Author Topic: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]  (Read 23570 times)

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Offline Someone

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #25 on: February 10, 2017, 07:04:08 am »
Current demand is just over 14,000MW but I think the data is delayed quite a bit. I think we'll see a sharp increase as people arrive home and their house is boiling hot. They'll whack on the AC and the compressor will just be running at 100% to drop the temperature down.
The NSW peak (which creates the national peak) has now been and gone, southern states saw 0 or negative pricing with the wild fluctuations but the system held with a margin of a GW or so. But it did require widespread curtailment:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-10/nsw-aluminium-smelter-power-down-amid-outage-concerns/8260830
Seems like just a few minor blackouts from transmission infrastructure, which is doing well for a network under such heavy demands.
 

Offline HalcyonTopic starter

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #26 on: February 10, 2017, 07:13:08 am »
Current demand is just over 14,000MW but I think the data is delayed quite a bit. I think we'll see a sharp increase as people arrive home and their house is boiling hot. They'll whack on the AC and the compressor will just be running at 100% to drop the temperature down.
The NSW peak (which creates the national peak) has now been and gone, southern states saw 0 or negative pricing with the wild fluctuations but the system held with a margin of a GW or so. But it did require widespread curtailment:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-10/nsw-aluminium-smelter-power-down-amid-outage-concerns/8260830
Seems like just a few minor blackouts from transmission infrastructure, which is doing well for a network under such heavy demands.

 :-+ Winner winner chicken dinner!

I think there were reports too of the Visy paper mill reducing its reliance on the grid.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2017, 07:15:13 am by Halcyon »
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #27 on: February 10, 2017, 07:39:59 am »
And a capture of the NEM pricing and demand in NSW for posterity. Huge drop in demand just as the 6pm news is playing out....
 

Offline HalcyonTopic starter

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #28 on: February 10, 2017, 07:49:38 am »
And a capture of the NEM pricing and demand in NSW for posterity. Huge drop in demand just as the 6pm news is playing out....

It's on the rise again though. I suppose as people vacate work premises, lights, computers, copiers etc... are being turned off or going into standby. But as people get home (and lets face it, Sydney traffic sucks so many people will only now just be walking in the door), AC's will be coming on, microwaves being used, lights being turned on...

It's still >40 degrees outside so opening windows really won't do a lot.
 

Offline station240

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #29 on: February 10, 2017, 08:49:03 am »
Current demand is about 13,500MW. With the temperature still increasing in most parts of Sydney. It's currently 42.9°C outside where I am with parts of Sydney hotter still. NSW has a total generation capacity of around 20,000MW which includes roof-top PV systems. Two of the four coal fired turbines at Liddell power station (which supplies a maximum of 2,000MW) are currently off-line for maintenance.

And how much of the solar is off-line for maintenance ?
Yeah, and the Liddell coal power station has 50% of its generators offline. No doubt due to "Commissioned between 1971 and 1973" which makes it 43-45 years old.

Not sure why people cannot understand that coal power stations are being shut down because they are too old and expensive to maintain. Solar doesn't require trainloads of black dirt to operate either.
 

Offline HalcyonTopic starter

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #30 on: February 10, 2017, 08:55:33 am »
Current demand is about 13,500MW. With the temperature still increasing in most parts of Sydney. It's currently 42.9°C outside where I am with parts of Sydney hotter still. NSW has a total generation capacity of around 20,000MW which includes roof-top PV systems. Two of the four coal fired turbines at Liddell power station (which supplies a maximum of 2,000MW) are currently off-line for maintenance.

And how much of the solar is off-line for maintenance ?
Yeah, and the Liddell coal power station has 50% of its generators offline. No doubt due to "Commissioned between 1971 and 1973" which makes it 43-45 years old.

Not sure why people cannot understand that coal power stations are being shut down because they are too old and expensive to maintain. Solar doesn't require trainloads of black dirt to operate either.

I personally don't see why we don't start embracing nuclear power, at least on a small scale as "fill in" reactors. Yes, coal is old and dated but solar is only ever any good during peak daylight hours, it's very inefficient.
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #31 on: February 10, 2017, 09:05:27 am »
I personally don't see why we don't start embracing nuclear power, at least on a small scale as "fill in" reactors. Yes, coal is old and dated but solar is only ever any good during peak daylight hours, it's very inefficient.

That's something that has been drifting around in the back of my head for a few years.  Yes, there is the radioactive waste - but anything with a really long half life is not going to have a high level of radioactivity.  Besides, that waste can be dealt with - not like the emissions from a coal-fired plant.

