Water, Water..It's not everywhere.

[Bushmiller]

We are up in arms at the moment with regard to the current bush fire phenomena. Should we be up in arms about the water shortages too? There are at least two issues even excluding such controversial topics as the Murray Darling system.

Firstly, why are cities and towns allowed to expand without comparable water expansion? This is part of the reason water is being trucked in to several towns at this moment and other towns or cities are on water restrictions.

Secondly, what has possessed us to allow water to be sold to remote (from the water source) locations for bottling water and processing for soft drinks? There are towns that are out of water and yet their water is being sold to botting companies. In some cases those towns are buying water back.

Chinese company gets approval to bottle water from drought-plagued Australian town — Quartz (https://qz.com/1776800/chinese-company-gets-approval-to-bottle-water-from-drought-plagued-australian-town/?fbclid=IwAR37z6YIYlh87qCta8uZ7PjLMC8yyxgZ49kZAOwfAOxervc4PL8PcE-U4Cc)

Unbelievable!

Regards
Paul

[Chris Parks]

Personally I think the Murray Darling is not controversial at all, the huge water holdings for cotton etc should simply not be there, end of story. Get rid of them and the problem is close to eliminated. The controversal part is the politicians who allowed it to happen in the first place. The properties with the huge water holdings for cotton should be forced to release it and their water allowance taken away from them. Not realistic I know but it should never have happened in the first place.

[ian]

Firstly, why are cities and towns allowed to expand without comparable water expansion? This is part of the reason water is being trucked in to several towns at this moment and other towns or cities are on water restrictions.
Paul

the reason is quite simple
when Bob Carr was the Minister for Environment (back about 1985 if I recall) he refused permission for Sydney Water (which was then called the MWS&DB if my memory is any good) to build the Welcome Reef dam on the Shoalhaven River. Part of his "reasoning" was that a dam was just a wall untill the reservoir behind it was full. There was other BS, but I believe the real reason was that the resulting lake would do too much environmental damage.
So scrub the plans that Sydney Water had been working on since before Warragamba was completed. BTW, Welcome Reef was about the last option to expand Sydney's drinking water supply.

Carr subsequently went on to declare Sydney "full" in the 1990s. But the city has almost doubled in population since then.

Desalination -- powered by wind -- seems to be the only current option to expand the water supply.
Given the current drought, I expect that Sydney will need a second desal plant pretty soon.



The current drought is getting pretty serious, and some towns have completely run out of water.

But, perhaps the last thing any of us should be doing is donating water to those towns. As Ross Gittins(?) wrote recently, the government has pretty much succeeded in shifting responsibility for drought relief and potable water supply onto the charity sector. Is thsi what we really want the charity sector to be doing -- supplying bottled water to towns where the water supply has run dry? shouldn't that responsibility be a core function of government?

[AlexS]

A few issues there. The problem in the Murray-Darling system is the sale of water that doesn't exist, which is down to the growing of inappropriate crops - cotton and rice. More than 30 years ago I was involved in modelling various scenarios on the Macquarie and Barwon-Darling systems, and it was obvious then that we had exceeded the capacity of the rivers to supply the demands of the irrigators, but governments of both ilks were seduced by the promises of financial growth and acquiesced to the demands. Since then, even more water has been demanded and promised.
I see no reason to allow the sale of bottled water. In most cases, it is no better (and in some cases, worse) than what comes out of any tap in Australia. If you want to drink bottled water, buy a bottle and fill it up.
I remember the Welcome Reef proposal, but had no involvement, so won't comment other than to say that I'd prefer not to have more dams built if it's avoidable.
One way we (in the major cities) are wasting water is sending our waste water out to sea, and using treated water for every purpose. There are some new developments in Sydney, e.g. Quakers Hill, where treated waste is supplied via a dual system. These people are not on water restrictions. Country towns have for years been drinking recycled water - for example, the treated sewage from Parkes goes int Goobang Creek, whence Condobolin pumps its town water supply.

More later.

[damian]

I think you are all missing the point.

Infrastructure under investment started in the early 80's throughout the developed world.

The electorate don't reward long term thinking or anything they can't see. They reward handouts and 30 second news grab announcements.

Politicians act accordingly. People won't pay more tax so they shift money from things that won't make too much fuss to things that will win them votes. Using the fires as an example how much do you suppose they saved cutting preventative work compared to how much this disaster relief will cost...us! No one made a noise when they cut funding to fire services, but the relief funds will be applauded.

And of course there is immigration. We have had for years the highest rate of immigration in the developed world by a country mile (by % pop). It's a smoke and mirrors game to make it look like we have a healthy economy. Take out immigration and we went into recession all the times everyone else did. But it's a ponzy scheme because you don't get a full 45 years work out of most of them and then they go on the pension. Because no infrastructure spending accompanies the immigration everyone's std of living quality of life deteriorates.

Politicians are a symptom. The disease is the apathy and self interest of the electorate. In a democracy you get the government you deserve.

[AlexS]

To continue...
Desalination using reverse osmosis is a high-energy solution, but it has the advantage that it can use the energy when it's supplied. Unlike domestic use, it can take advantage of solar and wind energy when it's available, not just when people want to use it. You can store water rather than energy. While it's good near the coast, it's not so readily available inland. Evaporative desalination has been used in the middle east, but I'm not sure about the economics of it in Australia. We don't have too much cheap, flat land near the coast, in places with high temperatures and low humidity.

