customers than commercial, but collectively commercial businesses use alot more.

Yes i agree businesses are open 8-10 hours a day but the electricity consumption habits are significantly different. Just think of your typical electricity consumption at home, how often is every light in your premises on? whereas the first thing a business does is turn on every light in the premises, plus businesses have an OSH requirement to have lighting at a certain amount of lumens, whereas residential customers just purchase globes that they are "happy" to live with. Then you've got machinery which often times are made to perform rather than save electricity. Plus alot of the functions that residential consumers have businesses have but at a commercial scale, eg washing machines, drying, hot water systems, electric doors, lifts, escalators, heating/cooling which is often on irrespective of outdoor temperature, and then theres lighting at night time simply to balance the load on the grid. i can go on but i digress.

Plus the other reason why retailers don't care about residential customers is because residential and a good chunk of businesses (in WA) don't have a choice. Whereas as a business when you purchase a significant amount of electricity (~$10k pa) you can choose your provider and therefore retailers are very keen to keep your business.

Also the proof is in the pudding, if you want to know if your retailer cares next time you contact your retailer try calling the line for a commercial businesses and try calling the line for residential customers. I'll be surprised if you get better service calling the residential customer line.

[FenceFurniture]

If this "aside" post kicks off any longer discussion then I may ask to get it moved to its own thread, but in the meantime....

I had cause to do a couple of house designs recently, and obviously Solar Panels would be part of this. So that means that the roof needs to be designed to make the best use of things for a particular block of land.

This proved to be quite challenging, and with many things to consider.

Conventional wisdom says:

Panels should be elevated to the same degree as your latitude. This is the best compromise angle. I say "Tosh" to this.
Panels are best to be flat against the roof - this is cheaper than elevating them beyond the roof pitch. I say "Yes" to this.
Panels should be North facing to make the most use of the available sun (in the southern hemi). I say "Maybe, but it depends..." to this.


Looking at point 2 first, this means that the roof pitch should be whatever the panels pitch should be.

Looking at point 3 next, (coz Point 1 could be lively :D) I would be inclined to put up about 50 panels if I could. The rebates are good and are about to start diminishing from Jan 18 at 1/14th per year for 14 years, and as a long term investment I think it is sound. Electric cars will be a thing of the future and when batteries are viable we will need significantly bigger batteries that they think we do now - especially depending on how far we drive each day. The reasons why I think 50 panels would be good are:

It is a cold climate, so heating levels are increased (although proper insulation, design and passivity should help greatly with that)
There would be someone at the premises virtually all day/every day so heating or air-con could be running a fair bit (esp heating)
There would be a juice hungry bunch of machines in a large workshop :;. These also produce heat so air-con comes into play even more.
Electric cars are coming - probably at about the same speed as decent affordable batteries
Until batteries are viable (maybe 4-5 years) enough juice needs to be sent back into the grid during the day to largely offset the usage in the low/non elec production hours (and these are largely the peak usage hours). When batteries are hooked up the feed-in tariffs will just be more bonus for any excess power generated
Having 50 panels means that some could be devoted to North-East and North-West presentation to make more elec earlier and later than with just North facing. This might account for 16 panels (8x NE, 8x NW). This of course depends on the specifics of the block and shading etc from other houses/hills/whatevers.



Noo then. Point 1, the elevation of the panels, which could provoke some discussion......I'll make that a separate post.

[FenceFurniture]

Also the proof is in the pudding, if you want to know if your retailer cares.....What? You think I don't know the answer to that alright already? After what I have been through? :D

Not sure what sort of professional aspect you are coming from (i.e within elec industry or not), but I have no doubt that fletty would have the numbers of the large industry/small industry/residential mix in his head.

[FenceFurniture]

Conventional wisdom says:

Panels should be elevated to the same degree as your latitude. This is the best compromise angle. I say "Tosh" to this.

Roight den. Let the games commence.



Some givens:


The latitude here is 34°
therefore Equinox zenith is 34°
The tilt of the Earth is 23½°
Summer solstice zenith is 10° (34 - 23½)
Winter solstice zenith is 57° (34 + 23½)


So panels at 34° are optimised for maximum production at the two Equinoxes, around March 22 and Sept 22. However, these are in fact periods where no heating or cooling may be necessary, or it could be some of each (we've had a fireplace going Xmas Day). Certainly it is unlikely that either system would be run extensively around the equinox - it is probably the most energy "lite" part of the year.Let's define that as 1 month either side of each Equinox.

That gets me to thinking that perhaps there should be two angles of panels set up, particularly if there are around 50 panels. That would then cater for optimising for 4 periods of the year in which there would be higher demands for heating and cooling, rather than optimising for just 2 periods that have much less energy demand.

So 4 months of low draw have been knocked out, which leaves 8 months to satisfy - one angle each for two periods of 4 months will do it. These 4 month periods will straddle the Solstices, so if an angle halfway between the Soltice Zenith and the Equinox angle is selected it will get covered twice (on the way into each Solstice, and on the way out). They would also provide better solar capture for the Solstice periods (and therefore maximum and sustained heat/cool draw), rather than the 34° compromise.

The angles should be:


(34 + 10)/2 = 22° for Summer and
(34 + 57)/2 = 45° for Winter


Now given that Winter elec producing hours are much shorter than Summer the number of panels should probably be split accordingly

The 50 panels might be split like:


8 facing east, 8 facing west (or perhaps northeast and northwest to again skew it towards winter). Maybe on a 34° roof?
20 on the 45° roof (because there are a great many heating days)
14 on the 22° roof (because there are not too many air-con days.....yet)




It makes designing the roof somewhat.....ah.....tricky, to say the least. Particularly when you have to take in the aspect of the land, the desired floorplan, location of other houses, trees, Council requirements. You get the idea....eez difficult.


Incidentally, for those who don't know, Solar Panels don't work on heat - they work on light, and in fact heat makes them less efficient (colder temps allow for a higher voltage to be produced). I think that light is specifically UV (IIRC) so they work best at altitude for two reasons: colder with higher UV.

[FenceFurniture]

....Oh alright so it doesn't BUT it does create more usable electricity for those without a battery. Think about it - the elec producing hours are shifted forward an hour, into the peak draw time. So you lose an hour in the morning when the draw is low but you get an extra hour in the late arvo when the draw is high.

[Chris Parks]

Remember that the poorest households will almost certainly be tenants, so they won't have much chance of talking the landlord into it. Just recently I attempted to do exactly that with my excellent and reasonable landlord. My argument was very well reasoned and cogent, with the correct -ve gearing figures put in, and it showed a very low longer term investment (esp considering that this is her retirement home in 8-10 years from now). The answer was a flat "No" - even with a modest rent increase thrown in to help, so I reckon I know how virtually all landlords would react.

As I said in a previous post, not all houses have a roof shape/aspect etc that is suitable, so those people miss out too, through no fault of their own. That is another reason why it has to be a community based approach.

My comments were directed at the new householder who in the first ten or so years of ownership generally find they have no discretionary money to spend on big capital improvement items cash poor could be a better term.

[fletty]

In response to earlier posts;

About 80% of outages by time lost, occur at the 11kV level and therefore have nil to very little to do with generation. It is mostly to do with critical equipment failure even though the majority of Australian networks are designed to N-1 standard. 'N-1' means that any single piece of equipment can fail without causing an outage but if 2 pieces fail, then......? The second biggest outage mode is inadvertent damage such a vehicles hitting poles, accidental cable dig ups, animals and vandalism.
Re outages due to lack of generation, (In NSW for example) by far the bulk of electricity is transmitted to the 3 distribution utilities by Transgrid, the transmission utility. Their Control room is constantly monitoring the input into their system from the generators and the output to the 3 utilities (plus (I think) 2 mega customers. If it looks like the required output is going to exceed the input, Transgrid advise the 3 utilities who will implement very well planned and rehearsed load shedding actions. IF THIS DIDNT HAPPEN, then the whole network can collapse, as happened in the North East USA about 20 years ago. The consequence of a complete collapse is horrendous and requires what is known as a 'black start' to get the network up again. A 'black start' is also planned and rehearsed but can obviously only be a virtual exercise. The problem is that you require electric power to start a generator and, if you don't have that power, then.....
Back in the 'old days' there would have been less than a dozen inputs to the system (= generators) and that made the monitoring of the system as above fairly easy BUT there are now thousands of input points some of these are effected by no wind, others by no sunshine, flat seas, low water levels etc and so the constant matching of input to output is infinitely more complicated and hence has had to be automated. Don't forget that you have to exactly match input to output + losses. There is no such thing as surplus electricity or at least there isn't until storage becomes significant. That is the reason why storage is so essential to stabilise a network that has thousands of inputs and millions of outputs many of which vary by environmental and human factors that can't be controlled nor forecast by the network operators.
The fact that we can flick a switch and 99.998% of the time there is power available, is a minor miracle!

