Hey everyone, I just came across this article.

- Energy operator wants to remotely switch off rooftop solar systems amid 'uncontrolled growth'
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-30/grid-operator-looks-to-manage-solar-power-output-in-sa/12202004

This follows on from an earlier article where WA discussed doing the same thing:
- The rise of solar power is jeopardising the WA energy grid, and it's a lesson for all of Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-01/rise-of-rooftop-solar-power-jeopardising-wa-energy-grid/11731452

A quick look shows dams in SA are at least 55GL under capacity.
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=dams+in+south+australia

Now I'm not an electrical engineer, but I say NO to purging excess solar.
I want them to use that excess power to switch on pumps that refill the dams, so that we turn the dams into more efficient batteries that store energy.

Excess energy should be used to refill the dams.

Don't purge that solar!
If that's the best they can come up with, they may as well start mining bitcoin with that excess power.
If state governments can lose the better part of a billion dollars and openly plan to purge rooftop solar then we're run by idiots and need new thinking on these issues.

What do others think?

Wind and solar has been reported as mucking up the network for some time. It doesn't appear to have had much, if any, effect on the average household. The thing to think about is this 'remote control' lurk that shadowy characters would like to exercise. Remember their desire to remotely switch your power off in times of high demand; smart meters and so on. Watch out for Big Brother. The restrictions they have brought in because of the China virus shows how dangerous our government is.

«we're run by idiots»

And I thought that every one is responsible for their own life...

How about installing your own raisable rain-water tank in your backyard, then use the excess, gravity-stored, solar power to heat your home for free in cold winter nights?

ttbn,

Can you please stop using the term 'China virus'? It is overly racist. Please use 'Wuhan virus' in future.

And if you don't do what I ask I will see if I can get Twiggy to bring in a couple of Chinese Communist Party heavies to set you right.

ttbn,

PS And if you think I'm kidding then just have a look at this to see exactly what Twiggy can do:

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/melbourne/extraordinary-scenes-as-chinese-diplomat-hijacks-government-coronavirus-press-conference-to-praise-beijings-handling-of-the-crisis-and-reject-australias-demands-for-an-inquiry-into-the-outbreak/ar-BB13nhV3

Armchair,
It is indeed stupid and completely unwarranted. The problem is that the grid was not designed for negative demand, and the electricity distributors prefer a workaround over a fix. But already the inverters automatically curtail the output when the voltage gets too high, so further action is unnecessary.

But pumping water is not a solution. SA's dams can't be refilled when the water isn't there! There is a very small amount of pumped storage that can be used with water from the Murray, but it is far too small to be a significant contributor to supply or demand.

Pumped storage using seawater has been proposed for SA, but meanwhile SA has pioneered an alternative solution: batteries.

Armchair Critic, it is not a matter of what to do with the solar power, but the fact that the fluctuation of the frequency, & amount of power supplied by solar from minute is causing havoc with the control of the grid.

If the frequency drops too low the grid will automatically shut down. If it doesn't lots of bad things will happen to electrical & electronics connected to it.

If the frequency rises too high even worse. Your electrical & electronic gear connected to the grid will burn out. Even much worse, some will go bang, & catch fire, a bit of a pity if you're not there with a hose handy.

If some control is not applied to the amount of rapid variability of solar & thus instability in the grid, expect many breakdowns in transformers, & extensive blackouts.

Aidan & Armchair Critic,

You should get Shadow Minister into your discussion. He's just an engineer and knows all about pumps and electric motors and lots of other boring stuff like that.

Mr. Opinion,

Sorry, I can’t oblige. China virus, China virus, China virus ……….

And, Twiggy is a twit. A clever rich twit, but a twit none the less. What sort of twit invites a Chinaman to a press conference without the Health Minister’s knowledge.

The Chinaman in question proved again that the Chinese have been insulated and brainwashed for too long to know how to behave in the world outside their Communist country.

