National grid owner and electricity system operator Transpower is warning of electricity worries next year which could be as bad or worse than those during the winter that's just ended.
This concern is raised in Transpower's latest Whakamana i te Mauri Hiko (WiTMH) - which is a six-monthly report on the status of the overall industry.
It says 2024 - just like 2023 - will be vulnerable because of increased electricity generation by wind turbines. It argues wind can blow strongly one moment and drop the next, making generation highly variable.
This problem brought several close shaves in the winter just ended. Transpower issued warnings in May, in June and again in August about those risks. It now says next winter could be "similar or worse."
"With intermittent wind generation up more than 50% since 2019, electricity supply can be squeezed when the wind drops at the same time as cold weather sends peak demand soaring," the Transpower report says.
The report goes on to describe how the electricity industry was forced to scramble to avert blackouts, and on one occasion did so with some agility.
It says on August 2nd, New Zealand's total electricity demand came within seven megawatts of the crisis of August 9th 2021.
That 2021 incident led to 34,000 homes being blacked out. It produced intense criticism and put Transpower into a defendant's dock, leading to a $150,000 fine.
The August 2023 shortage could have generated a similar crisis. But this time, the hydro electric industry system had enough capacity to ride to the rescue, and pump in enough power to keep the electricity system operating within safety margins.
"This shows that the industry is working well," says the Transpower report.
"But equally, it shows that margins remain tight with similar or worse pressure expected in 2024."
Transpower adds demand for electricity is growing at peak times.
"Six of the highest peaks on record occurred in 2023......peak demand growth has risen 2% annually on average since 2021....due to the growing electrification of transport, process heat, and space heating."
But the thermal electricity that is supposed to fill in the gaps does not always work effectively.
"Around half of New Zealand’s thermal generation capacity is slow-start and not designed for these peak capacity requirements. This means thermal generators need early notice that they will be needed so that they can be warm and ready to offer.
"With winter capacity challenges set to persist, we have signalled an urgent need for investment in flexible resources including fast-start generation, (energy) storage, or demand (management)."
Another aspect of the Transpower report shows hydro lakes which were filled up by heavy rain earlier in the year have used up that buffer, and are now lower than average, though still above the risk curve.
It also says the industry is expanding, with just under 1.2 gigawatts of generation projects having reached the application stage or later. Approximately half of this is for grid scale solar, followed by wind generation.
Electricity demand was stable for the 10 years up till 2020, but then declined in the industrial, agricultural, forestry and fishing sectors, due to closure of plant, curtailed operations due to higher electricity prices, and the effect of COVID-19.
On the flipside, residential demand has been growing by around 2% per annum over the prior two years.
The report adds the New Zealand economy is using energy more efficiently.
This means less energy needs to be consumed to produce the same economic production, which has an environmental benefit.
88 Comments
fast start biomass fueled distributed generators . Attached to hospitals swimming pools , hothouses , they are always warm and ready to go .
Only problem is the political will , and paying for it , no intermittent overcapacity is going to be economically feasible.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating-solar-towe…
The sun's energy is stored in salt to provide power generation
My understanding is that wind is variable day to day (of course ). But steady year on year.
Water is variable year on year.
I have good solar in that I send more - many more - sparks out the gate than I bring in, thus helping keep lakes more full.
'Distributed Generation'. - it is a thing - has the potential to link systems like mine with smart IT and new law into neighbourhoods. So that demand of the grid is smoothed.
Around 20 years ago, rainbow power in Aussie were selling minigrid systems for remote areas. They ran on around 110 volts ripple free d.c, 10 volts less than the legal limit for extra low voltage ( no electrical inspection required). I don't know how many they sold, very limited by today's standards. Done a couple of places where we put in a check meters, transformer down to ELV, and a long cable to charge batteries in a inverter system as backup. Worked well.
Just a bit of probably irrelevant history.
I do see the odd landlord asking about a solar system that could supply multiple flats. In theory, you could have one metre from the supply authority, with private check meters to each consumer. In your case, a meter at the end of the road, with check meters on each property. That would put you into large 3 phase consumer category, so you would have to be aware of charges for imbalance loads, and peak demand.
