Tag Archives: green electricity

Using ‘Green Energy’ to wreck our way of life

By Ronald Stein

In 10 years before the proverbial 2035 date when many mandated transitions to “green electricity” occur to reduce or eliminate the usage of fossil fuels, most of today’s elected officials, policy advisers, and policymakers are:

  • NOT trained in engineering.
  • Reside in wealthy countries.
  • Unaware of the engineering reality that without the petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, those 6,000 products that entered society after the 1800s start to disappear, the same products that have been the basis of the world populating over the last 200 years, after the discovery of crude oil, from 1 to 8 billion.
  • Unwilling to engage in conversations about where and how the world will replace the fossil fuels that are now providing the basis of all the “PRODUCTS” in society that did not exist before the 1800s.

Petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil… (1) Are key ingredients in manufacturing wind turbine blades and solar panels. (2) Are widely used in healthcare as feedstock for pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and plastic medical supplies. (3) These are the key ingredients for construction materials, from décor to kitchen necessities. (4) The basis of tires and asphalt used in transportation infrastructures. (5) Also provide the fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of jets, moving people and products, merchant ships for global trade flows, and military and space programs.

Those policymakers only focus on “just weather” dependent electricity generated from wind turbines and solar panels, i.e., “green electricity” that only exists because of government subsidies. They fail to understand that it’s the PRODUCTS that run this world, not just electricity. They also fail to comprehend that wind turbines and solar panels CANNOT make any products needed to support humanity.

Not being able to comprehend simple engineering principles, they fail to understand that all the components needed to make wind turbines and solar panels are made from petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, the same crude oil that they want to rid the world of!

By 2035, most of today’s elected government officials and policymakers will be termed out of office and either be retired or deceased, leaving their policies for today’s teenagers and grade school kids to pay for the implementation of those dictates from today’s “leaders” in wealthy country dictates!

The other 90+ percent of the world’s developing countries continue with unabated emissions for their dismal economies!

Today’s policy advisers, policymakers, and the news media, also primarily NOT trained in engineering, constantly refer to all climate changes being caused by humanity, but they never identify where most of that emission-generating humanity is located!

The healthy and wealthy countries of Germany, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, all the EU, and the USA, representing about one of the eight billion of the world’s population, could literally shut down and cease to exist, and the opposite of what the media tells us and believes will take place.

Emissions will be exploding from those poorer developing countries, i.e., the other seven billion on this planet. Unlike the wealthy countries that have huge economies that can subsidize any delusionally obsessed idea, these poorer countries’ dismal economies cannot subsidize themselves out of a paper bag!

Simply put, in these healthy and wealthy countries, every person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth or even die off. Global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Tanzania.

When Thomas Edison and his researchers at Menlo Park came onto the lighting scene, they focused on improving the filament — first testing carbon, then platinum, before finally returning to a carbon filament. By October 1879, Edison’s team had produced a light bulb with a carbonized filament of uncoated cotton thread that could last for 14.5 hours. They continued to experiment with the filament until settling on one made from bamboo that gave Edison’s lamps a lifetime of up to 1,200 hours.

Thomas Edison (1847-1931) is widely credited as the inventor of the incandescent light bulb, but the more accurate telling is that he improved on a technology that already existed. Many of Edison’s 1,093 patents were the product of teamwork, with a large team of researchers working out of his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Their research also played a key role in the development of sound recording and motion picture technology.

One of his most significant achievements was opening the first power plant in New York City in 1882, the Pearl Street Station. He also installed the first electric streetlights in Roselle, New Jersey, marking the beginning of the end of gas lighting in American cities.

Eventually, Edison’s companies evolved into the General Electric brand, which is known for its washing machines, refrigerators, and electric light bulbs, which all utilize parts and components made from crude oil.

Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles. More than 6,000 products based on oil are being used for the health and well-being of humanity, and the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.

Today, we have more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than  50,000 military aircraft that use the fuels manufactured from crude oil.

For aircraft and ships, just like that for the diverse options for the generation of electricity, they all utilize parts and components, i.e., the “PRODUCTS” made from the oil derivatives manufactured from raw crude oil.

When will our policymakers engage in conversations to identify the new source that will replace crude oil, which is the basis of all the “Products” for today’s humanity of the 8 billion on this planet?

Please share this information with your friends to further enhance conversations about Energy Literacy, as Breezes and Sunshine cannot manufacture anything. Electricity CANNOT exist without crude oil!

