I've mentioned on here before around rooftop solar and I need RoarEmotion posted some articles around controlled supply in some states. I had thought that the ALP's environmental plans were designed to help here, but it appears not. I've gone back and looked over them, and it appears I may have misunderstood them.
Their main 2 plans to help with network control over renewable inputs were Rewiring the Nation and Power to the People: Community Batteries.
Rewiring the Nation is a $20bn investment in upgrading power lines to high voltage infrastructure but there are some worrying components. As opposed to accepting the power generation from rooftop solar and finding a more efficient manner to distribute this within the network, the Rewiring the Nation plan seems purely isolated to bringing on new supply of large scale renewables. Sure, this will result in an investment in driving renewables, but potentially leading to suppression of existing power generation on peoples homes (which have in the most part been subsidised through STC's - federal, and through state grants). We run the risk of increasing the costs of these investments by not improving the quality of the whole network.
"Policy background The ALP proposes to develop a Rewiring the Nation Corporation (RNC) to invest $20 billion toward the modernisation of the electricity grid. A centrally coordinated process and low-cost financing for new electricity infrastructure is expected to improve the ability of new capacity to connect to the grid and deliver renewable energy at least cost. Substantial transmission investment will be required to accommodate the more than 50 GW of new large-scale renewable energy calculated by AEMO to be required in the NEM by 2042. The Rewiring the Nation policy is designed to bring forward the construction of high voltage infrastructure by lowering financial and planning barriers to unlock the development of large renewable energy resources. This is projected to support new Renewable Energy Zone development - primarily in NSW (New England REZ network expansion reinforcing Sydney, Newcastle, and Wollongong) and Victoria (South West and Western REZ network expansion) - with renewable capacity projected to grow by 26GW by 2030. This is calculated to increase overall renewable generation to 82% of all NEM generation, up from 68% under the modelled Reference Case. "
The Community Batteries scheme IMO is a great idea, but such a small investment compared to others. The Community battery scheme will do what we've suggested earlier in this thread around essentially creating small self generating areas of the grid. Ie. households generate electricity during the day, excess capacity is fed back to the grid and charges batteries, for those same communities to draw that power back during night time hours. Its an excellent solution but looking at the policy is very small.
"Policy background The ALP will commit to reducing household electricity bills, and emissions, by investing $200 million over four years in community batteries. This funding would be delivered through a capped, standalone grants program. To encourage participation by communities and network providers, and reduce consumer costs, the Commonwealth would meet the full capital cost of each battery, with operating and related costs met over time by networks, retailers and consumers. Compared to solar households with battery storage, solar households without battery storage pay more for electricity and produce greater emissions due to increased reliance on the grid. Batteries also contribute community-wide benefits by reducing peak demand and helping to stabilise the grid. The major barrier to battery storage uptake is the upfront cost, with household installed batteries typically costing $8,000-$15,000 (on top of solar costs). The development of community storage systems can therefore reduce total capital, installation and maintenance costs, while enabling the community to more efficiently store and share excess generation. A KPMG feasibility study undertaken for Ausgrid found that community batteries of 500kWh, supporting up to 250 households, are most feasible. Both the KPMG study and a separate ANU cost-benefit analysis suggest that batteries of this size currently have capital costs of around $500,000 ($1,000/kWh), with ANU analysis also suggesting battery operating costs of $8,000 a year ($16/kWh). A $200 million commitment by the ALP could therefore be expected to deliver at least 400 community batteries, benefitting up to 100,000 households, with these numbers likely to grow if battery costs continue to fall."
100,000 households for $200m, but we are investing $20bn in enabling private company investment to access the system. Seems out of whack when we have already subsidised the cost of people installing rooftop solar, if we just allow that energy production to be lost due to inertia and lack of planning, its a huge loss to the country IMO.
FYI there are around 10m homes in Australia, this investment will provide just 1% of those homes to be supported by community batteries. This isn't annual, this is the entire project funding. Had $20bn been diverted into here (and its far quicker to see this investment pay back) then this could yield community batteries for all 10m properties within Australia (at an average of $2,000 / household). Now we probably wouldn't hook all communities up to community batteries, you'd obviously select whichever neighbourhoods have the greatest solar generation as it makes sense to do that, but surely moving to community based batteries is the right idea, however if those operating costs are right (it says $16/kWh not mWh, then this might make it completely uneconomical anyway). Though I'm not sure their calculations on this are right, they state batteries are 500kWh (which usually states how big the system is, ie. it can receive charge of upto 500kWh and then this drains out, the following day it recharges again and so on). The calculations of $8,000 running costs per year at $16/kWh appears to be an annual charge per the named capacity and not what the ongoing costs would be for the network. For example, if the battery was to run at 100% capacity (which is probably unlikely, ie. it draws 500kWh capacity every day and then releases that amount back) then it can store 500kWH 365 times, so the network costs would be about 4.5c / kwh. Even at 50% capacity that would be 9c, but would be the only drawdown from the network and therefore cost of electricity would only be 9c for that area. Bearing in mind retail customers are paying between 20-30c right now, theres still significant margin in play here to lower power bills whilst also providing an excellent result to energy retailers.
Either way, neither of these policies really seem to address the key need of upgrading the network to be able to absorb the amount of rooftop solar being produced which is a massive missed opportunity IMO. An ABC article earlier this year suggested that a 3rd of properties in Australia now have solar panels, with many of those systems larger than the usage required for their homes (especially bearing in mind the time that supply is generated and the time when demand peaks) then there is a lot of energy being produced that is essentially disappearing into the network as worthless production because we haven't addressed the network requirements of this.
If we push for more households / businesses to move down the solar path and provide community batteries, there is probably very little need to connect these large scale renewables into the grid and therefore we wouldn't need to spend $20bn on Rewiring the Nation, that production could be spent on producing other things such as green ammonia, green hydrogen etc, and work towards decarbonising other areas of our economy (trucking / shipping etc) as it appears we already have a solution for home power generation, which just need a much better National Grid in order to disperse it. Whats even better, we might not even be far from capacity to do this.
Lets take the system I ahve (its fairly modest) at 5.5kwh. Most days when its been overcast in November, I've been generating around 20kwhs / day. I use around 10-12. The average system being installed at the moment is between 8-10 kwhs, so between homes and businesses, to power our entire home / business requirements, you probably only need somewhere between 1/3rd (we already have that) and 1/2 of homes / businesses (my business is also progressing with this, 80-100kwh systems), so why do we even need Rewiring the Nation, wouldn't it be better using the resource that we've already invested in through subsidies (either state based or federal STC's) rather than investing in something else, whilst production from our current investments goes to waste?
