The future of energy generation and storage

The crazy thing is 10am to 3pm is still charged at shoulder rates in NSW.

If the grid is getting too much power during this period, make it off-peak or super off-peak as I think they do in SA.

That's a much better way to encourage a shift in usage than a punitive feed in charge.

SirRumpole said:

How absurd. Wasn't there a requirement on (someone) to provide storage ? Power going to waste and the producers being charged for it. Ridiculous.

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Indeed, wouldn't it make more sense, for the Govt to demand Ausgrid and the other suppliers have to install storage to soak up excess renewable generation during peak times?
The individual household having to install batteries, should be the last stage of the storage rollout, not the first IMO.

Ferret said:

The crazy thing is 10am to 3pm is still charged at shoulder rates in NSW.

If the grid is getting too much power during this period, make it off-peak or super off-peak as I think they do in SA.

That's a much better way to encourage a shift in usage than a punitive feed in charge.

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Simple, obvious solutions obstructed by rules and regulations drawn up by people who wouldn't know a Cumec from a MVAR.

It used to drive me crazy but these days I just accept that society has decided to go down this path with all sorts of things, it's not in any way limited to energy.

The problem isn't a lack of competent people. It's just an excess of others getting in the way, making all this far harder than it needs to be.

Smurf1976 said:

Simple, obvious solutions obstructed by rules and regulations drawn up by people who wouldn't know a Cumec from a MVAR.

It used to drive me crazy but these days I just accept that society has decided to go down this path with all sorts of things, it's not in any way limited to energy.

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@Smurf1976 I think it is called justifying a well-paid job in which they know little about or understand

sptrawler said:

Indeed, wouldn't it make more sense, for the Govt to demand Ausgrid and the other suppliers have to install storage to soak up excess renewable generation during peak times?
The individual household having to install batteries, should be the last stage of the storage rollout, not the first IMO.

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Or make it mandatory for the suppliers to buy batteries for homes if they want to impose a "production tax".

This is the problem with a cart before the horse energy policy.
It all sounds good in the media, but in reality it is looking more and more add hock, as we move along.
Now we have a legislated target, that in reality has become 'open cheque book engineering' IMO.
So like the NDIS it is becoming a another Govt teat, that as usual the private sector work out ways to get on board and milk it for all it's worth.
Another brain fart in the pressure building phase unfortunately.
I don't know how many times I've said labor have great ideas, it's the implementation that blows their feet off, giving subsidies to the the coal generators and the general public is just forestalling the reality.
There is no money in power production, unless it is being sold, there is no value in energy storage unless it is free to charge it.
Very messy period coming up IMO.

sptrawler said:

This is the problem with a cart before the horse energy policy.
It all sounds good in the media, but in reality it is looking more and more add hock, as we move along.
Now we have a legislated target, that in reality has become 'open cheque book engineering' IMO.
So like the NDIS it is becoming a another Govt teat, that as usual the private sector work out ways to get on board and milk it for all it's worth.
Another brain fart in the pressure building phase unfortunately.
I don't know how many times I've said labor have great ideas, it's the implementation that blows their feet off, giving subsidies to the the coal generators and the general public is just forestalling the reality.
There is no money in power production, unless it is being sold, there is no value in energy storage unless it is free to charge it.
Very messy period coming up IMO.

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Yes a lot simpler to re-nationalise the lot and cut out the middle men imo.

Ferret said:

The crazy thing is 10am to 3pm is still charged at shoulder rates in NSW.

If the grid is getting too much power during this period, make it off-peak or super off-peak as I think they do in SA.

That's a much better way to encourage a shift in usage than a punitive feed in charge.

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It would also be very simple to schedule X number of off peak water heaters to operate between 10.00 and 3.00 to spread the demand

macca said:

It would also be very simple to schedule X number of off peak water heaters to operate between 10.00 and 3.00 to spread the demand

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Let's not try to find any reason but the fact they want to screw more money from the populace.
Think about it:
You buy your panels with your money, get some subsidies .. from your taxes, all maintenance cleaning etc on you, You pay to send the power back to the grid (solar feed fee), get ridiculously low feed in tariff ..single digit...and you will be charged now to send energy back, same energy which is charged full price for the neighbour .
What a rip off...

sptrawler said:

This is the problem with a cart before the horse energy policy.
It all sounds good in the media, but in reality it is looking more and more add hock, as we move along.
Now we have a legislated target, that in reality has become 'open cheque book engineering' IMO.
So like the NDIS it is becoming a another Govt teat, that as usual the private sector work out ways to get on board and milk it for all it's worth.
Another brain fart in the pressure building phase unfortunately.
I don't know how many times I've said labor have great ideas, it's the implementation that blows their feet off, giving subsidies to the the coal generators and the general public is just forestalling the reality.
There is no money in power production, unless it is being sold, there is no value in energy storage unless it is free to charge it.
Very messy period coming up IMO.

