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The future of energy generation and storage

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SirRumpole said:
Good article.

It's all pie in the sky from the government now, no plan whatsoever.
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Which is kind of what we have been talking about for quite a while.

The next issue that will be, how do we scale up generation, to make a new 1GW manufacturing facility viable financially.

But that question wont happen untill the next term of this Government, at least it should play out in three terms of Government, which is much better than having stop start every election.
 
SirRumpole said:
Good article.
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Just my view but I'm perceiving a definite shift in sentiment.

I'm seeing quite a few people who've had strongly held views on the subject, and I'm referring to people from politics and related fields, suddenly shifting toward a much more centrist position on the issue.

I think reality's starting to set in that we've got a problem. :2twocents
 
sptrawler said:
The next issue that will be, how do we scale up generation, to make a new 1GW manufacturing facility viable financially.
Click to expand...
It's not quite that large but there is a proposal being investigated in SA that, if it were to proceed, needs ~450MW give or take.

That's for a hydrometallurgical plant and associated refinery or in layman's terms a metal smelter plus to treat a somewhat complex ore stream containing multiple useful products. Plus there's the associated mine and supporting infrastructure.

That's not to say it'll go ahead, there's a lot more issues that'll determine its viability than just the electricity supply alone, but it's a seriously large load if it does.

For context average load in SA at present is about 1725MW with peak just over double that. So adding another 450 is substantial.:2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
I think reality's starting to set in that we've got a problem. :2twocents
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Well, the way I see it is that the strategists have decided what we need to do, now it's time for the tacticians (engineers) to decide how it's going to be done.

The current situation seems to be that the politicians decided we have to go to war but they also want to tell the army which guns to fire and when.

It doesn't or shouldn't work that way in practise, the experts have to be allowed to do their jobs.
 
SirRumpole said:
Is fusion power really coming, or is it the greatest hoax perpetrated on the world?

www.abc.net.au

Fusion-power deal heralds beginning of next great energy transition

China is driving hard to supplant the US in this new military industrial complex, and has already achieved leadership in electric vehicles, batteries, drones and renewable energy.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
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In terms of a functional, practical and at least reasonably economic system I'll believe it when I see it.

Never say never, but the old quote is "fusion is the energy source of the future and always will be" - a reference to it having been "just around the corner" for decades. :2twocents
 
I have talked about Gen IV nuclear before, IMO if they are successful they will be the next big step, high temperature reactors will be the goto energy source for industrialised countries.
It probably won't be for Australia, because we will be well down the path to renewables and as we wont be manufacturing much, nuclear wont be relevant.

He explains the state of play with China and its current nuclear ambitions, at times it sounds like a criticism of china but it isn't it is quite interesting.


 
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Greg Jackson of 'Octopus Energy' , a bloke who's had a modicum of success; has done a bit of media of late... All of it a little upbeat for the doomer's of these forums.
The oil Emirate Abu Dhabi stitching up contracts of data centres at US $0.06-kw/h, from solar and batteries... just one example.
 
Renew Energy has a detailed damning analysis of the Kurri/Kurri Gas - diesel power station. A long read but IMV an education.
I wish John Clarke was around to do a story on this disaster.

(Do you reckon Smurf had a hand in this story ? :D

The abject saga of one of Australia’s most controversial gas fired power station projects​

kurri-kurri-smoke-scaled.jpg


Smoke rises from Kurri Kurri peaking plant during testing. Image: Dan Repacholi Facebook page.

Ted Woodley
Sep 29, 2025

Commentary

As Snowy Hydro’s $2-plus billion Kurri Kurri Gas/Diesel Power Station finally reaches its testing phase and starts to generate intermittent power, it is sobering to look back over its history,

As a change from the normal conversational format, this article provides a chronological record of the word-by-word statements made by the key players over the past five years of this saga.

The chronology (attached due to its length) starkly exposes the hyperbole, the conflicting ‘rationales’ of Coalition and Labor governments, and the underestimated costs and completion dates (and multiple revisions).

