This is a mobile optimized page that loads fast, if you want to load the real page, click this text.

The future of energy generation and storage

Jump to new

Do you normally go over the 100mj per day by much? Maybe only a small part of your bill is a the higher rate.

As much as I hate to say it as an APA share holder, I think if you have a good location at your house for solar panels, it can be worth it to go electric for everything, even just the saving in connection fee adds up.
 

I live in a colder area and have hydronic heating. My wife also runs 2 degrees colder than me and (like many other couples) we have long conversations about hot and cold.

In Winter the energy use is well over the 100mj per day. In any case all the elements of the account have gone up by more than the alleged 1.47% rise. However the biggest increase is the additional winter Tariff.

Already have solar and it does make a big difference. Wife would take a very dim view of giving up her gas stove...

Still waiting to hear from the energy company about the figures. They are just nowhere near right.
 

Short answer = it could be done but there are limitations which need proper engineering.

The above answers the question. Following is just a layman's terms explanation for those who want to know:

Looking at existing HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) transmission, there are already links up to ~2400km operating successfully in China and some of those transfer serious amounts of power eg 8GW. To put that into perspective, 8GW is not far short of the all time record peak demand for electricity in Victoria (10.4GW) and is about twice the generating capacity of the present Snowy scheme.

For an AC power system, the longest one in the world is rather close to home - that being the one which stretches from north Queensland to just west of Ceduna (SA) and supplies practically all electricity across Qld, NSW, ACT, Vic and SA. Tasmania's system is separate from an AC power perspective but is connected via a HVDC link.

If we're going to be building things with any significant portion under water then HVDC is the practical means unless we're talking about short distances. For anything that's completely on land well you can build big AC power systems although that does then require that you operate it as one big AC power system. In contrast, if the only connection is DC then you've got two separate AC systems in practice. Depending on circumstances, either wins.

For the record, Qld - NSW are presently linked by one DC and two AC circuits and the same between Vic and SA. For other states NSW and Vic are linked at AC only and Vic and Tas are linked at DC only.

There are however a number of complexities in all of this which means it's all a case of bespoke design. It's not a "plug and play" situation like consumer devices are these days. Rather, it's all down to "real" engineering and the big issues relate to the existing system at both ends.

Trying to keep this to layman's terms, if you want to transfer what most people think of as "power", that is true power, then that's not particularly difficult. Once you want to transfer other technical characteristics, there's more to electricity than simply the true power aspect, well then having a long transmission line in the middle is problematic since it changes (AC) or completely nullifies (DC) those attributes. You're then reliant upon recreating them at the other end in order for it to work - that's doable so long as you've first worked out exactly what and how much you need to be doing which will be a dynamic thing it won't be constant.

As a practical example of that, there's a need to run synchronous generating plant (in practice gas but if it existed then coal, hydro, nuclear etc could also do it) in SA at all times even if the true power it produces isn't actually needed. That's for reasons of inertia (also known as "system strength"), reactive power (that's getting into the technical stuff.....) and so on and comes down to the limitations of non-synchronous plant (wind and solar) in that regard plus the limitations of long distance transmission at transferring those things from Victoria.

There are workarounds to that which are being built but point is you first have to know you need them (that point was missed in SA until the state ended up in dark.......) then you need to build them and then operate as required. In the meantime, running some gas-fired generation at all times is the workaround not because it's gas as such but because it's already there and can do what's required in purely electrical terms.

The other issue is a practical and economic one about scale. Scale it up and the unit cost comes down since it doesn't cost twice as much to build twice the capacity on an otherwise identical project. Trouble is, the bigger it is the more difficult it is to deal with failure when the inevitable happens. And once you get a "too big" fault on a system, well then in the best case you're going to black out a lot of customers and in the worst case the entire show comes to a halt real quick. One moment everything's normal, a few seconds later and an entire city, state or country is in the dark.

As background for that, if we look at Australia well we run the frequency at 50Hz and for other countries it's either 50 or 60Hz. In layman's terms frequency = speed.

Now think of what happens if you put a sudden load on an engine. Push the mower into long grass for example. The engine slows down and it slows down rather a lot yes.

Now back to the power grid, well if that 50Hz drops by 5% that's about the point where it's all over. At 48Hz the system should hold up but not without shedding quite a bit of load, at 47Hz I sure wouldn't bet on it staying energized at all, at 45Hz no we'll be in the dark before we get to that point.