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Realistically the decisions being made today needed to happen 10 + years ago.

Dogs breakfast, no good choices left.

macca said:

It would also be very simple to schedule X number of off peak water heaters to operate between 10.00 and 3.00 to spread the demand

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The problem is the excess generation requires storing, to reduce the need for fossil fuel generation during the evening peak and overnight.
The system actually needs excess generation during the day, to reduce it is just a hige backward step, as you say things like HWS should be timed on.
But even then, a huge amount of excess generation and storage is required, to carry the system overnight.
I would guess there isn't a lot of money in putting in excess generation if its output isn't being sold and there isn't a lot of money in storage if you have to pay to charge it and the only profit is the difference between charging costs and what you can sell it for IF it's required.

IFocus said:

Realistically the decisions being made today needed to happen 10 + years ago.

Dogs breakfast, no good choices left.

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Realistically the decisions made today, couldn't be made 10+ years ago. At that stage S.A was committed to purchasing and installing the Worlds largest molten salt storage generator, and they were going to replace all fossil fuel base load in 10 years.
Then it was found the process wasn't performing anywhere near the nameplate specs and it is only now the companies are re visiting the process.
Tbe issue IMO is, renewable technology is improving all the time and a holistic plan is required that allows the flexibility to realistically replace the coal generators with renewables and dispatchable cleaner generation.
The Govt has set a target for a huge reduction of fossil fuel generation in 6 years time, and in the time they have been in they haven't announced how they are going to do it or any new replacement generation, trying to keep blaming others for their failings is wearing thin IMO.
A lot of the technology that will do the heavy lifting is still being developed as we speak, with the likes of H2, high efficiency gas turbines that can actually run on H2 etc.
The mess has been compounded by legislating a target, with no plan of how or if it is possible to achieve it, Bowen needs to own it and either review it or come up with a sensible way of achieving it in the timeframe.
At the moment it looks like a wish and a prayer.

One of the often touted solutions about large transmission cables is to just put them underground.
Here is a quick vieo about why that is not as simple as so many people make out.
Its based on British conditions, but here in much bigger Oz, the technical difficulties are amplified greatly.
Underground cables
Mick

sptrawler said:

Realistically the decisions made today, couldn't be made 10+ years ago.

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What we could've done 10 years ago, or even 45 years ago as was once proposed, is do the bit we knew for certain would be part of the future.

Pick any of the alternative energy sources - geothermal, wave, wind, tidal, nuclear fission, solar PV, solar thermal, fusion, carbon capture at coal plants, etc.

What do they have in common?

1. They all produce electricity as their output. They don't produce gas.

2. Their output is either intermittent out of technical necessity, or it's base load out of economic necessity.

That being so, there was no scenario under which electrification at the point of consumption, especially for widely dispersed loads such as residential, wasn't going to be the right course of action.

There was also always going to be a need for at least shallow storage. There was no chance that building 8 hour pumped hydro for peaking plant was going to be a mistake.

Doubly so for off-peak storage water heating which combines both aspects into a single device, and a remarkably simple and low tech one at that. It takes the largest or second largest (depending on location and household size) use of household energy and doesn't just electrify it, but does so whilst raising minimum demand and adding nothing at all to peak demand. It fixes a lot of things all at once - and it's absolutely proven, cheap technology.

Now the electricity utilities were well aware of this a very long time ago, indeed 3 pumped storage facilities were completed in the decade to 1984 and there was a big push for off-peak water heating as well. It all made sense, because it fitted with any plausible version of the future.

Fast forward to today and politics managed to derail the whole lot, indeed they went as far as encouraging households to install gas. Go to a new homes area in the big cities today and it's not far short of 100% gas water heating. Once installed, that's there for decades.

That latter bit is the bit politicians seem to really not grasp. The day the legislation's passed isn't the day the job is done. Rather, it's the day 30 years of work can begin to be organised. It's not the case that someone can just say in 2040 that they don't want gas anymore and make it go away, any transition there will be decades and that's from when there's an actual start.

In the meantime, that lack of electrical load from storage water heating doesn't just mean gas is being used to heat water. It also undermines the finances of installing more solar, much of the output from which would displace fossil fuel generation during the morning and later afternoon for other uses. So it means more fossil there too.

That's what happens when the people making the decisions don't know what they're doing. For the record, Tasmania at the time refused to go along with it - copped some flak, that was a state government refusing to toe the line of its own party federally, but it was the right decision. Since then some others have also reversed that policy albeit somewhat too late given the damage was already done.