The post Using ‘Green Energy’ to wreck our way of life appeared first on CFACT.

Germany To Rely On Coal To Avoid Blackouts

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

Exclusive: An internal SPD document reveals a shift by the Minister of Economics on the coal phase-out.

It was the big project for the green transformation of electricity generation in Germany – and perhaps the most dazzling energy policy project of Germany’s coalition government: After the nuclear phase-out and the targeted coal phase-out as early as possible, natural gas would serve as a bridge technology – towards a new, green electricity world in Germany.
This bridge was to a new electricity world in which renewable energy, especially sun and wind, set the pace. Angela Merkel had already marked this ‘turnaround’ as Chancellor. As “backup” for the dark doldrums, i.e. whenr the sun doesn’t shine enough and the wind doesn’t blow enough, new, highly efficient and, according to Economics Minister Habeck’s wishes, ideally hydrogen – in the future natural gas power plants would step to secure power supply.
This is the plan of the federal government and, above all, its Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party). This plan also has a name: the so-called Power Plant Strategy. This strategy was intended to encourage the construction of new gas power plants in Germany with an output of at least 15 gigawatts, i.e. building at least 30 large power plants by 2030. Even this is quite a challenge. But then came Russia’s war against Ukraine. And then came the Federal Finance Minister’s austerity policy and, most recently, the budget crisis at the end of 2023.
But first things first: The Ukraine war quickly made it clear that natural gas for Germany was essentially only available via pipeline from Norway or in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) . Chemically speaking, LNG is natural gas, but it is liquid and 162 degrees cold. But it’s also pretty expensive and pretty dirty (sic).
For some, ‘expensive’ is a relative definition these days. Not dirty: In the USA, LNG is obtained through fracking, then has to be cooled down to minus 162 degrees using a lot of energy, and then transported laboriously and with high CO2 emissions across the world’s oceans and on tanker ships that use heavy oil and refinery waste as fuel.
At the North and Baltic Sea ports, the energy is to be fed into the German natural gas pipeline network via floating LNG terminals that were hastily purchased after the outbreak of war. At least one of these terminals had previously been decommissioned in Australia because the floating vehicle was anything but good for the coral reefs off the coast.
With the war, coal-fired power generation became en vogue again
Habeck’s plan for the green transformation of German electricity generation was therefore somewhat tarnished by Putin’s war. But overshadowed by a fog of war and so largely unnoticed by the wider public. Germany would become an LNG importer instead of buying piped natural gas from warmongers. The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was another decision-making event. Habeck’s plan seemed to have no alternative.
In the meantime, the Federal Minister of Economics has encountered a second problem with his plan. This time it’s more directly about money, namely German tax money. After the ministries and coalition partners had agreed on an initial concept for the Power Plant Strategy – which Habeck proudly announced in August – it became clear: As far as EU state aid law is concerned, the power plant strategy is not just massive problem, but it’s also quite expensive: 60 billion euros for 15 years. The Federal Minister of Finance will have already asked if it couldn’t be cheaper. And the question was already in the room: If nuclear power is no longer available to step into the breach, isn’t there an alternative to coal-fired power generation?
Reserve power plants are essentially coal-fired power plants
Then came the budget crisis. The Federal Ministry of Economics told members of the Bundestag’s Energy Committee that the Power Plant Strategy had been “shelved for the short term”. In the new plans for the federal budget, with adjustments announced on Wednesday, the financial resources for the strategy have been postponed by two years. So it’s essential for the next election period. Whether the strategy will return and what it may look like is more questionable than ever. It is now clear that this has apparently initiated a shift that could have existential significance for the Greens in the federal government.
In a draft of the SPD parliamentary group’s current work planning for the first half of 2024, which has been seen by the Berliner Zeitung and dated January 4th, the Power Plant Strategy is completely missing. This new work plan also reflects the plans of the Ministry of Economic Affairs led by Habeck. In the previous document for 2023, however, it was still included with the note that the schedule was “open”. Instead, the current SPD document talks about increasing the use of grid reserve power plants.
That sounds harmless to the layperson. Now reserve power plants are essentially coal-fired power plants. To be more precise, they are old power plants that have a good 40 years or more under their belt and whose electricity generation is fuelled by lignite or hard coal. These are power plants that should actually have been decommissioned long ago, but which were forbidden from being shut down by the Federal Network Agency, led by the President Klaus Müller (Green Party), in order to ensure security of supply and electricity network stability.
The likely manouver, which is revealed by the document from the SPD parliamentary group, is anything but without reason: Since the new gas power plants are not materialising as desired, the coal for electricity generation should not only be on the grid under the fig leaf of the reserve remain, but are even used more intensively.
There is undoubtedly rationality in this: the year 2030 is moving more and more out of reach as the desired date for the coal phase-out. But German dependence on expensive and dirty LNG will be reduced. And Germany will be less susceptible to blackmail geopolitically – keyword diversification. Betting everything on LNG would be understandably risky given the US elections.
The question of whether the old coal piles can fulfil their role as a replacement for a failed gas power plant strategy and as a geopolitical bargaining chip is one question – and ultimately, above all, a technical question. The other is whether Habeck and the Green Party will survive in the next elections, having sacrificed the ambitious goals of phasing out coal to such constraints. The plan announced by Habeck in a Maischberger broadcast in October to no longer be dependent on the coal reserve in the winter of 2024/25 is obviously not working. In any case, Habeck now has a lot to explain to his audience.
Translation Net Zero Watch