I haven't gone too deeply into the detail - but I have been intrigued with molten salt reactors.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2017, 09:07:16 am by Brumby »
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #32 on: February 10, 2017, 09:44:27 am »
Current demand is about 13,500MW. With the temperature still increasing in most parts of Sydney. It's currently 42.9°C outside where I am with parts of Sydney hotter still. NSW has a total generation capacity of around 20,000MW which includes roof-top PV systems. Two of the four coal fired turbines at Liddell power station (which supplies a maximum of 2,000MW) are currently off-line for maintenance.

And how much of the solar is off-line for maintenance ?
Yeah, and the Liddell coal power station has 50% of its generators offline. No doubt due to "Commissioned between 1971 and 1973" which makes it 43-45 years old.

Not sure why people cannot understand that coal power stations are being shut down because they are too old and expensive to maintain. Solar doesn't require trainloads of black dirt to operate either.
APVI provide system wide load factor for solar, just as with wind it doesnt provide a high capacity factor and wasn't running at capacity during the peak demand. So when the national grid demands greater than 36,000MW against an installed capacity of 48,254MW (http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Planning-and-forecasting/Generation-information) + Small solar of around 4,400MW (http://pv-map.apvi.org.au/historical#4/-26.67/134.12) we look at the national picture:

36,000MW Demand

 8,450MW Wind/Solar (nondispatchable plants)
44,192MW Other Plants (dispatchable plants)

Thats not a lot of headroom to take in availability around 90% of the conventional plants, and a capacity factor around 20-30% for the Wind/Solar. Just for NSW:

14,304MW Demand

 1,990MW Wind/Solar (nondispatchable plants)
15,392MW Other Plants (dispatchable plants)

So with a 90% availability of the "other plants" added with 25% load factor for Wind/Solar would have only just met NSW demand (50MW excess) without any margin. They leaned on the NEM and still had to curtail industrial users. Coal is easy to shut down and replace with Wind/Solar but the dispatchable capacity needs to be kept up somehow if the Wind/Solar isn't wildly over provisioned (say 5x more capacity than its replacing).
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #33 on: February 10, 2017, 09:53:12 am »
And a capture of the NEM pricing and demand in NSW for posterity. Huge drop in demand just as the 6pm news is playing out....

It's on the rise again though. I suppose as people vacate work premises, lights, computers, copiers etc... are being turned off or going into standby. But as people get home (and lets face it, Sydney traffic sucks so many people will only now just be walking in the door), AC's will be coming on, microwaves being used, lights being turned on...

It's still >40 degrees outside so opening windows really won't do a lot.
I'll disagree and say the overall shape was as expected, with no sustained demand from NSW. But that required a public scare campaign and curtailing industrial users.
 

Offline HalcyonTopic starter

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #34 on: February 10, 2017, 10:07:25 am »
I'll disagree and say the overall shape was as expected, with no sustained demand from NSW. But that required a public scare campaign and curtailing industrial users.

Not sure what there is to disagree about? The graph was as expected and came pretty damn close to (and at times exceeded) demand predictions. Industrial energy customers are on a totally different energy billing platform to residential and commercial customers. They get charged different amounts depending on the time of day. It's not unusual for energy providers to give their biggest (industrial) customers a call and warn they might risk be disconnected from the grid. Huge players have their own generators where they can completely disconnect from the grid and run autonomously if required in order to reduce overall demand (smelters etc...)

There was no scare campaign. The figures were real and by the looks of it, NSW came pretty close to rolling blackouts. Yes, we had some leeway in terms of the interconnectors to the other states, but I think they did the right thing. You don't wait until the last minunte when it's all too late.
 

Offline TerraHertz

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #35 on: February 10, 2017, 11:27:07 am »
When they shut down Wallerawang, it was obvious the lunatics had taken over. They didn't even mothball it, they destroyed it as quickly as possible.

google nsw coal fired power stations shutdown

These lunatics: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/greens-and-labor-want-all-coal-power-stations-shut-down-under-planned-transition/news-story/573a9f4656117f27ed44651ae6920efc
Greens and Labor want all coal power stations shut down under ‘planned transition’

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Offline aargee

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #36 on: February 10, 2017, 12:23:00 pm »
Subscriber only access for the Courier Mail article.
I've often wondered if the public could sway things with the power companies by threatening to turn off their solar systems en masse at 2pm on a day like this.
Not easy, not hard, just need to be incentivised.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #37 on: February 10, 2017, 12:48:43 pm »
Almost midnight now and the temps have subsided. We didn't lose power in Baulkham Hills. And given that a lot of my area is McCastle territory who love to leave their 3 story climate controlled aircons on 24/7, seems that the grid and sources are pretty robust. Although they always have been, power outages in Sydney IME are very rare. Not uncommon to go several years without one.
I heard a couple of suburbs went down due to some fault.
 