It also chronicles the exaggerated claims, the hydrogen folly and its unreleased Business Case, and the fundamental flaw of locating a power station where there is not enough gas to provide dispatchable energy 24/7.

First a potted summary, then read the attached for more information:
Kurri Kurri Power Station was initiated to replace Liddell (partially)

The saga began in September 2020 when the Morrison Government set a target for the electricity sector to build 1000 megawatts (MW) of new dispatchable energy before the Liddell coal-fired power station was to close in April 2023.

When there was no response, the government authorised Snowy Hydro to build a 660 MW gas/diesel power station at Kurri Kurri in NSW (KKPS), at an estimated cost of $600 million (to be paid by the government), and be completed by December 2023 (i.e. in 19 months).

The full project cost has blown out to more than $2bn

The cost of the main plant subsequently increased to $765m, then $950m and then to $1.3bn, and is likely to rise again after further problems and delays. This is despite an assurance in KKPS’s Business Case that a 20% increase in the $600m capital cost was ‘improbable’.

Adding in other project costs, particularly financing and gas infrastructure (which has increased from $100m to $264m, and now to $450m), brings the total to well over $2bn.

Nonetheless, when the estimated cost climbed to $1.3bn, Snowy Hydro claimed that the economic benefits had increased even more, to $914m (from $531m at FID when the cost was $600m).

Completion delayed to end-2025, 2.5 years after Liddell’s closure

The completion date has been delayed six times from the initial December 2023 target. Testing commenced last December, first power was generated on 27 July 2025, and full commercial operation is expected by the end of this year.

KKPS is two years late, having taken 43 months rather than 19 months to complete.

Completion will be more than two and a half years after Liddell’s closure, the supposed reason for the station “to keep energy prices low, keep the lights on and help reduce emissions”.

Not dispatchable 24/7, nor fast-start

The core attribute of gas-fuelled power stations is to be capable of providing 24/7 energy, and quickly.

However, due to its location at the end of the Sydney-Newcastle Trunkline, a 21 km lateral pipeline and a massive on-site storage, consisting of 24 kilometres of looped one-metre diameter pipe, is being installed. The 70 terajoules of stored gas can fuel the station for 10 hours at full output. (Initially a 6.5 hour storage was proposed).

When the storage is emptied it will take more than a day to refill, assuming gas is available to purchase.

Snowy Hydro made clear in its EIS documents that batteries outcompete gas generators for short periods, which is really all that KKPS is capable of. Also, KKPS’s claimed ‘fast start’ capability takes half an hour to reach capacity (just a tad slower than the few milliseconds for batteries).

Diesel will be a backup but is expensive and highly polluting.

Labor’s hydrogen folly

When the Morrison Government approved the project the then Labor Opposition criticised the decision for being driven by politics and the climate wars, adding “gas projects that stack up will be funded by the private sector, not taxpayers”.

But nine months later Anthony Albanese pledged, if elected, to provide an extra $700m to convert KKPS to run on 30% green hydrogen initially, increasing to 100% by 2030 (without any apparent research and despite Snowy Hydro previously stating it did not consider hydrogen viable or available).

The government called Labor’s hydrogen plan “economically incoherent”, aimed at shoring up support in the Hunter for the forthcoming election.

Subsequent to Labor’s election Snowy Hydro changed its stance, reporting that it was “working hard to achieve hydrogen readiness” and preparing a FID business case for the government’s 2023-24 budget. Three years later and the business case has not yet surfaced. Though Snowy Hydro reported that the turbines are ‘hydrogen-ready’ for 15%, extendable up to 30% at a cost of $75m, and theoretically up to 100%.

But KKPS will never run on hydrogen. The on-site storage has not been built to store hydrogen, as Snowy Hydro deemed it uneconomic, and there is no supply of hydrogen for the foreseeable future anyway. Recently Minister Bowen confirmed that green hydrogen may only play a “niche” role in power generation because renewables backed by batteries were “cheaper and better”.

