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Energy Prices Skyrocket in South Australia (yahoo.com)
Slashdot reader sycodon quotes an article from AFR:
Turmoil in South Australia's heavily wind-reliant electricity market has forced the state government to plead with the owner of a mothballed gas-fired power station to turn it back on. The emergency measures are needed to ease punishing costs for South Australian industry as National Electricity Market prices in the state have frequently surged above $1000 a megawatt hour this month and at one point on Tuesday hit the $14,000/MWh maximum price...
"A planned outage of the Heywood Interconnector to Victoria, coupled with higher than expected gas prices and severe weather conditions have contributed to large-scale price volatility in the energy spot market in recent days," said South Australia's energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis. The Australian Associated Press adds that "The state Labor government has invested heavily in wind and solar energy at the expense of baseload power, a move critics say has left the state exposed during poor weather. Mr. Koutsantonis has described the energy volatility as a failure of the national energy market because a lack of interconnection means South Australia often produces more renewable power than it can sell into the grid. But opposition spokesman Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the government had been too hasty to invest in renewables."
"A planned outage of the Heywood Interconnector to Victoria, coupled with higher than expected gas prices and severe weather conditions have contributed to large-scale price volatility in the energy spot market in recent days," said South Australia's energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis. The Australian Associated Press adds that "The state Labor government has invested heavily in wind and solar energy at the expense of baseload power, a move critics say has left the state exposed during poor weather. Mr. Koutsantonis has described the energy volatility as a failure of the national energy market because a lack of interconnection means South Australia often produces more renewable power than it can sell into the grid. But opposition spokesman Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the government had been too hasty to invest in renewables."
"This city is afraid of me...I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No.""
Seriously ? . I thought yahoo was in the Smithsonian.
Just wait. It will eventually be revealed that there was an Enron-like manipulation of the price
hmmm, maybe they could become the leaders in renewable energy storage? the world needs such tech badly, just sayin'
The unfolding energy crisis in South Australia was foreseeable and foreseen
Or is this just some Enron style ripoff scheme? The whole gag sounds like nothing more than an argument over distribution prices.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And told the politicians, who immediately made sure the management of the power authorities consisted solely of bean-counters.
Similar issues in Tassie no doubt.
The bottom line nobody seems to care about is that renewable energy is ON TOP of the cost of the normal baseline generation.
Corruption in the power industry has been driving up prices
http://www.smh.com.au/business...
Despite this Australians keep re-electing the corrupt Labor and Liberal parties anyway, so serves them right. You get what you vote for.
This kind of thing is going to happen until someone invents a viable storage system to allow renewables to cover base load.
The break even point in the US for running your own generator is around $0.40 - $1 per kWh. At $14,000 per MWh, I think you'd be better off buying a generator and just making your own power plant for your home. I know gas is more expensive down under, but it isn't that much more expensive.
This is actually perfectly normal behavior from real-time priced power markets. There's a certain point where the consumers are going to become non-responsive (you'll pay $1000/MWh if it's 90 degF in your house as the sun is setting) and that non-responsive load exceed the available generation. There needs to be enough dispatch-able generation (like the gas generator in the article) to cover all of the non-responsive load, or you get "market failures" like this, where the effective spot price climbs to infinity.
Source: demand-response simulations with GridLAB-D, a powerflow & residential simulator.
Wonder if other governments will look at this and learn. Like Ontario canada for one....
Ask any child of five. And they could have told you this was going to be a problem.
But hey, let's just shut down all non-renewables! Because we can get by without them!
Until we can't...
This is why we need something like modern nuclear for base load power. Build enough to cover base load with future demand in mind.
The cover shortfalls with renewables and storage.
And if there's any power in excess of demand, use it to convert carbon dioxide into methanol. Which can then be stored or burned for fuel.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We have privatized electricity production in Alberta and prices have averaged 3-5c/kwh (Canadian!) each month this year. We don't have a large renewables sector mind you...
It has nothing to do with "psychopathic private corporations", and everything to do with Government manipulation. Incentivizing unreliable, intermittent renewable power without adequate baseload is *guaranteed* to have this result. Its called supply and demand.
We are officially back to where Thomas Playford pulled us out of, in the 1950s!
Ask any child of five. And they could have told you this was going to be a problem. <-- WRONG
i asked my niece (age six) and she gave me a blank stare before asking what a "solmer pantle" was.
But hey, let's just shut down all non-renewables! Because we can get by without them! <-- CORRECT
we can get by without them but only if we replace them with something else.
This is why we need something like modern nuclear for base load power. Build enough to cover base load with future demand in mind. <-- WRONG
while nuclear is a good option, it's quite expensive and requires a decade to get up and running. a much better option would be to expand to having solar panel fields and actually store the energy in large battery warehouses.