[Bushmiller]

Brett

Roof pitch may not be viable. Remember that solar is already an expensive form of power at the moment. The additional costs involved in making either the roof a different pitch (1/4 pitch or 22 1/2 degs is fairly standard in Australia) or adjustable angle would probably price it out of the market. One day solar tracking might solve this problem and large scale installations will have that facility already. The Solar thermal has to have that, but if the reflectors suffer a malfunction many can be blinded!

Solar PV loose their efficiency as the temp climbs above 25 degs C so not that hot in Australian conditions. You make a good point about Autumn and Spring. These are traditionally the quiet periods where the big generators organise their scheduled maintenance with one or more units down for extended periods. Of course a sudden and unexpected heatwave causes high prices.

One other point: Go back thirty years and winter was the peak electricity useage period, but with the commonplace advent of air conditioners summer has taken over that spot easily.

Regards
Paul

[FenceFurniture]

Cockups & incompetence are now officially on an industrial scale.

Way back in post #1:
I had not had my regular Gas bill issued after 16th Sept

yap

yap

yap

What's next, I wonder?

there IS more......

yap

yap

yap

I think there must be about 6-8 cockups in that lot above, which makes a mere dozen or so for the day. A superb effort indeed!Not even a WHISPER of sympathy (AND it was back on topic):bawl::rant2: :roflmao2:

[FenceFurniture]

Roof pitch may not be viable. Remember that solar is already an expensive form or power at the moment. The additional costs involved in making either the roof a different pitch (1/4 pitch or 22 1/2 degs is fairly standard in Australia) Yeah, and 45° is hell difficult to work on once it's built. Not to mention having different parts of the roof at different angles being a probable eyesore.

So I think the answer there is to make the roof ¼ pitch at 22½° and then just lift up the "Winter" panels with the extenders that they have. They add a little cost which would be easily offset by the cheaper roof (and probably just in terms of less sheet steel apart from anything else).

[Bohdan]

...just lift up the "Winter" panels with the extenders that they have. They add a little cost which would be easily offset by the cheaper roof (and probably just in terms of less sheet steel apart from anything else).

Looked at this option when I installed my system but for the extra cost in the tilt increase you can just add more panels and get the same output in winter with lots more in summer.

[Bushmiller]

Funnily enough I have gone down the adjustable angle path, but not with our Solar PV installation (5KW). A while back we decided to put in a small pond. i wanted to pump the water to avoid stagnation and a mossie haven so I bought a pump, panels and planned on using a battery. I made up adjustable frames so that I could increase the angle for winter and maximise my capture of the sun. It is an amazing idea, but completely untried as after two years there have been any number of projects that have taken priority.

The point of this is the principle, sound, but in practice not so good unless it was automated ( and some clown got off his {posterior} and did a bit.)

Regards
Paul

[fletty]

Not even a WHISPER of sympathy (AND it was back on topic):bawl::rant2: :roflmao2:

Sorry, will send suitably sympathetic emoji.....

:doh: uhhm, no...

:; nah

:fart2:probably not

:hihi: maybe......

:stress: that's it!

[FenceFurniture]

Hmmph. :~

[ian]

Sorry, will send suitably sympathetic emoji.....

:doh: uhhm, no...

:; nah

:fart2:probably not

:hihi: maybe......

:stress: that's it!:whs:

[Chris Parks]

Sorry, will send suitably sympathetic emoji.....

:doh: uhhm, no...

:; nah

:fart2:probably not

:hihi: maybe......

:stress: that's it!

An excellent response. As for the rant in the opening post I give it a 7.5 out of 10, good but could have been better in sticking it to the companies that supply your power.

[bryn23]

Interesting thread,

I didn't even give my electric company the chance to better the price, before switching, if they wanted to keep me, then they should have offered a better deal.

I am about to embark on seeing if i can install solar panels on my industrial workshop (not being used as a business) and link both addresses to the single electric account so i can automatically access the excess power credits for my inner city apartment, as i can't have solar panels there

It seems simple enough, but it'll be interesting if i can do it.

[NCArcher]

Re outages due to lack of generation, (In NSW for example) by far the bulk of electricity is transmitted to the 3 distribution utilities by Transgrid, the transmission utility. Their Control room is constantly monitoring the input into their system from the generators and the output to the 3 utilities (plus (I think) 2 mega customers. If it looks like the required output is going to exceed the input, Transgrid advise the 3 utilities who will implement very well planned and rehearsed load shedding actions. IF THIS DIDNT HAPPEN, then the whole network can collapse, as happened in the North East USA about 20 years ago. The consequence of a complete collapse is horrendous and requires what is known as a 'black start' to get the network up again. A 'black start' is also planned and rehearsed but can obviously only be a virtual exercise. The problem is that you require electric power to start a generator and, if you don't have that power, then.....


Tomago aluminium smelter is one Mega customer, who's the other?
Loy Yang PS in the Latrobe Valley has a massive gas fired back up generator for black starts. It sounds like a jumbo jet taking off when you start it. Loy Yang has 4x 500MW generators. From memory, you need around 20MW for a black start. Older power stations don't have that facility so have to wait for Loy Yang to start before they can go back online. In the control room for each generator there is a button labelled "Prepare to offload". It tells Transgrid that they are about to lose 500MW of power. Things really get interesting if you inadvertently press that button. :D

[FenceFurniture]

Here you go Chris:
Perth start-up using blockchain technology for peer-to-peer trading - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-11/perth-start-up-using-blockchain-technology/9035616)

[fletty]

Tomago aluminium smelter is one Mega customer, who's the other?



All of the re/incarnations of BHP at Wollongong

[Bushmiller]

Tomago aluminium smelter is one Mega customer, who's the other?
Loy Yang PS in the Latrobe Valley has a massive gas fired back up generator for black starts. It sounds like a jumbo jet taking off when you start it. Loy Yang has 4x 500MW generators. From memory, you need around 20MW for a black start. Older power stations don't have that facility so have to wait for Loy Yang to start before they can go back online. In the control room for each generator there is a button labelled "Prepare to offload". It tells Transgrid that they are about to lose 500MW of power. Things really get interesting if you inadvertently press that button. :D

I think any significantly large consumer can enter into the contract system so that includes all the aluminium refineries. Actually that brings up the aspect on which Fletty touched: load shedding. There is a smelter in QLD which is the last to load shed. They don't want their pot lines to solidify as it takes months to dig them out with a jackhammer. Consequently up here the consumer sitting down to tea gets the chop first. Not so in NSW. It's the other way around.

Restarting after a blackout is problematical as you have stated. In any thermal station there are several very large electric motors. The first will be an electric feed pump ( ours is 5MW and small, Bayswater's was over 9MW), but although the largest motor it is not the most difficult to start. The biggest problem is the Induced Draft Fan (ID Fan for short). Although smaller (Bayswater's ID is >8MW) it takes about 20 secs to get to full speed as as it is a multi pole motor. During that time it draws about four times it's running current. It's enough to make a gas turbine bounce on it's pedestal if it is not big enough.

So yes, other stations have to start first. The stations with Gas Turbines or the stand alone Gas Turbines of which nowadays there are plenty. A "Black Start" is still one of aspects most feared by power stations. It is the equivalent to the nuclear holocaust in war. It is also a situation that is rehearsed in case it should ever happen.

Regards
Paul

[swk]

Here you go Chris:
Perth start-up using blockchain technology for peer-to-peer trading - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-11/perth-start-up-using-blockchain-technology/9035616)

Yes, beat me to it. Pretty much anything you can think of as far as trading goes can potentially be done. The issue is really how do you manage who uses what and who pays, but that is getting easier with smart meters and more massive computer power.

Someone earlier said that people in apartments wouldn't be able to use solar panels because they dont have the space. Perfectly simple, put up a set and manage it as any other strata title service. Here is an article (https://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/solar-panels-for-apartment-buildings-options-and-benefits/) from 4 years ago.

Landlords. It's only their reluctance to have a more complicated life and they see no benefit to _themselves_. There are a number of companies already which will do leasing plans (https://www.energyaustralia.com.au/home/solar-and-batteries/finance-options) no upfront costs, so landlords dont even have to do anything now, smarter long term thinkers will start to take this up and cream some of the payments off for themselves. At an extreme, when (if?) the economics swing to such a point that a company can make enough from generating into the system (imagine a distributed solar farm in the city) it's quite plausible that they may even pay to use a landlords roof. Watch the landlords fight each other to get some solar installed then (no good for the tenant in that scenario though).

Basically there are people now thinking about how to game this new technology and they do it for a living. We are only at the start of it.

Regards
SWK

[FenceFurniture]

That's just further food for putting up as many panels now as possible while the rebates are highest - worry about what to do with all the lecky later.

