3 ms·

The answer actually isn’t that you need days of storage. A researcher I follow on Twitter here in Australia called David Osmond has been running a simulation fo

The answer actually isn’t that you need days of storage. A researcher I follow on Twitter here in Australia called David Osmond has been running a simulation for over a year that scales up the wind and solar we have to the levels we would need to achieve around 100% renewable energy, and using real time data simulates storage requirements. He’s found that for the NEM grid in Australia at least, just six hours of storage can bring us to over 99% of demand being provided by renewables and storage over a month, almost every month. On a weekly basis, some weeks it’s 100%, but worst case will be something like two or three percent being provided by something like gas turbines over the week. We have more pumped hydro coming online and will have more in the future, so not all those six or so hours worth will be chemical batteries. Part of what makes this work is because on the eastern seaboard, often it might be, for example, windy in northern Queensland while it’s calm in South Australia, so being interconnected helps a lot. At this point we really don’t have (and it’s not simulating) any kind of serious demand management (apart from in emergencies, but I’m talking everyday kind of management), which could potentially remove some of the need for gas peaking. We also don’t have any offshore wind yet (legislation only legalised it last year and there are some early projects). As some of that offshore generation comes online with better capacity factors than onshore, it will likely make things more consistent.

duckmysick 4y ago
Is there any code for that simulation available publicly? I'd like to plug in numbers for other locations.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  I don't think so unfortunately, he just posts the results, e.g. https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880 https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880
evilos 4y ago
How many gigawatt hours is 6 hours of storage though? Also is this just to cover current electricity demand or total primary energy?
- stephen_g 4y ago
  In Australia, based on current electricity demand it's 24 GW / 120 GWh. Primary energy replacement obviously will require more than that, but it won't be so bad as people make out, since electrification can drive massive efficiency increases - electric cars are 3-4x as energy efficient as ICE cars, and there are very few places in the parts of Australia that get decently cold that are too cold for air source heat pumps, so that's a 3x efficiency increase over gas space and hot water heating (even as much as 5x for CO2 hot water heat pumps!).
magicalhippo 4y ago
You need those interconnects though. Here in Norway the electricity prices this summer and fall were up to 100x higher in the south compared to the north, due to lack of interconnect capacity between the north and south. Building hundreds of miles of high-capacity interconnects ain't done in a weekend either.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  People misunderstand the impact of interconnects. It's like saying, this remote town in the hills has cheap housing because it takes so long to drive to it so lets build a high speed express train right to the city. Then we can have cheap housing and access to the city. Except you can't, because as soon as you have access to the market demand, the price goes up to match the market price. Interconnects are useful, but people wanting to build interconnects so they can access the cheap power from places that only had cheap power due to a lack of interconnects is upside down thinking.
  - magicalhippo 4y ago
    Oh we've noticed that as well. Our interconnects to Germany and UK certainly contributed to the high prices in the south this year. But better internal interconnects between south and north would certainly have contributed to averaging out the prices across the country, avoiding the extremes we saw this year. After all, there were hydro plants in the north which halted production due to the low prices at the same time as we had prices >10x normal in the south.

duckmysick 4y ago

Is there any code for that simulation available publicly? I'd like to plug in numbers for other locations.

stephen_g 4y ago
I don't think so unfortunately, he just posts the results, e.g. https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880 https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880

evilos 4y ago

How many gigawatt hours is 6 hours of storage though? Also is this just to cover current electricity demand or total primary energy?

stephen_g 4y ago
In Australia, based on current electricity demand it's 24 GW / 120 GWh. Primary energy replacement obviously will require more than that, but it won't be so bad as people make out, since electrification can drive massive efficiency increases - electric cars are 3-4x as energy efficient as ICE cars, and there are very few places in the parts of Australia that get decently cold that are too cold for air source heat pumps, so that's a 3x efficiency increase over gas space and hot water heating (even as much as 5x for CO2 hot water heat pumps!).

magicalhippo 4y ago

You need those interconnects though. Here in Norway the electricity prices this summer and fall were up to 100x higher in the south compared to the north, due to lack of interconnect capacity between the north and south. Building hundreds of miles of high-capacity interconnects ain't done in a weekend either.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
People misunderstand the impact of interconnects. It's like saying, this remote town in the hills has cheap housing because it takes so long to drive to it so lets build a high speed express train right to the city. Then we can have cheap housing and access to the city. Except you can't, because as soon as you have access to the market demand, the price goes up to match the market price. Interconnects are useful, but people wanting to build interconnects so they can access the cheap power from places that only had cheap power due to a lack of interconnects is upside down thinking.
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  Oh we've noticed that as well. Our interconnects to Germany and UK certainly contributed to the high prices in the south this year. But better internal interconnects between south and north would certainly have contributed to averaging out the prices across the country, avoiding the extremes we saw this year. After all, there were hydro plants in the north which halted production due to the low prices at the same time as we had prices >10x normal in the south.