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Queensland's electricity price spikes far worse than South Australia during 'crisis'
Analysis shows spike in fossil fuel-dominated state’s wholesale spot price this year far eclipses that in SA in July 2016 which sparked calls for a national inquiry into renewable energy
Extreme price spikes in Queensland’s fossil fuel-dominated electricity market this year have far eclipsed those seen in South Australia last July, which sparked calls of a national inquiry into renewable energy and led the federal Coalition to call for a halt to state-based renewable energy targets.
Since the start of 2017, Queensland’s wholesale spot price for electricity has spiked above $13,000 per megawatt hour a total of 71 times, according to analysis by Dylan McConnell from the Climate & Energy College at the University of Melbourne.
Continue reading...Hunters to protectors: The Maasai Olympics
When things don't go to plan
Environmentalists warn of bumblebee's extinction after Trump halts regulations
Order for 60-day pause on regulations not yet implemented includes protection for endangered rusty patched bumblebee, which experts say is near extinction
Donald Trump has been accused of targeting Muslims, media outlets and even department stores in his first month in the White House. Now, the US president may have doomed a threatened bumblebee.
An executive order freezing new regulations could push the rusty patched bumblebee towards extinction, environmental groups claim. The 60-day pause on all federal regulations that have yet to be implemented – which includes the bumblebee protection – will review “questions of fact, law, and policy they raise”, according to the White House memo.
Continue reading...Renewables, floods and the incredible Amazon catfish – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A tiger family drinking at the watering hole, a nightingale and a snake that plays dead are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...The world's most unloved, underappreciated wildlife – in pictures
Do you like pangolins or silky sharks? How about the black-legged kittiwake? Vote for your favourite in the Wildscreen Arkive’s Valentine’s Day campaign to help protect under-appreciated species from poaching and climate change
Why Australian cities are at risk of power outages – video explainer
As temperatures in New South Wales, South Australia, the ACT, Queensland and Victoria soar, there are predictions of rolling blackouts in some parts of the national electricity grid. However, experts agree there is more than enough generation capacity in the energy market to meet demand, so why are we having power outages? Is it market failure? Are renewables to blame? Or are power companies gaming the system?
Continue reading...With a head-pumping strut, the cattle egret struts around the cows
Warblington, Hampshire By associating with large ungulates, these birds can obtain up to 50% more food using two-thirds of the energy required for lone foraging
A loose flock of egrets has gathered by the cattle in the corner of the pasture to the west of the cemetery. Three of the white herons are immediately identifiable as little egrets, their yellow feet beacons in the mizzle. The fourth bird looks dumpy, hunchbacked and stubby-billed next to its elegant, slim-necked, rapier-billed cousins. It is a cattle egret, a species that has had one of the most rapid and wide-ranging natural expansions of any bird, but is still relatively rare in Britain. Two of them were spotted here in mid-December. A few days later, they were joined by a third and, by the new year, five birds were regularly being sighted in the fields surrounding the church.
Related: A solitary little egret is an elegant sentinel on the muddy creek
Continue reading...Volunteers try to save whales at New Zealand beach after mass stranding – video
Dozens of volunteers form a barrier in Golden Bay in an effort to prevent more whales from stranding themselves after hundreds died on Thursday night. The Department of Conservation (DOC) discovered 416 pilot whales had beached themselves at Farewell Spit at the top of the south island, the largest stranding in decades. Volunteer Peter Wiles said: ‘It is one of the saddest things I have seen.’
Continue reading...Frogs on the stove – the failure of privatised power
Coalition’s “clean” coal plan revealed to be an “idiotic” fantasy
CEFC warns against risky investment in 'clean coal' technology
Federal government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation says coal ‘seriously challenged’ as a commercial investment
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has said it is “very unlikely” it would invest in new coal-fired generators and poured cold water on the federal government’s push to support “clean coal” technology.
The CEFC’s hostile approach to the sustainability and commercial viability of new coal plants means the government will have to change CEFC’s investment rules or directly subsidise new coal plants if it wants to support them.
Continue reading...Why did energy regulators in South Australia deliberately turn out the lights?