[Chris Parks]

Here you go Chris:
Perth start-up using blockchain technology for peer-to-peer trading - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-11/perth-start-up-using-blockchain-technology/9035616)

They must have been reading this thread....damn another good idea stolen :U

[swk]

About 80% of outages by time lost, occur at the 11kV level and therefore have nil to very little to do with generation. It is mostly to do with critical equipment failure even though the majority of Australian networks are designed to N-1 standard. 'N-1' means that any single piece of equipment can fail without causing an outage but if 2 pieces fail, then......? The second biggest outage mode is inadvertent damage such a vehicles hitting poles, accidental cable dig ups, animals and vandalism.



I want to expand on what Fletty said here.

In cities and larger country towns the topology of the electrical system is something like a wheel with spokes. The hub is a zone substation which imports power at a middle level voltage (22-66kV) and steps it down through transformers to, typically, 11kV (but maybe slightly more or less). The 11kV is the voltage of the "spokes" which are called feeders. The feeders have a string of 11kV/415V transformers (like a string of beads!) where each transformer supplies its own little patch of houses (or shops or a single factory etc)
The N-1 which Fletty describes is (usually) true for equipment in the zone substations (and most higher voltage systems that supply them too), however from the feeder level and down there is no duplication because it makes no economic sense to have two supplies to your house (unless it isn't your house, it is a hospital for safety reasons or a shopping centre which is prepared to pay extra for the privilege). Anyway, so if a car hits a pole and brings some of the 11kV down or a tree branch falls across it or someone decides to shoot them out for target practice (yes, it does happen in capital cities too, but thankfully rarely) the protection devices in the substation see this and cut off the feeder. The outage time is then determined by the time it takes to get crew out to either fix and restore or check all clear and restore. As fletty says, these are the more common outages by far and most likely what happen to you when your power went out last week. Usually they only affect 10s to a small number of 100s of people and are only for 1-2 hours. But they are very common, there are usually some every day. The distribution companies get penalised if there are too many outages or they go for too long (SAIDI, SAIFI and CAIDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIDI)) so they are trying to minimise outage numbers and times. The feeders have always been set up so that they could be cross linked to each other or connected to feeders from other substations so that restoration could be carried out quickly. Similarly (some) feeders have always been set up so that when they detect a fault the substation switches them off, waits a while and then switches back on. If the original fault was say a strip of bark or some wheat stalks blowing onto the line, it may have blown off or burnt up and be gone. You can usually tell when transient faults like this happen as your house lights will flicker. If the fault remains though, the substation will shut off the feeder permanently.
What the distributors are doing now is putting more remotely operated switches on the lines so that once a problem is detected the crosslinking of good sections and the removal of the faulted section can be automatically done.

Which gets us back to the small group of consumers running their own little pool.
If the pool is limited to your local block (ie below the 11/415 transformer level) they must use the distributors wires, how might they pay for that?
If the pool is limited to the feeder level, they have to use the distributors wires and transformers, and what happens during a fault when the feeder automation is isolating a bad section _with power still going into it from all the microgenerators_? (microgenerators, because it could be solar but it could be small wind turbines or little gas turbines which are in use in Europe now or something no body has thought of yet. Batteries dumping into a fault?)
If the pool is not limited to the feeder level, the power can flow from feeder to feeder in the zone substation, this can have imlications for how the protection works (it was never designed expecting power to come back), who will pay for mods there.
And the last thing that might interest Bushmiller, if the power flows back through the substation transformer as the microgenerators share power between zone subs, the step down transformer's OLTC is actually only designed to work one way. This is a big problem and we are on the verge of seeing it happen in real life now (solar has suppressed the current flow through some zone subs under good solar conditions, but not yet to the extent of reversing it. However, this is becoming a plausible if rare scenario)
I'm not saying these things are stoppers, they just give a taste of the complications ahead.

Regards
SWK

[FenceFurniture]

A few questions got lost/buried/ignored in the mix, so if anyone fancies a crack at them:

(in response to fletty's first post) Some questions come out of what you have written so far:
1. Who is it that buys these "futures" of power? I think you indicated it was the retailers buying from the generators, but where does the wholesaler fit into that?
2. What is the daily supply charge about? Is it a rort or is there actually something of substance to it?

In post #73 I was talking about hooking into battery production now, even though the tech isn't quite ready, because:
"My point being that we need the solution before it can be delivered via new power stations."

In my post #118 addressed to fletty:
"Which leaves us with what option/s?"

"I have no doubt that fletty would have the numbers of the large industry/small industry/residential mix in his head." i.e. who are the biggest consumers overall?

And some things that have had no reaction, and some feedback would be useful:
Yep, and I reckon Mike Baird sold the Poles & Wires at the peak time - they won't be worth a bumper once Solar has a decent take up rate.

Anyone have any reaction to my thoughts on Green Power (http://www.woodworkforums.com/f28/getting-energy-deal-joke-217233/2#post2049963)?

[FenceFurniture]

Which gets us back to the small group of consumers running their own little pool.
If the pool is limited to your local block (ie below the 11/415 transformer level) they must use the distributors wires, how might they pay for that?Until shown otherwise I'm still working on the assumption that the daily supply charge by the retailers is (at least largely) currently a rort. That would be a good opportunity for them to earn it.

[FenceFurniture]

There's hardly a few hours go by without an energy news story:
The Government wants to pay you to switch off this summer - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-11/power-scheme-offers-rewards-for-switching-off-in-peak-times/9037526)

[Chris Parks]

I think that the solar provider (let's call them that) will be treated the way a car user is treated, the roads are there so we as users pay a fee in the form of registration to access the road network, solar suppliers will pay a fee to use the poles and wires. That scenario is simplistic but I would be surprised if it varied much. The fee may vary somewhat based on the amount transported and how much of the network is used but broadly speaking that is how I see it happening. Why the start up in Perth is choosing to use digital currency is above my pay grade or understanding but I guess the whole thing can be tied together without using the banking system until the digital currency is sold to acquire AUD. The banks might be P'd off at that but good luck sometimes happens.

[Chris Parks]

There's hardly a few hours go by without an energy news story:
The Government wants to pay you to switch off this summer - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-11/power-scheme-offers-rewards-for-switching-off-in-peak-times/9037526)

I don't think the technical systems exist in NSW to do that. In VIC the smart meter program is fully installed or near enough but I wonder how they individually monitor it? Let's see, its a bit hot and I want to save a few dollars for christmas pressies, turn off the AC, jump in the car and go to the local shopping centre and chill out there. Maybe they need to give it a bit more thought or maybe Westfield are in on this.

[swk]

Batteries

You can use your car to go and collect some groceries from the shops for your up coming holiday, you can then use it to drive the family to Sydney (or some other exotic place :D) for that holiday, if you cant afford the hotels when you get there you can sleep in your car. Arguably, these aren't the same "uses" of a car.

People tend to think in terms of a battery storing power so they can use it, either at a low level personally in their own home or at a more esoteric level "to power the state" (or town or local area or whatever). It is true about storing power for use at a household level is reaching the stage where it is possible (but not economical, yet, at least in cities) to meet the complete household demand while the renewables are dormant. But away from the house level, that isn't what batteries (and the associated equipment that goes with them) are really about. From memory there are about 7 things batteries can do or help with (I don't remember them all!) and any one battery can do one or more things (just like your car)

Capacity Firming - Can help renewables be surer of their output over periods when they are bidding into the market, so is less riskier (ie cheaper) for them to bid.

Load Levelling/Peak Shaving - are similar but not the same. Similar to the example from earlier with the pumped hydro, where you take excess power in one part of the day and use it in another (load levelling). Similar concept (peak shaving) where you use the stored battery energy to export during times of rarer peaks (eg summer peak) means you don't have to build a generator just for that peak (saves infrastructure costs).

Voltage Support - Batteries can be used to import/export VArs

Power Quality - batteries can smooth out trashy waveforms which could damage equipment. Not such a problem in Australia as we already have a fairly high quality network (except for the fringes) but pretty useful in less developed places.

Bear the above in mind when you hear pollies or whoever say that such and such a battery is too small to supply whatever. As an example, the new Tesla battery being installed in SA (I have nothing to do with it, by the way) of 100MW for 1 hour or there abouts, would have been amply big enough to reduce the famous SA state wide black out (if it had been connected to the southern part of the system). There would have still been loss of everything north and west of where the towers went over because that left a big mismatch between generation and load, but the support the battery is capable of giving, even for just a few minutes would easily have supported the remaining southern generation (particularly the wind) and allowed the remainder of the system to stabilise and stay on.

Electrical power systems are really complex and all the parts interact in complex ways. Some people (like pollies) want simple answers where there are none. Where those people have refused to address the old difficult questions, time has lead to more complications and the questions have got even harder to answer. But they must be answered _at some time_. Kicking the can down the road only works for a while.
(Same for climate)

Regards
SWK

[Bushmiller]

As an example, the new Tesla battery being installed in SA (I have nothing to do with it, by the way) of 100MW for 1 hour or there abouts, would have been amply big enough to reduce the famous SA state wide black out (if it had been connected to the southern part of the system). There would have still been loss of everything north and west of where the towers went over because that left a big mismatch between generation and load, but the support the battery is capable of giving, even for just a few minutes would easily have supported the remaining southern generation (particularly the wind) and allowed the remainder of the system to stabilise and stay on.

