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https://reneweconomy.com.au/baseload-coal-and-peaking-gas-paradigm-no-longer-fit-for-modern-grid-says-aemo-chief/>
"Australia Energy Market Operator chief Daniel Westerman says the traditional
combination of baseload power and peaking generation is no longer fit for the
modern Australian grid, as cheap renewables backed by storage eat away at the
markets once dominated by coal and gas.
In a speech at the AFR Energy and Climate Summit on Monday, Westerman said
Australia’s National Electricity Market had been built on an operational
paradigm from last century: Baseload coal power for steady consumption, and
peaking generation – usually from gas – to meet short periods of high demand.
“But that formula is no longer fit for modern Australia,” he said. “The
principle of a security constrained economic dispatch market, is that the
lowest cost electricity is dispatched first.
“Today that lowest cost energy is renewable energy.
“Dependent on the weather, that renewable energy needs firming – the batteries,
pumped hydro and flexible gas as the ultimate back-up – to support it when the
sun and the wind across Australia are not.
“Australia’s operational paradigm is no longer ‘baseload-and-peaking’, but
increasingly it’s a paradigm of ‘renewables-and-firming’.”
Westerman’s reminder that “soon … coal will be gone,” from Australia’s energy
mix – just as it has recently exited the market in the UK – comes as the nation
enters its final stretch of the transition to renewables, testing the nerve of
policy makers unconvinced of a no-coal, no-baseload future.
But for the head of Australia’s electricity market, the future is clear – in
fact, he’s even witnessed it in action, from the control room of the UK
National Grid, near London, on the day that its last coal plant powered down
and disconnected.
“When I spoke with operators, there was a sense of nostalgia,” he told the
conference on Monday. “That it was the end of an era.
“But also a sense of confidence, since this was just one of many steps in the
transformation of Britain’s energy system.
“In fact, Britain’s first day without coal was in 2017, during the time when I
was responsible for operational control of the transmission system across
England and Wales.”
Westerman’s point is that, while there are challenges to running modern energy
grids on large amounts of highly flexible and at times unpredictable resources,
it can be done – and is being done – with the help of existing transmission and
storage technologies including increasingly clever big batteries."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
