Turnbull Unveils Snowy Plan For Pumped Hydro, Costing Billions

The Conversation - Michelle Grattan

In its latest move on energy policy, the Turnbull government has unveiled a plan to boost generation from the Snowy Hydro scheme by 50%.

The Snowy Hydro scheme already provides back-up energy to NSW and Victoria. AAP

The government says the expansion, which it has labelled the Snowy Mountains Scheme 2.0, would add 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market. This would be enough to power 500,000 homes.
Claiming the upgrading would be an "electricity game-changer", Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that in one hour it would be able to produce 20 times the 100 megawatt-hours expected from the battery proposed this week by the South Australian government, but would deliver it constantly for almost a week.
Turnbull flew to the Snowy early Thursday to formally announce the plan. The commonwealth is a minority shareholder in the Snowy Hydro, with a 13% stake. New South Wales and Victoria have 58% and 29% stakes respectively.
The government, through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), would examine several sites that could support large-scale pumped hydroelectric energy storage in the area, Turnbull said.
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the cost would run into "billions of dollars". It is being suggested it would be around A$2 billion. Frydenberg avoided being tied down on when it would be completed.
He said three new tunnels were being looked at, stretching 27 kilometres for the pumped hydro-facility. It would not involve new dams, but connect existing reservoirs and recycle water.
The plan had the potential to ensure there would be the needed renewable energy supply for those on the east coast at times of peak demand, Frydenberg said.
Tony Wood, energy program director at the Grattan Institute, cautioned that the plan would involve technical and economic issues, including whether it could make money, and to what extent it could contribute to solving the short-term power crisis.
"This isn't some sort of magic panacea," Wood told the ABC. Some hard-headed thinking was needed on what it would do and how it would work.
Turnbull said: "The unprecedented expansion will help make renewables reliable, filling in holes caused by intermittent supply and generator outages.
"It will enable greater energy efficiency and help stabilise electricity supply into the future," he said – adding that this would ultimately mean cheaper power prices.
He said successive governments at all levels had failed to put in place the needed storage to ensure reliable supply.
"We are making energy storage infrastructure a critical priority to ensure better integration of wind and solar into the energy market and more efficient use of conventional power."
Turnbull said an "all-of-the-above" approach, including hydro, solar, coal and gas, was critical to future energy supplies.
Snowy Hydro already provided back-up energy to NSW and Victoria and could extend to South Australia when expanded, he said. The expansion would have no impact on the supply of irrigation water to NSW, South Australia and Queensland.
The feasibility study for the expansion is expected to be completed before the end of this year, with construction starting soon after, he said.

Links

• Pumped hydro energy storage – making better use of wind
• Government losing the argument on energy, according to poll
• Turnbull to gas industry: give the local market more supply
• The government is right to fund energy storage: a 100% renewable grid is within reach

Year-On-Year Bleaching Threatens Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage Status

The Conversation - Terry Hughes | Barry Hart | Karen Hussey

The Great Barrier Reef is bleaching again, in its first back-to-back mass bleaching event. AAP/WWF Australia

The Great Barrier Reef has already been badly damaged by global warming during three extreme heatwaves, in 1998, 2002 and 2016. A new bleaching event is under way now.
As shown in a study published in Nature today, climate change is not some distant future threat. It has already degraded large tracts of the Great Barrier Reef over the past two decades.
The extreme marine heatwave in 2016 killed two-thirds of the corals along a 700km stretch of the northern Great Barrier Reef, from Port Douglas to Papua New Guinea. It was a game-changer for the reef and for how we manage it.

Bleaching caused by extreme heat in summer 2016, based on extensive aerial surveys. Category 4 in red: 60-100% of colonies were bleached; Category 3 in orange: 30-60% bleached. Author provided

Our study shows that we cannot climate-proof coral reefs by improving water quality or reducing fishing pressure. Reefs in clear water were damaged as much as muddy ones, and the hot water didn’t stop at the boundaries of no-fishing zones. There is nowhere to hide from global warming. The process of replacement of dead corals in the northern third of the reef will take at least 10-15 years for the fastest-growing species.
The Great Barrier Reef is internationally recognised as a World Heritage Area. In 2015 UNESCO, the world body with oversight of World Heritage Areas, considered listing the reef as a site “in danger” in light of declines in its health.