Sooner or later, someone is going to say that we should collect all the water that is "wasted", that runs out to sea from the large floods in the tropical north. As they say, for every complex problem there is a simple solution...that won't work. Firstly, if you look at Cape York and the channel country, where would you put your dam? There are plenty of small catchments on the Qld. coast, but they would also only support small dams. West of the divide the country is pretty flat. That means that if you can find a dam site it will be big & shallow, require lots of earthworks and lose lots of water by evaporation. Even if you could find a good site and build a big, deep dam, the economics are questionable - see the link below. In any case, it's not going to be possible to pipe that water to Sydney, or Adelaide, or the Darling basin - quite aside from the economics of it, you would hear the screams from would-be local irrigators and before the first drop of water arrived. I'm not even taking account of any potential environmental problems, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be some.

In NSW, there is potentially the Clarence River. However, water that runs to the sea and floods land on the way isn't wasted. It carries silt that replenishes farm land, nutrients that feed our fishing industries and coral reefs (while they are there), and larger loads that eventually make it to our beaches. Have a look at the Sydney beaches that are receding. There is research that attributes this to the effects of the coastal dams we currently have.

The point about population is well made. I won't critique it, other than to say that it's not just an Australian problem, there are just too many people in the world. Perhaps Donald Trump, Chinese and Middle Eastern politicians will get the world into a decent war to mitigate that problem.

Here endeth the lesson.

https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/925615/food_bowl_or_folly_the_economics_of_irrigating_northern_australia.pdf

[A Duke]

Over population is everybody's baby.

[RossM]

...in the Murray-Darling system is the sale of water that doesn't exist...
...governments of both ilks were seduced by the promises of financial growth ...

Agree completely - the idiocy of decoupling water trading and land ownership. Blind Freddy could see that the financial speculators would game the system to artificially inflate prices.

To answer Bushmillers question - if you want to know why - just follow the money. As the Mossack Fonseca scandal showed us, the corruption runs deep and is global in scale. And this was the very small tip of the enormous iceberg. Our politicians and business leaders are complicit.

[damian]

What about applying solar thermal to desal ? Instead of, or in addition to putting the steam through a turbine use salt water and tap off fresh at the end of the process.

Everything has it's problems but I've always liked solar thermal. Relatively low tech, just watch out for hail storms.

[Bushmiller]

This is from a paper submitted to Stamford university back in 2012. A little out of date perhaps.

"Methods of DesalinationAt least three principle methods of desalination exist: thermal, electrical, and pressure. The oldest method, thermal distillation, has been around for thousands of years. In thermal distillation, the water is boiled and then the steam is collected, leaving the salt behind. However, the vaporization phase change requires significant amounts of energy. More modern methods of distillation make use of various techniques such as low-pressure vessels to reduce the boiling temperature of the water and thus reduce the amount of energy required to desalinate.


A second major type of desalination utilizes electric current to separate the water and salt. Typically, electric current will be used to drive ions across a selectively permeable membrane, carrying the dissociated salt ions with it. A key characteristic of this method is that the energy requirement depends on how much salt is initially present in the water. Consequently, it is suitable for water with initial salt concentrations but too energy intensive for sea water. [3]


A third principle method of desalination is reverse osmosis, in which pressure is used to drive water through a selectively permeable membrane, leaving the salt behind. [3] Similarly to electrically-driven separation, the amount of energy required for desalination depends on the initial salt content of the water. Again, this renders reverse osmosis unsuitable for sea water purification."

The original theme of the thread was of course reminiscent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." It may be that we will have seriously think about converting sea water at some stage. Perhaps the first method could utilise solar thermal to create low pressure steam, but I don't see how the water could then be used as potable water. The problem there is that water passing through a steam turbine is normally treated with chemicals. It is worth investigating but as damian says there are few systems around without fundamental problems.

One things that occurs as I type is that salt beds have been used to store energy made from solar power for use after the sun is down so maybe that could be developed.

Regards
paul

[chambezio]

I think that the current problems with no water has high lighted that no one has considered any alternatives. We have had drought after drought that has usually be fixed up by rains that have interrupted the dry spells. The problem with this drought is that the "face saving rains" have not come! We are now in to "....What do we now...". Our governing fraternity has "systems in place" that will be reviewed in March (and they are quietly saying "Gees I hope it rains because we don't know what to do")

Our crop of current Pollies can't look any further ahead than the month before the next election. There doesn't seem to be anything in place to give our country towns the water they need to exist.

At the end of January is Tamworth's Country Music Festival where we are host to 30,000 (or more) hot and thirsty fans. The town is on Level 5 restrictions but I can't see the visitors going without using water to help the town.

There has been a lot of development on the edges of town for more than 5 years but there really hasn't been too much done to hold more dam water for these new homes. There are a number of abattoirs that have to use heaps of water for their processing and a few of these have cut back on through put due to less animals being ready and the water restrictions.

We have had 8mm of rain here at Moonbi this year but other places have had more while others less. The dam level is only going in one direction and its not up

[AlexS]

What about applying solar thermal to desal ? Instead of, or in addition to putting the steam through a turbine use salt water and tap off fresh at the end of the process.

Everything has it's problems but I've always liked solar thermal. Relatively low tech, just watch out for hail storms.
The nice thing about coupling renewable energy with desalination is that the desal can use the solar energy whenever it is available, not just in peak demand times.
I don't think any one form of energy is the solution, but most have their place.

[ian]

The nice thing about coupling renewable energy with desalination is that the desal can use the solar energy whenever it is available, not just in peak demand times.
The thing about solar power is that it's really only available for about 5 hours per day. Maybe six hours during December-January.