The infamous big blackout in SA was an event of that nature. Loss of some supply > more supply tripped off as frequency and voltage fell > rest slowed down even further > all over and the only option is restart everything from scratch and all in a matter of seconds. That's the nightmare scenario with power systems but for clarity, SA certainly isn't the only place where it has ever occurred.

Now for a practical example with a link between A and B consider that the load on the SWIS (South West Interconnected System) in WA is running at about 2800 MW presently and should get down to about 2000 MW overnight. Meanwhile the total load in the eastern states (the NEM including SA and Tas) is currently about 21,000 MW (that's fairly low given the time of day).

Now suppose that we wanted to link the SWIS with the NEM (National Electricity Market). It could be done but a major consideration is what happens when the inevitable trip of that line occurs at some random unknown time?

What happens to the WA system if it's 5am and half the supply is coming from interstate and that suddenly disappeared? As "seen" by the power stations in WA, that's akin to pushing the mower straight into long grass! Frequency would drop and either generation takes up that lost supply real quick, or some loads are cut immediately, or south-west WA (including Perth) will be in the dark.

Or the opposite direction. What if there's say 3000 MW of load in WA and 1000 MW being sent from the SWIS to the NEM and the line trips? Loss of that load on the grid in WA means there's now too much supply and frequency will be rapidly rising as a result. Can generation cut output quickly enough? If not then we'll see it outright trip due to frequency rising out of spec and worst case that results in an over-reaction which ends up tripping the whole lot.

Now there are solutions to that but it's the sort of thing that needs to be properly engineered and looking at both ends of the line. Whichever is the smaller one (electrically) will pose the biggest issues but that's not to say there won't be any problems on the other end too. It needs a proper examination of the existing power system and crunching the numbers on what works and what doesn't. That's certainly something which can be done but it's real, proper sort of engineering not something that's done in an afternoon.

For an Australian project currently being looked at, that is Marinus Link (aka Project Marinus - building additional HVDC lines between Vic and Tas), there's an obvious financial incentive to go as big as possible. The limits are being pushed there but to cut a long story short it seems that around 750 MW is going to be about it give or take a bit. That doesn't mean 3000 MW can't be built, just that it'll need to be done as 4 x 750 MW in order to keep the maximum size of any failure within manageable limits.

An exception to all this is if one end of the link exists only to supply the link itself. That is, the "grid" at one end isn't really an actual power grid but is simply a power station of whatever sort (eg a solar farm plus some batteries, wind, pumped hydro etc but point is it's only there to supply the link, it's not also supplying a local city etc). In that case well there's no real need to have that side remain energized (electrically live) if the link trips, and you're never going to send power in the reverse direction since there's nothing to use it, so you've only got to worry about the receiving end. Eg for a link from Australia to Singapore, the main concern is about what happens in Singapore if it trips, there's no need to ensure the sending (Australian) end remains live following a trip so long as nothing's physically damaged by that.

That aspect of only needing to worry about one direction of power transfer and only needing to worry about maintaining stability at the receiving end does obviously reduce the amount of engineering work required. It also means that things which wouldn't be acceptable for two way flow will be acceptable in practice given that the concern is really only about one end.

So how likely really is this concern about lines tripping?

Short answer is "it happens". It's 3 weeks to Christmas and odds are something, either transmission or generation, somewhere in the NEM will unexpectedly trip between now and Christmas Day. I can't tell you what or when, that's anyone's guess, but it happens most certainly.

For a recent example generating unit number 1 at Torrens Island B (largest power station in SA) tripped on Monday afternoon and a couple of weeks ago there was a trip of both AC transmission lines between SA and Vic.

That neither of those incidents became newsworthy was because everything worked pretty much as it should work. Eg with the trip at Torrens Island other sources of generation in the NEM immediately took up the load, then units 1 - 3 at Dry Creek and unit 5 at Quarantine power stations (which were previously idle) in SA were started up to restore the system to a secure state (so that's back to being ready just in case anything else goes wrong), then in due course the more efficient but much slower to start Pelican Point station ramped up and Dry Creek + Quarantine were shut down as no longer needed given low demand at the time.

That's how it's supposed to work. Unless you're in the industry or happened to be near Dry Creek power station, which is a peaking and backup plant that's normally idle, when all 3 generators suddenly roared into action then you'd be unaware that anything even happened. For ordinary consumers be they homes or business, life carried on business as usual.

A bad but not disastrous response to the same incidents would be a major deviation in frequency, some consumers blacked out but the system remains alive as such.

