Ponder how destructive solar power is: It only takes 13% solar to push a small grid to the edge
A little bit of solar power causes mayhem on a perfectly good grid.
NT Electricity Grid Map (Click to enlarge) Darwin is 1,300 km or 800 miles in a straight line from Alice Springs.
The Renewable Crash Test Dummy Country is aiming to be using 82% renewable electricity by 2030, but instead of making sure this works on a small scale at any one of our remote microgrid locations, where electricity is expensive to start with, we thought we’d do the experiment on the whole nation instead.
So it is “sobering” to see how this fails at Alice Springs. If there was a place on Earth that is well suited to wind and solar power, it surely is Alice Springs which is 1,200 kilometers from the Northern Territory’s main electricity grid. Surrounded by a million square kilometers of largely uninhabited arid land, if we can’t plaster enough solar panels and windmills here to support a town of 25,000 people with no heavy industry to speak of, where can we?
Yet the bare truth is that solar energy provides just 13% of Alice Springs annual electricity, and fossil fuel based generation, they admit quietly near the bottom of an FAQ page, is, shhh, 87%. Only one in four houses has solar power, yet the grid is already overloaded when it peaks, and unstable when a cloud comes over and the whole towns solar power goes down. (As it did in 2019 leaving many homes blacked out, as the engineers predicted would happen).
So the “news” that the ABC reports is that someone has a plan to push Alice Springs from 13% to 50% renewable energy by 2030. Despite this daunting task, ponder that the ABC is excited today that one small, extremely sunny isolated location might, in our wildest dreams, manage to achieve a bit more than half the target we set for the whole nation by 2030, but only if we spend $150 million (and over 20 years?).
This is called “Leading the Country” — where they fail to meet the targets before everyone else does…
When Victoria Ellis says “energy” below she means electricity.*
Alice Springs can be powered by 50 per cent renewable energy in six years, report shows
By Victoria Ellis, ABC “News”
According to the Alice Springs Future Grid website, about a quarter of Alice Springs homes have solar panels, and over a year about 13 per cent of the town’s energy comes from solar, but if more solar energy is added without further planning, the small electricity grid could become unstable.
The Alice Springs Future Grid website says if solar panels across the town are generating a lot of power in the middle of the day and a cloud bank suddenly shadows them, their electricity production may drop more quickly than an alternative power source can be drawn upon, leading to a blackout.
Alice Springs Future Grid director Lyndon Freason said in today’s system, there is sometimes lots of solar being produced that is not used by the grid.
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to efficiently absorb more renewables in the middle of the day when the sun is shining, without actually causing instability in the existing generation,” he said.
So the only problem with solar power is that there is either too much electricity or not enough, or it disappears when the clouds come over, needs constant back up, and it can’t stabilize the frequency, right? And then there is the duck curve. Look at the ramping rate required from 4 to 6pm:
The belly of the duck is the fall in the need for electricity at noon as solar peaks. The belly can’t be allowed to sink too far, because the gas/diesel power plant needs to keep running to keep the frequency stable.
The “Roadmap” such as it is, is four scenarios with a bit more-or-less of this and that:
Click to enlarge (From the PDF)
Roadmap Grid plan Alice Springs
The costs, the costs:
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned that 2030 is not 20 years away:
Mr Cocking [CEO of Desert Knowledge Australia] estimated implementing one of the scenarios would cost about $150 million over 20 years.
“Ideally it would come from government, but most likely as well some private investment,” he said.
More detailed estimates (page 63) suggest the costs could be as high as $216 million, but there will theoretically be about $50 million in fuel savings.
It still works out as $6,000 per man, woman and child — which no one has to spend at all — because they just built the current diesel-gas power plant there in 2011 and upgraded it in 2018 at a cost of $75 million. Should we ask the people of Alice Springs if they’d rather have the money? For a family of four that’s $24,000. Might be nice?
But as a microcosm of a national transition the Alice Springs mini grid speaks volumes about how absurd the whole crusade is.