Electrical power systems are really complex and all the parts interact in complex ways. Some people (like pollies) want simple answers where there are none. Where those people have refused to address the old difficult questions, time has lead to more complications and the questions have got even harder to answer. But they must be answered _at some time_. Kicking the can down the road only works for a while.
(Same for climate)

Regards
SWK

SWK

Nice explanation. I liken it to what a masseur once told me. He could fix a bruised or otherwise damaged muscle, but he couldn't repair a broken tendon.

As to the pollies and their self-centred agendas.......I don't think I should say :((

Regards
Paul

[swk]

Until shown otherwise I'm still working on the assumption that the daily supply charge by the retailers is (at least largely) currently a rort. That would be a good opportunity for them to earn it.

It may be a rort (I dont know). But don't get the distributors mixed up with the retailers.

There are simplistically 4 groups involved in this.
The Generators - they make the electricity (produce the goods)
Transmission - they move the electricity between generators and towns (like semis move bulk freight) They own the big lines you see in the country.
Distribution - they spread the electricity in the town to the consumers (like a delivery van business) They own the lines you see in the city
Retailers - buy the electricity (from the generators) and send out the bills. They own the meters

Generators supply electricity into the pool and get a pool price back. This varies with demand and who can generate.
Retailers buy out of the pool at whatever the pool price is.

The pool price varies from a typical 6-10c/kWh to a capped maximum of 14$/kWh. Dollars, not cents. (VoLL, might be a bit higher than that now, I've lost touch)
If you are an idiot, you buy and sell direct into the pool (like I believe BHP (http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/bhp-offers-plan-to-solve-south-australias-power-crisis/news-story/81b3137efd2b0f637f2ce553658ae59c) did) and when you get burned (as you must) you then understand that there are financial tools such as hedging where a generator will go to a retailer and say, hey we will come to an arrangement with you that if the pool price is low the retailers will give some money back to the generator and if it is high the generator will give their profits to the retailer. Over time it averages out a reasonable cost (with less risk) for both.

In the mean time the distributors and the transmission companies get a fixed "cut" of the electricity they carry (DUOS and TUOS respectively) which is set by the government as a "fair" return and argued about every 5 years or so.

Since it is the retailers which collect the money from the customers (unless you are a very big customer and should have worked out a proper deal direct) it is the retailers who work out the split of charges. Does it make sense to charge a "rental" on their equipment in your house or could they absorb that in the rate they charge you? (of course they could) but I don't know enough to go there.

Regards
SWK

[FenceFurniture]

It may be a rort (I dont know). But don't get the distributors mixed up with the retailers.

Does it make sense to charge a "rental" on their equipment in your house or could they absorb that in the rate they charge you? (of course they could) but I don't know enough to go there.No, I definitely don't get them mixed up, which is why I question just exactly what the retailers do. So far it sounds like not much at all.

My retailer was AGL, and is now Origin
Distributor (wholesaler) is Endeavour Energy

Endeavour does all the maintenance, AGL does none (same for whoever next door is using as their retailer). I'd be pretty sure that it's Endeavour that does the meter reads too, and then just hands them out to the various retailers for their billing purposes.

So as far as I am concerned the only conscionable way the retailers can charge for daily supply is if Endeavour (or whoever the distributor happens to be) charges the retailers for a daily supply to each property. I'll not be at all surprised to learn that they don't, and IF they do, it would be a much smaller amount than the consumer is charged.

fletty?

[woodPixel]

There are simplistically 4 groups involved in this.
The Generators - they make the electricity (produce the goods)
Transmission - they move the electricity between generators and towns (like semis move bulk freight) They own the big lines you see in the country.
Distribution - they spread the electricity in the town to the consumers (like a delivery van business) They own the lines you see in the city
Retailers - buy the electricity (from the generators) and send out the bills. They own the meters

Four cuts of the pie where there used to be one.

Rent seekers and ticket clippers at every step.

[tonzeyd]

[QUOTE=swk;2050327]It may be a rort (I dont know). But don't get the distributors mixed up with the retailers.

There are simplistically 4 groups involved in this.
The Generators - they make the electricity (produce the goods)
Transmission - they move the electricity between generators and towns (like semis move bulk freight) They own the big lines you see in the country.
Distribution - they spread the electricity in the town to the consumers (like a delivery van business) They own the lines you see in the city
Retailers - buy the electricity (from the generators) and send out the bills. They own the meters

/QUOTE]

In WA the transmission and distribution are owned by the same mob (Western Power) they also own the meters

[swk]

Four cuts of the pie where there used to be one.

Rent seekers and ticket clippers at every step.

No disagreement from me there.
(remember, privatisation is more efficient)


Regards
SWK

[pintek]

Power Quality - batteries can smooth out trashy waveforms which could damage equipment. Not such a problem in Australia as we already have a fairly high quality network (except for the fringes) but pretty useful in less developed places.

A lot of the issue in SA was because of the frequency fluctuation due to asynchronous generation from solar & wind, which was then compounded by the storm and transmission tower collapse - but the Vic interconnect was already disconnected due to the frequency limits being tripped before the towers collapsed.

A power station operator explained to me a little while back that the frequency meter in the control room used to hardly move (which has limits of 49 - 51 Hz. Beyond that protection kicks in) The more base load power was removed from the grid and asynchronous generation was added, the worse it has got. It think this summer, in Victoria at least, will be very telling of just how unstable things have already got. Batteries IMO, are simply a short term solution at best.

[FenceFurniture]

Retailers - buy the electricity (from the generators) and send out the bills. They own the metersSurely the Distributors own the meters? Otherwise the meter ownership will have to be transferred every time I change retailer (which might be quite a bit from now on).

Also, when my Gas meter wasn't on the distribuor's data base (Jemena) it was up to them to sort it out, not AGL. As I understand things, it the "Billing rights" that become the property of the retailer, not the meter. Furthermore, it would then be each retailer's job to read their own meters, so there might be ten readers reading 10% each of the meters in each street - drastically inefficient.

[FenceFurniture]

Batteries IMO, are simply a short term solution at best.You mean like the State owned batteries in SA?

[woodPixel]

Here you go Chris:
Perth start-up using blockchain technology for peer-to-peer trading - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-11/perth-start-up-using-blockchain-technology/9035616)

Sounds good. Doesn't work.

Blockchain simply doesnt scale. The end. ICOs are a fraud and Bitcoin triply so.

A Lot of people are going to lose their shirts, homes and family over ICO's and Bitcoin/Ethereum. Its tulips multiplied by speculation multiplied by hucksters.

Its exactly the same noise I heard from the inside before the dotcom crash wiped these frauds off the map.

About the only thing blockchain is actually useful for is perhaps taxation, contract enforcement or recording transactions for a retailer.

The hucksters flogging this vapourware are simply trying to stuff a turkey into the blockchain trendiness. Every investor will go down in flames. The blockchain is utterly unnecessary for this business model.

[Dibbers]

So i'm not overly technical when it comes to electricity generation or distribution, but as a layperson regarding the topic, it seems to me that it would be beneficial to both the government, the consumer and to business if there were greater emphasis on the implementation of battery storage (e.g. the Tesla System) in all new residential builds (and potentially some form of well governed subsidy for existing residences, not that i've ever seen any evidence of a well governed subsidy so i'm not holding my breath on that one).

Fact is, whether you're arguing for the environment, or for ensuring the country doesn't experience rolling blackouts every time the mercury hits 30 degrees or more, a tesla battery in say 30% of Aussie homes will significantly reduce the amount of juice needed from the grid during these peak periods... it would also mean we burn less coal which I think everyone, other than the suppository of all knowledge, agree is a good thing.

Now, the downside (if you can call it that) is that your AGLs and Origins and Adani's all lose a massive chuck of coin.... now people see this as meaning job losses etc, but if everyone had an extra $1500 to spend a year or whatever the average household bill is, then it would boost the economy in other areas and create jobs too (particularly in the renewables sector).

I have a habit of over simplifying things though, so there may be more wholes in this post than in the SA summer power supply...

[FenceFurniture]

Well I can't for the life of me see why we need so many retailers. A small handful is all that is required for competition (although it makes collusion easier). Add to that the number of different ways they skin the cat (to get the same result), and it just becomes more difficult and confusing for the consumer, not easier or better.

It's the same for NBN retailers. There is a BEWILDERING amount to choose from (just been through it), which just makes all the more time consuming to select one. Most of them seem to offer more or less the same thing anyway, but it takes ages to establish that and make a choice. At least comparing NBN plans is much simpler and doesn't require fairly complex spreadsheets.

