News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

[PeFe]

South Australia is usually an electricity exporter in winter and spring ("the windy months")

Things change Dec-April, temperature rise, the wind drops, and air conditioner use rises dramatically hence more power is imported from Victoria via the Haywood Inetrconnector.

This year though the South Australian government has rented diesel generators for emergency use.

[bits]

This year though the South Australian government has rented diesel generators for emergency use.

I think the SA Government own them. They are dual fuel and will run on gas once their permanent home is built.

[Norman]

South Australia is usually an electricity exporter in winter and spring ("the windy months")

Things change Dec-April, temperature rise, the wind drops, and air conditioner use rises dramatically hence more power is imported from Victoria via the Haywood Inetrconnector.

This year though the South Australian government has rented diesel generators for emergency use.

That was before Hazelwood closed down though, so we might find ourselves using our gas generators more to also supply power to Victoria. It will be an interesting summer, that's for sure.

[PeFe]

Good article from The Guardian Australia explaining recent falls in the spot price (ie buy now at today's market price) of electricity in South Australia.
Also another proof that gas is the driver of high electricity prices in Australia.

South Australia experiences dramatic fall in energy costs after gas deal



Renewables-heavy South Australia has been at the centre of national debate over energy policy. Photograph: Angela Harper/AAP
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South Australia’s renewables-heavy electricity market has been turned upside down, moving from importing power to exporting it, and from having some the most expensive wholesale prices in the country to having some of the cheapest.

And all that appears to be a result of one gas deal secured by a generator that was blamed by many as a major cause of a blackout in South Australia in February.

Dylan McConnell, an energy expert from the University of Melbourne who produced the analysis, says the switch is a result of the closure of the huge Hazelwood coal power station in Victoria. But the delay between its closure in March and the extra generation in South Australia coming on in July shows the need for a more orderly transition from fossil fuels, with more notice of closure required.

Renewables-heavy South Australia has been at the centre of national debate over energy policy after a number of blackouts last summer. In one of those blackouts, the state did not have enough supply to meet demand, and to protect infrastructure, the Australian Energy Market Operator ordered transmission be cut to 40,000 homes.

All through that blackout, one of the two generators at the Pelican Point gas generator – one of the newest and most efficient in the country – sat idle, despite repeated requests from Aemo for generators to come online to meet the demand. By the time Aemo considered ordering the plant to generate electricity, it was too late, and “load shedding” was required.

In the six months before that, and the year following, South Australia had energy prices that were among the most expensive on the mainland. A price spike in July 2016 led to calls for a national inquiry into the amount of renewables in the state. Those calls came despite half of the generation units at the Pelican Point gas generator continuing to be mothballed and bigger price spikes in other states including coal-heavy Queensland being mostly ignored.

But since July South Australia’s fate has changed. Prices in the state have been dropping, first dipping below coal-rich Victoria’s prices, and then becoming the second cheapest on the mainland (after Western Australia) for the past two months.

Full article : https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... r-gas-deal

[Spurdo]

Plans are currently up for the AGL Barker Inlet Power Station (Torrens Island A Station Replacement) and Alinta Reeves Plains Power Station

Barker Inlet Power Station
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... Part_1.pdf (Part 1)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... report.pdf (Part 2)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... _3_e-f.pdf (Part 3)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... _-_g-m.pdf (Part 4)

Reeves Plains Power Station
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... cation.pdf (Part 1)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... es_A-E.pdf (Part 2)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... es_H-L.pdf (Part 3)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... es_M-R.pdf (Part 4)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... ndix_F.pdf (Part 5)
https://www.saplanningcommission.sa.gov ... ndix_G.pdf (Part 6)

[Bob]

Good link for articles & discussions on Electricity transition to Renewable Energy - South Australia regularly referred to, also has the live Energy generation widget on the Home Page.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/
http://reneweconomy.com.au/south-austra ... rid-20463/

Also the link for the AEMO dashboard with multiple tabs of interest

https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/Nat ... h-overview

[Spurdo]

I don't mean to sound rude or pushy but can someone please explain to me why websites such as the Australian are considered biased but people can post links to websites like RenewEconomy and EcoGeneration and no one bats an eyelid?

[Norman]

I don't mean to sound rude or pushy but can someone please explain to me why websites such as the Australian are considered biased but people can post links to websites like RenewEconomy and EcoGeneration and no one bats an eyelid?

Bias is subjective. It depends on which end of the spectrum you sit on.

I believe it is good to get a mix of news sources and then make up your own mind based on your prior knowledge, values and beliefs.

[PeFe]

The Australian's agenda is anti-renewables and anti-South Australia.

Rupert Murdoch does not believe in global warming and considers any measures mitigating it, a threat against his and his friends business interests. The Australian's enviroment reporter constantly writes articles questioning "climate science" as if it was a question of conjecture (despite the fact that if you read science magazines, 97% of scientists believe the science is proven) The latest tactic by The Australian is to favour Bjorn Lomborg, a scientist who advocates "do nothing" approach.

The Australian newspaper regularly takes a "negative" approach to South Australia, the high proportion of wind and solar power is constantly linked to blackouts (The storms of Sep 16 are never mentioned as a blackout cause, and the fact that AMEO, the energy regulator, failed to turn on the second gas generator in Feb 17 leading to load shedding is never mentioned either.....)

