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Know your NEM: Still cooking as grid consumption soars
Record solar, wind “save” NSW consumers as coal, gas went missing
Malcolm Turnbull has battery storage installed in Point Piper home
Hamilton quits CCA over Coalition’s “unconscionable” push to coal
Pollinate Energy, an Australian social enterprise, wins support from Tata Trusts
The anatomy of an energy crisis - a pictorial guide, Part 1
Who could forget the energy “crises” that affected electricity supply across south-eastern Australia last year.
Firstly the Tasmanian crisis, following the Basslink outage in December 2015. With hydro storage dams at record lows following a drought on the back of aggressive storage withdrawals during the carbon tax years, Tasmania enforced drastic measures to ensure supply. Thankfully, flooding winter rains, together with the eventual restoration of Basslink in June helped resuscitate the apple isle’s energy supply. Tasmania’s hydro storages now stand at around 40% of full capacity, more than double at the same time last year.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156441/width754/image-20170211-23354-ci30zi.png)
July saw the first of the sequence of crises in South Australia that followed from, and were in many eyes, attributable to the closure of its last coal-fired power plant at Port Augusta in May of 2016.
With gas prices at record highs, and South Australia effectively isolated from Victoria due to upgrades on the main interconnector into Victoria, spot prices sky rocketed, culminating on a cold, windless winter day on July 7th. Energy consumers that had not contracted supply were at the whims of traders. Prices averaged over $1400/MWhour for the day and around $520/MWhour for the week, almost 800% above the average for that time of year.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156442/width754/image-20170211-23347-17gepyr.png)
All that was superseded by the events of September, when extreme winds played havoc with the South Australian transmission system, toppling transmission lines in the mid north. Poorly understood default control settings automatically disconnected wind farms, leading to the interconnector tripping and a state-wide blacked out. Unanticipated problems in restarting the system exacerbated the pain.
Finally, failure of a transmission line in south-west Victoria on December 1 lead to a power loss at the aluminium smelter in Portland. The damage to “frozen” pot lines has jeopardised the smelter’s ongoing viability. As the state’s largest energy consumer and the one of the biggest regional employers, the political fallout is intense.
After the NEM’s “annus horibilus”With 2016 very much the National Electricity Market’s (NEM) “annus horibilus”, pundits awaited the summer of 2017 with bated breath. The combination of high gas prices, frighteningly intense summer heat, a fragile and ageing energy supply system, and increasing concerns about market rules, the scene was set for “interesting times”. Whatever was to transpire it was always going to be inflamed by political point-scoring - the one commodity that seems rarely in short supply.
And so it would prove to be, even in the northern states of Queensland and New South Wales that had hither-too largely escaped the wrath of Electryone.
The summer of 2017 has seen extraordinary rises beset the spot market across the country, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland. Further blackouts in South Australia, and market interventions to avert them in New South Wales, have done little to assuage concern that our electrical power system is no longer fit for purpose. Queensland 2017 prices have been some is 400% above the historical average for this time of year.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156446/width754/image-20170212-23354-epkck6.png)
With the summer far from finished, our politicians remain hard at it, pointing fingers and apportioning blame, doing almost anything and everything but that which is in most short supply - namely, embracing bipartisanship. A glimmer of hope is to be found in comments from Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, who has been charged to lead a review of the security of our National Electricity Market.
What is our NEM?To provide some guide to what is happening to the NEM, and why, I have compiled a few pictures that illustrate elements its basic anatomy. This is designed as background. In following posts in this series I will focus on the details of recent events that have so heightened the political heat.
The NEM comprises five interconnected regional jurisdictions - one for each state along the eastern seaboard and South Australia. For each region, the market operator AEMO runs a 5-minute interval, energy-only, dispatch ‘pool’, or spot market. The objective is to balance supply with demand in a way that minimises cost, based on the bids submitted by generators. It is a complicated process. Settlement prices are aggregated at half hourly intervals, and determined as the average of bid prices of the last offer needed to meet the demand for the dispatch interval.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156479/width754/image-20170212-23324-xgwefd.png)
With the focus of the dispatch ‘pool’ being least cost electricity supply, AEMO also operates several ancillary markets to ensure the requirements for safe grid operation are met. This includes the provision of reserve supply and frequency control normally sourced from synchronous generators such as large coal plants.
AEMO also has regulatory powers to intervene in the market by demanding generation be made available in cases when the total bid capacity is insufficient. When demand exceeds total capacity, or if the available capacity cannot be made available in a timely fashion, AEMO can authorise load-shedding, effecting a re-balancing of demand to meet the available generation capacity.
Normally, large electricity consumers will contract power supply via the contract market, rather than directly through the spot market. This insures consumers against the potential for extreme price volatility allowed on the spot market, that can see prices range from between -$1000 and $14,000/MWhour. For comparison, the standard domestic retail tariff is about $250/MWhour or $0.25/kWhour.
