Australia is grappling with too much solar power as renewable growth outpaces grid capacity

[JustThisGuy]

This is down to total incompetence by both Federal and State governments of Australia and all the energy providers. Solar has been around for nearly 20 years in Australia and they have spent hundreds of billions on gold-plating poles and wires and the grid has not evolved one iota to cope with this new form of energy. The grid is still largely one way. We should be building medium scale batteries for suburbs that can store the excess energy and sell it back in peak times at far lower prices than the energy providers normally charge. Home batteries are still stupendously overpriced, not enough people have EV's or heatpumps. Thousands of ~1MWh batteries should already be in place right across the country.

Electric Vehicles with bidirectional chargers (V2G and V2H) might help stabilise the grid in the future. If even half of Australia's car fleet were plugged in it would create a virtual battery of around 60 GWh! Enough to power every household in the country for about 3 days.

 

[Freddie159]

Time to call the AI companies and let them setup their systems for cheap electricity!! ORR send that extra power to crypto farms and let them make enough money to power the Government!!

 

[Endymio]

The RW party has been sabotaging efforts to install batteries for YEARS.

And this is Australia. There's nowhere to sell it to.

Instead of spreading disinformation, why not learn the economics here? Grid-scale battery arrays capable of supplying hours or even days of demand are prohibitively expensive, not to mention the associated environmental and safety concerns.

Centralised gen has oversupplied the grid for YEARS. It just burns the excess power off on the transmission lines etc.

Not only is this flatly incorrect, but it misses the point entirely. The largest problem power utilities face isn't creating the energy, but rather matching supply to demand in real time, second-by-second. Sources like gas, nuclear, hydro -- all can scale production to match demand. With wind and solar, you're either always producing too much or too little ... and one is just as bad as the other.

 

[lonetac]

Batteries are another way to increase the amount you self-consume. Expensive ATM - but hopefully cheaper soon.

Yeah, its next on our list. First we did the new roof, then the solar and next is battery power. Its the only way to get "off the grid" so to speak.

Even with solar, if the power goes down, we lose power. With a battery you dont. Thats driving our decision.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Instead of spreading disinformation, why not learn the economics here? Grid-scale battery arrays capable of supplying hours or even days of demand are prohibitively expensive, not to mention the associated environmental and safety concerns.


Not only is this flatly incorrect, but it misses the point entirely. The largest problem power utilities face isn't creating the energy, but rather matching supply to demand in real time, second-by-second. Sources like gas, nuclear, hydro -- all can scale production to match demand. With wind and solar, you're either always producing too much or too little ... and one is just as bad as the other.

Our coal gen does NOT respond to changes in demand dynamically very fast at all. If you have ANY grid understanding at all, the grids are designed to have cascading voltage levels at transmission, distribution and consumer levels and increases in SUPPLY push the voltage levels UP at these levels. This causes MORE power loss on the transmission etc. And it can cause consumer devices to consume more power because the AC at the socket will be higher!!!

Why do you think voltage rating at AC is often a large range? 230-250VAC for Australia for example?

 

[Endymio]

Our coal gen does NOT respond to changes in demand dynamically very fast at all. If you have ANY grid understanding at all, the grids are designed to have cascading voltage levels at transmission, distribution and consumer levels and increases in SUPPLY push the voltage levels UP at these levels. This causes MORE power loss on the transmission etc. And it can cause consumer devices to consume more power because the AC at the socket will be higher!!!

Why do you think voltage rating at AC is often a large range? 230-250VAC for Australia for example?

Shockingly incorrect, for multiple reasons.

1. Simple mathematics. The mean value of 230 and 250 is 240, so ignoring other factors, supplying voltage smoothly over that range is no different than perfectly at 240v.

2. A higher voltage means less losses during transmission -- it's the entire reason we use very high voltages to transmit power long distances, then down-convert at the other end.

3. Most consumer devices nowadays convert line voltage to a fixed value. For those that don't, reactive loads like A/C compressors are more efficient at higher voltages, whereas resistive loads like heating coils break even -- higher voltages consume more power, but they work faster, and thus need less runtime.

4. Most importantly of all -- while coal and nuclear are poor at load following, non-demand sources like solar and wind are orders of magnitude worse. Such sources always produce too much or too little, which explains why every nation that's attempted to use them for more than a small friction of grid power has been forced to either build large amounts of (fast-reacting) natural gas generators to accompany them, and/or to use the power grids of their less-green neighbors to supply-balance.