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One thing I would love to see addressed in these kinds of analyses: the efficacy of strategic placement of solar. Electrical demand tends to peak slightly after

One thing I would love to see addressed in these kinds of analyses: the efficacy of strategic placement of solar. Electrical demand tends to peak slightly after sundown for much of the year. However, the sun obviously doesn't set at the same time everywhere. Darwin's sunset is currently an hour and a half later than Sydney/Brisbane. Could building more equatorial/western solar installations together with transmission defer some of the need for storage, even with the same amount of solar deployed?

fomine3 4y ago
It's fortunate for solar that most populated cities in AU is located on east.
wyager 4y ago
Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature superconductors or something.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  Losses wouldn’t be bad with HVDC, with the added benefit of HVDC ties not needing to be frequency synced across the entire grid, so you have some opportunity to increase resiliency. I don’t think it’s a one-sized fits all solution. There will be places where storage will make sense, and other where longer distance transmission makes sense. I think the reality is it will be a mix of both, along with a nice diverse mix of generation methods.
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    Australia seems especially well suited for long-distance transmission because development is so heavily weighted to the coasts; there's not a lot of existing built-up interior areas to route around. At 800 kilovolts HVDC line losses are only 5% per 2000 km: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC97720/ld-na-27527-en-n.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... (See page 11)
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      Yeah, people really underestimate how efficient HVDC has become. Even that doc is outdated - it was published in 2015 so likely based on 2013/2014 figures. Modern projects, e.g. ultra HVDC (1100KV) in China are seeing more like 1.5%/1,000KM losses: http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html
      - blitzar 4y ago
        Australia is ~4,000km wide, so ~6% - totally manageable if it is needed.
        zizee 4y ago
        Curious to know the relative costs of HVAC vs battery per megawatt/hour offset from peak solar production. 4000 KMs east to west is about 2.4 hours offset geographically. Would it be cheaper to have 2.4 hours of storage closer to the east coast of Australia, with solar farms close to the consumption? Or would building a 4000km HVAC transmission line from the west coast of Australia to the east coast be cheaper? I'd imagine there would be a tipping point where one option is more economical than the other. Personally, I'd like to see WA's electricity network connected through to SA, and connect SA's through to NSW, but I also like the idea of many independent microgrids for the resilancy they'd offer.
        blitzar 4y ago
        The controversial conclusion I came to many years ago was all of the above ... I remember when the solar lobby was fighting the wind lobby fighting the hydro lobby to be the one true green energy source. It was and still is entirely pointless. Distributed independent microgrids with interconnects fed by a range of power generation methods and size the generation at >1.5x power needs. Refurbish and maintain fossil fuel to fill when needed, and ideally make them as modular as possible with turbine halls being convertable between different fuel types.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > Losses wouldn’t be bad with HVDC Uh-oh. We're going to have to rewrite the history books on the current war between Edison and Tesla, this time with Edison as the victor!
  - wyager 4y ago
    Great, let me know when we have economically viable HVDC grids built up. Renewables enthusiasts love to talk about counterfactual or hypothetical scenarios, but ignore the fact that we can't spontaneously leap to one of those scenarios.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  This is pretty outdated.. HVDC has solved most of the transmission problem. Even the typical "3.5% per 1,000km" assumption that shows up on Wikipedia is pretty out of date. Modern projects are built with much lower losses (since they're running much higher voltage) and central Australia with massive solar potential is no more than 2,000KM from anywhere else in the country so generation transmission losses would be more like 5% total...
  - 5d8767c68926 4y ago
    Even if losses were something absurd like 15%, I don't see how that would meaningfully change the numbers. Location offsetting sunlight seems like a huge win.
    - theluketaylor 4y ago
      Indeed. Solar is so cheap (and the price keeps falling) needing to build an extra 15% bigger solar farms is a total non-issue. By the time some projects go from planning to ground-breaking that extra 15% might be free due to costs plummeting.