A reverse osmosis desal plant needs to run 24/7. This equates with either wind, nuclear or coal fired power stations.
One "good" thing about the Sydney desal plant is that it's operation was tied to a largish number of wind turbines. In fact I think that ALL the wind turbines east of Lake George provide power to the desal plant -- that's something like 100 turbines at around 2.5 MW each.

[ian]

the idiocy of decoupling water trading and land ownership. Blind Freddy could see that the financial speculators would game the system to artificially inflate prices.
The real idioticy was allowing inter-basin water transfers. So water from the Lachlan (which except in times of flood is a closed system) can be traded into the Northern Darling Basin. Allowing cotton irrigators on the Culgoa to purchase water rights from the Lachlan. Madness

[RossM]

The thing about solar power is that it's really only available for about 5 hours per day. Maybe six hours during December-January.

A reverse osmosis desal plant needs to run 24/7. This equates with either wind, nuclear or coal fired power stations.
One "good" thing about the Sydney desal plant is that it's operation was tied to a largish number of wind turbines. In fact I think that ALL the wind turbines east of Lake George provide power to the desal plant -- that's something like 100 turbines at around 2.5 MW each.

There is an easy solution if the political classes would get of their fat arses and provide the leadership we are paying them for. Pumped hydro can be stood up quite quickly and is very cost effective. There are 22,000 site suitable for this in Australia, many of which are ideally positioned to connect to the grid and that don't have significant land ownership or stakeholder issues. Fast tracking a few of these could have them online within two years.

See ANU finds 22,000 potential pumped hydro sites in Australia | ECI (https://energy.anu.edu.au/research/highlights/anu-finds-22000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-australia)

[Bushmiller]

There is an easy solution if the political classes would get of their fat arses and provide the leadership we are paying them for. Pumped hydro can be stood up quite quickly and is very cost effective. There are 22,000 site suitable for this in Australia, many of which are ideally positioned to connect to the grid and that don't have significant land ownership or stakeholder issues. Fast tracking a few of these could have them online within two years.

See ANU finds 22,000 potential pumped hydro sites in Australia | ECI (https://energy.anu.edu.au/research/highlights/anu-finds-22000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-australia)

Remember that just at the moment there is a distinct shortage of water. I agree that being able to pump water back to a "head" dam in effect becomes stored energy and could power a hydro electric power station and this could be the solution to storage batteries. which still are not at an economic point right now. I heard recently that solar power has become as cheap as any other form. I believe that is correct and incorrect. For a given megawatt that may be true (I don't really know exactly but I am prepared to concede it is close enough) but to keep the sums simple I work on a maximum of eight hours that our solar panels or solar thermal is operable. Ian has suggested it is closer to five hours. It will depend on the time of year and country of origin

Let's assume Australia during the summer as a best scenario. If we only produce power for a third of the day we need to be able to produce three times that amount for it to be the equivalent of a thermal station and we have to have a place to store it. Consequently for the cost of solar power to equate to other electricity production it has to have at least three times the capacity (probably more like four times when averaged through the year) and a a storage facility. This is where a dam could substitute for batteries, which is probably the first image that comes to mind when electricity storage is mentioned.

Problems:

1. Dams are not necessarily where the transmission lines already exist.
2. There has to be sufficient water (The DC link between Tasmania and the Mainland was put in for Tasmania not the other way around: It was in case Tasmania ran out of water)
3. Who is going to put these installations in place? The various governments have moved towards privatisation. At least solar allows smaller enterprises to be considered.
4. Solar farms have recently cried foul because there were no transmission lines provided for them. Who did they think was going to do this? What part of private enterprise did they not understand?

I don't really agree with privatisation of major utilities, but this is what successive governments have done in the quest for a quick buck and an attractive looking bottom line. It was the agricultural equivalent of selling off your breeding herd.

Regards
Paul

[RossM]

Remember that just at the moment there is a distinct shortage of water. I agree that being able to pump water back to a "head" dam in effect becomes stored energy and could power a hydro electric power station and this could be the solution to storage batteries. which still are not at an economic point right now. I heard recently that solar power has become as cheap as any other form. I believe that is correct and incorrect. For a given megawatt that may be true (I don't really know exactly but I am prepared to concede it is close enough) but to keep the sums simple I work on a maximum of eight hours that our solar panels or solar thermal is operable. Ian has suggested it is closer to five hours. It will depend on the time of year and country of origin

Let's assume Australia during the summer as a best scenario. If we only produce power for a third of the day we need to be able to produce three times that amount for it to be the equivalent of a thermal station and we have to have a place to store it. Consequently for the cost of solar power to equate to other electricity production it has to have at least three times the capacity (probably more like four times when averaged through the year) and a a storage facility. This is where a dam could substitute for batteries, which is probably the first image that comes to mind when electricity storage is mentioned.

Problems:

1. Dams are not necessarily where the transmission lines already exist.
2. There has to be sufficient water (The DC link between Tasmania and the Mainland was put in for Tasmania not the other way around: It was in case Tasmania ran out of water)
3. Who is going to put these installations in place? The various governments have moved towards privatisation. At least solar allows smaller enterprises to be considered.
4. Solar farms have recently cried foul because there were no transmission lines provided for them. Who did they think was going to do this? What part of private enterprise did they not understand?

I don't really agree with privatisation of major utilities, but this is what successive governments have done in the quest for a quick buck and an attractive looking bottom line. It was the agricultural equivalent of selling off your breeding herd.

