Future of the Australian Electricity Market

Another new battery! Bigger, faster, longer.... Developer Of Aluminum-Ion Battery Claims It Charges 60 Times Faster Than Lithium-Ion, Offering EV Range Breakthrough

As an aside, everyone keeps thinking of solar on their roof and the "I'm a tenant" argument.

Cool, but I think putting solar on ones roof is NUTS. The tech is moving faster than the market can keep up. Comments #79 and #80 show this. People get disincentivised for a dozen reasons and ALL the benefits go towards the landed aristocratic class ;)

Take that loot and invest it in companies that are making real money out of it. Take the divvies!

There is an ETF that does exactly this.... ASX CLNE .... there are no doubt a hundred shares that do the same. The ETF gets you into some very interesting companies and most of those are outside of Australia.


Micro grid storage via CAES and battery are a necessity. We need to build build build and then build.... same with trees.

I don't think this world has 20 years left in it before it blows up environmentally.

Interesting article with comments from the Tomago Smelter CEO in the Daily Telegraph re the need for the smelter to close down at times do to contractual arrangements re spikes due the Sydney winter usage.

”Tomago chief executive Matt Howell said the sudden power price hike to $14,500 a megawatt hour was the equivalent of petrol prices going up to $400 a litre.
When wholesale prices peak, the smelter is contractually obliged to temporarily power down to keep the rest of NSW going.
This isn’t an issue with our contract … it’s about constantly having to (power down) because we can’t afford the price,” Mr Howell said“

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Originally Posted by Lappa

Interesting article with comments from the Tomago Smelter CEO in the Daily Telegraph re the need for the smelter to close down at times do to contractual arrangements re spikes due the Sydney winter usage.

”Tomago chief executive Matt Howell said the sudden power price hike to $14,500 a megawatt hour was the equivalent of petrol prices going up to $400 a litre.
When wholesale prices peak, the smelter is contractually obliged to temporarily power down to keep the rest of NSW going.
This isn’t an issue with our contract … it’s about constantly having to (power down) because we can’t afford the price,” Mr Howell said“

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Lappa

That is an interesting situation and marks a significant fundamental difference in the way NSW and QLD operate. While NSW has the Tomago smelter, QLD has the Boyne smelter. Both smelter operations are large and of similar size. I think in round figures their potlines consume around 500MW or more (a very broad statement and I don't know precise figures). It is critical that the potlines do not run without power for any significant time. I think it may be 24hours and they would have to get the jackhammers in to chisel out the aluminium product that has solidified.

The fundamental issue is how the two states prioritise the distribution of power and possibly also reflects the availability of surplus power in each state. In NSW, when power is in high demand and supply is short, the industrial users are targeted first. In QLD it is the opposite in that priority is given to industry and the domestic consumers are those to lose power. There are two levels. The first reflects high spot prices while the second level reflects load shedding.

It would appear from the comment that NSW uses the smelter to significantly reduce demand (ie. mitigate high spot prices). Their CEO talks of contractual arrangements. It sounds as if there is a contract in place and I would expect that, but clearly there are other conditions that provide for the operator of the grid (AEMO) to ask them to cut power. There is a little bit of manoeuvring going on by the CEO to my mind. If you are a large consumer you have the ability to negotiate a contract and that contract will insulate you against price spikes. So that is the first comment. The second comment is that he apparently has a contract, but has to reduce load because of the high price. If he has a contract it is not costing him other than loss of production, which admittedly would be a big issue. It sounds as though he has to power down because there is another agreement with the NSW section of the grid that he will have to do this in times of high demand. It may have been a condition of the installation of the smelter in the first place. It would be neccessary to know the background.

One other point is that the price spikes are rarely protracted. Five minutes is normal, but also infrequent. I don't hear him complaining about the times when the price goes negative. It all evens out on the average. Contracts avoid price fluctuations. he is talking about another issue I believe.