Australia’s response falling short
In response to concerns from UNESCO, Australia devised a plan, called the Reef 2050 Long-term Sustainability Plan. Its ultimate goal is to improve the “Outstanding Universal Value” of the reef: the attributes of the Great Barrier Reef that led to its inscription as a World Heritage Area in 1981.
We have written an independent analysis, delivered to UNESCO, which concludes that to date the implementation of the plan is far too slow and has not been adequately funded to prevent further degradation and loss of the reef’s values. A major shortcoming of the plan is that it virtually ignores the greatest current impact on the Great Barrier Reef: human-caused climate change.
The unprecedented loss of corals in 2016 has substantially diminished the condition of the World Heritage Area, reducing its biodiversity and aesthetic values. Key ecological processes are under threat, such as providing habitat, calcification (the formation of corals’ reef-building stony skeletons) and predation (creatures eating and being eaten by corals). Global warming means that Australia’s aim of ensuring the Great Barrier Reef’s values improve every decade between now and 2050 is no longer attainable for at least the next two decades.

What needs to change
Our report makes 27 recommendations for getting the Reef 2050 Plan back on track. The following are critical:

• Address climate change and reduce emissions, both nationally and globally. The current lack of action on climate is a major policy failure for the Great Barrier Reef. Local action on water quality (the focus of the Reef 2050 Plan) does not prevent bleaching, or “buy time” for future action on emissions. Importantly, though, it does contribute to the recovery of coral reefs after major bleaching.
• Reduce run-off of sediment, nutrients and pollutants from our towns and farms. To date the progress towards achieving the water quality targets and uptake of best management practice by farmers is very poor. Improving water quality can help recovery of corals, even if it doesn’t prevent mortality during extreme heatwaves.
• Provide adequate funding for reaching net zero carbon emissions, for achieving the Reef 2050 Plan targets for improved water quality, and limiting other direct pressures on the reef.

At this stage, we do not recommend that the reef be listed as “in danger”. But if we see more die-backs of corals in the next few years, little if any action on emissions and inadequate progress on water quality, then an “in danger” listing in 2020, when UNESCO will reconsider the Great Barrier Reef’s status, seems inevitable.

This article was co-authored by Diane Tarte, co-director of Marine Ecosystem Policy Advisors Pty Ltd. She was a co-author of the independent report to UNESCO on the Great Barrier Reef.

Links

• Great Barrier Reef bleaching stats are bad enough without media misreporting
• This election is our last chance to save the Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef needs far more help than Australia claims in its latest report to UNESCO
• The third global bleaching event took its toll on Western Australia’s super-corals

Trump’s Budget Cuts To EPA, NOAA, NASA, And Energy Would Cripple US Climate Programs

Vox - Brad Plumer

Last one out turn off the lights. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

President Donald Trump's new budget outline for fiscal year 2018 can be read as a political document, a statement of his administration's policy priorities. Many of these cuts won't be enacted by Congress, but it's a look at what Trump values.
And what's clear is that Trump wants the US government to pull back sharply from any effort to stop global warming, adapt to its impacts — or even study it further. Under the proposal, a wide variety of Obama-era climate programs across multiple agencies would be scaled back or slashed entirely.
That includes eliminating much of the work the Environmental Protection Agency is doing to research climate impacts and limit emissions.
It includes scaling back the Department of Energy's efforts to accelerate low-carbon energy. It includes cuts to NASA's Earth-monitoring programs. The proposal would also eliminate the Sea Grant program at NOAA, which helps coastal communities adapt to a warmer world. The document dubs this a "lower priority."
Today's budget proposal mainly offers top-line numbers for each agency; in May, the White House will offer line-by-line detail on how it would like to fund or cut specific programs. Ultimately Congress will have the final say — and lawmakers may reject many of these proposals. But here's what we know about Trump's wishes:

