Thread: Big storm and no power in SA

Originally Posted by BMKal

Might be a new crop for some of the orchards that are currently struggling to make money.

Not at 6c/kWh feed in tarif.

I assume the SA Government will announce a deal to build and supply a new gas power plant, plus it may encourage some battery storage. The SA Government seems to have decided it's can't expect any useable support from the Federal Government and can't rely on the eastern states, so it will have to go it alone.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

I assume the SA Government will announce a deal to build and supply a new gas power plant, plus it may encourage some battery storage. The SA Government seems to have decided it's can't expect any useable support from the Federal Government and can't rely on the eastern states, so it will have to go it alone.

The current bidders for Arrium are both proposing construction of a Power Station as part of their purchase and will be self sufficient as well as supply surplus power the grid.

The problem is not so much a lack of gas fired capacity as a market unwilling to guarantee enough domestic gas supply at affordable rates. The will to correct this situation seems to be lacking. The good thing about Musk's battery offer is that it could offer just enough capacity to tide the state's supply over during next summer's peaks. All other storage and supply solutions on offer will take 2-3 years minimum before they offer any energy security.

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

Not at 6c/kWh feed in tarif.

Energy producers with 100kW capacity or more can play on the spot market.

First solar farm in community renewable energy project joins the grid | The Lead

http://www.energymatters.com.au/wp-c...-datasheet.pdf


three issues i see.

max power is 5kw. i occasionally go above this for short periods of time. then what happens? battery damage?
DoD is listed as 100%. i have trouble believing this.
and only 10 year warranty. i would have expected 15-20.

an interesting post on whirpool. i think its a nice summary from a different pov.

1. SA does not have sufficient "firm" generating capacity to meet maximum demand on the system.Firm = generation from sources which is reasonably reliable. So in the case of wind you need to base that on the minimum wind speed and resultant power output you're likely to get across all the wind farms.
For thermal (gas, diesel) plant you base that on installed capacity minus an allowance for things breaking down etc since faults can and do occur (power stations are pretty complex so things will go wrong, that's reality). Trouble in SA is there's not enough capacity even if everything works 100% perfectly.
2. At times the SA grid has a high % of total generation from wind which is an electrically "weak" source in that it can't quickly ramp up to offset the sudden failure of something else (since you can't just increase the wind speed when you want to). In contrast a gas or diesel plant that's online but running below capacity can respond fairly quickly and increase output.
Also there have been incidents where the transmission lines to Vic have failed either all at once or with one out and then the other fails (there are 2 x AC and 1 x DC circuits). If power transfer Vic to SA is fairly high at the time then such a failure puts a sudden additional load on power stations within SA and in practice they haven't responded quickly enough so the result is blackouts.
3. Much of the generating plant in SA is old and worn out.
When ETSA owned and ran everything they built these power stations with the intent that they'd last for around 40 years give or take a bit. They'd build new plants to be ready to replace the old ones as they wore out.
Looking at the major power stations in SA and a few others the problem is clear:
Torrens Island B (800 MW) – in operation since 1977.
Torrens Island A (480 MW) – 1967 so 50 years old.
Dry Creek (originally 156 MW but can't get that high any more) – 1973.
Snuggery (originally 75 MW but can't do that any more) – 1978.
There are some newer ones, eg Pelican Point (478 MW, 1999), Mintaro (90 MW, 1984) and Ladbroke Grove (84 MW, can't remember the date but circa 2000). Also the diesel stations at Angaston and near Lonsdale are reasonably new although fairly small.
Hallett is "sort of new" as such but was built with second hand equipment that was already old when it was installed in SA.
As a whole though a lot of the plant is getting old. Torrens Island (A & B stations combined) is half the non-intermittent generation in SA and the owners (AGL) have been pretty open in recent times about the fact that it's pretty much worn out.
As they put it, they doubt that it will ever again reach full ouput since they just can't keep everything working, there are 8 generating units between the two stations, all at once as too many things keep going wrong.
They fix one problem and then something else breaks. Eg one of the A station units, 120 MW each, had problems with the boiler. They fixed that just in time to have a transformer blow up out the front and put part of B station offline. And so on. When things are worn out you've got problem after problem so it's becoming unreliable.
Nobody is keen on building new power stations in SA, and we're talking more than $1 billion here for what's needed, because:
A. Uncertainty over government policy. What should they build? Pumped hydro storage? Coal? Gas? Solar? Nobody's going to risk their money only to find out that government doesn't like what they've done a couple of years later and wants to shut it down (or if they go with solar etc they'll be out of money if government lets someone else build something else which is cheaper but more polluting etc).
B. Gas has become expensive, price has more than doubled, and even physically scarce. AGL tried to buy more gas to run Torrens Island more but couldn't get enough. Other companies would almost certainly be having the same problems.
C. Anything involving diesel is too costly for daily use and carries the risk of the Australian Dollar falling (since oil is sold in US Dollars always) or alternatively OPEC (Saudi etc) could decide to jack the price up. So it's expensive to start with and financially risky hence it's used only for peak and backup generation.

Originally Posted by Eevo

http://www.energymatters.com.au/wp-c...-datasheet.pdf


three issues i see.

max power is 5kw. i occasionally go above this for short periods of time. then what happens? battery damage?
DoD is listed as 100%. i have trouble believing this.
and only 10 year warranty. i would have expected 15-20.

5kW is the inverter limit, any more and you brown out. PW2 cells are protected from high current levels unlike drill batteries which run at up to 4C and last accordingly. If your power is out you plan according to resources available. PW2's can be stacked up to 9 in one installation. DOD is software limited to ensure the maximum life of the cells, so you're getting the rating of the unit as a whole. 10 yr warranty is adequate because the replacements will cost less and perform better, you'll want a new one before the 10 years are up.