The Australian newspaper does not want South Australia to succeed, at any level, because that would undermine their anti-renewables stance. If South Australia had kept building gas and coal plants Rupert Murdoch would not have even spent one milisecond thinking about South Australia.......
Other News Corp papers do their bit in 'SA bashing"....Sydney's Daily Telegraph has run articles describing South Australia as Australia's "Gaza strip"
and the Herald Sun in Melbourne recently ran an article (that they copied from anti-renewable US site called stopthesethings.org) where they called called South Australia a " province"........yes thats what they wrote because some lazy right wing nutcase in the US is too lazy or stupid to google South Australia and find out how the country is divided administratively.
Of course The Advertiser doesn't shit (too much ) in its own backyard......because the advertisers would desert the paper.

Yes, Renew Economy is pro renewables website......but its just a small internet based site. The Australian, on the other hand, is Australia's only national newspaper......powerful and influential....to be held to the highest journalist standards,yet it now mixes fact and opinion pieces, and its owners commercial agenda really drives the tone of the articles. The Australian' s treatment of climate science (ie the constant undermining and doubting broad scientific opinion) reminds me of the tobacco companies campaigns against governments trying to regulate cigarette sales.

[PeFe]

Another proposal for a solar and wind farm (with storage) at Port Augusta!
When I wrote a list of new wind and solar farms a couple of days ago I had not heard of this project. To be constructed in 2 stages, with the storeage component coming in the end build.

From Renew Economy

DP Energy trumps Gupta with 1.1GW of wind, solar and storage



Irish company DP Energy has announced a major expansion of its Port Augusta hybrid renewable energy park in South Australia, adding in another 300MW of solar and 400MW of battery storage to its plans for what was already going to be the biggest hybrid plant in Australia.

Barely a week after Sanjeev Gupta announced a 1GW project to use solar, pumped hydro and battery storage, and demand management to supply the Whyalla steelworks and other major energy users, DP Energy has gone one step further.

It has signed up Downer Group and Vestas as its preferred contractors for the previously canvassed 375MW first phase, which will combine 225MW of wind and 150MW of solar near Port Augusta.

But it has also flagged plans to add a further 300MW of solar PV and 400MW of battery storage (it has yet to configure the actual MWh of storage) in a phase two project “across the road”.

Full article : http://reneweconomy.com.au/dp-energy-tr ... age-78205/

It really is worth reading the whole article, the project is yet to be fully financed, but this template of wind and solar farms built together, attached to some sort of storage, looks like being the model of future power generation.

And I would quite happily upload articles from other sources apart from Renew Economy, but I can't because the South Australian media is so lame, even In Daily is missing out on a really big story, and that is the energy transformation taking place in South Australia at the moment.

As I have written before, the amount of new energy generation online 2019 will change dramatically, turning South Australia into an energy exporter and
should all these proposals come to fruition.........wow wow wow, a new connector will be needed to the eastern states to export power

[Goodsy]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-09/n ... ed/9134360

Pretty neat video of the North Power station being blown up

[SBD]

The diesel generators at Holden and Desalination are apparently ready to go.
https://indaily.com.au/news/2017/11/13/ ... ady-to-go/

So... what is the optimal time for them to run between now and the election to demonstrate the value of having them, without invalidating the desire to have a high proportion of renewable energy?

I'm guessing it's between 3 and 6 four-hour runs for two to four turbines at a time.

[PeFe]

So... what is the optimal time for them to run between now and the election to demonstrate the value of having them, without invalidating the desire to have a high proportion of renewable energy?

Any time they are needed......my guess is during continuous days of 35C and above, Monday to Friday (weekends dont usually suffer power shortages, for the obvious reason of large businesses being closed) and after the sun has gone down....7-30 to 1030......

If they are turned on often, hopefully we can offload some of the electricity to Victoria, and recoup some of the costs.

[mshagg]

I don't mean to sound rude or pushy but can someone please explain to me why websites such as the Australian are considered biased but people can post links to websites like RenewEconomy and EcoGeneration and no one bats an eyelid?

I actually think this is a pretty fair comment, although I would preface that by stating I certainly dont subscribe to the Oz's world view on renewable energy. These guys, unsurprisingly, got a fair bit of airplay during/after the grid separation event last year and their defence of our supply mix went way too far at times (IMO). Their perspectives were of course shared around without question to challenge the narrative coming out of Canberra.

Grain of salt and all that, but data is objective and theirs is insightful (I assume is parsed from the raw feeds provided by AEMO) even if they have a tendency to spin it a little. Our supply mix and its geographical distribution is not without challenges, but we're getting ahead of the game here and the longer others wait the more painful it will be for them - as evidenced by some of the recent wholesale pricing and cross border flows. Hazelwood alone could power SA on a 43 degree day and I dont see the eastern states having many alternatives as the big sludge burners exit one by one... although apparently we have a federal government that is willing to step in to try and purchase generating assets on their behalf, in stark contrast to their tendency to laugh at SA during difficult periods.

Just a shame our retail framework locks in standing tariffs so presumably all of the current upside in wholesale pricing, to the extent it is unhedged, is going in the pockets of the retailers...

[rubberman]

I don't mean to sound rude or pushy but can someone please explain to me why websites such as the Australian are considered biased but people can post links to websites like RenewEconomy and EcoGeneration and no one bats an eyelid?

You could look back at the Australian's approach to privatisation of the SA power system in the first place. Or to the Australian's approach to the NBN question of fibtre to the home vs fibre to the node. You could look at the Australian's approach to debt and deficit in 2013 vs its approach now when it is much bigger.

I'm not asking anyone to take sides, merely look at the figures in these cases and draw conclusions about the Australian.