Future of the Australian Electricity Market

[yvan]

Well, while Bushmiller talks about power plant outputs in the mega's, we are attempting to improve the output of our 20-pannel PV system by having mini-inverters installed as we have 2 trees shading some of the panels during part of the day. Time will tell if this was a good decision!

As a general observation, I am more than miffed, being polite, to be told that our PV system creates a problem rather than solves one...

There we was, in our innocence, dreaming of making a contribution to improving the current health of our planet no less when the Tasmanian government introduced a power feed-back incentive scheme to encourage the locals to go solar, right at the time we were extending our modest abode.

This is the same government who then decided to reduce the buy-back incentive from 28c to 6c/kW. This of course went down like a lead balloon, to the extent that the original decision was reviewed so that, for current beneficiaries, the reduction was stepped from 28c to 13c to 6c over a period of time.

Sorry but I don't get it: one minute there is this attractive offer to install PV systems but now they are creating a problem...go figure!!!

The price of energy is becoming a political football with allowances being distributed to pensioners etc. Sooner or later the crunch will come when true power charges will have to be passed as the cost of such allowances becomes prohibitive.

I'm off me soap box!

Cheers,
Yvan

[Chris Parks]

Until governments and the electrical suppliers and generation companies get of their collective backsides and integrate storage into the grid then things won't change. It is a classic example of short term thinking and because the grid was developed as an instantaneous supplier unlike the water supply for instance which uses storage to supply demand.

[woodPixel]

Yvan, I see that Tesla in the USA will only sell bundled PV's with a battery system now.

Selling to the utilities for 6 cents a Kwh seems a bit pissy, so consuming your own photons will be the answer for the future.

If, after all, the government sees citizens and customers as its enemies, its time to lower the portcullis and provide ones own services!

Tesla Powerwall 2: A complete 2021 buyers guide | Solar Choice

[Bushmiller]

Well, while Bushmiller talks about power plant outputs in the mega's, we are attempting to improve the output of our 20-pannel PV system by having mini-inverters installed as we have 2 trees shading some of the panels during part of the day. Time will tell if this was a good decision!

As a general observation, I am more than miffed, being polite, to be told that our PV system creates a problem rather than solves one...

There we was, in our innocence, dreaming of making a contribution to improving the current health of our planet no less when the Tasmanian government introduced a power feed-back incentive scheme to encourage the locals to go solar, right at the time we were extending our modest abode.

This is the same government who then decided to reduce the buy-back incentive from 28c to 6c/kW. This of course went down like a lead balloon, to the extent that the original decision was reviewed so that, for current beneficiaries, the reduction was stepped from 28c to 13c to 6c over a period of time.

Sorry but I don't get it: one minute there is this attractive offer to install PV systems but now they are creating a problem...go figure!!!

The price of energy is becoming a political football with allowances being distributed to pensioners etc. Sooner or later the crunch will come when true power charges will have to be passed as the cost of such allowances becomes prohibitive.

I'm off me soap box!

Cheers,
Yvan

Yvan

I don't believe you have done the wrong thing for one moment. On the contrary you have made a positive commitment to going down the renewable path. Let me attempt to explain how the whole thing has developed and what have been the pros and cons of the arrangement.

I am not sure when solar started to be commonly adopted, but for arguments sake, we will call it the "early" days. Installation of a domestic or rooftop solar system was expensive and nobody was putting up their hand. There had to be an incentive and various schemes were introduced by the individual states and heavily subsidised both for the installation and the feedback price. This was to kick start the adoption of solar power. Prices offered for feeding back into the grid varied from 44c up to 53c/KWhr. Those states offering 53c/KWhr were fairly quickly subscribed up to their budgeted target. At the time, the large generators such as the power station where I work were getting paid around 8c/Kwhr which puts into perspective just how attractive the scheme was.

Overall these schemes had a finish date and I mention this because the downside of any subsidy is that the price of the goods does not remain down during the currency of the subsidy. It too goes up.

I purchased a 5KW system just before the subsidies were due to cease and paid in round figures $14,000 for which I took out a loan. A year or so earlier I had looked into getting solar and a similar system was going to cost $23,000.I did not do it at that time: Too much even with the subsidy. A colleague at work had put his name down for solar but did not take it up until after the subsidies had ceased. However because he had got his name down he was still entitled to the same scheme as me and with an identical system he paid $11,000, which shows how the subsidy was affecting the market. The subsidy did bolster the demand and reduce the price of panels and inverters, but it was not passed on. The drop in price was $3000 in two weeks.

So we come to solar today and the feedback price reflects the commercial market spot price more or less. There are still some subsidies available for the installation incidentally. We put in a second system the same size and I think the installation was down to $4000!

