News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

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rubberman
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2161 Post by rubberman » Wed Dec 18, 2024 12:51 pm

PeFe wrote:
Wed Dec 18, 2024 11:17 am
abc wrote:
Wed Dec 18, 2024 10:12 am
Australia's future under net zero

Image
What the hell is that? A graph suggesting Germany would face a energy shortage impacting economic performance sometime in the future???? Is that what it's meant to be??

And how is this relevant to Australia?
And even more importantly how is it relevant to South Australia?

Here is something to think about...I have posted this before so it's an oldie...but a goldie...

South Australia, 2002, 100% fossil fuel driven economy, 7% unemployment

South Australia, 2024, 72% renewable driven economy, 3.9% unemployment
Germany relied on fossil fuels from Russia. So, when the fossil fuel supply was interrupted, Germany was impacted.

Australian fossil fuel plants are approaching the end of their lives, and the private companies who own them aren't replacing them.

Sounds like a fossil fuel problem to me.

The only people actually doing anything substantial are renewables. Everyone else is just talk.

rooshooter
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2162 Post by rooshooter » Wed Dec 18, 2024 1:06 pm

Germany was heavily reliant on Russian gas, which isn't an option post Ukraine war.

Its energy crisis isn't BECAUSE of renewables being added to their grid.

Lethargic policy development and implementation around renewables, being ultra reliant on gas and switching off nuclear has had the largest impact on supply and cost.

If anything, Australia is FAR more likely to follow Germany's path IF we slow our progress on renewable investment and instead remain ultra-reliant on fossil fuels.

And there's also myriad other factors at play in Germany's current economic situation, but hey, in the name of flaming the board with your partisan ignorance, please keep putting that square peg in a round hole. :applause:

abc
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2163 Post by abc » Wed Dec 18, 2024 1:53 pm

rooshooter wrote:
Wed Dec 18, 2024 1:06 pm
Germany was heavily reliant on Russian gas, which isn't an option post Ukraine war.

Its energy crisis isn't BECAUSE of renewables being added to their grid.

Lethargic policy development and implementation around renewables, being ultra reliant on gas and switching off nuclear has had the largest impact on supply and cost.

If anything, Australia is FAR more likely to follow Germany's path IF we slow our progress on renewable investment and instead remain ultra-reliant on fossil fuels.

And there's also myriad other factors at play in Germany's current economic situation, but hey, in the name of flaming the board with your partisan ignorance, please keep putting that square peg in a round hole. :applause:
Germany had a bunch of nuclear power plants it shut down under Merkel, but you chose to overlook this fact because like name calling, it does not strengthen your argument
tired of low IQ hacks

rooshooter
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2164 Post by rooshooter » Wed Dec 18, 2024 2:01 pm

If you read my post, I said that Germany had shut down nuclear plants.
It’s the bit in bold.

rev
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2165 Post by rev » Wed Dec 18, 2024 2:25 pm

Germany's economic situation isn't primarily caused by their energy policies & choices. So it's a mute point and completely irrelevant to this thread. Maybe more so suited to the pub.

abc
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2166 Post by abc » Wed Dec 18, 2024 2:39 pm

rev wrote:
Wed Dec 18, 2024 2:25 pm
Germany's economic situation isn't primarily caused by their energy policies & choices. So it's a mute point and completely irrelevant to this thread. Maybe more so suited to the pub.
erm, its entirely caused by their energy policy..entirely

and the point is neither mute nor moot
tired of low IQ hacks

rooshooter
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2167 Post by rooshooter » Wed Dec 18, 2024 4:24 pm

Then you are disagreeing with the graph YOU posted, which indicates more than ONE factor.
Which is also discussed in more detail in the bloomsberg article from where you took the graph from.
Indeed, KPMG is reporting the multitude of factors also.
As is the overwhelming majority of reporting on Germany's economy.
Happy to play “show me your sources” with you, on the Pub page, if you’d like, rather than continue this bore-fest here.

abc
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2168 Post by abc » Thu Dec 19, 2024 1:35 am

rooshooter wrote:
Wed Dec 18, 2024 4:24 pm
Then you are disagreeing with the graph YOU posted, which indicates more than ONE factor.
Which is also discussed in more detail in the bloomsberg article from where you took the graph from.
Indeed, KPMG is reporting the multitude of factors also.
As is the overwhelming majority of reporting on Germany's economy.
Happy to play “show me your sources” with you, on the Pub page, if you’d like, rather than continue this bore-fest here.
I'm not interested in "your sources"
tired of low IQ hacks

