News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

[PD2/20]

South Australia's energy malaise in a nutshell...

Also from the CanstarBlue website is a comparison of average quarterly electricity bills where the ranking of states is somewhat different, with TAS top, and SA and NSW close together. The usage rates c/kWh are one factor that determine total bill cost, but the structure of the entire tariff including supply charges is also important.

Average Quarterly Electricity Bills

Click on image for full scale version.

[SBD]

The diesel generators are a LAST RESORT only....not going to be switched on unless the overseeing electricity authority believe it is "Lack of reserve level 3" situation ie forecast indicates that there could be blackouts due to lack of power otherwise they will stay switched off.

Hopefully this situation will be remedied in the short term with large batteries coming online...I am thinking of the proposed 500mw/1500mwh battery in the south east or the large Neoen battery at Goyder in the mid north.

Those diesel plants will inevitably shut for good....never to be heard of ever again.

And as for South Australia's high electricity prices, yes we know that...how about actually doing some research and giving us a breakdown on how the prices are generated...

Here is my take...

1) Gas is extremely expensive, routinely 5 times the price of wind and solar

2) All the batteries are controlled by 2 companies, we need more competition. AGL routinely charges the "gas" price when using the batteries they own. AGL built the big battery on Torrens Island so that their gas assets would not be undercut by other batteries.

3) South Australia reportedly has the highest transmission/distribution costs in the country. Hard to verify because these costs are considered "confidential" and the industry doesn't like these costs being scrutinized by the media.
Also South Australia has a lot of poles and wires to maintain for a very small population....hundreds of kilometres of electrical connectivity to be looked after for relatively few people.
Adelaide effectively subsidises effectively electricity costs to the non metropolitan areas.
What about WA you say..."surely the costs are higher there"?
WA has 3 separate electricity grids....no connection between them...and now in WA they are less likely to replace old or burnt out transmission wires, instead stand alone mini grids using solar and batteries are being built in rural areas...why?.....because it is cheaper than building hundreds of kilometres of new transmission lines.

4) Lack of retail competition in South Australia....small market, the big companies are not interested in "discounting" here to increase their market share whereas this tactic is used in the Eastern states all the time.

all political talking points invented to obfuscate from the reality, which is a situation that was manufactured by... politicians

I see them repeated online at the same time, its as if you're all reading from the same ALP press releases

what you forget is I didn't just arrive here from Punjab last week, I've been here for several decades and been paying power bills for as long and recall when power prices were a fraction of what they are now.... when we had our own operational power stations

I did not hear if it was reported how much the Government will pay Engie to keep two power stations on stand by instead of mothballs.

I've also never heard or found any information on the structure of transmission and distribution payments. Even in the old days, we had a connected transmission grid (now run by Electranet) with distributed generation. Are there cost/market considerations in which power stations are used at any moment, or is it purely determined by the capacity limit of each transmission line, and using the lowest bid generator, wherever it is?

More focused, is it sometimes cheaper to use Adelaide area gas and diesel generators to supply Adelaide area load than to use cheaper generators with higher transmission costs from country areas?

[rubberman]

The diesel generators are a LAST RESORT only....not going to be switched on unless the overseeing electricity authority believe it is "Lack of reserve level 3" situation ie forecast indicates that there could be blackouts due to lack of power otherwise they will stay switched off.

Hopefully this situation will be remedied in the short term with large batteries coming online...I am thinking of the proposed 500mw/1500mwh battery in the south east or the large Neoen battery at Goyder in the mid north.

Those diesel plants will inevitably shut for good....never to be heard of ever again.

And as for South Australia's high electricity prices, yes we know that...how about actually doing some research and giving us a breakdown on how the prices are generated...

Here is my take...

1) Gas is extremely expensive, routinely 5 times the price of wind and solar

2) All the batteries are controlled by 2 companies, we need more competition. AGL routinely charges the "gas" price when using the batteries they own. AGL built the big battery on Torrens Island so that their gas assets would not be undercut by other batteries.