A tragic tale of Coalition and Labor Governments driven more by politics than sound technical and economic reasoning, supporting another ill-conceived Snowy Hydro project without undertaking any independent due diligence.

Australian taxpayers have funded a $2-plus billion gas/diesel power station, unable to provide 24/7 dispatchable energy, that will be outcompeted by batteries, will be emitting greenhouse gases and pollutants potentially beyond 2050, will never run on hydrogen, and will never pay for itself.

reneweconomy.com.au

The abject saga of one of Australia’s most controversial gas fired power station projects

One of Austraia’s most controversial gas fired power stations is starting operations. Here is a look back at exaggerated claims, political failures and a hydrogen folly.
reneweconomy.com.au reneweconomy.com.au
 
The analysis of the Kurri Kurri power plant didn't come down with today's showers. The writer Ted Woodley had identified the critical issues with the project back in 2021.

Kurri Kurri: The generator on gas rations​

hydro-gas-generator-kurri-kurri-ooptimised-220x150.jpg
Credit: Snowy Hydro

Ted Woodley
Oct 12, 2021

Hydrogen Storage Utilities

The “Pub with no Beer” is part of Australian folk lore. Slim Dusty’s iconic song was based on a poem penned in 1943 by a farmer after he went to his pub in Ingham to discover that American soldiers had drunk dry its war-time beer ration.

Eighty years later, history is about to be repeated in Kurri Kurri. Well, sort of.

This time it’s “The Generator on Gas Rations.” Though psst… it’s a closely guarded secret.

Snowy Hydro is proposing to build a 660MW power station at Kurri Kurri with a ‘gas storage bottle’ that can fuel the turbines for just six hours at full load, and then takes a day to refill.

This gobsmacking limitation has been kept very quiet. There’s no mention on Snowy Hydro’s website, nor in announcements or parliamentary briefings.

The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) gives the opposite impression, repeatedly extolling the virtues of gas-fuelled generators for “providing dispatchable capacity over days and weeks” and being “particularly well suited to managing prolonged periods of low wind generation, which may last for weeks or months”.

A single sentence in the latest batch of EIS documents, now totalling 1600 pages, reveals the gas-ration secret:
“Sufficient gas will be stored for the Proposal in a part of the gas lateral. This “gas bottle” will allow the Proposal to operate at full load for six to seven hours on gas, with the gas lateral pipeline to be refilled over one day.”

reneweconomy.com.au

Kurri Kurri: The generator on gas rations

The Kurri Kurri gas generator makes no sense: It has only six hours storage and can’t compete against faster, cheaper, cleaner batteries.
reneweconomy.com.au reneweconomy.com.au
 
basilio said:
The analysis of the Kurri Kurri power plant didn't come down with today's showers. The writer Ted Woodley had identified the critical issues with the project back in 2021.
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I've also posted it previously. ;)

The limitation wouldn't matter in any practical sense if Kurri Kurri were the only power station in NSW that had such a constraint. In practice however that's far from the case, and its usefulness is, in theory, as firm generation source to backup the rest - that makes the fuel constraint hugely problematic.

Colongra (gas / diesel) has the same problem only it's worse.

Eraring gas turbine (not to be confused with the well known coal-fired units at the same site) is capped to 200 hours operations each year as per NSW regulations for environmental reasons.

Every battery is constrained to at most a few hours operation.

Shoalhaven pumped hydro, which has never been fully developed, is also somewhat constrained.

