OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
https://www.brightnewworld.org/media/2018/1/23/complementarity-not-competition
Quote
Late last year, there was a remarkable response to an article published to RenewEconomy, which provided details of the response of the grid scale battery in South Australia to correcting the frequency dip caused by the loss of a unit of coal generation in the neighbouring NEM region of Victoria.
The level of interest is understandable. A tangible demonstration of this frequency control is of interest when so few such facilities are operating. What the article also showed (and RenewEconomy curiously chose to mock rather than highlight) was an amazing complementarity of technologies. The problem (loss of frequency) was solved by both the newest participant and one of the oldest, together, more effectively than it would have been otherwise. No, a crisis was not imminent and no, the battery could not have done it all (and the coal plant actually could have). Nonetheless the cooperation, intended or not, was elegant. This complementarity strikes me as good news. Those designing Australia's policy should be looking for complementarity.
RenewEconomy instead went with teetotal metaphors of the old-west:
Gladstone injected more than Tesla did back into the grid, and took the frequency back up to its normal levels of 50Hz, but by then Tesla had already put its gun back in its holster and had wandered into the bar for a glass of milk.
This is no more-or-less accurate than suggesting the battery realised it had run out of ammo, and ran from the corral before the fight was over. In my opinion, it's equally silly. Each metaphorical effort betrays a bias that we should be excising from our energy discussions, rather than promoting.
So, the giddy triumphalist flavour of what was, in point of fact, an informative article is dangerously missing the point. It is another analysis applauding what was an emergency intervention (the battery) to correct a destabilisation that was wrought though an accelerated uptake of a-synchronous renewable generation. Wind and solar uptake displaced the underlying stability of the system and outpaced our response. It's a fix to a problem that was only very recently created. That problem (declining frequency control) was, until very recently, scarcely even acknowledged as relevant in the renewable energy discussion.
It's worth a quick recap of the journey from the point of view of Bright New World and previously the blog Decarbonise SA, and some of the main sources of data.
In a paper published in 2015 with co-authors Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook, we identified the risk posed by loss of ancillary services like frequency control:
Another reliability issue is the provision of necessary ancillary services to the network to ensure systems stability and power quality, such as frequency-control capability and reactive support (Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd & Electranet, 2014). These services are provided by ‘synchronous' generators, typically traditional coal and gas generation or hydro (in some states), where electricity is generated through turbines spinning in synch at close to 50 Hz…as shown, increased wind participation displaces traditional (non-hydro) synchronous generators from the market. The associated ancillary services reduce or disappear (Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd & Electranet, 2014)…Proposed solutions to mitigate this risk include payments for minimum synchronous generation to remain online, development of a new market in ancillary services, network augmentation and even curtailing supply from wind and photovoltaics (Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd & Electranet, 2014). This again points to system costs that are not represented by technology-specific metrics such as capital cost or levelised cost of electricity of the renewable generator. Such costs would spread nation-wide were other states to follow South Australia's lead, with each new addition of variable renewable energy eroding the buffer of reliability on which the overall system depends and increasing their implicit operating subsidy.
[Aside: the Australian Energy Market Operator was sending this information in unmistakable terms in a series of reports called The South Australian Electricity Report. We were not soothsayers, we were just reading with open minds. End aside.]
Approximately one year later, as South Australian electricity was entering dire straights, Decarbonise SA reflected on this paper (with a self-explanatory title) The unfolding energy crisis in South Australia was foreseeable…and foreseen .
As the discussion continued, I published Ancilliary wha? Ancilliary services, a piece which sought to highlight the overlooked value of part of the grid that no one cared about…until it went missing. In this piece I described ancillary services as:
‘all the important ingredients in running a reliable electricity system that you don't know about…Like most necessary support services, we acknowledge their necessity when they start to go away'.
*snip*
There's much more to the article, so I would humbly suggest reading it in its entirety before commenting.
Quote
Late last year, there was a remarkable response to an article published to RenewEconomy, which provided details of the response of the grid scale battery in South Australia to correcting the frequency dip caused by the loss of a unit of coal generation in the neighbouring NEM region of Victoria.
The level of interest is understandable. A tangible demonstration of this frequency control is of interest when so few such facilities are operating. What the article also showed (and RenewEconomy curiously chose to mock rather than highlight) was an amazing complementarity of technologies. The problem (loss of frequency) was solved by both the newest participant and one of the oldest, together, more effectively than it would have been otherwise. No, a crisis was not imminent and no, the battery could not have done it all (and the coal plant actually could have). Nonetheless the cooperation, intended or not, was elegant. This complementarity strikes me as good news. Those designing Australia's policy should be looking for complementarity.
RenewEconomy instead went with teetotal metaphors of the old-west:
Gladstone injected more than Tesla did back into the grid, and took the frequency back up to its normal levels of 50Hz, but by then Tesla had already put its gun back in its holster and had wandered into the bar for a glass of milk.
This is no more-or-less accurate than suggesting the battery realised it had run out of ammo, and ran from the corral before the fight was over. In my opinion, it's equally silly. Each metaphorical effort betrays a bias that we should be excising from our energy discussions, rather than promoting.
So, the giddy triumphalist flavour of what was, in point of fact, an informative article is dangerously missing the point. It is another analysis applauding what was an emergency intervention (the battery) to correct a destabilisation that was wrought though an accelerated uptake of a-synchronous renewable generation. Wind and solar uptake displaced the underlying stability of the system and outpaced our response. It's a fix to a problem that was only very recently created. That problem (declining frequency control) was, until very recently, scarcely even acknowledged as relevant in the renewable energy discussion.
It's worth a quick recap of the journey from the point of view of Bright New World and previously the blog Decarbonise SA, and some of the main sources of data.
In a paper published in 2015 with co-authors Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook, we identified the risk posed by loss of ancillary services like frequency control:
Another reliability issue is the provision of necessary ancillary services to the network to ensure systems stability and power quality, such as frequency-control capability and reactive support (Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd & Electranet, 2014). These services are provided by ‘synchronous' generators, typically traditional coal and gas generation or hydro (in some states), where electricity is generated through turbines spinning in synch at close to 50 Hz…as shown, increased wind participation displaces traditional (non-hydro) synchronous generators from the market. The associated ancillary services reduce or disappear (Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd & Electranet, 2014)…Proposed solutions to mitigate this risk include payments for minimum synchronous generation to remain online, development of a new market in ancillary services, network augmentation and even curtailing supply from wind and photovoltaics (Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd & Electranet, 2014). This again points to system costs that are not represented by technology-specific metrics such as capital cost or levelised cost of electricity of the renewable generator. Such costs would spread nation-wide were other states to follow South Australia's lead, with each new addition of variable renewable energy eroding the buffer of reliability on which the overall system depends and increasing their implicit operating subsidy.
[Aside: the Australian Energy Market Operator was sending this information in unmistakable terms in a series of reports called The South Australian Electricity Report. We were not soothsayers, we were just reading with open minds. End aside.]
Approximately one year later, as South Australian electricity was entering dire straights, Decarbonise SA reflected on this paper (with a self-explanatory title) The unfolding energy crisis in South Australia was foreseeable…and foreseen .
As the discussion continued, I published Ancilliary wha? Ancilliary services, a piece which sought to highlight the overlooked value of part of the grid that no one cared about…until it went missing. In this piece I described ancillary services as:
‘all the important ingredients in running a reliable electricity system that you don't know about…Like most necessary support services, we acknowledge their necessity when they start to go away'.
*snip*
There's much more to the article, so I would humbly suggest reading it in its entirety before commenting.
