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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."
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.
Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.