Greece has doubled its 2030 target for energy storage deployment to 3GW as it aims for a renewable electricity generation proportion of 70%.
The country’s Minister of the Environment and Energy Kostas Skrekas announced the plans at a meeting with US politicians on Tuesday last week (19 April), according to the Ministry’s official website.
The target for ‘electricity storage’ is double the 1.5GW outlined in an existing national plan, reports Insider.gr, and will accompany a renewable energy capacity of over 20GW by the 2030 deadline according to the Ministry.
Also discussed at the meeting were near-term plans to increase Greece’s energy security through increased local natural gas production, the Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) gas pipeline and new interconnections with Egypt, Cyprus and Israel.
Greek minister Kostas Skrekas meeting with members of the US Congress and House of Representatives last week. Image: YPEN.
Skrekas said that Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine would accelerate the green transition, as Europe seeks to wean itself off its fossil fuels, as would the falling price of renewable energy.
Insider reported that Greece already has a renewable energy capacity of 10.1GW at the end of 2020, so the 2030 target amounts to a doubling of that figure.
The storage projects will be supported by money from the post-Covid National Recovery and Resilience Plan, majority funded by the European Union, totalling €450 million (US$480 million) of which €200 million will be for battery-based projects.
In August last year, consultancy Clean Horizon’s head of market analysis Corentin Baschet told Energy-storage.news shortly that the €200 million would fund a 700MW tender for energy storage announced in June. He said Greece had all the drivers to become an important European market for lithium-ion-based energy storage in the coming years.
That tender may now have increased in size, with Insider reporting that regulatory steps and discussions with the EU have taken place and a tender totalling 800-900MW of storage could launch this coming September.
The 1kW pico-hydro generation system can be used with factory drainage systems and irrigation canals. According to the manufacturer, it is made with 3D-printed sustainable materials based on recycled plastics and is able to generate electricity even with a small stream of water. Solar and storage may be linked to the system to ensure stable power supply.
Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company has launched a 1kW pico-hydro generation system that can be used with factory drainage systems and irrigation canals. Pico-hydro systems are all hydropower systems with a capacity of less than 5kW and are commonly used as a cheap and easy-to-deploy source of power in theworld’smost inaccessible places.
Image: Ricoh
“The system can also be used in combination with photovoltaics and batteries to ensure stable power supply, ” a spokesperson from the company told pv magazine. “Depending on the amount of electricity generated, it can be used for IoT devices such as sensors, lighting devices, and charging systems.”
Called 3D-Pico Hydro Generator System, the new product will be initially sold in the Japanese market. “Service validation will begin in Japan, and the system will gradually be offered globally to markets where it is needed,” the spokesperson further explained.
The system was tested at Ricoh’s Numazu Plant. Image: Ricoh
According to the manufacturer, the system is made with 3D-printed sustainable materials based on recycled plastics and is able to generate electricity even with a small stream of water.
It was tested at the company’s Numazu Plant. “In our demonstration experiment using factory wastewater from the Ricoh Numazu Plant, we confirmed the possibility of lighting a lamp and using it as a power source for a security camera for nine months,” the company said. “We are also considering using it as a power source for disaster prevention in combination with battery storage.”
“Ricoh is also planning to improve the system so that it can also be used in microgrids,” the company’s spokesperson concluded.
There are many factors that determine the feasibility of a mini-hydropower project. These include the amount of power available from the water flow, the turbine type, the capacity of electrical loads to be supplied, and the initial and operating costs.
During the past decades, Pico-hydropower systems have been used with success in countries such as Nepal, Vietnam, Laos and Peru, as a way to provide electricity to rural locations.
Researchers have made significant progress towards making quantum batteries a reality after demonstrating a new proof-of-concept device.
The next-generation battery technology has the potential to revolutionise energy storage by making use of a phenomenon known as superabsorption.
This process involves a quantum mechanical principle relating to a molecule’s ability to absorb light, requiring less charging time the more they become entwined.
This means that it is theoretically possible for the charging power of a quantum battery to increase faster than the size of the battery. Superabsorption therefore means the bigger the battery, the faster it charges.
Until now, however, it has not been possible to demonstrate the effect on a large enough scale to make a quantum battery.
