With the official start of summer in December, Australia's electricity demand has soared. However, at the same time, extreme weather such as heavy rain and hail has frequently occurred, which has brought great challenges to Australia's electricity supply. To make matters worse, although Australia has stated that it will increase the grid-connected capacity of renewable energy and will also prepare for emergency power generation, the country's less flexible grid system does not seem to be ready to fully embrace "wind and wind" power.
Obvious shortfall in power supply during peak summer
Australian energy market operator AEMO recently released its summer power supply plan for 2021-2022, saying that from December, it will add nearly 5 million kilowatts of renewable energy power installations, and arrange more than 2 million kilowatts of emergency power generation installations to further enhance The resilience and resilience of Australia's main power grids reduce the risk of power outages.
It is understood that the Callide coal-fired power station with an installed capacity of 825,000 kilowatts in Queensland, the Hunter Valley gas-fired power station in New South Wales, and the Mintaro coal-fired power station in South Australia have all been determined to be unable to supply electricity this summer. AEMO predicts that this will result in a reduction of approximately 700,000 kilowatts of coal and gas power generation in Australia this summer compared to a year ago. In May, the Callide Coal-fired Power Station Unit 4 exploded and subsequently suspended operations. This caused 470,000 users including Brisbane and the Gold Coast to cut out power. So far, the Queensland Power Grid has been unable to ensure stable operations.
At the same time, data from the Australian Renewable Energy Economic Network shows that in the past year, Australia has added 2.6 million kilowatts of household solar power generation capacity, and the rapid deployment of large-scale distributed "wind and solar" power will provide power for the summer of 2021-2022. It has brought a certain degree of support, but it is not enough to completely support the country's huge power demand.
AEMO believes that in view of the intermittent nature of renewable energy power generation and in the face of uncontrollable extreme weather, Australia's power supply gap cannot be underestimated in the summer of this year and next.
In fact, extreme summer heat and high humidity, as well as extreme weather such as torrential rains and floods that have become more frequent in recent years, have put tremendous pressure on Australia's electricity supply. AEMO stated that it will hold weekly briefings with local governments and transmission network operators as needed throughout the summer of 2021-2022 to conduct research on the weather, power and natural gas system conditions in the coming week to identify and mitigate risks as early as possible , To ensure the smooth operation of the main power grid.
Extreme weather affects smooth operation of power grid
In fact, since December, the Australian power grid has been under tremendous pressure due to extreme weather, and large-scale power outages have occurred in many places.
On December 1, violent storms and hail "attacked" Melbourne, causing large-scale power outages in at least 6,000 households in Melbourne and nearby areas. On December 2nd, a devastating gale occurred in Victoria. The state issued a fault warning to users of Powercor, CitiPower and United Energy power systems, asking them to fully charge the electronic products at home in advance.
In addition, under conditions of heavy rainfall, the Yallourn coal-fired power station in Victoria, with an installed capacity of 1.48 million kilowatts, was once again threatened. Earlier this year, floods once affected the power generation capacity of the power station. AEMO pointed out that any outage of the Yaloourn coal-fired power station will result in a one-time outage of 150,000 to 500,000 users in Victoria for up to 8 hours during the intense heat.
The British "Guardian" pointed out that due to frequent extreme weather in recent years, Australia is preparing to rely on renewable energy for power generation this summer, or it will repeat the previous blackout. On September 28, 2016, a strong typhoon hit South Australia with storms, lightning, and hail. A series of failures such as large-scale wind turbine disconnection finally caused a 50-hour power outage across the state.
"Scenery" supporting facilities are seriously inadequate
It is understood that because some states and regions of Australia still focus on the development of the fossil fuel industry, they cannot provide better development conditions and policy support for energy storage technology. This makes the capacity to store "wind and wind" electricity in sunny or windy days insufficient, resulting in It has become very difficult to supply more clean electricity during peak electricity consumption.
Take Victoria as an example. Although the state’s utility-scale Megapack battery energy storage system is already in operation, it cannot support the state’s power supply guarantee. It can only provide one for 650,000 households when the state’s power supply is under severe pressure Hours of electricity. And, at the end of July, the energy storage system failed during preliminary testing.
The Australian Energy Market Council emphasized that as more and more renewable energy power is connected to the grid, wholesale power and environmental costs are falling, which will largely offset the impact of the planned shutdown of fossil fuel power generation installations, and it will also allow People trapped in high fossil fuel electricity prices benefit.
However, according to the latest survey by the Australian Energy Regulatory Agency, affected by the epidemic, the average arrears of natural gas and electricity by Australian households have increased from US$897 in 2019-2020 to US$1,000 in 2020-2021, an increase of 12%. This means The "occasionally" low electricity prices will not have a disruptive impact on Australia's energy and power structure.