https://netzerowatch.us4.list-manage.com/track/click

As I suggested the other day, regarding the EU’s 2030 targets, reality will trump green fantasy.

In Germany’s case, that means increasing coal power to replace both nuclear and gas power.

Pay particular attention to this gem:

Now reserve power plants are essentially coal-fired power plants. To be more precise, they are old power plants that have a good 40 years or more under their belt and whose electricity generation is fueled by lignite or hard coal. These are power plants that should actually have been decommissioned long ago, but which were forbidden from being shut down by the Federal Network Agency, led by the President Klaus Müller (Green Party), in order to ensure security of supply and electricity network stability.

In other words, the gigantic tranche of new coal power stations built in the last decade will carry on as baseload regardless.

The back up for intermittent renewables will come from 40 year old plants, which should have been shut down already.

But this paragraph has most relevance to the UK:

So how can morons like Skidmore and Miliband possibly justify stopping all further development of North Sea gas, if they really are so concerned about emissions?

Edit

A photo shows the new built gas and steam power plant of German power company Steag coal power plant in Herne, western Germany, on August25, 2022. – The Essen-based energy company Steag wanted to convert the old coal-fired power plant Herne 4 into a gas-fired power plant at the beginning of the year. In March 2022, Steag decided to postpone the conversion and to continue firing the old power plant with coal. (Photo by Ina FASSBENDER / AFP) (Photo by INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images)

Canadian Green Electricity Push Blocked by Alberta

Watts Up With That?

Alberta has invoked the Sovereignty Act to set limits on the exercise of federal power. But the federal government claims there is no legal basis for their actions.

Alberta invokes Sovereignty Act over federal clean electricity regulations

Premier Danielle Smith believes net-zero electricity grid by 2035 is risky and costly

Michelle Bellefontaine · CBC News · Posted: Nov 27, 2023 5:22 PM EST 

Alberta’s United Conservative government has invoked its controversial Sovereignty Act for the first time by introducing a resolution to push back against the federal government’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations. 

The resolution, tabled in the Alberta legislature Monday, instructs governments and provincial entities such as the Alberta Electric System Operator and the Alberta Utilities Commission to ignore the regulations when they come into force “to the extent legally permissable.”

The resolution also raises the possibility of Alberta setting up a Crown corporation to protect the private sector companies that provide electricity in the province. If passed, the resolution would direct AESO, AUC and the Market Surveillance Administrator to consult with stakeholders on the feasibility of such a corporation. 

…

Steven Guilbeault, the federal minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, said the potential use of the Sovereignty Act never came up in months of meetings between federal and provincial officials as part of a working group on the CER and the oil and gas emissions cap.

…

“There is no legal basis for what Alberta is doing ,” Guilbeault told reporters on Parliament Hill.

…Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/sovereingty-act-clean-electricity-regulations-1.7041533

A video of the Premier announcing the invocation of the Sovereignty Act, and her reasons for doing so. Well worth watching – Alberta is lucky to have a straight speaking premier like Danielle Smith.

Even if the Alberta Sovereignty Act is defeated in the end, just delaying the green menace with a tangle of lawsuits is a win, a chance for more people to wake up and start pushing back.

It is especially delicious that Premier Smith timed this act of defiance against green insanity almost on the eve of the international COP28 climate conference.

Blown Out of the Water

From Climate Scepticism

BY MARK HODGSON

Is the sun setting on wind energy?