And if there's any power in excess of demand, use it to convert carbon dioxide into methanol. Which can then be stored or burned for fuel. <-- BAD IDEA
one step forward and two step back?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
South Australia is very progressive on a lot of issues. In terms of a addressing baseload power issues SA has very high reserves of geo-thermal power in the form of Hot Dry Rock however the issue of funding the cable infrastructure to make that energy available as electricity has been something they have been trying to solve for a long time. From my understanding they want to establish alluminium smelters powered by geothermal energy to make it feasible.
You're probably right about them asking for problems by taking those risks however I think this is something they are aware of and endure as one of the issues they encounter in taking a leadership role.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why is that? Chemical storage is very high density and it's still carbon neutral. There will be efficiency losses, but I don't see it as a bad idea or a step backwards. Why do you say it is?
The same people who told us climate change wasn't real are now telling us we can't go 100% renewable. The main culprit is high prices is fossil fuels which are much more volatile than our weather.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coalitions-myth-renewables-high-electricity-prices-82985
This is a big fat lie from the fossil fuels lobby.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coalitions-myth-renewables-high-electricity-prices-82985
The conservative government of the time provided the transmission lessee a 99 year lease with a guaranteed return. Failures in the agreement have permitted the lessee to "gold plate the network" to their advantage/profit as the cost is recovered from consumers.
Electricity have since steadily increased to a level 2-3 times, where it's often cited as the most expensive in the world. Going off grid might work short term, but as that gains popularity, the burden of the transmission lease on the remaining few, will force the government to charge every property a supply charge.
The subsequent price increases, combined with the (national) RET scheme, have driven a massive adoption of solar in SA. The RET also fueled a massive increase in wind farm investment, but it's important to understand that scheme is a national scheme.
The third factor is the main interconnector to Victoria is being upgraded and presumably offline or running at reduced capacity.
The four factor is the recent shut down of the pt Augusta Coal plant that one served the majority of state. It was switched off last month.
Fifth factor is recent cold weather has increased demand.
It's important to appreciate the it's a combination of all these factors that have put the state in this predicament. Not just an abundance of renewable electricity.
Why it's only now made the news is because industry and retailers that normally get it wholesale for $50/MWh and lockin consumers at 30-40c at KWh [600-800% markup] are now losing money as these spikes get bigger and more common.
As the current treasurer pointed out, the markets are failing as there is no incentive to put on more transmission capacity and that has largely protected the remaining duopoly baseload generators who are cashing in.
SA just needs transmission capacity. Either interstate or to the northern geothermal sites.
Area51 - We are watching...
Ask any child of five.
I would recommend to look at facts and hard data instead.
Nothing to see here - the pricing mechanism is an insanely reactive stockmarketeers wet dream and not something that should have been implemented.
All it has taken is a cable outage to sent prices through the roof.
Prices going through the roof due to such an insane pricing construct reacting to an outage is given some one issue idiots an excuse to once again complain about windmills.
So all up it's about an extreme reaction to something trivial.
Ask any child of five. And they could have told you this was going to be a problem.
That was a rhetorical comparison meant to show the simplicity of reaching the conclusion. Most people understand this.
we can get by without them but only if we replace them with something else.
A reasonable person would spell out what the something else was and what the benefits and drawbacks to doing so are.
All of you are missing the point.
There are no "brownouts".
There is no problem providing enough supply.
There is a problem with price gouging.
Those over five can look at things like this and see that it's not quite the situation that so many here are ranting about:
https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/water-energy-and-environment/energy/energy-supply-and-sources/sa-electricity-supply-industry
The SA government is already investigating the use of Thermal Solar plants to help with baseboard generation, and let's be honest the place is hotter than hell so Thermal Solar will work quite well there I'd expect
14 $/GWh isn't so high. Here in Europe, normal! price is between 20 and 30 euro-cents. Here are the current prices e.g. in Germany:
https://www.eex-transparency.com
No. Because what happens when you have a shortfall on your renewables output? It DOES happen. And no, simply building "bigger" doesn't alleviate it.
Or are we still supposed to use non-renewables like NG for all the shortfalls that happen? I thought one of the reasons to use renewables was to cut out the CO2?
Because of a hostile regulatory environment set in place by the anti-nuke crowd.
And because things like solar and wind have MASSIVE subsidies.
And no, massive solar and then more massive battery farms is NOT the answer. The amount of land use required would be astronomical.
Also, battery technology is nowhere NEAR ready for that sort of thing. Not even in 20-30 years.
Nuclear power can do what solar can, with a fraction of the land budget and is FAR more energy-dense.
The largest complete, producing solar farm on the planet currently stands at 550MW, putting out about 1.3 Terawatt/hours annually. It covers 9.5 square miles.
ONE nuclear reactor (based on 50 year old designs) has roughly DOUBLE that output.