1) Many of the EPA's climate programs would be terminated. Trump is proposing a sweeping 31 percent cut to the EPA's budget — from $8.2 billion down to $5.7 billion — shrinking funding to the lowest levels in 40 years. That includes zeroing out funding for many of the agency's climate programs. Currently, the EPA is the main US entity working to monitor and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So there's no more money for work on the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era regulation to control CO2 emissions from power plants, which Trump aims to repeal. (By law, the EPA would still have to work on emission rules for vehicles.)
 There are cuts to "international climate change programs, climate change research and partnership programs, and related efforts" — totaling $100 million.
We don't have line-by-line numbers, but that could include killing EPA programs like the Climate Resilience Evaluation Awareness Tool, which helps utilities adapt to extreme weather events.
The budget also proposes eliminating Energy Star, a voluntary certification program that helps companies release energy-efficient products, helping prevent more than 300 million tons of CO2 emissions per year.
It proposes axing climate research funding for the EPA's Office of Research and Development, the agency's scientific research arm, whose overall budget would be cut in half.
One EPA climate program that would likely survive is the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which measures emissions from industries around the country.
Congress has mandated this monitoring, and getting rid of it would require legislative changes. So the EPA could still quantify US greenhouse gas emissions — it just couldn't very much about it.

2) The Department of Energy's R&D programs would be reoriented and scaled back. Trump is proposing a 5.6 percent cut to the Department of Energy, bringing its budget down to $28 billion. And, to do that, he would impose a steep 17.9 percent cut on core energy/science programs intended to accelerate the transition to new (and cleaner) energy technologies.
DOE has a variety of offices that direct early-stage research into solar, wind, nuclear, biofuels, batteries, carbon capture for coal, and other technologies. But these offices also partner with the private sector to deploy new energy tech that's closer to fruition — the sort of partnership that helped bring about the fracking boom.
Trump's budget proposes shrinking back from deployment and focusing solely on early-stage research, which many conservatives see as the only proper role of government. (Deployment, they argue, is vulnerable to cronyism and amounts to picking winners and losers.)
While we don't have specifics, this proposal might mean ditching things like DOE's Sunshot Initiative, which helps solar companies look for ways to cut costs. It also might mean DOE's Office of Fossil Energy will no longer help utilities build carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal (as DOE did with the Petra Nova plant in Texas). The latter would be a striking change, since Trump has long promised to help bring about "clean coal."
Trump's budget also proposes eliminating ARPA-E, which funds early research into long-shot energy technologies too risky for the private sector, like biofuels from algae or flying wind turbines. And the proposal eliminates the loan programs like the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which gave early support to Tesla. The proposal argues that "the private sector is better positioned to finance disruptive energy research."
Some energy experts argue that government-backed deployment is absolutely essential if the US hopes to cut emissions quickly and shift to low-carbon energy. And new Secretary of Energy Rick Perry seems to agree with this view. Here was Perry just the other day praising ARPA-E, which is now on the chopping block:

IMAGE

The White House, clearly, has other ideas.

3) State Department funding for climate change is axed. As part of the Paris climate deal in 2015, the United States pledged not just to cut emissions, but also to offer $3 billion in aid to poorer countries to help them adapt to climate change and build clean energy. So far, the Obama administration has chipped in $1 billion. This was seen as crucial for bringing these countries into the deal.
Trump would end all that. In his budget, he's proposing to "cease payments to the United Nations' (UN) climate change programs by eliminating U.S. funding related to the Green Climate Fund and its two precursor Climate Investment Funds."
This doesn't mean that the United States is leaving the Paris climate deal altogether — the White House is apparently still debating that. But it means they don't plan on contributing any funds toward making the deal work.