Regards
Paul

Problems 1 & 2 are non issues - often trotted out the the fossil fuel apologists.

Problem 3 requires some political action - it should be either fully funded or at lest underwritten by public sector - but at the very least they should stop subsidising fossil fuels &provide some regulatory certainty to allow any private investment to start. This is in part where the fat arses can help!!

Problem 4 really requires a complete reversal of the idiocy in privatizing the poles & wires. The national grid should be federal infrastructure, and the reticulation within a state the state government. These are natural monopolies and NOT suited to private enterprise on s many, many levels. However that does NOT stop the implementation of pumped hydro, as there a re many sites suitably located close to the grid.

[AlexS]

While those sites may be potentially able to generate energy, to say that they are all potential pumped hydro sites is drawing a long bow. The summary in the link makes no mention of the flow or storage available at those sites. It's probably not realistic to build storages above and below each turbine site, and there would almost certainly be justified environmental objections to most.
There is an inherent conflict in operating a river system for pumped hydro and irrigation, and almost every river in Australia has some irrigation extraction from it. To operate a pumped hydro system efficiently, you need to keep the water as high up in the system as possible, while irrigation water is usually required at the bottom of the system. Who decides which gets priority? To paraphrase Paul Keating, never get between an irrigator and a bucket of water.

[ian]

To paraphrase Paul Keating, never get between an irrigator and a bucket of water.
too true

[Bushmiller]

Problems 1 & 2 are non issues - often trotted out the the fossil fuel apologists.

Problem 3 requires some political action - it should be either fully funded or at lest underwritten by public sector - but at the very least they should stop subsidising fossil fuels &provide some regulatory certainty to allow any private investment to start. This is in part where the fat arses can help!!

Problem 4 really requires a complete reversal of the idiocy in privatizing the poles & wires. The national grid should be federal infrastructure, and the reticulation within a state the state government. These are natural monopolies and NOT suited to private enterprise on s many, many levels. However that does NOT stop the implementation of pumped hydro, as there a re many sites suitably located close to the grid.

Ross

While I agree with much of what you say and in particular the concept of a major utility not being in private hands, the fact is that all the states embarked on a policy some years ago to sell off the various components of electrical generation and distribution and to a large extent that is exactly what has happened. I suspect that even if they wanted to, and I don't believe they do, they would not have the money to buy back. It was at the time a once off sale for easy gain.

Consequently, where the old state owned networks were formed to provide continuity of supply, the current system is a commercial operation including the few state owned stations, who are bound by the same rules. When it was first established just before 2000 the general consensus was that while continuity of supply had been the prime objective now there were only three things that mattered: Price, Price and Price. It is a business. Pure and simple.

While in principle it allows new players to enter the market, in practice they can only do this if they can see it as a viable enterprise. You have to appreciate that we are talking about what we have got and no longer about an ideal situation. It is true to say that the government of the day could re-enter the market with their own competitive business, but I don't believe that either of the two major parties have an interest in doing this and I certainly have not heard any noises from either side reflecting a desire to get back in. Even the current government, who have advocated the building of one or more coal fired power stations have shown no interest in building it themselves. It is just the liberal government mouthing off to appease their buddies in the coal industry.

Just on the issue of where dams and solar farms are placed I'm afraid that is very far from being a non issue. To my mind it is probably the largest single impediment always assuming that the commercial sums stacked up in the first place.

Before I get into that and quote some examples from our local situation let me state my personal situation again. I work as a control room operator at Millmerran , which is a supercritical coal fired power station and the second last station to be built in Australia having been commissioned in 2003. (Kogan Creek was the last station in 2007 and is in fact government owned by CS Energy.) I have made no secret of where I work and my involvement in the fossil fired industry. However I have no axe to grind and my aim is to make people aware of aspects to which they would not ordinarily be privy (without divulging discrete information privy to the Millmerran operation). I am a big fan of solar power. I have solar panels on the house. My overall position is that there needs to be a transition from fossil fired power to renewable energy and I despair at the amounts of CO2 that are being placed into the atmosphere without sufficient trees to act as a carbon sink .

Coal fired power stations traditionally had a life expectancy around fifty years. That would take our station to 2053 and Kogan to 2057. However that was while newer more efficient installations were being continually being produced. Under the circumstances I would expect a few selected stations to remain open far longer on emergency standy by much in the same way as we keep diesel generators on standy today.

OK, back to the infrastructure for any station. When Millmerran PS was built the owners had to construct a new road to bypass the town, they had to construct an 80Km pipeline to take recycled water from Toowoomba, they had to build a substation and they had to put in place a 330KV transmission line. Back around the turn of the century it coast $1.4billion. It was done on the absolute cheap. A similar station today would cost around $4billion or more and it is a small station. This is why nobody is going to put their hand up for a new thermal station that will not be allowed to go for it's full life cycle. So you can relax on that count.

Nearby, but in almost the opposite direction there is a site that has approval for a 2000MW solar farm. Absolutely nothing has happened because they think that somebody else should supply the transmission lines.

Actually, that is not the whole story. Remember I mentioned that all these projects have to be commercially viable and the influx of solar power has indeed dropped the price during the day. So now at times (certainly not all the time) the wholesale price drops to zero dollars and sometimes it goes negative. Of course if it goes negative the solar is just shut off, but it means they can't make any money. Yes, I hear the chorus of the government should intervene, but that is not their philosophy.