Very true @Smurf it was only 3 or 4 years ago all and sundry were trumpeting the virtues of W.A for its gas policy, now Woodsode's AGM is being stormed and the CEO hounded at her private residence.

The reality is we had a solar manufacturing plant that was exporting panels world wide 14 years ago and it wasn't supported by the Govt of the day, but now we are going to build a new solar manufacturing plant to try and take the moral high ground and blame the other side, it just shows how much nonsense gets spoken for political expedience and optics.

The issue we have currently can't and wont be fixed by rear view mirror politics, IMO more pumped hydro needs to be commenced and more gas supply and firming capacity started, then a sensible long term roadmap to a fully renewable grid may be possible.
ATM all that seems to be happening is the Govt is being held to ransom by the coal generators, while they continue to squeeze every last bit of juice out of them and meanwhile no one is keeping an eye on system reliability, maybe I'm wrong but it certainly is the impression from what information is available.

Everyone is talking about the lack of housing due to the influx of immigrants, no one is mentioning the increase in power they will be drawing on the system.
Would you happen to know a recent projected load growth estimate smurf?
I don't think W.A is looking too rosy either, I haven't heard of any new gas plant going in and the whispers about Blue Waters keep mounting.
Interesting times ahead, when you read articles like this one and this is happening with a very pro renewable Govt in office. To me that is the really worrying part, then you start and hear the first rumblings of excuses.
Not a good sign IMO.


There has been an “alarming” slowdown in renewables projects in Australia, with large-scale plants bearing the brunt of this downturn while rooftop solar and batteries are “storming ahead”, according to a new report (The Guardian).

The Clean Energy Council report found there was $1.5bn in new investment commitments for renewables projects in Australia in 2023, less than a quarter of the $6.5bn pledged in the previous year.

By the end of 2023 there were 56 renewable energy projects under construction, a decrease from the 72 at the end of 2022.

These projects under construction have a combined capacity of 7.5GW, more than a fifth lower than the 9.5GW the year previously.

Across the year, funding for new solar farms dropped by more than a third while no windfarms gained support.



New investment commitments provided an “alarming statistic”, though, as such sign-offs were “a good signifier” of how the sector will perform in the future. All up, $1.5bn was secured for new projects in 2023, less than a quarter of the $6.5bn tally for 2022.

“There were no new financial commitments to utility-scale wind projects in 2023 (compared to six in 2022) – a disheartening situation that needs to be addressed,” the council said. The seven new solar projects with 912 megawatts of capacity last year was down from the 1.5GW in 10 solar farms in 2022.

On a rolling 12-month average, investment in the December quarter sank to the lowest level since the council began gathering data in 2017, dipping below $1bn.

Industry hopes of a turnaround in large-scale projects hinge partly on the federal government’s capacity investment scheme. The plan, to run from 2024 to 2027, aims to drive an additional 32GW of renewables and storage into the grid by 2030.

sptrawler said:

Would you happen to know a recent projected load growth estimate smurf?

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There are some seriously ambitious ones around.

Trouble is, if price an supply can't be sorted then they'll be way off the mark.

Eg Fortescue has being trying to get a project up and running in Queensland that needs 500 MW constantly. You read that correctly - 500MW load at a single site running constantly. That would be fed directly from transmission not via the distribution network (the proposed site is right next to a former power station site).

For the moment however that project looks dead, electricity price has been the problem, but without things like that it really throws the forecast out. Hence I'm very sceptical of them.

That said, here's an annual chart of load and supply sources for WA. Ignore the first year, 2006, due to incomplete data.

Black = coal, orange = gas, green = wind, yellow = solar. Note this is energy not peak power.



For other states it's more complicated. Purple = import from other states, below the zero line = export to other states. Blue = hydro. Red = diesel. Light blue = battery discharge.

Well @Smurf1976 that post is brilliant and sums up the problem perfectly.

When you consider 80% of Australia's population live in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, it shows the enormity of the problem.

The fact that there has been a reduction in projects since the target was announced, would indicate to me that the private sector have decided to take a passive role rather than an aggressive role and just make the Government dig their way out of the hole they have dug with a legislated target.

As for Fortescue, with any major industrial load with a 24/7 x 365 day operation, you and I know they need a guarantee of continuity of supply.
500MW is a lot of base load and for Fortescue to install that themselves, with renewables and have a dedicated line and long duration storage just wouldn't be feasible.

This is the problem Albo, Chris and the Canberra bred politicians have no concept of the enormity of the issue and could very well end up sending Australia into a cottage industry country. They actually may be starting to grasp it and that's why they are prepared to underwrite all the investment.
My guess is the privates still will be reluctant, there is way too much non productive investment required, so installing the renewable generation/storage isn't a problem, getting a long term return from it is.

