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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."
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!”
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.
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.
Yeah that's the Trillion Dollar question a lot of very smart people are working on. Once city or time-zone scale batteries (or equivilent) are invented, you just need to scale wind/solar at the continental level to about 250%.
Obviously, someone will invent that solution. If it's simply moving billions of tons of rock up a mountain, and then rolling it back down the mountain, then so be it. Emergencies like this will highlight the problem, and someone will solve it. Coal and oil burning plants are not long for this world. 50-60 years, tops.
People will look back at your post and laugh at it's short-sightedness.
moox. for a new generation.
It is around $0.40 for gasoline powered home generators, but only $0.22 for natural gas powered home generators. $0.22 is often cheaper than retail electricity prices.
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?
My off grid Australian house needs the diesel generator for about an hour a day for five months of the year, and is on solar and lead acids the rest of the time. I bought $40 of fuel in May and haven't used it all yet.
Flywheel storage. Pretty much the equivalent of the pumped-water storage used in conjunction with hydroelectric plants. Use excess power to spin up the flywheels, use the flywheels to drive generators when you've a power deficit to make up. The companies who make diesel locomotives have lots of experience with the basic motor-generator tech needed.
LOL no. Not with Mcwynnty in charge(Thanks Toronto!), they have given the IESO every increase they wanted and we're now running at 17c/kWh at peak, and the government here keeps scratching it's head going why are all the businesses leaving?! When you can buy it in Michigan for $0.05-0.07 at peak. And we're selling excess power to the US for 0.01-0.025kWh and buying back at 0.10.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
It has nothing to do with "psychopathic private corporations"...
I live in Alberta too. You seem to have forgotten about this. An excerpt:
In 2014, the province’s Market Surveillance Administrator alleged that TransAlta engaged in “anti-competitive conduct” in 2010 and 2011 by taking three coal-fired power plants off line on four cold days, during high-demand hours and in periods when other players in Alberta’s competitive power market were the least likely to be able to pick up the slack. This, the administrator said, drove up electricity prices and allowed TransAlta to reap millions in additional profits.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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
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!!!
Bingo.
Visible light in. IR blocked on the way out.
Are you of the belief that CO2 doesn't do this, despite the fact that it very easily demonstrably does?
Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
Newsflash, people still have aol addresses as well. You've probably upgraded to that one from the company that promised to "do no evil".
Just another day in Paradise
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... .)
Same here in Arizona. I only need the generator for pumping water or occasional heavy power tool. Maybe 4L/month.
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.
I bought $40 of fuel in May and haven't used it all yet.
Doesn't that stuff gel after a while? How long does diesel fuel keep? I hope longer than an inkjet cartridge...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
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.
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.