Currently when the wind and sun are asleep the town gets electricity from the Owen Springs Power Station which is a gas/diesel plant that can provide 80 megawatts whenever they need it. There is also an old power station built in 1973 that is still operational and a 5MW Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). Proportional to the size of the Alice Springs grid, it is (or was) effectively the “biggest battery” in Australia when it was installed in 2018. It is used mainly for stability and emergency power when the clouds roll over so the gas plant can ramp up. If it were to be used mostly for storage, the $8 million battery would only last about 20 minutes, or maybe 40, tops. This doesn’t scale well to a nation of 27 million people.
For the record, a mini-Snowy 2.0 scheme is not possible in Alice Springs. There are some worthy hilly areas for sure, but annual total rainfall is barely 280mm or 11 inches, and quite random.
Don’t wash those solar panels?
Curiously, the tap water in Alice Springs is worse for the solar panels than the dust is:
Detailed studies have been conducted on this subject, concluding that dust does not have a significant impact on PV systems. This is perhaps surprising, but washing the panels with tap water in places where there is a high concentration of calcium (such as Alice Springs) can actually have a more negative effect than dust. The arrays at the DKA Solar Centre are washed once a year by a specialised company who use a reverse osmosis filtration system to treat their water before using it to wash the solar modules. ( from the FAQ.)
Those key statistics from the FAQ of the “Alice Springs Future Grid” (which is the current grid)
In the 2021‑22 reporting period, total conventional generation capacity was 122.6 MW and operational maximum demand was 48.6 MW, not including requirements for system redundancy. It is noteworthy, however, that while the Ron Goodin power station is aged, it remains available for system redundancy. No definitive retirement date has been announced.
Over recent years, more than 25% of the approximately 9,000 households in Alice Springs have installed DPV on their property rooftops.
The maximum output capacity of all residential DPV systems in Alice Springs is estimated to be 23 MW, and historical generation data suggests in the order of a 9% contribution to overall consumption. Fossil fuel-based generation produced 87% of annual volume and centralised Renewable Generation produced 4%.
See the FAQ for more.
*Obviously solar power is not providing 13% of the towns energy – which also includes petrol, oil and gas.
It goes to prove yet again that with an isolated electrical grid like remote area Alice Springs with no interconnectors to real coal, gas, real hydro (not SH2) or in grown-up countries, nuclear power stations, random weather-dependent electricity is non-viable.
Australia already has two existing experiments at Flinders and King Islands in Bass Strait with no interconnectors to the mainland and which mainly run on diesel despite having plenty of sun and wind in the Roaring Forties. If unreliables could work anywhere, it would be there.
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Step 1: Load howitzer
Step 2: Point at foot
Step 3: Activate firing mechanism
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Surely Twiggy could easily use Alice Springs to show the world how his GREEN Hydrogen lunacy would work?
And no need to go to Arizona and WASTE BILLIONS of $ on GREEN Hydrogen that is generated from COAL, GAS and NUCLEAR. What a joke.
So far Alice Springs is a very poor test case for their TOXIC W or S. So who really BELIEVES they’ll fully change over to their TOXIC W or S nonsense in another 6 years? And at what cost?
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I bet if Trump is re-elected and Twiggy can no longer harvest subsidies via the White House Resident’s Inflation Production Act, he’ll shut up shop in Arizona and move somewhere else to harvest subsidies. E.g. Canada or back to the Dumb Country.
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That people in Alice even bother getting solar panels shows how little people understand the reality of electricity production. But it is never explained to them, so…
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I agree but expand on your comment to teach others.
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Seems not many know that Alice Springs has a natural gas supply. This on the internet
“The Palm Valley gas field is situated 100km west of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory. It produced its first gas in 1983. The field is managed by Central Petroleum (CTP) with a 50% ownership interest, alongside New Zealand Oil & Gas (NZOG, 35%) and Cue Energy Resources (15%)”
Unless it is being charged huge royalties the gas should have a reasonable price and the electricity produced should be a reasonable price.
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If you want to see how feasible a microgrid can be, have a look at Flinders or King island.
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https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
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Every time I have look at that site diesel is at 60% and wind at 19%. I do not think the web site is actually active.
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I always look at the Flinders Island site , it seems better maintained.
