20.06 Planning the Green Energy Transition. The AEMO Integrated System Plan
Purpose: To explain the purpose of the ISP, its scenarios and assumptions
The Critical Issues:
- Scheduled retirement of scheduled generators (coal, gas, battery), with construction of intermittent wind and solar:
| Period | Retired dispatchable MW | Built dispatchable MW | Intermittent MW |
| 2010-2020 | 2,500 | 7,100 built | |
| 2020-2030 | 5,800 | 2,400 (incl Snowy 2) | 10,500 underway |
| 2030-2040 | 14,000 | 39,000 announced | |
| 2040-2050 | 12,000 |
(2) The ISP is the official National Electricity Market transmission network plan. It requires network operators to begin planning the transmission projects that AEMO wants. It is designed to encourage more wind and solar into the network.
This is central
20.05 Lessons from the Californian Blackouts
Heatwave conditions in the USA and wildfires in California have recently precipitated a state of emergency with rolling power blackouts. California’s conventional power capacity has been run down in recent years while they promoted renewable energy from the sun and the wind.
California will not go completely black because they have extension cords running into several adjacent states.
In Australia we cannot turn to neighbours for power when we are short. This means we will have to maintain 100% of our conventional power sources to avoid outages whenever the wind is low and the doesn’t shine.
This applies especially at dinner time when the demand for power peaks. The NemWatch widget shows that hot dinners depend very much on conventional power
20.04 This is a warning to all leaders.
The world depends on modern shipping travelling from country to country to support international trade delivering cargo. The ship in Figure 1 in 2019 was the largest in the world with a cargo capacity of more than 200,000 tons but even so it achieves a speed of a constant 21 kn. It is diesel fuelled which many claim should be curtailed because of CO2 gas emissions, but our modern economies cannot go back to sail.
It used to be that cargo was carried place to place by sailing ships. This all but ceased in the 19th century and it is obvious why. First there is the size, see figure 2 “County of Peebles”. It was launched in 1875 and was one of the very last sailing ships. At the time it competed with steamships which then were quite small
20.02 Four Icebergs in the Path of Renewables Titanic
Purpose. To explain that the transition to renewable energy will be very difficult in Australia with existing storage technology
Background. All the major parties are in favour of increasing the supply of electric power from wind and solar energy.
Critical Issues.
Four features of the Australian situation will make the RE transition very difficult and impossible with existing storage technology.
- Wind droughts. There are frequent and prolonged “wind droughts” when there is next to no wind across SE Australia for many hours and even days at a time.
- The “choke point” factor. The grid needs a continuous input of power and the critical value of the input from intermittent sources is the lowest level. The RE transition is limited
20.03 - The Island Effect
Purpose of this note: To explain why Australia, being an island, is seriously disadvantaged in attempting to achieve ambitious renewable energy targets.
Background. A previous briefing note described four obstacles in the path of ambitious RE targets (The Four Icebergs – attached).
Frequent wind droughts.
The need for 100% of demand to be met 100% of the time.
The island effect.
No grid-scale storage available from batteries or pumped hydro.
The Critical Feature of the Island Effect: We cannot run extension cords to other countries to obtain power when we are short.
All the other places that have major RE installations either have access to power from neighbours with conventional power to spare or they have ideal topography