Via New Daily:
The world’s biggest lithium-ion battery — built by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s company Tesla last year — has survived its first summer in South Australia’s mid-north.
And according to a new report by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), it’s outperforming coal and gas generators on some key measures.
Here’s a look at how it’s performed and its potential impact on the future of power in Australia.
The big battery could stop another statewide blackout
In September 2016, South Australia was plunged into darkness when storms tore through transmission lines.
The faults in the transmission system prompted several wind farms to unexpectedly power down.
With that sudden loss of generation, South Australia immediately began drawing more power across the interconnector to Victoria, which overloaded and switched off.
Elon Musk’s Tesla battery is the size of an American football field and is capable of powering 30,000 homes.
The 100 MW output of the Tesla battery might appear small compared to South Australia’s peak energy demand of about 3000 MW, but its ability to quickly inject electricity within a fraction of a second is a large factor in its success.
AEMO is now working on a new protection scheme, and Tesla’s big battery will play a part.
It aims to detect high flows on the interconnector and trigger the battery to start discharging its full output as quickly as possible, while shedding power to homes and businesses if required.
And future batteries could also be a part of the scheme in the future.
The battery is capable of responding more quickly to problems than coal, gas or hydro
According to AEMO the speed, precision and agility of the battery is unprecedented in dealing with both major power system disturbances and day-to-day frequency variations.
Tesla’s impression of the South Australian battery farm
And on December 18 it got the chance to prove it, when a coal generator in New South Wales tripped.
The battery was able to respond to the sudden loss of 689 megawatts of generation within a fraction of a second.
A gas or steam turbine might have taken minutes to respond and adjust.
The Hornsdale Power Reserve is registered to provide what is known in the power markets as Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS).
FCAS requires providers to keep a little bit of power in reserve — which the market operator can use to help correct the supply/demand balance in response to minor changes in load or generation.
Some FCAS services are reserved for use in a major event — like a major power station fire, a transmission line tripping or a big industrial load switching off.
Until Tesla’s big battery switched on, FCAS services in Australia had only ever been provided by traditional coal, gas, diesel and hydro generators.
It has saved electricity customers cold hard cash
According to the report, early evidence shows the battery is helping cut some of the costs borne by South Australian electricity users.
With a high penetration of wind farms — which until recently haven’t offered FCAS — the state has sourced much of it back up power from generators on the eastern seaboard.
However, when the interconnector to Victoria is under maintenance AEMO is required to source some frequency control within the state.
Before the Tesla battery, there were only four gas-fired power stations offering those services.
The problem is, they’re not always available and can be very expensive, a cost which eventually flows through to South Australian energy consumers.
To put it in context, on a single day in October 2016, the Australian Energy Regulator found the cost of regulation services within SA exceeded $4.5 million, while buying these services has cost the state more than $50 million since 2015.
But with the battery now offering FCAS services at lower prices, the South Australian market has not seen similar price spikes over Summer.
It has been a money maker
According to analysis from consulting firm Energy Synapse, the Hornsdale Power Reserve has made an estimated $1.4 million so far by buying power when prices are low and selling when they’re high.
The overwhelming majority of this money – 95 per cent – was made on five very hot days in January and February, when prices were at their most volatile.
Interestingly, the Energy Synapse analysis estimates that the battery actually lost money in the energy market on 57 days.
But that doesn’t include the money made from FCAS.
It’s also not entirely clear how Neon’s money-making arbitrage strategy works, given it also owns the neighbouring Hornsdale Wind Farm, which is contracted to provide energy and shares a grid connection point.
Energy Synapse’s founder Marija Petkovic says the battery’s operators will need to be careful to avoid needlessly cycling it for little financial gain.
“This is an important consideration because the lifetime of a battery is strongly related to how many times it is cycled,” she wrote.
But, more financial incentives for battery owners should be introduced
The AEMO found the battery provided high-quality back up power and could respond more quickly to a major problem than traditional coal, gas or hydro generators.
But it said market didn’t adequately recognise or reward the agility of batteries.
It’s flagged the possibility of new, faster moving frequency control markets, like those offered overseas, to make sure Australia maximises the benefit of new batteries.
And Reneweconomy:
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull may have done more for renewable energy in Australia than he is given credit for.
Turnbull’s refusal to tackle the climate deniers and the fossil fuel ideologues within his own Coalition government has helped spark the biggest rush to rooftop solar the world has seen, and a powerful economic force that will quickly unravel the business model of so-called baseload coal.
Since Turnbull came into power in late 2015 – after unseating Tony Abbott, but not his predecessor’s climate and energy policies – the rate of uptake of rooftop solar in Australia has more than doubled.
It is now running at record levels of around 120MW a month, with 18,000 new installations on households and businesses around the country in March, and a total of 55,000 installations, and a record 351MW of capacity installed on rooftops in the first three months of the year.
The boom is occurring around the country, which now has 6.8GW of rooftop solar (systems under 100kW) and a total of 1.85 million different homes and businesses.
At this rate, it will exceed even the most optimistic official forecasts of more than 21GW of rooftop solar by 2035, and will likely be closer to forecasts such as Bloomberg new Energy Finance, which sees 33GW by 2040, when it will provide 25 per cent of total demand.
Now just imagine every one of these households installing a battery as well, all of them using their own power but still connected to the grid and capable of being mobilised as one giant virtual power plant.
The implication is that coal is deader than the Dodo. Unless of course you subsidise it, via the AFR:
The Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee could help deliver increased investment in a fleet of mid-life coal-fired power stations to provide further stability in the National Electricity Market, according to federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg.
With the federal government still putting pressure on AGL Energy over its plans to close the Liddell power station in NSW by 2022, Mr Frydenberg has asked the Australian Energy Market Operator to conduct an audit of younger coal-fired power stations to be delivered to the government by May.
Under fire from conservatives on his own backbench, Mr Frydenberg argues a NEG will ensure coal stays in the national energy mix for longer than under alternative plans, such as the Finkel Review’s Clean Energy Target that was rejected by the Turnbull government.
The only way this can possibly hold true is if the NEG – which nobody yet understands – contains a low carbon-intensity cap. In which case it will effectively be a pro-carbon price.
