Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Future of Energy in Australia

It might be scary, but it is coming to somewhere near you soon.  Australia's energy systems are changing, and while the citizens seem to realise that, and broadly embracing renewables and battery storage, it seems that administrators may continue to dither, while failing to secure the future of energy in this country.

The following is based on a recent article bu Mike Wheeler, and is predicated on a presentation by Australia's Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel.  Fail to note the implications at your peril!
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Australia risks being left in the dark ages if it doesn’t start taking energy reforms seriously and begin implementing strategies that will secure Australia’s energy future, according to Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel.
Finkel made the observation at a keynote address at the National Press Club this week where he warned that energy generators, wholesalers and retailers need to futureproof the supply.
One the back of his recently released report on the energy sector, Blueprint for the future, he said a key to securing the supply is understanding the number of technological disruptions that need to be taken into consideration by the market as consumer demand patterns change.
“One technological disruption is that ever cheaper wind and large scale solar, even without subsidies, are dominating investor interest,” he said. “Investors prefer wind and solar because they are now cheaper to build than traditional generation such as hydro and coal. Investors also like wind and solar because they can be rolled out in small steps, say 100 megawatts at a time.
“A second disruption is the nearly two million rooftop solar generators that householders have installed. The electrical load curve and the generation mix now ramp rapidly up and down during the day to the extent that it becomes difficult for slow-responding baseload generation to cope. The market into which coal generation operates has been forever changed.”
A third disruption is just beginning, he said, delivered courtesy of stunning improvements in battery capacity and cost. This is a grassroots revolution. It’s driven by billions of people wanting their smart phones and laptop computers to last longer between charges.
“To meet that market pull, global manufacturers have invested massively to improve the performance and lower the price of rechargeable batteries,” he said. “Re-purposing these batteries has enabled manufacturers to configure grid scale batteries. These are now being installed internationally at a level and cost that were unimaginable five years ago.
A fourth technological disruption results from the fast evolving digital technologies that dominate our lives. Digital technologies are poised to enhance our electricity system, allowing it to flexibly accommodate millions of distributed rooftop solar generators, two-way current flows and the connection of microgrids.
“The final disruption is that homeowners are becoming market participants,” said Finkel. “Empowered by friendly software, they are keeping tabs on their own power generation, storage, demand management and electric heat-pump heating.”
While Finkel was at pains to point out the system is not broken, the energy sector – along with both state and local governments – need to start thinking ahead about the country’s energy needs, and not keep their heads buried in the sand that it will be business as usual over the next decade.
“[Our energy needs] are at a critical turning point,” he said. “We must improve on what we have. Globally, policy makers and market bodies understand that the key driver of that change – technology – cannot be reversed.
“When we met our counterparts overseas, the thing that made the biggest impact on me was the long-term policy certainty in other countries, which enables them to efficiently plan for the energy transition.
“It is clear they are ahead of us. For example, Ireland has a multi-year program, Delivering a Secure, Sustainable Electricity System, to actively integrate renewables into the power system. The United States has the Quadrennial Energy Review, to enable the modernisation and transformation of the electricity system. And New York has the Reforming the Energy Vision strategy, which establishes targets for emissions reductions, renewable generation and energy efficiency in buildings. These examples illustrate the need for us to adopt a more proactive approach in Australia.”
The Review not only stipulated that the market had to think outside traditional spheres of generation. However, he also said fossils fuels were not to be taken out of the mix.
“Reliability, security, lowest cost, and reduced atmospheric emissions are the critically important outcomes,” said Finkel.
“The generation mix is an input. The exact mix of coal, gas, solar, wind and hydro is not important as long as the outcomes are met. To minimise future price increases we will need a diverse energy mix, including fossil fuels.”
Finkel believes if Australia doesn’t act now, its energy future will be less secure, more unreliable and potentially costly. He reiterated the point by stating that even though scientists use the term, business as usual when modelling in a specific way, there is actually no such thing because the system is dynamically evolving.
“The past is gone,” he said. “To preserve a stable system at lowest cost we need to embrace that future. Embrace. Not race. Move too slowly and we will miss out on what the future offers. Move too quickly and we put at risk the stability and affordability of our electricity system.”


