'Australia has enough renewables to reach 100% at times, but coal gets in the way!
This is the headline of an article by Giles Parkinson in today's 'Renew Economy'. It is an article based on an analysis of the National Electricity Market and the Australia;s electricity manager [AEMO] over the October long weekend. The analysis reported in the article clearly demonstrates that many times during any day - particularly in some states- renewable energy genrating capacity exceeds demand but has to be curtailed- in other words, our solar and wind generating potential capacity is not realised!!
** Curtailment means that energy generating wind turbines are shut down - even though strong winds capable of generating much renewable energy are blowing! AND rooftop solar generation is prevented from entering the national electricity grid.
** Over the long weekend, 3,200 Megawatts of renewable energy generated by wind turbines and 4600 Megawatts of solar renewable energy was prevented from entering the national electricity grid!!
WHY? You may ask - because the price of renewable energy on the wholesale market dropped below ZERO! And inflexibly operating BROWN coal power stations - that can't turn down or ramp up easily- had to keep pumping out their NON- RENEWABLE FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY- and their dirty emissions!!
** State by state figures are also interesting:
Tasmania: At times every day it uses 100% of renewable energy, particularly from hydro!
South Australia: Over the last two weekends at times rooftop solar produced all the energy required!
Victoria: Produced 86% of energy required from renewables. It had the capacity to generate 100% renewable energy on Sunday morning - particularly from wind- but was prevented because of inflexibility of brown coal generating power plants!!
Western Australia: Produced up to 84% of energy demands from renewable sources.
** What implications for changes are there from this analysis?? For me, there are three clear directions for change and government action:
1)Funding to install as much household rooftop solar generation AND hoiusehold storage batteries as possible! This will reduce demand on the national electricity grid. Germany's government last week spent 300 million Euros on doing exactly that! - and they have nothing like the solar energy potential Australia has - 10,000 times what we need every year!
2) Invest in large-scale battery storage so that renewable energy capacity does not have to be curtailed- turned off! The scale of battery storage that is now operating in other developed cities and countries.
3)By doing 1 and 2 we can get rid of the inflexible dirty coal generating plants as quickly as possible - replace them with solar and wind generation farms! - as is already starting to occur. Let's break the control fossil fuel energy generators have over our energy system!
** We need more and more rapid investment and action by our national and state governments -if we are going to be able to meet the renewable targets THAT THEY THEMSELVES HAVE SET!
** So next time somebody tells you that we in Australia don't have sufficient renewable generating capacity to meet our needs please engage in some MYTH busting!
[David Smith}