Another boost for the renewable energy grid

Originally posted by Rob79: ↑

Acorn, there are a lot of points in your post which makes it hard to know what to respond to. For me conceptually it sounds fine, practically it only works if you ignore curtailment and storage losses. If NSW close their coal there is no backup and if it is sunny and windy at the same time then the transmission is too small and storage required would be enormous and cost prohibitive.

Which Wind and solar farms will be curtailed? What is the curtailment policy in place and how will they cover their fixed costs if they have negative prices and forced to curtail because demand is low and weather conditions ideal? Where is any of this included in any plan presented by anyone?

SA had a target to build wind and solar, they have achieved that, they were able to ignore the frequency and intermittency because they had an extension cord to Victoria and large amount of gas generators in the background. Currently one of the transmission lines is out of action and they are running 50% in a manner that ensures they are not islanded. For the next week or so we are finally able to get a good picture of what 50% renewable looks like. Each state has a responsibility to ensure they can operate in an islanded situation, currently in my opinion that responsibility is being neglected and we are relying on ageing plant to hide that.

It is interesting for sure, it is also a little scary.
Bw

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Your post demonstrates and highlights how important policy is for this transition.

You are correct in that there are problems yet to be solved.
What is the right amount of storage ? What are the types of storage required ? Where should those storages be located ? How much renewable energy is actually required ?

Unfortunately, the development of storage technology lags renewable generation technology.

I think one of the important policy areas should be around curtailment and the retention of enough fossil power for backup.
Unfortunately politics is getting in the way and covering up the issues you have referred to. For sure we need to retain fossil backup for as long as is required to avoid another Hazelwood scenario. Instead of the government skirting around this issue, they should be addressing this with the facts and presenting it to the community.
We all want cleaner power but it needs to be delivered in a progressive way. Up until now this hasn't been done and it is because of ridiculous politics at both state and federal levels.

I think we are wealthy enough to pay for some curtailment just as we might need to pay for some fossil generation to be retained. We can adjust the levels of each as we go so that the swap is progressive.

The current SA situation is a good one. SA has already been the ' experiment ' and somewhat thanks to the connection to the east coast they have been able to perform that experiment. That said, despite that link, they still rely heavily on local gas generation. It will be really interesting to see how they manage the next two weeks. I think many things will be learned that can be applied to other states in the future.

I remain confident that we will get there. Whether we get there smoothly is another question. Because no one has built a renewable energy grid before this is all academic. The proof will be in the execution.

As far as each state being able to be islanded, I think it is way to early for that conversation. Sure, it should be a factor in the design of each state's grid but it is so far away from being practical it's not funny. Also, it kind of goes against the logic of having a grid really unless you talk about limiting your load considerably to the basics in the event of an islanding situation.

One of things that concerns me is the role of Snowy 2.0 and the monopoly position it might have which could discourage other distributed investment. Once again, it is all about the policy and who is pulling the levers. .