Blackouts in Australia

[DA? + 301]

3 hours ago, Auson said:

Funny I immediately thought Elon Musk when I read a battery that will last 20 years !

Its not built yet by the way and I also read a $5m subsidy.

I'm sure it will last 20 years and do exactly what is says as Elon always tells the truth and never exaggerates.

It's a great subsidy when it actually will help people save money, look at the Hornsdale battery and help end dirty old fossil fuels.

Why wont it last twenty years, the expected amount of discharge and recharge can be done to test the batteries over a very short time. The understanding of the chemistry and batteries have come on masses recently with such things as using X-rays to film the effect on molecules in the charging and discharging process. Elon has Elon time, we all know that. But look what he has done, all those things that weren't possible. He fails sometimes and that's great, if you are scared of failing you stay in your comfort zone and stagnate. He fails, he learns from that and tries again. In just a decade and half he has started a company to make reusable rockets and was laughed at by many of the experienced expects in the industry. Now they routinely send up rockets, then land the largest most expensive part on a robotic drone ship in the sea and for a fraction of the price anyone else can do it.

It's funny how Musk is demonised, is it because people are scared of becoming irrelevant because of him and others like him? 

 

 

[Red + 252]

3 hours ago, mthebold said:

This is a subtle but important difference - the kind of difference leftists are skilled at exploiting to control narratives.  What an ill-informed comment - you clearly have no idea about the concept of LCOE which has been around for a long while. It's as disingenuous as claiming renewables are cheapest without including the cost of grid storage, additional transmission lines, extensive grid modifications to handle intermittency, the expected value of grid failure, and the national security risks of running a heavily networked system.  You would then need to wonder why savvy utilities were not investing in coal-fired plant.  I suggest they have done the sums and worked out your remarks were relevant in the past, but are no longer.

If we want to discuss this topic honestly, we need to compare technologies using the same definitions.  Strip away production tax credits, tax deductions, and any taxes/fees fossil fuels pay to local/state/federal government for the use of public natural resources.  Then we can have an honest discussion.   Please read the link - the work has been done.  I assume from Tom's vote that he is as ignorant as you.

 

[Otis11 + 551]

19 hours ago, Red said:

What an ill-informed comment - you clearly have no idea about the concept of LCOE which has been around for a long while. 

You would then need to wonder why savvy utilities were not investing in coal-fired plant.  I suggest they have done the sums and worked out your remarks were relevant in the past, but are no longer.

Please read the link - the work has been done.  I assume from Tom's vote that he is as ignorant as you.

Hey Red, It's ok to disagree, but there's a much nicer way to do it (It also gives your argument more credibility when it sounds like you are trying to inform rather than attack).

 

Let me re-phrase those for you (Not agreeing or disagreeing with anything, just re-phrasing to demonstrate):

1) Have you heard of LCOE? It's this great tool that calculates the average cost of the power based on upfront capital investment, maintenance, cost of capital, degradation of power output and a bunch of other factors!

2) It appears most utilities are no longer investing in coal-fired plants as they once were. I believe when they run the numbers, they realize the profits traditional FF power plants had in the past are no longer present. (or at least no longer as lucrative)

3) Here is the link again in case you missed it: (I actually don't know which link you're referring to - hence why providing it again it valuable). I think you and Tom might both find it valuable as it does all the work for you and explains their conclusions.

 

See! Not so hard!

 

[Red + 252]

1 hour ago, Otis11 said:

Hey Red, It's ok to disagree, but there's a much nicer way to do it (It also gives your argument more credibility when it sounds like you are trying to inform rather than attack).  I don't condone stupidity.  If posters want to contribute, then let them add something which is at least informative.  mthebold continues to dribble nonsense into the forum, and tries to hide it under some unusual phrasings:  Ideologies are not facts.

This was not about if I "disagree", it was about ill-informed commentary, viz "the kind of difference leftists are skilled at exploiting to control narratives" - how exactly is that relevant ?  

There are many avenues to source information about LCOE, so adding my link again was not necessary.

LCOE provides a basis for the "honest discussion" that mthebold suggests, but I note he has not returned.  

