Post election haze, or perhaps just another controlled hazard reduction burn clouding vision! 
Restoration of clarity appreciated!
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Have you been reading The Australian/Murdoch rags? 
The reports are nonsense as that is not the purpose of the Horndale Reserve (aka Tesla big battery), it primarily supports the network to keep the frequency where it is supposed to be- ie 50Hz.
It does that far more effectively than any solid or gaseous fossil fuel generator can, as it can almost instantly change output levels or go from output to input in order to keep the grid frequency as close as possible to 50Hz.
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Peter Farley, a fellow of the Australian Institution of Engineers, wrote in RenewEconomy earlier this year:
“As for nuclear the 2,200 MW Plant Vogtle [in the US] is costing US$25 billion plus financing costs, insurance and long term waste storage. … For the full cost of US$30 billion, we could build 7,000 MW of wind, 7,000 MW of tracking solar, 10,000 MW of rooftop solar, 5,000MW of pumped hydro and 5,000 MW of batteries. … That is why nuclear is irrelevant in Australia. It has nothing to do with greenies, it’s just about cost and reliability.”
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Nuclear waste can be stored on the moon. Everyone knows that. What could possibly go wrong? 
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When it sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and faced a savaging from the industry. When it introduced the idea of a network for a 21st century country that was lambasted by the then opposition and then destroyed when that party gained power.
Next question?
Julian Assange’s (alleged - though I had thought it was confirmed) first appearance on the world stage was with the ■■■■ worm, targeting NASA for proposing to launch a nuclear-powered spacecraft.
I realise your comment was in jest, but the risks associated with trying to get nuclear waste off our planet make current treatments of it look like playground stuff. Just imagine a ‘rocket failure’ that spreads radioactive waste across half the planet!
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I don’t think it was spelled out with some recent WA block-chain peer to peer schemes - I wonder if the utility still gets a cut in that case. At the moment our one option Synergy in WA get a tidy 26 - 7 cent cut, they’ll be screaming if peer-to-peer goes from trial to large scale reality.
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Around a month after our solar & battery system was installed in February this year, I received a call from Ergon to say they were finally going to visit to inspect our system and to change the meter.
I explained to the caller that we already had a smart meter installed and it was already setup for the FIT, to which she said that they would still need to reprogram the meter.
I further advised that the installers had disconnected the off-peak tariff to which she replied that they would remove the ripple relay and there would be a charge of $140 for doing so which would be added to our next bill, and if their was anything incorrect with the installation resulting in a follow-up inspection, there would be an additional charge of over $140.
When the Ergon electrician called a week or so later, he inspected the installation and confirmed that the meter did not need replacing or reprogramming and that everything was satisfactory.
He then spent around 2 minutes to remove the ripple relay and he left.
When I saw the installers installing an identical system at our next-door neighbour’s home, I asked them if they had heard about a charge to remove ripple relays, to which they said that they had not and were very surprised as Ergon allows a free change of tariff each year.
The ripple relay was installed when we bought our current home 4 years ago and there was no charge for setting up the off-peak tariff.
When I later spoke with our neighbour, he said that when Ergon rang him about his inspection, he was told there would be no charge even though they had to replace the old analogue meter.
Our latest Ergon bill arrived this week without any $140 charge included so I can only assume it was just incompetence on the part of the call centre employee.
If we had been hit with this disgraceful rip-off charge, I was set to do everything necessary to have it removed.
The best part was the current bill is over 70% less than the bill for the same period last year and that is despite the lousy wet and overcast weather we have experienced during the billing period.
You beaut solar.
(Waves goodbye to Ergon bill rip-offs with raised hand whilst pointing to a bird on their powerline with middle finger).
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Power and Water Authority (the only choice in the NT) have a similar scam. If you go to split tariff, they install a smart meter at one charge, but if you go solar, its more than double - for the same meter, with the same programme. I figure this is the last sting before no more bills for many people - which adds a couple of months to my payback time … I’ve heard from a couple of people ‘in the know’ who tell me it is accepted by insiders that its a scam that nobody has worked out yet, but someday someone will push the issue - they rely almost entirely on ignorance, bluff and the fact there are no alternatives.
That said - I haven’t paid a power bill in 18 months, and figure the next ‘statement’ should be around $800 in credit, so figuring payback on the 5 kW system is going to be as expected - about 2 years - so I’m still not complaining too loudly
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Just received an email from Ergon regarding their “Barry The Bill Buster” promotion…
https://mailchi.mp/ergonretail.ergon.com.au/dont-miss-out-a-bill-break-enter-now-1334533
Part 2 is super simple as we busted Ergon’s rip-off bills with our new solar & battery system.
Part 1 is problematical a there is no option to “Dislike” Ergon.
But in any case, as our latest quarterly bill total is less than $54, Barry and Ergon can both go to the same place.
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Intelligent minds come up with creative approaches. Not exactly solar, but related to affects on the grid, so I parked this link here.
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This has been discussed within the industry for over 10 years. Likewise backflowing residential battery systems as well.
Both require removing control from the devices owner which may be challenging.
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For the owners or the power companies - retailers and generators?
If the way power is to be generated and regulated retains the centralised one way power flow of the current network design.
And
Generators and Retailers are to be given sole access to the provision and distribution rights.
It makes good engineering sense to keep every thing just as it is right now. IE maintain the status quo.
The alternative, is to progress to distributed generation and storage. Local network capacity and micro grid management becomes more important. The single greatest benefit of which is to reduce the power flows across the network distributors, which ever way they flow.