The bid strategies of power plants reflect differences in their cost structures and performance characteristics. For example, fuel costs for brown coal generators are very low, but they are best operated at constant load. In contrast gas plants are generally much more rampable, but much higher cost. In Victoria, as a consequence gas is used almost exclusively to meet peaks in demand as illustrated in the three graphics below.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156483/width754/image-20170212-23324-1zbgke.png)
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156480/width754/image-20170212-23331-128bxve.png)
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156482/width754/image-20170212-23342-1u86pkr.png)
Typically a large base-load generator, such as a brown coal plant, will bid much of its capacity into the spot market at their short run cost, to ensure a slice of the action. In contrast peaking power plants will bid at price well above marginal cost, anticipating that they will required only very occasionally. Forward contracts of various kinds help insure revenue streams for base load generators against spot prices below their long-term cost of production, and for peaking plants being available when needed.
Renewables such as wind dispatch at the whims of the weather, and because of negligible short run marginal costs, bid their output at very low prices. As a price taker, wind generation tends to drive spot prices lower, impacting the viability of other generators. As shown below, and to be discussed in more detail in a following posts, the recent events in South Australian dispatch highlights the challenges in the market when wind power output correlates poorly with demand.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156484/width754/image-20170212-23342-466hsw.png)
Finally, rooftop PV is not dispatched onto the grid, but rather is “revealed” to the market as a demand in reduction.
Why are spot prices risingIn theory, the spot market is designed to encourage a competition that ensures prices provide generators with a revenue stream that is linked to their long run marginal cost of production. If prices do depart, competitive market principles should ensure system re-balancing either through investment in new generation or the withdrawal of old. Of course, competition needs to be provided by an adequate diversity in ownership.
And so shifts in the spot prices, signalled via the contract markets, are designed to reflect the balance of demand and supply. The years 2009-2014 were characterised by persistent reductions in demand across the NEM, in part due to growing penetration of solar PV. At the same time, the addition of new wind farms to meet Renewable Energy Target contributed to a growing oversupply in the market, reflected in very subdued spot prices. For example from 2010-2014, Victorian spot prices averaged about $35/MWhour, after factoring out the carbon tax. While that price is above the cost of production for existing Victorian brown coal generators, it would be well nigh impossible to obtain financing for any new large scale generation at prices less than about 2-3 times that.
Since 2014, demand has risen in Queensland due in part to the commissioning of new LNG gas processing facilities at Curtis Island. Reductions in generation capacity in Victoria and South Australia due to closure and/or mothballing of several fossil plants (Anglesea in Victoria and Northern and Pelican Point in South Australia), has significantly tightened the supply-demand balance. Consequently, spot prices are on the rise across the NEM.
Why do spot prices vary between regions?Spot prices averaged about $60/MWhour across last year, but vary somewhat by region, and by season, and by jurisdiction.
As shown in diagrams above the make-up of generation in each of the five regions varies considerably, leading to different cost structures. Similarly differences in demand profiles lead naturally to differences in generation fleet. Finally there are differences in market competition.
With limited interconnection capacity, along with differences in regional demand and generation portfolios, occasionally lead to large separation in spot market prices. In times of very high demand during summer heat waves and winder cold snaps, or in times when supply is constrained by infrastructure (power plant or transmission) outages or fuel supply/cost issues, spot prices can be extremely volatile.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156445/width754/image-20170212-23354-18uffn4.png)
Historically, South Australia has had the highest prices and Victoria the lowest. This reflects the higher much higher proportion of gas in the generation mix, its larger proportional daily/seasonal cycle between minimum and maximum demand and, arguably, competition issues. As illustrated below, peak demand in South Australia is over 250% higher than the median, compared to around 150% in Queensland. A greater relative proportion of peaking generation capacity means higher average spot prices. Competition is a particular issue in South Australia, since the closure of the Northern Power Station, as it is in Queensland.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156478/width754/image-20170212-23331-63hlpa.png)
It is important to realise that while the physical characteristics of any power system are governed by the laws of physics, the market itself is a construct - just one of many ways of matching supply and demand. In particular as an energy-only ‘pool’ , there are questions about how well our NEM is suited to meeting the need of providing a cost effective, secure and environmentally acceptable energy supply. In particular, there is very little incentive for demand side management. Moreover, the power system does not operate in isolation, and needs to be considered with other policy settings in the gas and water markets as well as climate policy. In the following posts in this series I intend to address some of these issues with examples drawn from our recent experience on the NEM.
![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/71789/count.gif)
Mike Sandiford receives funding from ARC and ANLEC.