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Thank you – do you have link?
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Peter, here’s the Flinders Island dashboard and Diesel is well over 50% most of the time and Solar sfa and roaring 40s a low breeze and battery zip.
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/flinders-island
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Did you see this note?
“Please note:
Internet Explorer cannot display the live time energy dashboard.
If you are experiencing issues viewing the dashboard, please re-launch this page in Chrome.
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BTW Peter on my browser Flinders and King islands are real time and they change every few seconds as you look at them.
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Thanks Neville. I am on an iPad and it may not work on that. I don’t think I have any alternative on my current set up.
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Flinders Island work on the iPad, but not King.
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When you first open it thats how it appears, give it 30 seconds to update and it comes good.
snap shot 09:41
238 kw lolipops
65 kw sunshine
2075 kw (87%) actual reliable generation
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It looks active – the number are changing all the time. But to my eye the numbers don’t add up: wind 360kw, solar 950, battery -6, diesel 520 all add up to output 1100 (all approx because they keep changing, but not that much).
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Not enough power from solar/wind to power up the website. LOL. It’s all done with ‘hocus pocus’.
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I dont think your browser is refreshing.
I just looked and it was 75% solar 25% wind , loose change to the battery and diesel off
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Flinders Is currently at 70% diesel, the Roaring 40’s must be a ‘whimpering 40.
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I’ll save you all a heap to time. At the moment there is a huge high sitting over southern Australia which means mostly windless conditions. Apart from a short uptick in wind maybe Sunday night, early Monday morning when a minor low blows through it’s going to be Dead Calm up until about Thursday next week. Wind generated electricity will probably be almost non existent for all those turbines in SA, Victoria, Tasmania, for that period of time. So, even when the wind does blow late Sunday night it’s at time when power consumption is low anyway. So basically useless.
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So blocking highs could be renamed
‘mocking highs’
and permanent drought
‘flooding rains’.
I’m getting the hang of this.
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The subtropical ridge is too far south for this time of year and as we go into winter the STR should move north.
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDY65100.pdf
It very much depends on the southern annular mode, if SAM remains strongly positive then the wind farms will fail. Clearly they haven’t factored in climate change.
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SAM is also called AAO and the boffins are in big trouble.
https://weather.plus/aao-index.html
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BTW King Island is jumping and jiving as usual this morning and Wind is all over the place + their Solar idiocy and the DIESEL is carrying the LOAD AGAIN.
Seems like their so called roaring 40s is still changing to a quiet breeze for so much of the time.
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
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So I wonder what the clowns plan ‘B’ is for the future, perhaps more of what has proved it doesn’t work, that should do it.
Maybe the ‘Alice’ is sitting atop a heap of hot rocks, that would be good.
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Just seen the other day that Exmouth in Western Australia has come up with a Baldrick cunning plan to get around the solar efficiency issue by using EV’s as storage to then pump power back into their grid .
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https://www.horizonpower.com.au/about-us/news-announcements/clean-green-energy-ahead-for-exmouth/
Exmouths plans to go green/renewable.
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It just might work. All you need is a trailer with a diesel generator hooked up to the car. Powers the car and charges the battery ready for discharge into the grid.
You know it makes sense!
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The delusional Biden + other leftie loonies etc will now try to enforce CC and Storage through the EPA and they apparently hope to wreck BASE-LOAD power forever and change to clueless TOXIC W & S and bring the once great USA super power to its knees?
But will the voters even understand or read about this latest lunacy or THINK for a change? Who knows?
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-5-1-the-biden-administration-ever-more-delusional-on-energy
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Don’t they keep saying Australia is going to be a “Green/Renewable Energy Superpower”?
I think they misspelled STUPIDPOWER.
And what a fine example we set as a STUPIDPOWER.
Here’s Australia’s Chief Engineer and PM Albanese explaining how in the STUPIDPOWER you can charge your EV at night for free with solar panels.
https://youtu.be/vyS9uqRLbB8
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I see no mention of the output of individual solar installations at Alice Springs.
Website https://www.solarquotes.com.au/location/alice-springs-870-nt/ estimates that a 10 kW system (I use 10 because it’s easy to calculate other sizes) should output 62.6 kW in January but only 34.4 kW in June.
