3 ms·

> Apparently you can make money by connecting a battery to the grid as the one in South Australia does make money, but I have no idea how it does it. It is cal

> Apparently you can make money by connecting a battery to the grid as the one in South Australia does make money, but I have no idea how it does it. It is called the ancillary market. Basically if the grid voltage or frequency drifts off target too much, the mismatch causes semi-catastrophic shutdown of connected generation. It's... Kind of like if the timing belt in your car broke? Multi-ton generators rotating at thousands of RPM suddenly start to change direction, and they would fly apart if not for safety shutdowns. The ancillary market exists to prevent that. Standing contracts are posted to bring fast generation like hydro power or gas turbines on the second power gets too low or too high. In Southern Australia there is very little of those resources and due to technical neglect and the governments pro-coal policies, the growth in power demand led to an unstable grid. Their limited number of fast "peaker" plants just couldn't keep up. That's why the battery made money hand over fist- 1.5 years to pay for itself, a wholly unheard of thing in civil projects like this. Note that I've elided over a lot and ancillary markets worldwide are very highly regulated. They are very complicated, require sub-second reactions, and are generally a problem of the commons. One of the major problems that lead to the SA blackouts was the government expanding the acceptable frequency window- to ~5x what the rest of the world does (iirc). Companies immediately stopped making an effort to switch quickly and made poor long term decisions, relying on undercutting competition. > I struggle to see how grid batteries fit in, but house batteries (which are really a grid battery installed at the other end of the wire) seem like they are just around the corner. I think nuclear is one of the likely use cases, but it requires huge changes in carbon regulation. Nuclear is also highly capital intensive and benefits just as much as renewables from storage. A carbon tax is required to make the costs make sense though.

rstuart4133 7y ago
> The ancillary market exists to prevent that. Standing contracts are posted to bring fast generation like hydro power or gas turbines on the second power gets too low or too high. Ahhh, so that's how it works. Thanks. > In Southern Australia there is very little of those resources and due to technical neglect and the governments pro-coal policies, I struggle with that. South Australia is in the position it is is (50% renewable, 100% on occasions) because it has very little coal, and what they do have is low quality. In fact they import it from QLD and NSW. All that posturing from federal liberal politicians blaming SA Labor for choosing renewables is just that. In reality they didn't have much choice. It's very hard to be pro-coal when you don't have any. > Nuclear is also highly capital intensive and benefits just as much as renewables from storage. I've never thought about it - but that's probably correct. However I'm firmly in the camp of "if it was truly cheaper than coal or renewables, nuclear would be everywhere now". The data makes it fairly plain safety concerns are overblown - it's actually one of the safer forms of energy production. If it was cheap the loud protests from the anti-nuclear nuclear lobby would be ignored, just as the protests from the anti-wind lobby are mostly ignored.

rstuart4133 7y ago

> The ancillary market exists to prevent that. Standing contracts are posted to bring fast generation like hydro power or gas turbines on the second power gets too low or too high. Ahhh, so that's how it works. Thanks. > In Southern Australia there is very little of those resources and due to technical neglect and the governments pro-coal policies, I struggle with that. South Australia is in the position it is is (50% renewable, 100% on occasions) because it has very little coal, and what they do have is low quality. In fact they import it from QLD and NSW. All that posturing from federal liberal politicians blaming SA Labor for choosing renewables is just that. In reality they didn't have much choice. It's very hard to be pro-coal when you don't have any. > Nuclear is also highly capital intensive and benefits just as much as renewables from storage. I've never thought about it - but that's probably correct. However I'm firmly in the camp of "if it was truly cheaper than coal or renewables, nuclear would be everywhere now". The data makes it fairly plain safety concerns are overblown - it's actually one of the safer forms of energy production. If it was cheap the loud protests from the anti-nuclear nuclear lobby would be ignored, just as the protests from the anti-wind lobby are mostly ignored.