Of course we need some competition to keep the bastards honest(ish), but we need to be sensible about it too.

[Bohdan]

No disagreement from me there.
(remember, privatisation is more efficient)


Regards
SWK

At gouging absurd profits from the consumer with the gov claiming "nothing to do with us".

[swk]

In slightly different order:


My retailer was AGL, and is now Origin
Distributor (wholesaler) is Endeavour Energy

The distributor is not the wholesaler. They are just the delivery people. They don't buy and on sell. They get a fixed price for all the units they shift.
In fact they (most likely) have two main income streams. "Regulated" where they look after all the infrastructure they own and do things the state regulator says they must, like maintenance and new builds. From that they get an income based on how much electricity is shifted and which is also related to the value of their asset. They also can get penalised and have money taken away if they don't perform (SAIDI etc). There is also an "unregulated" stream where they can do contract work for anyone, just the same as any other contractor.



Endeavour does all the maintenance, AGL does none (same for whoever next door is using as their retailer). I'd be pretty sure that it's Endeavour that does the meter reads too, and then just hands them out to the various retailers for their billing purposes.

I dont know the real set up in NSW but yes. Endeavour (and others) would do the work for AGL (and others) as a contractor and pass on the costs (they would never just hand them out). This would be reading, testing, new installs and repair/replace.


So as far as I am concerned the only conscionable way the retailers can charge for daily supply is if Endeavour (or whoever the distributor happens to be) charges the retailers for a daily supply to each property. I'll not be at all surprised to learn that they don't, and IF they do, it would be a much smaller amount than the consumer is charged.


Very unlikely Endeavour charge a daily supply charge. But at the end of the day the retailer can split their billing how they like. I assume they justify the supply charge as some fixed rental of "their" meters. They don't have to do it this way. They could allow everyone "free" use of their meters and bump up the kWh rates (they could also charge everyone a high supply charge and zero rates for usage, that'd work too). Makes no difference to their bottom line, only the optics change.



No, I definitely don't get them mixed up, which is why I question just exactly what the retailers do. So far it sounds like not much at all.

Very, very, very rough breakdown (others can correct me, please). Your total bill goes something like this:

Generator 25%
Transmission 10%
Distribution 25%
Retailer 25%
GST 10%
The Rest (feed in tariffs etc) 5%

In the old days meter reading (now the responsibility of retailers) was very labour intensive. Every single meter had to be physically visited every 90 days (and more for complaints etc). That was very expensive. Not so much now due to smart meters etc. But there is still a lot of old stuff around.
When the National market first started there was an immediate reaction to generators "gaming" the system. A year or three ago, the distributors got a bit of bad press over "gold plating" the system. Expect in the near future similar scrutiny of the retailers.
I am not saying these things dont/didn't happen. What I am saying is that the rules made by pollies and lawyers to get a certain outcome will be thought about very carefully and will be played. It isn't any use saying "those guys aren't doing what we wanted them to do". Those guys job is to maximise their profits within the rules. If they (eg) base their costs on high labour useage (eg reading meters) and get an agreement on that, then work out how to cut that labour usage (smart meters) that's actually how privatisation is meant to work. If no one checks up on them, to claw those savings/profits back, whose fault is that?

Shorter answer; I mostly agree with you, I think they are probably getting away with soaking up too much of our bills right now, but it's probably not a huge amount and if enough people put the torch to the belly of their pollies, the pollies will pass on the love to the retailers. But this is a sideshow to the main game of what will the future electrical system look like.

Regards
SWK

[swk]

A lot of the issue in SA was because of the frequency fluctuation due to asynchronous generation from solar & wind, which was then compounded by the storm and transmission tower collapse - but the Vic interconnect was already disconnected due to the frequency limits being tripped before the towers collapsed.

A power station operator explained to me a little while back that the frequency meter in the control room used to hardly move (which has limits of 49 - 51 Hz. Beyond that protection kicks in) The more base load power was removed from the grid and asynchronous generation was added, the worse it has got. It think this summer, in Victoria at least, will be very telling of just how unstable things have already got. Batteries IMO, are simply a short term solution at best.

I'm an ex power station operator and I believe Bushmiller is a current one. The limits are much finer than 1Hz, closer to 0.3 Hz for load shedding. Yes, it's true that some older wind generators are "asynchronous" (like the ones in SA) newer ones aren't. But it is the VAr support from batteries (the point above the one you quoted) which is what fixes that problem. Not a short term solution. An actual fix.

Regards
SWK

[swk]

Surely the Distributors own the meters? Otherwise the meter ownership will have to be transferred every time I change retailer (which might be quite a bit from now on).

Also, when my Gas meter wasn't on the distribuor's data base (Jemena) it was up to them to sort it out, not AGL. As I understand things, it the "Billing rights" that become the property of the retailer, not the meter. Furthermore, it would then be each retailer's job to read their own meters, so there might be ten readers reading 10% each of the meters in each street - drastically inefficient.

You're probably right about ownership in NSW. In that case the retailers maybe "renting" the meters from whoever does own them. (WoodPixel, not wrong about rent seekers and clippers) I had an idea that the distributor in SA did once own the meters, but in the last year or so this was transitioned to some independent holding body. Each meter has a "NIMMI" number (I think that's right) with all the data about ownership, retailer, customer and history sitting in a data base which is used by, but not owned by the retailers (and anyone else that needs it). I know who did look after it, I thought that had changed recently. I had cause about 3 years ago to look over someones shoulder as we tried to work out a way to power up my kids "new" 1900s house which hadn't been supplied for 7 years and the old meter had disappeared. How messy that was, took near on 2 months to get power. Kids didn't have an account with a retailer so couldn't get a meter put on and didn't have a meter so couldn't get a retailer. Apparently there was at least one other person in Adelaide stuck in the same boat at the same time.

For another great anecdote, I know about 12 months ago one particular retailer went around to various customers and "upgraded" the meters. Only thing was the upgraded meters (for some reason, software compatibility I think) couldn't be used by some of the other retailers, so when any "upgraded" customers wanted to change over to a new retailer they got a "sorry, we cant accept you as a new customer because we are unable to use that type of meter". That caused a little fuss.
They tried my place, but couldn't de-energise the meter. Nice one, I got home and wondered why the clocks were flashing. Then asked around and found out what they were up to!

Regards
SWK

[NCArcher]

In NSW, at least, the meters are owned by the distributor, Endeavour, Ausgrid, Essential. You were close SWK, each meter has a NMI number. National Meter Identifier. You can't have imcompatability issues because the meters are issued by the distributor after filling out many, many forms and the customer opening an account with a retailer.

[swk]

...You can't have imcompatability issues because the meters are issued by the distributor after filling out many, many forms and the customer opening an account with a retailer.

I spoke to the guy in SAPN who was very familiar with meters and processes (knew him due to previous experience with the kids house). "Type 8" meter fires some neurons, but I am probably wrong. If it was the software of their competitors not capable at that time or something more fundamental I dont know. When I arrived home on the day I found a letter from the retailer (AGL) basically saying, we couldn't upgrade your meter today because we couldnt de-energise the meter. They had switched off the main switch (hence the flashing clocks) and when they tried to go further my service comes from a pit they couldn't get access into. That's why I am pretty sure it wasn't SA Power Network people, because it is their pit and I got the story from the SAPN man. It was all pretty low key, I think they might have got their fingers slapped. I still have the original meter and no one has subsequently suggested upgrading it.

Here's a comment (https://community.agl.com.au/t5/Accounts-and-Billing/Questions-on-Digital-Meter-upgrade/td-p/1250/page/2)on the AGL website which I just found looks like BWSS had a similar issue (also about 1 year ago) and got an old meter re-installed.

"SA must be different somehow, when I checked with Origin and other big retailers I got the same blank reply, they said cannot read the AGL meter on line, I had the same problem with Simply Energy so had to dump the AGL meter, get SAPN here to install their very standard meter which is manually read, every quarter, not the best but the only solution. Originally I did ask the others if they could read, they said yes, hoping for our business but when I quizzed them in depth and asked for them to acknowledge in writing thay could read the AGL meter on line, all retracted, sometimes it's the question(s) you ask to get the correct answer..."