You would have to have very thorough agreements with your neighbours, and everyone willing to limit peak loads to make it worthwhile.
Step one: A decent solar system on your house smooths demand on the grid, in particular that evening spike. Still get rises and falls on the grid, but not the trouble spikes you refer to.
Step two: Down your road of thirty houses you link up via those new legal structures and clever IT so you can share. On the night the three kids return to the empty nest and create great demands on your household. As your battery empties the system borrows from your neighbours, including their cars. The spikey demands on the grid are smoothed more.
Outcome. These neighbourhood units contribute net energy to the NZ system. So good. And smooth demands on the grid.
What's not to like?
The solar isn't the thing avoiding the evening spike in your example, it's the battery. If we decide that batteries are the way forward, why would we put one in every home at enormous cost when we can build Onslow? 10-20 billion or so vs 1 trillion to get the same battery capacity with Tesla power walls.
How much does an electric car battery lifespan decrease if it is used both to run the car and for a daily cycle running the household as well? Genuine question. I have heard that doubling (or more) the daily cycles in this way would be quite detrimental but I am not up to date on this.
Given the long lifespan we could expect from Onslow, even dropping a couple of years from every car battery's life span could quickly overwhelm that 16 billion.
Are you talking about current technology or the technology we are likely to have by the time Onslow is built? If you had asked that question 20 years ago you would have got a significantly different answer to today.
I wonder if the grid will become obsolete for households. Why pay $5k a year for electricity when you can put some solar panels on your roof and use your car batteries for storage. Assuming the solar panels and batteries continue to get better and cheaper which is highly likely. If you run out of electricity (bad weather) you can drive your battery to a charging point that is on the grid.
The same thing could happen to water too if some sort of home wastewater treatment technology (better than septic tank) becomes available. And internet once we have 10g or something. Network connectivity to individual residences is expensive.
Yes that's a challenge. Compared to today's technology Onslow is a no-brainer, but we can't truly know what the future holds for the competition. Onslow isn't going to get any cheaper or significantly more efficient than today's design, but batteries and other alternatives could improve dramatically. Or, they could get more expensive if we don't keep up with the required mineral resource identification and extraction, with the whole world trying to electrify at once.
Both approaches are risky. Onslow could be a white elephant, or no Onslow could leave us with blackouts, an ineffective grid, or hasty installation of coal plants to plug the gaps.
Yes hard to know. I think it is fairly safe to assume that we will see significantly more electric cars, and with electric cars home solar will be very cost competitive (assuming at least one of those cars is at home most of the day as both of ours are). If people use electric cars to distribute the load over time, then we may not need Onslow at all. If they don't and we end up with a lot of solar without much battery, then Onslow becomes essential.
If I owned an electric car I would be investing in solar for sure. Although I guess in a lot of cases the car is parked at work during sunlight hours. Maybe businesses will invest too (think of all that warehouse roof space going to waste). Having seen some roof quotes recently it might be cheaper to make the whole roof from solar panels these days!
With the chemistries like LFP, and the improvements in battery management the battery will probably outlast the car around it, and once its no longer useful for a car, it would still be useful for a house battery, since no house will ever try to pull >20kW from the battery or need to rapid charge it.
Ever been to West or South auckland? The extension leads would be the only change.
In reality there would be specialists electrical companies that drop the battery pack and the charger/PCS, and build a small enclosure for it, and attach it to the side of the garden shed/garage.
mfd. Onslow would help with winter long shortage certainly. But the design would do little to help the evening spike.
Onslow storage was huge, months of output, but battery option only needs to get you through a few hours. So your calculation comparison is the wrong comparison for capacity.
We also need more generation for the nation anyway. The panels part of the equation are good for that.
Good point. Solar and battery add both generation and storage. Even in bad winters, panels will still generate something.
At the moment we only need around 30,000 households to have the ability to use a battery at peak a handful of times a year. It would be much much cheaper to pay those people handsomely to do that than to build Onslow. Long term its really hard to know...
Why are roofs not made entirely of solar panels? Surely it would stack up a lot more if you save the cost of the roof itself? Yes a lot of the panels would not be oriented ideally, but they would still generate something.
