Will Australia miss global solar boom?
Federal Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson next month will have the honour of chairing the biennial meeting of 36 energy ministers hosted by the International Energy Agency. The topic will be the world’s energy future, and the contents are likely to be surprising – so much so that Ferguson may have cause to consider if Australia is well prepared for the energy revolution that lies ahead.
Since its establishment in the 1970s, after the oil price shock, the IEA’s principal mandate has been around the protection of oil supplies, and its forecasts for the world’s long term energy mix were viewed – particularly by those pushing renewables - with some suspicion.
In the last couple of years, however, the IEA has focused more on different scenarios for the world’s future energy needs – both in terms of energy security and in reducing emissions. In doing so, it has emerged as one of the world’s most bullish proponents of renewable energy, in particular solar.
Around the time that Ferguson will host the meeting in Paris, the IEA will produce a study that predicts more than half the world’s energy needs, and most of its electricity needs, will come from solar energy sources by 2060. The question that Australia needs to ask itself, as it signs yet another multi-billion dollar contract to develop LNG resources, is how it is placed to benefit from a solar future that will dominate future energy sources in the same way as coal and oil has in the past.
At a solar summit in Melbourne earlier this month, the Clean Energy Council warned that Australia had a five year window in which to seize the initiative in large scale solar or miss out on a huge economic opportunity. It warned that Australia, despite obvious expertise, risked being left behind because of the massive rate of deployment overseas of large scale solar – both PV, solar thermal and with storage – and the rapid fall in costs.
As the world’s biggest energy groups – GE, Alstom, Areva, Abengoa and Siemens (which has abandoned nuclear) – focus more on their solar technologies, and invest billions in new projects, Australia needed to accelerate its deployment and knowledge so that it, too, would have expertise that it could export rather than import.
That warning was made even before the IEA previewed its latest solar road-map, which it has expanded upon at the World Solar Congress in Germany at the start of the month, and at the SolarPaces conference in Spain last wek. According to its chief renewables analyst Cedric Philibert, many solar thermal technologies will fall to $US100/MWh by 2030 – making it as cheap or cheaper than the wholesale price of fossil fuels in many countries – meaning that its take-up – as a source of despatchable power, for district and industrial heating, and as storage, would be irresistible.
Professor Andrew Blakers, from the Energy Change Institute at the ANU, has a similarly bullish view for solar in Australia. He argues that by 2050, solar could be providing more than half of Australia’s electricity needs, with a mixture of wind, geothermal, ocean energy, biomass and some residual gas plants providing the rest.
He says that the prospects for solar are so bright that even having the wrong policies would merely delay the take-up of solar technologies, rather than prevent it. However, he agreed with the CEC that Australia’s interests would be best served by policies that encourage early deployment because it would give Australia engineering expertise and knowledge that it could export to other countries.
Blakers points to the plunging cost of solar PV, which is already below retail price parity in many parts of Australia. (Like the IEA, he says solar will be the best and cheapest option for between 6 and 7 billion people worldwide, as it is the sunnier climates that will witness most population growth). Blakers says wholesale parity – at around 8c-12c/kWh, could be achieved by the latter half of the decade, given the expectations for the rising costs of coal and gas and the carbon price.
If this is the case, then the take up of solar could be so great that Australia would be adding 4GW of solar capacity from around 2020 – enough to obviate the need for new coal and gas (apart from some peaking plants), and will mean CCS and nuclear missing the boat. He says that in these cases, planning, infrastructure and security issues are all much simpler.
Blakers is particularly bullish about the prospects of PV – both on commercial rooftops and in utility-scale arrays – backed by pumped hydro – a relative cheap and fast response option that needs storage on two levels, rather than a damming a river. He says this will be followed by solar thermal with storage such as molten salt. Others predict an earlier and more prominent role for solar thermal.
The IEA’s Philibert foresees three broad categories of situations – where solar thermal and storage dominates sunny and dry climates, where PV is backed by hydro and pumped hydro, and in temperate climates, where PV in combined with wind power. In the northern climates this is likely to mean a higher contribution from other energy sources.
If these forecasts are right – even if they are half right – it would present an enormous opportunity for the development of a solar industry in Australia, far greater than seems to be contemplated in current domestic scenarios - Treasury only includes a 5 per cent solar target in its forecasts. But to exploit these scenarios would require policy commitment.
This could come from bodies such as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the IEA is strongly supportive – and has been for several years – of early incentives such as feed-in-tariffs to build scale and know-how to accelerate the cost curve decline. “This is the price to pay to bring solar technologies to competitiveness with fossil fuels,” Philibert says.