Regards
SWK

[fletty]

Sorry, still having trouble typing....
421853

....and voice-to-text has no idea what to do with DUOS and TUOS! There is some really good current input to this thread so I'll just make a few additional comments.
In an earlier post, Chis was talking about having to pay the network a fee (or toll) to use the network and that was relating to having solar panels on 1 premises to feed another. Well that is what already happens. The network poles and wires owner gets paid a fee for electricity that passes through their network. In fence furniture's case that means that endeavour gets paid the DUOS fee and, if the voltage is high enough and is connected to Transgrids network, then they would get paid the TUOS.
In WP's post, it's not really 4 new entities instead of 1 and each one making a profit (gouging?) at the users expense at each step. There always were the 4 entities but they were usually departments within 1 company/utility and a single profit made from the beginning to the end. Where the real cost, and hence price risk is now, is that there is arbitrage and hedging between each of the functions and hence there is now some sort of financial institution at each boundary point.... and they don't operate for the benefit of customers, they operate for the benefit of their stakeholders!
The generator makes a stand alone profit, the poles and wires owner gets paid a Government decreed toll (DUOS and TUOS), the wholesaler makes a profit but adds a margin to cover risk (='hedging) the retailer makes a stand alone profit but likewise a margin to cover risk ( = hedging) so the NEW profit takers are the financial institutions at each boundary point.
At one point it was proposed that there should be a GENTAILER which was a generator who was also a retailer and this should have removed the risk and cost of a boundary point. However this raised all sorts of legal issues re third line forcing, insider trading etc so was quietly dropped. I made a comment at the time which was technically incorrect that GENTAILER was only 1 letter different from "GENITALIA" !
Let me take the opportunity now to write (slowly!) about the project in Sweden that could be the future model that overcomes so many of the issues raised in this ( hijacked?) thread.
The project relates to a residential and commercial rejuvenation of an area of prime potential CBD land that had been a Dockland/warehouse area ...... just like Sydney and Melbourne have done in recent years ..... and could have been done so much better.
The new development will be 'islanded' in that it's electricity network will not be connected to it's next door national grid nor to the combined European grid. In other words, unlike Denmark, IF the wind stops blowing they can't just flick the big switch and connect to the combined European grid. It is (as far as my knowledge is current) powered by dedicated wind farms out in the sea and supported by storage at the development itself. Residents can only have plug-in electric vehicles and they are allowed to have 2 per apartment. 1 vehicle is an 'A vehicle' and the other is, yes, you guessed it, a 'B vehicle'. The residents are guaranteed that the A vehicle will always be charged overnight BUT, if there is a power shortage, the B vehicle may actually be used to supply power to the development and hence not be charged ready for use the next day. All apartments are on a 'smart grid' with all of the goodies that you would expect. Solar generation from virtually all surfaces that are between 0 and 50 degrees to horizontal. Appliances that are turned on remotely by the resident or network operator depending on load, rooms that have sensors to turn off lighting and heating if not occupied, high tech insulation, automated blinds that allow solar inertia (which is fancy words for letting the sunshine in!), cruise ships that dock at the development can have their generators turned on remotely BY THE NETWORK OPERATOR to provide power if the development needs it etc etc. As I noted earlier, they was no new technology developed for this project. Other than some linking software, it already existed. What had to be developed however, was the human engineering to make the development liveable and desirable.
Re some of the comments about retailers. The margin on many (particularly) residential customers is so low that the cost of raising 6 2-monthly bills and receiving and handling 6 payments consumed all of the margin and hence the move to quarterly bills and payment, and 'rewards' for paying by EFT and ON-TIME.
I did a presentation about 10 years ago now, and before the retail function of the utilities was sold off, that the best organisations to become retailers were those organisations that already had our wallets and purses open. The example I quoted was Coles, Woolworths and Bunnings. Can you imagine going grocery shopping on Thursday night, the check-out person has added your grocery bill and then says, "oh, and your current electricity bill is $83, would you like to pay some off that now and receive fly-by points?". I note that this is now happening in Europe.
Hand hurting, haven't proof read but taking a break.
fletty

[Pete57]

I thought transmission and distribution companies got paid based on the cost of their assets. Incentive to gold plate and use money to add extra gold so next year brings more money.
There was talk of changing rules so may not be the case.

The other point is everyone expects their energy to be there 100% of the time. This requires the gold plating and lots of redundancy. If we could live with lower expectations on availability, it wold save lots of $$

[Chris Parks]

[/QUOTE]In an earlier post, Chis was talking about having to pay the network a fee (or toll) to use the network and that was relating to having solar panels on 1 premises to feed another. Well that is what already happens. The network poles and wires owner gets paid a fee for electricity that passes through their network. In fence furniture's case that means that endeavour gets paid the DUOS fee and, if the voltage is high enough and is connected to Transgrids network, then they would get paid the TUOS.[/QUOTE]

Alan, that is not quite what I had in mind though you most probably realise that. I should be free to set a price delivered from my premises to another at an agreed figure and pay the carrier a fee to move that amount of energy over his poles and wires, not tied to a wholesale figure that in reality is what the FIT is now. I can see in the future that if a peak is approaching and extra power is needed it is conceivable that the owner of a solar system receives a message asking if they want to feed extra power in at a stated spot price by switching off all the heavy use appliances they are running at the time.

[fletty]

I thought transmission and distribution companies got paid based on the cost of their assets. Incentive to gold plate and use money to add extra gold so next year brings more money.
There was talk of changing rules so may not be the case.

The other point is everyone expects their energy to be there 100% of the time. This requires the gold plating and lots of redundancy. If we could live with lower expectations on availability, it wold save lots of $$

It's a very popular misinterpretation of the rules and i first became aware of it as a political issue under the Gillard government when I think the "gold plated" comment also first became a political catch cry.
The reality is somewhat more complicated. Firstly, back then, the utilities got PAID nothing. The income received by the utility was as THE retailer with the price being set by IPART after the utility had presented to IPART a program of the work that needed to be done in the following 5 years. This program was to grow the network to match forecast population growth and expected usage, PLUS maintain what was already there? From the retail income, the utility was entitled to KEEP a portion of that money equal to a percentage of the total value of the assets. I remember numbers like 4.8%. From this percentage, the utility was expected to operate, maintain and eventually REPLACE that asset. The remaining income, ie 95.2%, was handed to the owner who was then the relevant State Government.
If you think of it as a return on investment, a business that returns 4.8% is not a business that YOU would invest in?
It is easy to see how those facts could be easily misconstrued to suit any political purpose.
The result of this was that, from the mid 1990's, Australia's networks were in a very poor state with, for example, the average age of power transformers being greater than 50 years even though 25 years was internationally regarded as being a practical life span. Ironically, what saved us was our population growth which resulted in many such transformers needing to be upgraded to a higher capacity so a newer, larger transformer was substituted and the tired, smaller one being moved further out in the network to continue working in a 'quieter' location!
One (in)famous example of this was a network manager being rung to be told that there was a transformer in a certain location with a Nazi swastika on it. Said network manager, thinking that it was particularly malevolent graffiti, told the crew to "paint it out IMMEDIATELY". "We can't" they replied, "it's made of steel"!
The transformer, still in service in a quiet location, had been made in Austria in 1938!
The industry is regularly demonised and, when it was almost exclusively Government owned, it would remain quiet and accept it. In the brave new World with the retail industry now being totally privately owned and the poles and wires businesses going the same way, I don't think that the industry will remain quiet when unjustly criticised in the future?

[Bushmiller]

Even within the power industry we may only hear part of the story. We become familiar with our own little sector, but that is all.

What occurs to me is that for about ten out of thirteen years the generators made very little or no profit, clearly from Fletty's comments the retailers have worked on small margins and Brett as our consumer representative is screaming because he has burnt off one ear and developed laryngitis wrestling a better price for his domestic consumption. I made an earlier comment (I think it was in this thread) that for business to succeed there has to be something in it for everybody.

I would comment that the mantra trotted out regarding private enterprise and competition being good for the market could be discussed at great length. It seems to be that continuity of supply has been substituted for price, which was well known back in the late nineties when the competitive market first emerged. The governments of the day wriggled free of any responsibility and when something crashes they cast blame around at all and sundry. They forget it was their decision to go down this track in the first place.

One thing the governments did not want to do was find money for new power stations and replacement infrastructure (transmission lines, transformers, switchyards etc). They handed this to private enterprise. Now with dwindling profits and a volatile market they are finding it difficult to attract new investors into the energy market. Nobody wants to build a coal fired power station (except Malcolm Turnbull) quite understandably. Gas fired units, which of course are not clean, just less dirty can no longer access cheap fuel as it can be sold overseas for more money. What company is going to say you can have this at a cheap price because you are good blokes? No multinational for certain. Renewables want some degree of certainty before they make a commitment, particularly with all the sceptics around.

The end user ends up coping the fallout.

Careful what you wish for.

Regards
Paul

[FenceFurniture]

Said network manager, thinking that it was particularly malevolent graffiti, told the crew to "paint it out IMMEDIATELY". "We can't" they replied, "it's made of steel"!
The transformer, still in service in a quiet location, had been made in Austria in 1938!:roflmao:



The industry is regularly demonised and, when it was almost exclusively Government owned, it would remain quiet and accept it.Perhaps you notice the demonising more, being from within, but I've only noticed happening fairly recently.


