On 20/04/2012 5:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:
It does seem to be very much a matter of having all your technical
details available in the form they want so that you can demonstrate that
you will disconnect from the grid when it's down, your power quality
will be good etc It's simple now to get PV's - up to 100kWe anyway -
connected to the grid in Oz as the regulators/utilities are comfortable
with the technical issues. 20 years ago this was definitely not the
case. When I suggested to the Vic regulator in the mid-90's that we
should follow the US lead with PURPA the response was decidedly not
favorable. Now we have getting on for 1 million rooftop PV installations
in Oz. If you have new kit you can expect to have to jump through some
hoops.
As for supplying in to the grid as against supplying a co-located demand
on a levelised energy cost basis you will struggle in Australia to
compete against large coal fired stations producing electricity at a few
cents/kWh receiving perhaps 5-6c/kWh to supply into the grid. If you can
supply a co-located load that's paying the utility for power at, say,
10c-25c/kWh your economics start to look a lot better. If you start
bidding to supply into the grid to meet peak loads the price can be a
lot better but you will be on the hook to supply that power. Or to hedge
your supply which will cost you.
David,
You are quite right and we made the decision not to actively seek grid
connection opportunities and focus on off grid or avoided grid cost
reduction and non electricity centric products as all our experiences
with Utilities were very negative, "Every assistance short of help"
seems to be the unspoken policy.
They seem less reluctant to wear <10kWe connections (so long as
individual branch line loads don't exceed 200kW) though it is hard to
say yet whether this will apply to biomass power plants but we will see
in due course, remember solar was mandated so they had no choice, but
every manager I spoke to whined about the burden on their resources, the
uncertainties imposed on grid management and the high cost they would
need to pass on to their customers. Given the million or so small solar
installations have made not one jot of difference to the traditional
infrastructure cost of utilities or the level of conventional generating
assets required to meet peak demand they might have some grounds to
complain.
The highest "in principle" PPA offered (for a proposed 2MWe biomass
power plant) was 4c/kWhr (the average coal fired wholesale price at this
location was 5c...), which is as you say another disincentive. We even
had a client in the ACT who was really keen to put in a 1MWe waste wood
fueled plant but after spending all day on the phone to the local
utility being passed from one person to another they gave up after the
6th such shuffle referred them back to the utilities website so our
client could buy green power off the utility rather than go to the
trouble to generate it themselves...(there appears no transparency as to
how such "Green" power sold at a premium by the utility was actually
obtained). Yet the ACT Government was willing to spend millions to get a
large MW scale solar plant into the region...go figure.
Anyway the point is the demand and market requirements often talked
about are largely intellectual constructs, with a catch 22 thrown in
which reads something like "We need to promote and develop technologies
for this purpose, unless this is inadvertently achieved in which case we
need to change the requirements"
(Hey its not my fault, I was born an optimist they made me into a cynic)
I am told by the solar installers that the grid tied systems can't act
as stand alone house power when the grid goes down for any reason, even
though this is technically possible without risking the safety of line
workers repairing a blown transformer for example, somewhat detracting
from many home owners dreams of being self sufficient in a crisis. We
have discussed this with some utilities and they seemed to like the idea
of "Smart Grid" controls fitted to biomass power plants as these could
then be managed directly by the utility, turning them off, on, up and
down as required for best grid management (great synergy then with solar
PV & wind as a flexible renewable energy matrix), cumulatively the
"poles & wires" providers could embed dozens or even hundreds of MW's of
distributed generation capacity without the normal costs or problems of
large centralised plants, early days in all this though since it also
requires a change in status quo, never easy. If it did happen though,
then Oz could potentially meet 30% of its existing electricity needs
from such "Stored Solar" (biomass) resources and bootstrap a higher
solar/wind mix than otherwise prudent for grid stability.
At the end of the day though electricity is second only to process heat
as the lowest value commodity, transport fuels and chemical feed stocks
being a far more attractive target for gasification technologies with
avoided landfill/waste disposal costs topping returns. Lots of public
funding available to research and develop this, but not for anyone who
can actually do it though since this would disrupt the gravy train.
Is it all depressing? Not at all. Firstly at a small scale lots of
people want or need to be grid independent (if you can build a system
that meets their needs), secondly at commercial scales with some careful
planning and hard real life research there are some really intriguing
and potentially viable approaches using a little technology blending and
lateral marketing...hate to spoil this though by announcing it in time
for the policy makers and vested interests to stuff it up...
Cheers,
Peter
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