Australian companies know this all too well – its new technologies, such as Carnegie’s wave energy machines, Atlantis Resources’s tidal energy turbines, Dyesol's solar dyes, or Ceramic Fuel Cell’s BlueGen units, will be deployed at scale overseas because that is where the greatest incentives lie. Many of Australia’s geothermal companies, as well as the largest independent renewables group Pacific Hydro, are now focused on South America and near Asian neighbours for the same reason.
All this should present some food for thought for Ferguson and his advisors. Ferguson, like the IEA, has mostly been interested in protecting the supply of fossil fuels or export or use at home, although he has shown an increasing interest in sola of late, spending more time in recent months at solar summits and gladly appearing at solar announcements.
His attachment to LNG-style mega projects is all well and good, and the export income is crucial. But perhaps Australia can walk and talk at the same time. Given that Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf emirates, are now looking to a massive investment in solar energy for their domestic electricity so they have more fossil fuels to sell, perhaps it’s time for Australia to consider the same route – particularly given its expertise in solar R&D - allowing it build a major stake in the energy of the future as well as profiting from the boom in commodity energy sales.
Comments on this article
However, he agreed with the
However, he agreed with the CEC that Australia’s interests would be best served by policies that encourage early deployment because it would give Australia engineering expertise and knowledge that it could export to other countries.
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20% was correct, without sun tracking
Hi David,
you were right the first time, and there's no need for sun tracking. At the PVoutput website you can see output figures for over 1000 rooftop PV systems, many in real time. The following page is for NSW systems yesterday.
http://www.pvoutput.org/outputs.jsp?df=20110927&state=NSW
Most systems are obtaining efficiencies of 4-5 kWh per kW of installed capacity per day. My own 2.115kW systems has averaged 10.5kWh per day during September, or almost exactly 5 kWh per kW per day.
regards, Dave
Sometimes it is good to be wrong
In response to Nigel Morris:
If I am proved wrong about rooftop PVA, then I will be happy, because the consequence will be a viable alternative to coal power.
It is a bit like what is supposed to happen on October 1st. I have predicted that Collingwood will lose, but if I'm wrong, I'll be a very happy old man on Saturday night. :-)
The question I am trying to raise is whether we would be better off building wind farms in windy coastal regions, or solar plants (thermal or PVA) in arid regions, rather than paying to subsidise rooftop PVA, in places like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Many argue that the latter means we can save in HV transmission. I argue that in fact both need extra HV transmission, simply because if we have bad weather in Sydney and Brisbane, then excess capacity from Melbourne, Adelaide etc is needed to compensate.
If the contribution of rooftop PVA becomes significant, then, ergo, rooftop PVA needs investment in long-haul HV, EHV, or UHV transmission.
If we have long-haul HV, EHV, UHV transmission then we can put a PVA farm near Broken Hill.
Imagine we got all the rooftop PVA units in Sydney, took them to Broken Hill, and put them on tracking units. We'd get about 4 times the power (2 times for less cloud, and 2 times because they track the sun). We could easily afford the 10-30% of transmission losses incurred depending on whether we used HV, EHV, or UHV transmission.
Go the Pies!
Sorry - my 20% was misleading
In response to David Osmond:
My 20% was an "average peak", ie it was only compensating for average peak daylight hours and assumed that most rooftop PVA did not follow the sun? Are there units available that track the sun?
If you add in weather, aging, and losses in network transmission, then I think one might get much less. In hindsight, 0.3-0.5GWh is a bit low, but I think 1-2GWh is probably closer.
We DO have 1GW installed
Thanks Giles and Mathew.
David; you sound a bit like the head of Decca who famously said in 1962 on rejecting the Beatles "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
Uunfortunately as many have pointed out, your data for PV is out of date.There are a number of ways to monitor the installed PV capacity in Australia and along with many others, it is what I do for a living.
In 2009 we installed 83MW, in 2010 we installed 394MW and this year around 670MW will (likely) be installed by year end. The IEA PVPS team estimates that 102MW was (cummulatively) installed prior to that so in total we are around 1.2GW.
I do ackowledge that capacity factor is an issue and PV is not a silver bullet. But is has many advantages and will undoubtedly continue to grow and provide much needed point of use generation. It has a wonderful contribution to make as part of sensible portfolio approach to energy generation.
They degrade inperformanc over time; (like every generator does), but at less than 0.5% p/a just so you know. My 18 year old solar panels have averaged 0.2% p/a as a real world example.
You might also be happy to know that in virtually every state (except Qld) as of the end of this month, there are effectively no FITs for PV in Australia.
