Future of the Australian Electricity Market

[havabeer69]

like Paul I also work at a power station, ours is coal fired.


the only way we will get proper sized grid "storage" will be with large scale pumped hydro. let the water out during the day when the demand is there and pump it back up at night using cheap electricity.

the problem with ALOT of projects is that the government will not subsidise the grid connection, its why there are so many approved solar farms, hydro dams etc but bugger all actually being built. its because the cost of the getting connected to the grid is insanely high. 900k's of new grid interconnection between S.A and N.S.W is going to cost us (the tax payers and elect users) 2.6 billion. Further blowout for vital NSW-SA grid interconnector

that's 2.8million per kilometre of wires and its not even finished. once you start asking private companies to pay huge connection fee's like that it just becomes unrealistic unless you are very close to the grid. which most of the times all these area's aren't. The government has actually just made some chunk of NSW a green energy zone where I believe they are actually going to contribute funding to help connect some of these renewable projects with in that zone.

Also don't always worry about spot prices TOO much, larger stations will also contract out part of there generating capacity. I'm at a 2 unit coal fired power station and I believe we've basically contracted out 1 units worth of capacity. So we're constantly being paid for that generation. but if the spot market prices go high and we have 1 unit out of service we obviously can't make the bulk of our actual profits, which means maintenance gets cut as we don't have the money to spend.

really the 3 big killers for coal fired power stations will be:
Ash Dam storage - The old addage of "you can't you die" rings true. if you have nowhere to store your ash you can't burn coal
Profitability - Market conditions means you won't make any money so just turn the thing off and walk away, this is both profit from generating or coal becoming to expensive to buy etc.
Plant Failure - Aging plant breaks and becomes to costly to fix


My view of the situation (in NSW) will be:
one or two of the older coal fired stations will close around the 2023 - 2025 mark (about when snowy 2.0 will come in). this will provide a small price increase which will be enough for the remaining stations to stay open until 2029 - 2032 which by then either a new base load gas or stored hydro will be in a much better place to take over.

[Beardy]

Matt put a solar power battery on his bike shop. But there'''s a reason he won'''t put one on his home

Generally people say they want to go green and save the planet but it appears that it needs to be financially rewarding to do so first

[Chris Parks]

A lot of people with existing solar in NSW may not be aware of a scheme to provide interest free loans in a trial currently available. It seems strange that none of the areas listed are in the south eastern area of the state but we won't go into that. I would be into it like a rat up a drain pipe but we are not in it.

[havabeer69]

assume you're talking about the solar battery offer:
Empowering Homes solar battery loan offer | NSW Government

turns out i'm eligible but really its $900 a year for a battery ($9000 interest free loan) as I already have a 6.6kw solar. so I would need to be saving over $900 a year on electricity to make this viable for my self to meet at least a 10 year pay off.


its also hard with rental property's.... there is zero incentive for me to put panels on my rental property. Doesn't really make the place any more "desirable" in terms of getting tenants in. Other then trying to do my bit to "go green" a lot of existing rental properties will probably never get solar. As it gets mentioned most people don't want to go green unless they benefit from it.

[Chris Parks]

As I mentioned above in a previous post I think that community batteries and micro grids will evolve in the future. I can't see house standalone batteries ever being truly viable like solar panels have become over the last few decades. I did not look at the terms as not being eligible so I will now withdraw my enthusiasm for the idea.

[woodPixel]

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.

[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“

[Bushmiller]

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“

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

[woodPixel]

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.....

[Bushmiller]

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

[woodPixel]

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


kZrsYu5.jpg

using this tool --> Australia National Electricity Market Dashboard

[woodPixel]

A new process and a game changer too...

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

[AlexS]

A new process and a game changer too...

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

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.

[woodPixel]

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.

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....

[woodPixel]

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