30 January 2018, Te Conversation, Explainer: power station ‘trips’ are normal, but blackouts are not. Tens of thousands of Victorians were left without power over the long weekend as the distribution network struggled with blistering temperatures, reigniting fears about the stability of our energy system. It comes on the heels of a summer of “trips”, when power stations temporarily shut down for a variety of reasons. This variability has also been used to attack renewable energy such as wind and solar, which naturally fluctuate depending on weather conditions. The reality is that blackouts, trips and intermittency are three very different issues, which should not be conflated. As most of Australia returns to school and work in February, and summer temperatures continue to rise, the risk of further blackouts make it essential to understand the cause of the blackouts, what a power station “trip” really is, and how intermittent renewable energy can be integrated into a national system. Read More here
Tag Archives: Renewables
27 January 2018, DeSmog, Macron’s Pledge to Wipe out Coal Is Just as Meaningless as Trump’s Plan to Revive It. In a speech at the 2018 World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to “make France a model in the fight against climate change” and promised to shut all coal-fired power plants by 2021 — two years earlier than the timetable put forward by his predecessor. While Macron’s move is mainly symbolic since France only generates about 2.2 percent of its power from coal, it signals his government is actively trying to wean itself off fossil fuels in sharp contrast to the current policy of his U.S. counterpart. “We have finally ended the war on coal,” pretty much sums up American policy these days, as President Donald Trump declared in a recent speech. Behind the headlines and clear policy contrasts, however, lies an important point: The U.S. is likely to become coal plant free anyway, with or without presidential support. The reason is economics, which, as always, trumps the words of a politician — even if it can take longer. The US and Coal In the U.S., the Energy Information Administration has been charged, since the energy crises of the 1970s, with providing an unbiased view of the types of energy used to power the U.S. economy. Its data show that in 2006 about 10 percent of all electric power plants — 616 — ran on coal. By 2016, the latest year for which data are available, that figure dropped to just 4 percent, or 381 coal-fired power plants. That compares with 1,801 natural gas plants and 3,624 “other renewables” such as wind, up from 1,659 and 843 in 2006, respectively. Read More here
15 January 2018, Climate News Network, District heating warms cities without fossil fuels. Heating homes and offices without adding to the dangers of climate change is a major challenge for many cities, but re-imagined district heating is now offering an answer. A district heating scheme is a network of insulated pipes used to deliver heat, in the form of hot water or steam, from where it is generated to wherever it is to be used. As a way of providing warmth for thousands of homes, typically in multi-storey apartment buildings, district heating has a long history in eastern Europe and Russia. But the hot water it distributes typically comes from power stations burning coal or gas, which means more greenhouse gas emissions. Tapping into other forms of producing hot water, from renewable energy, bio-gas or capturing waste heat from industrial production, supermarkets or IT systems, provides alternative sources of large scale heating without adding to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Sweden has pioneered the switch from fossil fuels to other ways of heating water. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency says the country has gone from almost exclusively relying on fossil fuels to being 90% powered by renewable and recycled heat in 2017. Read More here
11 January 2018, The Conversation, A month in, Tesla’s SA battery is surpassing expectations. It’s just over one month since the Hornsdale power reserve was officially opened in South Australia. The excitement surrounding the project has generated acres of media interest, both locally and abroad. The aspect that has generated the most interest is the battery’s rapid response time in smoothing out several major energy outages that have occurred since it was installed. Following the early success of the SA model, Victoria has also secured an agreement to get its own Tesla battery built near the town of Stawell. Victoria’s government will be tracking the Hornsdale battery’s early performance with interest. Generation and Consumption Over the full month of December, the Hornsdale power reserve generated 2.42 gigawatt-hours of energy, and consumed 3.06GWh. Since there are losses associated with energy storage, it is a net consumer of energy. This is often described in terms of “round trip efficiency”, a measure of the energy out to the energy in. In this case, the round trip efficiency appears to be roughly 80%. The figure below shows the input and output from the battery over the month. As can be seen, on several occasions the battery has generated as much as 100MW of power, and consumed 70MW of power. The regular operation of battery moves between generating 30MW and consuming 30MW of power. Read More here