Going viral
The increasingly concerning spread of coronavirus around the world might seem like the sort of thing which has no winners, as borders shut, tourism collapses and racist invective seems to govern the discourse and also the federal government’s quarantine procedure.
When a paper has to literally publish a story saying that a food court does not have coronavirus, you know things have hit an exciting new level of crazy.
But you’ll be relieved to know that there’s one definite winner of all this hopefully misplaced panic: Ndemic Creations, makers of the insanely addictive mobile and desktop game Plague Inc.
The game, in which you control the spread vector and infectiousness of a worldwide pandemic, was originally released in 2012 and has puttered along ever since with a new options and updates a few times a year.
But a quick look at the game’s download stats shows there was a massive spike in downloads starting at the beginning of the year and jumping over 1000% in the space days, which suggests that a lot of people are gameifying the hell out of their anxiety.
According to Gamespot, it’s the #1 app in China right now, to the surprise of no one. And while it’s fun to see things from the virus’ perspective for once, just remember: it’s a game, not a scientific model.
That you can infect people in the game via vampire attacks should be something of a giveaway.
Shock(ing) therapy
The government’s controversial religious freedom bill is yet to slouch toward parliament where it will doubtlessly be debated for either legalising prejudice and bigotry, or for not legalising prejudice and bigotry nearly enough.
But there are signs in Queensland that maybe folks aren’t banking on the law getting through the federal parliament at all.
The state government is trying to outlaw the practice of conversion therapy on the grounds that it’s unscientific nonsense based on homophobia. Meanwhile, a collection of Christian schools and ministries are fighting the move on the basis that it will stifle legitimate discussion of sexuality and gender (or at least the bits where you pretend you can pretend your way to heterosexuality, one presumes).
According to The Guardian, the law would make “the practice of conversion therapy to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity punishable by up to 18 months in jail”.
However, Renew Ministries submitted that the laws were “an attack on Christians who are same-sex attracted but want to live according to their own personal definitions of their sexuality”.
Which, again, would require that definition of their sexuality to be “I can wish my way straight, if only I’m ashamed enough”.
It’s worth adding that Attorney-General Christian Porter has said that the religious freedom bill will not override state law, which seems a remarkably optimistic interpretation of the whole federal vs state law bit of the constitution.
Isn’t he meant to have read that stuff?
The Prince of New Power Generation
Much has been made of the government’s supposed pivot toward low emission energy generation, despite the lack of new targets or renewable energy investment or any actual pivoting whatsoever.
But part of the rhetoric involves talking up loads of alternatives to coal — nuclear! Gas! Pumped hydro Snowy 2.0! — while assiduously ignoring wind and solar farms and maintaining the fiction that Australia is regularly wreathed in windless darkness unsupported by battery storage.
Unfortunately and annoyingly, wind and solar keep succeeding, even that big battery in South Australia, which Scott Morrison dismissed as being a “Hollywood Solution” and a leftist tourist attraction.
Indeed, the five “big batteries” saw their revenue jump by 70% last quarter, making a cool $20 million now that they’re feeding into the national energy market and can do things like make power when it’s cheap and then release it when demand drives up the price. You know, like a battery.
Pumped hydro, meanwhile, has struggled because it’s not nearly as dispatchable since it takes power and thus money to pump the water up to release it for generation which is, by definition, most expensive to do when the power is the most lucrative to generate. Revenue actually dropped in the last quarter by $3 million for that very reason.
But yeah, let’s keep having discussions about building nuclear reactors and north Queensland power plants. That seems far more economically prudent than, you know, the stuff we’ve already got.
The problem for a 100% renewable power supply is not “that Australia is regularly wreathed in windless darkness unsupported by battery storage”. It is rather that Australia would be frequently and unpredictably wreathed in windless darkness. There’s the off-season to be accounted for too. And also bad years and disastrous years.
Far from being a successful backup for renewable energy, the 90 M$ battery in SA can only store six minutes of SA’s consumption. Scale that cost up for six months (or even six hours) and you have covered the cost of a nuclear reactor to do the same job. With three years storage, as fuel thrown in to the bargain.
Roger, I understand you seem to have no love for RE or it’s supporting technologies, however your criticism of the Big Battery (Hornsdale Power Reserve) is wildly off the mark.