And yet, consumers and small commercial customers continue to use their own money to invest in their own power stations.
1.1GW peak capacity is a reasonable amount of power
Hi David, I think you may have made a mistake in your most recent calcs.
I agree with your earlier estimate that roof-top PV would obtain a capacity factor of about 20%, equivalent to just under 5 hours per day of peak output. That would imply the 1.1GW peak capacity installed of PV would average about 5 GWh/day, or about 0.7% of our needs. Thus we'd need about 15 times the current amount of rooftop PV to get 10% of our daily needs.
cheers, Dave
1.1GW peak capacity is still not a lot of power Matthew
We currently consume in this country around 740GWh/day. (270,000 GWh/year).
If we have 1.1GW peak capacity of rootop PVA installed, how many MWh can we generate. I doubt we could get more than 0.3-0.5GWh per day from that capacity. To achieve just 10% of our current daily needs, we would need between 140-210 times the current amount of rooftop PVA to be installed.
And we'd still need a national electricity grid to compensate for East Coast/West coast weather patterns.
That final paragraph is the central issue I keep coming back to. Whatever power technology we can think of; PVA, solar thermal, wind, nuclear, and geothermal, all will need either aggregation, or distribution from remote areas (geothermal, solar thermal, and nuclear). Ie all need a national electricity grid.
Thank you for that correction Matthew
It has been a while since I looked into these issues, and I am glad to see that so many more have come on line.
Nonetheless, they are all small plants (50MW), with modest storage. Unless we can talk about having say 10, 2GWh storage tank pairs, or 50, 500MWh tank pairs, and 10 times the peak capacity of all these Spanish stations, I will remain to be convinced that MSS is the best heat storage solution.
I do agree though that heat storage with solar thermal is the way to go. I was disappointed to read that these solar thermal projects in the Mojave either do not have, or are not planning to have heat storage.
It seems a pity that these companies in Spain have decided to lock into replicating 50MW, 7.5 hour (nominal) plants.
Despite my reservations, your idea of replicating 220MW sized plants, with a nominal 20 hour store, seemed to have more potential to generate real amounts of power.
Given Australia's enormous size, we have the capacity to aggregate energy over a vast area. So, unlike Spain, we have the potential to compensate for local weather events. All Spain can do is buy electricity from France when the weather is bad.
I note that Manchasol II, and Andasol III are not yet apparently on line? With your contacts in the industry I guess that your info in these matters is more current?
Spain is a good comparison
Spain's economic problems are more to do with a property bubble than anything else.
To ignore Spain's contributions to renewable energy development, modest as they are, because their banks had poor governance, is like ignoring Japan's engineering achievements because TEPCO is incompetent.
I suspect we would be in the same boat if the Big 4 banks weren't so dominant, and if they did not behave as though cooperation was better than competition. If there had been a real "war" between our banks, who knows what sorts of home & business loans might have been given out.
The size of Spain's economy is on a par with ours. They have reasonable solar resources, though less than ours.
Like us, they have had the advantage of a lot of cheap coal. Unlike us, their cheap coal is running out, and it is getting expensive, so their need to find alternatives is a little higher than us.
Unlike us they do have some nuclear power plants. These are all quite old (Franco era), and approaching the end of their service life. Something will have to be done to replace their contribution to Spain's energy needs.
Like us, nuclear power is not popular - neither the government or major opposition parties are pushing for more nuclear power.
Solar thermal storage
Well , I guess if all else fails.....................those who enjoy really hot Tamales will know where to get some really hot salt to go with them !
Please stop mentioning Spain and Italy in this debate.
They are both bankrupt countries.
Spain especially has spent a fortune in Solar because it had cheap access to EU money and pissed it against the wall with things such as solar.
There was a report that found that for every Green job created in Spain it LOST 2.2 normal jobs.
Look at Spain now! A basket case.
Giles correct on Solar Photovoltaic
Giles is correct - we are over 1,100MWe of PV
PV installations can ramp very fast. In Italy in 1 year they had 1,000MW the next they installed almost 8,000MW
Ten Solar Thermal Storage Plants - six over next 4 months
Ten Spanish plants Operating with Storage - Ignorance is not a good basis for a debating position. Here is the list.
Cobra Andasol 1
Cobra Andasol 2
Solar Millenium Andasol 3
Cobra Extresol 1
Cobra Extresol 2
Florida Power & Light Samca La Florida
Cobra Manchasol 1
Cobra Manchasol 2
Torresol Gemasolar
Abengoa HelioEnergy 1
Almost completed
Aries Astexol II Nov 11
Torresol Arcosol-50 Nov 11
Torresol Termosol-50 Dec 11
Aries Aste 1A Jan 12
Aries Aste 1B Jan 12
Abengoa Helioenergy 2 jAN 12
With another 15 to go
Giles: I didn't argue that AGL wanted nuclear power
My comment was purely hypothetical.
