Clever idea for bulk power storage

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#2949524 1-Aug-2022 22:20

gzt: EV power plans are readily available, and EVs tend to have a time schedule charging option available.

Yup, they're called "free hour of power" or similar. You can tell who's using them and when by the power lines outside their house sagging due to the heat buildup.

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#2949526 1-Aug-2022 22:29

Humor no doubt ; ). Plenty of EV plans available.

https://www.canstarhblue.co.nz/energy/electricity-providers/ev-power-plans/

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#2949549 2-Aug-2022 08:32

djtOtago:

Not sure how far along the idea is, but there is a plan for a bigish solar farm In Christchurch.

I'm pretty sure Christchurch Airport’s Kōwhai Park is going to (at least partially) go ahead.

Their first stage looks funded including $100mil from Australian renewable energy fund Solar Bay.
To begin with that's a a 220 hectare, 150MW array.

You'd expect most renewable energy buildout in Aotearoa to be wind (NZ production's - unsubsidised - roughly 7 or 8 cents per KWh)
- but there's some decent solar in the pipeline. Even in fairly remote areas.

Just 20km South of my NZ home - at Pukenui, John Telfer's Far North Solar Farms has built a (12ha) 16MW 32,000-panel array beside Top Energy's transformer on Lamb Rd.
That handily beats Todd Energy's Sunergise 2.1MW Kapuni solar farm which - with just 5,800 panels - in June 2021, was NZ's largest..

FNSF's on a roll - with 13 sites now (near transmission points) and funding from Germany's Aquila Capital, they've got 1.13GW of solar being developed.

A bit down the road, just West of Kaitaia, Lodestone Energy's building an 80,000-panel installation in behind 90 Mile Beach's sand dunes.
Top Energy's already contracted the first 58,000 panels, the rest of 'Lodestone Two' will be spoken for before completion this year.

Of course there's also a:
'Lodestone One' 120 GWh solar farm near Dargaville, with 125,000 panels - and 170 hectares of farming operation.
'Lodestone Three' 85 GWh - about 115,000 panels in the Waiotahe Valley, east of Whakatane.
'Lodestone Four' 52 GWh solar from 70,000 panels at Edgecumbe.
'Lodestone Five' - near Whitianga with 54 GWh and up to 80,000 solar panels.

Meridian has plans to build a large (100MW) grid-connected battery and solar farm at Marsden Point.
UK-based Harmony Energy (expat Kiwi Pete Grogan's director) announced plans for 147MW (!) starting with 329,000 panels on Tauhei Farm's 260ha site at Te Aroha West..
Todd Energy's announced plans for a 750,000-panel farm near Taupo.
Contact Energy's partnered with Lightsource BP (the renewables arm of British Petroleum) to build out a (very large) solar portfolio of up to 380,000MWh by 2026..

And that's only as far as the Central North Island (plus likely already missed a few)

Not all of these will be built, but enough will that electrical energy storage and recovery becomes an issue.
I look forward to seeing what the Government's going to pull out their hat. It'll have to be decided on soon..

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#2949555 2-Aug-2022 09:02

I’m disappointed there is no government incentive for people to invest in home batteries and form Virtual Power Plants (VPP). A kind of distributed bulk storage which includes some phase shifting capability. Combined with solar to charge the batteries may be able to reduce the overall load on the main generators.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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#2949616 2-Aug-2022 09:34

Dingbatt:

I’m disappointed there is no government incentive for people to invest in home batteries and form Virtual Power Plants (VPP). A kind of distributed bulk storage which includes some phase shifting capability. Combined with solar to charge the batteries may be able to reduce the overall load on the main generators.

I raised a similar point a long time ago here and the response was that "people" i.e. residential do not use much power. The other issue is that for many, solar PV and especially batteries aren't worthwhile. $15k+ for a 13kW battery that can store 13 x cheap night rates is a long payback period. If it is worthwhile, then there is no need for an incentive

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#2949643 2-Aug-2022 10:52

tdgeek:

I raised a similar point a long time ago here and the response was that "people" i.e. residential do not use much power. The other issue is that for many, solar PV and especially batteries aren't worthwhile. $15k+ for a 13kW battery that can store 13 x cheap night rates is a long payback period. If it is worthwhile, then there is no need for an incentive

Similar to EVs then.

Make it more affordable-> greater uptake.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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#2949652 2-Aug-2022 11:15

Dingbatt:

Similar to EVs then.

Make it more affordable-> greater uptake.

That still doesnt do much good for our power system if Residential users are a small portion of power usage. Maybe unaffordable housing could be made affordable by a subsidy? Inflation is up so maybe we need a Govt funded 8% pay rise? Where does it stop? We seem to be in a situation where we want handouts for everything these days. Oh and tax cuts

EV's is just a political thing.

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#2949691 2-Aug-2022 13:11

tdgeek:

That still doesnt do much good for our power system if Residential users are a small portion of power usage.

From Ministry of Energy:

Around a third of New Zealand’s electricity demand is from households and over a third is from industrial sectors. The majority of industrial electricity demand is from the wood, pulp, paper and printing sectors and the basic metals sectors, with the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter being the largest single user of electricity in the country.

The commercial sectors consume around a quarter of New Zealand’s electricity demand. The remaining demand comes from the transport sectors and the agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors, which consume only a small amount.

So Residential users are more than a "small portion" of power usage.