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Last Wednesday evening, shortly after 6pm local time, around 90,000 homes and businesses in South Australia were deliberately disconnected from the electricity grid for up to an hour. In what is becoming a familiar pattern, this event provoked politicians and political actors to release a stream of claims and counter-claims about what happened and what should be done about it.
So why did it actually happen? At the start of the day, electricity was being supplied by a combination of wind power, the two interconnectors from Victoria, and a modest amount of local gas generation. As the day heated up (the temperature in Adelaide hit a maximum of 42℃), demand grew, wind generation fell away, and the volume of electricity supplied by gas generators increased rapidly.
Half-hourly total state electricity consumption reached its maximum for the day between 5.00pm and 5.30pm, by which time rooftop solar was supplying about 9% of the total. This is a very common pattern on hot days in the state.
As the sun went down, total consumption went down but solar generation went down faster. This is also very common and in theory there is more than enough capacity to meet this level of demand from gas-fired generators plus the interconnectors.
In practice, however, not all of South Australia’s gas generation was available on the day, meaning that it was not sufficient to meet demand. This happened shortly after 6.30pm local time, not helped by the fact that the maximum temperature arrived very late in the day, boosting the demand for after-work air conditioning.
Switched offTo prevent potentially widespread damage to the entire system, which might have triggered even more widespread blackouts, the Australian Energy Market Operator exercised its authority to instruct SA Power Networks (the local “poles-and-wires” distributor) to start a series of rolling disconnections of blocks of consumers – a tactic known as “load-shedding”.
Unfortunately, although the demand was only lowered by 3%, it affected a large number of consumers. It was about 40 minutes before the underlying demand had fallen to the point where available sources of generation could supply all the electricity that was required, at which time all customers were reconnected.
There are two reasons why this was deemed necessary. First, the peak demand for grid electricity was the highest for three years. Second, the amount of gas generation available on Wednesday was about 20% less than the nominally available capacity. Had the full capacity been available, the blackouts would have easily been avoided. It is this fact that has particularly angered the South Australian government, which is once again facing political derision for failing to keep the lights on.
The largest single part of the unavailable capacity is 240 megawatts – roughly 8% of the state’s total gas generation – at Pelican Point power station. Pelican Point is the highest-efficiency, lowest-emission thermal power station in South Australia. But nearly two years ago its owner, the French multinational Engie (which also owns the Hazelwood coal station in Victoria), announced that the rising cost of gas had made it too expensive to run at full capacity. Since then Pelican Point has operated only intermittently, and never at more than half of its nameplate capacity.
What a gasHigh gas prices are the direct result of the huge demand for gas by the three export LNG plants at Gladstone, in Queensland. Gas that might notionally have been used to supply electricity for South Australians is instead being shipped to customers in Asia.
Meanwhile, smaller amounts of nominally available gas-fired electricity were also offline in South Australia on Wednesday. We are unlikely to know why until the official reports on the incident are published.
More importantly, however, making more gas generation capacity available is only a short-term fix and does not seriously address the changes needed to maintain, in the words of the National Electricity Objective, a secure, reliable and affordable supply of electricity.
What kinds of changes will be required? A good starting point would be to acknowledge the role that rooftop solar is already playing in reducing peak demand for electricity from the grid. On Wednesday, the peak demand for grid-supplied electricity was about two hours later and 4% lower than it would have been if no one had solar panels.
The need for load-shedding could have been completely avoided with the help of technologies that are already available for power consumers to reduce their own demand. For more than a decade, demand-side participation (which gives consumers more influence over the timing and quantity of their own electricity use) and direct load control (which involves reducing specific customers’ demand at certain times) have both been talked about, reported on, trialled, and instituted in only a desultory way. They have never been taken seriously by either industry participants or their regulators.
Large-scale electricity storage has emerged only recently because of significant cost reductions. These are just some of the likely components of a low-emission, 21st-century electricity supply system.
Almost the only positive action which governments have taken on these matters in recent times has been to establish the review by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel. The real test for the politicians will be whether they understand and act decisively on what Finkel and his colleagues have to say.
![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/72729/count.gif)
Hugh Saddler is a member of the Board of the Climate Institute