Genesis telling porkies about Rodney
Genesis Energy claims in a New Zealand Herald article last Friday that their 480 MW gas-fired Rodney power station won’t get in the way of renewable generation. Please cue the Tui advert - Yeah, Right!
Such a massive plant will stop renewable development in its tracks. Who would build more capacity with that jugernaut sitting up there? The true problem with this porky, that Genesis doesn’t want anyone to know, is that renewable options are cheaper than the Rodney plant - by a long, long way. Building the Rodney plant will mean a huge windfall profit for Genesis, because we’ll have to import LNG at international prices in order to run it, meaning they can then charge international prices for our local gas. Gas that they get for much, much less.
This consumer gas price jack-up is what will subsidise the otherwise uneconomic Rodney electricity plant. Industrial consumers will continue with their low fixed price electricity contracts, while residential consumers will bear the brunt of the massive price rises, both for electricity and gas.
You don’t have to be a Genesis customer to suffer here. The most expensive, marginal unit of electricity sets the price for the whole market, (except those lovely fixed-price industrial contracts), and everyone gets hit with the price rise.
When DEUN complained that only residential rates have risen in recent times, politicians (except the Green Party) looked the other way. Recent price rises will pale in comparison to this rort, if they are allowed pull it off.
The hearings continue up north as I write. I just hope that the hearing’s six commissioners have the wisdom to see this rort for what it is.
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September 30th, 2008 at 8:17 am
They are correct to the point that once renewables such as wind, tide and solar provide more than about 12% of demand then every watt of renewable power must be backed up by a watt of reliable power which can include geothermal and even hydro if we over build a bit.
So a lack of stand by generation can be a reason for declining a wind farm or whatever.
By the way, in my opinion the Kaipara Tidal proposal appears to be a scam - whether the promoters are aware of it or not. I am still waiting to see some financials.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I’m far more interested in South Island power, and how much further we are in a hole than the North Island, see Press Article.
It once again mentions Project Aqua, a reneweable resource, desperately needed, blocked with help from the Green Party.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Owen, that argument really only holds true if wind, tide and solar provide more than about 12% of generating capacity . If wind, tide and solar provide more than about 12% of electricty demand by directly converting wind, tide and solar energy to heat or mechanical energy then the requirement for standby energy is reduced. If this is done as multiple systems solutions rather than as commercial energy trading then the need for standby generation can be eliminated entirely.
Farm windmill water pumps are the best example of a systems solution in which a simple storage medium allows supply to be matched with demand. The introduction of KERS in Formula One will make these energy buffering technologies well known to the public and that will break the information monopoly that large commercial generators currently have. Then you will start to see large numbers of individual businesses and homeowners deploying mission specific energy system solutions.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I use a farm windmill because water is easy to store.
Electricity is not.
YOur argument is theoretically sound but given the time spans we are talking about there is little doubt that we have to provide some stand by generation to back up wind power if we do not want to have such renewables declined on the grounds that we have no means of filling the gaps leading to burn outs and brown outs.
Remember, if the wind speed halves the power output is reduced eightfold.
How would you like to manage that level of variation in demand with no rapid response standby?
September 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Theres no real issue with variable generation such as posed by wind; the technique is to adjust demand in response to supply.
New Zealand has been adjusting load to match supply longer than pretty much anyone else on the planet with ripple control systems universally employed. The problem is that the decabit code used by ripple control takes several seconds to transmit a single message. But, back in in 1920 that was pretty impressive, and well adequate to match an inadequate generation and transmission system to the work required of it.
We now live in a wired society with getting on for ubiquitous broadband. We have the communications infrastructure installed to deliver control in tenths of a second. Thus we have within our grasp the ability to match load to generation capacity on a fraction of a second basis. Thus the need for rapid response generation has been designed away.
We can do better than conventional thinking, and have it done cost effectively.
(And note what I said above - the generation and transmission of New Zealand was designed to be inadequate, as (as everyone knows!) the systems have to be able to handle the absolute peak load, and that peak load determines the overall cost of the system. Reduce the peak load, and you reduce the cost. Thus by employing ripple control and shifting load from peak periods to off peak periods, the cost of the electrical infrastructure was dramaitically reduced.
When the NZ electrical system was pseudo-privitised it started to be run on the financial basis of maximizing load to maximize income, but the electrical system was never designed for that model, which is why we are where we are today)
October 1st, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Owen, It’s a pity you don’t work for Fonterra. Simple logic like that applied across all irrigated dairy farms would have dramaticly reduced the growth in electricty in the South Island, possible at significantly less than the cost of installing electric irrigation pumps.
Heat can also be stored, in concrete walls and floors. Attention to detail at the design stage can allow a home or office to store surplus heat energy from the sun for release into the building at night, not always sufficient to meet the building’s entire heating needs 24/7 but sufficient to achieve that goal during the critical ealy evening electricity demand peak.