I have no doubt that AGL have no interest in building a nuclear power plant. My point was simply that no government would initiate one - there would need to be external pressure, and from a reputable engineering organisation.
As well it would have to be a company large enough to fund a campaign to start a national debate on the topic.
A GoD, even one run by Tony Abbott, would not start such a debate, as it would be hounded by the opposition and every NIMBY in the land.
I'm not sure nuclear power is economically viable. I do not rule it out though - I still have an open mind on that topic.
As regards the 1GW figure - I have looked at the first article you referred to. The figures seem suspect.
Here is the URL of a European report:
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CD8QFjAE&url=http...
That gives the 2010 figures, and they seem about half the 383MW figure quoted for 2010.
As for the figues for 2011 - well I find them hard to believe. It seems to suggest that in 6 months we have installed more than all we have before?
Nonetheless, let us assume the 1GW figure, and also assume a 20% capacity factor - it is still only 200MW. Considering the many billions spent, why should I get excited by that?
I am not against rooftop PVA. I just dont believe that a fixed FiT should be used to subsidise it. I'm also sure AGL would agree with that.
Molten Salt Storage is still an experiment
In response to David Arthur:
I believe that there are only three plants currently operating with molten salt storage. A small one in Italy (name escapes me?), and Andasol 1 in Spain (50MW - 7 hours storage), and Gemasolar (19MW - 20 hours storage).
Despite the small size of these plants the molten salt storage tanks are enormous.
The need for purity, the problems of decomposition at high temperature, as well as the enormous amounts required, make the idea of "scaling" hypothetical.
Storage means that daytime power can be smeared into the evening, but only if the sun is shining. To counter weather effects, solar thermal also requires aggregation over a large area - ie it needs a national electricity grid.
Dont get me wrong, I am convinced that solar thermal with heat storage has a future. Its future may not use molten salt though. I myself would suggest simply using a heat transfer fluid, one that was capable of being pumped at temps as high as 1300C, and transferring heat to an insulated sandpit. Sand, which is ubiquitous, has half the heat capacity of molten salt, but it can operate over a much larger temperature cycle, thereby requiring less volume for the same energy capacity.
Chemical batteries are too expensive and have too little energy density to store significant amounts of power. At present you're better off storing energy as heat, or potential energy (pumped hydro).
Yes we do
David.
I think we well above 1GW in PV, consider that all mainland states have said above 100MW, plus NSW which is well above 500MW now.
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/australian-solars-race-edge.
The nuclear industry body has a more realistic outlook for nuclear than some of the people commenting here ...
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/news/nuclear-power-may-halve-market-s...
And i've put the nuclear question to AGL. They laughed, so did Origin. You need a company a gazillion times bigger than those to carry the risk of nuclear (and that is risk as ascribed by insurers and bankers rather than greenies).
Peter Lang has one point - I wish he could see a few more
Wind power is not an experimental technology.
Solar Thermal is still an experiment, though it is close. PVA "farms" may have a future - we'll know soon, when these new plants get under way in the Mojave desert.
If wind farms were connected to a national electricity grid, they could deliver reliable baseload power.
We dont have a national electricity grid because we have left power generation and distribution to state governments. What is in a state's best interest is not always in the nation's best interest.
Nuclear Power isn't going to happen soon, simply because no government will make that decision. Labor, for the moment, are idealogically opposed, and the Coalition would never initiate building one.
The initiative would come from a company such as AGL. The Government of the Day(God), would let such an initiative generate appropriate debate in the community - a debate we are not yet having. If the GoD felt that the initiative had community support, they may approve the construction of one. Then we'd have a 5-10 year debate as to where to put it.
It would end up in the desert somewhere, a long way from anywhere logical. It would need a national electricity grid to distribute its power.
Whether or not that will happen is hard to say - all I know is that we need to stop burning coal, and focus on methods that allow us to do that.
Unfortunately rooftop PVA will not stop the need to burn coal.
We do not have > 1GW of installed rooftop PVA
In response to Nigel Morris:
In a recent Climate Spectator article, it was annouced that we had just passed the 300MW mark for installed rooftop PVA.
The EIA estimated the amount to be around 170-190MW in 2010. In Aug 2009, there was only 13MW here in NSW.
None of these figures fit well with ">1GW".