Quite by chance I caught a revealing interview on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme earlier today. I set out a transcript below. Unfortunately the interviewee, Rod Wood, the MD of Community Wind Power, seemed to be on a mobile telephone and I struggled to catch every word clearly.

ED: Now, a green light for an offshore oil and gas development today, but it comes at the time we have another very significant energy story unfolding. Red lights flashing over wind energy projects in the UK. There are now several signs of problems. One, a Swedish developer, Vattenfall, put the breaks on a development in the North Sea in July, saying it was no longer viable. Two, the latest auction for contracts for state support for clean energy flopped. There were no bids from offshore wind developers. And then three, yesterday, one of our biggest onshore wind developers said it’s halting development of Sanquhar II in Dumfries & Galloway. Community Wind Power say the project would have powered 350,000 homes. Rod Wood is the company’s managing director. I asked why he’s now choosing not to invest in onshore wind, which we’re told is the cheapest and easiest form of green electricity.

RW: You’re right, onshore wind has been the cheapest, and I think will continue to be cheap alongside solar in the UK. The difficulty that we all know of late is the last few [two?] years is we have a huge increase in capital costs, we’ve seen inflation, obviously rampant inflation, and we’ve seen with turbines that the costs have increased over 60, 60+%. We’ve also seen a massive increase in financing costs, where mortgage increases, so financing costs for wind farms long-term for infrastructure, fifteen years, has increased from below 2% up to nearly 8%, so a four-fold increase there. We have a weak pound as well. All those things factored in together have signficantly increased our costs and we estimate them now to be around £80, just over £80 per megawatt hour, which is substantially more than they were, and of course the Government, as you’ll be aware, with this windfall tax they’ve introduced has determined somehow that anything over £75 is an extraordinary, er extraordinary price. So we have the sales tax applicable from £75, so actually they’re taxing £5 of cost.

ED: So, just tell me whether the economics of onshore wind, or wind in general, has been fundamentally transformed by the things you’ve described. We’re talking 8 pence per kilowatt hour, in human terms. The price at the moment – I don’t know what I’m paying, probably 30p or something per kilowatt hour? I mean, it should be surely possible to make money where we are.

RW: Well we don’t, unfortunately, sell you the electricity ourselves. We’re a generator, so we sell to the utilities and to corporate PPAs. So that’s where…there’s a differential obviously. There’s a cost in transferring the power from site in to your house, and that’s a big difference, obviously, and different companies evolve [?] that. From our perspective, clearly, Evan, the situation is the costs have increased. All costs…supermarket costs, everything has increased significantly.

ED: I want to just ask you about your view of whether the Government is interested in wind. This is the third blow – pardon the pun – to wind power. We’ve had Vattenfall abandoning one project they were going to invest in; we’ve had an auction for off-shore licences which didn’t get any takers; and I just wonder whether you’re worried that there isn’t the commitment to wind that we have had in the past?

RW: I think I agree with you. Positionally, they’ve already pinpointed renewables, wind and solar particularly. We have the windfall tax. If we were generating electricity from gas or from diesel generators, there’d be no windfall tax. So why are they attacking us when they should be looking at the wider community of generators in the UK? That’s the big issue, and why are they giving us a five year tax, when actually in Ireland or the EU the tax is finishing at the end of this year. Green electricity is the backbone and the foundation for new industries, data centres, AI, blockchain, pharma.

ED: I mean, it is very interesting. This obviously came in, this announcement comes in the week that we have a new licence for offshore drilling for oil and gas.

RW: Yeah, reading the press release, it’s quite interesting that they now talk about Net Zero and taking, looking at it in a pragmatic and proportionate, realistic response. I’m not quite sure what that means exactly. But I don’t think the climate will be looking at the UK in the future in that way, as sea levels rise and London, you know, and other coastal cities start to submerge. This is going to be the fourth, or was going to be the fourth largest wind farm in the UK, with 380 Megawatts in addition to the 30 that’s already there. We can’t make it work, so how can others?

ED: Have you actually, perchance, had conversations with the Opposition, the Labour Party, about whether they would be inclined to make the environment more friendly to your investments?

RW: We haven’t as yet, no. We’d certainly like to. We’d like to engage with them and other parties and explore, and explain how actually this industry can support all these other industries going forward. There’s massive opportunity there. John Coldwell … on the programme the other day, you know, let’s encourage green new companies, investments, coming in to this country and we can be great again, you know, with lower corporation tax rates as in Ireland, and actually drive the growth of the economy forward. But we need modern thinking, as they’re doing in the US and the EU and other places, and hopefully Labour will be considering that.