So there's a lot of generation in NSW that has very limited ability to actually operate and there's also another gotcha. Kurri Kurri doesn't just have a physical constraint on operations, it also has a regulatory constraint for no more than 1110 hours per annum in total and no more than 175 hours per annum using diesel. The latter being the one that's potentially more problematic in terms of actually using it to firm wind and solar given the primary use case is not for peak power but rather, it's during an extended period, multiple consecutive days, of low wind and solar yield meaning diesel will be heavily relied upon on account of the gas limitation. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
I've also posted it previously. ;)

The limitation wouldn't matter in any practical sense if Kurri Kurri were the only power station in NSW that had such a constraint. In practice however that's far from the case, and its usefulness is, in theory, as firm generation source to backup the rest - that makes the fuel constraint hugely problematic.

Colongra (gas / diesel) has the same problem only it's worse.

Eraring gas turbine (not to be confused with the well known coal-fired units at the same site) is capped to 200 hours operations each year as per NSW regulations for environmental reasons.

Every battery is constrained to at most a few hours operation.

Shoalhaven pumped hydro, which has never been fully developed, is also somewhat constrained.

So there's a lot of generation in NSW that has very limited ability to actually operate and there's also another gotcha. Kurri Kurri doesn't just have a physical constraint on operations, it also has a regulatory constraint for no more than 1110 hours per annum in total and no more than 175 hours per annum using diesel. The latter being the one that's potentially more problematic in terms of actually using it to firm wind and solar given the primary use case is not for peak power but rather, it's during an extended period, multiple consecutive days, of low wind and solar yield meaning diesel will be heavily relied upon on account of the gas limitation. :2twocents
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If there is a choice between breaking the regulations and letting the lights go out, any government would be stupid not to break the regulations or they would risk being flayed alive by the media and the Opposition.
 
Gladstone closing not unexpected.

6 units in the station, all the same and originally rated at 275MW each.

Looking from the outside may cause some confusion which I'll solve by pointing out 2 boilers discharge into each stack, hence only 3 stacks.

Original project was for 4 units with commissioning 1976 - 79 one roughly each year. Then it was simply extended with two more built, entering service in 1981 and 82.

Technically it's all very conventional and cooled by sea water since it's on the coast. Fuel is coal delivered by rail. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
Gladstone closing not unexpected.

6 units in the station, all the same and originally rated at 275MW each.

Looking from the outside may cause some confusion which I'll solve by pointing out 2 boilers discharge into each stack, hence only 3 stacks.

Original project was for 4 units with commissioning 1976 - 79 one roughly each year. Then it was simply extended with two more built, entering service in 1981 and 82.

Technically it's all very conventional and cooled by sea water since it's on the coast. Fuel is coal delivered by rail. :2twocents
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Similar age to Muja C and Kwinana in W.A and they are all shut down.
So I guess it is to be expected.
 
SirRumpole said:
Muppets in charge of energy policy.

Dan Tehan fails to grasp difference between baseload and firming as he sprouts nonsense on nuclear

Dan Tehan is touting "transportable" nuclear reactors of up to 10 gigawatts as diesel replacement for mine sites. Someone needs to have a quiet word.
reneweconomy.com.au reneweconomy.com.au
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I actually took the time to read the article by renew economy.
I am not sure if they have any better handle on things that than Tehan does.
One of the problems with mining is that the majority of it is in remote areas where facilities are in short supply.
Big players like BHP or RIO have transmissions systems already set up and can demand that only renewable sourced electricity is despatched along those wires.
If I find a new deposit somewhere in WA, there is a rather high chance that there will be no poles and lines to transmit electricity to my mine site, regardless of the source, be it fossil fuel, renewables or a stand alone Nuclear plant.
However, a small reactor that can be transported to the site may well be a more practical than building a transmission line that mey only have a limited time in use.
Mick
 
mullokintyre said:
However, a small reactor that can be transported to the site may well be a more practical than building a transmission line that mey only have a limited time in use.
Click to expand...

Well then you have to have a waste disposal facility and all the associated costs, and who is going to be responsible for that?

However, I do think that reactors would be useful for supplying industries like mining, smelting and concrete that need continuous power.

In my view it has to be coordinated centrally not left to individual commercial interests.
 

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