According to this site (US? https://homeguide.com/costs/solar-panel-cost), the cost of solar panels are $4 to $10 per square foot with installation. That is $100 per square metre. Even after converting to NZD, it would be cheaper then a new colorsteel roof on our house.
Thats what Elon was trying to do with the solar roof tile thing. haven't heard much about it, I think it was a bit of a flop. Waterproofing and cutting solar panels to the right shape for the roof are two obvious issues, not to mention electrical regulations limiting the size of the solar array you can connect to the grid.
If routed to store the energy as hot water then this would offset some of the peak demand through hot water heating used for the likes of dishwashers, washing machines, showers, baths, hand-washing dishes. Not certain to be significant but it is some load off nonetheless.
With the battery it gets through the peak shortage issue which is the subject in Eric's article.
Production stat you asked for - in the dark - none. But overall already a contributor to the nation from this setup. With 'distributed Generation' it becomes significant.
that is happening here as well but on a smaller scale , solar farms up north are being linked to battery farms to release the power when needed
Recently, Meridian Energy purchased a striking 105 hectares of land to set up a utility-scale solar plant and a 100 MW battery storage system.
But I've been told incessantly the planet is warming up. and we're running out of water. It's certainly colder this year than last where I live, and there's been oodles of rain.
We've had some very narrow escapes in this country, and if they're not careful some unpredictable event will cause a colossal power outage that will have severe ramifications for those in command of our electricity industry.
The locals become very restless when the power's out, as we saw with the looting in Hawkes Bay.
Auckland has had many cases of recent power cuts lasting days for thousands of houses. Being both medically dependent on power and needing it to run the pumps losing both breathing support, water, being flooded with wastewater from outside mixed with sewage is not a pleasant experience. Most families in those conditions did not even have the money to call the ambulance as advised for medical support at the hospital in the interim (hospitals at the time also did not have capacity so were turning people away to no other option). Do you want to know what NZ does fund for those medically dependent on power or needing it for pumps: free advice to go "stay in a car on a different suburb 'temporarily'". Want to guess what health effects are from such repeated experiences. Try trauma and severe depression leading to suicide attempts of affected family members.
People literally would be safer in prison than in many Auckland suburbs during a power cut... which sadly says a lot. Most batteries do not have the capacity to last for more than a day. Most emergency power events will need high power support for longer than that.
Hence a dedicated UPS & generator is far better. Hence Hawke's Bay need for them during floods, the massive sellouts of generators during the Auckland floods and power cuts and the highly profitable business of UPS service sales. Because this sh*t happens frequently in our main cities. Even Dunedin has power cuts for days and some families up north no longer have power to their homes. Hence Marae are setting up UPS systems with generators to provide power for far more than just the building needs as families use it during crisis and power cuts for huge amounts of necessary living tasks. Medical centers have essential needs for them e.g. freezing and refrigeration of samples, medication, vaccinations, use of medical equipment and legally & medically important access to patient notes etc.
More likely it is because they have a turbine down in huntly that will take to mid 2024 for parts to be fabricated and installed, as well as a whole new turbine being needed as one blew to pieces at a gas powered station in Taranaki, which again will take to mid 2024 to get parts fabricated, shipped and installed. Now considering power is sold in advance at wholesale rates based on the expected generation capacity to expected demand, we will see power increases coming into winter.
Because when you fail to do maintenance your plant goes down, and it's your competitors that make more money because they have operational plant. Also because if you've sold power on long term contracts you might have to purchase that power to fill those contracts on the spot markets costing you 10x what you sold it for.
ripple controls for residences also no longer installed so that tool not as effective as it was?
As an "industrial user" we (along with other larger users) have signed up to allow instantaneous shut down when the grid has an issue - so this is already being implemented and no longer a capacity that can always be relied upon for "normal peaks". Its use has also been blunted somewhat as we now shed load at peak morning and evening times given the pricing levels - and I know a number of other large users who do the same. So again reflects that the supply is tight and getting tighter
Start looking for gas again and build a new peaker turbine at Huntly
They've moved from Ripple control to smart control from/by the smart meter.
https://www.vector.co.nz/special-pages/hot-water-load-control
It varies region by region, but are powerco a public company or owned by the people? In our area the lines company is owned by power users, we vote for the management, we vote for the right wing guy who cuts all maintenance and improvement costs and gives us the biggest dividend. In a real company there would be a share price trade off to underinvesting.