Some more info on the smelters:

How Tomago aluminium smelter supports the power grid | Catallaxy Files

Boyne Smelters - Wikipedia

There appears to be a lack of straight talking and there is a decided air of I want my cake and be able to eat it too.

Regards
Paul

Australia's "father of PV" says your next rooftop solar system might be tens of kilowatts | One Step Off The Grid

edit - I was thinking... What If....

What If the rollout of solar, wind, hydro, CAES and geothermal DOES race ahead at full bore maximum speed.

Seems the genie is out of the bottle, the toothpaste has left the tube....

This article is just a warm and fuzzy thing of "gee, 2000 is was 1kw, then 210 is 10 and 2020 is 20kw on my roof....".... now what if Solar DOES keep dropping at the rate of 20% per year and EVERY roof is slapped happy with magical 20Kw-producing solar tiles.....

A suburb will generate 1 MW per day... (maybe)

Here in Canberra there are 121 suburbs... and how many houses with roofs? 82,700.....

That's a LOT of juice.

Things are going to blow up!


Now the What If.... IF this occurs, what is the cost to move this juice around? Wires, upgrades, moving from the 16th century electrical grid, etc?

Where is the thinking of What If from our political masters?

Obviously this is a ridiculous hypothetical but it shows that if people are going to be self-interested and they consume their own juice first (even a "little" 10kw jobbie can be acquired for ~$5k), then the "remaining" costs need to be apportioned/proportioned..... what happens to the 10% of those without solar inputs on their rooves? Do they pay the Big Bills? Hardly.

Interesting line of thought.....

I heard on the radio news that a "significant event" has occurred within the QLD electricity market. Details are sketchy for the moment, but initial information is that nine coal fired units are offline as a result, plus solar is affected too, and currently there is only about half the demand available. This is resulting in considerable load shedding.

Regards
Paul

Queensland hit by widespread power outage after fire and explosion at Callide power station - ABC News

Widespread power outage affecting just under 400k customers in Queensland : australia


Attachment 495051

using this tool --> Australia National Electricity Market Dashboard

A new process and a game changer too...

Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater - MINING.COM

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

A new process and a game changer too...

Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater - MINING.COM

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Interesting. Nearly 50 years ago I worked in a copper mine where the ore was low grade - <0.5%. One of the geologists reckoned it was approaching the concentration of Cu in seawater, and it wouldn't be too long before they were extracting it from seawater.

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Originally Posted by AlexS

Interesting. Nearly 50 years ago I worked in a copper mine where the ore was low grade - <0.5%. One of the geologists reckoned it was approaching the concentration of Cu in seawater, and it wouldn't be too long before they were extracting it from seawater.

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It seems that every time I read these amazing articles the answer lies in electricity.

Electrification is going to be huge.

Imagine it - if we have gobs and gobs and gobs of spare electricity we can start doing things that are crazy .... mass desal (pump it inland! Irrigation! Industry!), cheap transport, CO2 free smelting, cooling, heating, industry free of the amperage-overhead....

Broken Hill compressed-air energy storage facility to inject $457m into economy, company says - ABC News

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

Broken Hill compressed-air energy storage facility to inject $457m into economy, company says - ABC News

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take that with a grain of salt, its still in the "feasibility" and business case phase, there is even articles about the project from 2019 and 2020 and yet not one shovel has been brought out to start the project.

they couldn't even get funding for a 5MW/10MW/h pilot plant
Storage proponent for huge Broken Hill micro-grid fails to land finance for pilot plant | RenewEconomy

Hydrostor energy storage project to contribute to New South Wales economy | Energy Global

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In 2020, Hydrostor’s 200 MW and 8 hours (or 1600 MWh) A-CAES system was selected by NSW’s Transmission Network Service Provider, Transgrid, as the preferred option in its Regulatory Investment Test for Transmission (RIT-T) for reliable and secure supply for Broken Hill. Hydrostor and Energy Estate are actively developing this project, which has received grant funding from the NSW Government’s Emerging Energy Program to complete pre-feasibility work.

