energy crisis - New Catallaxy

SA the wind-leader!

This morning on Wednesday Nov 23 South Australia is in a wind drought. The wind-leading state is demonstrating the great green future of Australia as we pretend to transition from coal.

Before sunrise SA was importing power from Victoria and drawing almost 30% of its demand from the wind, with 70% from gas, with a bit of input from diesel generators. The wind CP was 22% of installed capacity and falling.

At 8 (Sydney time) SA was still importing power and the wind was down to 7% of installed capacity, providing less than 10% of demand. The sun was starting to make a contribution but gas was still delivering almost 70% of demand.

This is the live display that shows the flows between the states. Check the Fuel Mix tab to see the contribution of different sources, not including rooftop solar because these souces are not registered generators and they are not measured accurately by AEMO.

Below is a screen shot taken about 8am. The vertical axis shows the Capacity Factor. The upper line is the picture for the NEM in total and the lower line is SA. The coloured lines are individual wind facilities. this is the live display. Check the boxes to get the various state figures.

Let’s Lift Wind Literacy

Reading literacy appears to be in decline and that is causing concern but spare a thought for the prevalence of “wind illiteracy.” This means lack of awareness of the wind supply, especially at the continental scale.

Wind illiteracy has enabled the biggest peacetime policy blunder in our history, that is, connecting intermittent energy sources from sun and wind to the grid. That mistake has been compounded by subsidising these providers and mandating the use of the product.

The result is a mortal threat to the electricity supply which is the lifeblood of modern society since the horse and buggy days. At the very least the price of power will rise sharply, crippling energy-intensive industries, wrecking household budgets and feeding inflation in every sector of the economy where electricity is an input.

The root of the problem is the combination of extensive and protracted wind droughts, the need for continuous input to the grid to match demand, and the lack of grid-scale storage to fill the gap in supply on windless nights.

Did anyone involved in planning the transition to intermittent wind and solar power think about the wind supply in the way that irrigation planners presumably pay attention to the water supply?

Did anyone call the Bureau of Meteorology or seek advice from some wind literate person who might have warned them about the widespread wind-lulls that occur when high pressure systems hover for a day or three, as they do, several times a year.

These are not the result of recent climate change. In the history of the Lameroo district in the Mallee of western Victoria:

A drought of a very different kind occurred in March and April of 1934. Because Lameroo sits above our underground water supply, windmills (wind pumps) were used to draw water to the surface for stock water and personal use. The period from mid- March to the end of April was almost completely windless; therefore no water. Farmers were soon desperate for stock water. Source

Paul Miskelly accessed the AEMO records of the power delivered from wind farms attached to the grid. During the calendar year 2010 the total wind output across the entire grid fell rapidly to zero or near zero on 109 occasions in the year. Source

He showed that these droughts occurred when high pressure systems fell over the area, these are visible in the weather maps that show the high and low pressure systems that move from west to east across the continent.

He flagged the need for a fleet of fast-acting gas plants with enough capacity to match the installed wind capacity, on standby mode “to balance the wind’s mercurial behaviour.”

In 2010 there were only 23 wind farms with less than 2GW of installed capacity and it was anticipated that the supply would become more reliable as the number of sites increased. John Morgan reported that the situation was much the same in the 12-month period from Sep 2014 to Sept 2015 when the capacity of the wind fleet was approaching 4GW. Source

The problem persists with almost 9GW of installed wind capacity at present. Mike O’Ceirin, an independent analyst working with the Energy Realists of Australia, has an interactive site using the AEMO records. Source

The records can be interrogated to the depth and duration of all the wind droughts from 2010 to the latest serious episode which lasted over 40 hours through the 7^th, 8^th and 9th of August.

People need to become wind savvy and alert to the Achilles heel of the intermittent energy system, that is the nights when the wind is low and there is next to no RE input. During these periods no amount of additional installed capacity will help because there is next to no grid-scale storage to save the excess power generated on sunny afternoons.

RE promoters celebrate record high inputs like the wind just before the drought in August and the solar input for an hour in SA on the afternoon of Oct 16.

AEMO recently started to promote a massive fraud on the data dashboard with a record of Renewable Penetration. See the tab at the top of this page.

Admittedly it is labelled “highlights” but that will mislead the unwary who don’t realise that the highs are useless as long as the lows persist. It is directly comparable to the fence around the cow paddock where the gate is always open or there are permanent gaps. Doh! The cows will get out regardless of the height of the fence.

The transition from coal is limited by the lowest level of RE input on windless nights and until that rises to meet the full demand we had better keep all the coal and gas capacity that we have at present or be prepared to eat breakfast and dinner cold, and in the dark in winter.

