The Northern Territory is a test case for renewable energy and it’s a bonfire
In 2016, the new Labor Government waved a magic wand and commanded they would be 50% renewable by 2030. The experts said it was doable and would save $30 million a year. They gave out the permits for large solar installations, which began construction in 2019, but then suddenly changed the rules in 2020, and wouldn’t let the solar plants connect to the main Darwin-Katherine grid. Unbelievably, 64 megawatts of solar panels that cost $40 million dollars have sat, doing nothing, for four long years.
“It’s just reflecting back into space, not being used to power the grid and to substitute for diesel and gas turbine production,” said local vet Peter Trembath, who leased his land to energy company Eni Australia for the solar project.
“It’ll be some technical issue, but you’d reckon they would have sorted that out before Eni spent $40 million to erect it.” — Max Rowley, ABC News June 2022
It’s always the Grids fault…
The reason they couldn’t be connected was that the Territory government suddenly rewrote the rules in February 2020 and insisted the solar generators had to operate like fully scheduled generators, not semi-scheduled ones. Cruelly, they would have to make accurate predictions of what they could supply 30 minutes ahead on a rolling 5 minute basis. This meant they would need their own battery backup with the equivalent of 80% of their capacity and storage that lasted 30 minutes. They’d also need “weather forecasting” ability to predict cloud cover.
The solar owners, Eni, protested that this would cost them $20 million (at least!) making the project unviable. And to make things even worse, the government was saying they had to build the battery at the solar plant, and reserve it to back up their own panels, so they wouldn’t be able to build the battery in Darwin, and use it to help the grid at other times, which would defray the costs. It all seems quite bizarre. (Who would want to run a business in the Northern Territory?)
Why didn’t the renewables industry protest these belated draconian conditions louder? Probably because they didn’t want to highlight the reason for the Territory government’s sudden flip. It suddenly makes sense when we look at the timing.
The panic-attack about connecting solar power came just after the Alice Springs black start
The NT government didn’t appear to realize that there were risks in adding 64MW of solar power to a grid that was roughly 250MW in size until 13th October 2019 when the whole Alice Springs network serving 29,000 people collapsed due to a cloud. It was the third blackout in four years, and it must have terrified the management in Darwin, because Alice Springs didn’t have much solar, yet the system was so unstable. Only 13% of the town’s total electricity comes from solar panels, but one cloud was enough to knock that little grid over and it took over nine hours to get it restored. By December 2019, an inquiry was set up and both CEO’s of the Power and Water Corp and the Territory Generation lost their jobs.
Presumably the new CEO’s were not going to risk the collapse of the larger Darwin-Katherine Grid, hence the sudden rule change in February 2020 which left the solar operators high and dry.
The ABC and others insist the blackout had nothing to do with solar power, and was just due to incompetence, but all the new grid managers grabbed their electrical garlic and acted exactly like solar power was the vampire. How else do we explain that these perfect solar plants have been sitting there doing nothing for four years?
So 64MW is too much for Darwin, but lets build 4,000?
Clearly grids need their armour before anything so risky as a large solar plant can be connected, which is all the more poignant considering the Australian government just approved (again) the humongous SunCable plant, what will be the “largest plant in the world”, at 4GW, and it’s going to be in the Northern Territory. It’s 60 times bigger than the 4 Eni plants, but is supposedly going to send most of the green electrons to Singapore, a mere 5,000 kilometers away, which is lucky, because the whole Darwin-Katherine grid only uses 250MW at peak, so SunCable would eat it alive.
The people will pay for the solar debacle
The new NT Generator Performance Standards were trying to make sure that the Territory’s consumers wouldn’t end up footing the bill for the backup and wouldn’t suffer a blackout. But the Territory Government has paid $45 million to build a battery in Darwin anyway, and looks like it will try to buy out the four idle solar plants from Eni. So the citizens will be whacked for the cost one way or the other for the magical wish-fairy thinking that renewables would be easy and cheap.
As it happens the people of the NT get to vote tomorrow in the Territory elections. Lets hope there is some salvation. Though on the media apparently the major issue is not about keeping the lights on, or whether the NT is a basketcase for investors, but whether people can keep crocodiles as pets. No, seriously. (And they’re talking about the Saltwater kind which eat people, and grow to 6m and 1,000kg.)
