"Possible solution in April" for those projects. Kiamal commissioning with synchronous condenser in Q1, possible tender. So, they're basically hoping that condenser smooths things out. Bold move.

Kiamal is a Total project, they have deep pockets. I know they were thinking of adding a huge battery, 270MW / 1,080 MWh -> https://reneweconomy.com.au...

Well, it'll be interesting to see how the condenser works out, and if they decide to phase into the possible battery for their Kiamal Stage 2 development. In the short term, I don't know why AEMO can't tender a hybrid compensator and upgrade substation. They could also tender batteries out there, can Victoria throw some incentive at it? "Grid-forming" inverters are a field of a lot of research right now, so it'll be nice when better integration capabilities start hitting the market.

What a bloody mess. Taylor, Canavan, Kelly, all the moronic Monash group must be crowing in glee.

Why, oh why, can the perverse, recalcitrant AEMC and MCA not be charged with criminal conspiracy to pervert the - something? Is there not some statement in the charter of what their responsibilities are? Something about fairness and equity to all generating companies, best results for consumers, that sort of thing?

OK, I have just done what I do when I start asking these questions. I asked Dr Google.
And learned this. And this is a straight cut and paste from the AEMC's own website.

"AEMC’s work is guided by the three legislated national energy objectives:

National electricity objective (NEO)
National gas objective (NGO)
National energy retail objective (NERO).
Each objective requires an explicit focus on the long-term interests of energy consumers in our rule making decisions and advice."

It is patently obvious, from this, that the obstructive resistance to facilitating the transition to clean, low cost energy flies in the face of their establishing legislation.
Time for the thwarted wind and solar companies to mount a class action against AEMC for failing to fulfil their remit.

Surely there are relatively useable loads that's could be invoked to stabilise the resources either Individually or collectively.
This will be a symptom at Ross Garnau's 700 % so clearly time to start desal in the southern edge of the region and pump it north and uphill. There is a nice synchronous load waiting in the wings.
Or has the time come for hydrogen created at sites.

Hey Elon Musk do you have a battery that could solve many of these system strength and transmission capacity issues (again!)?

Were they actually able to define the problem without using marketing terms?

The right call by AEMO

Keep up the good work

rear guard action is working fine

A monumental failure of governance:

"AEMO says the issue in Victoria is not just about system strength and the risk of oscillations, it is also about “thermal capacity”, which is unlikely to be resolved without significant grid upgrades and new links. There is simply not enough capacity in the grid for all the proposed developments, it says."

AEMO has expanded the problem definition with 'thermal capacity' thrown into the list of excuses now that 'risk of oscillations' has been questioned as a credible excuse...

Doubts over any 'risk of oscillations' was raised in these comments a month ago:

The US grid suffered two catastrophic failures due to "power grid oscillations". See the first of the two articles listed below that begins: "The complete causes of the 1965 and 2003 northeast US blackouts continue to be a mystery to most engineers".

It is an obscure issue and is unlikely to occur. A US lab developed a real-time controller in 2018 to detect the warning symptoms and prevent any grid failure. See the second of the two articles listed below for their solution.

The AEMO seems to be relying on an obscure and solvable issue to frustrate renewable energy being used to replace coal-fired generator output. Note that extra grid investment is not needed. This is just an excuse to restrict the supply of renewable energy.

A couple of articles - an older one with a description of power grid oscillations, and a newer one about the development of a controller to tackle the problem are =>
1/ "THE POWER-GRID OSCILLATOR" and
2/ "National Lab Solves Grid Inter-area Oscillation Problem"
You can do a google search on the above titles to find the articles.

The thermal capacity is only a problem for proposed developments.

Also, your solution above is for a different problem. But the real problem is how the AEMO is unable to define the problem.

I believe the problem with “thermal capacity” was identified by AEMO as far back as 2016.

If the projected volume of new generation connects into the grid, individual generators (both new and existing) may be constrained or disconnected, mainly due to thermal and system strength limitations of the transmission system in Western Victoria. Network limitations outside of Western Victoria (including interconnector capability) may also constrain the output of these new generators

That is from a April 2017 AEMO report on Western Victoria.

Yep... they were warned. Most savy participant could see the risks. They went ahead with skinny margins to develop projects and clip the ticket. Now all crying over congestion that everyone could see.

When the AEMO cut off the output from half of the inverters at solar farms last September it was a problem that "suddenly emerged" in a "review just recently" and was about "voltage fluctuations".

See "AEMO slashes output of five big solar farms by half due to voltage issues", Renew Economy, 13 September 2019:

"The Australian Energy Market Operator has taken the dramatic move of slashing the allowable output from five solar farms in Victoria and NSW by half, because of issues over “system strength” that appear to have suddenly emerged."
...
Most of the solar farms affected by this latest ruling have been operating for some time – and in the case of the 53MW Broken Hill solar farm for four years. But it seems that the issue only emerged in a review just recently.
...
AEMO said it was working closely with a “number of solar farms” and network service providers to manage identified voltage fluctuations in north-west Victoria and NSW.