AC,

I have since learned that 'cut off the panel' deal pertains to those people who have rushed in to install panels at the taxpayers expense; they would't get their added income on top of their big bludge on taxpayers. Tough titty!

ttbn,

You're a hell raiser, I'll give you that.

As for Twiggy, I think you would have to admit though that he is definitely not a dim as he sims.

Misopinionated,

Funny, I didn't know they had ivory towers at TAFE colleges.

I have a brother who was an engineer, a very practical DIY hands-on person, you wouldn't ever come across him in any ivory tower. Strangely enough, he also thinks for himself - an engineer who is also thoughtful.

Early on, he was employed by the Milk Authority of an un-named country to find a way to compress milk to make it more easy to transport. Milk being mainly water, he knew on Day One that it was impossible (Misop.: water can't be compressed; kids learn that early in high school but perhaps they un-learn it in TAFE).

So he did all the deep, academic, run round paperwork, theoretical stuff on the topic (or well around it) for six months before he could find a more satisfying job working for a bus company.

Wow, if you had been appointed, they would have had an wannabe-academic TAFE student who would have fitted right in with a long-term BS make-work role.

I'm puzzled by your adoration for fluffy arts stuff and denigration of anything useful. Are you enrolled in a TAFE Certificate in Irrelevance and Hindsight Studies ? You'll go far.

Joe

Hey Yuyutsu,
Yes we should all practice what we preach, and maximise energy for ourselves;
But if the government is going to carry on about climate change, give incentives to install rooftop solar, including buying it then spilling it then somethings seriously wrong.

Hey Aiden,
"But already the inverters automatically curtail the output when the voltage gets too high, so further action is unnecessary."
I don't want the energy wasted, we should use it.

"But pumping water is not a solution. SA's dams can't be refilled when the water isn't there!"

Change the rules, create a workaround: a foolproof solution.
At the bottom of the big dam, you create a smaller dam, with enough holding capacity to so there is enough to pump back into the bigger dam using up the excess power spilled from the grid;
Now we have the water back.

Hey Hasbeen,

"Armchair Critic, it is not a matter of what to do with the solar power, but the fact that the fluctuation of the frequency, & amount of power supplied by solar from minute is causing havoc with the control of the grid."

As previously mentioned I'm not an electrical engineer.
But if theres more power that needs to be spilled at any particular moment turn more or less pumps on to use that energy and stabilise the grid.

The way I see it power companies will have us spilling the solar power just to create more demand for their coal power which wouldn't be necessary if we used what we had more efficiently in the first place.

Can someone more well versed than I explain? If you have a dam full of water going through a generator/turbine and pumps to pump it back up. I understand you pump when electricity is cheap and generate when electricity is expensive and needed instantly but in reality is this workable? I have never seen an example of costs of building and generating against income? Yet we are happy to put up billions of dollars? Too much to hope for a guarantee that can be attributed if it does turn to custard.
I am still waiting for anyone to put up some sort of case for solar panels and wind? A real comparison, cost of installation against a yearly output of actual electricity? Then yearly output figures from then on but am I asking for an inconvenient truth?

LOUDmouth,

I disagree about what you THINK about water not being able to be compressed.

There are something like about 22 states of water. About 18 can be demonstrated in the lab with the rest by theory (these cannot be demonstrated in practice because the conditions cannot be attained in any lab eg pressures and temps beyond the achievable on earth).

Obviously you along with most of the people on The Forum OLO do not have any respect for the Arts which I find strange because Arts is all the things like history, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, philosophy, etc., that deals with all the sorts of topics that you all mostly like to talk about.

So what does this mean? It means that you along with the other usual suspects do not have any credentials in those areas so you are left to tell us what you think rather than what you know. How do I know this? Because I can ask you how you know something about a subject when you have no credentials in that area. You can only tell me what you think, not what you know.

I wish there was a qualified electrical engineer who could give some guidance on this topic as I feel no one on this thread knows what they are talking about. I certainly couldn't offer any technical expertise and I haven't seen anyone on this thread that actually has.

Dear snake,

You're saying " ………… I feel no one on this thread knows what they are talking about."

