News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

[PeFe]

AGL battery on Torrens Island almost ready to go. It will become South Australia's biggest battery.

From Renew Economy

Tesla big battery loses “biggest” title as Torrens Island finally ready to charge up


Torrens Island big battery. Source: ElectraNet.

The original Tesla big battery at Hornsdale has already lost the titles of biggest battery in the world, and biggest battery in Australia, and is now poised to lose even the state title as the new Torrens Island battery starts to charge up.

The Torrens Island battery – owned by the country’s biggest coal generator AGL Energy – is being built at its main gas complex near Adelaide, part of a plan to turn the company’s ageing fossil fuel facilities in new clean energy complexes.

The battery is initially sized at 250MW and 250MWh, but is likely to add more hours of storage as the arbitrage market develops. It could reach up to 1,000MWh, or four hours storage. But even at this level it trumps the expanded Hornsdale Power Reserve, which is now sized at 150MW/193MWh.

The Torrens Island battery is being built by Finnish group Wärtsilä and, like the Tesla big battery at Hornsdale, will also feature grid forming inverters and will initially focus on providing grid services, hence the low amount of storage duration.

ElectraNet, which owns and operates the state’s transmission network, says the Torrens Island battery has now executed the projects’s transmission connection agreement, nearly five months after the construction was complete in November last year.

This timetable contrasts sharply with the mere 100 days it took the original 100MW/129MWh Tesla big battery to be built and connected in 2017 – to satisfy the twitter boast by Tesla boss Elon Musk.

RenewEconomy understands that the delay in the approval of performance standards is believed to have been caused by issues around the battery’s electrical “noise” on the grid, which needed to be solved with the installation of special harmonic filters.

“Full energisation and commissioning activities for AGL’s Torrens Island battery will happen in the next few weeks,” ElectraNet’s head of customer connections, Niketan Tyagi said in a statement.

“We have been providing essential support in the testing and commissioning of the auxiliary load of this project while waiting for the required performance standards to be approved by the Australia Energy Market Operator and our team.”

AGL’s project director for the battery Thomas Hill said it was a significant milestone for the project.

“The Torrens Island battery is an important asset, both for AGL’s portfolio and the state of South Australia,” he said in a statement.

“The battery will support the uptake of greater levels of renewable energy, improve the security and reliability of the grid and help to put downward pressure on power prices. It’s also a key pillar of our plan to transition the Torrens Island site into an integrated, low-carbon industrial Energy Hub.”

Another new battery is also due to shortly join South Australia’s growing portfolio of storage assets, with the 41MW Tailem Bend battery nearing completion for owners Vena Energy, which has also added a 118MW second stage solar farm to the Tailem Bend facility that was the first utility scale solar farm in the state.

South Australia is already running at an average 70 per cent wind and solar over the past 12 months, and 80 per cent over summer, which leads the world in a gigawatt scale grid. It is expected to reach at least 100 per cent “net renewables” after the new transmission link to NSW is completed in a few years.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-big-b ... charge-up/

[1NEEDS2POST]

https://indaily.com.au/news/2023/03/31/ ... 0-billion/

There's no reason it has to be done by SAPN. If councils want powerlines undergrounded, they can build their own underground network in competition to SAPN. That way the network is re-nationalised, but this time at the local government level.

[PeFe]

Rev wrote

How many buses are there in the fleet, and would the electricity network be able to cope with all of them being charged without any upgrades to the network?
This the live market at the moment..
Generation is the top bars, demand below..red line is just where I had the mouse cursor when I took the screengrab.

In 2017 SA installed the worlds first large battery (the Tesla battery) which was rated at 100mw (100,000 kw).

In 2023 AGL activated their 250mw (250,000 kw) battery on Torrens Island.

NSW and the ACT have recently bought Yutong electric buses (each bus has a 422 kw battery, range 328 kms)

Given the fact that large batteries seemed to have posed no problems for the SA electricity network I would assume that electric buses would be a mere blip.

The large batteries in SA usually recharge during periods of large renewable energy production (ie the middle of the day with its large solar production and or early am with its abundant wind)

And moving onto other matters....if you are buying solar rooftop panels from July 1 then the rules have changed on the export of power to the South Australian grid. The SAPN operator will have the power to curtail export to the grid, but on the plus side exports above 5kw will be allowed.

Flexible export limits: The next phase for rooftop solar kicks off in Australia



South Australia has become the first state in Australia, and possibly the first in the world, to roll out flexible export limits for homes with rooftop solar panels at scale.

On July 1, new rules came in that mean all new solar systems must be technically compatible with flexible export limits of 10kW.

The new system requires modern inverter technology to be installed with rooftop panels so that exports can be remotely controlled and ramped up and down, to better suit the needs of the grid and manage new concepts such as minimum demand.

Flexible exports are promoted on the basis that distributed network service providers (DNSPs) can avoid switching them off altogether, as is being proposed in Queensland, or proposing hard and inflexible limits on rooftop solar exports, which has been usual practice around Australia.