If I can comment on the pumped hydro, as with all the other forms of power generation, it has to be commercially viable. In other words competitive. In articular with hydro it has to meet the environmental criteria too. Remember that the primary reason for the Snowy Mountain scheme was irrigation. Electricity generation was a secondary consideration. Neither do all the generators in that scheme have the ability to pump back up to the top dam.

As we are on the subject of hydro, this article on Snowy 2.0 may be of interest: It coincidentally mentions the issue of transmission lines, but also the reality of what can really be produced as opposed to a theoretical maximum.

Snowy 2.0 will not produce nearly as much electricity as claimed. We must hit the pause button (https://theconversation.com/snowy-2-0-will-not-produce-nearly-as-much-electricity-as-claimed-we-must-hit-the-pause-button-125017)

Unfortunately nothing in life is simple. As I have mentioned before in other threads, particularly on power generation, there is no power source today that does not have a fundamental flaw: None.

Apologies to the OP for the small digression. Heck that was me. I'll allow it :D .

Regards
Paul

[ian]

Coal fired power stations traditionally had a life expectancy around fifty years. That would take our station to 2053 and Kogan to 2057. However that was while newer more efficient installations were being continually being produced. Under the circumstances I would expect a few selected [coal fired] stations to remain open far longer on emergency standby by much in the same way as we keep diesel generators on standby today.
Methinks that scenario -- keeping a coal fired plant as an emergency standby -- is very unlikely.
without divulging trade secrets, realistically how long would it take to get a coal fired power station from stone motherless cold up and running?

I've seen estimates that just varying the station output takes around 24 hours. Starting a station from stone motherless cold would take much much longer than a month. First off you'd have to locate and possibly train the operators.

Not something you can do as an emergency standby.

[Bushmiller]

Methinks that scenario -- keeping a coal fired plant as an emergency standby -- is very unlikely.
without divulging trade secrets, realistically how long would it take to get a coal fired power station from stone motherless cold up and running?

I've seen estimates that just varying the station output takes around 24 hours. Starting a station from stone motherless cold would take much much longer than a month. First off you'd have to locate and possibly train the operators.

Not something you can do as an emergency standby.

Sorry Ian.

I misled everybody there with the diesel gen analogy. I meant to say hot standby (actually back in NSW we used to refer to it as "rolling reserve. although I have not heard it called this for a long time, possibly because there has been precious little of it.) In other words, the station is generating it's absolute minimum load ready to step up if needed. The only real scenario I can imagine for this would be that such a station would be paid a retainer as it certainly would not be economic to run at that level. This also is my personal supposition and not based on anything factual and I envisage it only for a brief period in the final transition to other forms of electrical generation.

Your assumption as to time taken to get up and running is on the right track, but does vary hugely from station to station. Kogan creek for example can go from a unit trip back up to full load in four to six hours (assuming the trip was a simple fix and not a catastrophe) while we at millmerran are.....well, quite a bit slower :rolleyes: . We just caint go no faster, no sirree!

As to starting up from a mothball situation, we could be talking months depending on what the rats have eaten and what was plundered while it was "stored."

Regards
Paul

[ian]

My understanding is that back when governments owned the generators, the definition used to be "spinning reserve" -- meaning a generator that was spinning but not generating power. A unit that could be brought on line relatively quickly. Certainly within about 15 minutes.

With the NEM "spinning reserve" has been replaced by the generator bidding process -- I undertake to supply x MW for a period of y (in 30 minute units) at a cost of z dollars. And everyone is paid at the the last rate accepted -- which around lunch time can be a negative dollar amount.


Looking on line, Kogan Creek is a single boiler / single generator (Millerman has 2 generators?). So a system trip at Kogan Creek -- presumably a situation that equates to a hot restart -- requires 4 to 6 hours to get back to full capacity.


I'll go out on a limb and suggest that keeping a coal fired power station as an emergency reserve is not something that even a coal loving government would find the money for. Paying wages and overhead for a fully staffed station to sit idle for 5 years during the transition to "clean energy" would cost far too much.

[Bushmiller]

My understanding is that back when governments owned the generators, the definition used to be "spinning reserve" -- meaning a generator that was spinning but not generating power. A unit that could be brought on line relatively quickly. Certainly within about 15 minutes.

With the NEM "spinning reserve" has been replaced by the generator bidding process -- I undertake to supply x MW for a period of y (in 30 minute units) at a cost of z dollars. And everyone is paid at the the last rate accepted -- which around lunch time can be a negative dollar amount.


Looking on line, Kogan Creek is a single boiler / single generator (Millerman has 2 generators?). So a system trip at Kogan Creek -- presumably a situation that equates to a hot restart -- requires 4 to 6 hours to get back to full capacity.


I'll go out on a limb and suggest that keeping a coal fired power station as an emergency reserve is not something that even a coal loving government would find the money for. Paying wages and overhead for a fully staffed station to sit idle for 5 years during the transition to "clean energy" would cost far too much.

ian

Your memory is better than mine and it was indeed called "spinning reserve." That's a measure of how long it is since the term was used (or a measure of my memory). However, the units would no sit spinning but not generating as they overheat. If a 500MW unit is running at 250MW it has 250MW of spinning reserve.

The NSW system when I first joined it used to aim to have 2000MW of spinning reserve. That probably has not happened for a long time now. It has to be said that the grid is now interconnected in part so that does partially negate the need for spinning reserve. Gas Turbines with their quick response times also satisfy that need as do the Hydro stations with the fastest response of all.

Kogan Creek is a better designed plant than Millmerran and more automated, which is why it would take us four to five times as long to reach full load on a hot restart.