In the brave new World with the retail industry now being totally privately owned and the poles and wires businesses going the same way, I don't think that the industry will remain quiet when unjustly criticised in the future?All the more reason to put one's best foot forward, play smart, play fair, without BS, and most certainly without the crap they've put me through. If they had been fair and alerted me that I could get better discounts W.T.F am I saying, GIVEN ME A GOOD DISCOUNT WITHOUT ASKING then the whole whole sorry sodding episode wouldn't have occurred. That discount would have been less than the 32% that AGL ended up being beaten into, after spending $120-150. They blew some dough needlessly (rinse & repeat until the shareholders revolt)! Very poor management indeed - they have actually spent money to lose money, where most good business practice is spend it to make it. :doh:


So I bet you now regret retiring when things are just getting interesting (in the Chinese sense). :D

[FenceFurniture]

clearly from Fletty's comments the retailers have worked on small margins and Brett as our consumer representative is screaming because he has burnt off one ear and developed laryngitis wrestling a better price for his domestic consumption. I made an earlier comment (I think it was in this thread) that for business to succeed there has to be something in it for everybody. Yes, and the stupid thing is, as per my last reply, if they'd done the right thing in the first place they'd still have me as a customer with a smaller discount. But hey, if they're going to offer it.......

[FenceFurniture]

Nobody wants to build a coal fired power station (except Malcolm Turnbull) BOLLOCKS! Abbott would build ten tomorrow - they don't affect anything in a negative way remember, AND they eventually saves lives through fewer cold snaps.

[swk]

Quick question Fletty (if your hand can stand it)


...Firstly, back then, the utilities got PAID nothing. The income received by the utility was as THE retailer with the price being set by IPART after the utility had presented to IPART a program of the work that needed to be done in the following 5 years. This program was to grow the network to match forecast population growth and expected usage, PLUS maintain what was already there? From the retail income, the utility was entitled to KEEP a portion of that money equal to a percentage of the total value of the assets. I remember numbers like 4.8%. From this percentage, the utility was expected to operate, maintain and eventually REPLACE that asset. The remaining income, ie 95.2%, was handed to the owner who was then the relevant State Government.

Roughly what period are you talking about? If pre-privatisation, SA was similar but not the same. There must have been some government body setting the price (but I dont remember how). The old ETSA used to give a dividend to the state government, but my memory tells me it was of the same order of magnitude as the payroll tax ETSA paid. The bulk of the old ETSA earnings went back into infrastructure. Power stations mostly. It was only after the mid/late 1980s when ETSA basically pulled the pin on new power station planning that the state government started pulling out more money (my memory tells me round about 1990 the dividend was $100M, which was significantly higher than it had previously been)



If you think of it as a return on investment, a business that returns 4.8% is not a business that YOU would invest in?

Well, that would depend on the riskand if I wanted my money safe out of another country :rolleyes:.


It is easy to see how those facts could be easily misconstrued to suit any political purpose.
The result of this was that, from the mid 1990's, Australia's networks were in a very poor state with, for example, the average age of power transformers being greater than 50 years even though 25 years was internationally regarded as being a practical life span. Ironically, what saved us was our population growth which resulted in many such transformers needing to be upgraded to a higher capacity so a newer, larger transformer was substituted and the tired, smaller one being moved further out in the network to continue working in a 'quieter' location!
One (in)famous example of this was a network manager being rung to be told that there was a transformer in a certain location with a Nazi swastika on it. Said network manager, thinking that it was particularly malevolent graffiti, told the crew to "paint it out IMMEDIATELY". "We can't" they replied, "it's made of steel"!
The transformer, still in service in a quiet location, had been made in Austria in 1938!

Sounds like NSW was much worse than SA. Most of our infrastructure was newish in 1970, which makes a good deal of it 50 yo now, but was only 20-30 at privatisation. (yes there was some real old stuff, but not lots of it. We just upgraded a CBD site which was originally built in 1930s, when there was a private electrical system in Adelaide. However, it had already been upgraded once in the 50s)

Reckon your transformer was Swedish. ASEA used a swastika from about 1890 to 1933 (which means it was even an older tranny than you remember) :)



The industry is regularly demonised and, when it was almost exclusively Government owned, it would remain quiet and accept it. In the brave new World with the retail industry now being totally privately owned and the poles and wires businesses going the same way, I don't think that the industry will remain quiet when unjustly criticised in the future?

Actually in SA I don't think the old ETSA was really held in low regard. No one remembers the statewide blackout of 1980 now. Nor the continuous suburb tripping that happened during the commissioning of Northern Power Station. The complaints really only started leading up to then after privatisation.

Regards
SWK

[FenceFurniture]

No one remembers the statewide blackout of 1980 now.We had rolling blackouts in Sydney through 1980. That is we knew when they were going to occur. I forget what the reason was, and I forget who we blamed, but I know we blamed someone!

[fletty]

Combining answers t above questions, my 'retirement' from the utility portion of the industry was not voluntary. I was in the equipment supply side of the power industry for many years and was then headhunter into the utilities in 2000. I was always a bit too progressive for the utility side of the business, I was, at best, an octagonal peg in a round hole. In 2009, I 'left' the utility side of the industry and returned to the equipment supply side. So that, in the last 20 years, I had spent half in a Government owned utility and half in the multi-national manufacture and supply of equipment and solutions to utilities. This eventually resulted in my advice being sought by privately owned potential bidders for Utilities that were being privatised. It was fascinating to see the rationale of potential buyers and the incredible missed opportunities by Government in the 'sale/99 year lease' of those businesses. It is an unusual burden, and frustration, to know the intimate details of both sides of such a complex transaction! It is mostly that frustration that has driven me into recreational woodwork and especially the design and manufacture of bespoke furniture .... and consequently onto this forum?
If anyone out there wants advice to buy or sell a publicly owned utility, get in touch with me.......... and I'll design, make and sell you a handmade, intricately carved, Balinese daybed! :;

[FenceFurniture]

Today's energy news story:
Base load power: The dinosaur in the energy debate - Science News - ABC News (http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336)

Some interesting quotes from it:
"If you have an increase in demand, a coal power station will take hours [to meet it],
a gas turbine 20 to 30 minutes,
batteries about a second,
demand management about a second, (ed: what's demand management?)
and pumped hydro will take anywhere between 20 seconds and two minutes."

"Pumped hydro is 100-year-old technology, completely off the shelf, and importantly you can get these pumped-hydro sites built before 2022," he says.

".... there's about 22,000 [potential] pumped-hydro sites on the east coast. We only need 20 or 30 of them."

[ian]

Today's energy news story:
Base load power: The dinosaur in the energy debate - Science News - ABC News (http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336)

Some interesting quotes from it:
"If you have an increase in demand, a coal power station will take hours [to meet it], that was always the "joke" about Earth Hour. Everyone feeling smug for turning out their lights for 60 minutes and lighting a few candles, while Liddel and Bayswater and Mt Piper et al just went on burning coal and pushing out CO2 as if nothing had changed.


demand management about a second, (ed: what's demand management?)
flicking the switch to disconnect the Tomago Smelter?
though I understand that most (all?) coal fired power stations have one or more huge fly wheels that can be slowed to accommodate a short term demand pike -- I only vaguely remember the Physics / Electrical Engineering, but it was something to do with converting stored rotational energy into electricity. Wikipedia reports on commercial systems good for 20MW over 15 minutes. For comparison, the Royalla Solar Farm (rated at 20 MW) puts out an average of about 15 MW per hour for about 3 hours each day.


and pumped hydro will take anywhere between 20 seconds and two minutes."which is something the British make full use of -- see the Dinorwig Power station in Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station


".... there's about 22,000 [potential] pumped-hydro sites on the east coast. We only need 20 or 30 of them."
as I said earlier, best wishes getting more than one or two of those through an environmental assessment

[tonzeyd]

The funny thing about that article is at no point does it address the cost of any of the above alternatives. People are already complaining about the cost of running coal power stations as the "base" load which most of Australia is running off, let alone switching to any of the above alternatives.

The other thing the article also fails to mention is yes a coal power station takes hours to meet the additional demand, but doesn't actually address if this is actually a bad thing...In reality its not. Power consumption is as predictable as peak hour traffic and to have a random sudden increase in demand rarely occurs. So ramp up/down is a forecasted and an anticipated event.

Plus taking advantage of alternative power sources is fantastic when they line up with consumer demand, however this often isn't the case either for eg wind generally blows at night and conventional hydro when the tides move.

IMO the only sustainable alternative is nuclear, but obviously the whole potential exploding side of things doesn't sit well with many people

[FenceFurniture]

that was always the "joke" about Earth Hour. Everyone feeling smug for turning out their lights for 60 minutes and lighting a few candles, while Liddel and Bayswater and Mt Piper et al just went on burning coal and pushing out CO2 as if nothing had changed.
Power consumption is as predictable as peak hour traffic and to have a random sudden increase in demand rarely occurs. So ramp up/down is a foretasted and an anticipated event.So Earth Hour actually has some potential to cause problems for the Generators - they don't really know how much power to account for, because they don't really know what the participation rate will be. They can use last year's figures I spose, but....