Tesla factory built in China in 10 months
& built 2 hospitals in 10 days.

Just saying

Maybe we need SMEC (Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation) as Engineer of last resort 3.0 ( links) 4.0 (Batteries) (5.0) Bass Strait etc

Solutions need to be found urgently. Here are some suggestions:
1) Remove AEMO from its role as grid planner in Victoria. Clearly it can't do both roles nor is it proper for it to be given such a role.
2) Independent technical assessment of the way AEMO is managing new connections to the grid and handling of existing connections in NW Vic and SW NSW.
3) Require AEMO to consider risks to the grid of delaying the connection of additional generators. That is lack of generation capacity in Vic and NSW. At the moment it is not looking at a balance of risks. Currently it is in their benefit to be as conservative as possible, thus delaying new generation connections. (Won't even suggest that it needs to consider the risks of climate change).
4) Subject to (2) fast track the installation of a battery to provide grid inertia in NW Vic & SW NSW. Provision by tender.
5) Stop installing any further synchronous condensors, others than those already at advanced planning stages. Batteries should be used for inertia, not synchronous condensors as they are less efficient and don't offer the flexibility that batteries provide.

I agree on the batteries.

Beyond that, I urge you to organize a substantial task force very fast, and tally up the economic harms to the renewable energy industry, the customer base, and the nation (due to exacerbating climate chaos and pushing the planet over the tipping point to runaway extreme heating that kills off most life on earth) of a seven-year hold. Maybe have analyses for each of these levels, for powerful argumentation purposes.

Simultaneously, develop a variety of scenarios for ending the issue with batteries, including wholesale changeover to a network of smart microgrids, with ample batteries as the storage system. Cost out several attractive versions that span a diversity of approaches, using US$75/kWh for batteries, and US$50 for 48% to 50% efficient solar thin film, as the average costs across the time span from 2 to 7 years out. Assume non-lithium batteries that will not catch fire, and have at least a 10,000 cycle lifetime.

Given the resistance to change you are experiencing, one or more of the scenarios should explore approaches to mass, self-organized, self-use that takes away most of the load for the grid, forcing the networks to convert to serving the individuals, blocks, and other groupings (most in microgrids or minigrids) who will otherwise simply opt out of the grid entirely, and amp up on storage and demand management & trading to get through long storms or fires with relatively little inconvenience -- and probably have better service statistics than the networks anyway. And if the networks don't respond to the forcing function, they will go bankrupt, and can be bought and reorganized to serve communities as a public good.

Then compare the scenarios with the costs of inaction (ostrich putting head in sand), and put together a political coalition that won't take no for an answer, and get the job done. That includes ensuring that the source of the batteries and solar has all the necessary resources to supply the technology as fast as is humanly possible.

Gold plated network-yeah right!!!

I think what got gold plated was the distribution networks in the cities not the longer distance networks. In Adelaide all the sub-stations were connected by
fibre optical cable which they installed by directed drilling down streets. They
really needed fibre optical cable ?

It’s nuclear explosion proof. You need that level of redundancy when every transformer has been fried.

AEMO is a failure;
We may as well have Matt Cannovan or Angus Taylor in charge of creating those planning pdf's about what could happen, maybe, one day, if someone else wants to do something, and they are allowed to do it...

AEMO is NOT a failure.

They only do what AEMC tell them to do.

AEMC is governed by a puppet of the Morrison LNP COALition government.

The Morrison LNP Government whose mantra is jobs, jobs, jobs, is deliberately turning its back on funding transmission infrastructure as a nation building project.

The Morrison LNP government is the puppet of the coal and fossil fuel industries in Australia.

So, if you want to blame anyone, blame the coal industry, who it seems, has the government, and opposition in its pocket.

Don’t even bother explain the nuance on this forum mate. They don’t listen ...

Also - why doesn’t Anastasia P of the QLD Labor party close the QLD coal gens tomorrow? It’s their asset!

Ignorance as a plan, i think that ones been tried. mate...

Spot on ! What is Anastasia Palaszczuk thinking by adopting ignorance as a plan and not actually closing Tarong and Stanwell immediately and save us from the climate crisis ?
Imagine the immediate reduction in Co2 👍

You are probably right Sam, it's like trying to give medicine to a dead person.

"The short term outlook for other near complete [...] solar plants [...] is clouded"

Well, I laughed...