A disastrous response to the same would be frequency falls too far, generation trips and down goes the whole show thus requiring a complete restart from scratch. Avoiding that is the first and foremost focus of it all really.
 
Something I will add to previous comments in regard to undersea cables is that whilst it's possible, noting that 2400km onshore cables have indeed been built overseas, that does depend on:

1. That the ocean floor is suitable for laying a cable on. So it's not all mountains and valleys etc.

2. That someone's got the money because this stuff isn't cheap.

In that context it's worth noting that Basslink (Tas - Vic) at 290km was the longest such cable in the world when built and since then others of about twice that length have been built overseas.

Going to NZ at close to 2000km or to Singapore at ~3500km is a pretty big leap. It should be a doable leap but it's a leap nonetheless and will need someone with $$$ willing to back it. That's perhaps the biggest hurdle.
 
On other matters relating to this industry:

*Origin Energy (ASX: ORG) have released an updated schedule for returning Mortlake power station unit 2 to service following a major failure earlier this year. The updated return to service date is now 30 December 2019. Mortlake is a gas-fired peaking plant located in Victoria comprising two units each of approximately 260 MW capacity.

*Origin has extended their deal with rival company Engie (not listed) in respect of Pelican Point power station (SA). The extension runs from 1 July 2020 for four years and in simple terms Origin supplies the gas (gas being the only fuel used at this facility), pays Engie and takes the electricity produced with Engie as the physical operator. This applies to half the plant only, the other half continuing to be run by Engie as their own business. Capacity is nominally 478 MW but can exceed that a bit in practice. Location is Adelaide metro area.

*AGL (ASX: AGL) are still testing their new Barker Inlet plant in SA but given that it has generated just over 10% of all electricity used in the state over the past 24 hours it would be fair to say that testing seems to be going pretty well. Plant capacity is 210 MW located in the Adelaide area.
 

thanks for that,

outside of engineering problems, can you see any financial problems, eg Would The saleable electricity that comes out the other end in Singapore still be able to be sold at a profit, or is there a chance transmission losses are so huge that it’s not viable?
 
SirRumpole said:
Demand management...cutting power bills and taking the load off the grid.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12...offer-hope-for-reliable-clean-energy/11766766
Click to expand...

Excellent story. Controlling peak demand has always been the holy grail of the electricity industry.

Certainly makes huge sense and having thousands of micro cuts and load levelling across industry and households is a clever way to spread the energy demand.

I think the really big deal will be when we have substantial numbers of electric cars on the roads and a system is devised where cars can be plugged into the grid when they are not on the road and act as flexible battery banks.
 

I'm not aware of any proper calculations for losses on that project (it might have been done, just not something I'm following) but as an order of magnitude we're talking about 15% not 50%. Don't take that 15% literally, it's an educated guess not based on any actual design, but point is yes there will be losses but most of the power gets from A to B.

An issue there is that HVDC losses aren't linear. There's a loss at both ends, so a line twice as long won't have double the losses, and also losses go up as a % of total power transmitted as power throughput increases. Run the same line at higher capacity and loss goes up in % terms. End result is there's no single figure for losses.

There's also more than one approach to the design and construction itself which will again affect losses. Bearing in mind that the electrical current always needs a return path to form a circuit, there's more than one way of doing that when it comes to cable under the ocean.

One is to have two conductors to form the circuit. The other is to have one conductor only and use the ocean as the second one.

The latter is far cheaper but does create concerns relating to corrosion since the surest way to outright ruin anything metallic is to have stray DC currents going into and out of it in sea water. Do that and anything metal will be full of holes in no time.

The ocean return approach was originally going to be used with Basslink (Tas - Vic) but in short everyone lost their nerve as to exactly where current might end up flowing. Through the water yes but through what else? Oil rigs and gas pipelines for example and that could end very, very badly for obvious reasons. With that in mind the idea was dropped like a hot potato but at very considerable expense financially and the cable was built with a metallic return instead.

It has been done elsewhere overseas though using just a single pole and the ocean as the return.

So the detail of the design will affect losses and costs and without knowing that I'm really just putting 15% forward as a ballpark sort of number.

As for whether or not that matters, at that point it's purely business like any other situation. If 15% of the stock from your shop routinely gets stolen or 15% of your crops aren't of suitable quality for sale well then it really just comes down to whether or not it's still a viable business based on revenue from the other 85% or not? In the case of energy, it's just business at that point - does the project stack up financially or not?

A point of relevance there is that about 95% of Singapore's electricity is presently produced from gas and the cost of the gas itself, as distinct from the cost of machinery etc, is the most important driver of the cost of that operation.

