By Jo Nova
Shh. The Renewable Crash Test Dummy Nation is at work.
We’re still subsidizing new solar panels even as we figure out how to shut down the excess panels we already have.
The body responsible for keeping the lights on in Australia’s biggest electricity grids wants emergency powers to switch off or throttle rooftop solar in every state to help cope with the daily flood of output from millions of systems.
It turns out those negative prices for electricity at midday are there for a reason. A firehose of electricity at lunchtime isn’t always a good thing. Negative prices are not a bargain, they’re the penalty a seller has to pay to get someone to take the toxic waste away, and the price signal was saying “Don’t Add More Solar”.
The amazing thing is that an institution with fifteen years of grid management didn’t see this coming fifteen years ago. Does night follow day? Is there any industry that runs better for only four hours a day rather than for 24?
The AEMO surely knew that without a Sea-of-Galilee type miracle in battery storage, the whole nation could not run on lunchtime generators. The AEMO also surely knew that our 50Hz stability comes from 500 ton turbines that spin 3,000 times a minute, and not from flat glass panels that make the wrong kind of electricity (the DC kind, not the AC). Yet here we are, 60 quarterly reports later, swamped with excess solar power to the point where we suddenly need to add remote switches to four million already-installed solar panels, so the guys in the the control rooms can stop them doing the one thing they are supposed to do at the time of day when they are best at doing it.
The disaster days are now Spring — when the sun is shining but people don’t need their air conditioners on, which begs the question of whether we just need to issue emergency announcements to turn on the dishwashers, pool pumps and ovens to save the grid. You know, “Pyrolytic Ovens save the day, people”.
In any case, wasn’t climate change going to turn spring into summer? Won’t this problem solve itself as spring disappears and long hot summers take over the calendar? No one seems to be saying that now…
Solar is pushing out the “other” forms of generation that are keeping the grid stable
AEMO said the ever growing output from solar was posing an increasing threat to the safety and security of the grid because it was pushing out all other forms of generation that were needed to help keep the system stable.
But isn’t the whole point of solar exactly that? Aren’t we supposed to drive out the other sorts of generation because they cause storms and floods and they start wars, kill koalas, and makes babies premature. Are all these things OK now?
Did we say “desperate”?
The AEMO admits what many suspect they are already doing, rather brutally sending voltage spikes down the line to trip out the solar panels:
And it warned that unless it had the power to reduce — or curtail — the amount of rooftop solar times, more drastic and damaging measures would need to be taken.
These could include increasing the voltage levels in parts of the poles-and-wires network to “deliberately” trip or curtail small-scale solar in some areas.
They’re hinting these voltage spikes might damage some delicate equipment. Would you like a big blackout or a small capital loss?
An even more dramatic step would be to “shed” or dump parts of the poles-and-wires network feeding big amounts of excess solar into the grid.
“If sufficient backstop capability is not available … the NEM may be operating insecure for extended periods,” the agency wrote in the report.
The Bureaucrats that wrote this hope you don’t understand it:
“(It may) therefore be operating outside of the risk tolerances specified in the National Electricity Rules, where the loss of a single transmission or generation element may lead to reliance on emergency control schemes to prevent system collapse.
But there it is. They’re talking about “system collapse”.
As it is, new solar panels already have to have the remote control switch built in in WA, SA, Victoria and parts of Queensland. Yesterday was the day when the AEMO announced we needed to do this in every state, and “by next year”.
Just four weeks away…