Monday, June 26, 2017

Queensland and North Australia Rainfall Variability

Queensland experiences some of the highest rainfall variability in the world. The chart below shows an analysis of the historical rainfall records from 1889–2017 and reveals 9 sequences of wet and dry periods, each lasting from 5 to 13 years. Our variable climate, especially long periods of drought, is one of the biggest challenges when running a successful grazing property in north Australia.
The maps also indicate graphically the situation for north Australia and includes the Northern Territory.
The maps are easier to see if downloaded separately from the original website.
Queensland has had a recent extended period of low rainfall [ see reddish and brown areas], while north and northwest Australia has been wetter than normal [blue and green areas].
There are some indications that at least for Queensland it might be getting wetter. 
Australia's Extended Wet/Dry Periods (1889-2016)
Queensland's Extended Wet/Dry Periods (1889-2017) (PDF, 2.1M, last updated 01:48PM, 21 June 2017)*
The Drought and Climate Adaptation Program (DCAP) is an initiative to improve drought preparedness and resilience for Queensland producers. The program aims to do this by delivering a range of research, development and extension projects.
The Queensland Drought Mitigation Centre is a collaboration of national and international climate modelling expertise and has been established to facilitate the research, development and extension projects under the DCAP program. The Centre is a collaboration between the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF), Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation (DSITI) and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ).  It has a Queensland focus, but data tends to cover north Australia more generally.
Drought and Climate Adaptation Program
The research projects include:
  • Managing for climate variability and improving drought preparedness in Queensland grazing enterprises: Rural specialists' perspectives and suggestions
  • Quantifying and communicating risks associated with multi-year drought in Queensland
  • Customised Pasture Alerts by email
  • Redevelopment of the LongPaddock website
  • Necessary climate change projections data for quantitative agricultural risk management
  • Communicating climate change impacts on Queensland’s agricultural sectors
  • Learning from the past – incorporating palaeoclimate data into water security planning and decision-making
  • Improving seasonal forecasts
  • Predicting multi-year droughts
  • Quantifying multi-year droughts
  • Enhanced multi-peril crop insurance
  • Economic value of risk management from seasonal forecasts
  • Developing drought monitoring indices
  • Developing crop forecasting models
  • Enhancing decision support tools
  • Crop production modelling under climate change
  • Regional climate change adaptation
  • Managing for climate variability workshops
More details on the results of the projects will be available soon.
This type of approach may offer deeper insights for the rural communities in north Australia, as well as mining and other industries in the north.

Friday, June 23, 2017

Northern Territory - To Get Australasia 's Biggest Electricity Network Back Up Battery

Northern Territory seeks solution for battery storage

Simon Mackenzie
Vector has won a multi-million-dollar Australian contract to supply the Territory Generation Alice Springs Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project.
Vector was one of a number of Australian and international firms bidding for the contract that will see it supply Australasia’s largest grid-tied lithium ion battery storage solution to stabilise and enhance generation on the Alice Springs electricity network.
The 5MW battery system will improve reliability on the network while helping smoothly switch energy use between renewable sources and the grid as needed. Vector will be responsible for the design, engineering, construction, and installation of the system and once commissioned, will also be responsible for ongoing maintenance.
Vector Chief Executive, Simon Mackenzie, said this contract further endorses Vector’s strategy and commitment to delivering customers world class sustainable energy solutions.
“It’s not just the technology Vector’s using that is innovative, it is the way we’re tailoring the solutions to meet quite specific and widely varied customer needs that is the game changer,” says Mackenzie. “It’s our mindset that is proving as innovative as the technology we’re using to meet the unique challenges and aspirations of the Alice Springs network.”
“When we complete this contract, Vector will have delivered the two largest grid-tied battery storage projects in Australasia. It’s a great endorsement of our expertise.”
Sort of nice to see the NT in the spotlight for renewable energy - in a positive story!!

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Rural America is Stranded in the Dial-Up Age

This is the heading for a pertinent article in the Wall Street Journal [ www.wsj.com ] of 16 June 2017. 

It highlights the deplorable plight of rural America in regards to decent internet coverage, now seen as a necessity for business, education, healthcare and rural properties, let alone households.

While Australia has made considerable efforts to provide a decent service through the NBN, the once great US of A is struggling with services to rural areas.

We are not doing fantastically in Australia, but may be doing a great deal better than the USA it seems.

Read here - https://www.wsj.com/articles/rural-america-is-stranded-in-the-dial-up-age-1497535841 

This should be relevant reading for all those outside capital cities in Australia, in terms of pursuing additional pressure on the Australian government to really consider rural Australia in NBN planning.