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Yes.

We have to differentiate between those projects that have an incontrovertible go-ahead and those that are being touted to see if there are any takers. The proposal for a new power station at the old Collinsville site was a classic example of something that had no foundation.

Regards
Paul

:rolleyes:And it’s amazing that all these new technologies require electricity to work

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Originally Posted by Lappa

:rolleyes:And it’s amazing that all these new technologies require electricity to work

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I am amazed, from that article, that they couldn't raise 60 mil. Such a trivial sum.


The whole point is electrification. Everyone wails about "what when the sun dont shine" .... well, tra-da! Batteries and CAES.

Fossil fuels and CO2 generation must stop.


I think the problem is these developers are still thinking too small. $60M is just background noise. Pump it up to a billion and then you'll get a few Liberal pollies involved :;

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

I am amazed, from that article, that they couldn't raise 60 mil. Such a trivial sum.


The whole point is electrification. Everyone wails about "what when the sun dont shine" .... well, tra-da! Batteries and CAES.

Fossil fuels and CO2 generation must stop.


I think the problem is these developers are still thinking too small. $60M is just background noise. Pump it up to a billion and then you'll get a few Liberal pollies involved :;

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a problem is at the moment we're asking private companies to front up the cost and unless they can see a $$$ return they won't invest.

so unless the government chucks the money in a lot of projects just wont happen and its actually pretty hard/slow just to get grant money out of the government. It's also not just the building costs its all the on going costs as well and the government are just too focused on trying to get the budget back into the black then what's actually good for all its citizens.

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Originally Posted by havabeer69

a problem is at the moment we're asking private companies to front up the cost and unless they can see a $$$ return they won't invest.

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haveabeer

That is absolutely the crux of the matter. Add to that the equivocal stance by the government and the prospect of investment becomes slight tending towards "you must be joking.". Until such time as the government of the day acknowledges there is a climate crisis and actively demonstrates that this is it's firm belief by their actions, as opposed to lip service, private companies will be reluctant to commit their funds

How will the government persuade private enterprise they are serious about climate change? I would say they have a problem in this regard considering their past history of constant denial. I would suggest they would need to have a vested interest such as would come about by joint ventures even if they are a minority partner.

Before my comments are seen as political I would like readers to view this satirical take on the Victorian situation (Labour party of course) where there is a proposal to begin taxing electric vehicles. Watch the delicious ladies from The Juice Media and see the comparison with Norway in particular.

Honest Government Ad | Electric Vehicles - The Juice Media

Regards
Paul

The idea for taxing BEV's came from the US and Australia would just be copy cats if it happens here which it must do eventually. The difference between the US and here is that in the US there are tax credits and incentives to buy a BEV and here the government is trying to avoid upsetting its electoral base (presumably) by not encouraging anything that can be seen to be hurting the coal industry. This is a good link to the US situation Special Fees on Plug-In Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (ncsl.org)

Chris

Thanks for that link. My take is that there are two aspects. Firstly the initial incentives to go EV, which are just not there compared to other countries: Norway is the prime example

Attachment 495943

and secondly the question of taxation down the track. It would seem that Victoria is putting the cart before the horse. Also see where the US is related to other western nations:

Attachment 495944

Having said that, our past record of sleeping with the US would leave me to believe your conjecture is right.

Regards
Paul

Norway is actively going down the path of alternative energy in spite of what it will do to their huge oil production that supports those goals of reduced emissions while Australia refuses to do exactly the same thing because the politicians are petrified of what will happen to them at the next elections. I thought the politicians were elected to do the best thing for Australia and not for themselves. I doubt one party is any better than any others in Australia but time will tell on that one.