In a new study, published in the journal Science Advances, researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia were finally able to prove the concept of superabsorption by building several wafer-like microcavities, filling them with organic molecules, and charging them with a laser.
“As the microcavity size increased and the number of molecules increased, the charging time decreased,” said Dr James Quach, a scientist at the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing at the University of Adelaide.
“This is a significant breakthrough, and marks a major milestone in the development of the quantum battery.”
The next step is to now develop a fully functioning quantum battery prototype, with the hope of ushering in a new era of ultra-efficient batteries for use in electric vehicles and electronic devices.
The way quantum batteries operate means they could potentially harvest and store light energy simultaneously, providing significant cost reductions compared to conventional solar technologies.
“The concepts that Dr Quach and his team have worked on opens up the possibility of a new class of compact and powerful energy storing devices,” said Professor Peter Veitch, head of the University of Adelaide’s School of Physical Sciences.
In five years, operating a coal or natural gas power plant is going to be more expensive than building wind and solar farms. In fact, according to a new study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, building a new solar farm is already cheaper than operating coal and natural gas plants in many regions of the world.
Yet a full shift to intermittent energy sources desperately calls for low-cost, reliable energy storage that can be built anywhere. Some nascent startups believe the answer lies in the process that lights up toaster coils by electrically heating them to scorching temperatures.
Antora Energy in Sunnyvale, Calif., wants to use carbon blocks for such thermal storage, while Electrified Thermal Solutions in Boston is seeking funds to build a similar system using conductive ceramic blocks. Their vision is similar: use excess renewable electricity to heat up the blocks to over 1,500°C, and then turn it back to electricity for the grid when needed.
To beat the cost of the natural gas plants that today back up wind and solar, storing energy would have to cost around $10 per kilowatt-hour. Both startups say their Joule heating systems will meet that price. Lithium-ion batteries, meanwhile, are now at approximately $140/kWH, according to a recent study by MIT economists, and could drop to as low as $20/kWH, although only in 2030 or thereafter.
Blocks made from graphite or ceramics (akin to the concrete blocks pictured here) may be a promising medium for thermal storage of renewable energy generated by intermittent solar and wind energy sources. SOURCE: ALAMY
Justin Briggs, Antora’s co-founder and Chief Science Officer, says he and his co-founders Andrew Ponec and David Bierman, who launched the company in 2018, considered several energy-storage technologies to meet that goal. This included today’s dominant method, pumped hydro, in which water pumped to a higher elevation spins turbines as it falls, and the similar new gravity storage method, which involves lifting 35-ton bricks and letting them drop.
In the end, heating carbon blocks won for its impressive energy density, simplicity, low cost, and scalability. The energy density is on par with lithium-ion batteries at a few hundred kWh/m3, hundreds of times higher than pumped hydro or gravity, which also “need two reservoirs separated by a mountain, or a skyscraper-sized stack of bricks,” Briggs says.
Antora uses the same graphite blocks that serve as electrodes in steel furnaces and aluminum smelters. “[These] are already produced in 100 million ton quantities so we can tap into that supply chain,” he says. Briggs imagines blocks roughly the size of dorm fridges packed in modular units and wrapped in common insulating materials like rockwool.
“After you heat this thing up with electricity, the real trick is how you retrieve the heat,” he says. One option is to use the heat to drive a gas turbine. But Antora chose thermophotovoltaics, solar cell-like devices that convert infrared radiation and light from the glowing-hot carbon blocks into electricity. The price of these semiconductor devices drops dramatically when made at large scale, so they work out cheaper per Watt than turbines. Plus, unlike turbines that work best when built big, thermophotovoltaic perform well regardless of power output.
Antora Energy’s graphite blocks store renewably-generated energy at temperatures exceeding 1000º C, eventually converting that back to electricity via their proprietary thermophotovoltaic heat engine. Source: ANTORA ENERGY
Thermophotovoltaics have been around for decades, but Antora has developed a new system. Richard Swanson, one of the company’s advisors, was an early pioneer of the technology in the late 1970s. The efficiency with which the devices convert heat into electricity was stuck in the 20s until the Antora team demonstrated a world-record 30% efficiency in 2019. They did that by switching from silicon to higher-performance III–V semiconductors, and by using tricks like harnessing lower-energy infrared light that otherwise passes through the semiconductor and is lost. Antora’s system recuperates that heat by placing a reflector behind the semiconductor to bounce the infrared rays back to the graphite block.