What confuses me is the lack of concern for our kids future and I don't mean that from a renewables perspective, just the single minded, self centered smug attitude they are adopting.

As I keep saying well intentioned, poorly executed policy, driven by a smug self righteous belief in their own opinions.
Heading for a major crash yet again IMO.

PS, IMO the reason we have actually gone so far with the transition until now, is because the legacy generators were losing market share to renewables as the Government were facilitating the entry of renewables, to push the legacy generators off the grid.

It was working well IMO, the coal generators were having to consider their futures and adapt and change their plant, or lose market share.

Now the Government has given them a Guarantee to support them until the Government can coax or bribe renewables onto the grid, to meet the legislated target.
Talk about blow your feet off.

Train wreck on the horizon IMO, what incentive is there for the coal generators to spend money on the plant and two what incentive is there for renewables to enter the grid if they will be curtailed and what major processing plant is viable without secure grid supply ?
Enter @IFocus stage left, it is only a discussion on where we are heading and we obviously don't have all the info. But with our backgrounds alarm bells must be clanging.

sptrawler said:

Well @Smurf1976 that post is brilliant and sums up the problem perfectly.

When you consider 80% of Australia's population live in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, it shows the enormity of the problem.

The fact that there has been a reduction in projects since the target was announced, would indicate to me that the private sector have decided to take a passive role rather than an aggressive role and just make the Government dig their way out of the hole they have dug with a legislated target.

As for Fortescue, with any major industrial load with a 24/7 x 365 day operation, you and I know they need a guarantee of continuity of supply.
500MW is a lot of base load and for Fortescue to install that themselves, with renewables and have a dedicated line and long duration storage just wouldn't be feasible.

This is the problem Albo, Chris and the Canberra bred politicians have no concept of the enormity of the issue and could very well end up sending Australia into a cottage industry country. They actually may be starting to grasp it and that's why they are prepared to underwrite all the investment.
My guess is the privates still will be reluctant, there is way too much non productive investment required, so installing the renewable generation/storage isn't a problem, getting a long term return from it is.

What confuses me is the lack of concern for our kids future and I don't mean that from a renewables perspective, just the single minded, self centered smug attitude they are adopting.

As I keep saying well intentioned, poorly executed policy, driven by a smug self righteous belief in their own opinions.
Heading for a major crash yet again IMO.

PS, IMO the reason we have actually gone so far with the transition until now, is because the legacy generators were losing market share to renewables as the Government were facilitating the entry of renewables, to push the legacy generators off the grid.

It was working well IMO, the coal generators were having to consider their futures and adapt and change their plant, or lose market share.

Now the Government has given them a Guarantee to support them until the Government can coax or bribe renewables onto the grid, to meet the legislated target.
Talk about blow your feet off.

Train wreck on the horizon IMO, what incentive is there for the coal generators to spend money on the plant and two what incentive is there for renewables to enter the grid if they will be curtailed and what major processing plant is viable without secure grid supply ?
Enter @IFocus stage left, it is only a discussion on where we are heading and we obviously don't have all the info. But with our backgrounds alarm bells must be clanging.

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But isn't it perfect: no more energy, no more industry , back to food and shelter.
This will give us real zero and we will have saved the planet from global warming, lol yet freezing in 50y due to climate short cycle , yet with CO2 20% higher than current level
By that time, we will be broke unable to buy required new renewable plant or even buy spare parts for reliable gas turbines or hydro plants.
And Chinese company will ship our gas for their domestic usage wo even any land facilities
It is interesting how our country wants to mirror Argentina and Chile path to oblivion.
We are just one socialist leadership away, who will be the Australian Allende?
Power is everything in both life and economy

qldfrog said:

But isn't it perfect: no more energy, no more industry , back to food and shelter.
This will give us real zero and we will have saved the planet from global warming, lol yet freezing in 50y due to climate short cycle , yet with CO2 20% higher than current level
By that time, we will be broke unable to buy required new renewable plant or even buy spare parts for reliable gas turbines or hydro plants.
And Chinese company will ship our gas for their domestic usage wo even any land facilities
It is interesting how our country wants to mirror Argentina and Chile path to oblivion.
We are just one socialist leadership away, who will be the Australian Allende?
Power is everything in both life and economy

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True, but it is hard to get people to understand the current issues, without trying to get them to crystal ball gaze into a 20 year future.

ATM we are of this belief we are saving the planet and Chris is leading the way, the rest of the World wont even know what is happening here.

The only people who believe we will make any difference to climate change and or actually not send ourselves further down the toilet, are those with a fervent belief in the Labor/Green gospel and those who just want to believe in anything that fills the climate catastrophe void they are facing.

So I try and keep it low key and in the here and now, you are trying to walk into a church congregation and get the whole congregation to convert to atheism.