From Transpower:

You can see that there is a load peak before 8am, and another after 5pm. So it's residential use, primarily cooking and heating, rather than commercial that causes the peak, which in turn is what the network capacity needs to be provisioned for. If we can reduce those peaks by storing electricity in people's homes, then we will have a more resilient and cheaper electricity system. I think it's reasonable that the government and industry contribute to home storage, since *everyone* will gain from it. Just as EVs are good for everyone, not just those who use them.

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#2949697 2-Aug-2022 13:21

Interesting that I was quoted here a different figure, whatever it was back then. 6% or 16% rings a bell, when I queried getting all homes setup for Solar PV

How do we go in the cooler 6 months? I unfortunately cannot get Solar PV but I have Solar HW (which I rate heavily) so an exorbitant subsidy to get solar PV which the investment isnt worth it for most people, has a 50% value in any given year. The period we dont need power, we get good solar, when we want it, its not there. (My mate has a Powerwall so I'm quite of usage/consumption as I can login to his Tesla app) I'd rather use those funds for solar farms, much less costly per kWh. Thus, more kW bang per buck

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#2949776 2-Aug-2022 17:07

gzt:
Ripple control of HWC

To some extent I can understand quitting h/w ripple control. The standard h/w cylinder properly installed has little loss and requires little management. Is h/w load shedding really going to help where it's needed in 2022?

That's true. That's why it's a perfect candidate for ripple: because you can turn it off for three hours in the afternoon and no-one notices, or if there's a grid emergency.

The problem isn't that you can't get day/night, EV, or hour of power plans. It's that the 'conventional' 24-hour plans are still competitive for a lot of people.

raytaylor

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#2949809 2-Aug-2022 18:14

Scott3:

Building Onslow is cripplingly expensive, and with climate change we run the risk of say 2 or 3 consecutive dry years, where it would end up empty and useless regardless.

I thought onslow was pumped hydro - that is it absorbs excess solar during the day to pump the water from the lower reservoir to the top reservoir then releases it at night, placing less demand on hydro lakes which only refill from river inflows.

I worked out it would be about 4 months of average residential consumption at 5tw of storage.

So in a dry year I would assume there is more sunlight, so the daily recharge from solar would be fine, but the greater capacity of the lake would provide more long term security.

I dont see us as having much other option than going ahead with the onslow project.

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#2949814 2-Aug-2022 18:20

gzt:
Ripple control of HWC

To some extent I can understand quitting h/w ripple control. The standard h/w cylinder properly installed has little loss and requires little management. Is h/w load shedding really going to help where it's needed in 2022?

Approx 150 watts per 180L cylinder per hour. If 75% of the 1.9million NZ homes have hot water cylinders (i dont have exact numbers vs gas) thats around 213MW per hour that can be shifted out of the 5-8pm peak.

Its a little low in my opinion and more could be done for encouraging ripple control and load shifting.

Ray Taylor

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#2949817 2-Aug-2022 18:23

Dingbatt:

I’m disappointed there is no government incentive for people to invest in home batteries and form Virtual Power Plants (VPP). A kind of distributed bulk storage which includes some phase shifting capability. Combined with solar to charge the batteries may be able to reduce the overall load on the main generators.

Not enough of a battery recycling industry yet in this part of the world.

I worry we are becoming Japan's dumping ground for half-spent lithium car batteries

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#2949834 2-Aug-2022 19:07

One other thing I wanted to point out....

Many complain that the demand being in the north island means there is little sense of lake onslow down south.

During the day, wind and solar provide electricity to local consumers.
Excess is sent towards lake onslow for recharging the nations battery.
Existing Hydro output is reduced so lakes can charge up from river inflow.

When the evening comes, lake onslow starts sending power back out in various directions and northward up to the grid long distance / HVDC carrying capacity. Whatever cant come back across the HVDC link will come across the New HVDC link or Existing hydro dams in the north can increase output to supply the rest of the north island peak.

We have duplicated the HVDC link once before and it can be done again. Onslow and the shutdown of Tiwai will probably make another HVDC link viable.

By looking at last winters peak consumption, and using it as a theoretical maximum limit (even though it was a generation limit and not the actual grid capacity limit) and then working out the unused capacity between the load from this morning and that peak, we have the capability to transport 25399mwh of electricity from generation to consumption between 9pm and 6.30am most winter evenings.

If we assume an 80% efficiency rate for the input/output of lake onslow and another 10% of transport losses - 5% each way - then residential solar and wind around the country can send to and return from lake onslow 17,779mwh of electricity each day/night.

For each of NZs 2 million houses that is 8.8kwh or 35kms of car travel per day. If more local hydro is switched on overnight (since it was left to charge up during the day) then we can still deliver more by duplicating some north island transpower and local lines.

For example, from Haywards, the north island HVDC landing point, there are 2x 220kv lines running north via Kapiti but I assume the 110kv line via the Wairarapa which could be upgraded to increase capacity going to the upper north island and seems like a choke point on the transpower map.

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djtOtago

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#2949848 2-Aug-2022 19:37

raytaylor:

I thought onslow was pumped hydro - that is it absorbs excess solar during the day to pump the water from the lower reservoir to the top reservoir then releases it at night, placing less demand on hydro lakes which only refill from river inflows.

I worked out it would be about 4 months of average residential consumption at 5tw of storage.

So in a dry year I would assume there is more sunlight, so the daily recharge from solar would be fine, but the greater capacity of the lake would provide more long term security.

I dont see us as having much other option than going ahead with the onslow project.

I haven't seen any proposals to use solar to refill lake Onslow. Only the uses of excess energy from current energy sources when demand is low.

Which I read as, our current hydro lakes when there is plenty of water and not a lot of demand.

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