4) NASA's Earth-monitoring programs are shrunk. One reason we know so much about climate change is that NASA has deployed a fleet of Earth-observing satellites since 1999. They collect data on everything from temperature and precipitation to underground aquifers and ocean currents to wildfires, soil moisture, and storms.
But NASA's Earth Science Division has come under attack from conservatives who don't appreciate the agency's forays into climate science and think NASA should focus on space exploration instead. As such, Trump's budget would trim the agency's Earth science budget to $1.8 billion — a $102 million cut.
That'd include terminating "four Earth science missions (PACE, OCO-3, DSCOVR Earth-viewing instruments, and CLARREO Pathfinder) and reduc[ing] funding for Earth science research grants."
The proposal derides these programs as too "Earth-centric."
For context, NASA's PACE mission was meant to help climate scientists better understand how aerosol particles and clouds influence climate change — still a key source of uncertainty — and to monitor ocean ecosystems more closely.
DSCOVR, meanwhile, will still monitor solar storms that could harm the grid, but it will no longer use its Earth-facing cameras to monitor things like ozone levels, weather patterns, or deforestation.

5) A key NOAA program to help coastal communities adapt to climate change would be gone. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Sea Grant program provides grants for research efforts intended to help coastal communities deal with a wide variety of challenges. Lately, that has included climate change.
As John Upton writes at Climate Central: "Sea Grant research has helped West Coast shellfish farmers cope with water acidification, provided advice to Maryland residents about coping with worsening floods, and promoted the use of grooved nails in roofs to secure panels during storms in the Northeast."
Trump's budget would zero out the $73 million program, calling it "a lower priority than core functions maintained in the Budget such as surveys, charting, and fisheries management."
It's unclear if Congress would agree to this: The Sea Grant program was established back in 1966 "to foster economic competitiveness" and has rarely been controversial in the past.

Links

• Trump’s plan to roll back Obama’s fuel economy rules for cars, explained
• What Scott Pruitt’s recent climate denial means for the EPA
• Scott Pruitt denies basic climate science. But most of the outrage is missing the point.
• Elon Musk says he can fix Australia in 100 days. He might be telling the truth.
• It’s not your imagination: bike sharing systems are popping up all over the place
• Clean energy is now as big as pharmaceutical manufacturing in the US

Despair Is Not An Option When It Comes To Climate Change

Fairfax - Tim Winton*

We've heard a lot about warming oceans in the past couple of decades, and it's always sounded so distant and technical. Even to me a 2-degree jump in sea temperature sounded harmless. But that was before I saw what it meant. That's when it got personal, when it literally hit me where I live.
During the summer of 2010-11, Western Australia had an unprecedented marine heatwave. One morning not far from where I live, beach-walkers saw seabirds massed along the shoreline. Birds as far as the eye could see. When they got closer they saw the tide-line covered with dead and dying abalone – thousands of them. The sea had suddenly gotten too hot for these molluscs to endure. So they climbed out off the limestone reefs to escape, only to find themselves – out of the frying pan and into the fire – roasting to death on the sand.  A mass stranding of abalone – no one had ever seen the like before.

Tim Winton.  Photo: Louise Kennerley

Just think of it for a moment, a creature so desperate to escape its own intolerable world it casts itself ashore to die. The pathos of that. And consider what it might mean for all those other creatures, unseen and unnoticed, beneath the sunlit surface.
This event really shook me because abalone has been such an important part of my life. When I was a kid the shellfish was a local staple, growing in such abundance I could fill a string bag with them in 10 minutes before school. We called it muttonfish.  On our honeymoon my wife and I dived for them. Abalone was our first meal as a married couple, and in time we showed our kids how to collect them and cook them, just as our parents had taught us. But now, in our part of the world, the population is decimated and the fishery closed.

People talk about the boiling-frog moment. Well, this was mine. Then last summer images started coming back from the Great Barrier Reef showing massive coral bleaching, and although I accepted the images and testimony of the scientists involved, I really struggled to accept the reality of what they were reporting. This news wasn't nearly as close to home as the abalone kill, but the implications were so much worse. Nearly a quarter of the world's largest coral reef was either critically ill or dead.