The technology has caught on. Antora has received early-stage funding from ARPA-E and is an alum of the Activate entrepreneurial fellowship program and Shell/NREL GameChanger accelerator program. More recently, they have gotten funding from venture capitalists and the California Energy Commission [PDF] to scale up their technology, and will build a pilot system at an undisclosed customer site in 2022.
Electrified Thermal Solutions, which is part of Activate’s 2021 cohort and was founded in 2020, is much younger. The company’s cofounders Joey Kabel and Daniel Stack chose ceramic blocks as their thermal storage medium. Specifically, honeycomb-shaped ceramic blocks used today to capture waste heat in steel plants. Since ceramics don’t conduct electricity, they dope the bricks to make them conductive so that they can be electrically heated to 2,000°C.
Stack says they plan to target a wide market for that stored heat. They could use it to drive a gas turbine for electricity, or to run any other high-temperature process such as producing cement and steel.
The duo is still working out some technical challenges such as keeping the ceramic from oxidizing and vaporizing over time. Eventually the system should have a lifetime of 20-plus years, another big advantage over batteries. They are now building a benchtop prototype, Kabel says, but the final full-scale system should look like a large grain silo that should store about 1 MWh/m3, besting Antora’s energy density.
It will be a few years before either company is ready to build a full-scale installation.
If they can prove themselves, though, these companies could pave a way for a cost-effective storage technology for the 21st century electrical grid. “We want to decarbonize the industrial and electric sector by replacing the combustion process with a renewable heating system,” Stack says.
I have been following World Bank Group’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) “Unlocking Investment and Finance in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs)” and have been challenged to draw up a finance and investment strategy for a developing economy of my choosing. With the election season (presidential election in 2019 and parliamentary elections in 2020) drawing closer, I felt that I could focus on Sri Lanka and particularly on its development challenge in meeting its intended Nationally Determined Contribution of reducing GHG emissions in the energy sector by 20% against the Business As Usual scenario and recommend an investment strategy from the point of view of a Government Official. I hope this article will spur further discussion on the options and avenues available for the country in financing the desired transition on the energy profile and serve to inform decision makers on the best course of action.
Sri Lanka has made major strides in its development journey with 100% of the population having access to electricity by the end of 2016 and approximately 83% of all adults having a bank account, with 18.6 bank branches for each 100,000 people in the population as at March 2018. These growth statistics could be taken to mean that the country is managing its energy and financial sectors well, however, a closer look will reveal that behind these respectable numbers are structural weaknesses in domestic resource mobilization and national financing strategy, which impede private sector investment in energy infrastructure and cause inefficiency in the system leading to higher costs for tax payers and higher energy cost for industry (posing a challenge to national competitiveness).
Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), a state-owned enterprise, controls all major functions of electricity generation, transmission, distribution and retailing in Sri Lanka. In attempting to make energy affordable for low-income households, a differentiated tariff regime is in place where the rates for low-energy consuming households are subsidized and some of this subsidy is recovered though higher rates to high-energy consuming households. Whilst subsidized electricity has helped to provide a better quality of life and led to positive externalities, the losses to the Government from this subsidization and reliance on expensive power generation has had to be met through increased taxation (with proportion of indirect taxes being approximately 80%). Therefore, even though low-income households spend less, directly for electricity, as a result of high proportion of indirect taxes, they are footing the heavy losses of the State Owned Utilities (eg: CEB reporting a LKR 23bn loss in Q1 2019).
For high-energy consuming households in Sri Lanka, however, rooftop solar is attractive proposition with payback being between 5 to 8 years. As a result, there is high conversion to solar in this segment (177 MegaWatts (MW) of rooftop solar installed as at April 2019) . This would be a positive development in the country’s ambition on climate action, however, it does not bode well for the CEB, the utility provider, for whom this would mean a loss of revenue, because it is losing the client segment that is paying high tariffs. This would exacerbate the losses further and affect Government’s debt sustainability.