ED: Rod Wood there, who’s the Managing Director of Community Wind Power, pulling back on a scheme in the south of Scotland.

Conclusion

It was interesting to hear Evan Davis describe onshore wind only as the cheapest form of green electricity, and Mr Wood, after agreeing that it had been, going on to say (if I heard him correctly) that he thinks onshore wind will continue to be cheap (but he seemed to drop the claim going forward that it will be the cheapest). Indeed, it would be difficult for him to maintain the claim, given that he then launched into a long spiel about all the costs now hitting onshore wind energy.

He spent a long time bemoaning the windfall tax – on anything above £75 per megawatt hour. He seemed particularly aggrieved about this, despite the fact that this is at a level significantly higher than the price of recent CfD rounds (admittedly those contracts haven’t been taken up) that was used in some quarters to claim that wind energy was “nine times cheaper” than fossil fuels. He also suggested that if his company generated electricity using diesel or gas, then no windfall tax would apply. I would suggest that either he or the BBC is mistaken, for less than two months ago the BBC’s website featured an article about the windfall tax, more properly called the energy profits levy (or EPL) with the heading “What is the windfall tax on oil and gas companies and how much do they pay?” It stated that:

In the first six months of 2023, BP paid $970m (£755m) of tax in the UK – with about $460m (£358m) due to the EPL.

Shell initially said it did not expect to pay any windfall tax for 2022, as its North Sea investments meant it was not considered to have made any UK profits.

But on 2 February it announced that it would pay $134m (£108m) for 2022, and expected to pay more than $500m (£400m) for 2023.

Centrica said it was paying about £1bn in tax from its £3.3bn 2022 profits, which includes about £54m under the levy.

Much of the rest of the interview seemed to bemoan the return of long-term interest rates to what are historically normal levels, and that in turn carries the suggestion that renewable energy has only made the headway that it has thanks to unsustainably low interest rates over a remarkably long period of time.

The interview wound up with a reference to alarmism (apparently London and other UK coastal cities will be underwater if windfarm projects don’t proceed) and an implicit plea for subsidies (euphemistically described as “modern thinking, as they’re doing in the US and the EU and other places”) and preferential tax treatment (“let’s encourage green new companies, investments, coming in to this country and we can be great again, you know, with lower corporation tax rates as in Ireland”).

It all rang rather hollow, and one sentence (“We can’t make it work, so how can others?”) for me blew out of the water the claims that are constantly being made on behalf of wind energy. It looks as though Net Zero could be unravelling before our eyes.

Australian Electricity Generation – 2023 Update

From Climate Etc.

by Chris Morris

This report brings readers up-to-date with happening in the Australian generation industry since the previous posts: Australian Renewables Integration: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.  While many were optimistic about Australia’s planned changes, we were concerned that technical problems would emerge and that the costs of the transition will also make the power significantly more expensive for a less reliable supply.

The other articles Planning Engineer has written on Climate Etc. are well worth reading to explain electricity grid issues which many aren’t aware of. For Australia, Wattclarity needs a shoutout as they provide interesting articles to those who, or want to understand grid issues and electricity markets.

Another article is being prepared on New Zealand electricity generation as a compare and contrast exercise. It has a market structure based on Australia’s but a very different generation base, though the issues occurring are similar.

Overview of what has happened

Since Part 3 in March, the only big generation change has been the closure of Liddell, a nominal 2000MW coal fired power station in New South Wales (NSW). The two coal stations at Callide in Queensland (QLD) are still out-of-service following failures. This has caused significant ongoing market distortions in NSW & QLD which may improve when these units return to service. There have been uprating of equipment on the transmission network (mainly in southern NSW sub-stations) to carry heavier flows and the controlling software has been modified to incorporate new operating constraint rules. The grid operator has had to do many more market interventions to meet stability guidelines. Federal and State governments  pushing their green electricity generation agenda have impacted the market  adversely.

There have been no significant power outages in the last six months caused by lack of generation. However, there have been numerous close calls with only minimal reserves available. When a declared  low reserves actually occurs, it needs only one major transmission line fault or a large generator to trip for load shedding to occur.

