North Island National Grid at near Capacity

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Ultimate Geek
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#2757585 9-Aug-2021 22:17

cokemaster:

gmball: And how exactly are we supposed to charge all of these electric vehicles we are now being encouraged to purchase?
Or perhaps next winter is the idea just to park them up and walk during the colder months?

EV owners are given incentives to charge during offpeak period (in the form of cheaper kWh charges)- eg. after 9PM.

It would be less than ideal for them to charge during peak periods such as this.

That works for private vehicles, but isn't government also wanting commercial users to switch to electric vehicles, in which case they might not have the liberty of only charging off-peak. Either way, surely the push towards electric vehicles will increase demand on an already frail electricity network?

Handle9

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#2757586 9-Aug-2021 22:19

gmball:

cokemaster:

EV owners are given incentives to charge during offpeak period (in the form of cheaper kWh charges)- eg. after 9PM.

It would be less than ideal for them to charge during peak periods such as this.

That works for private vehicles, but isn't government also wanting commercial users to switch to electric vehicles, in which case they might not have the liberty of only charging off-peak. Either way, surely the push towards electric vehicles will increase demand on an already frail electricity network?

Overall capacity isn't really a big problem, peak load is.

If downtime is a big problem vehicles will likely be powered by hydrogen.

Scott3

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#2757588 9-Aug-2021 22:19

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ezbee:

Power Grid.

Bring back ripple control.

We never got rid of it - In Auckland, and my hot water is switched off by vector at the moment. (some area's use systems other than ripple relays, but the effect is the same.

We can put car chargers on the same system :-) .

We could - Realistically having some cheaper off peak hours in the middle of the night would largely have the same impact. Pritty much all EV's (except the MG ZS EV) have charge timers so owners can take advantage of cheaper off peak rates if offered.

Grandads grid was smarter ?

Things like night store heaters have gone, displaced by more efficient, but non time of use shifting tech like heat-pumps.

Well our population has grown substantially over last 20Y.
More people more power consumption, so infrastructure needs to expand in line with that.

Yes population has grown a lot over the last 20Y, but power demand has pretty much flat-lined since 2006 odd, Hence we haven't needed much new generation capacity over this time period. Basically just wind and geothermal projects to displace more expensive to run power plants.

Huntly.
Perhaps Hamiltonians might want to take over the control room and send the power back south ?

Trans-power will be dictating where power be shed. Suspect some regions may have been able to meet their targets just by turning off peoples hot water.

I guess Northland is sweet with expansion of their own thermal generation ?

Ngāwhā power station upgrade completed in 2020 taking capacity to 57MW? Bream bay diesel, commissioned 2011, 9MW?.... Northland is currently consuming 741MW, so is a massive net importer, majority of their power has to travel through Auckland, and means they have some of the highest power prices in the country.

Could it be we don't lack generation as much as spot pricing is spiking so much companies are lothe to buy it ?

I don't think retailers have the option of capability to shed their customers, but when I worked at a power company and prices spiked, the operators would take the head office off the grid, allowing it to fold over to the backup generator with reduced lighting levels etc.

The trans-power statements said less than 200MW of capacity left, in the scheme of over 6200MW demand, that is pritty much fully tapped out, and means there are big issues if something big trips offline.

The reason that Aussie started putting Tesla Power Storage in place.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve is primary to provide spinning reserve to chip in to cover the time between a power plant tripping offline, and another being spun up to replace that load, Also provides frequency control, and can provide a few hours cover in the event of a price spike.

The power grind in it's area is quite dominated by thermal power plants that aren't ideal for spinning reserves, so the project stacked up.

Could have helped in tonight situation, but generally hydro power plants that NZ have a lot of are great for frequency keeping, spinning reserves etc. Suspect the money would be better spent on conventional (non gas dependent) peckers or base load. NZ's power grid's biggest issue is the risk of an extreme dry year.

Handle9

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#2757590 9-Aug-2021 22:21

ezbee:

Perhaps Hamiltonians might want to take over the control room and send the power back south ?

Guess where Transpowers northern control room is?

Linuxluver

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#2757591 9-Aug-2021 22:26

Stu1: Fire up that coal plant with the foreign coal she’ll be right , it’s been a mild winter really are the lakes empty?

Coal is running at just under 60% of capacity.

Geothermal is just over 90% of capacity.

Gas is at 67% of capacity.