If renewables could provide consistent power, this solar rooftop adoption would not have been an issue. However, with the renewable energy generated being intermittent and with peak demand occurring at night time, CEB, the utility provider, has had to rely on large hydro and thermal power plants to provide the base-load. It also has to pay for peaker plants operated by Independent Power Producers and even buy expensive emergency power, when installed capacity falls short to provide the peak energy demand. The high energy consumers who have taken up rooftop solar systems park the excess power they generate during day to the grid and draw power from grid at night. Therefore, Government has to still incur the costs of maintaining the base-load and buy peak hour supply for night time energy demand.
The investment size for the pumped storage hydropower project is expected to be USD 621mn (USD 1,063/Kw). Delaying the set-up of pumped storage to 2028 will significantly affect amount of renewable energy that could be grid connected and renewable investments that could be scaled up. Government currently plans to invest in 4 new coal power plants due to issues in debt sustainability and grid reliability (noting that coal power is cheaper option and stabilizes the grid), however, if energy storage solutions are integrated to the grid making renewable energy investments feasible and if the inefficient subsidies are gradually replaced by alternate incentives facilitating self sustaining community micro-grids (loan schemes, roof rental for solar companies in working with low-income households, and making P2P energy trading possible through electricity auctions on micro-grids), Government will be able to ensure clean energy supply without having to spend public money on coal power plants, by crowding in private investment. This author came across a proof of concept developed by a group of students from University of Jaffna in having a mobile app for P2P energy trading in Sri Lanka during Sri Lanka’s first fintech hackathon. However, current regulatory set-up does not allow for such electricity trading within community micro-grids as sale of electricity is controlled. Therefore, a serious review on incentives for public engagement in support of the renewable energy drive needs to be undertaken and the enabling environment created.
With regards to funding the energy storage solutions and renewable energy investments (over USD 56 billion is needed between 2017 – 2050 to meet 100% renewable energy generation by Sri Lanka power sector), Government need not be restricted to public finance in financing these large investments. It could and it should crowd in private investment for these sustainable energy infrastructure, rather than place extra burden on the tax payer. It could resort to financing internationally, as the Cost of Funds in Sri Lanka is high. Sri Lanka is yet to issue a Green or Sustainable Bond. As in Fiji, the Government can raise a sovereign green bond or work with Sri Lanka Banks’ Association’s Sustainable Banking Initiative to get local banks to lead on issuing Green Bonds and working with MDBs such as IFC, FMO, etc to support this process. Additionally, Government could tap directly and through partnerships vertical funds such as Global Environmental Facility and Green Climate Fund, where there is additionality and market is not ready to accept the risk return profile of the investments. Recently launched Central Bank of Sri Lanka led Roadmap for Sustainable Finance in Sri Lanka identifies the need to build capacity and integrate financial sector to support the real economy through new solutions such as Green Bonds and there is interest by banks to engage in blended financing. Government should fast track the implementation of this roadmap on sustainable finance and I recommend that the Government work with IFC and Sri Lanka Banks’ Association’s Sustainable Banking Initiative to launch Sri Lanka’s first Green Bond to immediately fund the Pumped Storage (also referred to as Pumped Hydro Energy Storage [PHES] or Pump Water Storage Power Plants [PWSPP]) and Battery Solutions and relevant upgrades to the national grid to transition to a smart grid. London Stock Exchange Group has also expressed support to Sri Lanka and Colombo Stock Exchange. Therefore, these support networks must be leveraged.
Government has been successful in soliciting concessional finance from China, Japan and India for energy infrastructure (government to government loans and grants). Beyond this, the Government could also encourage FDI and public-private partnership for investments. Support from MIGA could be elicited to give international investors the confidence to infuse capital to the country.
In conclusion, Government would need to implement concerted effort to on the one side improve domestic resource mobilization and on the other hand, expand its sources of sustainable finance in the energy sector. Like the energy profile, the country also needs to diversify its investment streams and not excessively rely on Government funding for green energy infrastructure. An investment opportunity of over USD 56 billion exists and a healthy mix of international, domestic, public and private and debt and equity investment streams need to be explored. A first step in this journey could be a 10 year US$800mn syndicated green bond using SLBA Sustainable Banking Initiative platform, where use of proceeds will be for renewable energy storage solutions.