For a sea lover and activist like me, this was a devastating development. For the scientists who'd been warning of an event like this for decades there was no sense of vindication, only sorrow. And for many Australians these events have been profoundly shocking.  But the horror is compounded by the knowledge that all during this catastrophe the federal government has been ignoring global climate science and undermining renewable energy. To add to this folly, the Turnbull regime has done everything in its power to smooth the way for the world's biggest coal mine in the Galilee Basin just inland, effectively offering to subsidise the largest-known reservoir of carbon pollution and help unleash it into the atmosphere.
But despair is not an option.  And cynicism is just cowardice in a mask. Who can afford either?
At moments like these, when our leaders traduce our interests, it's important to remember that the ordinary citizen has real power. When we share knowledge and passion, when we get organised and gain strength and momentum from one another, we make our will known.  That's when we achieve mighty things, and no government or corporation can resist us. Australians asserted their will at the Franklin Blockade, in the old-growth forests of WA, at Fraser Island and the Daintree. I was there to see it up close at Ningaloo. This is what I remind myself of, steel myself with.


Great Barrier Reef's bleached coral up close
Parts of the Great Barrier Reef are enduring sustained periods of heat stress worse than at the same time during last year's record-breaking coral bleaching event, raising fears the natural wonder may suffer another hammering.Vision supplied: Biopixel.

We've reached a moment in history in which we're fighting for the Great Barrier Reef's very survival. The world's largest living structure, a marvel visible from space, is in desperate need of help. And if the reef dies then we're all in jeopardy because our survival depends on the health of the seas – 70 per cent of the earth's surface is water, and when the oceans die life on this planet is no longer viable.
Humans are a remarkable, unrepeatable species. In recognising our dependency on nature we've come a long way in such a short period – it's been a revolution in my own lifetime. But the natural world is now changing faster than our adaptive response. We need to think and act faster, more consistently and more concertedly. In good faith. In common cause. Because this is fast becoming a rescue mission, not just to spare the corals, but to save our own kind.  If we can't save it, we've sealed our own fate.  A planet that can't sustain its greatest reef will eventually become a place that won't support human life.  Like the abalone, there's nowhere else for us to go.

Tim Winton woke one day to see the shoreline covered in dead or dying abalone.  Photo: Department of Fisheries

Decisions made about the Carmichael coal mine will have an impact upon the reef, on our global atmosphere, on the state of our oceans.  None of us can afford to get this wrong.  We are creatures of the blue planet.  If we cook ourselves here at home the only other option is a burning beach.

*Tim Winton is an author and patron of the Australian Marine Conservation Society.

Links

• I saw the Great Barrier Reef die last weekend, and I wept
• 'Significant event': Coral bleaching returns to the Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef Bleached For Unprecedented Second Year Running 
• Reef authority warns of widespread coral bleaching again this year
• Coral bleaching threat extends to Sydney
• Climate change impact on Australia may be irreversible, five-yearly report says
• Big tourism must demand action to save the reef – its business depends on it
• Great Barrier Reef could face another big coral bleaching event this year
• Australia must choose between coal and coral – the Great Barrier Reef depends on it
• Nasa scans Great Barrier Reef to find answers to coral's poor health
• Great Barrier Reef: government must choose which parts to save, says expert
• The Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare
• Great Barrier Reef: advisers call for cap on farm pollution
• Great Barrier Reef needs $10bn for chance of survival, scientists say

Solar Experiment Lets Neighbours Trade Energy Among Themselves

New York Times - Diane Cardwell

Patrick Schnell, a participant in the Brooklyn Microgrid, with solar panels on his roof in Gowanus. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times