As such, the profitability of generating renewable energy in Australia and sending it to Singapore is primarily a function of the cost of building the overall scheme (everything - cable, solar farm, etc) and the price of natural gas which is variable subject to market forces. Presumably various contracts would underpin an actual development, but ultimately someone is going to be making a profit / loss on it to the extent that the gas price moves up or down.

A related factor there is how will investors (whoever) perceive the whole thing? There's no real precedent for locating a power station in another country over 3000km away from the load to be supplied with virtually all that transmission being under water. There are certainly power stations built on the other side of a border, eg Mexico and the USA or plenty of examples in Europe, but that's a comparatively simple operation compared to having it thousands of km away separated by water.
 
SirRumpole said:
Demand management...cutting power bills and taking the load off the grid.
Click to expand...
As a concept I'm enthusiastic.

In practice I'm cautious in view of the troubled history of making what should be easy happen in practice. Think "politics" there rather than "engineering" or "finance".

I say that based on observation of actual occurrences rather than cynicism. We're having a lot of trouble changing some timers which are already installed, all that needs to happen is change the settings, so needless to say I'm cautious about anything even slightly more ambitious.

That's not wanting to sound negative, it's just having seen the degree of politics standing in the way of all this.
 
basilio said:
Another round of gas price rises is coming through the system
Click to expand...

Of relevance to those investing in companies which produce or consume significant amounts of gas, or using it themselves, is the supply situation going forward.

ExxonMobil have scrapped their proposed LNG import terminal in Victoria altogether.

AGL's LNG import terminal in Victoria seems delayed until 2023 and faces considerable opposition.

No change so far as I'm aware to the other LNG import proposals in SA (1) and NSW (2).

Something to bear in mind if you're investing in gas either producing or consuming.
 
About the Singapore deal, one point i am unaware of, maybe @Smurf1976 can help :do they really plan to go all the way, or could it not be cheaper to just land on the Indonesian grid and feed it there with the Indonesians feeding an equivalent to Singapore
Far less cost and losses..but some important geopolitical and tech reliability issues.
If i was Indonesian, i would try this and get extra expertise for my own grid for free or cheap, and maybe strengthen my own grid as a result
 

thanks,

yeah that’s the part I was trying to work out, eg can they lose 15% of their stock and still be able to sell the remaining 85% at a price that atleast matches the competition Eg the oil fields and LNG carriers.

I love the idea of being able to make a continental size international grid capable of trading and storing renewable energy, it opens up a vast area of investment for Australians.
 
SirRumpole said:
Are solar panels still worth the money ?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-05/solar-panels-rebates-energy-is-it-worth-it/11738270
Click to expand...

Yes, Yes, Yes.

Adding solar panels can be the highest return investment there average family is likely make.

Even after taking $1000 per year of depreaciation of the panels into
account, you will still be earning around 17% return, and what makes that better is that 17% return doesn’t hit your tax return, it’s all gravy.

Now, I can’t think of any other Low risk investment that the average family has access to that can earn 17% tax free.

——————

even if you can’t afford to pay cash for the panels a great strategy is to redraw the $8000 you need for your solar system from your home loan, and then increase your home loan payments by the amount you normally spend on your electric bill.

That way your house hold cashflow stays the same, but that 17% return will flow directly into paying your home off quicker, via the electric bill funds you are directing into your home loan.
 
Value Collector said:
I love the idea of being able to make a continental size international grid capable of trading and storing renewable energy, it opens up a vast area of investment for Australians.
Click to expand...
It will happen.

Look how far we’ve come in a relatively short time.

Next Tuesday marks the 124th anniversary of public electricity supply in Launceston.

Whilst it certainly wasn’t the first place to use it, it was notable as the first in the first place in the Southern Hemisphere and possibly the world where a utility would simply supply electricity to anyone who wanted it, for any purpose, 24 hours per day no restrictions or questions asked.

That was a revolution of sorts at the time since the established business model elsewhere was charging customers “per light” or “per horsepower of motor capacity” and commonly with limited hours of supply. Simply selling the power, charged on the basis of consumption, and leaving the customer to do whatever they liked with it was a new idea certainly.

The first proper transmission system in Australia was also in Tasmania, operation commencing in 1916. There’s no actual proof so the claim isn’t officially made but there’s a general acceptance that by 1919 it might briefly have been the largest system, in terms of interconnected route length, in the world.

Victoria came next in 1924 and promptly did the same thing as Tasmania - just keep building more and more until it covers the state.