Finally, if people are so ignorant about a topic that they upvote ill-informed commentary, they are welcome to defend what they did.   It's admirable that you did what you did, but adds nothing to this topic.  

I know Australia is hardly on the radar of those living in the USA, but there are things happening here with renewables which will cause many other nations to take notice: NB.    

Interestingly, the impetus for the thread was a politically charged claim from our federal government that SA's blackouts were due to renewables - a charge that investigations proved false.  Sadly, our nation is governed by energy troglodytes and despite commissioning many studies to get a national energy policy in place, they have not jumped the political hurdle to this day.  The upshot is quite interesting.  First, SA effectively bypassed the status quo and Tesla installed the world's biggest battery to solve intermittency and peak issues (in the main).  That was over a year ago.  There was a change of State government in SA in 2018, to that of the same party as the federal government.  However, rather than toe the federal line on "waiting" for a policy in the wind, they have continued to drive the renewables agenda even stronger.  To the point they are looking at substantially increasing renewables capacity and adding another interconnector to the Eastern seaboard to tap into a time differential leading into peaking rates.

As a bit of an aside, but a fun fact, an interesting thing happened during the recent Victorian State elections.  The soundly defeated coalition had a plan for a policy which would seek a new 24/7 electricity generator.  Aside from the fact that additional capacity was not needed, party spokespersons effectively conceded it had to be fossil fuel based  to be 24/7.  However, where they really came unstuck was not being able to show that if there was demand, then nothing prevented the private sector from immediately entering the market.    

 

 

Edited January 4, 2019 by Red
missed the hurdle

[Otis11 + 551]

13 hours ago, Red said:

This was not about if I "disagree", it was about ill-informed commentary, viz "the kind of difference leftists are skilled at exploiting to control narratives" - how exactly is that relevant ?  

There are many avenues to source information about LCOE, so adding my link again was not necessary.

LCOE provides a basis for the "honest discussion" that mthebold suggests, but I note he has not returned.  

Finally, if people are so ignorant about a topic that they upvote ill-informed commentary, they are welcome to defend what they did.   It's admirable that you did what you did, but adds nothing to this topic.  

I know Australia is hardly on the radar of those living in the USA, but there are things happening here with renewables which will cause many other nations to take notice: NB.    

Interestingly, the impetus for the thread was a politically charged claim from our federal government that SA's blackouts were due to renewables - a charge that investigations proved false.  Sadly, our nation is governed by energy troglodytes and despite commissioning many studies to get a national energy policy in place, they have not jumped the political hurdle to this day.  The upshot is quite interesting.  First, SA effectively bypassed the status quo and Tesla installed the world's biggest battery to solve intermittency and peak issues (in the main).  That was over a year ago.  There was a change of State government in SA in 2018, to that of the same party as the federal government.  However, rather than toe the federal line on "waiting" for a policy in the wind, they have continued to drive the renewables agenda even stronger.  To the point they are looking at substantially increasing renewables capacity and adding another interconnector to the Eastern seaboard to tap into a time differential leading into peaking rates.

As a bit of an aside, but a fun fact, an interesting thing happened during the recent Victorian State elections.  The soundly defeated coalition had a plan for a policy which would seek a new 24/7 electricity generator.  Aside from the fact that additional capacity was not needed, party spokespersons effectively conceded it had to be fossil fuel based  to be 24/7.  However, where they really came unstuck was not being able to show that if there was demand, then nothing prevented the private sector from immediately entering the market.    

 

 

So, just for your reference - I've worked on renewables on both the technical side and on doing project financials (and even some work writing articles for some of the very sources cited in this and other renewable threads on oilprice). I'm an Electrical Engineer with a Masters in Solid State Electronics, aka LEDs and Solar Cells. I am very heavily pro-renewables. (Breaking my rule here - I normally try to stay as neutral as possible and not let my biases be known. If people can't guess my bias it means I'm doing a fairly good job of sticking to the facts)

That said, if I check my biases at the door and look at this from the point of view of an uninformed, yet reasonable, person - who's argument is more compelling? The person who has a lot of opinions and sites some unsupported facts, or the person posting ad hominems?