3) South Australia reportedly has the highest transmission/distribution costs in the country. Hard to verify because these costs are considered "confidential" and the industry doesn't like these costs being scrutinized by the media.
Also South Australia has a lot of poles and wires to maintain for a very small population....hundreds of kilometres of electrical connectivity to be looked after for relatively few people.
Adelaide effectively subsidises effectively electricity costs to the non metropolitan areas.
What about WA you say..."surely the costs are higher there"?
WA has 3 separate electricity grids....no connection between them...and now in WA they are less likely to replace old or burnt out transmission wires, instead stand alone mini grids using solar and batteries are being built in rural areas...why?.....because it is cheaper than building hundreds of kilometres of new transmission lines.

4) Lack of retail competition in South Australia....small market, the big companies are not interested in "discounting" here to increase their market share whereas this tactic is used in the Eastern states all the time.

all political talking points invented to obfuscate from the reality, which is a situation that was manufactured by... politicians

I see them repeated online at the same time, its as if you're all reading from the same ALP press releases

what you forget is I didn't just arrive here from Punjab last week, I've been here for several decades and been paying power bills for as long and recall when power prices were a fraction of what they are now.... when we had our own operational power stations

It's hardly an ALP talking point that the Liberals sold our power assets. That's a historical fact. If we don't have our own operational power stations, who else can you blame? Heck, Weatherill even tried to restart ETSA, and bought some power generation capacity. What did the Liberals do on regaining Government in 2018? Sold it off.

I'm sick of hearing renewables being blamed for Government policy failures.

[PeFe]

I did not hear if it was reported how much the Government will pay Engie to keep two power stations on stand by instead of mothballs.

I've also never heard or found any information on the structure of transmission and distribution payments. Even in the old days, we had a connected transmission grid (now run by Electranet) with distributed generation. Are there cost/market considerations in which power stations are used at any moment, or is it purely determined by the capacity limit of each transmission line, and using the lowest bid generator, wherever it is?

More focused, is it sometimes cheaper to use Adelaide area gas and diesel generators to supply Adelaide area load than to use cheaper generators with higher transmission costs from country areas?

There is no cost advantage for using power plants "closer to Adelaide"...these are usually gas....and gas on average is 5 times the cost of wind and solar.
The cost of transmission is usually not a huge consideration (wholesale price is the major consideration) however the cost of maintaining long isolated electrical power lines adds huge costs overall.

Take the cost of providing electricity to Eyre Peninsula versus the cost to metro Adelaide in terms of per person. I have no doubt there is a huge disparity between the two, maintenance costs per head of population would be horrendous for Eyre Peninsula (even though the lines are tiny compared to the huge electrical transponders coming into Adelaide)

Here are the last 12 months
of wholesale spot prices in SA (You can change the time range or state if you wish, or only select certain modes)

https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/ ... Simplified

[abc]

[SBD]

According to Wikipedia, when Wattle Point Wind Farm was commissioned in April 2005, it was the largest wind farm in Australia, owned by an Australian subsidiary of New Zealand's Meridian Energy. That was before your chart shows the "Renewables Craze" began.

[abc]

According to Wikipedia, when Wattle Point Wind Farm was commissioned in April 2005, it was the largest wind farm in Australia, owned by an Australian subsidiary of New Zealand's Meridian Energy. That was before your chart shows the "Renewables Craze" began.

1 swallow does not make a summer

try harder next time

[rubberman]

According to Wikipedia, when Wattle Point Wind Farm was commissioned in April 2005, it was the largest wind farm in Australia, owned by an Australian subsidiary of New Zealand's Meridian Energy. That was before your chart shows the "Renewables Craze" began.

1 swallow does not make a summer

try harder next time

Excellent examples of correlation not equalling causation.

[abc]

According to Wikipedia, when Wattle Point Wind Farm was commissioned in April 2005, it was the largest wind farm in Australia, owned by an Australian subsidiary of New Zealand's Meridian Energy. That was before your chart shows the "Renewables Craze" began.