Power from the South Island is running at 41% of capacity.......

(Source: Electricity Map app).

I wonder where the distribution bottlenecks are? We appear to have spare capacity.

I have 2 Tesla Powerwalls.....so no problem if they decide to black out our area. Ever since power generation moved to a commercial, for-profit footing, it's made very good sense to generate as much of your own power as you can and store some of it. The big operators just aren't reliable at peak times like long cold days in mid winter......

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decibel

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#2757592 9-Aug-2021 22:28

Bring back Max Bradford - he knows how to fix this !

cokemaster

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#2757594 9-Aug-2021 22:31

@handle9, I'm guessing that either power capacity will need to improve or fast chargers + big amperage AC chargers might need to be subject to ripple control.

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vexxxboy

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#2757595 9-Aug-2021 22:32

no idea this was happening , im just reading this before bed and everything is fine in Rotorua .

Common sense is not as common as you think.

Handle9

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#2757597 9-Aug-2021 22:34

cokemaster:

@handle9, I'm guessing that either power capacity will need to improve or fast chargers + big amperage AC chargers might need to be subject to ripple control.

Ripple control is not likely. Load shifting will definitely be a thing but things have moved on a bit for industrial load shifting from ripple relays.

Linuxluver

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#2757599 9-Aug-2021 22:35

decibel:

Bring back Max Bradford - he knows how to fix this !

He broke it. Maybe that's what you meant? :-)

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Linuxluver

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#2757601 9-Aug-2021 22:43

gmball: And how exactly are we supposed to charge all of these electric vehicles we are now being encouraged to purchase?
Or perhaps next winter is the idea just to park them up and walk during the colder months?

There are over 30,000 grid-connected residential solar systems in NZ. The output from these isn't reported as far as I can tell, but it would be about 150Mw on a sunny day, assuming 5kw average across the lot. A lot of those people own EVs, so they likely don't use the grid for some or all of their charging...Or they charge late at night.

I tend to plug the MG ZS EV in between 10am and 2pm and charge from my solar power.....and / or I set my (settable) charger to charge the car from midnight to 8am, for example..... This is my cheap time....and a time of low demand. Once I'm up to about 80% I won't begin this cycle again until I'm on about 20%......and that's about 130km later....which might take me several days to use.

Most EV owners would do the same. It's not the issue some people think it is.

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colinuu

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#2757603 9-Aug-2021 22:47

What is behind the gas production issues? Is it anything to do with the govt shutting down new exploration some time ago, or something else?

nzkc

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#2757604 9-Aug-2021 22:51

Linuxluver:

I tend to plug the MG ZS EV in between 10am and 2pm and charge from my solar power.....and / or I set my (settable) charger to charge the car from midnight to 8am, for example..... This is my cheap time....and a time of low demand. Once I'm up to about 80% I won't begin this cycle again until I'm on about 20%......and that's about 130km later....which might take me several days to use.

Most EV owners would do the same. It's not the issue some people think it is.

Ive got nothing to scientifically base this on. However; I would put you in the small percentage of EV owners that can do this. I would doubt many have access to their own solar.

colinuu

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#2757607 9-Aug-2021 22:55

Linuxluver:

....

Most EV owners would do the same. It's not the issue some people think it is.

because currently most EV owners are enthusiasts who have the knowledge and take the time to work this through. It will be a different story when EV's become main stream IMO.

Linuxluver

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#2757608 9-Aug-2021 22:57

nzkc:

Linuxluver:

I tend to plug the MG ZS EV in between 10am and 2pm and charge from my solar power.....and / or I set my (settable) charger to charge the car from midnight to 8am, for example..... This is my cheap time....and a time of low demand. Once I'm up to about 80% I won't begin this cycle again until I'm on about 20%......and that's about 130km later....which might take me several days to use.

Most EV owners would do the same. It's not the issue some people think it is.

Ive got nothing to scientifically base this on. However; I would put you in the small percentage of EV owners that can do this. I would doubt many have access to their own solar.

It would be good to know. I've been driving EVs as my main transport since June 2016. I've been active in the "EV community" for some time. Among people who are prepared to pay double for a car with zero emissions there is a strong correlation with installed solar. In my own case it took 3 years to get there....so EV in 2016 and solar in 2019.....and that's a common pattern. Once you have an EV installing solar is driven by the same values.

Tesla has built a business around this very same set of assumptions.

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