In other words, if your installation is sized for June conditions you’ll have twice as many panels as you need in January to generate the same amount of electricity. This is by no means the worst I’ve seen. The figure generally gets higher as you go further south. In Hobart you need 4 or 5 times the number of panels. In other words many Australians are spending big money on things they only need for a few months each year.
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As a fairly regular traveler through Alice Springs during May , June July August months I’m always amazed at how my solar panels on the van and tug suddenly exceed their rated wattage , conditions though are usually cold but sunny so perfect for solar .
We have been through once in February though , 40+ degrees C and there was a noticeable drop in wattage , I imagine it would be a nightmare if trying to balance a grid from solar here especially if a random cloud passed over .
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At 23 degrees South, Alice Springs sits right under the sun in December. The power then must be phenomenal.
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HIgh temperatures reduce their efficiency
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True, but not as much as I thought. I only notice around 5% on a really hot summer’s day, but it’s difficult to judge. Clouds really impact home solar though.
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yes , but you have to ignore the basics of bulk supply to make the academic point
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Just remember, the plan is not to supply you with abundant, inexpensive energy like you used to have.
Solar panels coupled with a small affordable battery like a car battery or two can in fact deliver small amounts of power such as to provide one or two lights at night, a small Internet connected appliance to receive government propaganda and to spy on you (Orwell’s Telescreen) and perhaps a little power to warm your dehydrated rations of insects and gruel.
Of course, cooking, refrigeration, heating, cooling, swimming pools etc. are expensive luxuries unsuitable for the Proles, only Elites.
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I once went to Ayers Rock (now renamed) for the purpose of climbing it before that was prohibited and stayed at the local Yulara resort where they had a huge 1.8MW solar plantation.
I think it’s only purpose was to harvest subsidies because the tax payer appears to have paid for it.
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Many years ago I discovered that a friend had some aboriginal heritage.
The discovery came about when I described my visit to Ayers Rock. He protested that in aboriginal culture it had always been known as Uluru and rhetorically asked why I disrespected their culture.
My response was to protest that in my culture it had always been known as Ayers Rock and rhetorically asked why he disrespected my culture.
The conversation moved on to Kings Canyon.
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“The development and financing of the project was supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).”
Yes, all taxpayer supported alphabet entities.
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It may be related to the phenomenon I see on my home solar.
My inverters will only permit export of 5kW to the grid. As such on sunny days, once the battery is full, the system dashboard shows production is limited to whatever the house is using plus 5kW. For example instead of showing 10kW on a clear sunny day it might show 6 or 7kW.
I haven’t seen a convincing explanation beyond the basic notion that a solar panel which is not connected to a load will produce precisely zero electricity regardless of how the sun is shining.
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Meant to be in response to Ronin at #14
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“Alice Springs Future Grid director Lyndon Freason said in today’s system, there is sometimes lots of solar being produced that is not used by the grid.”
If it’s not going into the grid, where is it going, do they use a resistor bank like Norfolk Island has, to dump solar input when it got more than 70%, apparently their diesel generators need to input 30% to keep their grid stable.
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is he talking about behind the meter use?
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Yes, could be.
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Solar PV = 9%. One grid solar thing is 4%
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If a town like Tennant Creek (pop 3000-ish) had 1000 homes with a fridge/freezer drawing 200W run by 2 PV cells, a battery and micro inverter, that would amount to >1.7 MWhr p.a. which the base loaders would not have to supply. Power stations could run at a reduced level with reserve capacity for the times when grid solar and wind were low. Initial costs are high but it would help protect a 50Hz grid from phase wobbles and short-falls.
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No.!
He said ….
What he means is, its becoming harder for “grid based “ wind and solar to operate (and earn revenue) during those periods.
So the “difficulty” is not actually a technical issue , more a financial business justification problem for the commercial investors of RE..who have no demand for their power during the peak daylight period.