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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2169 Post by SBD » Thu Dec 19, 2024 11:02 pm

abc wrote:
Thu Dec 19, 2024 1:35 am
rooshooter wrote:
Wed Dec 18, 2024 4:24 pm
Then you are disagreeing with the graph YOU posted, which indicates more than ONE factor.
Which is also discussed in more detail in the bloomsberg article from where you took the graph from.
Indeed, KPMG is reporting the multitude of factors also.
As is the overwhelming majority of reporting on Germany's economy.
Happy to play “show me your sources” with you, on the Pub page, if you’d like, rather than continue this bore-fest here.
I'm not interested in "your sources"
Those charts seem to show, in order:
  • Energy costs went up in Germany when the Russian invasion of Ukraine stopped delivery of gas
  • Global demand for products made in Germany declined, starting about a year after
  • Domestic demand increased immediately post-pandemic, then declined and has kept falling too
  • Supply chain issues initially had a dampening effect on productivity, but that has been effectively reversed

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Algernon
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2170 Post by Algernon » Fri Dec 20, 2024 2:27 am

As a resident of the EU:

The period immediately following the 2022 invasion was pretty tough. Prices spiked very hard in 2022 then have slowly edged back down. Then we basically had 3 non-winters. After the mad scramble to secure the gas supply, there were some preemptive measures to curb industrial use but in the end, we just didn't end up using much.

Russia tried using gas as a weapon and it failed pretty spectacularly.

On the German side, the nuclear plants were being turned off for quite some years but the tail end did overlap with the gas issue. Running concurrently is that they're ramping up their renewable mix.

It's very much in the interests of certain types to yell "look how bad it is in YOOROP!" but I'm scratching my head here trying to figure out what on Earth problem you even think there is?

The post pandemic inflation bomb utterly dwarfs any issues that arose from us speeding up the timeline that we were going to stop buying Russian gas.

On the general economic front, debt to GDP continues to come down and is about 3/4 that of the US. Unemployment is historically low.

If there's a crisis on, would've been good if someone told us.

rubberman
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2171 Post by rubberman » Fri Dec 20, 2024 9:39 am

Algernon wrote:
Fri Dec 20, 2024 2:27 am
As a resident of the EU:

The period immediately following the 2022 invasion was pretty tough. Prices spiked very hard in 2022 then have slowly edged back down. Then we basically had 3 non-winters. After the mad scramble to secure the gas supply, there were some preemptive measures to curb industrial use but in the end, we just didn't end up using much.

Russia tried using gas as a weapon and it failed pretty spectacularly.

On the German side, the nuclear plants were being turned off for quite some years but the tail end did overlap with the gas issue. Running concurrently is that they're ramping up their renewable mix.

It's very much in the interests of certain types to yell "look how bad it is in YOOROP!" but I'm scratching my head here trying to figure out what on Earth problem you even think there is?

The post pandemic inflation bomb utterly dwarfs any issues that arose from us speeding up the timeline that we were going to stop buying Russian gas.

On the general economic front, debt to GDP continues to come down and is about 3/4 that of the US. Unemployment is historically low.

If there's a crisis on, would've been good if someone told us.
The people saying how bad it is in Yoorop are almost always people who cheered on Brexit and said the UK 'held all the cards'. :roll:

I visit the EU every year, and have a network of friends there. Power prices and power mix aren't on the list of things they worry about.

Back to the topic.

The Australian Energy regulator has released a report on the "Two Way Energy System". It's looking at the question of how much needs to be done to manage the reverse flows everyone mentions.

It points out that only 1% of transmission expenditure is on export infrastructure from homes. 1%!!!

https://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/hidden ... g-exports/

The link to the pdf is in the article.

I must admit to feeling annoyed at those people saying renewables are expensive because transmission costs are going to be huge.

1%. Good grief!!!

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PeFe
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Re: News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

#2172 Post by PeFe » Fri Dec 20, 2024 2:07 pm

How the energy market really works....

