That's what is different about this new study. It uses real time supply/demand figures instead of annualized averages. It meets 98.8% of demand with renewables and fills in with fossil power the rest of the time. To quote from the article:
Key results from the 52 weeks of simulations are summarised as follows:
- Renewables met 98.8% of demand over the year, with the remaining 1.2% met by ‘Other’ (fossils)
- ‘Other’ generation peaked at 6.59 GW on the night of July 12. Over the year its average capacity factor was 4.3%.
- Hydro met 6.9% of demand. This was lower than my target of 7.5%, and also less than actual hydro generation of 8%. This means that dam storage levels in my simulation would have ended the year higher than they did in the real world.
- 17% of the wind and solar generation was in excess of requirements and ended up being curtailed.
- 11% of wind and solar generation went into storage. Storage discharge met 10% of demand.
- 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed.
> 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed.
This is amazing. As an EE I wonder about transportation losses, but wind and solar should be pretty easy to decentralize, so maybe this is a non-issue. Wind might be a little harder to decentralize, but I don't know how the regional differences are in Australia. I'd suspect the coasts (or even offshore) would be windiest, which is also where most people tend to live.
Am I the only one that's kinda off put or frankly disgusted by the thought of ruining our nature by peppering it with giant wind turbines? At what point does it stop?
Transportation is definitely one of the main issues. One of the reasons a place like Australia can manage so well in a simulation like this, is the huge size (combined with a generally very sunny interior). On a given day, a very large percentage of total power demand may have to be transported from one end of the continent to another.
For other, smaller countries (like any European one except Russia), you also face political risk, like we're seeing currently with Russian natural gas. When relying on long distance transport of electricity to keep the grid stable, one or two bad actors may tear down the stability for everyone.
Perhaps a smaller issue, but I would not be surprised if total transportation loss would be 10-20% if not higher, when counting both transmission lines, transformers, storage and similar.
If the price of storage comes down enough, it might be a better source of stability, rather than relying on there being wind "somewhere".
Didn't you wonder about the stability of such grid considering the timeframe inverters take to adjust their output on load or production changes? Wind can also consume energy, solar can just cut off and our electricity grids all other the world are not DC, for various significant and good reasons.
Key results from the 52 weeks of simulations are summarised as follows:
- Renewables met 98.8% of demand over the year, with the remaining 1.2% met by ‘Other’ (fossils)
- ‘Other’ generation peaked at 6.59 GW on the night of July 12. Over the year its average capacity factor was 4.3%.
- Hydro met 6.9% of demand. This was lower than my target of 7.5%, and also less than actual hydro generation of 8%. This means that dam storage levels in my simulation would have ended the year higher than they did in the real world.
- 17% of the wind and solar generation was in excess of requirements and ended up being curtailed.
- 11% of wind and solar generation went into storage. Storage discharge met 10% of demand.
- 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed.