Matching supply with demand is the whole point of storage. Storage is the key to preventing waste. Sure, there is a cost to that but it is the value you get from that investment that is the important thing.
I don't think using the example of lean manufacturing is applicable here. In manufacturing you are relying on very accurate and very predictible demand data that allows you manufacture at the last minute. Worst case scenario you run out of product which is annoying and inconvenient.
You can't do that with power.
Even our fossil fleet didn't meet the last minute model because you need redundancy. With large coal stations you don't have flexibility so they had to build many peakers to manage the fluctuations. Peakers that might only run a few times a year.
Power from renewables doesn't fit that model either because of it's intermittency. Because of that we need large amounts of storage and diversified renewable resources.
Renewables continue to get cheaper which helps offset the input cost. Storage will get cheaper and cheaper as opposed to fossil fueled construction and ongoing costs.
I think people are forgetting about the running costs of renewables. It appears that they are very cheap to run long term compared to fossil. So, there is a far better opportunity to offset the initial capital costs.
Making the generator pay the cost of storage doesn't work. That cost will only be passed on to the consumer anyway. What the consumer is paying for is clean, low emission, reliable power. How they do that at a reasonable price is up to them.
That is a great website and it demonstrates the need for storage perfectly. All those periods where we are over generating could be stored and used later. I'm not sure whether that chart allows for curtailment specifically. Is the part where it goes negative an estimate of curtailment or it simply generation vs demand ?
You might find that there is more enery wasted than the chart shows.
I agree that we need to get on with this and that's exactly why we need policy to give direction and therefore back the investment. The Snowy 2.0 group claim that they can be supplying electricity from late 2024. I believe the Tassie Big Battery reckons they can do that well before that although a second Basslink will be required to be really effective. A similar time frame might be required.
In that period there is going to be quite a bit of storage built out from home storage, evs and commercial storage. But, I think it's the big storages that are the key for long low wind periods.
You might suggest that we could have too much storage in the end and that is over capitalisation. I would argue that having excessive capacity and storage from a very cheap source could radically change the electricity market. At the moment business is hamstrung by power supply. That's why there are shoulder charges and peak periods where they really pay high prices. This is such a drag on business that they have to invest in capital on solar and storage to reduce their power costs rather than investing that money in their businesses.
In my utopian world of large storage, the high cost of electricity during business hours could disappear therefore making power very cheap. Possibly flattening the price across 24 hours. I imagine there are many businesses that could benefit from this and I also believe it could create opportunities for new businesses because power is so cheap and predictible.
I previously thought that building a replacement Hazelwood would have been the go prior to the old one shutting down. I figured that it might then become the last one to shut down in the end .Unfortunately that didn't happen. What I didn't expect is for the technology to catch up so quickly.
Make no mistake, we are a long way from completely swapping from fossil to renewables and I reckon we've only done the easy bit so far. 30% of the total is easy as it isn't too disruptive to the baseload generators. 50% or more could be quite disruptive and we need to be prepared for it which I don't think we are. That's why federal policy is so important.
However, the pace of change in renewable price and efficiency has surprised everyone, including the experts. Now we have the global community working on this problem further accelerating the pace of change." The latest technology cost analysis released by research company BloombergNEF shows that battery storage costs have fallen by more than one third since the first half of 2018, and even wind and solar have also fallen by another 10 per cent 18 per cent respectively over that time. Offshore wind is down 24 per cent over the last year.
The big mover, and the most significant for the unfolding low carbon energy transition has been the cost of lithium-ion battery storage, which BNEF says has fallen by 35 per cent to $US187/MWh. That means it is competing with, and in some cases, easily beating gas generation for tenders for peaking plants, including in the US where gas is supposed to be cheaper than elsewhere. "
https://reneweconomy.com.au/more-stunning-falls-in-solar-and-battery-storage-costs-put-fossil-fuels-on-notice-31119/
In the end, I reckon we're probably both right. The answer will be somewhere between our opinions.
Good chat.