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My experience with grid connected solar is that modern compliance for inverters is they have auto de-rating settings. If there is enough panels on the street connected to the same transformer they can be producing so much that the residential inverter derates until it trips on over voltage protection. Thus on best solar days your unit either generates 60-80% of capacity or keeps tripping and you pay for retail power until it resets..only to trip again. My bill doubled unti thsnkfully, the western power tranformer “tap” setting was adjusted lower to accept the residential solar. The western power rep. Was initially reluctant because it risks under voltage trips in winter.
The days of older style inverters that don’t self derate are gone. It’s a shell game to force residents to buy battery storage.
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In case you are wondering how the Government gets away with this economic insanity, yesterday on the radio a former pollster for the Labor Party said that voters no longer consider economic mismanagement a serious issue.
Notice how you never hear the fake conservative Liberal Party complain about Government spending, debt, mismanagement or over-regulation like they used to?
In other words, it’s hopeless.
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They accept that they are not much better.
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“For the record, a mini-Snowy 2.0 scheme is not possible in Alice Springs. There are some worthy hilly areas for sure, but annual total rainfall is barely 280mm or 11 inches, and quite random.”
I wonder where all their treated sewerage ends up.
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The physical impossibility of doing it is all the more reason for them to establish it as an expensive and hugely wasteful virtual signaling project.
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A swimming facility for birds
https://www.powerwater.com.au/about/community/bird-watching
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Is Alice Springs over the Great Artesian Basin? If so, yes they could do a mini Snowy 2, pumping water up from the GAB then running it back for power.
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No Snowy Hydro but off-shore wind turbines could pump air into huge concrete cylinders (like diving bells) in water 100ft+ deep anchored to the seabed. Air at 3 atmospheres could later be used to drive a gas turbine to generate electricity. Inefficient but low-tech and clean so would appeal to the “wilderness between the ears” tribe.
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Gold star to Jo today for listening to the ABC. She goes bravely, where lots of us fear to tread.
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Yes.
Jo is brave.
It’s hugely painful for a thinking person to have to listen to Their ABC.
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Game-Changer for Alice Springs?
Storage solution
5MW total storage capacity for 40 minutes
Includes capacity to ‘absorb’ overloads into the system up to 7.5MW for 60 seconds
Can assist to prevent major or widespread outages
Now a viable solar only solution would require at least enough battery storage to meet demand from late afternoon to early morning
So why didn’t the Goverment owned corporation install much more that just 40 minutes of storage?
But then there are those pesky cloudy days so would need additional battery storage to cover these.
Could be that the cost of a “battery solution” to replace fossil fuels would be embarrassinly high?
https://territorygeneration.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/20170622-Territory-Generation-MR-Alice-Springs.pdf
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How much solar panel overcapacity is required to recharge battery storage?
Let us assume that there were three days of rainy and cloudy weather in Alice Springs and a mega battery supplied energy during this period.
Once the Sun returned how many days would be required to recharge the mega battery assuming normal daily demand was also being met by solar panels?
Cleary more solar capacity than required to meet normal daily demand would be required during the recharging period.
However, once the mega battery had been recharged most of the time this additional electricity would not be required.
Would resistor banks need to be installed to take this additional electricity and dissipate the surplus electricity as heat?
Or perhaps a Twiggy Forrest hydrogen production facilty would make hydrogen for export!
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“…..would change the face of Alice Springs as it transitions to a renewable energy future.”
jeeeez, they all use the same weasel word generator dont they?
I get so sick of that glib nonsense
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Maybe because they have plenty (100%) of diesel fueled backup generators, and the battery is only required to cover those periods between sudden cloud shutdown of the Solar, and the delayed ramp up of the backup generators.?
Remember that Alice had that blackout a few years ago due to sudden a cloud bank during peak sun period.
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AGAIN here’s the global total energy share by source.
This is all energy and not just electricity.
NOTE also that energy from COAL and GAS has actually increased since 1990.
And coal + oil + gas + traditional biomass are about 92% of global energy in 2022.
And W + S are about 2.13% of global energy.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy-share-inc-biomass
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Solar power, plenty when you don’t need it, none when you do.
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“how absurd the whole crusade is.”
I have had a Damascus moment.