This article first appeared on Green Building Council of Sri Lanka’s newsletter “Green Guardian” in December 2020.
A material discovered less than two decades ago could become the key to safer, faster-charging and lighter batteries that power electronic devices, electric vehicles, and stationary energy storage. Since the ‘supermaterial’ graphene was first isolated in 2004 by researchers at The University of Manchester in the UK, a growing number of graphene-making start-ups have been developing battery technologies which, the companies say, will usher in a future of fast-charging devices and electric vehicles (EVs), with higher energy capacity and without risks of overheating.
Graphene is only a single atom thick. It’s a superconductor of electricity and heat, and very light. It’s more than 100 times stronger than steel, but also 6 times lighter. Graphene slows the heating process in lithium batteries and allows up to five times faster charging speeds. Because it has low resistivity, graphene conducts heat evenly across the battery to help it cool, says one of the start-ups working with graphene, Real Graphene.
Graphene is not yet used in EVs or stationary storage systems, but developers of the material and technologies with it say that this supermaterial, because of its mechanical properties, holds the promise of more powerful, safer, and faster-charging batteries.
Graphene has the potential to be used not only in consumer electronics, but also in EVs and storage of solar and wind power, researchers at The University of Manchester say. Developing graphene supercapacitators could help enable high-performance electric supercars. Because graphene supercapacitators are light, they could also reduce the weight of cars or planes, according to the university, which is also studying, with its commercial partners, graphene’s potential in grid applications and storing wind or solar power.
Start-ups have recently accelerated the development of graphene and its incorporation into batteries.
Los Angeles-based graphene manufacturer Nanotech Energy, for example, said last year it had developed and scaled a process to produce graphene with more than 90 percent of its content monolayers—the purest form of graphene available in mass production quantities.
The company also launched in 2020 a proprietary non-flammable, high-performing battery ready for commercialization.
“We perfected the battery by utilizing the extraordinary electronic and mechanical properties of graphene to increase the battery capacity. To further increase the safety of a lithium ion battery, we took a step further by designing a non-flammable electrolyte that can withstand operation at high temperatures without catching fire,” Maher El-Kady, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Nanotech Energy, said at the time.
“Most industries and end users are confined to the technology of lithium-ion batteries, from smartphone and laptop manufacturers to automotive manufacturers to the consumer at large,” Dr. Jack Kavanaugh, chairman and CEO of Nanotech Energy, said.
“Nanotech Energy now offers all of these industries a path toward a safe and more powerful battery technology – a game changer for them,” Kavanaugh added.
Graphene Batteries of Norway is developing Lithium-sulfur (LiS) battery technology enhanced with graphene derivatives. The company has developed a sulfur cathode based on a proprietary method and is targeting stationary energy storage systems as one of the areas of application of its technology.
U.S. firm NanoGraf is developing silicon-graphene anode materials that enable longer-lasting and faster-charging batteries. NanoGraf believes that current lithium-ion battery chemistries have hit a plateau in performance improvements. The company says its silicon alloy-graphene material architecture in the anode could be customized to achieve between three and six times higher capacity than current graphite-based anodes.
Electric vehicles with batteries containing graphene will require at least four years of additional research and testing, NanoGraf’s Chip Breitenkamp, a polymer scientist and VP of business development, told Futurism at the end of last year.
The company is confident that its technology would work for EVs, but it knows it would take a few more years to have the thumbs-up for electric cars.
Graphene is an amazing material for batteries, Breitenkamp told Futurism, adding that, “Essentially, graphene can play a central role in powering a sustainable, electric future.”
The monumental Tesla Battery Day last week clearly wasn’t as monumental for some as they had expected. The day after the much-anticipated event, Tesla shares dropped by nearly 10%. This seems to be partly because the “million mile battery” wasn’t part of the presentation. The fickle investment community was hoping for an easily understood revolutionary announcement like an EV battery that will do a million miles without needing replacement. What they got instead was a series of incremental improvements based on technologies that were hard to understand and not very well explained. But the tail end of the Battery Day presentation was incredibly significant and foretells the final nail in the coffin of the traditional car industry based around fossil fuel propulsion.