The largest operating nuclear facility in the world (not the largest nuclear facility in the world) is in Canada, and comprises 8 reactors at a combined 6.3GW, putting out roughly 45 Terawatt/hours annually. It covers roughly 3.5 square miles.
There's also the environmental offsets of obtaining (see mining) all the constituent materials used in massive solar installations and the ecological damage they do. Moreover, there's the adjunct offsets and damage of producing all those batteries and the waste involved.
Sure, nuclear waste is unpleasant shit. But, again, it's hundreds of times more compact than the end-product waste you're talking about.
Again, renewables simply don't provide a stable power output. PERIOD. And the storage technologies that would be required to stabilize them simply aren't up to snuff yet (and if you think they are, you're delusional or you've got a racket going selling the stuff).
And why is producing methanol during a power surplus as a fuel a bad idea?
We're not going to see an all-electric passenger vehicle fleet in this country anytime in the foreseeable future.
Creating methanol binds CO2 out of the atmosphere, sequestering it while stored..
Sure, burning methanol releases it again, but it then becomes an essentially carbon-neutral propostion.
So what, exactly, is so "bad" about it?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Because nuclear = bombs...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
South Australia needs to bite the bullet and get either geothermal, solar thermal, or both types of plants built and running. They have the technology. The resources, and the need. I grew up in Adelaide. The state is very forward thinking/progressive. They need to prioritise fixing this as a matter of urgency. There have been plans for about 10 years now to build a Solar Thermal plant in Port Augusta.
The same people who told us climate change wasn't real are now telling us we can't go 100% renewable.
Look at most of the solar and wind facilities being put in.
They're not "100% renewable".
They're hybrid solar/NG and wind/NG facilities. So that when solar or wind production tapers off, they "augment" by burning natural gas.
The Ivanpah solar plant in California generated 46,000 tons of CO2 emissions in its first year.
http://gizmodo.com/if-a-solar-...
A single clean coal plant generates about 1 million tons of CO2 a year (compared to a standard coal plant which pukes out about 10x as much) and recaptures about 90% of it.
Not saying we should continue with coal.
And not saying we shouldn't pursue ever better forms of renewable power and power storage tech.
I'm saying that nuclear and renewables play a complimentary role in an overall plan that delivers power reliably without being subject to huge swings in price.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Ask any child of five.
I would recommend to look at facts and hard data instead.
Well, I was trying to soften the blow a bit...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
...are you claiming that "green houses" are hot because of CO2?
You should know that the term Green House was coined by the AGW crowd as a way to explain to the great unwashed masses why the are destroying the earth.
A Green House you find at your local gardener's place has identical atmospheric gas concentrations as found outside the green house unless the purposely wheel a tank of co2 in and increase CO2 deliberately.
Even then, green houses are warmer due to thermal radiance from the sun captured by the enclosed structure.
Holy fuck, talk about drinking the Look Aid.
You have been deliberately, artfully lied to. I trust that, being on slashdot, you have a basic grasp of ecology, chemistry and physics. Now let me ask you a question. When the evil farmer who's growing your dinner "wastes" water by watering here in the central valley, where does that water go? It magically disappears from the ecosystem, right? Well, actually, about 1/3 of it goes down and right back into the water table. Another third of itruns off in surface water, and about a quarter falls on the sierras and comes back downhill. Now, tell me what happens to the water that's going up over the hill to the LA basin. You know, the water that's righeously used for golf courses and lawns and swimming pools. Some of that water evaporates and heads out to Vegas, but most of it goes through the sewage plants and out into the pacific ocean.
So yes, you've been lied to. While "80% of the water is used for agriculture, that water is almost all put back into the ecosystem, while the "30%" that is consumed int he bay area and SoCal is much closer to 70% of the useable water coming off of the sierras.
Bingo. Visible light in. IR blocked on the way out.
Some slight misunderstandings here.
A physical greenhouse-- the kind made with glass-- works by the principle of the glass admitting light, but suppressing loss of heat via convection. The "greenhouse effect"-- in the atmosphere-- works by the principle of the atmosphere transparent in the visible admits light, but the loss of heat is suppressed by outgoing IR being absorbed by trace gasses. The two work by different mechanisms.
So the first statement ("green houses are warmer due to thermal radiance from the sun captured by the enclosed structure") is right, but the second statement ("Visible light in. IR blocked on the way out.") is true for the atmosphere, but not for a greenhouse.
Although glass is opaque to IR, blocking IR isn't important in the operation of real greenhouses, since convection is a much more important heat transfer mechanism than radiation at the surface.
You should know that the term Green House was coined by the AGW crowd as a way to explain to the great unwashed masses why the are destroying the earth.