The battery was never designed to support a large percentage of SA’s power needs for long (duh), though some revenue comes from time shifting energy needs. Some of it is usually used to buffer energy from RE for SA government power needs. But it really shines by stabilizing the frequency during NEM events (usually yet another coal or gas generator going off line) before the “nominated emergency” gas generator comes on line.
It has proved wildly successful – so much so it has paid back all it’s capital costs, and the operators Neoen have been busy upgrading it’s size by ~60%.
Some grid events are worth mentioning.
Last year lightning struck the NSW – QLD interconnector, and forced the NEM states to go into islanding mode (separation) for some of the night. Both NSW and Vic suffered rolling blackouts during that time. The battery allowed SA to continue operation with no interruption.
On January 31 2020, a tornado wrecked a section of the main Vic-SA interconnector in northern Vic. The big battery (along with 2 smaller ones also in SA) allowed power stabilization, and has been vital in the two weeks since then in keeping power going for both SA, and some small bits of western Vic, including the heavy power using Portland Aluminia smelter.
Incidentally, the average power mix over that period has been more than 50% RE.
CEJ says it out loud: “The battery was never designed to support a large percentage of SA’s power needs for long (duh)”. Well, there you have it folks. This is probably what the entire electrical engineering community thinks of us suckers who believe that we can achieve 100% non-carbon power by using renewables-plus-batteries.
Now, was SA Premier Jay Weatherill advised by electrical engineers – or renewables zealots, when he negotiated (on Twitter) with Elon Musk, one of the world’s most successful salesmen? It’s pretty clear that he thought he was buying a battery so big that South Australia could store wind power when it was up and supply power when it was down. It isn’t likely that he thought he had to use his authority to spend ninety million tax dollars to buy an improved FCAS tool for the local engineers. (Have they paid the taxpayers back yet?)
Throughout renewables journalism and and in the comments on Crikey, voices proclaim the cost of batteries will reduce so far and so fast that, we will soon be able to replace all fossil fuels with 100% renewables levelled by batteries. The article above spells it out, a battery is something that will store “power when it’s cheap and then release it when demand drives up the price”. The article is written for an audience of true believers. Most of them don’t even know what an FCAS device is. But written here in bold is what the experts think about 100% renewables-plus-batteries, and its believers.
Oh Roger.
The entire electrical engineering doesn’t think of the community as suckers. They are at worst using ‘batteries’ instead of the more accurate ‘energy storage’ term. The vast majority of the public doesn’t care if power is stored with chemical means, gravitational potential, electrical potential, elevated temperature, latent heat, kinetic or whatever – so long as it works.
Not everyone has to understand that different energy storage methods provide different uses on the grid. They don’t have to know that chemical batteries are great for FACS and short term supply; heat, air pressure systems for overnight, and Snowy-2 & ‘the battery of the nation’ for longer term needs. They just have to understand these things work physically and most can be made to work financially so long as governments cooperate (thanks, Jay) or at least get out of the way.
What’s more, even what SA has now has not only been very profitable for the the battery operators, it has also reduced wholesale power prices, at least outside summer peaks where extreme demand allows profiteering gas peakers to cash in.
This first generation of grid-scale batteries has been great for ancillary services, however in California they are already looking at GWh scale batteries to replace gas peakers.
> Now, was SA Premier Jay Weatherill advised by electrical engineers
I’m sure he was, and what it was for. The 2016 system black caused more than $500 million damage to the local economy. Labor announced a variety of measures to make a repeat unlikely.
Guess what – they were successful, as the recent continued operation of the SA part of the grid shows. It is even supporting Portland, saving the Aluminum smelter there. I suggest this has saved more than $500 million – something that should be shouted from the rooftops.
Have you guys lost your spacebar? Do you want to borrow my spare one?
I’m not trying to discredit the efforts of alternative energies to reduce our CO2 footprint, but batteries???.
Have a look at the Australian Energy Market Operators website:
https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem
This shows the fuel mix for the various states over various time periods. The batteries DO NOT REGISTER. If anyone thinks that Lithium Ion batteries manufactured for electric cars are going to save us they have been conned by some pretty transparent con artists. We never found out how much the batteries cost: It was all “commercial in confidence” which is Big Gov’s and the private sector’s way of keeping unpleasant truths from Mr and Mrs Tariff Payer.