Elon Musk teased a potential future car costing as little as $25,000. TESLA
Without much more than a single slide and a couple of sentences, Elon Musk delivered the punchline revealing where all the minor improvements up until that point in the presentation were leading. Numerically, it was a 56% reduction in battery costs. But then he explained that this would enable a $25,000 Tesla TSLA-2.1% “with fully autonomous capability”. In atypical style for Musk, he didn’t make any bolder claims about what this car would be able to deliver, but we can read between the lines.
Musk infamously cancelled the Standard Range version of the Model Y, stating that under 250 miles EPA range was too low, and subsequently that 300 miles of EPA range was the “new normal”. From this we assume that the $25,000 car will have at least 300 miles of EPA range, which would mean well over 300 miles with the more frugal WLTP test. You can also be certain this car will be fast because there’s no such thing as a slow Tesla, so it will definitely do 0-60mph in under 6 seconds. There have already been rumors of Tesla planning a small hatchback / subcompact vehicle, with a design teased back in January, and this will likely be the format of the new car given the price.
The Tesla Inc. Model 3 is displayed during AutoMobility LA ahead of the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018. With two of the world’s biggest carmakers under harsh scrutiny, the Los Angeles Auto Show will be a welcome chance for the industry to generate some positive publicity. Photographer: Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg
The $25,000 tag doesn’t initially sound that impressive, when you can buy an internal combustion engine Toyota Corolla in the USA starting at under $20,000. But this isn’t the market the car will be aimed at. The Tesla Model 3 starts at just under $40,000 in the US, and was clearly aimed at the luxury mid-sized market epitomized by the BMW 3-series, which its sales have annihilated in the USA. The new $25,000 car – shall we call it the Model 2? Everyone else is – will be aimed at another European icon, the hugely popular VW Golf, which represents quality at an affordable price. You can pick one of those up for just over $23,000.
Obviously, the “Model 2” is still a theory, but Musk was talking about the new battery enhancements being able to deliver the price enabling a Tesla EV at this level in 1.5-3 years’ time. So in around 3 years you could well have the choice of a well-built German fossil fuel car, or a semi-premium EV with over 300 miles of range and much faster performance – that will then go on to be much, much cheaper to run because even in the USA, electric miles are considerably less expensive than fossil fuel ones. In the UK, where petrol and diesel prices are astronomical, the running cost differential will be huge.
Tesla teased a sketch of small car aimed at China in its official WeChat channel back in January 2020. TESLA
Teslas tend to come across to the UK at around the same price numerically in pounds as they are in dollars – the Model 3, which is $40,000 in the US, is around £40,000 in the UK. But the VW Golf is also numerically about the same. So a $25,000 Tesla Model 2 would probably be around £25,000, in the same ballpark as the VW Golf 8, which starts at just over £23,000 in the UK. VW’s all electric ID.3, just released in Europe (but not being launched in the US so far), will be right out of the picture, because it’s closer to the Tesla Model 3 in price.
Which would you choose for $25,000 – a Tesla Model 2 EV or a VW Golf with a conventional fossil fuel engine? No longer will the argument hold that “I can’t buy the EV because it’s too expensive”, because they will be the same price. You could still say “300 miles is not enough to get me all the way from New York to Los Angeles or London to Edinburgh in one go”, but who really does that? In three years from now, recharging will be much more ubiquitous, too – and it’s hardly a trial for Tesla owners already. When you can buy an EV with over 300 miles of range that is faster and equipped with better technology than an internal combustion engine VW Golf, as well as being much cheaper to run, only groundless anti-electric prejudice will stop you. There won’t be any real reason to buy a car that runs on fuel derived from oil and gas anymore.
Then, just a few days later, the state reached 100 per cent wind power (of state demand), on Thursday, October 15.
This was not the first time for wind, as it occurs reasonably often and for sometimes lengthy periods, but the fact that the two events occurred within days of the other are nevertheless important milestones. And although the transition to clean energy is far from complete, it does give some insight into what the state Liberal government’s target of “net 100 per cent renewables” by 2030 might look like.