The new system does not apply to existing rooftop solar systems nor will it apply to those which export nothing to the grid.

Full story : https://reneweconomy.com.au/flexible-ex ... lia-first/

[I Follow PAFC]

Does anyone know much about South Australia's Virtual Power Plant https://www.tesla.com/en_au/sa-virtual-power-plant ?

[1NEEDS2POST]

Does anyone know much about South Australia's Virtual Power Plant https://www.tesla.com/en_au/sa-virtual-power-plant ?

There are multiple VPPs, they're run by retailers. Tesla sells batteries that can be used in VPPs.

[I Follow PAFC]

Does anyone know much about South Australia's Virtual Power Plant https://www.tesla.com/en_au/sa-virtual-power-plant ?

There are multiple VPPs, they're run by retailers. Tesla sells batteries that can be used in VPPs.

This one is done thru the South Australia housing trust.

[RetroGamer87]

I still find it strange that batteries are measured by megawatt hours instead of joules. 250 megawatt hours is basically saying 250 megajoule-per-second-hours.

Power plants that have there capacity measured in megajoule-per-second-hours-per-year are even worse.

900 gigajoules is easier to say than 250 megawatt hours.

I suspect if the watt had been defined today instead of in the late 1800s it would be called the joulesecond.

[SBD]

I still find it strange that batteries are measured by megawatt hours instead of joules. 250 megawatt hours is basically saying 250 megajoule-per-second-hours.

Power plants that have there capacity measured in megajoule-per-second-hours-per-year are even worse.

900 gigajoules is easier to say than 250 megawatt hours.

I suspect if the watt had been defined today instead of in the late 1800s it would be called the joulesecond.

Your last sentence is the wrong way round - a watt is a joule per second, not a joulesecond.
Alternatively, a joule is a watt⋅second.

I buy my electrical energy in kWh but my gas energy in MJ and my liquid car fuel in litres (with no clearly defined conversion factor). They are all energy.

[rev]

Startling admission reveals real reason for nuclear power ban

It’s not about saving the environment. Now someone has finally admitted it, writes Caleb Bond.

Caleb Bond
2 min read
September 7, 2023 - 9:57PM

This is the real reason nuclear power is still banned in Australia.

It’s all a massive protection racket for expensive, unreliable renewable energy that keeps driving up your power bills.

The startling admission came from, of all people, Queensland Energy Minister Mick de Brenni.

He must have thought he was in safe company when he addressed a conference of the Smart Energy Council – a renewable energy advocacy group – on Tuesday. Except that they posted his comments online.

“(The Coalition) recently talked about lifting the nuclear moratorium,” Mr de Brenni said.

“The threat of nuclear power is a moratorium on your industry, your goals, your plans and puts its future in jeopardy.

“And we know the threat is real. The last time the opposition was in power, they tried to build a uranium mine in North Queensland.”

There you have it, folks. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

Why, pray tell, would nuclear energy put a moratorium on renewables? Why would it put renewable energy in jeopardy?

Is it, perhaps, because nuclear could provide a reliable and economically viable source of baseload power that doesn’t involve excessive subsidies to renewable energy to which successive governments have committed?

It is an extraordinary admission from a minister of the Crown that nuclear energy is a major threat to renewables and therefore must remain banned so the renewable energy industry can keep making money.

That money, of course, comes from you through your power bills. And as you well know, the cost of turning the lights on has gone through the roof.

Many of us have suspected this for a long time but it has now been put on the record.

Governments have so heavily subsidised renewable energy that power companies have directed all their investment that way.

That has led to the degradation of coal-fired power stations to the point where state governments are now paying the big power companies to keep their coal plants operating. Victoria is now subsidising Loy Yang A and the New South Wales government this week acknowledged it would have to pay Origin to keep Eraring open.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opi ... 9421250573

[urban]

Simple reason there would be a moratorium on renewables....The only way nuclear power can compete with other forms of power (including coal) is if the plant is govt built and competition is removed.

[PeFe]

Nuclear power for domestic electricity production has been around since the 1950's. It has failed to dominate the energy market for the simple fact that it is so expensive and so s-l-o-w to build. Coal and gas dominated the 60's-90's because of the way cheaper cost
and now renewables are doing the same thing.

News Corp love to promote nuclear energy but NEVER EVER mention the cost, or the timeline to build, in their articles. Usually they promote small nuclear reactors (just like a pr firm) especially the American NuScale reactor. The first NuScale reactor is being but now but it's cost is blowing out from US 5 billion to US 9 billion......yes that's 12 billion Aussie dollars! And all you get for that price is 462mw of power.

If you spent 12 billion on renewables you could buy 4000mw of onshore wind plus 5 (yes five) large 500mw/2000mwh batteries.
https://ieefa.org/resources/eye-popping ... ar-reactor

[Nort]

Simple reason there would be a moratorium on renewables....The only way nuclear power can compete with other forms of power (including coal) is if the plant is govt built and competition is removed.

