Faced with the need to strengthen their electricity grid the South Australian Labor Government proposes to build and own a $360million 250MW gas turbine generator. When disaster strikes – who do you call? The ABC quotes Premier Weatherill making conflicting statements in his confusion.
Quote 1 – “We will supply the nation — coal-rich states like Queensland and New South Wales will be relying upon the clean, green power that we are developing here in SA.”
Quote 2 – “….making sure that SA power is reserved for South Australians,” he said.”
This is getting quite a bit of overseas press.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-14/energy-bedlam-in-australia-worsens-as-blackout-state-breaks-away
Some background on costs to industry.
www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/bhp-billiton-warns-for-crisis-in-power-market/news-story/2fd327cdc5258667701754788883bcb9
250MW will help, but not enough. On a peak summer day, SA uses about 2,500MW. Wind power can collapse from +1,000MW to under 100MW in less than an hour.
Can’t rely on Victoria, as 1,300MW Hazelwood goes out of service at the end of this month.
The more hardship that South Australia experiences the better.
It may help to highlight to the world that the CO2 horsesh*t is a bogey.
The main aims of this new OCGT is to
add spin to the claim that Pelican Point No.2 wouldn’t start up at 30 minutes notice when demanded by the State Govt. (That it is a CCGT which would take 4-5 hours to full capacity, didn’t have any fuel, and was not going to be run short term at a loss to oblige the Govt. that made it shut down).
and convince the public that Weatherill has taken firm action.
and convince the public that the emergency is over.
It doesn’t solve the real problem of a lack of continuous power, and is too small to cover for any major interruption.
The battery component might be of minor use but is, again, mainly spin in that it is ‘the latest technology’. The Greens think batteries are the answer to storage of large scale** renewables.
More benefit will come from the 100MW diesel generators the SA Power Network are trying to install before December, and the encouragement for gas exploration.
** Hazelwood is pumping out more electricity from 7 units than the entire wind installations east of Eucla, and has been for all of the month.
I can see 2 issues with Turnbull’s Snowy Mountain pumped storage scheme.
1. Pumped storage is great when used in conjunction with nuclear, which works best producing power at a constant rate. But I wonder how well it will work with wind’s highly variable output.
2. Most wind turbines are a long way from the Snowy Mountains and transmission losses will be significant. I wonder what the loses will be when storing SA wind power in the Snowies.
This article says it won’t store any significant amounts of renewable energy.
www.afr.com/business/energy/hydro-energy/frontier-economics-danny-price-snowy-20-breathes-new-life-into-coal-20170319-gv1h1f