Australia to close 8 GW of coal power by 2030 2

[GregLocock]

Australia to close 8 GW of coal power by 2030. Inevitably these won't be replaced by coal or nukes. 8 GW is quite a lot. So I ran the numbers on what will happen if we try and replace them with renewables. Given that many other countries are pursuing the same pipe dream (I'm looking at you USA and Europe), battery supply is going to be an issue. With renewables you need at least a 5 day backup, as continent wide wind droughts are not uncommon in winter

lost coal plants 8 GW
lost coal plants 8.00E+09 W
lost energy per day 1.92E+11 Wh
5 days backup for winter 9.60E+11 Wh
Hence kWh of battery 9.60E+08 kWh
Global production 2021 2.78E+02 GWh
Global production 2021 2.78E+08 kWh
Years of production 3.45E+00 years

So for the east coast of Australia by 2030 we need 3 years of global battery production. There is a new hydro scheme that will help, but that is the order of magnitude of the issue.





Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[dik]

We'll see what happens in 8 years... I'm not overly optomistic...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[SnTMan]

A blog, Manhattan Contrarian contains a number of posts on the implementation of grid-scale renewable energy, and in particular storage.

Several of these are linked below. I have not attempted to very the assumptions but I assume the analyses are honest. I am unenthusiastic...

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com...verything-using-only-wind-solar-and-batteries

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com...verything-using-only-wind-solar-and-batteries

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com...gy-advocates-offer-for-the-problem-of-storage

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[GregLocock]

Thanks, I hadn't seen that blog before. I had read the Andrews study, which is what got me thinking about the days of battery reserve you need. Europe had a 5 day wind drought last year. I decided that even a damn fool government (oh there are other kinds?) would actually keep a few gas plants around, which is why I decided that 5 days was enough rather than the 30 that the purists would need. On the other hand that means you have to keep the gas infrastructure around for a once in every few years event.

Well, I'm off to buy some Lithium miners, probably via an ETF.



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[rb1957]

close coal power stations by all means, but create some replacement.

Ontario has closed coal power stations, and (I think) switched to gas feedstock.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[GregLocock]

The feds are building a 660 MW gas plant to compensate for the operator closing down a 1.5 GW coal one. The feds are also pushing for large scale immigration to ramp back up. Joined up policy leaves the meeting.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[rb1957]

that makes for a tonne of sense !

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[SnTMan]

I'm in the US. I've always lived in old houses which were not especially energy efficient. Energy was always so cheap it didn't make sense to upgrade the houses as the payback was so long. I never really foresaw that our governments at all levels would become so incompetent and / or evil to force actual, for real, energy shortages and energy poverty upon its subjects citizens.

Starting to see the error of my ways now

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[1503-44]

"old houses which were not especially energy efficient." and other outright wastage is exactly what got us here. Keeping them, et al is what is creating energy poverty, i.e. you can no longer afford to do what you have been up to for the last 100yrs, and building dirty coal stations to sustain those cheap smoke habits is not fixing anything, it's only feeding your bad habits, and is actually making all things worse. Yes, I'd rather have you pay more than eat your cheap smoke. I use energy efficiently and I don't particularily feel the need to build dirty coal plants just so you can keep the habit going. Pay up, or cut your energy usage, one way or another. Cheap dirty energy is not in the Bill of Rights. What gives?

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[SnTMan]

Pardon me

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[EdStainless]

Calling gas fired plants backup is a bit of a stretch unless they are on hot spinning reserve.
And they aren't required to have any reserve fuel supply on site. (Hey TX I am talking about you)
True utility scale storage will require flow batteries.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[LionelHutz]

It is rather obvious to anyone who knows the capabilities of the various bits that the current state of renewables today will have a hard time to replace that much power. Maybe they're banking on the commonly applied "a solution will be invented by then" hope. That much power would also likely take somewhere in the range of 4000-8000 wind turbines, which is also no small feat.

 

[1503-44]

As you say, it is indeed obvious, hence brownouts-blackouts will be part and partner to such a future on the track that it is. Equally obvious is that those in the know, know and that nobody in the know is admitting it to J.Q.PUBLIC.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[dik]

Hot off the press:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/can...ared-for-impacts-of-climate-change-un-report/

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

True utility scale storage will require flow batteries a range of technologies.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

 

Hot off the press:

That's been stone cold obvious for a long time, in many more ways and for many more reasons than these scientists considered.

(Fun fact: the G&M was my introduction to the gig economy, age 11. FWIW I stopped visiting the Grope & Flail when they put up a paywall and made commenting extremely onerous and censor-prone. That, and I couldn't abide the schizophrenic editorial attitude.)

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

 

[GregLocock]

I was imagining a river of vanadium pentoxide solution passing a Thames Barrier sized set of membranes. That's a fun thought, how big would a 1 GW flow battery be?

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

Having done a couple of investigations into failures high-temperature CRAs in combustion environments gone wrong, I have serious respect for vanadium pentoxide!


"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

 

[EdStainless]

And at today's cost for V it explains why they are so busy looking for alternate chemistries (other than high temp S).
I have seen 100kW cell stacks and they in enclosures about 3'x 6'x 5' tall, not that large.
You get about 1kw/m2 of cell area.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[thermionic1]

Our state lacks in both solar exposure and good wind, however we are adding more and more to our grid. We had a seminar from the system protection group where they were explaining new protection schemes that will be implemented to protect the transmission line. What we were told is that the inverters do not react like a traditional synchronous machine, therefore the (state of the art) digital protection relays may not be able to sense all faults on the line to initiate a trip. The inverters can only produce about 1.2-1.3 x nameplate under fault conditions. A regular generator may produce 10 times that for a similar fault. Nearly all new generation in our interconnection queue is solar or wind.

Additionally, there have been disturbances on the grid that should not have affected other generation, but have tripped large scale renewables offline. There is a strongly worded paper from NERC, nearly demanding that the Inverter OEMs share more information about the inverter operation as they are very tight lipped at the moment. This makes modeling the power system very difficult. Obviously when a gas plant trips offline, the last thing the grid needs is for additional generation to fail.

PV Magazine Odessa

NERC Odessa

NERC San Fernando

NERC 1200MW Trip

UK 2019

NERC reporting on UK issue