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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."
Ahh, the sweet, sweet profits of privatised energy. Fuck society, fuck the community, more, More, MORE, profits now. Yeah, everyone knew but corrupt government and voilÃ, bullshit exposed as bullshit. Privatisation is not about saving anything, it is about squeezing more profits out of society, up to it's death or the peasants revolt (they don't care, as long as they are rich and powerful right now, aftermath somebody else's problem). They desperately trying to come up with excuses, you know like, too much wind, not enough wind (we know what kind of wind they are really talking about) but the reality is, the inevitable consequence of allowing psychopathic private corporations to control monopolistic essential services.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Doesn't need to be. I strongly support renewables, but one has to be realistic about the limitations of the technology that they're using. Any plan based around "Let's make a large portion of our power generation from intermittent sources over a very limited geographic area (little variation in production levels) with most of our peaking having very limited connections to us which can and will need to be taken down at points in the future" is just asking for problems. In fact, it's practically guaranteeing them.
Renewables and stability can come hand in hand (dramatic demand variability has been part of the market from day 1, so why not supply). But the higher the percentage of your power you want to come from intermittent sources, the more you need to do it right. And that means, 1) different types of intermittent sources (say, solar paired with wind), 2) geographic distribution of generation (so that drops aren't as extreme or as sudden), 3) sufficient storage OR peaking to fill the gaps, and 4) all elements of the above being linked in a manner that can effectively statistically guarantee constant supply uptime.
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That is an insightful article. Hopefully we can keep this conversation at a high level. The usual thing when energy supply in transition runs into a rough patch is for many to argue that we should just keep depending on coal and natural gas. But any time you do something new, there is trial and error. Hopefully more of the forseen problems could be avoided, but humans seem to have to make mistakes before they can learn from them. As integrated wind, solar, transmission, and storage systems become more mature, we can run a stable energy system with mostly renewables and much less damage to the ecosystems we depend on. But there will be a learning curve.
Exactly - there's plenty of supply, it's just charged at an insane rate since "They have no choice - want power? Pay what we ask or start doing rolling blackouts"
It's a commercial/political/greed issue.
Never happened. True story.
Hope is a lie.
This was foreseen but not avoided because it didn't follow the marketing lies of the politicians and self deceiving voters.
It's also foreseen that an integrated system of many energies will still fail because it doesn't even out. You're exasperating peak load with least production.
We have a perfectly good solution for carbon free economical electricity: nuclear. Even better, it only emits 1% the radiation that coal fire plants do.
Exactly - there's plenty of supply, it's just charged at an insane rate since "They have no choice - want power? Pay what we ask or start doing rolling blackouts"
It's a commercial/political/greed issue.
Do you have facts to back up your contention that there was plenty of supply, because the article talks about the engorgement wanting to start up a retired plant to ease the problem? BTW, they are talking about market spot prices spiking to that level, not consumer prices. Its not evident from your post that you distinguished between the two.
Idiot. Let me say that again, you're a complete idiot. Cheap energy is one of the best ways to get people out of poverty and one of the best ways to increase the general health of a group of people.
Om, nomnomnom...
Renewables are not a reliable source of energy: their production levels vary as whatever natural phenomenon they depend on varies. This was known well in advance, as was the necessity to maintain classic plants for base load. A political choice was made not to maintain sufficient plants for base load, and since production through renewable sources does not have sufficient capacity at all times, an allocation scheme for times of tightness was needed - a market, so customers with very high requirements for reliable energy could simply pay more for that privilege while customers with lower requirements could choose to lower their consumption at times when production was insufficient.
So far, it looks to me like everything is working exactly as designed. So what exactly are you complaining about? Blackouts? Those were a known and expected feature of having a high level of renewables without enough classic plants. Varying prices with high peaks? Those were _also_ a known and expected feature of the technology! Or is it simply that you wanted to 'save the planet', as long as it didn't inconvenience you personally with high prices and blackouts?
Don't pretend it is all an evil plot to extort money. You made this bed, now lie in it. I'm just sad to see the people who wanted other options (nuclear, for example) having to suffer with you.
It's economic enough for us in the UK to put lines to Norway and Europe, studies have even shown lines to Iceland from Scotland would be viable.
I don't think the loses are as big as you think they are. Quote "âoefor every 1,000km a DC line will lose less than 3%."
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