One argument I see the Govt using is they have spent close on a trillion dollars getting Australia through the pandemic so they will need time to pay down that debt before they can provide relief in other areas such as electric car incentives.

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Originally Posted by Lappa

One argument I see the Govt using is they have spent close on a trillion dollars getting Australia through the pandemic so they will need time to pay down that debt before they can provide relief in other areas such as electric car incentives.

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They had exactly the same policy pre the virus issues.

Maybe so but they didn’t have the same debt, so now, as much as we don’t like it, they are in a stronger position to put off incentives by crying poor.

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Originally Posted by Lappa

Maybe so but they didn’t have the same debt, so now, as much as we don’t like it, they are in a stronger position to put off incentives by crying poor.

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That may well be true and probably is, but there could be peer pressure from around the world that says something like "Do you think for some reason you are the only ones doing it tough? Have a look around the world and wake up: And, stop hiding behind excuses!"

Regards
Paul

I can't understand how the government can't see the benefit to the country by adding infrastructure such as the Singapore proposal and the various other solar and battery proposals mostly funded by private industry. I understand that some of these maybe either dreamland stuff due to other issues but like Paul says international pressure will force them to do it in the end. Maybe it will take a major coal market that is converting to stop buying coal and that is going to happen anyway.

I would say that it's more likely that the coal industry is lining the gov's pockets and until there are better offers the policy won't change.

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Originally Posted by Bohdan

I would say that it's more likely that the coal industry is lining the gov's pockets and until there are better offers the policy won't change.

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Such cynicism in one so young.:D:D:D

Cynical, but fair.

:)

Regards
Paul

I still lean to them trying to look after themselves rather than the community they represent and do anything that helps them stay in power. I think there was only one who did put the community before himself and that was Ted Mackie, a man who stood up for what benefited others to his own cost.

I saw a snippet of a Federal Govt minister being interviewed and he was asked why there was no incentives for buying electric vehicles and his answer was why give incentives for luxury vehicles as the people buying them could afford them. I’m determined to find who it was and name and shame.
Talk about being out of step!

It was Angus Taylor who said “ we’re not into subsidising luxury cars ……… people who have the money to buy a luxury car are welcome to go out and do that” etc. Etc.

He’s the Minister for Energy and Emission Reduction no less !!

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Originally Posted by Lappa

I saw a snippet of a Federal Govt minister being interviewed and he was asked why there was no incentives for buying electric vehicles and his answer was why give incentives for luxury vehicles as the people buying them could afford them. I’m determined to find who it was and name and shame.
Talk about being out of step!

It was Angus Taylor who said “ we’re not into subsidising luxury cars ……… people who have the money to buy a luxury car are welcome to go out and do that” etc. Etc.

He’s the Minister for Energy and Emission Reduction no less !!

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Not quite in touch!

Regards
Paul

Just to get away from the political comments (not really permitted under Forum rules), which arguably is very hard to do, this is a little more information on the incident just recently at Callide Power Station. Some information I have is confidential and I am not a liberty to divulge it, but the following information is mainly available through mainstream media, Callide bulletins or through AEMO bulletins.

Firstly a pic of the badly damaged Unit 4.

Attachment 496046

My apologies to those of you in the industry as this next information is not for you. :) Steam enters the turbine from the right into the HP (high pressure)and IP (intermediate pressure) cylinders. They are housed in the square box on the right (well it was originally squarish), which is actually a containment device in case the turbine overspeeds (more on this in a moment). The blackened section is the LP (low pressure) cylinder and the relatively intact section on the left is the generator.

This unit was rated at 425MW. That is quite a lot of power: Enough power to run about six 747 aircraft. If you are going to have such a disaster this one was very well contained. That box on the right is designed as a safety device in case the turbine lets go. It is primarily to prevent the blades acting as missiles, 21st century boomerangs that don't come back. It did it's job. The whole station was evacuated after the other two units that were also running were shut down as a safety precaution. Nobody was hurt.