I am not familiar with the Tasmanian pricing structure and the terms offered, but much will depend on whether it was a firm contract. From what you have said the price is either back to 6c/KWhr or it is ramping back to that price point via 13c/KWhr. Even when you get to 6c just spare a thought for us poor Queenslanders where the spot market for the commercial generators has averaged just below 4½c so far this year! You are actually doing 33% better than we are! Of course if the Tassie government has reneged on a deal, that is an entirely different matter and I will expect to see you at the head of a street parade ranting and raving about the broken promises.



I appreciate this may not be exactly what you were hoping to hear, but I hope it may go some way to explaining what has happened particularly with pricing

Just leading on from that, sufficient provision has not been put into place to cope with the final uptake (it may not be final) of solar and that without storage capability it will never be able to provide more than a quarter, actually make that a fifth, of our electricity needs. An additional problem, as I have mentioned elsewhere before, is that solar does not have the ability to control voltage. Eventually a combination of wind and storage technology will resolve the issues, but for the moment the fossil fired stations, including gas because it is not a green source of power, will provide continuity of supply during the sunless and windless hours. We have also got to the point in South Australia where the solar supply can on occasion exceed the demand. Somebody has to stop generating: Problem. Once storage is available it won't be a problem, but that point is not just around the corner so until then, who knows?

Again I will mention that some of the problems of feeding back into the grid are not so much caused by the reverse flow of power, but by a distinct lack of maintenance and antiquated systems that were not pro actively maintained because of greed and profit

There is also some talk of rooftop generators having to pay to use the transmission lines to feed into the grid. This would be a real kick in the erogenous zone as there is already a service charge borne by every customer and will have people jumping up and down big time!

Regards
Paul

[Optimark]

Well, while Bushmiller talks about power plant outputs in the mega's, we are attempting to improve the output of our 20-pannel PV system by having mini-inverters installed as we have 2 trees shading some of the panels during part of the day. Time will tell if this was a good decision!

Cheers,
Yvan

I would suggest it is a good decision, we have two different types of micro inverters, our first lot of 18 panels (4.5kW) are running ABB micro inverters, our second lot of 10 larger panels (3.2kW) have Enphase micro inverters. We also have trees, plus our panels are on four hipped rooftops and one flat rooftop, so micro inverters were really the only solution.

Our neighbours directly opposite us have micro inverters supplied by the South Australian manufacturer of their panels. They have had issues and the issues were so bad all of their micro inverters were replaced.

The difference between our ABB system and our Enphase system is not that great, they both are doing an excellent job, but the Enphase software is the bees knees by comparison to the ABB software.

The people who installed our second lot of solar panels won't install micro inverters unless they are Enphase; virtually no problems with any of their installations once they switched to Enphase micro inverters.

Something for future reference, if you run micro inverters then you have AC coming directly from the roof, which you can use straight away, and if allowed, send excess to the grid. If in the future you wish for a battery or batteries, then in all probability you will have to convert the AC to DC to send to the battery for storage. When you draw from the battery, you will need to convert the DC from the battery to AC for the house. This is what our system does, yes it is slightly wasteful, but it works and works very well.

Mick.

[yvan]

Paul,

Thank you for your explanation taken from another perspective.

As an aside, I am not exactly sure if I understand how the energy market works either: I recall your map showing the spot price of power in the various states of the country. I appreciate the price is a spot price which, by definition, will fluctuate in time but, when I see a negative price, my immediate thought is that the supplier would pay the consumer to consume! Exactly the same as negative interest rates when the depositor pays the bank for the privilege to have the same bank keep his money!!!

Could your figure of 4.5c/kWh indicate that this energy is produced at a loss and, if so, how can it be sustained?

The storage of renewable energy seems to be the key to the management of its use and I would have thought that, instead of building more plants, instrumentalities should consider using the funds to offer owners of PV systems loans at break-even interest rates to install battery banks. No subsidy, sufficiently high interest rates to "cover costs". I would have thought that the cost of a single power plant would buy a fair few battery banks!

Ramblings over!

Cheers,
Yvan

[Chris Parks]

Paul may correct me here but I think there is going to have to be large mass storage in the grid as well as domestic storage. I also think that the grid will be broken up into smaller localised units in some parts such as for country towns.

[BobL]

Something for future reference, if you run micro inverters then you have AC coming directly from the roof, which you can use straight away, and if allowed, send excess to the grid. If in the future you wish for a battery or batteries, then in all probability you will have to convert the AC to DC to send to the battery for storage. When you draw from the battery, you will need to convert the DC from the battery to AC for the house. This is what our system does, yes it is slightly wasteful, but it works and works very well.

We also have an Enphase system.