Though it might not necessarily lead to low reserves, very high spot market prices like those shown in Figure 1 now regularly occur. This is when transmission constraints, little wind and the sun going down is being matched by having to ramp up the expensive thermal generation. The merit order stack can be very steep. As expected by all but the most starry-eyed proponents, the much touted Big Batteries provide very little assistance in such situations. They make a lot more of their money on the much more lucrative very fast reserves market that was needed because of the  increasing replacement of responsive thermal plant generation with wind and solar.

Fig 1  Grid power flows and prices for 30 May 2023 17:35. Note the interconnectors aren’t at rating here, illustrating constraints are in transmission system elsewhere. Battery contribution is purple sliver at top of generation type graph.

These very high short interval market spot prices have distorted the “average” prices.  To quote the AER  (the grid regulator) report on the situation:

“30-minute prices exceeded $5,000MWh 12 times over January to March 2023 – 5 times in Queensland, 3 in NSW and 4 in South Australia. This compares to 16 high prices over the same period last year,……, Price spikes, while short in duration, can have a material impact on average quarterly prices. The high price events covered in this report contributed between $7/MWh to $12/MWh to the quarterly average prices in Queensland, NSW and South Australia”

Since March, high price periods numbers have increased and there have been many more instances of price periods between $300 and $5000/MWh. Note that the averages quoted are just straight averaging the pricing; they do not take into account the market load at the time. This has the effect of distorting the average down from what would be the true figure of total energy supplied divided by total money charged.

Market intervention for stability and inertia often needed for the South Australia (SA) system. At times there, the duck curve has become a canyon (Figure 2). Much of the unwanted generation is shed by negative pricing, where it costs generators, particularly the semi-scheduled (wind and grid solar) to stay on. However, AEMO has regularly dispatched gas turbines to stay on in SA to maintain sufficient strength while removing grid solar and wind as they do not provide support. This occurs frequently when the spot price is negative. The costs of these interventions do not show up in the wholesale power price but in the network and other charges. As will be discussed later, that is why SA has relatively low wholesale power prices but very high retail ones. Together with that, states like SA offer retail subsidies that are a charge against the taxpayer, not the domestic energy customer – robbing Peter to pay Paul. This further distorts the market.

Fig 2  SA demand showing midday canyon in grid demand but gas kept on and very high gas and interconnector contributions morning and evening. Very little from batteries, especially in morning,

The cost to do the changes and market interventions has increased the cost of operating the AEMO which regards itself is at the lower cost end of its peers. Note the AEMO also runs the Western Australia (WA) and gas markets which are outside the National Electricity Market (NEM) – the Eastern states. As part of their operation, they operate over 30 small ring-fenced services which are nominally cost-neutral. Even so, just that one small part of the operation is about $40 a year per household. Customers may not pay this charge directly, but it affects the economy.

As mentioned earlier, there have been regular curtailments of grid solar (Figure 3) and wind farms (Figure 4), particularly during periods of negative market spot prices. These must come at a cost. There is very little market incentive for the semi-scheduled generation developers to build new plant, or maintain existing ones, if the market price isn’t there. That is why there are yet more subsidies. Coal also gets subsidised, but at about $0.40/MWh, which is mainly to maintain system stability and to be there when the renewables aren’t. This compares with the $74/MWh wind gets.

Fig 3  Grid solar daily curtailment Jan to March 2023

Fig 4  Wind farm daily curtailment Jan to March 2023

Negative Pricing

A common issue occurring on the electricity spot market now, especially over the summer, is low or even negative pricing. This is in the period 10am to around 4pm. Examples are shown in Figure 5. During these periods, the wind and grid solar can be constrained off but like Figure 2 shows, the gas turbines (GTs) continue to run in SA. As all the coal fired stations need to stay on, albeit at reduced load and lower efficiency, both to ramp up when the sun goes down and provide inertia/ system support. The coal stations operate at a loss during these times unless they have long term contracts for the power.

Fig 5    Low and negative grid pricing from all the solar generation. Domestic solar is largely unaffected because they are generally behind the meter and can’t be controlled.

The cost for coal stations to stay generating is being covered in a variety of ways, none of them good to the consumer. The bid stack price for when their generation is needed has to go up. This is reflected by the higher market spot price. They start and stop more often to try to generate only when the price they will receive is above their cost of generation. This raises costs of operation but doesn’t bring in more income.

The plants cut costs by reducing maintenance, availability or derating. Towards the end of its operation, the 500MW units at Liddell were down to less than 400MW.  They don’t get the capital re-investment to refurbish, update and modernise plant to new best practices. This lack of money makes them less reliable, increasing the likelihood of them tripping often when their generation is most needed. And they are shut down, removing their needed dispatchable generation from the market. But they can be kept going and available by you guessed it, subsidies.

