an interesting read on Solar/CC etc

[king1]

https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/08/28/an-eng...-doing-it/

[harm_less]

https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/08/28/an-eng...-doing-it/

Rewiring Aotearoa are a clever group of individuals who can see the benefits that are possible by a major rejig of our electricity generation and transmission system. It's totally frustrating that Simeon Brown is driven by ideology and fossil fuel supporting corporations and flatly refuses to take any of this knowledge onboard. He and the coalition are just screwing over NZers to the benefit of their lobbyists.

The latest event along these lines is the quiet granting of a seabed mining permit area in the South Taranaki Bight that is 4 times the previous area that was turned down by the industry regulator but then dropped as the Fast Track consenting bill was announced. The increase in the area in question will now make the chances of a planned offshore windfarm in that area virtually impossible. Treacherous bastards!
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/09/03/seabed...77c14fd054

[harm_less]

Saul's New Zealand presentation.

[nzoomed]

I know someone heavily involved with power generation in the energy sector, he believes solar is the future, but as it stands the grid cannot cope with the extra demands imposed if every rooftop was putting solar into the grid.
I expect this is the same issue Australia is facing where they are penalising people for putting power into the grid at peak times.
Basically its a mix of a lack of foresight and the lines companies wanting to retain as much profit by deferring investment into the lines to handle solar/EV's.
Only real way to get around this is by installing a battery.
Thankfully solar panels and batteries have come down in price tremendously, it was around $1 per watt not that long ago, and now I see panels around 500W for only $260 each.
They can be had for wholesale even less, we are at the point now where solar is becoming affordable for the masses and its only going to become cheaper.
Hate to say it, but China is at least doing something positive in this field.

[harm_less]

Discount Tony's predictions with caution!

Also the situation in Australia cranked up to 35% of homes with PV due to incentives at a rate that the lines companies struggled (still are) with. Our much lower uptake rate together with lessons learnt from Australia's experience mean we can better upgrade our infrastructure as the growth occurs.

Having said that we are currently seeing a series of power outages as Powerco installs a voltage regulator device in our rural location due to increased demands on their grid infrastructure. Apparently they have chosen to take the cheap option so an indication of continued short term vision and expectations.

[harm_less]

And then there's our current government's energy strategy  

[nzoomed]

And then there's our current government's energy strategy  

I dont know if lake Onslow was the best value for money with the way solar is going, but at least it appears the government are focusing on offshore wind and solar which is somewhat reassuring but we need a long way to go.
The other disadvantage I see is the North island has the highest electricity demands and getting it sent up all the way north creates additional problems that Transpower is still working on upgrading with the HVDC link, etc.
With the costs of solar coming down its possible that widespread solar farms might be a viable option.
Then ive been hearing about gravity batteries which look rather interesting and even compressed air, might actually work out better than the lake battery?

[harm_less]

Hydro is definitely a valuable component in our electricity infrastructure given its huge storage capacity acting as a long term buffer for the intermittency of wind and solar but the cost of developing Lake Onslow as an addition to that storage capacity does rely on the future of climate related disruption of inflows into the existing dams being proved correct.

The weakness of solar and wind generation is its intermittent nature which other countries counter by way of grid scale battery facilities. We have hydro that can serve the same purpose by dam levels being able to be maintained to an increasing degree as those renewables offset hydro fed consumption. In that same vein the greater prevalence of solar and wind facilities in the North Island can be utilised to offset Waikato River generation to the advantage of mitigating South to North Island transmission. My point is that the ebb and flow of electricity consumption need not be a case of generation needing to be sent the length of the country in order for its benefits to be gained, and in the case of distributed generation such as rooftop solar and domestic scale wind or hydro it is often consumed very close to its source with negligible impact on the grid at large.

The biggest barrier NZ has presently insofar as rectifying our current 'energy crisis' is a government who can't see beyond feathering the nests of their fossil fuel corporate supporters. The Lake Onslow article demonstrates this bias as does Simeon Brown's total ignorance of any generation solution beyond importing LNG. This strategy will expose NZ to rising international pricing for this commodity as well as ensuring the genretailers can maintain high and increasing generation costs due to the broken wholesale electricity pricing structure we are stuck with. And there is definitely something wrong when our government go from concern about agricultural methane emissions in one breath to importing shiploads of methane in the form of LNG in the next.