The problem is thermal capacity. Too right, the brown coal thermal plants refuse to shut down and make way for renewables

In this context, is not thermal capacity the inadequate capacity of the old, unfit for new purpose, transmission lines to carry the power generated, without heating those lines so much that the losses are huge, and there is a risk of the lines burning out?
I suspect some commenters are confusing this situation with the capacity of thermal, coal fired power plants, to produce electricity.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

That may seem to be the understanding from an engineer’s view point , but they could have used more natural and precise speech like ‘inadequate transmission capacity’ or ‘ underrated switchgear’ but ‘ thermal capacity’ could mean a host of things including but not necessarily limited to your understanding of the term Hettie. We often see this sort of quasi- technical terminology to give a meaning to one audience and quite the opposite to another. Ie, to the coal brigade: they are saying ‘your thermal capacity has precedence over wind and solar’ to the wind and solar developers they say ‘sorry the thermal overload you are causing on our thin- wire network means you must curtail your energy production’

Another way to put this “ we have enough thermal coal capacity to not bother to upgrade the transmission lines to your renewable resources so tough luck, you can transmit electricity in the existing transmission lines to their thermal capacity and then no more’ If the state’s coal turned into mud bricks and their thermal generators closed down, then the appropriate transmission capacity would be built yesterday!

Yes, of course you are right.

:-)

I guess these issues are an unintended outcome of the regulator preventing gold-plating in our networks. And any fixes, take years of hiatus in RITs, AER approvals etc etc, before they get deployed and commissioned.

These archaic rules were meant for a grid which was gradually growing (evolutionary) and not being trying to accommodate mass generation connections (revolutionary). Sometimes we can be too clever by half.

Even if our Federal Government suddenly were to accept that Australia needs to do more on the Climate Change abatement front (especially in relation to significantly increasing levels of RE in the NEM), the inability of our grid to be quickly modified or augmented to accommodate what will be, step increases in distributed RE generation, presents a major challenge we need to clearly and quickly overcome.

This bodes well for Scottie from Marketing and his colleagues from the Country Party (er sorry that should read Nats or the NP part of the LNP). They couldn't have asked for a better outcome and prolongs the Coal based status quo.

.

Gold plating didn't ensure the right investments were being made in the right locations.

In any case, it occurred about 10 years ago, well before the boom in large scale renewable generation took off.

I am skeptical that the NEM grid cannot be modified or upgraded quickly. What is the lead time on big transformers, and switch gear? The towers and upsized wires can be ordered 'off the shelf' especially now when so much of Australian steel fabrication is underused. Line construction could start now and be in use ready to be switched over to the higher voltage/bigger currents when the new gear is put in at each end.

Two years to roll out the required amount of new HVAC transmission each year was a number I sourced when doing jobs modelling for a WA transition to 92% RE by 2035. Not sure if that’s credible. As for system strength, best call Mike Cannon-Brooks to call his mate in California.

Thanks, two years for enough HVAC to keep up with renewables deployment (and how long is my piece of string) is a good number. I imagine some of the conductor thermal limits could be raised at least in part by progressively stringing thicker conductors? And hot transformers could be sprayed with water as was not uncommon on my local sub-regional suburban substation until the whole thing was replaced.
I really feel for the investors and companies who in good faith put their money into the northwest of Victoria only to be told their projects are being curtailed longterm. Any sign of urgency by the Victorian government to help would be good.

I’m I the only one who recalls around the time of the first or second VRET reverse auction the Minister making remarks to the effect that they didn’t think that new transmission would be required to accomodate new projects at this stage and that “other methods” of accomodating the extra capacity would be found?

I’m not being critical of the minister, I’m sure that was the advice provided to her, but it sure as hell made me scratch my head at the time and ask myself what “other methods” are they? Are we invoking Nikola Tesla technologies here?

I know that I am an amateur but I am stunned by the slow responses across the grid.
Everybody is planning for a renewable powered gris, the ISP even showed where the solar and wind generators will be based on climate, land availability and putative transmission.
Everybody knows the new transmission will be built to serve this new generation. Much of the new transmission could be as upgrades to existing lines so avoiding a lot of permitting work.
So why so slow to actually build the transmission? There is more than a hint of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic here, diversionary activity to make it look like order is maintained while the economics of the renewable generators is destroyed.
Is it an argument over who pays for the strengthened grid? The state could build it and recover the expense through transmission levies over a long period.
Is it a lack of design engineers? A phonecall to China.

Advance Australia to where exactly...….all of this sounds contrived...…….stinks like coal......like defeat. I won't stand for defeat, can't stand it. Will some authority come forward and tell us exactly what's really going on.

I agree Chris, China rules are needed.

To clarify; there are plenty of very good, excellent engineers in China. Very skilled at building high voltage DC, high voltage AC and lots of other things. I am not so keen on many of China's planning policies and practices. But then the Western World is in danger of freezing motionless as nothing can be done without upsetting somebody somewhere.

A dose of antifreeze will slow down global warming.

A Term like Risk Averse applies to Electricity Rules and Regulation. We're so trying to avoid the risk of creating a stranded or over-sized asset, we go down a long and winding path of navel gazing, RITs and applications for AER approvals, more application for funding approvals, with the net result in that it takes years before a shovel hits the dirt.

A clear case of Paralysis by Analysis.

A key example is Project Marinus, initial feasibility study start in 2015, not expected until 2027, needed now.