More wind farms

The proponents of wind are still pushing the line that the wind is blowing somewhere so a large spread of locations will balance their output. This is to counter the inconvenient graphs like the one in Figure 6.

Fig 6 Total Australia wind generation showing its unreliability (thanks TonyfromOz)

That 6GW loss is a lot of coal and gas fired power stations which need to ramp up to cover the decline. It would be in addition to those which covered the 4pm to 9am solar loss. Declines like this might not happen that often, but they occur. How many days a year would you be prepared to be without power if you were relying on wind? The weather conditions which caused this are shown in Figure 7. Now where would the somewhere be for the wind farms the proponents are hoping to find?

Fig 7 Weather maps for consecutive days showing sudden onset of no wind over continent

New Grid Storage

The answer that glibly rolls off renewable proponents’ tongues to the lack of reliability is “more storage”. They are building more batteries and have others on the drawing board but in terms of energy storage and the hole they would have to cover, these planned additions would be insignificant and at prohibitive cost.

The alternative is supposed to be Snowy2 ,an expansion of the hydropower in the Snowy mountains. It is touted as 2000GW pumped storage generator with 350GWh storage – less than a day’s electricity for the NEM. It was originally costed as $2B and it was to be finished by now. Cost is already above $12B, assuming no more problems and completion possibly 2029 . That is assuming they can stop the tunnelling machine getting stuck again. There is a new CEO for the government owned company that will operate it because the previous one was sacked for rubbishing the ridiculous claims of the Energy Minister about this and the gas turbine to run on green hydrogen. Politicians don’t like being shown wrong by engineering and common sense.

Remember that as well as the storage, you also need additional generation constructed to fill storage.

New Transmission Lines

As part of the Snowy2 scheme (and included in the original cost) was uprating the transmission lines needed to get the extra power into and out of the grid. This has run into difficulties. Landowners do not want to lose the land the power lines will occupy nor the restrictions on farming operations and practices that go with them.  The government is planning to force through legislation to over-ride opposition. Energy experts are warning it will be a big mistake to build them but the Energy Minister wants to push ahead. Needless to say, costs have skyrocketed and they are behind schedule.

South Australia

The May market review about the State had this:

SA’s average May 2023 electricity spot prices more than doubled in price to $202/MWh compared to $78/MWh in April.

  • At $202/MWh, prices are cheaper than in the same period last year when prices averaged $312/MWh.
  • Price volatility was high, with one market cap event and 25 instances of pricing being close to $10,000 or more. Numerous negative pricing incidents were recorded but were less extreme than those in positive territory.
  • Renewables dropped from 72% in April to 56.6% of total generation. Gas continued its upward trend from 27% the previous month to a staggering 42.6%.
  • Battery power remained on par with last month at 6% and averaged a cost of $445/MWh. Gas cost an average of $293/MWh and renewables $108/MWh.

The South Australian Grid operator in their latest report saw increased import capacity as necessary – not 100% renewable, just 100% net renewable so they still want to sponge off other states when their unreliables don’t deliver. To do this, more interconnectors will be needed. Events like shown below (Figure 8) put a lie to their renewable generation credentials. And remember, it doesn’t show interconnector flows, which in this case would be inward.

Fig 8     SA generation – no wind, no solar, no battery. Very high electricity price.

Reality has bitten and SA will subsidise a company to keep a GT station operating. Odds are this will happen again.

Voltage Stability Issues

There are also problems starting to manifest themselves in regions that have high renewables penetration with unstable grid voltages, particularly sub-synchronous oscillations (frequencies <50Hz) (SSO). These are superimposed on the basic waveform, distorting it. They can rapidly age or even destroy other components on the grid, particularly transformers and spinning shafts. EPRI in the USA recognised and initiated cures for the problems fifty years ago, but they are coming back as more assets involve DC/AC inverters. AEMO believe the problem is serious enough to issue a warning, even for operators of synchronous condensers. It is very likely the problem will get worse and be at least a large contributor to a major outage before there is an impetus to fix it. One hopes that the solution will be “causer pays” by fines and/ or remedial modifications like it is for other grid disturbances, but I for one doubt it. Politicians don’t admit their own mistakes.