Friday, June 16, 2017

Renewable Energy Jobs Exceed Fossil Fuel Generation Work

Champions of fossil-fuel generation have long complained that jobs losses have been one of the biggest detriments to the decommissioning of coal-fired power plants. And renewable energy sources do nothing to help replace those jobs.
Not so, according to a panel of experts at the recent Australian Energy Storage Conference and Exhibition held at the International Convention in Sydney. At the Q&A after The Benefits of Microgrids for Urban, Rural and Off-Grid Applications seminar, the question of how many jobs are created by renewables was raised by moderator Mark Higgins, COO of clean energy consultancy Strategen.
“In the United States there is a lot of hand wringing over the loss of jobs in the conventional fossil fuel industry,” said Higgins. “In California this issue is finally starting to come to light where statistics are showing that within the renewable energy industry there are more renewable energy jobs than the entire coal industry in the United States.”
This is backed up by a recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy that shows that solar power employed 43 percent of the electricity sector’s workforce in 2016, while fossil fuels combined accounted for 22 percent.
Almost 374,000 people were employed in solar energy, whereas gas, oil and coal power generation combined had a workforce of slightly more than 187,000.
While offering no hard data to back up his point of view, Michael Ottaviano, CEO of Carnegie Clean Energy, said anecdotal evidence suggested that clean energy job opportunities were on the rise.
“If you think about it, since 2010 we’ve retired about 5000 MW of coal-fired power stations,” said Ottaviano. “We haven’t built any coal-fired power stations in about seven years but we’ve built about 10,000MW of renewable [plant]. In terms of job creation, we’ve created no new jobs in the construction of coal-fired power stations in the last seven years, but an enormous amount of jobs to create 10,000MW of renewables. I think the battery storage space is about to take off so we’ll do something similar. Politically the argument doesn’t get much traction in Australia but it should. We’re hearing a lot even in the Finkler report that came out recently about the need for coal-fired power stations to give three years notice partly to allow people to be retrained. That’s a real problem that needs to be addressed.”
ESS vice president of business development, Bill Sproull, said not only did renewables create jobs, but tended to make them localised, which in a country like Australia, is a good thing for regional economies.
“When I think about renewables and microgrids, it’s really decentralising energy generation and control that’s been prevalent in most of our countries. With that, jobs become very much more local, even down to the community level,” he said.
Another panellist, Giin Sia, the Asia Pacific regional sales director for NEC Energy Solutions, sees nothing but positive outcomes in the near future.
“If I could provide feedback from the rest of the Asia Pacific, [renewable] projects are seen as progressive,” he said, “particularly with an existing structure where there is a big dependence on fossil fuel. When talking to some of the utility companies, as well as governments and ministries, I do not get the impression that energy storage or micro grids are going to take away any jobs at all. In fact, it’s going to be able to put in more jobs, specifically in areas that are not seen as traditional skills.”
Battery energy storage should also contribute to new jobs in renewables in coming years. 
So for all you young and work aspiring people, the renewable energy industry might just be the place to seek and build skills that would translate into jobs......real jobs, particularly in regional cities, where living costs might also be lower than state capital cities. 
 [based on article by Mike Wheeler in PACE magazine, June 2016]

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Green Wall by Elmich Survives Strong Typhoon

Elmich Green Wall Braves Strongest Typhoon of 2016By ELMICH AUSTRALIA PTY LTD

News Date: 05 Jun 2017
Category: Buildings
Elmich's VersiWall GM (VGM) Green Wall at JI Hotel Xiamen Zhongshan Road Pedestrian Street survived the strongest typhoon to hit China in nearly 70 years.
Elmich Green Wall Braves Strongest Typhoon of 2016
Super typhoon ‘Meranti’ made landfall in Xiamen City, Fujian with a wind gust speed of around 170 km/h bringing heavy downpours and causing major disruptions to the electricity and water supplies affecting more than 3.2 million homes located in the region.
Elmich VGM mounting system is equipped with anti-lift arms and proprietary anchoring pilaster system, and certified by independent international test authority to withstand wind uplift from various directions up to 110km/h.
In this application, the real test of nature has proven that a product of quality can withstand the strongest typhoon.
For more information regarding the Green Wall at JI Hotel Xiamen, click here.

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Quite a positive outcome with implications for many other tropical areas where the security of tall green walls has been quite a bit of a worry in cyclonic / hurricane / typhoon conditions around the world.