Here in California, many look at Australia and Germany as an example to follow. Now that California is considering closing our last nuclear power plant (and the largest powerplant in the state), realities like spinning reserve and DER madness are finally getting some attention.

Good to see that Australia can and will build nuclear energy, and transition their steam expertise from coal to nuclear.

Hi Richard,
Thank you for your feedback. The UAE is really the best recent exemplar for how a non-nuclear nation makes a choice to pursue nuclear energy and then puts that choice into action. “Technology neutral” has become a tongue-in-cheek expression with regards to nuclear energy in Australia – the Government couldn’t be less technology neutral than when it comes to nuclear energy!
Regards
James

Thanks Paul, We will take this on board. Please note this post has been sent to a large group of local, state and federal government politicians

Geoff, Pleased you liked the article. The cartoonist is a lady from Perth. Her names Vicki and she really captures the essence of what we’re trying to do

Hi Geoff,
Feel free to get my contact details off Rob Parker if you’d like me to put you in contact with Vicki. She is a wonderful artist and a pleasure to work with – she is also a very good sounding board.
Your comment on the technical aspects of rotating mass (inertia) and how this is irreplaceable when it comes to system strength and voltage and frequency control is very true. There is some good work being done by operators and technology providers of IBRs (inverter based resources in AEMO parlance) and it is encouraging that solar and wind operators are actively trying to find ways of contributing to system strength…however there are limitations and no analysis I’ve read suggests that they can entirely replace the inertia of large rotating generators.
A good friend of mine is a senior network operations engineer and I’ll discuss with him a future article that goes into more detail.
For the best power system analogies from a true power system expert, I don’t think you can go past Bruce Millers articles on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-miller/detail/recent-activity/posts/
In particular the one he did where he explained power system dynamics using the analogy of a train – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-system-analogies-bruce-miller/
Regards
James Fleay

Hi Mick,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. On a second reading, I think your comment is fair and the wording in the article should have been clearer. My intention was to convey that rotating generators were the only type of generation that could provide certain types of grid services (batteries and demand response not being generation). I understand the the Hornsdale battery is an effective provider of some grid services (as I mentioned in the article) but would point out that this kind of project is only really necessary in a grid with large amounts of non-synchronous, intermittent generation – AEMO didn’t really have to pay for these things previously as they were provided intrinsically and with sufficient strength by the incumbent synchronous generators.
I am also aware of some trial work that was completed at the Hornsdale wind farm which recently resulted in them being allowed to offer 6 of the 8 FCAS services and some ongoing trials for solar farms to provide grid strengthening – so this space is changing quickly.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment.

James

Hi Paul,
Thanks for your feedback – we can only hope that our representatives start to take note.
Regards
James Fleay

FYI this is very inaccurate. Both batteries and demand response participate in the FCAS markets (… curiously, the ability of batteries to provide FCAS is actually alluded to earlier in the article). In fact, batteries now have over 25% of the FCAS market share. Similarly, demand response is the largest contributor to RERT.

To be clear – they are absolutely not only be provided by power stations with a rotating generator