A recently reported development in the operation of grid is potentially more concerning than the lack of inertia or SSO. It has caused the unreliables to be dispatched offbecause of the lack of system strength becoming a risk to stability. System Strength is the ability of the power system to maintain a stable voltage waveform at any given location, both during steady state operation and following a disturbance. If it isn’t controlled, it can rapidly damage electrical equipment. The problem occurred up in north Queensland. As recently as last year, the AEMO  did not identify this region as one of the areas of potential weakness.  One region they did identify, Victoria, will need about $1B of infrastucture quickly installed to address the risk.

As a simple explanation as to what is happening; if the voltage waveform is defined as a continuous sinewave, SSO will cause a cyclic amplitude change to the wave while low system strength causes distortion of the shape of the wave.

How much electricity do the unreliables actually provide and when?

TonyfromOz collected a years’ worth of daily NEM data and analysed it for the contribution from each source for each time interval. This was averaged. Those values went on a graph for a single day closest to the average. The results shown in Figure 9 indicate just how much Australia still relies on fossil fuels, especially in the period 5pm to 7am. Figure 10 is the whole year’s data (plotted as daily totals) he analysed showing the still very high reliance on coal.

Fig 9  average yearly contribution of renewables per grid trading period
Fig 10   plot of daily summation data used to give the Fig 9 average plot. Note tiny amount of load (negative generation) at bottom of bars for pumped hydro and battery storage.

Increased Risk of Power Outages

AEMO recently released their ten year forecast document, which showed an increased risk of a shortfall between generation and load.  The document itself described the situation as “perched on the edge”. This resulted from closing the coal stations, yet not building enough wind/ solar/ batteries to replace the loss of dispatchable power. They do list their assumptions in their scenarios – many of which have a significant effect on the model. All the acronyms, links and terminology in the document make it heavy reading and easy to misinterpret. An example of why you shouldn’t ask an electrical engineer to explain what you thought was a simple issue.

Some commentators have been predicting doom and gloom from this forecast, with more blackouts ahead. Others are relatively sanguine about it. As Wattclarity helpfully points out, for any single consumer using the numbers shown, a power cut is more likely to be from a problem in the distribution system rather than on the transmission or generation side. The perception is that people appear to be more accepting of say a car crash taking out a neighbourhood power pole, rather than not enough generation, even though the nett effect may be the same.

Electricity Pricing

There is a very big disconnect between market wholesale pricing and the charge to consumers. The reasons for this are discussed in the ACCC paper that now seems only to be available in the web archive. However, they broke down prices into network, wholesale plus hedging, environmental, retail and margin. For the snapshot in 2017-18 across the whole of the NEM, wholesale was 34%. For SA, it was 41% which was the highest domestic price of the states. What they wrote about SA was:

“The primary drivers of cost increases in South Australia have been wholesale costs and environmental costs. These components increased average bills by $171 and $158 respectively from 2007–08 to 2017–18. There was also a decrease in retail margin of $12 per customer during this time period. South Australia overall had the highest increase in effective prices of 14.6 c/kWh”

What the actual price component breakdown is now does not seem to be available. Even what is published may be distorted by subsidies and Feed-In Tariffs for those with domestic solar. However, by trawling through various documents on Wayback, what is shown in the tables below is the wholesale and domestic prices for the 5 states in NEM. Most of the electricity generated is not sold through the wholesale spot market but on longer term contracts.

It is not known which if any of the prices have any subsidies already built in. The comparisons are believed to be consistent between years, subject to all the provisos already discussed.

The present Federal government came to power promising cheaper electricity and promising acceleration away from thermal plant. Instead, the price has gone up markedly and they have realised they need coal. It will be interesting to see if there are electoral repercussions. The main opposition party had similar energy policies, just not as radical.

One doesn’t need to be Nostradamus to see the domestic cost of electricity is going to continue rising at a rate higher than inflation as the coal stations are shut down. If solar and wind were really cheaper for the grid, they would already have been built and not need financial incentives or workarounds. So more subsidies for the coal replacements will be needed.

With all the subsidies, it is lucky Australia can pay for them with taxes, and charges on iron ore, coal and LNG exports. This is rather than providing reliable power with cheap coal like they used to do. As Forrest Gump said “Stupid is as stupid does”.

One of their major newspaper’s cartoonist got it right.

As was written on another blog: Renewables – the energy source so cheap, nobody can afford to build them.

The author thanks Planning Engineer for pushing him to write this update and for his significant editorial input. He also appreciates his workmates for the long smoko discussions about the meanings and importance of operational details