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“Moving beyond baseload:” NSW turns to consumers and local storage to fill Eraring gap (reneweconomy.com.au)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The New South Wales Labor government has confirmed it will turn to consumers and local and shared storage as part of its plans to spend $1.8 billion to fast track its response to the proposed closure of the country’s biggest coal generator in two years time.

The Minns Government on Wednesday outlined a $1.8 billion “boost” to help “rescue NSW’s energy transition”, and fill the gap that will be created by Origin Energy’s planned closure of the 2.88GW Eraring coal facility in August, 2025.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has said that if government tenders for nearly a gigawatt of “firm power” and other renewable and storage projects are delivered on time, then there should be no breach of the country’s tight reliability standards.

But NSW – fearing delays in project delivery and commissioning – has decided to fast-track other measures that could boost the capacity and reliability of the grid over the short term.

The $1.8 billion package – announced at the site of a new community battery at Blacktown in western Sydney – includes a previously announced $1 billion to establish the Energy Security Corporation.

This was largely seen as a vehicle to support pumped hydro storage, which hasn’t been able to compete with batteries even when the guidelines require eight-hour storage.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Wiggles if they are going to rely on consumer storage, the state governments of Australia should really pull their fingers out with V2G technology. An EV typically has at least 3x the storage of a fixed home battery, 60kWH vs 20kWH. So if they really want consumer storage to work, it needs to be accessible. At the moment South Australia is the only state where V2G technology is certified for connecting to the grid. #V2G

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I agree V2G will play apart in complete electrification of the grid, but I think other community or residential energy storage will be necessary too as EVs aren't guaranteed to be connected to the grid during peak solar generation times. They will be good for supply during peak demand times though, especially as demand peaks when everyone gets home from work, at which time they will be grid connected and can discharge when necessary, with the EV the recharging overnight while energy is cheaper.

The only way I can think of making them a primary storage source is if absolutely every car park in the country has an V2G EV charger installed. That way the online time they would be disconnected I when they were in use. The complication I can see with this though is its hard to predict user habits so if the batteries discharge to the grid too much then the user will be limited to travelling shorter distances. A way around that would be to allow a maximum discharge amount be set I the EV, but this could lead to everyone setting it very high to limited energy is made available to the grid anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Wiggles Australian electricity use in 2020 was 265,232 GWH for the year. That's 726 GWh / day. If we take 12 h of daylight, during which time solar generation is providing power, (and recharging batteries), we can say we need 1/2 the daily amount for overnight storage, or 363 GWH.
If we say each ev has 60kWH of storage, that means we need 6050 cars, or 18150 cars if we only use 1/3 of the battery charge.
There are 20,000,000 cars in Australia (20 million). That's enough to cater for Australian daily energy storage needs 1100 times over, assuming a conservative 1/3 of the stored energy capacity is used.
So I dispute your conclusion that here has to be v2g charging points every where.
As per the above, if only 1 in 1100 cars (<0.1%) had a V2G connection at home, that would provide enough for Australian energy storage self sufficiency
Its a fucking no brainer. So why is south Australia the only state that allows V2G connections to the grid?
#V2G #Australia

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately 363GWh/60kWh = 6,050,000 cars, which goes to 18,150,000 cars if we only allow 1/3 of the battery charge be used, which is over 90% of the 20 million cars figure you mentioned.

We also havent considered things like big industrial loads, which can have very large energy demands. I think it will be more likely they would require energy storage closer to their location, as drawing power from distributed sources across the entire grid would lead to a lot of grid congestion, as well as higher resistive power losses from transmitting greater distances. Having batteries closer to the large loads would be more similar to how the grid operates now, as the big industrial loads often get their own distribution transformers and lines connected to the transmission system so they don't negatively impact the distribution lines that provide population centres.

I think it is also worth taking into account the evolution of energy storage tech as well. There are far fewer limitations (size, weight) for land based energy storage types, and there is a lot of research going into more sustainable batteries, but these may not be suitable for EVs for some time. https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/energy/sodium-ion-batteries/

You are right in the sense that as a significant percentage of the population owns a car, and therefore will forseably own an EV, it would be more sustainable to use that energy storage for the grid, rather than doubling up on energy storage devices.

I'd be interested to know what Australia's annual energy use would be if the large industrial loads weren't considered. It may even be that EVs could cover a considerable percentage of residential and commercial energy demand.

Either way, V2G will have an important role to play to completely electrify Australia and the rest of the state governments should pull their fingers out and allow it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@Wiggles good pick up. I was out by a factor of 1000. I should have double checked. But even if is not so compelling, it's still a technology that has the possibility to make a huge impact. EV storage is only going to increase.
There are V2G chargers on the market now, but it's illegal to connect them to your home outside SA.
There should be no impediment, particularly when state governments start talking about relying on home storage for grid stabilization.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@Wiggles

Great reporting by reneweconomy here: https://reneweconomy.com.au/moving-beyond-baseload-nsw-turns-to-consumers-and-local-storage-to-fill-eraring-gap/