Hi, the politics of the energy issue is a small interest to me. They are all the same in my book.
The country has been in drought for years, our farmers are struggling and people are suggesting we pump water up a hill because we have too much electricity when the sun shines or wind blows - crazy priorities in my book. I do think pumped hydro has merit though and given we are surrounded by ocean would think that would be a good place to start. Alternatively they could look to the rivers that flood regularly and think about some mitigation schemes to stop the towns getting flushed away.
Re FCAS and the Hornsdale battery - In 2014 Frequency control and ancillary Service costs in the NEM were $20m, in 2019 they were $182m and in the first quarter this year they are $112m. ref:
https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markquarterly-global-fcas-prices-by-servicesI wonder where are the savings being claimed and if anyone checked the calculated savings? Also the battery wastes 17% of the electricity that goes into it. If wind or solar is used then the some of the LGC's they claim are wasted. If fossils charge the batteries then that increases emissions.
South Australia rarely runs at 50%, if it did they wouldn't need the battery because the baseload generators would provide the frequency and inertia. Smaller batteries do appear to be useful for additional boost and that was shown in the separation event.
Re the video I had seen and looked again - it adds a renewable perspective however doesn't address the points in the earlier post which show someof the issues we are are avoiding. Opinions that are different to mine are of most interest, we all make mistakes and have bias. Conceptually the ANU provide a good overview but I like to play around with excel so prefer to not get too distracted if the base assumptions are not clearly stated.