I think you are right about keeping a station in reserve. Time will tell there.

Regards
Paul

[clear out]

Well it looks like we are in for some rain in Sydney over the next few days.
Ive cleaned the leaves and dirt out the front and rear gutters on the house and pulled up the down pipes into the stormwater and hooked up some pvc pipes to spread the water over the yards.
I don’t expect we’ll get much so I’m not letting it go into the harbour.
Ive also a 3000 litre corro tank plus one of those 1000 litre plastic square tanks as an over flow on the Shed.
Unfortunately it’s on the uphill side of the Shed so will only be getting about 20% of the 240 square metre roof until I rehang the gutters out there.
Anyone else in the big smoke got a tank?
When our neighbor redid his yard I missed the chance to put 2 x 10,000 litre tanks in a dead space next to the Shed. I even had a hydraulic ram pump to pump up to the 1000 in the peak of the Shed internally.
Id really prefer a windmill, that would really get up some noses in this rapidly gentrifying burb.
When he did it we were in Canada so the only way to get tanks in that spot now is to roll them over 10 metres of corro roof on the leanto annex. That could be interesting but maybe possible.
H.

[RossM]

Ross

...Just on the issue of where dams and solar farms are placed I'm afraid that is very far from being a non issue. To my mind it is probably the largest single impediment always assuming that the commercial sums stacked up in the first place...

... So now at times (certainly not all the time) the wholesale price drops to zero dollars and sometimes it goes negative. Of course if it goes negative the solar is just shut off, but it means they can't make any money...

...If I can comment on the pumped hydro, as with all the other forms of power generation, it has to be commercially viable. In other words competitive...

...Unfortunately nothing in life is simple. As I have mentioned before in other threads, particularly on power generation, there is no power source today that does not have a fundamental flaw: None...

Hi Paul - sorry for delayed response - off the air (caused by another bloody right wing government screw up - the NBN intervention to "fix" something that never needed fixing - another story!)

I was being somewhat flippant & should have explained my earlier response:

"1. Dams are not necessarily where the transmission lines already exist."This is not an issue as:
a) so many sites have been identified that there are many that are more than suitable from all possible criteria. There has been cost modelling done by a number of players, including the AEMO, ARENA and others; and all that I have seen include the costs of building transmission lines interconnecting pumped hydro to the grid. Note that the sites are not in-stream, but propose construction of off-river systems such as turkeys nest or dry gully reservoirs (with the exception of Snowy 2, which is an outlier & in part driven by political optics).
b) I'm not commenting on the location of any proposed renewable generation facility (and these do not need to be co-resident with the pumped hydro facility.) To bring this up as an objection is a straw-man fallacy.

"2. There has to be sufficient water "
a) Pumped hydro is a closed loop system, and requires a comparatively small volume of water. You could truck water in at full commercial rates and you would not notice it in the capital cost of the system.
b) Operational losses overall are small (for example evaporation losses are controlled by various means and can keep evaporation rates below average rainfall).
c) Overall water use is fractional in comparison to fossil fuel systems. Design for these systems show less than a quarter of the water use.
d) There are suitable sites that can use salt water rather than fresh.

With regard to the effects of trading on electricity price & cost efficiencies - by using a storage solution for renewables much of this is eliminated. Instead of selling to the grid at zero dollars, the excess capacity can be stored & sold as demand picks up. I know this is a very complicated issue; it is another area where government really needs to intervene to reduce the gaming of the trading system. Again, this requires some political courage that favours consumers (both institutional as well as residential)

Commercially viable & competitive - the ability to supply low cost instantly dispatchable / ‘peaking’ energy at an LCOE of less than 14c/kWh seems pretty competitive. And the benefit of grid stabilization also helps. Capital costs of about $500M for a 250MW plant (including transmission!) also seems to stack up well.

I agree - nothing in life is simple & there are no silver bullets. However something needs to be done. PHES can be deployed relatively quickly (systems could be commissioned within 3 years) and can serve an immediate need. I have used POGE (the Principle Of Good Enough) throughout my career; or in other words don't let perfection get in the way of progress. So, flaws or not, we need to make progress. PHES may not be the perfect solution, but as far as I can see given the current state of technology, it is the most pragmatic one to help with a rapid transition to renewables.

To put another slant on this - its a risk mitigation game. Sadly, procrastinating with the status quo has much more risk than moving forward with current alternatives.

[ian]

"2. There has to be sufficient water "
a) Pumped hydro is a closed loop system, and requires a comparatively small volume of water. You could truck water in at full commercial rates and you would not notice it in the capital cost of the system.
Ross, I'm going to have to call you on this one.
The Dinorwig scheme in Wales is perhaps the best example of pumped hydro in the world.
The Dinorwig hydro "battery" has a capacity of 9.1 GWh -- equivalent to around six hours of running at a flow rate of 390 cubic metres per second. 390 cubic metres is equivalent to 26 Army Mack tankers each second. ,
Six hours contain 21600 seconds, which roughly translates to 560,000 Mack tanker trucks of water.
At $2 per tonne km and assuming an 80 km one-way trip, that equates to about $1.3 B -- I'd think even Government would notice $1.3 B.

[Bushmiller]

Thanks Ross for a well thought out post.

It is a pity that people in a position to implement remedies seem not to be either thinking or implementing. I would caution that there can be quite a deal of hype over ideas that all too frequently does not translate into viability in the real world. However, that is not an excuse to ignore possibilities. All too often the political agenda of those seeking re-election gets in the way.