In the early afternoon we have sunk into a wind drought with the Capacity Factor (% of plated capacity that is being delivered) near 6% and the wind is contributing almost 4% of the demand. The level of demand is as low as it ever gets in the daytime, being a mild Sunday afternoon, and with plenty of sun about the penetration of RE at present is 60%.

Live Supply & Demand Widget, sponsored by RenewEconomy

The Energy Crisis is upon us: Energy Disaster is coming.

A guest post by Bill Stinson, one of my colleagues in The Energy Realists of Australia and author of an important survey of damage inflicted on the planet through the life-cycle of wind and solar projects. The Dark Side of Renewable Energy.

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap” – Galatians 6:7.

Australia is without leadership. Australian politicians live in a fantasy world, believing that Australia is somehow immune from the energy crisis currently affecting Europe and the United Kingdom. For at least the past twenty years, Europe and the United Kingdom have, lemming-like, invested hundreds of billions of Euros building wind farms and PV solar farms, which depend upon the vagaries of the weather to generate electricity. This reliance has left them so vulnerable, that they are now rushing to bring mothballed coal-fired power stations and nuclear reactors back online, in an attempt, to save their citizens from what is predicted to be a harsh winter.

Australian politicians continue to legislate and enter into United Nations agreements, which will deliver the same disastrous energy outcome for Australian citizens and businesses, that has now befallen Europe and the United Kingdom.

The problem

If you were told that by paying subsidies on your energy bill you would be subsidising an increase in the cost of your energy, would you continue to accept that this was a sensible thing to do. This is what Australian citizens and Australian businesses are doing right now.

Every energy bill collects environmental subsidies which support the development of wind farms and PV solar farms which hastens the closing down of reliable, affordable and dispatchable energy from coal fired power stations. When these coal fired power stations are taken out of service, unlike the European and United Kingdom governments who mothball them, Australian governments condone the destruction of our coal-fired power stations, so they can’t be repurposed, using small modular reactors for energy production.

Australian governments continue to pursue policies supporting the rollout of environmentally destructive, technologically inefficient and toxic wind farms, PV solar farms and batteries. Images of coal-fired power stations being blown up is a metaphor for the disastrous energy policies of governments of all political persuasions, both State and Federal.

We are fundamentally changing our energy generation capability from reliable coal-fired generation (which can easily be upgraded to nuclear
generation) to environmentally destructive, technologically inefficient, toxic, unreliable PV solar and wind generation from a tenuous forced labour supply chain.

The solution

THE VOICE of energy realism

Mark Mills explains why the green energy transition is not happening. 5 min

On the limits of wind and solar power. 5 min

Nigel Ballantyne

On the beauty of nuclear power. 4 min

What sea-level rises? 2 min

Welcome to COP 27 1 min

RC The tragic tale of peaks and troughs in windpower 8 min

RC The German trifecta of failure 6 min

Not enough “oats” in the European power supply?

Everyone knows the sad story about the farmer who decided to save some money by reducing the ration of oats for his horse. He started with a reduction of 10% and it didn’t seem to matter so he cut another 10% and then another. He was saving money hand over fist but then the animal unfortunately died.

Over the last decade or three the nations of the western world started to reduce the amount of fossil fuel “oats” in their power “rations.” In Australia the process started in 2012 with the closure of Munmorah in NSW (600MW), Swanbank, Q, 500 and Collinsville Q 180. Major closures since then were Wallerawang (1000) in NSW, Northern (546) and Playford (240) in SA and finally in 2017, the biggest of all, Hazelwood in Victoria(1760.)

That took 7600 MW out of the total of 30,500, a 25% reduction. This year the phased closure of Liddell in NSW started with one of the four 500MW turbines going out of service, with the process to be complete in April 2023. In recent months a combination of planned (maintenance) outages and unplanned outages combined with issues in the supply of gas caused major price increases and alarm about the stability of the system.

The horse died when the ration of oats slipped below a sustainable level. How many more oats (coal power capacity) need to be taken out of the system to kill it? Practically everyone who has an opinion insists that the closure of coal stations has to be accelerated, or at least the expansion of wind and solar power, storage capacity and major interconnections has to be ramped up with all possible dispatch. That cannot work, as described below.

Now in Europe we can see what happens when you go too far, apparently it happens very quickly when you get to the tipping point.

Trigger warning, this material is likely to be distressing if you manage to conjure up a feeling for the desperation and desolation in a Britain where 60% of their manufacturing could be about to collapse, while household bills for many people are likely to exceed their disposable income.