Dr. Chalmers, PhD studies in Paul Keating. An Australian Treasurer who could not do his own tax return.
“our work will be responsible and methodical, and guided by where we can be more competitive, where it contributes to an orderly path to net zero”
” there are important opportunities in areas such as refining and processing critical minerals, moving up the value chain of battery production, renewable hydrogen and green metals”
This is nonsense. He has net zero idea what he is talking about. Nor Albanese. No idea at all. The endless word salads of catch phrases illustrate it.
So as for understanding electricity distribution, the need to precisely synchronize generators in an AC system, load balancing, the impact of clouds, the intrinsic worthlessness of lunch time solar or the fact that hydro is not going to work in Australia especially as dams have been banned for thirty years, Jim and Tony have no idea. And for manufacturing’s essential need for cheap energy or the chemistry of ‘refining’ metals is quite beyond them.
We Australians have two pilots who have no idea how to fly. And they are just winging it, talking the talk, passing laws they do not understand. Our own version of Joe Biden Blather. They are reliant on ‘The Science’. It’s where a total lack of any work experience outside the party room is most obvious.
And on Future Made in Australia “Protectionism is about building walls, this is about building foundations. We want to build competitiveness and productivity, not underwrite profits.” Clearly according to both, manufacturing is not about profits. It’s about competitiveness and productivity.
(As Judith Sloan says in the Spectator, “Who writes this guff? Some recent arts graduate, I suspect.”)
Perhaps the great strength of man made CO2 driven Global Warming is that no politicians have a clue what they are talking about.
Which gives the Climatebaggers total freedom.
But that QUANTUM computer sounds fantastic. We should buy one. It just might work one day. Anyway it’s a bargain at a cool billion and we can talk about it for years. Snowy II is a bit of a problem as it heads to $20Bn for nothing. And we may have to save the Great Barrier Reef again.
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However, they have two pilots of two private jets that do know how to fly – all being paid by us mug taxpayers!
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I know TdeF, when I heard the Australian Government were going to invest $1bn in a Quantum Computer after advice from some ex Labor advisors I thought how typical. All sounds really woke and will get lots of mentions on social media and photo ops for politicians. All for the cheap price of only $1b. For that money just think how many regional roads could be fixed? But there’s no votes there.
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Albanese and Chalmers are just having fun pretending to be really important people with a big vision. And really pretending to understand things like manufacturing, investment, the future, nett zero. I am now of the opinion that they don’t have a clue. Nothing either of them says actually makes sense, but they seize on big words and important sounding phrases. Which is why a Quantum Computer just sounds fantastic.
Maybe there will be bronze statues of them both, Australian champions, creators of great ideas, intellectuals and most importantly, Progressives.
In reality you could add them together and the IQ would not increase.
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Keating had his tax done by Gavan Disney, the Hey Hey It’s Saturday producer.
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“has Net Zero idea”.
I’m definitely going to use THAT one.
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In the graph, neither the levels nor slopes at the beginning of the plots (12 AM) and end of them (11 PM), align. Something isn’t right.
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To make the green dream a reality, all we need is a battery that has infinite capacity and a cost of $0.
Fortunately we have still have lots of coal.
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To export
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I suppose an SMR is out of the question?
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Wash your mouth out
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At <30 MW power consumption, a bit of an overkill? Might have to wait until those container-sized SMRs become available.
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“The Alice Springs Future Grid website says if solar panels across the town are generating a lot of power in the middle of the day and a cloud bank suddenly shadows them, their electricity production may drop more quickly than an alternative power source can be drawn upon, leading to a blackout.”
Why can’t the grid be set up so that when a cloud blanks the solar panels, the system is set up to drop out non critical load first, such as AC and hot water, then all the green-labor voters, leaving the hospital and pubs on until last.
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I guess that what the biggish battery mentioned up thread is for
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It obviously didn’t work when needed.
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think its planned, not actual atm
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How about light intensity meters around the town, to sense when clouds are coming (and going) – to allow timely ramping up and down of the diesel generators. No need for the big battery then.
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Speaking od “fossil” fuels:
Right, in bullet-swept Ukraine, vehicle fuel costs about FIVE US Dollars per US Gallon (about 4 litres).
