Australia’s Energy Transition

Balancing Competing Demands and Consumer Roles

Glen Currie

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9789811561443
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811561450
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Social Sciences

This book studies Australia, a country characterized by the highest concentration of domestic photovoltaic systems. In addition, the high level of solar energy that Australia receives makes these systems a significant part of its energy mix. International electricity system managers take note; your systems are heading this way. The energy transition is an emerging field, and few texts have been published that can help energy planners as this book does. The research presented is sociotechnical in nature, and reveals that the main challenge in the energy transition is its emerging social role. Very few works combine the social and technical fields of energy. Given its scope, the book will appeal to readers interested in policy, regulation, and energy systems, including government employees involved in energy system management all around the world.

© The Author(s) 2020

G. CurrieAustralia’s Energy Transitionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6145-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Why Should We Learn About the Energy Transition?

Glen Currie¹

(1)

University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

Glen Currie

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Blackouts struck South Australia on the 28 September 2016, then again on the 8 February 2017. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) Final Report on the South Australian blackouts (AEMO in Black system South Australia 28 September 2016: Final report, 2017a) made 19 recommendations and none refer to managing consumer load. They do however refer to household PV causing a low level of reactive load, and hence contributing to instability. A further shortage of energy in NSW on 10 February 2017, prompted an AEMO Incident Report (AEMO in Incident report NSW 10 February 2017, 2017b) and again made no mention of managing consumer load. Infrastructure Australia was a government body to foresee and document these coming problems (Infrastructure Australia in Australian infrastructure audit, 2015). They saw the electricity system as robust but in audit findings 63 and 66 warned that climate policies were interfering with investment and recommended regulatory reform to reduce peak period demand and improve grid stability. Grid stability has been a focus of recent Australian energy policy (Finkel, Moses, Munro, Effeney, & OKane in Independent review into the future security of the National Electricity Market: Blueprint for the future, 2017), but the consumer has yet to be integrated in energy policy. We need a focus on this integration because the rapid uptake of air-conditioning and PV is putting pressure on grid stability and electricity prices.

Keywords

Balancing stakeholder demandsComplexityDuck curveRisk of delayUrgency

End Abstract

Electricity prices have risen to a point that it is now an energy justice or social equity issue (VCOSS, 2018). The high price of electricity also makes Australia’s manufacturing industry less competitive. Energy justice is defined by Jenkins, McCauley, Heffron, Stephan and Rehner (2016) as covering energy policy, energy production and systems, energy consumption, energy activism, energy security and climate change. This book does not attempt to cover the full gamut of energy justice. The related term used in this book is social equity and is defined in this book as a fair system that equitably shares costs and benefits.

The Australian electricity system faces a crisis if it continues along the current path (Millken, 2018). One cause of this is the decreasing utilisation of electricity distribution assets which is due to very low loads during the day and high loads during the evening peak (Denholm, O’Connell, Brinkman, & Jorgenson, 2015). Resultant increases in electricity prices are having negative consequences for many people in Australia and the price average shown in Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1

Electricity price change since 2003 compared with CPI

Governments are conscious of this problem of high electricity prices as citizens bring it to their attention and it often comes up in the media.

The challenges for the electricity system occur in all the above four sectors, generation, transmission, distribution and retail. The sectors with most focus in this book are the distribution and retail sectors as they are poorly understood in the context of electricity systems. They have been studied in isolation, but this book brings them into the context of the operation of the whole electricity system, as they are a key part of the Energy Transition.

Generation is shown in Fig. 1.2 as a coal generator and a wind generator. Other key generation sources are gas, hydro and gas. Further detail on the Australian generation mix is in Table 2.​1.

Fig. 1.2

Main parts of electricity systems (South Australian Government, 2020)

Distribution Business faces the customer on one side and the transmission system on the other. They are under a mix of private and public ownership and have little visibility to the customer because the customer would normally only contract with their retailer. Distribution Businesses are discussed widely in this book, because they are a key battleground for the Energy Transition.

1.1 Defining the Energy Transition

The “Old Grid” was centralised, focussed on the efficiency of generation, and offered a stable system. It began with the “War of the Currents” between the companies of Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Westinghouse bought Nikola Tesla’s induction motor patent in 1888 and supported the winning choice of alternating current (AC). Edison supported direct current (DC). The “Old Grid” finished with the 1992 United Nations Rio Accord (Bodansky, 1993). The Rio Accord led to the introduction of policies for low emissions generation around the world.

The “Grid Development” phase includes the development of control and grid management including sophisticated tariff structures which enabled the grid to absorb large-scale wind generation. It included the adoption of energy policies that recognised the role of renewable energy, as well as a stable grid.

The “Energy Transition” refers to the current transition. One example of an organisation in this space is the European Go Flex Community (GoFlex, 2019). Consumers are far more active in the electricity system, and their decisions to install air-conditioning, solar PV and buy electric vehicles are all affecting the whole electricity system.

The electricity system has recently moved to a phase we call in this book the Energy Transition. The Energy Transition as defined in this book is more than just the change in generation types. It relates to the current decarbonisation of generation, social change, how people use energy, policy, regulation, and the overall structure of the energy system.

1.2 Grid Stability and the Energy Transition

There is high diurnal variation in load at present caused by PV and air-conditioning which creates overvoltage, thermal overload, frequency instability and voltage instability and a worsening reliability of the electricity system.

Northern Europe has grid stability problems (Menck, Heitzig, Kurths, & Schellnhuber, 2014) as has Australia (Finkel et al., 2017). The grid is not designed for the intermittent contribution of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) mixed with centralised synchronous generation. It is technically hard to schedule supply to follow rapid changes in demand. Distributed Energy Resources (DER) reduce grid stability because they lower the system inertia. This inertia is also measured by the amount of spinning plant on the electricity system. The main sources of inertia in the Australian electricity system are coal and gas generation plants. This is because wind and solar energy are normally non-inertia sources.

The electricity system needs inertia to maintain the required frequency. Traditionally inertia has been provided by heavy rotating generating equipment such as used in coal-fuelled generators. Therefore, without new alternate sources of inertia, renewable generation is limited to about 50% (Finkel et al., 2017) of total instantaneous generation. An example is that Siemens Australia in 2017 proposed the addition of three 100 MVAr synchronous condensers around the South Australian grid (Parkinson, 2018). Theoretically system inertia could be maintained by continuing to spin the generators in decommissioned fossil fuel plants (to function as capacitors), and that this might allow 80% of generation to be intermittent. From there, the use of pumped hydro or other inertia maintaining generation, we could envisage a stable system with 100% renewables.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Why Should We Learn About the Energy Transition?
• 2. Why Focus on Australia?
• 3. Political-Social Dynamic of the Energy Transition
• 4. Modelling Consumer Roles in the Electricity System
• 5. Technology and Data for Improved Decision Making
• 6. The Energy Transition as a System
• 7. Conclusion
• Back Matter