Meantime, the same forces are de-industrializing Europe right before our eyes. Industry after industry is throttling back, shutting down, or considering doing so if the energy chaos continues. Britain is staring at the potential shutdown of 60 percent of its manufacturers. Germany and most of Europe are on the same track.

Never say it couldn’t happen here!

There are companies that started business in the 1800s and survived two world wars but may not last the coming winter. It’s all changing so fast, they lament. With energy costs rising three to sixfold, the highest energy industries are folding. The first casualties were fertilizer, aluminium and zinc, and now in the second wave, the glass makers and tilers are coming undone, and with them, whole towns that support them will unravel too:

‘Crippling’ Energy Bills Force Europe’s Factories to Go Dark

How many power-intensive Australian firms will survive the impending increase in power prices?

Postscript. Why we can’t build RE capacity to get out of the hole.

As the saying goes, when you are in a hole, first of all stop digging. We are in a serious hole with the power supply but the standard response is to keep digging by accelerating the building of wind and solar, storage, interconnectors, hydrogen.

That will not work due to the combined effect of the following factors.

Wind droughts. These are well-known in some circles but not among the people in AEMO and other advisory bodies who planned the destruction of the conventional power supply.
Need for continuous supply – no gaps. Hence the term “choke point” that I used to convey the sense of “rapid death” when the wind power supply is too low to keep the lights on.
No storage
No capacity to exchange power with neighbours.

The reason why more windmills and solar panels will not help at the “choke point” is that when you have no RE on a windless night, no amount of additional capacity will help. The horses will get out of the paddock through gaps in the fence, regardless of how high you build it. Building the high parts even higher will not keep the horses in. We can increase the penetration of RE in the system by building more capacity but the gaps persist (so why bother?)

As for storage and the calls for “Storage Targets”, we don’t have any effective storage at grid scale at present and there is no prospect of any in sight, despite the number of “big battery” projects in the pipeline. Add them up in terms of MWhrs (instead of MW) and see how much you get compared with the demand on a windless night.

Wind watch update

This morning just before sunrise the wind was generating 7% of power across SE Australia at a capacity factor of 12% (almost down to the 10% for a severe wind drought.) South Australia (the wind leading state) was importing two thirds of its demand and the local generation was 80% gas! A bit of a gap there!

This evening at dinnertime WA was down to 1% of power from the wind. In the East the wind was doing much better, delivering 3% of the demand at a capacity factor of 7 (severe drought.) Victoria is the big wind state with more capacity than SA, though not per capita, and their windmills contributed 1% of demand at capacity 1.4%. Their capacity factor was below 5% for the previous 24 hours!

Approaching 10pm nothing has changed, the wind across the SE is delivering 4% because the total demand has gone down, still the capacity factor in SA is 1.2 and in Victoria 2.8! This is a shot of the NemWatch widget, it is a live display so it will change.

This is the AEMO data dashboard, this is also live, this display shows the flows between the states, see the Fuel Mix tab at the top to find what the different sources are providing.

The wind supply over 24 hours. This is the rolling 24-hour display at Aneroid Energy. Tick and untick the boxes to see individual states. This is the 24-hour display for all sources on the same page.

Our biggest peacetime policy blunder ever

Epic Failure of Planning for the Green Energy Transition

Briefing Note 22.9 September 2022

Purpose: To signal that the transition from coal cannot go any further without nuclear power.

The critical issue.

The combination of wind droughts and the lack of grid-scale storage dictate that any further loss of coal-fired power capacity will pose serious dangers whenever the wind supply is low.

This means that the green power transition cannot accelerate and it may have to stop until nuclear power is up and running.

An epic failure of planning

Readily available evidence on the frequency and extent of wind droughts across SE Australia (the NEM) was apparently ignored or discounted.

Billions of dollars have been spent on assets which cannot replace conventional power in the grid and would be stranded without subsidies and mandates to use wind and solar power.

Imagine a gigantic irrigation scheme with no reliable water supply!

Many billions more will have to be spent to keep coal and gas facilities on line until nuclear power is available.

Conclusion.

The decision to allow subsidised and mandated intermittent energy to connect to the grid is probably the greatest peacetime public policy blunder in Australian history.

Supporting information.

How it is working out on Europe – update from Jo Nova.

TheAustralian situation in a nutshell.

Mark Mills explains why the green energy transition is not happening.

Mark Mills on the limit of wind and solar power.

A thorough comparison of the cost of different power mixes, taking account of the firming required for wind and solar. Source

The real cost of intermittent energy and how it kills reliable power providers.

The failure of RE is demonstrated in South Australia.

For example, on the morning of Monday 19 September at breakfast time, half of the demand for power in SA was imported and 80% of local generation came from gas.