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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."
The unfolding energy crisis in South Australia was foreseeable and foreseen
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.
Or, if you only want to use renewables and only have a small geographic area, you could way overbuild the power plants so that at the worst times you have enough power, while normally selling the excess power very cheaply to aluminium smelters or bitcoin miners on the condition that it will be intermittent to them.
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.
Sorry, I'm with the GP. This is clearly a scam. It's not about energy, it's a disagreement over the price. And it's another reason not to privatize critical resources. I am astounded that the people are letting them get away with it. Unfortunately little will be learned from this, as the water issue also illustrates so well.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
As the people of California already know, one picture explains it all. These are the kinds of things that justify calling for early elections to make at least a feeble effort at correcting the problem. And I hope this time the lessons of privatization fall on fertile ground.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm certainly talking about market spot prices.
So far there has been sufficient supply (note, they DID/DO purchase the power at the stated prices) It's just not generated locally by our own market, so when we fall short on local supply we need to purchase from our non local suppliers who can and do set their spot price.
So the facts to back up my contention is that at no point was there not enough supply to meed demand. It's only the cost of the supply that's the point of contention.
IF they are forced (due to supply constraints and not economic constraints) to start doing rolling blackouts or similar due to inability to meet demand then I'll stand corrected. But having worked directly with our largest whole-sale provider to implement demand management systems at the customer end (experimental) I can be rather confident that the supply is there if they are willing to pay the price.
In past years our local suppliers would do rolling blackouts during high demand periods to avoid paying for costly supply. This typically occurred during summer. This has been offset by using roor-top-solar. But still, it's always been about price, not availability.
Never happened. True story.
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.
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...
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.
If an aluminium smelter doesn't get electricity constantly there is a very expensive problem of a lot of solid pots that should be full of liquid.
They get built in places where they can be sold continuous cheap power.
Yes.
When the national electricity marketing system (mostly fake competition between entities owned by the same government) was designed in the 1990s the California electricity systems was held up as a model. I kid you not. A clown called Hillmer from the third ranking university in a small city made his career out of it. Some people really were that stupid, naive or greedy.
Have you looked at the actual losses of modern HVDC transmission?
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
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%."
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
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.
We come from Enron down-under
Where ramp up bills and we plunder
...
Exactly so; cf 5% in distribution and 2% in transmission for the UK typically, so far from a deal breaker.
Indeed it might be worth a transmission link across the Atlantic IMHO:
http://www.earth.org.uk/note-o...
But obviously it's better to shout things down while admitting never even trying to find the facts...
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Aluminum smelters cannot (except at great expense) shut down altogether. But they can modulate their power consumtion a fair amount. They have to keep enough power flowing through the aluminum to keep it molten, but they don't have to run it at peak production rates through each cell.
Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.