It is OVER TWO Pacific Pesos per LITRE here in the lackey country.
Any guesses why?
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Just ‘because’, it is actually cheaper as you get out of the city.
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210 shekels in FNQ
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It would be good thing to keep the spotlight on Alice Springs, this most likely is a warning for the rest of Australia, variables just can’t cut it.
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Thee numbers look incredibly low. It may be that Alice Springs has an extraordinarily temperate climate and no heavy industry so the per capita power usage is very low.
Alice Springs has a population close to 1/1000 of the whole of Australia. So prorata the cost comes out to $216bn for Australia. That is ridiculously low cost. Maybe they are counting on all those houses buying their own solar panels so the grid is left to provide connections and battery.
My estimate for NEM to convert was $1,500bn. About 7 times higher than the $216M on a per capita basis.
But what is the reduction in power bills. It would only take a few years to be ahead. It seems an incredibly low number.
Diesel without rebate is $2/l. A modern diesel will produce around 4kWh per litre. So the fuel cost alone is 50c/kWh.
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Rick, I didn’t think it was realistic either, but we’re talking about costing 4 different fantasy-wish-lists over 20 years that is supposedly going to be ready by 2030, so I just stopped trying to process it. I mean, these people don’t know the difference between 6 years and 20. What’s the point?
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WA would’ve had a good example of how large weather fronts affects the solar output to the grid yesterday (02-05-2024). A large front covered most of the south west corner all day where light levels at midday resembled near dusk conditions. WA is probably fortunate that the roof top solar is distributed over a massive area where even large cloud cover may not cause massive fluctuations.
Looking on the NEM and AEMO sites it is difficult to get exact figures for the 12/24hr period as NEM is 24hours behind for the SWIS and AEMO no longer show those details.
From AEMO- fuel /resource mix for the 48 hours to 11.30am 03-05 (includes a mild Monday into storm front affected Tuesday) it was 6.1% Distributed (roof top) solar, 1.5% Utility Solar (farms), Wind 13%, Coal 40%, Gas 39%, Other 1.7%.
the NEM 3 days to 7am Tuesday 2nd for “Simplified” mix shows Solar 13 %, Wind 29%, Gas 26% Coal 30%.
Great to see the Institute for Public affairs study on the WA SWIS “Renewables/ Net Zero” plan got some main steam new coverage in the Western Australian.
https://thewest.com.au/opinion/kevin-you-rocco-loiacono-states-dream-of-net-zero-by-2030-is-simply-unachievable-c-14449823
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gazzaton, what makes you think the roof top solar is spread over a large area? Even though the SWIS is 600km wide, 2.1 million people live in Perth. 75% of the entire state population is within a block 50km wide and 150 km long. And the length of the “longest city in the world” runs north-south along the coast aligned with the cold fronts that regularly arrive to hit most of the solar panels in one go. Everyone wants to live on the beach.
Most of the population that doesn’t live in Perth lies directly south. One cold front could wipe out 90% of the states solar power in half an hour…
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My Perth rooftop solar dropped to one third of its nominal summer output yesterday, only 11 kWh, compared to the April daily average of 19.3 kWh. So far doesn’t look much better today.
My overall solar efficiency last month was 15.5%, down from 19.3% in March. And that’s in sunny Perth…
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Mind boggling.
Reminds me of the tower of babel. Perhaps solar panels could be put on a towers high enough to be above the clouds to overcome rooftop solar cloud problem?? and huge fluctuations in output. 🙂
I might be onto something here. Has anyone thought of this yet?? Solar towers of babel??
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Jo,
Good points, I agree and that’s why I’m interested to see what effect yesterdays front had on the solar input and ramping of gas etc.
I did say probably as I was just assuming that household and utility solar systems spread over the SWIS may be less influenced from cloud than say Alice Springs as per your article or Brisbane & Sydney as examples.
It is a vast area of WA in a stand alone system, SWIS may be around 600km wide but is also covers roughly 970km north to south from Kalbarri to Albany.
Quote from AEMO “The SWIS covers 260,000 km”.