You see that shiny, rather phallic looking piece of steel sticking provocatively out of the floor and being used as an improvised device to support the barricade tape? Well, as you may have imagined, that was part of the shaft. The operators were unable to open the electrical circuit breaker that connected them to the grid and the machine ran for around half an hour without any steam or oil to the bearings: While the turbine did not overspeed, because it was attached (locked in actually) to the grid it was running at 3000rpm, which is it's normal speed. However,withoutsteam to cool the blades and oil to lubricate the bearings it overheated and eventually seized. At the time it was estimated that it may have been powered by almost the equivalent of a 747 aircraft. We call it "Generator Motoring," because it is being driven by the electricty system just like our electric motors. Coming to an instantaneous stop from perhaps 50MW was never going to work out well. Back to our "symbol" in the floor: An engineering colleague estimated that piece of shaft embedded in the concrete including the part that is not visible weighs around 4½ tonnes! Another piece of the apparatus weighing 80+Kgs did manage to escape the building. It was found half a kilometre away. Clearly a few pieces did enough damage to let more light into the building than was ever intended. The incident resulted in a fire from the escape of hydrogen, which was contained with the help of more than twenty firemen.

Needless to say this unit will not be repaired any time soon. Initial estimates were twelve months. It would not surprise me if it was a lot longer than that. I don't know if some of it is even repairable. Maybe it has to be replaced, which arguably would be quicker, if a brand new one was available (probably not).

Regards
Paul

This looks like the part that decided to free itself.... mighty indeed!


Attachment 496052 Attachment 496056

WP

It might well be. Your pic shows the LP rotor and the shaft is the connector between this last part of the turbine (the third cylinder) and the generator. It won't be looking like that now.

Regards
Paul

Edit: There was only the pic on the left when I looked before. The pic on the right shows the IP cylinder and the HP cylinder. Steam enters the two cylinders and travels in opposite directions to balance thrust. With the LP cylinder it enters in the middle and travels out in both directions. As steam moves through the turbine it both cools and expands. Consequently the blades get larger and larger to cope with this transition. Between the HP and IP cylinders the steam is returned to the boiler and reheated (to 590° C at our station). One of the crazy things in power stations, because of the pressures we use, is that we have water at 300° C and because of the vacuum in our condensers we have steam at around 50°C. :cool:

I simply searched for "callide power station"... there were plenty of diagrams, videos, a few engineers snaps of the install and even a good discussion on welding the beasties up....

Here is a video of the install (of one of them anyway)...

https://fb.watch/66GZiQWpks/



NOT the kind of thing likely to be spare in storage, ready shrink wrapped :)

Wow, that's some serious damage.

I missed this in the news (hope no-one was injured), but I imagine with the ongoing mothballing of older power stations this is not a happy place to be for Qld/Aust over the coming year that it will take to repair.

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Originally Posted by Chris Parks

I still lean to them trying to look after themselves rather than the community they represent and do anything that helps them stay in power. I think there was only one who did put the community before himself and that was Ted Mackie, a man who stood up for what benefited others to his own cost.

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Ted Mack was the type of politician we need, an exemplar of honesty and service in all three levels of government. Resigned from federal parliament the day before he would have become eligible for a fat pension.
The only other one I can think of who comes close was John Hatton, who forced the Greiner state government to create ICAC, after they fought tooth, nail and dirty against it.

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Originally Posted by Bendigo Bob

Wow, that's some serious damage.

I missed this in the news (hope no-one was injured), but I imagine with the ongoing mothballing of older power stations this is not a happy place to be for Qld/Aust over the coming year that it will take to repair.

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Bob

Nobody was injured at all. The correct procedure was followed and the station evacuated.

Suffice to say the electricity system up and down the Eastern seaboard is being severely tested at times. This would have been exacerbated over the last couple of days with Yallourn in Victoria shutting down some of their units because of flooding in their mines. I think they are left with only a single unit at a reduced load (200MW?) to conserve coal.