Brooklyn is known the world over for things small-batch and local, like designer clogs, craft bourbon and artisanal sauerkraut.
Now, it is trying to add electricity to the list.
In a promising experiment in an affluent swath of the borough, dozens of solar-panel arrays spread across rowhouse rooftops are wired into a growing network. Called the Brooklyn Microgrid, the project is signing up residents and businesses to a virtual trading platform that will allow solar-energy producers to sell excess-electricity credits from their systems to buyers in the group, who may live as close as next door.
The project is still in its early stages — it has just 50 participants thus far — but its implications could be far reaching. The idea is to create a kind of virtual, peer-to-peer energy trading system built on blockchain, the database technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The ability to complete secure transactions and create a business based on energy sharing would allow participants to bypass the electric company energy supply and ultimately build a microgrid with energy generation and storage components that could function on their own, even during broad power failures.
"Community members can work both individually and collectively to help meet demand in an efficient way," said Audrey Zibelman, who recently resigned as chairwoman of the New York State Public Service Commission, which regulates the state's utilities.
"It takes a central procurer — in this case, historically, the utility — out of the mix," she continued, "and really sets the market where they're not buying and selling to the utility but they're identifying each other's need and willingness to buy and sell."
The project is but one example of how rapidly spreading technologies like rooftop solar and blockchain are upending the traditional relationships between electric companies and consumers, putting ever more control in the hands of customers.
Across the globe, upstart companies like LO3 Energy, which is designing the Brooklyn experiment with the industrial giant Siemens, are building digital networks that offer the promise of user-driven, decentralized energy systems that can work in tandem with the traditional large-scale grid or, especially in emerging economies, avoid the need for a grid at all.
In Australia, where Ms. Zibelman will soon run the nation's energy markets, a company called Power Ledger announced the start of a residential electricity trading market based in blockchain last year at a housing development in Perth.
In Bangladesh, where an estimated 65 million people lack access to a central grid, ME SOLshare has been developing peer-to-peer trading networks of rural households with and without rooftop solar systems. Producer-consumers there — known as prosumers — can sell excess power into the network, where neighboring homes and businesses can buy it in small increments with a cellphone.

A Transactivegrid meter at Garry Golden's home in Brooklyn. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times

And in Germany, Sonnen, a leading supplier of home batteries and smart energy products and services, has created a web of about 8,000 customers, both with and without solar on their roofs, who are trading their stored energy among one another.
"Peer-to-peer is slowly but surely becoming a reality," said Olaf Lohr, Sonnen's head of United States business development. "This really is a very disruptive technology. The customers are also the owners — they are the producers of the energy. There is no centralized feed-in from one big power plant."
In New York, the Brooklyn microgrid is conceived to work with the conventional grid, which is in the midst of a reboot under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's directives to make it more flexible, resilient and economically efficient while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
That effort, known as Reforming the Energy Vision, or REV, includes encouraging the development of microgrids and more active community participation.
The ideal power system, said Richard L. Kauffman, who as the governor's chairman of energy and finance is leading that effort, is one that combines large power plants and transmission lines with clusters of smaller-scale producer-consumers, "where electrons can flow in more than one direction and supply and demand of electricity is dynamic — and that's different than the grid is today."
Peer-to-peer power sharing is consistent with that vision, he said, though a number of regulatory changes are necessary for it to take off.
The State Public Service Commission has already taken a few of them, including last week approving new ways to determine pricing for electricity from renewable energy projects that more accurately reflect the value to the grid based on geographic location, timing and other factors yet to be determined.
But Lawrence Orsini, LO3's chief executive, said the state still needed to determine how to define his company and its network of participants before it could get its market up and running, a move he anticipates by June.
"There's nothing technically infeasible about what we're doing," he said. "In order for transactive energy to take off as a whole, regulators have to be comfortable that markets can actually work this way and, more importantly, that people want markets like this."
Over the past year, LO3 has been working to find those people, using Google Earth to identify homes with rooftop solar installations and then knocking on doors to enlist participants, with some success throughout Park Slope and Gowanus.
On a block of President Street last year, the company carried out two sales of green electricity credits generated by one homeowner's solar system to a neighbor across the street — tiny transactions, but important in proving the concept's viability.

Mr. Golden on his roof this month. "We need to make energy a product and a service that people can purchase on their own," he said. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times