Yep. If there were private operators really wanting to invest in nuclear power production in Australia there would be a whole lot of mining tax style lobbying that could almost certainly overturn the moratoriums. Any feasible building of nuclear plants in Australia today would involve the government funding them, and legislating that power from them is required to be bought for decades to come.

[abc]

Nuclear power for domestic electricity production has been around since the 1950's. It has failed to dominate the energy market for the simple fact that it is so expensive and so s-l-o-w to build. Coal and gas dominated the 60's-90's because of the way cheaper cost
and now renewables are doing the same thing.

News Corp love to promote nuclear energy but NEVER EVER mention the cost, or the timeline to build, in their articles. Usually they promote small nuclear reactors (just like a pr firm) especially the American NuScale reactor. The first NuScale reactor is being but now but it's cost is blowing out from US 5 billion to US 9 billion......yes that's 12 billion Aussie dollars! And all you get for that price is 462mw of power.

If you spent 12 billion on renewables you could buy 4000mw of onshore wind plus 5 (yes five) large 500mw/2000mwh batteries.
https://ieefa.org/resources/eye-popping ... ar-reactor

there's reason why China is an industrial economic powerhouse and Australia has been left in the dust, deindustrialised

why would you build anything in Australia when the cost of energy is the highest in the world

[rubberman]

Nuclear power for domestic electricity production has been around since the 1950's. It has failed to dominate the energy market for the simple fact that it is so expensive and so s-l-o-w to build. Coal and gas dominated the 60's-90's because of the way cheaper cost
and now renewables are doing the same thing.

News Corp love to promote nuclear energy but NEVER EVER mention the cost, or the timeline to build, in their articles. Usually they promote small nuclear reactors (just like a pr firm) especially the American NuScale reactor. The first NuScale reactor is being but now but it's cost is blowing out from US 5 billion to US 9 billion......yes that's 12 billion Aussie dollars! And all you get for that price is 462mw of power.

If you spent 12 billion on renewables you could buy 4000mw of onshore wind plus 5 (yes five) large 500mw/2000mwh batteries.
https://ieefa.org/resources/eye-popping ... ar-reactor

there's reason why China is an industrial economic powerhouse and Australia has been left in the dust, deindustrialised

why would you build anything in Australia when the cost of energy is the highest in the world

What's that got to do with renewables? Private companies are selling our own gas to us for more than companies in Japan are paying. It's the fossil fuel that's expensive. Then, coal plants are literally crumbling to bits...mostly owned by private enterprise. AGL had one of its biggest generators, Loy Yang A, out of commission 3 years in a row. One hundred million a pop breakdowns, one after the other. Not cheap, not reliable. The only renewable energy source not doing well is hydropwer. Snowy Mk2, which should have been operating by now, has crashed and burned. It's the same party that did all of the above that's now spruiking nuclear.

Yeah, nah. Lol. Hard to take seriously.

[rev]

Nuclear power for domestic electricity production has been around since the 1950's. It has failed to dominate the energy market for the simple fact that it is so expensive and so s-l-o-w to build. Coal and gas dominated the 60's-90's because of the way cheaper cost
and now renewables are doing the same thing.

News Corp love to promote nuclear energy but NEVER EVER mention the cost, or the timeline to build, in their articles. Usually they promote small nuclear reactors (just like a pr firm) especially the American NuScale reactor. The first NuScale reactor is being but now but it's cost is blowing out from US 5 billion to US 9 billion......yes that's 12 billion Aussie dollars! And all you get for that price is 462mw of power.

If you spent 12 billion on renewables you could buy 4000mw of onshore wind plus 5 (yes five) large 500mw/2000mwh batteries.
https://ieefa.org/resources/eye-popping ... ar-reactor

there's reason why China is an industrial economic powerhouse and Australia has been left in the dust, deindustrialised

why would you build anything in Australia when the cost of energy is the highest in the world

What's that got to do with renewables? Private companies are selling our own gas to us for more than companies in Japan are paying. It's the fossil fuel that's expensive. Then, coal plants are literally crumbling to bits...mostly owned by private enterprise. AGL had one of its biggest generators, Loy Yang A, out of commission 3 years in a row. One hundred million a pop breakdowns, one after the other. Not cheap, not reliable. The only renewable energy source not doing well is hydropwer. Snowy Mk2, which should have been operating by now, has crashed and burned. It's the same party that did all of the above that's now spruiking nuclear.

Yeah, nah. Lol. Hard to take seriously.

On top of what you've said, the move away from large scale manufacturing such as cars, textiles and white goods, with factories with thousands of workers, started long before our electricity cost woes. It's something that's happened across the whole developed western world.

Pretty sure as well that the highest electricity costs are between Germany and Denmark at the moment depending which set of data you look at, in some sets Australia is 16th in others we're not even in the top 20.