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South Australia hits new high in race to renewables-only grid
- toomuchtodo 4y agoLot of folks throw shade because of how small South Australia and its electrical consumption/generation is, but it is a prototype of what the electrical grid future looks like. During sunny and/or windy periods, they run no more than ~80MW of natural gas generation (per electricitymap.org) [1] [2] for frequency response services (previously it was double that, but some synchronous condensers [3] were added to provide the grid services without consuming fuel in the process. A few more batteries and transmission lines, and that last bit of continuous fossil generation should be able to transition to peaker capacity [4]. [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/AU-SA?wind=false&solar=false https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/AU-SA?wind=false&solar=... [2] https://reneweconomy.com.au/fossil-gas-pared-back-to-its-bare-bones-in-south-australias-renewables-grid/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/fossil-gas-pared-back-to-its-bar... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser [4] https://reneweconomy.com.au/remarkable-south-australia-may-soon-be-first-big-grid-to-run-on-renewables-only/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/remarkable-south-australia-may-s...