Those sales involved test versions of renewable-energy credits — numbered certificates that are used to track electricity exported from a renewable system to the grid. Utilities, corporations and other customers can buy the credits to claim green energy use.
In the Brooklyn case, LO3 used the credit sales, conducted over PayPal, to test its approach; it cannot legally buy and sell electricity until regulators determine its market status.
Once that occurs, Mr. Orsini said, the company will be able to facilitate the trading of energy among its participants — though they would still pay the utility, Con Edison, for infrastructure fees and services, as customers now do when they choose to use a green energy supplier through the utility.
Mr. Orsini's team is busy collecting data from meters installed in prosumer homes, measuring production, use and export of the solar electricity to help model the market.
They are also testing a smartphone app that customers will be able to use to manage their electricity purchases, setting parameters to control the source — selecting from a range of conventional, renewable, local and bulk options — as well as how much they are willing to spend.
Mr. Orsini said he expected that most users would want to make their choices and then let the system take over.
"No one wants to day-trade energy," he said. "You're giving something to people that they haven't ever had before, and that's really a way to personalize their energy consumption."
That is the aspect that appeals to a number of the participants, including Garry Golden of Windsor Terrace, a futurist who consults for a variety of businesses, including electric utilities and infrastructure companies.
Mr. Golden installed solar as part of a group purchase that proved so popular with his neighbors that almost a dozen systems are within view of his roof, forming an attractive cluster for the microgrid experiment.
"We need to make energy a product and a service that people can purchase on their own and not rely on a large centralized entity," Mr. Golden said. He added that it was important to build out infrastructure that would be able to better withstand disasters, both natural and man-made.
Other participants echoed that concern.
"The long-term goal is to be at least partially independent of the grid in emergencies, which was a reasonable argument to join," said Patrick Schnell, whose Gowanus basement flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, though he did not lose power. "Hopefully it will expand and more people will join and it will be more worthwhile."
The project includes plans to create a roughly five-square-block area — either around a collection of public housing projects or near a hospital — that could disconnect from the grid and operate independently in case of a power failure.
"It's a recognition of energy needs beyond your own," Mr. Golden said. "There's a microgrid of our community, and that's great, but the hospitals, the clinics, the schools, large housing complexes — you can feed the energy where it needs to go."

Links

• Tesla Gives the California Power Grid a Battery Boost
• A Big Test for Big Batteries
• Power Couple: Tie-Up Shows How Batteries and Solar May Link
• Reforming the Energy Vision

South Australia’s Energy Plan Gives National Regulators Another Headache

The Conversation - Jeffrey Sommerfeld

SA energy minister Tom Koutsantonis (left) and Premier Jay Weatherill have outlined their vision for the state’s electricity. AAP Image/David Mariuz

The keenly awaited new energy policy unveiled by South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill features a range of headline-grabbing items, such as a plan to spend A$150 million on a 100-megawatt battery storage facility to help stave off the danger of future blackouts.
On page 7 of the policy document, Weatherill explains part of his underlying rationale:

The national market is now widely considered to be failing and in need of urgent reform. The ability of governments to influence the industry requires cooperation within and across state borders and at a Federal level – cooperation that needs to transcend politics and self-interest.

Noble words, but the new policy doesn’t “transcend politics and self-interest”. Quite the contrary – it is a unilateral move by a state government understandably keen to safeguard itself after suffering vicious criticism at a federal level.
There are rules for how SA and the east coast states that make up the National Electricity Market (NEM) are supposed to behave, yet member states seem to be able to flaunt them, systematically undermining the NEM along the way.
Rightly or wrongly, the NEM does not account for schemes such as renewable energy targets or solar feed-in tariffs. This means that when states pursue them, they can distort the market in the process.
There is conjecture about how much blame the Weatherill government should shoulder for the reliability issues that have beset SA’s electricity network. Either way, the decision has been made to fix it with yet more unilateral state government intervention in what is supposed to be a federated electricity market.
As a result, the new policy is likely to cause major headaches for the NEM and its operators. The announcement includes plans to give the state’s energy minister Tom Koutsantonis the power to override the NEM’s operating rules, allowing him to order generators to supply extra power when he deems it necessary.
This might help avert another South Australian blackout, but it will also undermine the role of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which is responsible for managing the supply of electricity within the NEM. I will be fascinated to see how the SA government deals with the complex issue of what price they will pay for such power.
If the NEM is experiencing a peak in demand and South Australia is facing a shortage, will the South Australian Minister be able to override AEMO and demand private power generators in SA deliver power at a price determined by the minister? Or will the price be the one dictated at that moment by the market?
It is unlikely that the predominantly Labor-run states that now constitute the NEM will allow any adverse action against South Australia. In fact, the SA Parliament is the body through which rules of the NEM are legislated, so it will be nigh-on impossible to toss SA out of the NEM, lest the whole house of cards collapses.