Tough times.

Regards
Paul

Haha!

Solar =sun don't shine, what then...
Wind = wind don't blow, what then...
Coal = mine floods, machine explodes, what then...


There's some very big bucks in those stink factories.

I'd imagine going to the banks, cap in hand as a coal using generator looking for a loan to fix it! Tough sell.

Wonder what would happen if we spent a BILLION or 5 on solar, wind and CAES?

Apparently the gov spent a Trillion during COVID for support. Imagine if 200 billion of that went to SWC? mmmm, futureproof everything....

BuT wE cAnT aFfOrD iT!

This is interesting.... Bloomberg -The Future of Power Is Transcontinental, Submarine Supergrids

(read it in a Private Window)

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Bloomberg Businessweek reports on "renewed interest in cables that can power consumers in one country with electricity generated hundreds, even thousands, of miles away in another" and possibly even transcontinental, submarine electricity superhighways:Coal, gas and even nuclear plants can be built close to the markets they serve, but the utility-scale solar and wind farms many believe essential to meet climate targets often can't. They need to be put wherever the wind and sun are strongest, which can be hundreds or thousands of miles from urban centers. Long cables can also connect peak afternoon solar power in one time zone to peak evening demand in another, reducing the price volatility caused by mismatches in supply and demand as well as the need for fossil-fueled back up capacity when the sun or wind fade. As countries phase out carbon to meet climate goals, they'll have to spend at least $14 trillion to strengthen grids by 2050, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That's only a little shy of projected spending on new renewable generation capacity and it's increasingly clear that high- and ultra-high-voltage direct current lines will play a part in the transition.

The question is how international will they be...?
The article points out that in theory, Mongolia's Gobi desert "has potential to deliver 2.6 terawatts of wind and solar power — more than double the U.S.'s entire installed power generation capacity — to a group of Asian powerhouse economies that together produce well over a third of global carbon emissions..."The same goes for the U.S., where with the right infrastructure, New York could tap into sun- and wind-rich resources from the South and Midwest. An even more ambitious vision would access power from as far afield as Canada or Chile's Atacama Desert, which has the world's highest known levels of solar power potential per square meter. Jeremy Rifkin, a U.S. economist who has become the go-to figure for countries looking to remake their infrastructure for the digital and renewable future, sees potential for a single, 1.1 billion-person electricity market in the Americas that would be almost as big as China's. Rifkin has advised Germany and the EU, as well as China...

Persuading countries to rely on each other to keep the lights on is tough, but the universal, yet intermittent nature of solar and wind energy also makes it inevitable, according to Rifkin. "This isn't the geopolitics of fossil fuels," owned by some and bought by others, he says. "It is biosphere politics, based on geography. Wind and sun force sharing...."

If these supergrids don't get built, it will be because their time has both come and gone. Not only are they expensive, politically difficult, and unpopular — they have to cross a lot of backyards — their focus on mega-power installations seems outdated to some. Distributed microgeneration as close to home as your rooftop, battery storage, and transportable hydrogen all offer competing solutions to the delivery problems supergrids aim to solve.

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

Haha!

Solar =sun don't shine, what then...
Wind = wind don't blow, what then...
Coal = mine floods, machine explodes, what then...


There's some very big bucks in those stink factories.

I'd imagine going to the banks, cap in hand as a coal using generator looking for a loan to fix it! Tough sell.

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WP

Whilst I don't totally disagree I have to point out that the sun doesn't shine every day: For about sixteen hours or more and at other times it doesn't shine at all. Wind certainly doesn't blow all the time. Yallourn may be down for a few days. Callide will have all their units running again by the end of the month(I am not privy to an exact time scale) with only Unit 4 being out of service for a protracted period.

I also imagine that before they go to the banks the owners will be visiting their insurance companies first.

Regards
Paul