P.S. - You don't have to change the mind of mthebold or the other posters who are staunchly anti-whatever-topic to win... that's often a herculean task that's unlikely to yield results and even less likely to be worth the effort. Argue to convince the 90% of people who simply lurk and read the posts - those who don't know enough about the topic that they feel comfortable contributing. Write a compelling argument based on facts and win the hearts and minds of the silent majority. That's the real win.

[Otis11 + 551]

As for the actual topic at hand - solar and wind can provide lower costs initially to owner, and due to how the electrical biding process works will lower the cost of wholesale electricity by edging out the high cost producers. This works at low penetration of renewables, but as renewables grow, the fluctuations in renewable supply starts to be larger than the fluctuations in power demand. When this happens, (It does happen in some markets, but is vastly overstated because very few markets have the level of renewable penetration required to make this a problem. The power grid needs spinning reserves anyway with the current thermal plants meaning no change until renewables force this amount to increase) we need more spinning reserves to back up the variability in the renewables. Now, this can also be achieved by batteries or other storage technologies instead of spinning reserves, but currently, if the plant already exists, spinning reserves are much cheaper than battery storage.

The way companies are getting by this and promising extremely low energy prices with batteries is by selling the vast majority of their power directly and only requiring the batteries for a very small portion of their power. For example, a solar plant can sell the vast majority of it's production (all morning, most noon-day, and all evening) straight to the grid, and then use the batteries to only store the excess production at solar noon to be discharged into the grid in the evening during the period of high demand. This allows them to sell 90% of their power directly, which costs them about 4c/kwh (LCOE), and only have to store 10% of the produced power at 14c/kwh (original 4c/kwh of the solar, plus 10c/kwh for storage LCOE). If you do the math, that's an average cost of 5c/kwh. Many times they can further lower this buy pulling power from the grid at night to charge the batteries and discharge during the morning peak, but only if the electrical price spread between night and morning is larger than 10c/kwh (cost of storage). And this is the thing everyone gets wrong - they see this and assume we can produce solar and storage at 5c/kwh... which isn't correct. That only works because the base load exists and we're only shifting a small portion of the power. The shifted power costs 14 c/kwh (in this example).

This also only holds for how our grid is currently designed the the US and Europe - there are ways to mitigate some of this, however it requires a differently designed grid (which costs money), retrofiting the grid (which costs money), or installing HVDC lines long distances (which is actually very economical, but takes political will which currently does not exist in sufficient quantities).

Anything I missed? Sorry I didn't site as much support for this as I would normally like, but I'm a bit time crunched at the moment, so my apologies. Hopefully this helps.

[Red + 252]

3 hours ago, Otis11 said:

P.S. - You don't have to change the mind of mthebold or the other posters who are staunchly anti-whatever-topic to win... that's often a herculean task that's unlikely to yield results and even less likely to be worth the effort. Argue to convince the 90% of people who simply lurk and read the posts - those who don't know enough about the topic that they feel comfortable contributing. Write a compelling argument based on facts and win the hearts and minds of the silent majority. That's the real win.

If you read what I write, you would notice that I welcome people to believe whatever - that's for them to resolve.  I focus on an "argument", ie what have they said that is reasonable and informative.  

Thank you for your background and informative last post on some specifics.  Here's how the Australian energy market gets it power on a live basis.  During the course of each day you will see the energy-source outputs vary considerably for all states except WA which is not interconnected.  The price profile follows a LCOE model, and output variability kicks in strongly during daylight hours when SA & Tasmania's renewables are cheap and they become nett energy exporters for the daylight hours.

I suspect the carbon-based energy market was a pretty simple proposition 30 years ago, and the need to even think about how renewables would become a disrupter was not in consideration.  Nowadays, in some developing economies the reverse is likely.  And that's aside from even considering how any commitment to reducing GHGs should affect decision making.

In developed economies you rightly show there are lots of issues to grapple with - eg. how much spinning reserves are needed is a big issue while renewables struggle to dent market penetration.  At this point LACE becomes a more valuable tool, but needs to be costed region specific, and even then won't be able to model prices that well while the cost curves of renewables continue to decline, along with the costs of storage (and different types of storage).