Offline ajb

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #38 on: February 10, 2017, 01:41:11 pm »
I personally don't see why we don't start embracing nuclear power, at least on a small scale as "fill in" reactors. Yes, coal is old and dated but solar is only ever any good during peak daylight hours, it's very inefficient.

A nuclear plant will never pay for itself if used only for standby/peaking; it's simply too expensive to build them (and eventually decommission and process the resulting waste).  If you want to have any hope of breaking even on a new nuclear plant you have to plan on running it at full capacity basically for every minute of its lifecycle.  For reference, there's a PWR plant under construction in Florida was supposed to cost $5 billion and open in 2016.  It's now expected to cost $22 billion and take at least another decade before it's completed (if ever).  That puts the capital cost at close to $10,000/kW, which is much higher than DOE estimates for any other technology.  At this point, nuclear plants are far too financially risky on their own merits for any sane private investor, so they don't get built without public financial backing, and all of the headaches that arranging that entails.  I'm not even sure that the US government is willing to back them anymore.

Nuclear advocates will often claim that new reactor designs are better/faster/cheaper/safer, but it's going to be extremely difficult to convince investors and utilities that they're actually worth building in the current energy economy.

If you want to bridge the gap from now to full renewables, my understanding is that combined cycle natural gas is pretty much the best option (at least in the US).  They're relatively inexpensive to build and operate, relatively efficient and clean to run, and well suited to variable loads which makes them good fill-in for solar/wind in the absence of adequate energy storage. 

One nice thing about solar is that its output tends to correlate with some of the most problematic loads...air conditioners.  After all, if you're running your aircon extra hard because it's hot because it's summer and the sun is beating down on your house...
 

Offline richard.cs

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #39 on: February 10, 2017, 03:46:28 pm »
One nice thing about solar is that its output tends to correlate with some of the most problematic loads...air conditioners.  After all, if you're running your aircon extra hard because it's hot because it's summer and the sun is beating down on your house...

Worth bearing in mind that isn't true worldwide, in the UK peak electricity demand is in the winter, usually highest on cold frosty days in January. In winter the coldest days tend to be the ones that are clear and still (so with little/no wind), and solar power is limited by both low angle sunlight and short days. As a result we burn a lot of coal and gas this time of year (right now the major contributions to the 48 GW demand are, 9.2 GW coal, 9.6 GW nuclear, 2 GW wind and 23 GW CCGT - in summer coal is down to a GW or two and gas at 10-15 GW).

In the summer there's a lot more solar peaking at about 1pm, but the demand peak is actually at about 6 pm when people get home from work and start cooking, etc.
 

Offline HackedFridgeMagnet

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #40 on: February 11, 2017, 12:58:31 am »
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/10/electricity-market-operator-denies-being-asleep-at-the-wheel-during-blackout

Haven't got Swift's original comments, hopefully he is not being misquoted.

It seems that the energy market is being manipulated and that was the cause of the shortage in SA. 
Tell me if I've got this wrong.

Couple of points
Quote
He said there were three thermal generators in the state on the day that were not available to meet the surge in demand. This lack of availability was attributed to “technical issues”.
So much for base load power.

Quote
When Aemo contacted the plant operator at Pelican Point at just after 5.30pm eastern time to check whether it could begin power generation in order to prevent the blackout, the market operator was informed it would take up to four hours to kickstart the plant, and by that time, it was too late.
Four hours? I thought gas was quicker.

Quote
Swift went through Aemo’s actions on the day of the blackout. He said Aemo issued market notices in response to what he described as “an unprecedented level of demand”, but despite the market price being very high, there had been no market response.
Quote
He said their projection of market demand for Wednesday had been out by 3%. Swift said Aemo had built into its projections that wind and solar power would drop off on Wednesday, but the situation had been manageable until outages were reported.
not coping with 3% fluctuation seems strange, and not really unprecedented.

http://engie.com.au/media/UploadedDocuments/News/Pelican%20Point%20Second%20Unit%20-%20Media%20statement.pdf
pelican point gas turbine media statement. Just makes me think these regulations and the pricing mechanism are a bit of a mess.


« Last Edit: February 11, 2017, 01:08:00 am by HackedFridgeMagnet »
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #41 on: February 11, 2017, 01:15:08 am »
I'm talking about ceiling insulation.  That is cheap and easy.
I'm thinking about getting solar panels for that purpose. They cover the roof so less heat gets in. Still I'm not a fan of cold so I usually have the AC set at 25 deg. C if keeping the windows open isn't enough.
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Offline HalcyonTopic starter

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #42 on: February 11, 2017, 01:51:30 am »
Let's see what happens today. It's supposed to be hotter than yesterday. It's curently 43.6°C and rising where I am. Demand on the grid is currently 12,220 MW.

