Waiting impatiently for green energy

While political flatulence over the ‘made in Australia’ solar revolution thickens the air - more solar panels and household batteries for every home - federal and state government’s hungry, almost megalomaniacal, determination for a sun tax, which forces homeowners into propping up an aging and failing electricity grid, has become obscene.

29 May 2024

ALAN HAYES

 

AS Australia ramps up for a storage battery boom, outdated political attitudes are limiting a revolutionary transformation of energy supply. The NSW State Government’s announcement last week that a deal had been done with Origin Energy to keep Eraring power station online for a further two years is not the answer. But then, fossil-fuel interests and royalty payments will continue to have government’s salivating, regardless of their alleged green ideology.

 

The announcement of a two year reprieve last Friday (24 May) for Eraring had Premier Chris Minns saying, “Labor has made a responsible call, which will keep our lights on across the state, protect households from higher energy bills, while giving us time to build the clean energy of the future.”

 

“I’ve always been a big believer in renewable energy,,” the Premier said.

 

“Every day, more solar panels are being installed, more batteries are being plugged in, more wind farms are coming online.”

 

But while Chris Minns envisages his utopian green dream for NSW, the National Party’s federal leader, David Littleproud, was suggesting that solar panels will not be enough to solve the Country’s energy woes and that rural Australia feels left out of the discussion about the renewables transition; Barnaby Joyce was on his usual energy warpath and crying for more fossil-fuel generated electricity!

 

Joyce has described renewable energy development as a “swindle” and wind turbines as “filth", in an address to a rally against Australia’s shift to renewable energy. The Rally Against Reckless Renewables, reported to have been attended by between 300 and 500 people, had almost as many speakers as listeners, starting with a long list of LNP climate deniers, fossil boosters and nuclear pushers.

 

When Barnaby Joyce’s New England electorate council proposed at last year’s National’s conference that the party abandon its support for net-zero emissions by 2050, it was interpreted by some as an attempt to destabilise David Littleproud’s leadership.

 

Littleproud himself has escalated the debate over the country’s path forward saying regional and farmland communities can’t handle any more renewable energy projects and has suggested that Australia should downgrade its Paris Agreement commitments. He was quoted as saying “Renewable projects, not fossil fuels, are being vetoed under Australia’s crap environmental laws.”

 

When the motion on the 2050 target was submitted to the Nationals conference, some Liberals at the time were reportedly worried another toxic Coalition debate about climate policy would damage their election chances in 2025.

 

Nuclear, as suggested by the LNP, or more commercial solar farms and wind farms, is not the answer to solving our energy generation problems. Neither is turning every home rooftop into a free generating system for greedy power wholesalers to profit from. Even community batteries only offer a short term fix – a fifteen-year band-aid solution at best.

 

Wind farms - their lifespan is a few more years than a battery - won’t provide the 24/7 power that is needed either. They continually break down, are subject to impact from lightning strikes and other adverse weather conditions, and are expensive to maintain. After the first three-years of operation their failure rate is ten per cent – not very encouraging.

 

Wind farms also prose another potential problem! Although the owner of a wind turbine farm is responsible for paying for the removal of the turbines once they have reached the end of their lifespan, which includes the cost of dismantling, transporting, and disposing of the turbine, farmers enticed by the financial benefits of hosting wind turbines on their property may be lumped with the cost of decommissioning the infrastructure if the wind turbine owners default.

 

While total fees earned for hosting a wind turbine for 25 years could yield farmers $250,000-$750,000, figures from the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner indicate decommissioning costs of up to $600,000 or more per turbine.

 

In many cases, some renewable energy project developers have been quick to promote projects to communities without securing social licence, or responding to genuine concerns people have.

 

But just like the desire to build more wind farms, our politicians seem to be doing very little else to address the energy supply crisis, other than to cry more solar farms and more community battery storage. There is no long-term vision to address the problem – base-load power stations have been allowed to literally fall apart from years of neglect as the ‘Albo, Future Made in Australia’ solar policy has reached a fervour of biblical proportion.

 

So, what about Albanese’s race to build a local solar manufacturing mega industry?

 

The Australian federal government’s initiative to install 400 community batteries across the nation has reached mythical heights. If Labor is to be believed, only government intervention and spending billions of taxpayer dollars will enable Australia to “compete” in the new global protectionism race to build local manufacturing and to come out smiling with the sun. Yet the recent budget clearly shows that the Albanese Government’s ‘Future Made in Australia’ manufacturing vision is in ‘bombs, not batteries’ – green power paling before defence investment.

