• South Australian Government will spend more than $500 million on battery storage and gas power plant
    10 replies, posted
[QUOTE]The South Australian Government has announced it will spend more than $500 million to build a new gas-fired power plant and Australia's largest battery as it moves to secure the state's energy supplies. Announcing the energy plan in the wake of blackouts and load-shedding, SA Premier Jay Weatherill said his government would take control by ensuring the energy minister was given powers to direct the market. The plan would involve building, owning and operating a $360 million, 250-megawatt gas-fired plant to provide power grid stability and for emergency power needs. The private sector would build Australia's largest battery before next summer, with a 100MW output, Mr Weatherill told a news conference. The venture would be funded from a new $150 million renewable technology fund, he said. "We think that a secure energy system should have multiple sources. It is a question of speed as well," he said. "A battery could be delivered quickly, we are advised, but we want multiple sources of redundancy, if you like, in our electricity system so that we have got more service efficiency. "The other thing with a battery, which is attractive, is that it can be done quite economically. [B]The battery can become essentially a player in the market and, to some degree, pay for itself[/B]." [/QUOTE] [url]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/sa-power-energy-minister-electricity-market-plan-jay-weatherill/8351450[/url]
shit, twitter actually did the world some good for once
Since when was there a South Australia. Kidding. This will be interesting to see the results of.
"To some degree" being the key word. It's not going to pay itself back.
So does the gas charges the battery and then kicks in when the battery is being used and depleted? Smart way to set it up as gas generators take a few minutes to kick in unlike diesel generators which are instantaneous. I guess this means you don't need the gas generators to constantly run slowly in case it's suddenly needed. Seems like a better alternative than oil and gas. Though someone please correct me if I'm understanding the workings of this incorrectly.
[QUOTE=Badballer;51961471]So does the gas charges the battery and then kicks in when the battery is being used and depleted? Smart way to set it up as gas generators take a few minutes to kick in unlike diesel generators which are instantaneous. I guess this means you don't need the gas generators to constantly run slowly in case it's suddenly needed. Seems like a better alternative than oil and gas. Though someone please correct me if I'm understanding the workings of this incorrectly.[/QUOTE] If the generator is a CCGT (which it appears to be based on cost), it will take 30 to 60 minute to kick in, well past the point of the battery being dead. The battery is only being bought so the Labor Government can continue to jerk each-other off and tell themselves wind turbines have nothing to do with our energy insecurity.
If the battery can't last until the gas generator kicks in that seems a bit useless
I thought they were trying to use Renewable Energy, why use Gas Power?
[QUOTE=Badballer;51961517]If the battery can't last until the gas generator kicks in that seems a bit useless[/QUOTE] That's because that's probably not how it's going to work. There aren't a whole lot of details in the op article, but I assume the battery is for load balancing. Like previously mentioned, turbines are slow to react. They aren't something that's just flipped on and boom, they need to be constantly adjusting their supply by speeding up and slowing down to cope with changing loads. A battery can react much more quickly, meaning if the turbine is supplying more power to the grid than required, it can just be stored instead of slowing the turbine down. More info on batteries as an ancillary service here: [url]https://energytransition.org/2015/06/batteries-stabilize-the-grid/[/url]
[QUOTE=Ltp0wer;51962607]That's because that's probably not how it's going to work. There aren't a whole lot of details in the op article, but I assume the battery is for load balancing. Like previously mentioned, turbines are slow to react. They aren't something that's just flipped on and boom, they need to be constantly adjusting their supply by speeding up and slowing down to cope with changing loads. A battery can react much more quickly, meaning if the turbine is supplying more power to the grid than required, it can just be stored instead of slowing the turbine down. More info on batteries as an ancillary service here: [url]https://energytransition.org/2015/06/batteries-stabilize-the-grid/[/url][/QUOTE] No, they run at a constant speed. If you sped them up and down you would get variations in the AC frequency. Power is controlled through increasing fuel or opening steam valves to maintain a constant RPM and line frequency. The limiting factor to powering up and down is thermal stresses on various parts. [editline]15th March 2017[/editline] Those graphs are terrible. If your power system is changing frequency over various loads something is very wrong. [editline]15th March 2017[/editline] I would hazard a guess that too much and too little power is being supplied.
[QUOTE=Xonax;51961948]I thought they were trying to use Renewable Energy, why use Gas Power?[/QUOTE] We still dont have the technology to implement renewable energy in an affordable fashion. Australia has a large infrastructure, unlike countries like Iceland who don't have to power much, (so in turn they use geothermal power). Wind turbines are expensive to maintain and are low output to cost, meaning it would take decades before money saved using them would exceed their initial cost. Solar power has the same problem, although cheaper to use, the sun isn't out 24/7 obviously and it requires large amounts of land to have any useable output. Money should be spent in investing research, and gas/coal sources should keep being used to not damage the delicate infrastructure. Renewable energy isn't magic, and its no where near perfect.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.