A Look at Renewables
Editions 3 30/04/2023
AEMO is leading us to massive complexity and cost with renewables by 2050
Wind and solar gain priority access to the grid because they do not incur the full cost of supplying their energy. Costs of increased grid construction, backup generators, reserve capacity and ancillary services are not accounted for in their supply. The induced costs and inefficiencies in the coal plants may require significant subsidised costs as is currently the case in Western Australia.
AEMO Integrated System Plan Step Change Scenario 2050
In the following image key elements are:
- Vertical scale in Megawatts shows the levels of power demand and generation for each type of generator
- Generator types are shown by their colour in the legend
- Horizontal scale shows the date as generated in the model for a the orange peaks above the demand line
AEMO’s step Change scenario in 2050 generating and storage capacities had to be increased to provide enough energy to meet demand with Generating capacity of 338 GW and storage of 1,396 GWh. It includes 21GW of open cycle gas. Cost to Low voltage customers is 47 cents/kWh and a moderate emissions intensity of 138 gr CO2/kWh.
As can be seen in the following image a substantial amount of energy is spilled amounting to 23% of production. This is shown in the
100% Renewable Hydrogen Superpower Scenario 2050
Gas and coal generation has now exited the market. The Hydrogen Superpower scenario has 100% renewable wind and solar with 770 GWh of energy storage coming from 79GW of storage capacity. We found it did not meet the energy demand and had to increase the generating capacity to 1,495 GW and storage capacities to 1,669 GWh. It is a very costly concept due to low capacity factors, large amounts (43%) of spilled energy and large increases in transmission and distribution. Cost to low voltage customers is 51 cents/kWh and emissions intensity is 51 gr CO2/kWh which comes from huge amounts of embodied emissions.