Almost time to crack open a cold beverage I think.
 

Offline johansen

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #43 on: February 11, 2017, 01:55:46 am »
It just seems that the electricity infrastructure isn't keeping up with the increases in population growth and more people adopting luxuries such as air conditioning. When I was growing up, we were fortunate enough to have a single split-system unit at home. These days big ducted systems are becoming the norm, if not expected in homes.

Same issue with the road and public transport infrastructure. It's not rocket science, stuff is reaching capacity.

Per capita, electrical usage is 3 times higher today than it was in the 70's. in America.
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #44 on: February 11, 2017, 02:21:37 am »

Per capita, electrical usage is 3 times higher today than it was in the 70's. in America.

Are you sure?  According to Wikipedia (and roughly cross checked to a number of other sources), US consumption has been roughly constant or slightly declining since the 70s.  You are saying Australia has caught up and gone ahead by a factor of three since we were noted as the most wasteful folks on earth?  Seems likely that somebodies numbers are off.
 

Offline HalcyonTopic starter

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #45 on: February 11, 2017, 03:32:16 am »
It's starting to get warm now... a screen grab from my place. 2:32pm local time.
 

Offline TerraHertz

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #46 on: February 11, 2017, 04:21:31 am »
There's one unexpected advantage to having shelves full of boat anchor equipment in my workshop. Lots of thermal mass. The downstairs area is quite well insulated, and if I make sure it has plenty of airflow through during the cool part of the night, it doesn't get too bad during the day. So long as I remember to keep the windows and doors closed - which I didn't yesterday.

No aircon yet. Soooon...

Upstairs though... So far it only has thin roof insulation, not the planned thick barrier. So the loft is a no-go area on days like this. It's possible to bear it very briefly, but half an hour - forget it.

Edit: Oh, and I meant to say, for all suffering Sydneysiders, here are some pleasant stories about cold places.
   https://www.iceagenow.info/

Also, JoNova with words to say about deliberately degraded electricity grids, and how other states are doing in the heat.
   http://joannenova.com.au/
« Last Edit: February 11, 2017, 04:27:49 am by TerraHertz »
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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #47 on: February 11, 2017, 07:17:27 am »
I can see a bigger push to implement DREDs (Demand Response Enabling Device AS4755) in air conditioners and other appliances if this trend keeps up in Summer.
Yay let the power companies nobble your device because they can't be bothered / too cheap to upgrade infrastructure to keep up with demand  :-- :--
How about make a similar type of device that works in reverse - that is, it turns *on* during some off peak times for loads where using more now can reduce use later and make electricity very cheap or even free during those off peak times. An example of a load that would work extremely well with that is a dedicated freezer. A water heater is another, but they really should be pushing heat pump technology as it is very cheap to implement nowadays.

In principle, it can also be done for A/C loads. Run the A/C more before the peak so the peak ends up longer but lower. That would use significantly more energy, though, so it would have to be timed for a net benefit and be such that the end user also sees a cost savings.
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Offline HackedFridgeMagnet

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #48 on: February 11, 2017, 07:39:16 am »
I think pricing signals transmitted to some of the loads would fix a lot of this.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]
« Reply #49 on: February 11, 2017, 09:11:00 am »
I think pricing signals transmitted to some of the loads would fix a lot of this.
The UK had this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7
and this was one of the promised benefits of the rollout of smart meters in Australia.
I can see a bigger push to implement DREDs (Demand Response Enabling Device AS4755) in air conditioners and other appliances if this trend keeps up in Summer.
Yay let the power companies nobble your device because they can't be bothered / too cheap to upgrade infrastructure to keep up with demand  :-- :--
How about make a similar type of device that works in reverse - that is, it turns *on* during some off peak times for loads where using more now can reduce use later and make electricity very cheap or even free during those off peak times. An example of a load that would work extremely well with that is a dedicated freezer. A water heater is another, but they really should be pushing heat pump technology as it is very cheap to implement nowadays.

In principle, it can also be done for A/C loads. Run the A/C more before the peak so the peak ends up longer but lower. That would use significantly more energy, though, so it would have to be timed for a net benefit and be such that the end user also sees a cost savings.
The majority (energy) of the loads in a residential house could be on pricing based switches, its easy for people with grid connect solar but very few go to the effort despite the savings available. The retailers don't want it either as they make huge profits on inflexible pricing terms.
 


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