UK unprepared for exiting Europe's green legislation, says Lucas
Green MP says 1,100 pieces of environmental law need to be moved on to UK statute books before Britain leaves EU
Britain is hugely unprepared for the potential impact of Brexit on environmental protection, with more than 1,100 pieces of EU green legislation needing to be moved into UK law for safeguards to be maintained, according to a report by the Green MP Caroline Lucas.
Lucas, who spent 11 years as an MEP before being elected to parliament, said environmental protections faced “a cocktail of threats from Brexit”.
Continue reading...Why did energy regulators deliberately turn out the lights in South Australia?
Country Diary 100 years ago: The red-breasted bullfinch does a flit
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 17 February 1917
Surrey
The vane above the old church tower moves uneasily a point, and scarcely more, from east towards the south. It is not much, but just enough this morning to make the top of the frosty earth crumble as you walk across a field which was ploughed weeks ago, to show cart tracks along the border way, and, what is more, to set the birds in movement and in voice over the hedgerows and among the trees. When snow not long since lay in the birch wood on the far side of the common the young trees appeared to be dull yellow, but now, with the snow gone, they are cream in colour. The thin shreds of bark peel off like knitted fragments and scatter among the lengthening tassels on hazel boughs. A plaintive note comes from the far side of the birches, then a pause; the swish of the wind goes through or between the long, hanging limbs; the note sounds again, and then, as if following it, a bullfinch flits, the rich red of his breast set off by the darker feathers, which in the lights and shadows among the trees are beautiful beyond belief. You wait a long while to catch sight of any company he may have, but to-day there is none; a stormcock flies on to the highest branch of an ash at the corner of the copse and fills the empty air with singing; you move, and he drops, almost like a stone, below the boughs, but in the space of a short pause is up and again in full song. There is a clamour in the south where the sky is so heavy as to forbid the sight of what it all may mean, but momentarily a great flight of rooks – over a hundred – comes into view, well up in the air, wheeling in an almost solid body to the west. The noise seems to animate everything. Wood pigeons scatter into small flocks, some going this way and some that, a bantam crows, the sheep bleat and the lambs call, the cattle coming from the shed yonder sniff the air and low, halting in their march toward the mangold which lies in a heap near the slicing machine.
When smog hits the headlines
January’s smog broke recent records, but while glib comparisons with Beijing can result in action, they are also misleading
Newspaper headlines in January told us that London’s air pollution was worse than Beijing. BBC journalist Joseph D’Urso likened this to the heatwave weather stories each summer that say Brighton is hotter than Barcelona. Brighton is not normally as warm as Barcelona. Comparing particle pollution, London was worse than Beijing for four smoggy days, from 20 to 23 January, but over the whole month London’s particle pollution was around a quarter of that in the Chinese capital.
Related: Paris tries something different in the fight against smog
Continue reading...Mass beaching of whales at NZ beach
Senior Republicans push for climate change action
Solar farms lead renewables boom
Why we need to map all Earth’s critters, quick | Letters
This is the great age of cartography, says Lois Parshley’s timely reminder of the importance of understanding landscapes (The long read, 7 February), and mapping everything from sediment-laden ocean floors to patterns of disease outbreaks in earthquake-hit locations.
Related: Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O Wilson – review
Continue reading...How drones can help fight the war on shark attacks
Following an unprecedented series of shark attacks off Australian beaches, the need to find practical solutions is intensifying.
Aerial drones could be an important tool for reducing risk of shark attacks on our beaches within the coming years. Here’s how it would work. Drones would fly autonomously over beaches continuously scanning for sharks with image recognition software.
If a shark is detected, real-time video will be instantly sent to beach authorities, such as lifeguards. If it is a dangerous shark, appropriate action can be taken to ensure public safety, such as sounding alarms and clearing people from the water.
Like other shark bite mitigation measures, this cannot completely eliminate the possibility of a shark attack. However, it could help to reduce the risk to an acceptable level for the majority of beach users.
Importantly, the drone-based approach to shark bite mitigation does not harm sharks or other marine wildlife, such as whales, dolphins, rays and sea turtles, unlike more controversial shark control measures such as mesh nets or baited drum lines.
Surfer has a close encounter with a great white shark as seen by a drone. Testing dronesAs part of the NSW government’s A$16 million Shark Management Strategy, researchers from the NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) and Southern Cross University (SCU) have demonstrated that drones can reliably detect sharks off Australian beaches.
NSW DPI researchers have also compared the costs and benefits of marine wildlife sightings between drones and helicopters, as well as established environmental conditions suitable for drones to provide effective shark detection capabilities.
This summer, a team of SCU and DPI researchers completed an intensive drone trial on five important beaches in NSW to verify that drones will work in the long term. As part of the trial, drones performed six 20-minute patrols each morning on each beach for every day of the school holidays.