 

The Albo vision, including state governments, with the exception of South Australia, doesn’t include ‘Concentrated Solar Power'.

 

‘Concentrated Solar Power’ (CSP), as the Grapevine has previous reported on a number of times, uses mirrors – also known as heliostats – to concentrate the sun’s heat onto high temperature solar receivers.

 

CSP uses liquid sodium to transfer the heat, which is then stored in molten salt reservoirs. The stored thermal energy is then available to create steam, power a turbine and produce electricity. Or, for direct use in  decarbonising some industrial processes.

 

One of the benefits of CSP over photovoltaic solar panels is its cost-effective long storage time. This means that CSP can generate electricity or provide heat on demand, including overnight – it is economical green energy.

 

The CSIRO has a pilot CSP plant in Newcastle, but there is no other CSP plant in operation in Australia.

 

Australian renewable energy and storage company Vast Renewables, however, has signed key engineering contracts for the development of a 30MW/288MWh VS1 concentrated solar power plant, at a cost of $200 million, in Port Augusta, South Australia.

 

Dominic Zaal, Director of the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute, a division of the CSIRO, has previously told the Grapevine that the $785 million being invested by AGL in a solar battery, on the site of the decommissioned Liddell Power Station, could have built a 100MW CSP plant.

 

Unlike the AGL battery, which will only supply power for two hours during the evening peak period to 60,000 homes, a CSP plant would have provided electricity into the grid 24/7.

 

CSP plants are less expensive and quicker to build than new coal-fired, gas or nuclear power plants and their operation doesn’t impact on the environment or on human health. They provide the solution for a strong, green-powered, base-load electricity grid network, which is is supplemented by solar and wind farms and batteries. All that is needed is a commitment from our governments to invest in a logical solution to guarantee a net zero future - the United States, Spain, Israel, India, China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Algeria, Canada, Chile, South Africa, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Thailand and Turkey and powering their electricity grids with CSP plants.

 

Rewind to last Friday – 24 May

 

Chris Minns said, “extending the life of Eraring to cover these gaps is the right call in these circumstances.”

 

“Every new watt of cheap power is a win for NSW,” he said.

 

“Privatisation took power out of public hands, meaning we had to negotiate with private companies to ensure our lights stay on.

 

“More proof, if you ever needed it, that privatising essential assets doesn’t work.”

 

In May 2012, the O'Farrell Liberal government passed legislation to sell the State-owned generators, then during the 2015 state election the Mike Baird Liberal government campaigned on a controversial plan to lease 49% of the state-owned electricity distribution network (known as the "poles and wires") for 99 years.

 

At the same time that the Baird Government was hatching its plans to effectively privatise the electricity grid’s poles and wires, it sold Delta Electricity, which at that time owned only the Vales Point Power Station, to Sunset Power International for $1 million.

 

In 2016, the Baird-New-South-Wales Government orchestrated the effective sale of a 50.4% stake in Ausgrid, through a 99-year lease, the balance of ownership still remaining with the State Government.

 

There can be no argument that Premier Chris Minns is correct – selling off state-owned utilities doesn’t work. But neither will the NSW Government’s plan to allow a sun-tax during the day, topping up the coffers of energy wholesalers, score his government any ‘brownie points’.

 

What is surprising, however, is that the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) have come in defence of the ‘shameful’ sun-tax scheme. They argue that a small charge to supply free rooftop generated energy to the grid during the middle of the day is a reasonable way to balance costs. But why should the public be expected to balance the books for the failure of successive governments, or energy wholesale energy suppliers, such as Ausgrid, to maintain a viable electricity grid network and base-load power generation? It was reported in last week’s Grapevine that Ausgrid are looking to reduce their operating costs by 80 per cent over the next ten years.

 

Yet PIAC’s director of energy and water, Douglas McCloskey, said about the planned new ‘sun-tax’, “This will see solar owners pay a fairer share for their use of the network.”

 

While the concept of charging consumers for sending clean and free power to the grid – generated by solar panels homeowners were incentivised to invest in, and in some instances a considerable investment, and which have helped to drive down energy costs for everyone during the day, doesn’t seem to be of concern to the PIAC, Ausgrid or the government. For some perverted reason they believe that it is a privilege for home solar owners to be charged to generate free-energy for the grid.

 

Ausgrid, as previously reported, claim that the charge for exporting free energy to them between 10am – 3pm is only a modest impost, but then believe that the 2.3 cents they will pay you after 3pm exceeds the realms of generosity. A business model that beggars belief.

