Australia is ramping up for an energy storage boom, but, once again, political apathy and outdated attitudes are limiting a revolutionary transformation of energy supply.
When South Australia’s Hornsdale Power Reserve came online last November, what was then the world’s largest lithium ion battery received both international attention and the expected disinterest from the Coalition.
A joint project between the SA government, Tesla and French company Neoen, the 100MW/129MWh battery largely runs off Neoen’s nearby 309MW wind farm. It has so far exceeded expectations in delivering both cheap, dispatchable backup power and longer-term frequency control, so much so that what will be the next world’s largest battery — the SIMEC Zen Energy 120 MW/140MWh storage facility — is set to be switched on down the road in Port Augusta.
Add to this utility scale batteries contracted across most other states and territories, Port Augusta’s solar thermal plant (AKA molten salt), and a bunch of new pumped hydro projects across the country, including a gold mine in Queensland, and it all paints a rather rosy future for energy storage in Australia.
But the truth is that batteries like Hornsdale could remain the exception rather than the rule, with research indicating Australia wouldn’t actually need new storage in order to hit 50% renewables by 2030, let alone the federal government’s universally panned emissions reductions target of 26-28%.
Professor Andrew Stock of the Climate Council believes the 26% goal will fetter Australia’s capacity to attract new technologies, because “the government’s own modelling shows you only need very little renewables added to 2030 to meet it”.
“What that means is things like more widely deployed solar, technologies that can make the grid smarter, all these things will take a lot longer to roll out had there been higher targets driving more innovation and more investment,” Stock said. “One of the things that is somewhat hidden in the current dialogue around the National Energy Guarantee, particularly on the emissions side, is that it will provide little encouragement for those firms to stay in Australia and continue to build renewables here, because, simply put, the nation won’t need them”.
While there have been some promising recent signs from the federal government on storage, which recently matched a $25 million contribution to two Victorian batteries, they have also historically dismissed and downplayed South Australia’s achievement, with Treasurer Scott Morrison specifically comparing Hornsdale to the “Big Banana”.
This attitude, deliberately or otherwise, misses the point of a technology absolutely primed for a more flexible energy grid. Because while it won’t bring Snowy Hydro’s 2000MWs to the grid, Hornsdale’s tender to deliver 70MW contingency power for up to 10 minutes, and 30MW of load sharing for three to four hours, was all that South Australia needed.
Rather than simply discharge backup wind power (which, as we saw when the Loy Yang power plant tripped in December, the battery can do), Hornsdale offered a more efficient, cost-effective form of managing supply and demand than existing frequency control services.
According to Stock, the real growth Australia can expect to see with or without federal momentum is in household batteries (barring, of course, certain state governments not actively revoking them). These can both work in isolation to take pressure off the grid and store solar power for later, or, alternatively, work together to help create a “virtual power plant”.
And similar to rooftop photovoltaic solar power (PV) systems a decade ago, prices for battery packs are falling (80% decrease since 2010 and expected to halve again by 2025) and usage is starting to kick off (6750 in 2016, compared to 20,000 in 2017).
“So this is a market that is starting, it’s still embryonic, but it’s starting to accelerate,” Stock said. “And that will continue because consumers still see benefits in storing their electricity from PV, and, rather than export it to the grid, store it so they don’t have to buy off the grid at night at inflated prices.”
Other changes include updating an infamously slow-moving regulation to better enable these new power sources, creating free or low-cost solar and batteries to poorer households to tackle “power poverty”, bringing in smarter, energy-efficient appliances that can be managed remotely, and, looking further into the future, electric vehicles acting as mobile batteries to further support the grid.
If we are going to see real change, Australia needs a completely new attitude towards power supply and distribution. That, and a renewable energy target that doesn’t actively hold everything back.
Another small nugget of wisdom Chris. Interesting linkage of electric cars available as a mobile battery backup to household solar; but doesn’t it make one weep, if not rage, at the vested interests of LNP politicians on-going obstruction. Holding back of national aspirations is nothing short of treason or at least a calculated attack upon young Australians?
This is a good review, very interesting and encouraging. In a few short years battery storages will be commonplace and people will forget how they managed without them in the past (like mobile phones now…)
Please bring it on. Soon as you like…
SA’s “big” battery is many things, but “cheap, despatchable, backup power” is hardly an accurate description. ACOLA’s recent report on storage (https://acola.org.au/wp/esp/) estimated that you’d need 600MW to have prevented SA’s 2016 blackout. So the battery isn’t big enough to do that. What happens if we lose 400 MW and we have a 100 MW/129MWh battery? A backup system would allow the grid to keep functioning … that’s what the word means! At best the battery provides a couple of seconds grace to allow load dumping mechanisms to dump a bunch of suburbs (or industries) with an aggregate load of 400 MW … or to allow the interconnecter supply to rise to fill the gap (assuming it isn’t too heavily loaded). Are batteries being used anywhere on the planet to provide power? Ignoring pumped hydro, the answer is no. They are being used as buffering components in grids, nothing more. Lastly, the falling price of batteries may be coming to an end. Tesla recent raised it’s prices for its home batteries as the global cobalt bottleneck starts to bite. With half of the worlds cobalt coming from the Congo, there’s a serious supply bottleneck. Sure, Congo has plenty more children it can add to the current 40,000 it has in mines producing cobalt for the renewable revolution, but it will take more than just throwing children at the problem. Most cobalt is a byproduct of other mines and it is rarely profitable to increase output of cobalt alone. So look forward to more price rises.