With conventional PV systems up to 600V DC is running across a roof to the inverter, compared to the the 240V AC coming out of micro inverters. 240V AC which is much safer (eg fires and electrocution), not just the lower V but the fact that it's AC. Even 100V DC is able to kill or serious injure. A colleagues husband was killed by a the DC coming out of just 4 panels. Interesting it didn't kill him directly - it threw him off the roof.

RE: convert the AC to DC to send to the battery for storage.
Modern inverters are incredibly efficient so the energy loss is less than the efficiency gain from using the micro inverters. VFDs convert a fixed frequency AC to DC back to variable frequency AC for a variety of reasons - the gains in efficiency from driving machinery at variable speeds far outweighs the loss of energy involved in the double conversion process.

[Bushmiller]

Paul,

Thank you for your explanation taken from another perspective.

As an aside, I am not exactly sure if I understand how the energy market works either: I recall your map showing the spot price of power in the various states of the country. I appreciate the price is a spot price which, by definition, will fluctuate in time but, when I see a negative price, my immediate thought is that the supplier would pay the consumer to consume! Exactly the same as negative interest rates when the depositor pays the bank for the privilege to have the same bank keep his money!!!

Could your figure of 4.5c/kWh indicate that this energy is produced at a loss and, if so, how can it be sustained?

The storage of renewable energy seems to be the key to the management of its use and I would have thought that, instead of building more plants, instrumentalities should consider using the funds to offer owners of PV systems loans at break-even interest rates to install battery banks. No subsidy, sufficiently high interest rates to "cover costs". I would have thought that the cost of a single power plant would buy a fair few battery banks!

Ramblings over!

Cheers,
Yvan

Yvan

The price at times was negative and at times very positive. Overall it 4.5c was the average price for the first five months of this year in Qld. It would have been similar, but not the same in each of the other Eastern states. So we are not making a loss, but precious little that could be considered profit.

I think you are right that the government could direct their efforts and money in a much better direction. My personal belief is that the next stage of solar electricity will revolve around storage. I don't see how else, without the introduction of a new technology, that we will be able to approach 100% renewables. I stress "approach" because I can't see us realising this goal completely for the moment: In time I hope I will be able to change my mind on that.

Regards
Paul

[Bushmiller]

Paul may correct me here but I think there is going to have to be large mass storage in the grid as well as domestic storage. I also think that the grid will be broken up into smaller localised units in some parts such as for country towns.

Chris

I think you are on the right track, but I have to point out that the "large" batteries proposed are a pittance compared to the demand and way too few. Also battery storage is for the moment uneconomic. To put that into perspective, the much touted Tesla battery produces 100MW for one hour only.

The smallest state demand in Australia, which is our dearly beloved Tassie, is about 1000MW. To supply that state for 24 hours would require 240 batteries of that Tesla size and the solar power to charge them, which is about 4000MW as the solar will only operate for about a quarter of the day at best. This assumes the sun shone through the day. These figures are only a rough guide, but if anything are conservative.

The other states have demand up to eight times that of Tasmania.

That is a lot of batteries. I am still interested to see what happens with that Ambri battery you linked to before.

Regards
Paul

[Bushmiller]

I recall your map showing the spot price of power in the various states of the country. I appreciate the price is a spot price which, by definition, will fluctuate in time but, when I see a negative price, my immediate thought is that the supplier would pay the consumer to consume! Exactly the same as negative interest rates when the depositor pays the bank for the privilege to have the same bank keep his money!!!


Cheers,
Yvan

Yvan

Just to address that concern specifically, the price is totted up over a period of time and the average hopefully is in the black. Should it ever get to a negative overall, we, the generators will be out of business, and more than likely, you and I will be without power. Fortunately that is unlikely to happen so don't rush off to buy your portable gen set yet.

Regards
Paul

[Chris Parks]

Recycling an old power station, making good out of bad seems like a worthy idea.

‘All about evolution’: Here’s what to do with a dead power station

[Bushmiller]

Chris

The hyperbolic shape of cooling towers I always think are architecturally pleasing. I hope the new owners can do something with it, but I have no idea of the acoustics. Often more than 100m high (I think those at Bayswater were 121m) they are very imposing structures with an area approximating a football field at the base. Cheap seating could be available outside the structure with more expensive balcony or boxes higher on the walls. I am imaging the possibilities.....

Regards
Paul

[woodPixel]

Turn them into Mega-art projects

Big picture: How artists including Rone paint enormous silo murals and city art - ABC News

photo_2021-05-14_15-05-21.jpg

[woodPixel]

This is the pipeline that was shut down in the USA last week for a few days.... Colonial Pipeline - Wikipedia

People there were filling plastic bags and shooting each other at petrol stations over it, like scenes from Mad Max....

Colonial's pipeline carries about 100 million gallons per day of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

This is one pipeline by one company in one part of one country.

100 million gallons a DAY.... 378.5 million Litres.....



The world is doomed. We have no hope.