Isn't that the truth. And it doesn't stop with this thread. Just about everyone on The Forum OLO can only tell you what they think, not what they know. Reason: they don't have any credentials related to what they are discussing. It's the usual suspects, The Forum's Old Farts Club members, etc., etc.

Dear Critic,

«But if the government is going to carry on about climate change, give incentives to install rooftop solar, including buying it then spilling it then somethings seriously wrong.»

Government cannot do this unless people accept their offers for such "incentives". You do not even need to inform government when installing rooftop solar, but then if people are greedy, they have only themselves to blame!

Hey JBowder,

"Can someone more well versed than I explain? If you have a dam full of water going through a generator/turbine and pumps to pump it back up. I understand you pump when electricity is cheap and generate when electricity is expensive and needed instantly but in reality is this workable?"

I wasn't implying buying when cheap (to run pumps) and selling when demand is high.
- Though that may have its own merits.

I was simply saying that we shouldn't spill or purge the excess power in the grid as NSW and WA propose to do.
'Spend' that excess power running pumps that would refill the dams instead.

If you've got:

A/ Excess solar panel generation
B/ Dams that are low on water

Then:

C/ Use the excess power to refill the dams

Result:

D/ 'Spilled energy' becomes 'Stored energy'.

AC, I do not think you answered my question at all however let me help you. If we have generation that cannot be used then we have the wrong generation model. Monash thought out the Latrobe Valley coal to electricity and thought it through properly. Now we have useless, diffuse energy generation that needs the reliable generation envisioned by Monash as back up. We are in a real bind over this and that is the real problem. Jackasses who just cobbled together a load of old rubbish thinly disguised as "Green". What a joke we are in Victoria. The perfect State to actually destroy our own economy, run out of proper power and with no civil rights.
We get what we deserve.

The problem AC is you can't feed all that variable power into the grid, without destabilising it causing resultant catastrophe. So unless you build a separate network from your solar panels to your usage site, you can't transfer the power to your usage.

If your usage is a motor, to drive pumps in your suggested usage, the waffling frequency of that power, without considerable expensive management & moderation of that power, it will burn out your motors.

A small amount of solar & wind power could be balanced, & the frequency controlled by a large amount of spinning mass in thermal, [in our case coal fired]generators. As the percentage of alternate generation increases, & thermal generation decreases it becomes increasingly difficult, & expensive to maintain the frequency required to be provided to the network

Hasbeen,
SA did order some synchronous condensers for frequency control, but whether they're a good investment is uncertain. Active frequency control is better than passive, and the upgrade of the big battery is likely to do far more to stabilise the state's power than any condensers.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Joe,
Compressing milk is far from impossible - all you have to do is remove most of the water! It's commonly done - Indeed I opened a can of evaporated milk a few hours ago. Or there's the option of removing even more water to get powdered milk.

A good engineer looks at the real objective, rather than assuming the clients have the same meaning as physicists when they say "compress".

_________________________________________________________________________________

ttbn and Mr 0,
It's not racist at all, but please stop calling it the "China virus"! It wasn't the first virus to come from China and it won't be the last.

________________________________________________________________________________

Armchair,
If there's the extra capacity provided by a second dam, why would you pump the water back into the main reservoir if you're not using it for arbitrage?
Pumping water from one dam to another doesn't increase the total water supply.

If you want to avoid wasting power, there are many things that could be done with it, but using batteries is probably the most convenient and best value. Pumped storage is certainly a possibility, but large scale fresh water pumped storage is not practical for the driest state on the driest continent.

Aidan,

I absolutely refuse to call it the 'China virus'. I have repeatedly told ttbn to stop it and only refer to it as the 'Wuhan virus'. (Or on second thoughts, maybe we could call it the 'Wuhan bat soup virus').

Whatever way, I have warned ttbn that if he doesn't refrain from calling it the 'China virus' I will try to arrange for Andrew Forrest to bring a couple of Chinese Communist Party heavies around to have a talk to him. As Twiggy might exclaim: "We'll show him who's running the country!"