What would have prevented SA’s 2016 blackout was pylons that didn’t fall over in record high winds.
We’ve had other losses of power even bigger than that loss of pylons, but without a state wide blackout. The reason the loss of pylons caused the blackout is quite clear from Table 11, page 55 of the FINAL AEMO report on the blackout. When we had the previous power losses of bigger than 450MW, we had much larger amounts of synchronous power (ie., fewer renewables). These provided the system inertia needed to maintain frequency long enough to shed unmatched load and stop the entire grid crashing. We used to have 10,000 MW.s of inertia, but now with the growth of renewables, we only had 3,000 MW.s when the storm hit.
Let’s just give up and burn more coal. That will fix everything. Especially LNP bank balances.
Australia has huge nickel/ cobalt reserves in remote NPY lands of SA and WA particularly. Sadly tax payers are once again subsidizing exploration without any return beside a few dozen jobs created, just sit back and watch as its shipped overseas; only to return 1000% more expensive.
Thank you Chis for a very good article. The points you make, along with the real-life success of the project at Woking in Surrey demonstrate that household consumers do not need a ‘grid’. Woking went off the UK ‘grid’ in 2008. Therefore, what consumers need is local shared generation and shared power, like Woking. That brings energy down to local control and largely disconnects us from corporate incompetence and greed. Historically, the logic of the grid, which has only really been developed since the early 1960s, was to interconnect big industrial users so that they could be sold cheap power subsidised by individuals. The new and emerging technologies are destroying the logic and the economics of a massive and expensive grid in which over 50% of the electricity generated is simply lost through transmission. But I have no expectations that the neo-liberal dolts in the LNP can even understand this obvious benefit for society. Under neo-liberalism only business ‘competition’ and outrageous rent-seeking can benefit society. The world is indeed MAD.
You want renewables? Then you need a bigger grid, not a smaller one. Why, because you need to shift electricity from where you harvest it to where you need it. And if you harvest over a much bigger area, then you need a much bigger grid. How much bigger? One study reckons 5 to 11 times bigger. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148113005351 In SA, the Libs will be building a new interconnector … why? Because we now have so much wind power that when the wind is blowing, we have to dump electricity. So it’s better to build more interconnections … otherwise nobody will build anymore wind farms. If you can’t sell the power, why would you build it? Is Woking actually cut off from the grid? I’ll be she imports Chinese manufactured goods. Meaning she is dependent on the Chinese grid and probably many more. With HVDC transmission you can move large amounts of electricity with negligible losses.
I say let’s start thinking more local, smaller, more human, more control by real people. Not bigger, more industrial, remote, submission to corporate stupidity and greed.
A friend of mine is an electrician. He has a few stories of real people and their dodgy, dangerous self installed battery systems. There are really good reasons why we let engineers do engineering, electricians do electrical work and brain surgeons do brain surgery. Look at what has happened with all manner of would be experts thinking they understand climate science better than the scientists. Lack of respect for good science is the major reason we have so much climate denial.
Ah yes, Argumentum ad Anecdotum, what pro-coal trolls use in lieu of facts or evidence.
For the record, all bigger grids do is increase T&D losses, & provide ever more points for critical failures. Its the same reason why offices went with networked microcomputers over a mainframe approach.
Yes, Geoff, it would be much better to dispense with the dangerous high voltages that require the services of highly trained and thus expensive electricians.
The 110 volt system of the US is an example of a low voltage set up for safety.
Local transmission can be set up to only allow half that voltage to ever be available to provide a shock , which at that level is non-lethal.
The Rainbow Power Company, a renewables pioneer in Australia, has consulted with intentional communities to provide such safe direct current/battery set-ups for their local grid supply.
Your electrician friend could easily skill-up to join such an industry, and be part of the solution to dodgy,dangerous self installed battery systems.
Just takes a bit of physics and electrical engineering, some higher mathematics and a willingness to recognise inadequate understanding, as you so correctly advise.
Unfortunately technical “specialists” dependent on the ignorance of their customers are sometimes, understandably, unwilling to embrace change.
Heartily agree BA
Or you could build more battery banks and harvest the wind power?
Thanks Chris…what you say about South Australia makes sense to me because I live here.
What is totally mystifying is that the drongos in this state just voted in a Lieberal government, who will now slowly dismantle all the good work done by Jay Wetherill and the Labor government…just because they can!
GO FIGURE!!!!!
There was a swing towards Labor at this election. The Libs only snuck across the line thanks to redrawing of the boundaries.