[Red + 252]

 

On 1/5/2019 at 1:26 AM, Otis11 said:

As for the actual topic at hand - solar and wind can provide lower costs initially to owner, and due to how the electrical biding process works will lower the cost of wholesale electricity by edging out the high cost producers. This works at low penetration of renewables, but as renewables grow, the fluctuations in renewable supply starts to be larger than the fluctuations in power demand. When this happens, (It does happen in some markets, but is vastly overstated because very few markets have the level of renewable penetration required to make this a problem. The power grid needs spinning reserves anyway with the current thermal plants meaning no change until renewables force this amount to increase) we need more spinning reserves to back up the variability in the renewables. Now, this can also be achieved by batteries or other storage technologies instead of spinning reserves, but currently, if the plant already exists, spinning reserves are much cheaper than battery storage.

Keeping on topic, and extending on your points, yesterday there were again blackouts in Australia.  What I have so far seen reported related mostly to transmission equipment failures (like fuses tripping in excessive heat) but nothing on load shedding outages aka "blackouts".

Here's an overview of what went down (thanks to an industry insider - not me):

• A total of about 630 MW of load was ultimately shed across Vic and SA. Of this, about 365 MW was shed voluntarily (industry etc) and the remaining 266 MW was done by force (blackouts).  To put this in perspective it's about 5% of the load at the time or about 10% of average load. So it's not a disaster but it would be fair to say it was a significant event given that it did ultimately involve involuntary cuts (blackouts).
• All available coal, gas, hydro, diesel, battery, wind and solar generating plant in Vic and SA was fully utilised with an additional 478 MW from Tasmania and a varying amount, generally in the vicinity of 200 MW, from NSW.
• Overall generation in Vic and SA worked better than could reasonably be expected with a total of 1002 MW of plant not running. That is an imperfect result but anyone who has spent much time around power stations wouldn't consider an overall outage rate of 8.5% as being particularly bad, especially not when it is considered that virtually all of that involved thermal (fuel burning) plant more than 30 years old.
• The modeled "firm" wind generation between the two states is 210 MW and this is what is assumed to always be available (that is, it doesn't go to zero). Actual wind generation between the two states varied as it always does but it was consistently above this figure during the load shedding and most of the time was at least double that amount. 
• Batteries in both states also worked as intended but in practice the discharging commenced significantly earlier than necessary, when the alternative option existed to increase generation from conventional sources (particularly diesel) with the result that in both states the batteries went flat during the period of load shedding, loss of that supply adding to the problem.
• Breakdowns at coal fire power stations at Loy Yang and Yallourn could be labelled as the "cause" although it is unreasonable to expect very old plant driven to full capacity during Australia's hottest week on record to run perfectly
• Although Tesla's and another large battery were dicharged prematurely, they wouldn't have avoided all problems but could have reduced it if only used when absolutely necessary. (Blame the "market" way of doing things for that occurrence - they were discharged to make a profit for the operators.)

Ultimately Australia has insufficient capacity in the system to cope with a normal level of plant outages occurring when it gets hot. This situation will not resolve itself.  Market operators are unwilling to invest the billions needed because the federal government continues to avoid setting out a clear national energy plan.  Instead, their stated energy plan is to "reduce electricity prices for consumers".  Our takeaway from this plan of theirs is that if you can't get the electricity you need then you are equally blessed by not needing to pay for it🤕.

[catch22 + 244]

7 hours ago, Red said:

 

Keeping on topic, and extending on your points, yesterday there were again blackouts in Australia.  What I have so far seen reported related mostly to transmission equipment failures (like fuses tripping in excessive heat) but nothing on load shedding outages aka "blackouts".