The term "greenhouse effect" to describe atmospheric heating from IR absorption by trace gasses predates the discovery of anthropogenic global warming-- the metaphor was in use by the late 1800s, and term "greenhouse effect" itself was apparently coined in 1907 by Pointing (discussing the calculation of planetary surface temperatures, not the effect of anthropogenic gasses on the Earth's atmosphere: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi... .)
Ask any child of five. And they could have told you this was going to be a problem. I had one of these when I was five and learned a lot about solar.
How can they have higher than expected gas prices? Surely, they didn't think the glut of oil and natural gas would be permanent in their cost analysis! By what means could electricity ever be $14,000(AU) per KW/H given the current world energy climate? Something else is the cause of this and this just smells like a coverup.
This is why we need something like modern nuclear for base load power. Build enough to cover base load with future demand in mind.
Ask any child of five, nuclear has managed to be over-budget, off-schedule and safety deficient. This won't change.
Shouldn't you pretty much always over-compensate and install capacity for more renewal than regular plants? Plus seriously consider diversifying power generation methods? (Solar / Wave / Solar tower etc?)
I assume they didn't do one of these things, because mathematically and logically, once you get to a certain point with renewable energy, it should reach a point where it's not only paying / paid for itself but existing infrastructure subsidises the new stuff coming in.
Sad to see something like this botched.
Gee, big bad fossil fuel still has a place???
Sure, they were the ones who rigged energy prices in CA for a tidy profit, but that was just an early step.
Their masterpiece was the invention of a whole new investment scam that builds a completely imaginary stock market based on trading things that do not actually exist and that heve no inherent value at all. The creators of such a market have to invest relatively little since they invent the product being sold from absolutely nothing. They also lose nothing of they het stuck "holding the bag" because what they are stuck with has no cost. And then they make massive profits selling the marked-up nothingness to others forced by law to buy it, but those sucker buyers then get locked-into supporting the scam market because THEY actually did invest piles of cash buying the nothing they were forced by law to buy and they lose it all if the market is ever shut down.
This is called "carbon trading". And most people who pretend to hate Enron seem to be champions of Enron's greatest invention. They should be bowing toward the site of Enron's old headquarters every day like muslims prostrating themselves toward Mecca.
How well do you think this [groworganic.com] blocks convection? It has holes in it.
Yes, polytunnels are often vented. Do you know why? Because if you don't vent them, they get too hot.
As expected, the article is pure FUD spread by fossil fuel lobbyists, here's the reality included technical details and analysis: http://reneweconomy.com.au/201...
Quote:
On Sunday, November 21, one of the two lines that links South Australian to Victoria was out for maintenance, when at 21:56 the second line “tripped” because of a faulty signal. It was blamed on “non-compatible protection relay configuration” that had been recently installed as part of an upgrade. It was probably human error.
This “trip” caused the the South Australian grid to be “islanded.” This should be a routine situation. 160MW of capacity was shed to deal with frequency issues, and under normal circumstances the power should have been re-established quickly, in less than 10 minutes.
However, the local network could not solve its frequency problems as it expected, but not because of too much or too little wind energy.
First, frequency levels were affected by a rise in output from “non scheduled” generators that lifted frequency levels – most likely co-generators and diesel gensets. Then, the situation was made much worse when the large Torrens Island gas generator ignored requests from the market operator to cut down its output. Instead, it kept raising it, by 65MW all told.
This pushed the frequency level above 50.58 Hertz, outside the normal frequency band, which meant that the South Australia grid was insecure and could not be synchronised with the main grid.
The result, says AEMO, was that instead of power from the inter-connector being restored within 9 minutes, it took an extra 26 minutes for the frequency control problems to be resolved and the link restored.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Unmodified cheapo thin polyethylene film usually blocks about 30% of thermal IR (rough ballpark of 10um), which is much better than "none". Unmodified polypropylene film blocks almost all thermal IR around that range.
...(By the way transmission curves [in the] IR are meaningless with no thickness cited.)
The thickness was cited on the page, 2mm thickness.
No, it is not. The link you gave showed only a graph, no caption. The thickness may have been cited somewhere, but not anywhere on the page you linked.
And "look, you're wrong" as a response to a rebuttal is the second least convincing answer possible, right after "LA LA LA I can't hear you!".
No. It is, however, accurate.
Please learn the difference between a webpage and an image. I linked you to an image. You posted concerns about the thickness. I told you the thickness from the page. Not image.
In case for some bizarre reason you doubt the thickness, here you go, figure 9.
Then defend your claim. In the process of insisting that manufacturers and books and everyone else is lying about the subject, point out how either (1) plants simply loosely wrapped in plastic or plastic with holes in it won't rapidly equalize to the ambient temperature, or (2) why convection would still be relevant even if they're already at the ambient temperature.
Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
Whether you call it a page or not, the link you gave did not list thickness. If the thickness was on some different page, you should have linked that page.