- theptip 4y ago
  > Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Big “citation needed” on that assertion. HVDC is a widely proposed option and it’s an oversimplification to dismiss it with a single sentence. For example the old DeserTec made a feasibility analysis for HVDC interconnects across EU and into Africa; the problem with that one seemed to be more about geopolitical issues and upfront investment costs, rather than long-term feasibility of transmission losses. A newer analysis at the top of Google does not say “this doesn’t work because of transmission losses”. https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/electricity/hvdctransmission/pdf/transmission.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/electricity/hvdctransmi....
  - wyager 4y ago
    > Big “citation needed” on that assertion. My knowledge of power markets. > HVDC is a widely proposed option I'm sure it's widely proposed by fictional utopian scenario enthusiasts. I will consider it seriously when there's an actual HVDC grid we can use, or even just a successful HVDC interconnect.
    - theluketaylor 4y ago
      There are tons of HVDC interconnects and transmission lines in place, many of which are already over 1000 km long. Many of these projects have been in place for decades. Breakthroughs in solid state HVDC are making it easier and cheaper all the time, but it's not some fanciful science fiction technology. It's a key element of existing power grids already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
      - wyager 4y ago
        Mea Culpa! I knew about a few of these projects in the US but there are more than I realized. Thanks for correcting me.
- snek_case 4y ago
  I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem, and dismiss the entire solution as if it was worthless, which is obviously false. As others have pointed out, there are now HVDC lines that can go over thousands of kilometers (transcontinental scale!) with reasonable losses. There's no reason to believe that we've hit the peak of HVDC technology either. The need for this technology to exist will drive further innovation. Even if the OP's estimate is off. Even if we "only" get to 90% renewables by 2045, that's still pretty damn great compared to what we have now, isn't it? Is your cynical opinion that we should just keep going with the status quo because we can't get 100% ? Even if we need 15% more wind and 15% more storage to than the OP's estimate reach 99%, that's not impossible either. It will create a lot of jobs. Why not just roll up our sleeves and do the best that we can? Thankfully, the world is not only made up of cynics, and a lot of people already are. We aren't done innovating on the renewable front either. There's LOTS of research into cheaper, safer, more scaleable grid-scale batteries. The current state of the art is cobalt-free and nickel-free lithium iron phosphate, but people sodium-ion batteries look like they're going to be viable soon. I also feel pretty confident that we'll eventually manage relatively efficient ways to store energy over the long term. If we could turn electricity into methane or ethanol with even 25% efficiency, that would allow us to store energy from the summer to use in the winter, or to power transatlantic airplanes with renewables. That seems pretty exciting to me.
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Did you consider how strategical targets became such networks? How much geopolitics nightmares they represent?
    - stevesimmons 4y ago
      Conversely, did you consider how much critical infrastructure we already have today, and how surprisingly little of it is targeted?
      - kkfx 4y ago
- caf 4y ago
  That's the whole point of what the author did. He didn't model putting solar out in the Western Desert or something - he scaled up the existing wind and solar generation on the NEM, implying more generation in the places where we know transmission works just fine, because we're doing it now. Of course if we put more utility scale solar in New England or Central West we'll need to augment the existing transmission, but that's just increasing the capacity of transmission where we already have it.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Not true. Transmission lines can be made quite efficient especially the really high voltage ones like 345kV look it up. Other alternatives are High Voltage DC which is more expensive but much less lossy. There are solutions, nothing is cheap but these things last for decades and when amortized against losing our planet to global warming have great potential. Sorry but you are wrong.
caf 4y ago
A new east-west interconnector is in progress: https://www.projectenergyconnect.com.au/ https://www.projectenergyconnect.com.au/ In general though, BESS & overbuild seems to be working out cheaper than very long interconnectors.