I've got a good idea, lets import 100k people a year (a million people over a decade) and put even more load on generation, and not build any new hydro storage and generation, or replace old ones. Lets also move our vehicle fleets to electric, phase of natural gas heating and switch them to electric, to create even more demand. Allows prices to go up and up.
Will these multi millionsaires buying up 2 million dollars + house want to buy these houses when electricity could be unreliable and we could end up like South Africa with 'load shifting' / blackouts
Guessing it will need to become another 'crisis' before anything is done.
1) there as been zero annual load growth in a decade +
2) prices have been declining in real terms since 2015. Power makes up an ever smaller % of household budgets. Right now it's the most affordable it has been in decades.
3) there is constant maintenance and uprating of hydro plant. hundreds of mw has been added in the last 20 years as old generators are replaced and a handful of smaller schemes are built.
Once the smaller 400MW or lower plants have been proven, absolutely. The legacy ~1GW nuclear plants are far too big for our requirements as we would need to run another 1GW of potential generation ready to step in at short notice for any plant/lines fault on the giant nuclear plant. Or, I guess we just accept huge blackouts whenever the nuclear plant is down for repair, maintenance, fault etc.
And being a high EQ risk country, potentially we risk another Fukushima....I don't think so. They were very lucky with that too, even though they have many years of work ahead. I suggest everyone watches the Netflix program 'The Days' on it. Hydro is potentially far better for a country like NZ, clean and green generation, and water storage is like a battery to store energy. IMO it is false economy in the long run going nuclear, and instead we leave future generations with problems.
Now you're thinking. Composting boomers would generate heat. Every house could be allocated boomers as they expire and the heat generated piped from the heap. I suspect burning boomers might be an energy sink though, unless the pockets are stuffed with cash from the latest property flick.
Hospitals are far more likely to need power for newborns and for the younger generations (think birth blood requirements & operations, emergencies, non elective surgeries, organ support) whereas most old age medical issues and disabilities are far more likely to need easier to access human resource support during a power cut (e.g. meal prep, shower and dressing support and wound care).
This has devastating effects on the economy for that whole family unit. Think of how much 3 months carer & bereavement leave (often longer the more traumatic a death) and delayed support costs the economy when the numbers go exponential. Traumatic deaths are often far more devastating and spouses, parents, wider whanau, and even friends do not return to work for even longer and with knock on effects for businesses, productivity, medical effects (especially lacking mental health support during a bereavement - as many families of traumatic deaths can attest).
And it is a traumatic death through effects caused by power cuts. Families in power cut conditions did not even have the money to call the ambulance as advised for medical support at the hospital in the interim (hospitals at the time also did not have capacity so were turning people away to no other option). Do you want to know what NZ does fund for those medically dependent on power or needing it for pumps: free advice to go "stay in a car on a different suburb 'temporarily'". Want to guess what health effects are from such repeated experiences. Try trauma and severe depression leading to suicide attempts of affected family members.
if generators want to put more variable, intermittent wind power onto the grid Transpower should require them to put in big batteries to manage the load problem they introduce, or charge them accordingly. If the cost of doing that is set correctly, then I can't see the problem.
New Zealand Grid - Chris Morris
Cool, please explain your logic behind this comment regarding Onslow:
It has been discussed as both dry year storage or day to day energy smoothing – it can’t do both.
I can see no reason it can't do both, so long as the overall water balance is increasing in wet years, ie more water gets pumped up the hill over the year than gets released to perform day to day smoothing operations.
As I thought and you have confirmed, you have no understanding of the grid operations or the economics of generation. Something that people who understand the subject can do the analysis by fagpacket maths to show the project was a dog, no matter how it was going to be operated.
Pragmatist – (a real misnomer that one) - you are a real pot calling the kettle black.
On a capital price of $16B, you need to make a profit of around $1M a day from arbitrage to pay it off, even at the best old cost of money rates and 60 years to clear the books. Below are the two cases: day-to-day trading and long-term storage in maths I hope you can understand, as you were incapable of doing the calcs yourself..