Mr. Opinion,

Poor old Aidan and his bleating "please don't call it the China virus". Do you think he is a Chinese spy? Do you think that he thinks that we think that he has some divine right to be obeyed? (Just like the Chinese think). Do you think that he thinks at all? The virus came from China, therefore it is the China virus. The politically correct covid-19 sounds more forced and ridiculous every time some pretend-ernest newsreader squeezes it out. Why people feel the need to be PC when the Chinese ambassador makes threats against Australia is very strange.

And, on China's 'diplomacy', the Chinese Consul dragged in by Twiggy without the Health Minister's knowledge, was a cyber spy, spying on Australia, before he turned up in Melbourne. Well done, Twigs! As Alexander Downer said, Twiggy and the Chinese need to get some good political advice. Twiggy is a successful businessman, but politically ignorant; the Chinese need to learn about Australia and the fact that their Communist totalitarianism is not acceptable here.

It is only excess solar that goes to the grid your house gets what it needs first. So it would not account for any extra power being bought from the grid.
So their grumbles would be in vein as it would not make any difference what so ever.
No doubt revenue for power generators would be way down due to the current climate. That means they are looking for a handout.

ttbn,

I saw a full video yesterday where Greg Hung walked from the room to his car and Oh Boy! was he angry. I have never seen anybody with that much anger in his face. His face was as red as a tomato and he looked as if he was going to explode. It was real hatred for Andrew Forrest and his Chinese Communist Party mate.

Well at least people like Andrew Forrest and others of his persuasion are starting to show their true colours and where their sympathies lie.

And maybe it's now time for Gladys Liu to stand up in front of the full House of Reps and explain her position too.

And yet, Twiggy writes in one of the mainstream rags this morning that Hunt was happy with it all. Twiggy tells porkies. Hunt looked anything but happy when he walked out of the conference. Twiggy needs to be told to stick to mining. Twiggy's desire to buy Virgin - looking good on the surface - needs to be scrutinised for the presence yuan in the deal.

What we have to remember with Twiggy's love affair with China is that it's all about money - his money. The same applies to all mining magnates and big business people. Fair enough. The country benefits; we all do. But Twiggy and co should not be making political decisions and telling us that we will perish without Communist China. That's one good thing about Morrison: he doesn't take kindly to being usurped by anyone.

ttbn, you miss my point.
LOTS OF VIRUSES CAME FROM CHINA. So it is grammatically incorrect to refer to this particular coronavirus as THE China virus.

I recently read an article about AEMO's problem with the large solar farms.
They had been cutting back the maximum output that they could take from
the larger farms. However they announced that the German Manufacturers
of the inverters have modified the software and are able to overcome the
difficulties that had been the cause of the problem.

The suggestion that batteries could be used instead of a hydro system
would of course work, but the batteries would have more likely hood of
being fully charged when needed than the hydro system would of being full.
Some make a big deal of the 30% loss in a hydro system, but so what, it
is very cheap electricity or so we have been told.

Re Armchair's worry, the distributor could install equipment at the local
substation to overcome the local difficulties they are having.

Aidan,

I told him that but he just won't listen. He just doesn't want to take to calling it the 'Wuhan bat soup virus' for some reason.

Aidan,

Ok. How about THIS China virus; or, the 2020 China virus. You can't say the current China virus didn't come from China because umpteen other viruses came from China on previous occasions. 'Grammar' has nothing to do with it.

Everybody but you knows which virus I mean, and I intend to continue calling it the China virus, despite your nitpicking and pettiness. Try ignoring me like that ratbag Foxy claims everyone does if it worries you as much as it seems to.

Solar is in direct conflict with coal. Coal needs to be shut down and replaced with gas which is most easily regulated.
Solar is getting to the point that changes to the norm are imminent.

Hey everyone,
Hope you're all having a nice weekend.

Maybe I bit off more that I can chew with this forum thread.
I just don't have the technical knowledge to understand all the aspects (and problems) associated with electricity generation.