From Renew Economy
How big utilities manipulate the energy market, even with a high share of wind and solar

Image

The Australian Energy Regulator has accused Austraia’s biggest energy utilities of effectively manipulating the wholesale electricity market, deliberately withholding capacity at certain times to ensure that they can push prices higher and maximise profits.

The assessment by the AER – in its latest wholesale energy markets report – has huge implications for the energy transition in Australia, and the future market design which is to be considered by a new panel led by Griffith University’s Tim Nelson.

Australian wholesale electricity prices have been heading lower as the amount of wind and solar increases in the grid. But the ability of big players to manipulate the market over short periods – when they push the wholesale price to the market cap – if offsetting those gains.

Previous reports have made clear that – were it not for a handful of short high priced periods – usually the result of a network of big generator breakdown – wholesale prices in most state would have been lower rather than higher.

The AER says the dominance of a small number of big players in the market is being felt across the country’s main grid, but it has focused particularly on South Australia – where the share of wind and solar is the highest, at more than 70 per cent, but the concentration of market power is also the deepest.

“South Australia is at the forefront of the energy transition and has more renewable penetration than other mainland NEM regions,” the AER writes. But it is also at the end of a long and stringy grid, and when there are constraints on its link to Victoria, the big players are visibly exercising their market power to push prices up.

The AER used its new found monitoring and reporting powers to investigate trading and contracting positions.

One of the most interesting things it found is that while the number of negative price intervals are significant, due to the dominance of wind, solar and rooftop PV, there us now a near total absence of mid-market bids. It is either all or nothing.

It notes that the market is very concentrated, particularly in terms of dispatchable generation. AGL Energy and Neoen own 91 per cent of registered battery capacity in South Australia, and AGL and Origin Energy own 75 per cent of gas capacity.

The AER used its powers to monitor practices of one unnamed participant over a four year period.

“By and large, we found that the participant made significant additional returns following the rebids and the primary motivation for the rebids was to optimise the participant’s long position,” it writes.

“That is, the participant had more generation than required to cover its retail and wholesale contractual obligations in these periods, and as such higher prices would benefit its portfolio.

“We consider the rebids that resulted in an increased return for the participant are examples of successful economic withholding behaviour.”

The AER also noted that high price events in South Australia are almost always associated with constraints on one or both of the 2 interconnectors between Victoria and South Australia, when there is little or no competition from other states.

“This is because it is difficult for prices to rise in South Australia when additional generation capacity in Victoria can be offered into the South Australian market” – i.e. when there is more competition.

It says the Project EnergyConnect – the new transmission link between South Australia and NSW – will improve market competition by allowing more imports when required, and also encourage new investment by allowing a more than doubling of exports.

The activities identified by the AER are not news to market participants, or observers – but the scale of the re-bidding and withholding of capacity is getting to plague proportions across the grid, and the high price spikes in such situations are more than offsetting the reductions brought about by lower cost wind and solar.

The regulator goes to pains to underline the fact that this is not a result of a shortfall in supply – it is simply the ability of dominant players to use scarcity to control prices – as has happened in South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and NSW this year.

AER chair Clare Savage is using the findings to push for changes that may be considered by the newly constituted market panel, which is due to report by the end of the year.

Savage has previously been an advocate of capacity markets, but a proposal backed by her was knocked back several years ago because it included fossil fuel generators.

“South Australia’s experience offers valuable lessons for the National Electricity Market’s transition,” Savage said in a statement accompanying the report.

“While increased renewable generation has sometimes lowered prices, factors like fuel costs, network congestion, and bidding strategies have kept prices high and volatile, with fewer mid-priced offers and incentives for limiting supply further driving instability.

“These factors have led to new inefficiencies, challenges to competition, and costs that should be addressed in market design reviews.

The AER’s recommendations include a market design that ensures revenue can cover long-term costs and support competitive tension, the need to guarantee on time delivery of new projects, diversity in dispatchable generation contracts, and not destroying current risk management transactions, such as contract hedges.

She notes that revenue certainty is also needed for large scale renewables, with wind and solar find it increasingly difficult to secure decent returns in a saturated market.

“The AER is very keen to work closely with the market design review panel next year on all of the recommendations presented in this report to build a market that delivers reliable and affordable energy at the least cost to all Australians as we transition to net zero emissions,” Savage said.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-big-uti ... and-solar/

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