It also came in a week when the state premier and energy minister formally opened construction of two significant projects in and around Port Augusta – including the country’s biggest wind-solar hybrid plant (317MW), and the 86MW second stage of the Lincoln Gap wind project, which is expected to grow to a total of 452MW.
We are indebted to Glenne Drover, from the Australian Institute of Energy, for noting the twin milestones and posting it on LinkedIn a few days ago.
It comes in a spring full of renewable energy and other records, at state and national level. The share of both wind and solar is reaching record levels, the share of renewables is above 30 per cent for the first time, and new minimum demand levels are being set in South Australia and Victoria, reflecting the growing influence of rooftop solar.
The commentary on Drover’s his post made for fascinating reading, and an insight into the state of the energy debate in Australia, and elsewhere for that matter.
It ranged from the those who moaned that solar couldn’t provide 100 per cent of the energy supply for 24 hours (apparently the sun goes down every evening, who knew?), to the energy trader from Shell who celebrated that gas also delivered 100 per cent of the state’s demand at one point (well, it didn’t quite, but nearly).
AEMO chief executive Audry Zibelman put it in some perspective, noting that the combination of rooftop solar (992MW) and large scale solar (313MW) fuelled the state’s electricity needs for a 30-minute period, a first in Australia and for any major jurisdiction globally.
She said the milestone affirms the world-leading scale and pace of transition underway in Australia’s power system.
“The domination and successful integration of rooftop solar in South Australia foreshadows the rebuilding of jurisdictional power systems in Australia,” Zibelman said in an emailed statement.
What the state will need is a lot more storage – either in the form of big batteries, virtual power plants or the numerous pumped hydro plants that have been mooted, but appear stuck in regulatory and policy limbo.
The case for storage was undermined by AEMO’s Mike Davidson, who in a comment on the LinkedIn post noted that “storage is next”, and also pointed to the key role that wind and solar played in keeping Victoria’s Portland smelter running when the main link between Victoria and South Australia was blown down in a storm earlier this year, and Victoria’s biggest load was hanging on to the end of the S.A. grid.
By Giles Parkinson, founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of The Driven. Giles has been a journalist for 35 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
Drax eyes key role for Cruachan pumped hydro storage station in managing growing levels of renewable electricity on the grid
A hydroelectric power storage facility built into a hollowed-out mountain that towers above the Scottish Highlands is to undergo a £1m upgrade in a bid to boost its efficiency, operator Drax Group announced yesterday.
For almost 55 years the Cruachan Power Station has provided electricity storage for the grid by using its turbines to pump water from Loch Awe in the glen below to an upper reservoir built on a plateau a short way up Ben Cruachan mountain. The stored water can then be released back through the turbines to generate power quickly when demand increases.
The plant’s 440MW capacity provides high levels of flexibility for the grid, which has proved particularly useful during the coronavirus lockdown when low electricity demand in Scotland coincided with periods of high wind power, according to Drax.
Last month, Cruachan to provided critical support services to National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), which is responsible for balancing electricity supply and demand services in the UK. Such power storage and flexibility services are becoming increasingly important as the energy system shifts towards more intermittent, greener forms of power such as wind and solar.
As such, Drax is investing £1m in modernising the power station’s turbine control system, replacing its existing programmable logic controller computer system with a new design aimed at drastically boosting its efficiency.
“Cruachan plays a critical role in supporting renewable energy in Scotland and stabilising the electricity grid,” said Ian Kinnaird, Drax Group’s head of hydro. “As the country continues to decarbonise, the station’s flexibility has never been more important. This upgrade will ensure the Hollow Mountain can deliver the fast, flexible power that hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses rely on for many decades to come.”
The upgrade to the plant’s systems will be carried out by control system builders ITI, previously known as Servelec Controls. The firm has worked on the site since 1987, previously building a control system which enables the Lanark and Galloway Hydro Schemes to be remotely managed from a single interface located in Cruachan’s underground cavern.
“We’ve been working at Cruachan Power Station for over 30 years now, and in that time have developed a deep understanding of their assets, their systems and their operational requirements,” said Bryn Thomas, sales director at ITI. “It is these strong relationships with our customers that enable us to work with them on developing transformative solutions that enhance their operations, improve safety and support sustainable green energy production,”