Appreciate you work in highlighting all the issues in these troubling times.
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https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/intermittency-wind-and-solar-could-be-worse-originally-thought-experts-say
And Albo/BOB had better believe it!
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Interesting that the average U.S. wind CF is higher than Aust. @ 33.5%.
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In Germany Wind CF it is only around 20% and they propose to rely on wind and solar during the German winter when solar is a non-starter!
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Does Germany have much solar? That would also have a very low CF, as the UK average solar CF is only 10.5%.
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Yes, Germany has over 80 GW (nameplate) of Solar installed.
In addition they also have 60+ GW of onshore Wind generation.
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FYI… in 2023 overall, that 80 GW of solar operated at a CF of just 7.5% to produce 53 TWh of electricity !😱
Wind was little better at a CF of 22% .
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Indeed.
For North Americans, especially, it is worth remembering that Great Britain is … all … North of Winnipeg [Canada].
A fact also worth learning for slaver-panel enthusiasts in Scotland, the southern-most tip of which is 720 nautical miles from the Arctic Circle.
The Gooberment can incentivise – but cannot overcome orbital geometry.
Auto
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FWIW, dont’ forget there is a Seasonal Duck Curve issue. Batteries can not economically “fix it” either.
MUCH more Sun in summer, much less in winter. Storing the excess from summer for winter use requires that the battery have “one cycle” over a year. Your energy storage payback vs annual cost for a battery drops to near nothing (I.e. a LOT of cost and nearly nothing of benefit).
Then there is the fact that there is no battery with a zero “self discharge rate” They will go flat before the need for the electricity arrives…
So even if you manage to solve the “Daily Duck Curve” with batteries, look at the seasonal demand cycle and ask how to solve that…
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Has anyone got an update on the Yackandandah & Upper Murray Energy Resilience and Reliability Project?
The project sets its sights set on being entirely powered by renewables by 2024, but it has gone awfully quiet.
It is pretty much based all in Yackandandah, despite the name of the project.
They basically plan to go 100% solar with batteries and replace petrol equipment with electricity.
The great irony is it all started with the local servo deciding to go solar. The town wanted people to stop and fuel up and buy at other shops. So they came up with this idea as a way of attracting people.
I still think no-one in the town has worked out the irony in their strategy. For example if they are going 100% renewable, wouldn’t the petrol station be the first to go?
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they smooze on collecting grants and getting and giving awards (a core activity)
initially when they sad they would achieve “energy sovereignty” by 2024 (think that was the date) I asked what that phrase meant and what the plans and key milestones were to get there. The response was awfully defensive and they though I was being negative. Oh well , at least they have a hobby.
https://totallyrenewableyack.org.au/category/news/
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If it doesn’t work, throw more money at it.
e.g. Add rotating inertia; huge flywheels.
Who pays, having already installed more than double the required nominal generating capacity?
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Very good article.
I call it The Flounder Effect when a local utility reaches a percentage of ruinables (wind and solar) that ruins the reliability of their service, and makes a blackout likely, Every utility would have a different Flounder Percentage, which is probably not predictable. 13% solar is much lower than I would have expected.
I did not have time to read any comments, but I would like to mention my theory:
Nut Zero is really a political strategy to control the private sector (leftist fascism), so the climate goals are just
an excuse for leftist fascism.
The coming climate crisis is a fake crisis
Nut Zero is a fake engineering project
In the US, Joe Bribe’em is a fake president who got his job from a fake election
What is real?
There is a Real Transition to Leftist Fascism in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and about 15 other nations.
About 175 nations, with a combined population of almost 7 billion people, could not care less about CO2.
That means CO2 levels will continue to rise … ad our planet will continue to green.
If CO2 emissions reductions were the real goal, then why do the 20 Nut Zero nations ignore the other 175 nations?
Last week I unofficially changed the Nut Zero name to the more scientific sounding:
Carbon
Reduction
Atmospheric
Project,
or
CRAP
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[…] Jonova skriver på sin hemsida att Australien måste betraktas som Krockdocke-landet för förnybar energi. De har tänkt sig att 82% av deras el ska vara förnybar till år 2030. […]
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