Apparently though the government is expecting electricity gentailers to stump up for the cost of LNG terminal developments rather than put taxpayers' money in those facilities. The problem is that from what I'm hearing from industry circles is that the electricity sector don't want a bar of investing in such short term and volatile strategies so LNG ain't going to be a thing any time soon.

Also some good info from Dave Borlace on gravity storage systems:

[nzoomed]

Importing LNG will only make energy costs higher I would have thought, I can only see it as a stop gap measure to fill in excess demands.
Really we should be getting away from gas ASAP so we are no longer dependent on it, especially imported gas.
Gravity storage could come in very handy, but if battery technology improves, then it may become more cost effective.
I can see batteries being a good supplement to wind farms.
As far as solar goes, it's probably the most predictable at the end of the day. The worst thing that could happen is lower generation output on an overcast day, but the sun us guaranteed to shine each day.
In an ideal world, it would be nice to see solar provide the bulk of our energy needs with our wind and hydro being able to top the excess.

This article is a good read.
https://theconversation.com/with-a-milli...ves-237851

[harm_less]

[snip]
This article is a good read.
https://theconversation.com/with-a-milli...ves-237851

The situation it describes with Australia having to move towards batteries to timeshift their significant domestic solar generation capacity serves to highlight just how valuable our hydro storage capacity is in its ability to buffer intermittent solar and wind generation.

Incentivising up take of rooftop solar and domestic battery installation is just as relevant here in NZ as for Australia, particularly to mitigate transmission investment and electricity transmission losses. It's just frustrating to see the fossil fuel lobby queering the advance of an elegant solution to future energy needs.

Check out my reply to CT in his Shane Jones thread in Politics for more on the current problems with NZ's electricity sector.

[nzoomed]

[snip]
This article is a good read.
https://theconversation.com/with-a-milli...ves-237851

The situation it describes with Australia having to move towards batteries to timeshift their significant domestic solar generation capacity serves to highlight just how valuable our hydro storage capacity is in its ability to buffer intermittent solar and wind generation.

Incentivising up take of rooftop solar and domestic battery installation is just as relevant here in NZ as for Australia, particularly to mitigate transmission investment and electricity transmission losses. It's just frustrating to see the fossil fuel lobby queering the advance of an elegant solution to future energy needs.

Check out my reply to CT in his Shane Jones thread in Politics for more on the current problems with NZ's electricity sector.

Will do.

Australia will need to address timeshifting with batteries for sure with their spread out time zones.
It also looks like there is a very ambitious project planned to generate solar power and export to southeast Asia via an undersea.

We can expect the oil industry to lobby things for sure, but they are very aware of the situation they are in and have been quietly investing in power generation and my fear is that the same crowd will end up controlling the energy sector. 
We are not really seeing this in new zealand yet, but it's inevitable I feel.
That's one reason I'm more eager to install solar to save on energy costs.
Have also been reading this article here, looks like China is really moving fast with solar and EVs and this is just the tip of the iceberg. 
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-21/m.../104016030

[harm_less]

Another factor worth noting in regard to NZ & AU's differences in grid infrastructure is that Aussie's baseload generation is primarily coal powered which has a significant delay involved in ramping up or closing down to address grid loads. NZ by contrast has hydro as our base load supply which can be 'turned on and off' very quickly so is better suited to near instaneously addressing grid inputs by intermittent sources such as wind and solar.

In Australia's case it seems they have addressed the 'laggyness' of their baseload installations by throttling their significant rooftop solar capacity as a input control mechanism. We are far better suited to widescale domestic solar rollout due to our huge hydro storage and generation capacity.

On reading further into that article you would find Brett Christophers' book The Price is Wrong of interest on the matter of the resistance to renewables in the world's generation grids. It's not as straightforward as their cheaper implementation compared to existing methods. There are some very complex economic and political conflicts at play there.