For daily trading, NZ uses about 120GWh daily. The best they can realistically do from Onslow is buy about 13GWh and sell 10GWh at “profit” of $130/MWh. The average price of power is around $130. How often and big are the peaks to allow that type of sales volume in? Now, where are they going to get the daily 13GWh cheap from? The most recent windfarms built need to have an average unit price over $130 to be viable and their capital costs are going up. Reduce the volumes traded each day and the arbitrage has to go up. The merit order is steep up there. A small extra volume drops the price rapidly. If you are short one day, you need to make it up as extra the next or it makes Onslow more uneconomic.
For long-term storage to cover dry seasons – say its needed every 3 years (numbers discussed were 5 yearly) 5000GWh. That is arbitrage of around $260 for ALL the lake’s water. And you still need to get the power to fill the lake – average 6GWh a day. Every hour pumping is an hour less generating if used day to day as well. As before, where is that surplus power going to come from and at what price? And what happens if two dry seasons in a row?
I won’t even bother with the consent problems or issues of getting the power to Whakamaru as that is just so beyond your very limited understanding.
You nailed it with circlejerk Pragmatist - "The increased water losses due to seepage and evaporation would require permanent pumping to maintain the Lake Onslow level. The cost of electricity to fill Lake Onslow would exceed the revenue from electricity sales in a low-hydro year. So, there is no economic rationale to proceed."
Ten fatal flaws with the Lake Onslow concept
https://www.energywatch.org.nz/issues/EW85_7-2022.pdf
and a summary from a previous edition:
Summary
• The scale of the original Lake Onslow scheme is 10 times larger than is needed to address the so-called “dry-year” problem.
• The scope of the project has changed: -
o Level reduced from 800 m to 760 m.
o Tunnel increased from 15 km to 24 km
o Soil removal from 27 km2 added
• The Teviot Valley dam would be 1.5 km long making it the second [longest] hydro dam in the world after the Three Gorges dam in China.
• The increased water losses due to seepage and evaporation would require permanent pumping to maintain the Lake Onslow level.
• The round-trip efficiency would be <60%
• The cost of electricity to fill Lake Onslow would exceed the revenue from electricity sales in a low-hydro year. So, there is no economic rationale to proceed.
• Filling Lake Onslow would create an electricity shortage in New Zealand of greater magnitude than the “dry-year” problem.
• The NZ Battery Project should abandon the Lake Onslow concept forthwith without the need to proceed with re-estimating the capital cost of the ~$4 billion project.
A toxic sink holed, hideously over budget, pumped hydro circlejerk.
"The pumped hydro project, trumpeted as a grand "nation-building" scheme, was first estimated to cost just $2 billion. It's blown out to $12 billion.
It was expected to produce its first power next year — now, it won't be keeping any lights on for at least another four years.
...Snowy 2.0 was sold as being key to a low-carbon future — capable of powering 3 million homes for an entire week."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-23/snowy-hydro-sinkhole-toxic-gas-t…
What I wrote, to put it in full context, was
"Because the current government wants to virtue signal, moving from the predicted 95% renewables by 2030 to 100% while also providing cover as dry year reserve, development of a massive pumped storage scheme at Onslow in the lower South Island has been promoted. Exact details aren’t forthcoming as it is still just a concept, but it is scoped as about 1200MW, 5000GWh. Pricing just for the station went from $4B to $16B in the space of two years of investigation, but the Minister of Energy still thinks it is a good deal. Industry speculation is that the real capital cost of all the infrastructure needed would maybe double that. There is no report or details as to how it will operate or integrate into the market trying to pay its way by arbitrage. It has been discussed as both dry year storage or day to day energy smoothing – it can’t do both. There will need to be massive transmission lines and switchyard infrastructure built to utilise the power if it goes ahead. As well, many windfarms will need to be built to fill the lake. None of these have been proposed, let alone costed. "
Now Pragmatist, which part of that was wrong? Can you give the economics to support Onslow, other than mouthing platitudes? As another has pointed out, even Energywatch without access to grid operation info could see the holes in the case.
How is this the winds fault? We need a billing system that pays people to not use power when demand can't be meet. At present record profits are being made because we pay fossil fuel rates for renewable generation. It time that money was used to build more generation and storage.
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