I suppose I don't understand why the cant seem to use all the different ways of generating electricity together to create a better end-product.
It seems like one big mess, and purging power they funded the installations of seems ridiculous.

We need to lockdown the 20 smartest brains in the country together and tell them they're not coming out till they figure out some real solutions to this mess.

Regarding COVID-19.
I think its real name is SARS-CoV-2

I don't call it the 'China' virus, though I did call it the WuFlu in the beginning.
The reason I don't refer to it as 'Chinese' is because I'm not convinced that China is entirely responsible for the outbreak.
- And I don't want to apportion blame until I get the true facts.

The important facts to me concern its origin.

1. We know the virus came from bats, and those bats most likely came from China.
In this sense they imply it was naturally occuring (for public consumption)but that's only half the story.

We know US government departments funded the bat virus studies, even in China.
http://vermontbiz.com/news/2020/february/13/leahy-coronavirus-and-trumps-budget
http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698

2. If we let the virus speak for itself then what it tells us is that it came from a lab, and was engineered with a gene-splicer to include HIV
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/340100582_WUHAN_COVID-19_SYNTHETIC_ORIGINS_AND_EVOLUTION

- This other part of the story then dismisses the entire Wuhan fish market narrative.

This leaves us the question which lab?

Now the closest one was the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan.

But the US has biolabs all across the globe, it could've come from any one of them, or people involved in the transport of these biological agents from one country or lab to another.
http://armswatch.com/project-g-2101-pentagon-biolab-discovered-mers-and-sars-like-coronaviruses-in-bats/

US was the biggest funder of the WHO, which means that it's primarily their scientists the WHO would use abroad, and the US has all the Coronavirus strains.

You also have Americans working with scientists from other countries.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/harvard-s-chemistry-chair-charged-allegedly-lying-about-china-contract-n1124646
(What you must also take from this is that China was actively trying to steal the Wests technology under their Thousand Talents program.)

So who did it?
We don't know that yet, so we need to look deeper.
Who benefits from SARS-CoV-2?

We need honesty and transparency in the investigation that follows, but can we expect that from governments whom are actively involved in bioweapons programs?
Can we expect other countries to be steadfast in the demand for answers regarding SARS-CoV-2 ?
Probably not, because they're lackeys for either Chinese or US interests as well.

AC,

Call it what you like, the China virus definitely came from China; and the bat thing is a myth: has been for some time now. There is a growing consensus that it came from the only virology lab in China, at WuHan. Your references say only that it is 'believed' to have come from a bat. You might like to look up Steven Mosher, an American sociologist and expert on the Chinese Communist Party. And it is the CCP that is the villain, here; not the Chinese people, 95% of whom are NOT Communists. The CCP and President Xi are as much threat to the Chinese people as they are to the rest of the world - more probably. 1.3 billion people have had no say in their lives or country since 1949.

And, I think that it's best to ignore the CCP's attempt to drag our most important ally - the only one able to support us against China, the US - into it. Don't listen to lies from the most vicious regime on earth and greedy tycoons like Twiggy Forrest.

None of this, however, has anything to do with your original thread topic, again proving that there are a lot of erratic posters around, including some who constantly whinny like mules about the correct names for things.

Seeing that it is apparently OK to talk about anything, anywhere, I would like to say how encouraging it is to see Industry Minister, Karen Andrews, announce that it is INEVITABLE that our supply chain will shift away from China, giving a boost to the reintroduction of Australian manufacturing.

Already, the China virus has the government going about the business of increasing our fuel reserves. It's a disgrace that we have to have a real crisis to force our incompetent government to do something that it should have always been doing.

High tech and pharmaceutical manufacturing is back on the to-do list at long, long last.

It would be nice to have, some day, politicians who are not too dumb or too lazy - as they are now - too plan ahead as they are paid to do, instead of waiting for a catastrophe from overseas to hit us. A leader who stands for something would also be nice; we haven't had one such since John Howard.

ttbn,

Even the Chinese know the Wuhan bat soup virus started in China. They just don't want anybody else to know.