Plus taking advantage of alternative power sources is fantastic when they line up with consumer demand, however this often isn't the case either for eg wind generally blows at night and conventional hydro when the tides move.Well surely batteries are the solution to that?



IMO the only sustainable alternative is nuclear, but obviously the whole potential exploding side of things doesn't sit well with many peopleWithout agreeing or disagreeing, there would be more chance of getting pumped hydro site approved than a nuclear option. I really don't think the Public has the appetite for it.

Maybe that (nuclear option) was what fletty alluded to, but didn't elaborate on.....:ninja:

[tonzeyd]

The issue with batteries at this stage is cost, until the cost of lithium comes down significantly the uptake will be quite small. Plus then there's the hippies out there who will claim that batteries are not environmentally friendly. Plus I'd like to see the folks with three phase try and run their equipment off a battery.

Also then there's the issue with storing the batteries, especially with the new norm (in WA) where houses are being built on smaller and smaller blocks with talks of blocks on a 70sqm footprint, doesn't leave much space to put the batteries in an unobtrusive location.

Guess the other issue with hydro is, in WA in particular we don't exactly have many potential sites for hydro power given that most of the state is effectively flat.

I'm sure somewhere along the line some research will also come out that batteries will give you cancer etc which will put a wet blanket on the whole deal.

[tonzeyd]

as I said earlier, best wishes getting more than one or two of those through an environmental assessment

Agreed, nothing gets the environmentalist's blood boiling quicker than sticking a massive pump/eye sore in a nature reserve.

[FenceFurniture]

I meant batteries in the sense of what SA is doing. Maybe not on the same scale but enough to store the wind power generated during low demand periods.

In reality there is NO solution that is particularly environmentally friendly. Whatever is built has left behind its own carbon footprint during manufacture/construction, so obviously all of that has to be considered. The main thrust of this latter part of the thread is what do we do NOW to avoid dreadful consequences over the next few years.

The only short term solution I can see being viable and doable is to get on with macro and micro solar & batteries, even though a little premature. Anyone have any other ideas?

[tonzeyd]

Just to throw another spanner in the works.

Toyota at the moment is working on a hydrogen car AKA The Mirai, At the moment i believe the US has these vehicles for sale but early days for Aus. Obviously at this stage for the Mirai to be a serious player much like other electric cars needs serious investment. Something the government at this stage is quite iffy about, probably because of the uncertain future every electric vehicle has. Think HD DVD/Blu-ray kind of race one will prevail but no one quite knows which will and obviously in the tough economic conditions no one wants to blow millions *cough* plebiscite *cough* on nothing.

Anyway the reason why i bring up the Mirai is because the idea behind it was to be able to allow you to use the energy stored in the hydrogen cells to power your home as well as your car, it also has another party trick of producing pure water out the back end.

[Bohdan]

Just a question to consider and I was wondering if someone could supply an answer.

Do the current domestic battery storage systems shut down if the grid goes down, just like the solar arrays have to by regulation and not for technical reasons?

[FenceFurniture]

Just a question to consider and I was wondering if someone could supply an answer.

Do the current domestic battery storage systems shut down if the grid goes down, just like the solar arrays have to by regulation and not for technical reasons?No, another excellent advantage of them. It may be the case that you have to flick a switch or something, but my understanding is that you don't really even know the grid has gone down, similar to when emergency generators kick in.


Toyota at the moment is working on a hydrogen car AKA The Mirai, At the moment i believe the US has these vehicles for sale but early days for Aus. Obviously at this stage for the Mirai to be a serious player much like other electric cars needs serious investment. Something the government at this stage is quite iffy about, probably because of the uncertain future every electric vehicle has. Think HD DVD/Blu-ray kind of race one will prevail but no one quite knows which will and obviously in the tough economic conditions no one wants to blow millions *cough* plebiscite *cough* on nothing.

Anyway the reason why i bring up the Mirai is because the idea behind it was to be able to allow you to use the energy stored in the hydrogen cells to power your home as well as your car, it also has another party trick of producing pure water out the back end.Yes, there are I think 3 of them in Oz at the moment being trialled (they have their own refuelling truck available). Wouldn't it be great if the end game here is to hydrolyse the water in-car, burn the H, collect the waste, re-hydrolyse, rinse and repeat. There would have to be some loss otherwise perpetual motion would have just been invented.

[Dibbers]

has another party trick of producing pure water out the back end.

I know a few restaurants that have produced the same results... well maybe not pure...

[ian]

Without agreeing or disagreeing, there would be more chance of getting pumped hydro site approved than a nuclear option. I really don't think the Public has the appetite for it.

Maybe that (nuclear option) was what fletty alluded to, but didn't elaborate on.....:ninja:

IMO the only sustainable alternative is nuclear, but obviously the whole potential exploding side of things doesn't sit well with many peoplefunny you should say that.

I read an article within the past few months about "safe" nuclear power.
Back in the 60s, the US Government funded research into what are known as fluidised bed thorium reactors. If I recall the article correctly, all but one of the operational and technical issues were resolved. The program was shut down in favour of other nuclear technologies -- enriched uranium, breeder/plutonium reactors, etc -- before the last issue, an economic way to clean the reaction products from the thorium fluid was resolved. The technology is considered "safe" because Thorium and its decay products are not suitable for bomb making.


But I agree, "nuclear" is usually guaranteed to raise the hackles.

[ian]

Just a question to consider and I was wondering if someone could supply an answer.

Do the current domestic battery storage systems shut down if the grid goes down, just like the solar arrays have to by regulation and not for technical reasons?looking at this from a safety perspective, just like roof top solar, if the grid goes down, either locally or across a region, any backup battery or sizable UPS needs to be isolated from the grid with no possibility that the grid can be even partially energised while there might be someone working on a downed wire.
I would call this a "technical" rather than "regulatory" issue.

[woodPixel]

Pebble Bed Nukes are another option. Just feed them with water and they generate steam, when it runs out they don't turn into a neighbourhood Chernobyl/Fukushima: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor

FF's thread is quite timely, the rate of headline articles this week is huge: Base load power: The dinosaur in the energy debate (http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336)

Maybe some of our experts here can comment on the ABC, they are seeking expert opinions. Some of the stuff Ive read here is very good indeed.

[ian]

The issue with batteries at this stage is cost, until the cost of lithium comes down significantly the uptake will be quite small. Plus then there's the hippies out there who will claim that batteries are not environmentally friendly. Plus I'd like to see the folks with three phase try and run their equipment off a battery.
running three phase off a battery would be easy -- provided yo had a big enough battery.

The bigger issue I see relates to lithium itself and the other rareish metals used in batteries. Is there enough easily accessible lithium in the world to even build a battery big enough to provide 5.5 GWh of power? 5.5 GWh is roughly equivalent to the Eastern States average total electricity consumption across 24 hours? If it is to cover a 24 hour summer "peak" the battery might need to be 1.5 times that size. If I have the maths right, 5.5 GWh is over 100 times the size of the battery that Tesla is building for the SA Government.
And if we are fair dinkum, every grid in the world will need a proportionally sized battery.

[Dibbers]

running three phase off a battery would be easy -- provided yo had a big enough battery.

The bigger issue I see relates to lithium itself and the other rareish metals used in batteries. Is there enough easily accessible lithium in the world to even build a battery big enough to provide 5.5 GWh of power? 5.5 GWh is roughly equivalent to the Eastern States average total electricity consumption across 24 hours? If it is to cover a 24 hour summer "peak" the battery might need to be 1.5 times that size. If I have the maths right, 5.5 GWh is over 100 times the size of the battery that Tesla is building for the SA Government.
And if we are fair dinkum, every grid in the world will need a proportionally sized battery.

I don't know if you'd need to go that far.

I think a solution to reduce the reliance on the "dirty" generation methods until a viable solution is developed would go a long way.

As i said in a previous post, requiring all new builds to have a tesla-esque solar & battery set up would be a start (similar to the rain water tanks) would go a long way to reducing the reliance on traditional generators. It'll also boost the revenue of those companies to pump into further R&D.

Personally (and this might seem like it'd be better placed under the red flag of communism) if we had a dedicated renewables research centre, you could make an arrangement where the general public purchased all solar and batteries through them, ensuring the average joe wouldn't be buying inferior products, and all profits go into research.

You'd have a manufacturing and installation/maintenance crew, creating jobs in Oz, and it would be a not-for-profit organisation so no bonuses to CEOs or Shareholders... naturally though in the current political climate, this would probably be privatised to turn a quick buck...

[FenceFurniture]

the rate of headline articles this week is huge: Base load power: The dinosaur in the energy debate (http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336).Pffft. That's old news man - posted here at 10.33 this morning :D

[FenceFurniture]

5.5 GWh is over 100 times the size of the battery that Tesla is building for the SA Government. I make it 55x Ian. They are building 100MWh, so 0.1GWh. 5.5/0.1 = 55