The current challenge of synchronisation and load management are all based on coal fired steam turbines. Typical are a large inertial mass, slow load response and the electrical analogy of mechanical inertia (inductive/capacitive energy within each electrical machine and equipment). Reality is for a future system with zero carbon fuel based generation, designers and operators will need to be able to operate an interconnected grid without spinning reserves.
It’s a simple observation, the current generators and retailers have likely foreseen. Possibly key players in government may also understand the implication. The next generation of battery technology, H2FC, plus where reasonable local pumped storage will disrupt the NEM. Local communities will have the ability to go off grid as will any LGA with the promise of lower power costs. The only obstacle is Federal and State Govt wills to keep the current system. (Excuse the puns. Perhaps there should be some current applied to those not in sync?)
P.S.
I’d expect any locally connected battery system (BEV included) need only respond to local requests to charge or export. Whether each battery system responds to a network demand request, and whether it is able to respond at that time can remain in the hands of the owner. Opt in, and at a user negotiated rate. There is no point feeding in if you only get 2c per unit (kWh) at the time. Peak gas generators have been known to get ten times or more the base generation rate to meet peak demands. Why not the average consumer? TOU will need to work both ways.
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Not forgetting the one way flow of money in the other direction, which I’m sure they would like to maintain!
The average consumer could also, if they used the right provider and tied their rate to the wholesale price. My brother is using Amber, resulting in significantly lower electricity bills, and although the export FiT is mostly low, around 6c lately, there are occasional spikes when a lot more is paid.
BTW, peaks are a LOT more than 10X the typical wholesale price
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Backflowing was done in SA in 2019 using their Virtual Power Plant to help stabilise Qld’s Power network:
Perhaps a good reason to encourage Govts into fitting many more Solar and Battery systems to public housing and other buildings eg Schools, Police Stations and so on.
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The cost of implementing battery storage improves with scale.
Targeting public and private enterprise,
- with usable solar PV potential,
- high capacity electrical supply connections (retail/commercial/light industrial),
- daytime biased, low shoulder and peak consumption.
Any property with similar characteristics would likely provide better outcomes than government support for smaller scale one off residential systems. Shared community systems, which could include social housing could be the better path to bring the benefits to individual properties. Smart metering and monitoring can track and manage individual household export and usage from a shared external storage.
The challenge remains with the state governments to change their regulations and vary how local supply networks are constructed and managed. EG a 1,000kWh (1MWh) Battery might scale to a 50 house development all connected back to a common node at the battery. For the connected community shortfalls in PV are able to be topped up off peak, while in normal use surplus or a percentage can be exported to smooth peak hour or make up for short term external losses of centralised generation.
I’m assuming such thoughts are far from original or unique. Why would developers not promote such a simple and elegant solution in providing more attractive blocks of land? Are there any real life relevant examples?
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My understanding of this one was that the flow supported the local network and not a true backflow. It was local network support to reduce the amount of flow to SA. A true backflow allows transforming from a low local voltage to a higher voltage and then transmitted to another local network or other parts of the extended network.
This was also government housing with batteries to support the local network so in effect the government and GOC local network operator controlled discharge to the local grid when it owns the assets (not the public housing tenants).
The challenge and cost lies in allowing reverse flows on the network from low voltage to high voltage and then back to low voltage. Current network design is for high voltage to low voltage flows.
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Retail distribution or HV transmission network?
System design limits or operational control requirements?
Accepting any argument without question, is accepting a future of centralised generation and retail control. Is this the future consumers deserve? Or are vested interests hiding behind technical puffery to secure a profitable future?
There are arguments for investing at the local network level, rather than spend elsewhere and lock in a more centralised future.
P.S.
I doubt it is a simple one scenario answer.
The less each local retail distribution network demands from the HV interconnecting network for support, the greater the capacity of the HV distribution network to manage power flows across the network. It already does as supply and demand changes across the NEM.
There is one scenario for the HV distribution across the interconnected NEM. Why spend another cent to that end?
There are different considerations in how the retail distribution networks are designed and controlled. The significant majority of electrical apparatus is equally capable of energy flows in both directions. There in lies the long technical discussion. There are many local and regional differences in retail network designs/demand. There is more than one option/solution for each local network. Improved voltage regulation at the consumer level and local batteries are but one.
There is no technical challenge, just good engineering, and a political and retailer busting commercial opportunity. IMO 
As the first posts in the topic suggested
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Distribution has higher voltages than 230V to allow mass flow of electricity to each network segment. Usually in urban areas these range from 430V to 11kV/33kV or even up to 110/132kV.
Higher voltage is needed for capacity and also to transmission. Low voltages (230V) are limited to the local network where there is a limited number of connections. Trying to run 230V from on side of a city to another is problematic and would exceed the reliability ability of the networks.
Backflows are only really beneficial for network reinforcement where they can flow across the network in areas needing the reinforcement. This requires transformation to higher voltages.
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Not to mention the large power losses.
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Are either of these relevant. Only if we continue to design and build and operate the networks as we have in the past.
WA has made a decision on which path to take. If there are such concerns they appear to be managed by the chosen alternative. They chose the third option.
Johnston said the state had three choices to deal with the growth of rooftop solar PV and its implications for the grid: “We could limit solar PV or other DER, we could make a massive increase in network investment; or we could find a better way forward and use DER to support the grid to make it more available for everyone.”
In a nut shell on the NEM and eastern states:
The response of the WA government is encouraging, and perhaps wouldn’t have been possible in the eastern states where the market and policy-makers are buried under layers of regulatory burden, and where progress has been impeded by the likes of the Australian Energy Market Commission.
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