Here's an overview of what went down (thanks to an industry insider - not me):

• A total of about 630 MW of load was ultimately shed across Vic and SA. Of this, about 365 MW was shed voluntarily (industry etc) and the remaining 266 MW was done by force (blackouts).  To put this in perspective it's about 5% of the load at the time or about 10% of average load. So it's not a disaster but it would be fair to say it was a significant event given that it did ultimately involve involuntary cuts (blackouts).
• All available coal, gas, hydro, diesel, battery, wind and solar generating plant in Vic and SA was fully utilised with an additional 478 MW from Tasmania and a varying amount, generally in the vicinity of 200 MW, from NSW.
• Overall generation in Vic and SA worked better than could reasonably be expected with a total of 1002 MW of plant not running. That is an imperfect result but anyone who has spent much time around power stations wouldn't consider an overall outage rate of 8.5% as being particularly bad, especially not when it is considered that virtually all of that involved thermal (fuel burning) plant more than 30 years old.
• The modeled "firm" wind generation between the two states is 210 MW and this is what is assumed to always be available (that is, it doesn't go to zero). Actual wind generation between the two states varied as it always does but it was consistently above this figure during the load shedding and most of the time was at least double that amount. 
• Batteries in both states also worked as intended but in practice the discharging commenced significantly earlier than necessary, when the alternative option existed to increase generation from conventional sources (particularly diesel) with the result that in both states the batteries went flat during the period of load shedding, loss of that supply adding to the problem.
• Breakdowns at coal fire power stations at Loy Yang and Yallourn could be labelled as the "cause" although it is unreasonable to expect very old plant driven to full capacity during Australia's hottest week on record to run perfectly
• Although Tesla's and another large battery were dicharged prematurely, they wouldn't have avoided all problems but could have reduced it if only used when absolutely necessary. (Blame the "market" way of doing things for that occurrence - they were discharged to make a profit for the operators.)

Ultimately Australia has insufficient capacity in the system to cope with a normal level of plant outages occurring when it gets hot. This situation will not resolve itself.  Market operators are unwilling to invest the billions needed because the federal government continues to avoid setting out a clear national energy plan.  Instead, their stated energy plan is to "reduce electricity prices for consumers".  Our takeaway from this plan of theirs is that if you can't get the electricity you need then you are equally blessed by not needing to pay for it🤕.

Thanks - ive been saying these same things for while now. Imagine what is going to happen once you add in a whole lot more demand from charging electric vehicles to the mix. The system already cannot cope with peak demand - imagine what will happen when we shift a large part of all the petrol and diesel energy from motor vehicles to the electricity grid... Ergon energy is now paying me to install load shedding devices to compatible air conditioners here in QLD. They are providing cash incentives for consumers to  install the devices. Ergon pays me to install them, AND pays the customer to get them installed - thats how badly they need this to happen and paints a clear picture about how inadequate the system can meet peak demands...

[Otis11 + 551]

7 hours ago, catch22 said:

Thanks - ive been saying these same things for while now. Imagine what is going to happen once you add in a whole lot more demand from charging electric vehicles to the mix. The system already cannot cope with peak demand - imagine what will happen when we shift a large part of all the petrol and diesel energy from motor vehicles to the electricity grid... Ergon energy is now paying me to install load shedding devices to compatible air conditioners here in QLD. They are providing cash incentives for consumers to  install the devices. Ergon pays me to install them, AND pays the customer to get them installed - thats how badly they need this to happen and paints a clear picture about how inadequate the system can meet peak demands...

Interestingly enough, higher penetration of electric vehicles is actually expected to help the grid cope with the variability of renewables in the long run. That happens because they are huge load shifting devices - so large in fact that the average american driven electric car will consume almost as much energy (~80%) as their house! (Sorry, I don't know the numbers for Australia) Since most of these drivers will come home from work and plug their car in at 5 pm, and leave it plugged in until 5 am the next day, they really don't care much when during that period it charges - or in many cases that it even charges all the way (a half charge may be enough for some - the car just needs to know how much charge it's owner needs). Combine this with smart chargers, and utilities can shift a huge load multiple hours, and even a reasonably sized load from day to day. This can help with the ramp rate utilities need to hit, and even help demand more closely match supply. This can also be done with smart electric water heaters, smart AC/space heaters, smart refrigerators/washers/dryers/dishwashers, etc. (Simply delaying when the water heater or space heaters turns on by 15 minutes actually gives the utility a huge lever to balance supply/demand. Same for ACs, fridges, etc)

 

But the key to all of this is smart devices and incensing those devices to shift load in a beneficial way (either through market signals like time-pricing power or through direct control such as your utility paying for the ability to have that load shifting capability)