You mentioned $500m for a 250MW pumped hydro plant. I don't know where that figure came from or who conducted the estimate, but I would suggest that if it was commercially viable companies would be crawling over each others backs to put up their hands. That would be competitive with Millmerran nearly twenty years ago and that was built on an absolute budget. There are many reasons why it is not being taken up and at least one of them can be laid fairly and squarely at government doors as they have no plans and consequently no assurance of continuity into the future for a wouldbe player entering the electricity market.

I think your last statement sums up the situation for new entrants to the market"

"To put another slant on this - its a risk mitigation game. Sadly, procrastinating with the status quo has much more risk than moving forward with current alternatives."

I have to say it is very easy for me to see pitfalls in new technologies (actually I see even more pitfalls in old technologies), but I have to be critical bearing in mind nobody is going to take up something that is not viable. Today we just cannot go past the first premise of commercial viability and we can thank both major parties for that. In NSW the Labour government kicked off the first moves towards privatisation under barry Unsworth in 1986. Ironically Unsworth was an electrician and and electrical trades union official before entering politics!

For example, as far as throwing up barriers is concerned, I quite like the thought of using sea water for pumped hydro, but then I thought that it has to go through a turbine. I don't think there is any way you could do that. Coastal thermal stations use sea water but only for cooling purposes. I think we both agree, there is not goingto be a simple solution and I suspect neither major party really wants to stick it's neck out.If that were the case labour would have already boasted and promised what it would do if elected next time around. Having said that, they may well get in purely by allowing Scomo to continue alternating with the right and left foot in his mouth.

Most fossil fired power stations use large quantities of cooling water for their condensers. Something that I don't believe I have mentioned in the past when talking about Millmerran PS is that we have air cooled condensers (huge fans) and while we do use an amount of water for cooling (it is a small fraction of the traditional water cooling methods) that water is recycled effluent from Toowoomba.

In summary I like the concept of water storage as a substitute for a battery, but I doubt there are very many suitable sites. I would also draw your attention to the Snowy 2 link in post #20 where there are serious doubts cast on the ability to pump back suitable quantities of water. Again was the Turnbull government of the day trotting out election pleasers?

Regards
Paul

[RossM]

Ross, I'm going to have to call you on this one.
The Dinorwig scheme in Wales is perhaps the best example of pumped hydro in the world.
The Dinorwig hydro "battery" has a capacity of 9.1 GWh -- equivalent to around six hours of running at a flow rate of 390 cubic metres per second. 390 cubic metres is equivalent to 26 Army Mack tankers each second. ,
Six hours contain 21600 seconds, which roughly translates to 560,000 Mack tanker trucks of water.
At $2 per tonne km and assuming an 80 km one-way trip, that equates to about $1.3 B -- I'd think even Government would notice $1.3 B.

We are not talking PHES at that scale, we only require short term off river storage systems. A 200MW project requires about 2 GigaLitres of water. Just before xmas the Qld government started to truck about 2 MegaLitres of water per day to a drought affected dam. Based on their costs it would be around $50M to provide the needed water for a 200MW facility. However this is really moot and I apologise; I probably should not have mentioned trucking above, as it really is a distraction. There are so many potential sites and we need so few to secure the required energy that we can afford to select sites with good local water availability.

[RossM]

Thanks Ross for a well thought out post.

...You mentioned $500m for a 250MW pumped hydro plant. I don't know where that figure came from or who conducted the estimate, but I would suggest that if it was commercially viable companies would be crawling over each others backs to put up their hands...

... I quite like the thought of using sea water for pumped hydro, but then I thought that it has to go through a turbine. I don't think there is any way you could do that. Coastal thermal stations use sea water but only for cooling purposes...

...In summary I like the concept of water storage as a substitute for a battery, but I doubt there are very many suitable sites...

Hi Paul

There are many recent studies that put capital costs at around $2M/MW - for example the recent Entyra report commissioned by ARENA says "$1.48m/MW for 6 hours storage, $1.70m/MW for 12 hours, $2.11m/MW for 24 hours storage and$2.75m/MW for 48 hours storage. The high cost of 48 hour storage projects is mainly due to a low number of such projects." This is in line with many other benchmarks I have read.

With regards to seawater - Energy Australia is hoping to proceed with the Cultana Pumped Hydro Project in South Australia.
https://www.energyaustralia.com.au/sites/default/files/2017-08/Cultana%20Pumped%20Hydro%20Project%20Fact%20Sheet%20-%20August%202017.pdf
(This is a 225MW plant with an estimated cost of around $470M - in line with my estimates earlier)

Okinawa Yanbaru Seawater PHES was the first plant in the world to use seawater as the energy source. It was decommissioned after about 15 yrs of operation due to cheaper power availability in Japan and lower than expected demand. The technology has advanced since the 1990s.

With regard to the number of sites in Australia, over 22,000 have been identified (thought I had mentioned that, but maybe in Brett's thread on Katoomba Temp records?) - you can check the ANU study. The following is interesting reading & has links to the ANU study and other info:
Pumped hydro energy storage: What are the opportunities for the water sector? - Water Source (https://watersource.awa.asn.au/business/assets-and-operations/pumped-hydro-what-are-the-opportunities-for-the-water-sector/)
ARENA has a summary of the ANU study here:
Study identifies 22,000 potential pumped hydro sites (https://arena.gov.au/news/potential-pumped-hydro-sites/)

Of course we don't even need water - Deep shaft kinetic systems can also be used in a similar manner:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330997953_Gravity_energy_storage_with_suspended_weights_for_abandoned_mine_shafts
and being commercialised already:
UK startup eyes abandoned mine shafts for energy storage The Engineer (https://www.theengineer.co.uk/abandoned-mine-shafts-energy-storage/)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50146801

[Bushmiller]

Ross

Thanks for the links. they are most interesting. Whether the concepts can be translated into viable projects remains to be seen.