Going it alone
Two other interesting aspects from the South Australian “energy intervention” is the construction of a new A$360 million gas-fired power plant, courtesy of SA taxpayers, and the A$150 million battery bank.
Presumably the SA government would like this new power plant to be able to sell electricity into the NEM, but to reserve the right to commandeer its output when circumstances dictate. It is not at all clear that the NEM rules allow this.
Consider the circumstances during last month’s heatwave, when both SA and New South Wales were facing power shortages. Under SA’s proposed new rules, NSW would be on its own (unless it develops a similar policy of its own). Hardly an example of cooperation.
The same issue will apply to the battery bank. Will it only be on standby for power shortages in SA, or will it be able to discharge into the NEM to take advantages of peak pricing? Could this result in SA finding its batteries empty when the wind stops blowing?
The SA government is correct to point out the deficiencies in the NEM, and even perhaps to claim that it is failing the nation. But an interstate scheme cannot be fixed by the unilateral actions of one state government – in this case, it is likely to be worsened.
The most worrying prospect of all, as far as the NEM is concerned, is the possibility that this will increase investment uncertainty still further, making it even less likely that the interstate grid will attract the new investment it needs.
If that happens, we might well see a few more states deciding to follow SA’s lead and plan sweeping energy reforms of their own.

Links

• Chief Scientist’s report lays a solid foundation for reforming Australia’s electricity network
• Will the latest electricity review bring climate and energy policy together at last?
• The electricity market’s not doing a great job – here’s how to improve it
• South Australia makes a fresh power play in its bid to end the blackouts
• Why the free market hasn’t slashed power prices (and what to do about it)

Gas Companies Make Guarantee They Will Meet Domestic Supply

ABC News - Ashlynne McGhee

Mr Turnbull said gas companies would increase supply to meet domestic and international demand. (ABC News: Nick Haggerty)

The major east coast gas companies have given the Federal Government a guarantee they will make gas available to meet domestic demands.
The promise emerged after an hour-long crisis meeting in Canberra convened by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, to find solutions to what he termed a looming crisis.
"They have given us a guarantee that gas will be available to meet demand," Mr Turnbull said.
"We are a massive gas exporter and it is untenable for us to be in a position where domestic gas consumers ... cannot have access to affordable gas."
It comes a day after South Australia announced it would spend more than $500 million to build a new gas-fired power plant and Australia's largest battery in an attempt to secure the state's energy supplies.
South Australia has experienced blackouts and load shedding when demand for power outstripped supply.

SA power milestones and mishaps

SA's power generation and supply security has been under scrutiny in recent times. How did we get here?

Nine gas company bosses were summoned to today's meeting in Canberra.
Mr Turnbull said they would increase supply in order to meet domestic and international demand.
He would not be drawn on how the companies would increase supply, but said they would revise up their domestic gas production forecasts.
"That is a matter for them as to how they manage the balance between domestic and export," Mr Turnbull said.
"But they understand the absolutely critical importance of maintaining their social licence to be doing business in Australia.
"We [Federal Government] have the ability to control exports ... we have that power.
"We want the market to operate, we want their there to be as much freedom in the market to operate, we want there to be as much investment as possible.
"But I stress, we will not shirk from any measures that would be required, if all else fails, to protect Australian businesses, jobs and families."
Two companies, including Asia Pacific LNG, promised to be net domestic gas distributers, meaning they will provide more gas to the Australian market than they will export.

Links

• SA to spend $500m to take control of state's energy market
• 'Worst fears being realised' as residents most likely to bear cost of gas shortage
• Crisis meeting on gas as Malcolm Turnbull warned of winter power crisis
• Malcolm Turnbull to demand gas companies lift supply, states end bans
• PM convinces gas companies to boost supply
• Malcolm Turnbull to tap gas chiefs for solutions in emergency energy talks
• Turnbull to gas industry: give the local market more supply