[catch22 + 244]

In theory it can help balance demand as you say. But we will have to see how it performs in practice- and particularly here in Australia- how it will perform in terms of total demand- not just peak demand. We have had very little investment into new base load power generation here, and aging coal plants approaching end of life. There has been alot of investment into renewables, mostly solar and wind, but theres no solar available to charge the cars overnight! There has been very little investment into energy storage to help this problem aswell! So its not just a peak demand issue- but a total maximum demand issue as i see it. For the exact reason you brought up- and that is people will want their vehicle to charge during the night and we have no solar or battery storage to do it at that time. Nor are we able to use the batttey in the car as storage for our rooftop solar- as everyone is away at work during sunshine hours! 

Its an interesting problem which is being compounded by 300k people per annum net immigration, we are growing faster than infrastructure can keep up...

[Red + 252]

On 1/26/2019 at 1:17 AM, Otis11 said:

Interestingly enough, higher penetration of electric vehicles is actually expected to help the grid cope with the variability of renewables in the long run. ....

But the key to all of this is smart devices and incensing those devices to shift load in a beneficial way (either through market signals like time-pricing power or through direct control such as your utility paying for the ability to have that load shifting capability)

That does not compute.

Unless the network can meet (actually it must exceed) demand there is no energy for EVs.  Given the eastern seaboard has already had 2 days of load shedding this summer and we have the odd handful of EVs on the road here, there is no way the network could cope with tens of thousands of EVs.

Presently there are no plans that I am aware to deliver large scale dispachable energy to the market (eastern seaboard).  In the event a generator blinks and decides to invest, it will be a number of years before that capacity is available to supply.

Edited January 27, 2019 by Red
granma

[Refman + 207]

The Aussies are installing a lot of rooftop solar, as well as utility scale solar and wind. There will be plenty for EV's.

[catch22 + 244]

1 hour ago, Refman said:

The Aussies are installing a lot of rooftop solar, as well as utility scale solar and wind. There will be plenty for EV's.

Not without energy storage theres not - and there has been very little investment into energy storage... The EVs by overwhelming majority - will be charged by night when people are at home - the sun dont shine during this time! the only way is via energy storage systems and they have been prohibitively expensive for  consumers to get on board- just like the EVs themselves... very few are willing to pay just yet

[Refman + 207]

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/01/24/australia-to-lead-world-in-residential-battery-uptake-in-2019/

70,000 expected to install storage this year.

[Red + 252]

On 1/27/2019 at 12:57 PM, Red said:

That does not compute.

Unless the network can meet (actually it must exceed) demand there is no energy for EVs.  Given the eastern seaboard has already had 2 days of load shedding this summer and we have the odd handful of EVs on the road here, there is no way the network could cope with tens of thousands of EVs.

Presently there are no plans that I am aware to deliver large scale dispachable energy to the market (eastern seaboard).  In the event a generator blinks and decides to invest, it will be a number of years before that capacity is available to supply.

Otis, I should have more carefully noted your comment that "electric vehicles <are> actually expected to help the grid cope with the variability of renewables in the long run.

I was looking at the next 10 years in Australia where presently it's difficult to envision demand being met during heatwaves, and otherwise stressing supply across the summers such that EVs would not have the energy needed to do the job they were supposed to.

Assuming demand is addressed then the the usable storage of about 900 GWh available to the eastern seaboard via a fully electrified vehicle fleet (18 million cars etc.) married to technology for either directly through bi-directional energy flow or indirectly through control of the timing of battery charging, creates an entirely different energy market to what we now have.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Red
spellimk

[DanilKa + 443]

On 11/27/2018 at 7:35 PM, Auson said:

Funny I immediately thought Elon Musk when I read a battery that will last 20 years !

Its not built yet by the way and I also read a $5m subsidy.

I'm sure it will last 20 years and do exactly what is says as Elon always tells the truth and never exaggerates.

get your microscope or magnifying glass ready to find contribution of much hyped Tesla (Panasonic, actually) battery storage - picture of  SA generation leading up to blackout (distillate is diesel). Gas does most of the lifting.