Over twelve months the fuel mix and therefore indirectly the CO2 footprint for electricity production has been.
Batteries 0.011%
Black Coal 56%
Brown Coal 18%
Coal Seam Methane 0.39%
Diesel 0.003%
Hydro 7%
Kerosene 0.009%
Natural Gas 8.758%
Solar PV 2.758%
Wind 7.284%
https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem
These figures are extremely accurate as they are measured by energy meters that are regularly calibrated against traceable standards and in most plants they are duplicated. They are not maintained or owned by the generators but by the grid. So the generators cannot fiddle the meters to get more revenue. Just like the average domestic tariff payer has no chance to fiddle their meters to try and get their electricity bills down to reasonable values.
Forget electric car batteries, for once Morrison the Egregious is correct. However! Wind and solar make up only 10% of Australia’s electrical energy so the idea put forward by Morrison and his henchmen that we are “doing our bit” for climate change is what is known in the vernacular as a “lie.”
Just like he lied about the Sports Rorts and just about everything else he and his equally egregious henchmen and woman mouth off about.
And just to point out another fallacy of batteries. The batteries in South Australia are not being charged by renewable they are being charged by the fossil power stations.
The logic is simple. Wind and solar operate in the market with zero fuel costs. They always produce at whatever level the wind and solar irradiation produce. The batteries are therefore charged when the power prices are the lowest and they take their energy from coal and oil not wind and solar. It’s the same with pumped hydro storage. The water is pumped back up the hill by coal generators bidding low prices to keep their generators on and to get some revenue rather than none.
The total demand for energy in the NEM is about 1,000,000 times that of the battery energy capacity. How can they have ANY meaningful effect on the price. Any effect they do have is simply a blip on the screen that you’d most probably miss.
The current generation of batteries do have a very small proportion of the energy supply. Should the GWh batteries being mulled over in California be economical, that will change.
If you relax your definition of ‘batteries’ to ‘energy storage systems’ however (which you should probably do if Snowy-2 and ‘battery of the nation’ go ahead), you are already looking at larger numbers (up to 11% at times).
Your argument about batteries and coal shows some dangers of building energy storage without large amounts of RE. It was written clearly in the reports for both Snowy-2 and ‘battery of the nation’ that fossil fuels would tend to supply much of their energy needs while fossil fuels remain a significant part of the NEM.
As for the current situation with ‘energy storage systems’. Remember that all generators are bidding, and the highest successful bid in the 1/2 hour sets the price (yes this will change to 5 minute intervals later rather than sooner). So energy storage systems are not paying any more or less from each generator that was successful with a bid.
Wivenhoe pumped hydro previously favored occasional charging from FF assets in the same group overnight. With new ownership it has switched to mainly charging in the day to take advantage of the duck curve.
Batteries such as the ones at the Hornsdale Power Reserve are in a slightly restrictive position at the moment, as 3 of them are in SA, and not too many elsewhere in the NEM just yet. The (usual, ignoring the last fortnight) interconnectors to Vic are relatively small – if there is lots of RE, little power is coming in from Vic. At least one local gas generator must be on at all times under an AEMO direction – this reduces the amount of RE generation but it also reduces the amount of coal generation to provide power to where the batteries are.
So I would expect relatively little battery charge in SA to be supplied from Vic/ NSW coal, and I would expect around 1/2 of the battery charge to be coming from RE. This won’t continue across the breadth of the NEM as more batteries get added. There are other factors that come into play though. AEMO/ AMEC rules may soon allow batteries to buffer the output of RE farms. This allows for a more stable supply but also makes it much more likely that RE provides the majority of the charging.
So while I don’t agree with your contention that the vast majority of charging for batteries will be from FF sources as it stands, I can agree that the percentage will rise. But the NEM is not some fixed monolith. Generators close, others are built, new interconnectors open up areas of supply.
Batteries and other energy storage might not be massively ‘green’ yet, but in 20 years (assuming rational development, not a given in Aus) they will be a necessary part of a much greener NEM.