1 swallow does not make a summer

try harder next time

Excellent examples of correlation not equalling causation.

meanwhile your ilk en masse trying the promote the lie its because all of a sudden we have a small population and the vast distances have raised prices..like that was never the case in the past

[rubberman]

1 swallow does not make a summer

try harder next time

Excellent examples of correlation not equalling causation.

meanwhile your ilk en masse trying the promote the lie its because all of a sudden we have a small population and the vast distances have raised prices..like that was never the case in the past

I just look at the prices publicly posted by AEMO, and renewables are almost always cheaper than fossil.

Maybe it's just me, but when the wholesale price of something is cheap, but the retail price is not, I tend to look at the middle man.

But, whatever. Unless someone can explain to me why they think cheaper wholesale prices are somehow causing higher retail prices, it's hard to take them seriously.

[abc]

Excellent examples of correlation not equalling causation.

meanwhile your ilk en masse trying the promote the lie its because all of a sudden we have a small population and the vast distances have raised prices..like that was never the case in the past

I just look at the prices publicly posted by AEMO, and renewables are almost always cheaper than fossil.

Maybe it's just me, but when the wholesale price of something is cheap, but the retail price is not, I tend to look at the middle man.

But, whatever. Unless someone can explain to me why they think cheaper wholesale prices are somehow causing higher retail prices, it's hard to take them seriously.

creative accounting to pass the buck

its highly political

[SBD]

We've heard this week that Adelaide's desalination plant will be more heavily used. Does anyone know how easily the electricity demand from this can be ramped up and down? Can it be used as "dispatchable load" and shut down during windless nights and evening peaks, but ramped up on sunny days?

For much of the last week, the wholesale electricity price has been negative, and the large solar farms have shut down. The desalination plant should thus be able to operate in those times and effectively get paid to consume excess generation capacity. Turning off a dispatchable load has the same net effect on the grid supply/demand balance as turning on an extra non-market generator such as the Weatherill Government's gas turbines, the recently-mothballed diesel turbines or a government-owned hydrogen fuel cell.

In the long term, negative (or low) wholesale prices will act to discourage investment in new generation - solar, gas/coal or nuclear. No responsible board should approve spending money to build a facility that requires them to pay to generate electricity.

[SBD]

meanwhile your ilk en masse trying the promote the lie its because all of a sudden we have a small population and the vast distances have raised prices..like that was never the case in the past

I just look at the prices publicly posted by AEMO, and renewables are almost always cheaper than fossil.

Maybe it's just me, but when the wholesale price of something is cheap, but the retail price is not, I tend to look at the middle man.

But, whatever. Unless someone can explain to me why they think cheaper wholesale prices are somehow causing higher retail prices, it's hard to take them seriously.

creative accounting to pass the buck

its highly political

Who do you think is engaged in creative accounting?

• AEMO market operator?
• gas-powered generators (and coal interstate)?
• solar and wind-powered generators?
• Electranet and other transmission companies (towers and big wires and big substations)
• SA Power networks and other distribution companies (poles, conduits, transformers and smaller wires)
• retail billing companies?
• national and/or state regulators?

What would change if the whole lot was integrated and nationalised? Would it be a change for the better?

[Algernon]

South Australia's energy malaise in a nutshell...

Also from the CanstarBlue website is a comparison of average quarterly electricity bills where the ranking of states is somewhat different, with TAS top, and SA and NSW close together. The usage rates c/kWh are one factor that determine total bill cost, but the structure of the entire tariff including supply charges is also important.

CanstarBlue Av Quart Elec Prices.png Click on image for full scale version.

My monthly electricity bill is around $500 in a flat. The country' energy split is 43% coal, 33% nuclear and 20% waste (literally just burning the rubbish). About 1% wind/solar. At the moment they're trying to figure out how to fund the replacement of the 2 main nuclear plants Temelín and Dukovany. They're approaching 50 and it's time to move them on.

In an apparent parallel universe the liberals are telling a whole bunch of patsies that you should cost them over 100 years because that's how long they live. LOL

But ABC is a poor little victim paying the "highest prices in the world". Such a humble guy that we should care about.

[[Shuz]]

$500 per month!?

For one or two people?

That seems extraordinarily excessive.

Mine averages 300/350 a quarter split between 2 people.