fomine3 4y ago

It's fortunate for solar that most populated cities in AU is located on east.

wyager 4y ago

Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature superconductors or something.

theluketaylor 4y ago
Losses wouldn’t be bad with HVDC, with the added benefit of HVDC ties not needing to be frequency synced across the entire grid, so you have some opportunity to increase resiliency. I don’t think it’s a one-sized fits all solution. There will be places where storage will make sense, and other where longer distance transmission makes sense. I think the reality is it will be a mix of both, along with a nice diverse mix of generation methods.
- philipkglass 4y ago
  Australia seems especially well suited for long-distance transmission because development is so heavily weighted to the coasts; there's not a lot of existing built-up interior areas to route around. At 800 kilovolts HVDC line losses are only 5% per 2000 km: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC97720/ld-na-27527-en-n.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... (See page 11)
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Yeah, people really underestimate how efficient HVDC has become. Even that doc is outdated - it was published in 2015 so likely based on 2013/2014 figures. Modern projects, e.g. ultra HVDC (1100KV) in China are seeing more like 1.5%/1,000KM losses: http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html
    - blitzar 4y ago
      Australia is ~4,000km wide, so ~6% - totally manageable if it is needed.
      - zizee 4y ago
        Curious to know the relative costs of HVAC vs battery per megawatt/hour offset from peak solar production. 4000 KMs east to west is about 2.4 hours offset geographically. Would it be cheaper to have 2.4 hours of storage closer to the east coast of Australia, with solar farms close to the consumption? Or would building a 4000km HVAC transmission line from the west coast of Australia to the east coast be cheaper? I'd imagine there would be a tipping point where one option is more economical than the other. Personally, I'd like to see WA's electricity network connected through to SA, and connect SA's through to NSW, but I also like the idea of many independent microgrids for the resilancy they'd offer.
        blitzar 4y ago
        The controversial conclusion I came to many years ago was all of the above ... I remember when the solar lobby was fighting the wind lobby fighting the hydro lobby to be the one true green energy source. It was and still is entirely pointless. Distributed independent microgrids with interconnects fed by a range of power generation methods and size the generation at >1.5x power needs. Refurbish and maintain fossil fuel to fill when needed, and ideally make them as modular as possible with turbine halls being convertable between different fuel types.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > Losses wouldn’t be bad with HVDC Uh-oh. We're going to have to rewrite the history books on the current war between Edison and Tesla, this time with Edison as the victor!
- wyager 4y ago
  Great, let me know when we have economically viable HVDC grids built up. Renewables enthusiasts love to talk about counterfactual or hypothetical scenarios, but ignore the fact that we can't spontaneously leap to one of those scenarios.
mikeyouse 4y ago
This is pretty outdated.. HVDC has solved most of the transmission problem. Even the typical "3.5% per 1,000km" assumption that shows up on Wikipedia is pretty out of date. Modern projects are built with much lower losses (since they're running much higher voltage) and central Australia with massive solar potential is no more than 2,000KM from anywhere else in the country so generation transmission losses would be more like 5% total...
- 5d8767c68926 4y ago
  Even if losses were something absurd like 15%, I don't see how that would meaningfully change the numbers. Location offsetting sunlight seems like a huge win.
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    Indeed. Solar is so cheap (and the price keeps falling) needing to build an extra 15% bigger solar farms is a total non-issue. By the time some projects go from planning to ground-breaking that extra 15% might be free due to costs plummeting.
theptip 4y ago
> Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Big “citation needed” on that assertion. HVDC is a widely proposed option and it’s an oversimplification to dismiss it with a single sentence. For example the old DeserTec made a feasibility analysis for HVDC interconnects across EU and into Africa; the problem with that one seemed to be more about geopolitical issues and upfront investment costs, rather than long-term feasibility of transmission losses. A newer analysis at the top of Google does not say “this doesn’t work because of transmission losses”. https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/electricity/hvdctransmission/pdf/transmission.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/electricity/hvdctransmi....
- wyager 4y ago
  > Big “citation needed” on that assertion. My knowledge of power markets. > HVDC is a widely proposed option I'm sure it's widely proposed by fictional utopian scenario enthusiasts. I will consider it seriously when there's an actual HVDC grid we can use, or even just a successful HVDC interconnect.
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    There are tons of HVDC interconnects and transmission lines in place, many of which are already over 1000 km long. Many of these projects have been in place for decades. Breakthroughs in solid state HVDC are making it easier and cheaper all the time, but it's not some fanciful science fiction technology. It's a key element of existing power grids already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
    - wyager 4y ago
      Mea Culpa! I knew about a few of these projects in the US but there are more than I realized. Thanks for correcting me.
snek_case 4y ago
I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem, and dismiss the entire solution as if it was worthless, which is obviously false. As others have pointed out, there are now HVDC lines that can go over thousands of kilometers (transcontinental scale!) with reasonable losses. There's no reason to believe that we've hit the peak of HVDC technology either. The need for this technology to exist will drive further innovation. Even if the OP's estimate is off. Even if we "only" get to 90% renewables by 2045, that's still pretty damn great compared to what we have now, isn't it? Is your cynical opinion that we should just keep going with the status quo because we can't get 100% ? Even if we need 15% more wind and 15% more storage to than the OP's estimate reach 99%, that's not impossible either. It will create a lot of jobs. Why not just roll up our sleeves and do the best that we can? Thankfully, the world is not only made up of cynics, and a lot of people already are. We aren't done innovating on the renewable front either. There's LOTS of research into cheaper, safer, more scaleable grid-scale batteries. The current state of the art is cobalt-free and nickel-free lithium iron phosphate, but people sodium-ion batteries look like they're going to be viable soon. I also feel pretty confident that we'll eventually manage relatively efficient ways to store energy over the long term. If we could turn electricity into methane or ethanol with even 25% efficiency, that would allow us to store energy from the summer to use in the winter, or to power transatlantic airplanes with renewables. That seems pretty exciting to me.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Did you consider how strategical targets became such networks? How much geopolitics nightmares they represent?
  - stevesimmons 4y ago
    Conversely, did you consider how much critical infrastructure we already have today, and how surprisingly little of it is targeted?
    - kkfx 4y ago
caf 4y ago
That's the whole point of what the author did. He didn't model putting solar out in the Western Desert or something - he scaled up the existing wind and solar generation on the NEM, implying more generation in the places where we know transmission works just fine, because we're doing it now. Of course if we put more utility scale solar in New England or Central West we'll need to augment the existing transmission, but that's just increasing the capacity of transmission where we already have it.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Not true. Transmission lines can be made quite efficient especially the really high voltage ones like 345kV look it up. Other alternatives are High Voltage DC which is more expensive but much less lossy. There are solutions, nothing is cheap but these things last for decades and when amortized against losing our planet to global warming have great potential. Sorry but you are wrong.

caf 4y ago

A new east-west interconnector is in progress: https://www.projectenergyconnect.com.au/ https://www.projectenergyconnect.com.au/ In general though, BESS & overbuild seems to be working out cheaper than very long interconnectors.