Edited February 4, 2019 by DanilKa

[DanilKa + 443]

On 1/28/2019 at 7:11 AM, Refman said:

The Aussies are installing a lot of rooftop solar, as well as utility scale solar and wind. There will be plenty for EV's.

I'm one of Aussies who installed rooftop solar. Too bad I can't use it if there is power outage - even if there is plenty of sunshine. I'm pretty sure utilities played role in this criminal stupidity. Excuse is to avoid charging grid and protect workers - from school physics I recall there are electronic devices called "thyristors" so grid can be isolated.

Reason I've installed solar now - prices came down and I've realized utilities will soon limit further installation because of havoc rooftop wreaking to the grid.

[Red + 252]

1 hour ago, DanilKa said:

I'm one of Aussies who installed rooftop solar. Too bad I can't use it if there is power outage - even if there is plenty of sunshine. I'm pretty sure utilities played role in this criminal stupidity. Excuse is to avoid charging grid and protect workers - from school physics I recall there are electronic devices called "thyristors" so grid can be isolated.

Reason I've installed solar now - prices came down and I've realized utilities will soon limit further installation because of havoc rooftop wreaking to the grid.

Intelligent people know that batteries would be needed to complement a home solar PV installation.

Power outages are usually from prescribed load shedding by AEMO. In South Australia local area blackouts were mostly extreme weather events tripping transformer fuses - totally unrelated to load shedding.

I have not heard the reason you mentioned and I follow this sector more closely than the average person (I get emailed updates from AEMO).  

[DanilKa + 443]

41 minutes ago, Red said:

Intelligent people know that batteries would be needed to complement a home solar PV installation.

and anyone with half-brain can do the math to figure out payout of batteries exceed its cycle life. Not saying you are the one impaired.

[Red + 252]

37 minutes ago, DanilKa said:

and anyone with half-brain can do the math to figure out payout of batteries exceed its cycle life. Not saying you are the one impaired.

depends where you live and what you want to achieve

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 9/9/2018 at 4:24 AM, Dan Warnick said:

Here is an interesting article that seems to show a fairly unbiased picture of the initiatives Australia is taking, or what the various parties are proposing.  One thing is for sure: they show some impressive data in support of renewable energy.  There are opinions presented with a view towards consumers, government factions, industrial magnates and even Tesla, so it is a pretty good summary, I think.  Normally, I don't care much for the skewed information presented in the media, but this one seems to be well researched and minimally biased.  What do you think?

Meanwhile, Tesla is surviving on a drip charge. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

12 hours ago, DanilKa said:

and anyone with half-brain can do the math to figure out payout of batteries exceed its cycle life. Not saying you are the one impaired.

https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/blog/do-i-need-a-battery-system-and-whats-the-payback-period/ 

Maybe worth it just for backup power and may be getting close to payback within life expectancy. 

[DanilKa + 443]

On 2/5/2019 at 8:57 AM, ronwagn said:

https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/blog/do-i-need-a-battery-system-and-whats-the-payback-period/ 

Maybe worth it just for backup power and may be getting close to payback within life expectancy. 

Lithium batteries are prone to degradation of capacity with cycles (your phone or laptop have best-in-class yet not lasting more than 3-5 years) and payback of solar after subsidies is often more than this; adding batteries pushing it over 10 years. Average home needs over ~5-10kw.h of backup to keep fridge and lights going for one evening.

I wanted solar to work when there is no grid power but this option isn't available unless decent size battery installed. I'm pretty sure it won't be difficult to trick the inverter into thinking its connected to grid by supplying it with 50Hz 240V and balancing solar output with pool pump, AC etc. Appreciate tips how to do it w/o spending fortune

[ronwagn + 6,290]

It sounds like you know more about the practicalities than I do. I know that a little electricity to run lights and computers is vital but when it comes to refrigeration and high draw appliances it may be too costly for the batteries. Heating and air conditioning are ruled out. Small fans might be OK.  I don't know the capacities of the Tesla large battery and competitors. RV owners who are boondockers are probably the largest users of small to medium size solar panels. They generally use a couple of automotive batteries. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Boondocker

Edited February 7, 2019 by ronwagn