A nice piece today in the AFR of all places:
Closing Eraring safely requires two things: solving for reliability, which means replacing the energy it supplies with a combination of renewables, storage and gas peakers.
The second condition is replacing the power quality services supplied by large coal generators. This is more technical and intangible, but no less important.
These factors include managing voltage and system strength across the NSW grid. When the first coal generators closed, there were enough big coal units to cover these requirements. But that all changes when Eraring exits. Eraring is the Rubicon.
Investment in both solutions aren’t ready. The delays in replacing Eraring’s 2.8GW of capacity are well documented: renewable supply chain constraints, transmission and planning delays.
Readiness means replacement kit is not just be approved, but fully operational. Near enough is not good enough. The reliability of electricity grids has historically relied upon abundance, not hoping for the best.
The technologies to replace Eraring’s power quality services haven’t started. NSW’s transmission business Transgrid has been diligently navigating its way through new regulatory processes to supply these services that used to come free with every coal generator.
Sadly, the writer of the article omitted the simple truth that the gas peakers will never be ready to replace Eraring.
Why? Because there is no secure gas supply. While Origin Energy is busy extracting economic rents to keep Eraring open, it is also a key player in the QLD LNG export cartel, which sends most gas offshore, ensuring no East Coast gas peaker will ever be built again.
This implies that energy storage and renewables must work together to replace Eraring—a lot of the latter, which, as Snowy Hydro 2.0 so haplessly illustrates, will be vastly more expensive and take much longer to build than a few gas peakers.
NSW now has the most expensive energy futures outlook in Australia. It’s much higher than the former renewable whipping boy, SA. And one of the most expensive in any developed market in the world. Triple historical prices:
But neither VIC nor QLD should gloat. VIC already has secret deals to keep its coal power running forever. QLD will do it next.
All we need is a little gas domestic reservation, and it is all fixed.
Or the Eraring chaos is just the beginning.