The other states generally didn’t get excited about it until after WW2 and Queensland didn’t do anything really major until the 1970’s. They were still running 3 separate grids within the state up to that point.

NSW and Vic were interconnected in 1955.

SA with Vic in 1990.

Qld with NSW in 2000.

Tas with Vic in 2006.

In terms of physical size we’ve already got the biggest system in the world and there’s a current plan to extend that in a westerly direction in Qld therough to Mt Isa with a new 1100km line.

So going international will happen, the question is of timing and detail.

Origin Energy (ASX listed) were looking very seriously at building transmission between Qld and PNG some years ago. Reason was to enable deveopment of PNG’s vast hydro resources which, if fully developed, would supply about 60% of Queensland’s electricity (though Origin planned an initial development at 30% of that scale). It didn’t happen, gas got in the way, but the idea was around certainly.

So the trend’s pretty clear over time, it’s just a question of detail and keeping politics out of it.

FWIW the USA hasn’t really managed to do it, they’re split into 3 systems across the lower 48 states although they do have connections to Canada and Mexico.

Middle East can’t even manage to agree on running gas pipelines between countries due to politcs.

The EU is mostly fairly well tied together including to some extent with the UK.

China’s the place building seriously big stuff though and arguably the leader these days. Before that it was the USSR prior to their collapse - there’s still half built infrastructure which was never finished but it was world leading stuff at the time.

From an investment perspective though it’s all very case by case. Not just physical aspects but also the underlying merits of linking two presently separate systems and crucially the funding model for building the connection.

In the Australian context, but it’s similar in many places, a key question for investors is that of a (financially) regulated project versus an entrepreneurial one.

The former carries inherently less risk for the owners but also no real potential to increase profit - it’s a regulated investment basically.

In contrast an entrepreneurial link exploits the pricing difference between two regions as its source of revenue.

In Australia it would be fair to say that there’s not a lot of interest in the entrepreneurial approach to interconnectors.
 

Great post Smurf
 

I guess it also papers over the cracks to some extent that the delivery system is unable to match the demand and therefore may take the heat off those in charge of generation and put the onus back onto the consumers who are expecting service in return for one of the highest power prices in the world ?
 
Controlling domestic solar power to protect the grid is relatively straightforward and seemingly well supported in WA..
Comprehensive story.

Print Email Facebook Twitter More
Authorities look to control household rooftop solar power systems to stabilise the grid

The body that runs WA's main electricity market wants the ability to remotely dump excess solar power from households — cutting the bill rebates people receive — to safeguard the grid from surging levels of renewable energy and avoid rolling power cuts.

... Clean Energy Council supports move
Darren Gladman, the Clean Energy Council's distributed energy director, fully backed AEMO's push, saying the difficulties posed by solar panels were largely technical and smart inverters were needed to help overcome them.

He said if people wanted to see ever growing rates of renewable energy on the grid, they needed to accept the role the market operator would play in regulating the system.

"The really important thing that relates to smart inverters is that it's able to understand what's happening on the grid and provide support to the grid when it needs it," Mr Gladman said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12...trol-house-rooftop-solar-power-in-wa/11773436
 

I think the grid operators need to be very careful with how they handle this situation, if they simply decide to start dumping or shutting down Solar production when there is an excess of supply, an this causes the owners of the solar panels to have their production reduced, or their export earnings reduced, then they will end up creating a massive incentive for people to leave the grid all together.

When you factor in the $365 it costs per year to be connected to the grid today + the Spread between the Buy and sell price (minimum 9 cents per Kilowatt) vs installing a battery + smart hotwater system, the grid only has a few marginal benefits.

I think it is in the grid operators long term interests to focus on strategies, that utilise the peak solar productions rather than seek the easy way of dumping them or idling them back.

Large scale storage, smart timing of off peak systems etc are better ways in my opinion.

Or even providing incentives to get households with solar to purchase batteries which the grid can control partially to decide when they charge etc, eg having batteries that only start charging during peak solar times, but allow the house hold to export solar production in the morning and afternoon.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Gen Alpha
Replies
13
Views
2K
moXJO
M
Electricity demand and data centres
Replies
15
Views
2K
farmerge
Electricity investments
Replies
8
Views
2K
Smurf1976
Official Microsoft Office 2024 Professional Plus License Key $59 with lifetime free updates ends March 20
Replies
0
Views
1K
bigdog
The Effect of Deepseek on Australian Stocks
Replies
7
Views
2K
Smurf1976
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more...