 

Ausgrid’s two-way tariff structure is still more than a year off being mandatory, which gives you time to put in place, as suggested in last week’s Grapevine story - ‘Electricity Greed Turns Net Zero to Ash’ - appropriate measures to deny Ausgrid their free booty.

 

Minister for Energy, Penny Sharpe, says that where people do opt-in, their costs to take electricity from the grid will be lower. But the bill credits they see for sending solar to the grid will be smaller – nothing surprising there (a one for all and all for me business model).

 

Ausgrid’s argument is that there is a cost to the network company of accommodating increasing amounts of rooftop solar, while also keeping the grid running smoothly. Charging for exports in the middle of the day, Ausgrid says, “ensures fairness for all customers, including those who can’t access rooftop solar.”

 

Ausgrid’s two-way tariff argument, no matter which way you bend it or twist it, is pretty unconvincing – no more than a ‘Big Brother stick approach’, which could wind up disincentivising rooftop solar at a time when policy makers are calling for more investment in a PV power shift to electrification.

 

Yet, for the record, Ausgrid says it “fully supports the uptake of rooftop solar, as people play their part in the clean energy transition” – from the ‘Big Book’ of ‘slippery slope’ arguments, it would seem.

 

The new solar two-way tariff is designed to punish solar panel owners who don’t own a home battery to store the energy they produce.

 

So, what’s the State Government’s answer?

 

Last Friday, 24 May, a new incentive was launched to make household batteries more accessible and allegedly affordable for NSW residents.

 

The Minns Government says households and businesses with solar panels on their roofs will be able to buy a cheaper, subsidised battery to store solar energy generated when the sun is shining.

 

This will help get the most out of their solar, by allowing them to use it around the clock, the government claims. "It will also reduce their energy bills and boost the reliability of the state-wide electricity grid."

 

Wasn’t the original purpose of having a solar panel/battery system to eliminate electricity bills, whilst supplying excess power above your daily needs to the grid for others to use? That’s how the scheme was sold previously by state and federal governments.

 

The new incentive, the Minns Government says, is part of the Peak Demand Reduction Scheme and will provide between $1600 and $2400 off the up-front installation cost of a household battery for homes and business with existing solar.

 

The cost of residential solar batteries ranges from $1,000 to $1,300 per kWh of capacity installed. Based on this, the cost of a 10kWh battery could range from $10,000 to $13,000, excluding any potential rebates or incentives. It’s not hard to imagine that there won’t be a rush of new battery installation in NSW or on the Central Coast.

 

If your are, however, still enthusiastic about battery storage and additional solar panels, or the installation of a complete new system (solar panels and batteries), green loans are available on the Central Coast, at a competitive rate, through Community First Bank located at Erina and Gorokan. Alternatively, increasing your existing mortgage to cover the cost of the purchase, would only see a minor adjustment to your current repayments. And don’t forget the Catch All solar relay in our previous story- it will allow you to take control of the power that you produce.

 

The state government is also providing an additional incentive, for those who have the spare cash to install a battery, of between $250 to $400 for connecting a battery to a Virtual Power Plant. It can be claimed a second time, three years on.

 

By connecting batteries in Virtual Power Plants, households and businesses can collectively share capacity across the energy grid. So, what does this mean? During peak period Ausgrid can remotely access your battery and suck it dry at 2.3-cents/kWh, which could see you later in the evening buying power back at a commercial rate – depending on the time, it could be between 30 to 15 per cent more than you were paid.

 

The lifespan of a 10kWh home battery, which is an average size to run a house overnight, once your solar panels go to sleep, is 15 years. But they are not designed to be fully discharged night-after-night as part of a virtual power grid - not only will this permanently damage your battery, it will considerably shorten the battery's lifespan.

 

The state government's battery incentives will have quickly turned to confetti as you quickly realise you are up for the cost of a new battery – unless, of course, you are an altruistic person and see a worthwhile reason in propping up the electricity grid while politicians still pontificate about every other solution than the one that is staring them in the face – ‘Concentrated Solar Power’ – doesn’t see the light of day, or in the case of CSP the heat of the sun rays radiating onto the earth.

 

So, while the state government is accelerating the roll out of major battery projects across the state, boosting electricity reliability to keep the lights on in NSW, why aren’t more community batteries being rolled out to store the excess of electricity from home roof top systems during the day? And why isn’t there a concerted effort to encourage investment in CSP plants? Band-aid solutions will only put off the inevitable – net zero turning to ash and the lights going out.