Researchers monitoring drone footage spotted great white, bull, whaler, mako and hammerhead sharks off NSW beaches. They also saw many dolphins, sea turtles and less dangerous shark species, such as shovel-nosed sharks.
These trials included experiments comparing “people versus machines” by evaluating the utility of automated flight paths and shark recognition software.
Drone captures a great white shark cruising the shallows of Northern NSW. Automating the drone-based approachThe overall objective of this research is to develop a fully automated drone-based shark surveillance system in the near future.
We envisage that a team of aerial drones could run continuous shark detection missions during the hours when most people are on our beaches.
When required, each drone will automatically take off, patrol for sharks, land itself and charge up again, ready for the next mission. If a drone detects a shark, to can alert beach authorities.
Their response will vary depending on the species of shark detected and its location. This will be immediately apparent from the live video feed and location data they receive. As well as tracking sharks, the drones will also be fitted with sirens and lights to contribute to any emergency actions.
Great white shark off a beach in Northern NSW. Problems to solveThere are still at least five major challenges to overcome before establishing a fully functional automated drone-based shark surveillance system. But these could be gradually overcome within the next few years.
Civil aviation regulations
Aviation regulations restrict the use of fully automated drones in most airspace. We could overcome this problem by modifying the law or establishing restricted zones over beaches where drones can fly.
Public safety concerns
We need to minimise the risk of injury as a result of drone failure, by making sure their flight components are failsafe and having flight paths clear of beachgoers. We also need airspace safety systems to ensure that drones are grounded when emergency and other aircraft are in the vicinity.
Public privacy concerns
A drone-based shark surveillance system would require public acceptance. For this, beachgoers need to be aware of the sorts of data being collected by the drones, and to rest assured that this does not breach privacy legislation.
Reliable hardware
Although aerial drones can already automatically take off, fly routes, land and charge themselves, it is not clear how reliably this technology will stand up to the Australian beach environment. To be effective, we will need drones that can reliably function under heavy workloads in coastal conditions. Similarly, data transfer platforms also need to be fast and reliable.
Purpose-designed software
Image analysis software needs to be further developed to automatically detect sharks with a high level of accuracy. Customised software will also need to be developed to coordinate the missions of a team of drones and to ensure seamless video streaming to the portable wireless devices of beach authorities and users.
In terms of the hardware and software challenges, there are a number of research groups racing towards solutions with the goal of commercialising their products. Once an automated drone-based technology for shark bite mitigation is in place, it should be possible to solve issues regarding legislation, safety and privacy.
Given the current rate of technological development and the falling costs of commercially available drones, fully automated drones could be reducing the risk of shark attacks on Australian beaches within five years. However, for many nervous beachgoers, this may not be soon enough.
![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/71633/count.gif)
Brendan Kelaher receives funding from the NSW Department Primary Industries for two PhD students working on shark projects.
Andrew Colefax receives project funding for his PhD from the NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI). He also receives additional work from the NSW DPI.
Paul Butcher works for NSW Department of Primary Industries. He receives funding from the NSW and Commonwealth Governments. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Southern Cross University.
Vic Peddemors receives funding from the NSW Government, the Australian Research Council and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) on behalf of the Australian Government.
Bob Creese does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Energy policy: no room for partisan politics, 18 groups tell government
Joint statement says years of finger-pointing have destroyed investor confidence in Australia’s energy sector
A coalition of business, energy, investor, climate and welfare groups has issued a sharply worded wake-up call on the energy debate, declaring “finger pointing” and 10 years of partisan politics have destroyed investor confidence in Australia’s energy sector, “worsening reliability risks”.
The joint statement from 18 groups ranging from the Business Council of Australia to the Australian Council of Social Services follows months of zero sum political debate about energy policy, power prices and reliability, during which time the federal government has pre-empted a major review by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, by ruling out carbon trading in the electricity sector.
Continue reading...New Zealand whales: Hundreds refloat on high tide at Farewell Spit
Humans causing climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces
Researchers develop mathematical equation to determine impact of people’s intense activity on earth
For the first time, researchers have developed a mathematical equation to describe the impact of human activity on the earth, finding people are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces.
The equation was developed in conjunction with Professor Will Steffen, a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, and was published in the journal, The Anthropocene Review.
Continue reading...The eco guide to a happier, greener workplace
Natural lighting or at least LEDs will improve your mood, and there are other positive steps to take to make the office a more world-friendly environment
If you’re dreading the start of the working week tomorrow can I just check it’s not the lighting? A 1990s study showed plentiful natural light to be a top determinant of job satisfaction.
If you can’t get near a window at least press for LEDs (they have a life of up to 60,000 hours in comparison to 6,000 hours for a fluorescent tube). They also improve your mood, productivity and energy efficiency.
Continue reading...