Just out of interest, the two largest power stations in the world are both Hydro.

China has the Three Gorges Dam station:

Three Gorges Dam: The world's largest hydroelectric plant (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/three-gorges-dam-worlds-largest-hydroelectric-plant?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects)

and Brazil/Paraguay have the Itaipu Dam station.

Itaipu Dam - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam)

Although the Chinese dam is nominally bigger, I think the South American project generates more.

Regards
Paul

[ian]

We are not talking PHES at that scale, we only require short term off river storage systems. A 200MW project requires about 2 GigaLitres of water. Just before xmas the Qld government started to truck about 2 MegaLitres of water per day to a drought affected dam. Based on their costs it would be around $50M to provide the needed water for a 200MW facility. However this is really moot and I apologise; I probably should not have mentioned trucking above, as it really is a distraction. There are so many potential sites and we need so few to secure the required energy that we can afford to select sites with good local water availability.
Ross
I take your caution about mentioning trucking water at commercial rates, but feel I must comment on your contention that we -- in Australia -- only require short term energy storage.

A study from a few years ago -- which I can't currently find to link to -- estimated a worst case scenario where Australia needed something like 3 days of water battery backup energy generation. That quantity of storage would allow Australia to become 100% carbon free -- discounting the carbon released by dams, solar and wind -- and provide something like 1 in 10,000 reliability (but it may have only been 1 in 1000).
(For comparison, dam safety is assessed as a 1 in 15,000 risk -- and some people find that risk of failure too high.)

In 2016/17 Australia's electricity production was 258 TeraWatt hours (258 x 10^12 Wh) -- 3 days electricity consumption is roughly 2 TWh.
Even if you are prepared to accept a higher risk of power disruption, even 1 TWh of energy storage is still a very very large number.

So even if 1,000 of the 22,000 potential pumped hydro sites are viable, at 200 MW per site -- each site needs to run for something like 5 hours to supply a total of 1 TWh. At 2 Gl of water per site, that's something like 3,300 times the volume of Lake Eucumbene (when it's full). A hugh volume of water.


If the Australian grid is to become self-sustaining and stable, we can not kid ourselves on the scale of the generation "problem". When the lights go out, it's too late to say "I should have ..."

[RossM]

Ross
I take your caution about mentioning trucking water at commercial rates, but feel I must comment on your contention that we -- in Australia -- only require short term energy storage.

A study from a few years ago -- which I can't currently find to link to -- estimated a worst case scenario where Australia needed something like 3 days of water battery backup energy generation. That quantity of storage would allow Australia to become 100% carbon free -- discounting the carbon released by dams, solar and wind -- and provide something like 1 in 10,000 reliability (but it may have only been 1 in 1000).
(For comparison, dam safety is assessed as a 1 in 15,000 risk -- and some people find that risk of failure too high.)

In 2016/17 Australia's electricity production was 258 TeraWatt hours (258 x 10^12 Wh) -- 3 days electricity consumption is roughly 2 TWh.
Even if you are prepared to accept a higher risk of power disruption, even 1 TWh of energy storage is still a very very large number.

So even if 1,000 of the 22,000 potential pumped hydro sites are viable, at 200 MW per site -- each site needs to run for something like 5 hours to supply a total of 1 TWh. At 2 Gl of water per site, that's something like 3,300 times the volume of Lake Eucumbene (when it's full). A hugh volume of water.


If the Australian grid is to become self-sustaining and stable, we can not kid ourselves on the scale of the generation "problem". When the lights go out, it's too late to say "I should have ..."

Hi Ian,

In fact the modelling shows 450GWh (=- 30%) of reserve capacity is required for complete transition to renewable. In a 100% renewables grid, this would likely come from a mix of PHES, battery and demand management. PHES is likely to have a cost advantage over other technologies for quite a while. Reserve power needed is about 20GW

There is an interesting paper on storage options here:
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Fully-Charged-Renewables-and-Storage-Powering-Australia.pdf

[ian]

Ross
One day you will have to tell me who you work for, or previously worked for.

Thank you for that link.
I'm not sure it references the study I referred to above, my recollection is of a paper or report dated prior to 2016.

I take two things away from what little I read in your link.

1. If Australia is to embrace a 100% renewable electricity grid we will need to radically rethink how we fund reserve capacity. At some point we as a nation will need to accept that keeping the lights on (or the air con running) will require that we as a nation accept higher energy prices. The SA battery is proving vital to smoothing transients in the SA electricity supply, but at less than 200 MWh (after expansion) it is still too small to power the state through a night, let alone two consecutive cloudy days and three nights. The SA battery would need to be at least three orders of magnitude bigger for this task. And please don't mention the capacity "reserve" inherent in electric cars. Don't know about you, but I want my car ready to go in the morning, not sitting in the garage because its battery is flat because it's been powering the grid all night.

2. The Climate Council is not a disinterested player in this discussion. Like all lobby groups it has an agenda to push.

[AlexS]

Can I thank all the participants in this discussion, both for the wide range of knowledge you bring and for the civil manner in which it is being carried out. May it continue.