But, if I have a 1GW coal or nuclear power station, then except for scheduled maintenance, that is what we have 24/7. I would be very surprised that we would have more than about a 20% capacity factor, ie about 5 hours equivalent to midday, or about 10 hours equivalent to 9am or 3pm. That means your 1GW (which we don't have) is averaging maybe 200MW at best.
Dont get me wrong I am not advocating using coal (or necessarily nuclear power), I'm just trying to illustrate that quoting peak capacity is not the whole story.
Well if you were 2/3rds wrong you may have a point, but in fact your are 15/16ths wrong, at least. To be honest, when the PVA cells age, then their output falls. So in a year or so, you'll even be "wronger". :-)
@roy kendall, what you say is
@roy kendall, what you say is incorrect. Projections of the full cleanup cost of Fukushima are still only a small fraction of the commercial value of nuclear electricity that has been generated in Japan (never mind all the secondary economic benefits deriving from said electricity).
John Bennetts reviews Giles
John Bennetts reviews Giles Parkinson's column: "Another nice, big article foreshadowing a rosy future for PV, but again, with not a dollar sign in site."
Nowhere in John's comment is there mention of solar thermal power generation, only PV. Solar thermal power generation, with molten salt heat storage, can provide both baseload and peak power in a grid.
Perhaps the future for PV is for provision of offgrid (stand-alone) power requirements, as well as for trimming of domestic power demand. One limitation of grid-connected solar is that it shuts down during blackouts.
Using your solar PV to charge deep cycle batteries means that you've at least got DC power available during blackouts. My understanding is that you should also be able to export power as per normal if your inverter is connected to your batteries - could someone correct me if this is not the case?
John's comment about government handouts, etc, is well-warranted. When the government stops handing out money for fossil fuel use, as well as cash handouts for the boondoggle that is subsidised carbon farming, then a case for cessation of public subsidy of solar PV could be made.
Not CEOs job to make sound energy policy
@Ian Strange, CEO endorsement of renewable energy says nothing about the merits of the technologies, and everything about how they know a big fat subsidy when they see one. To the extent that they are driven by political populism (which is to say, entirely), those subsidies are quite literally the price of general ignorance.
anti nuc?
Blimmy are you in a cave?
the cost to the clean up of Nuc far out wieghs any advantage, ask the families in Japan, ask the fishermen, ask the farmer, ask any industry from tourist, light or heavy get over yourself, have a look at the Kassle project it worked
So right Peter!
My goodness Peter, you had better tell GE CEO Jeffery Immelt, Alstom CEO Patrick Kron, Areva CEO Benoît Bazire, Abengoa CEO Javier Leirado and Siemens CEO Peter Löscher that they should "stop all this renewable energy nonsense".
If these gentlemen believe it is worth investing in these technologies surely you can see yourself clear to at least investigate thier relevance to the future energy mix of the world/ Australia.
Solar thermal in Canada
We have lots more solar than Canada but they have interesting developments we don't hear about.
Check out SHECenergy.
www.SHECenergy.com
Since when does cost not count?
Another nice, big article foreshadowing a rosy future for PV, but again, with not a dollar sign in site.
As for the statement "more than half the world’s energy needs, and most of its electricity needs, will come from solar energy sources by 2060"! Are the actions required to achieve this in 49 years happening? Certainly not!
The OECD's 2010 report into energy options ruled out PV as a contender even worthy of consideration. See: http://www.mit.edu/~jparsons/current%20downloads/Projected%20Costs%20of%20Electricity.pdf
Unless and until PV supporters throw off their blinkers and start to consider costs openly and without government handouts or misguided market support via exemptions from commercial reality, a.k.a. feed in tariffs, this misguided debate will roll back and forth.
Meanwhile, the earth continues to heat up.
"But Australia, with the most
"But Australia, with the most sun and the best R&D, risks being left behind."
No! The reverse is the case. We are wasting our efforts, research resources and money on renewable energy. It will never be economically viable, except in boutique and off-grid applications. The longer we keep policies like subsidies, mandatory renewable energy targets, feed in tariffs, and more, the further behind we will get.
We should remove all these subsidies and remove all the impediments to low cost nuclear energy. France's electricity produces 8% the CO2 emisisons of Australia's electricity, and is near the lowest cost electricity in Europe. 75% of France's electricity is generated from nuclear and has been for about 30 years. That is the solution we should be striving for. Stop all this renewable energy nonsense. And stop the anti-nuclear hysteria.
solar forecast wrong
Giles
I couldnt agree more; PV is going to happen despite the indiscriminate policy environment in Australia.
Its worth noting that the 5% solar target in Treasury modelling includes large and small scale solar PV and concentrator technologies AND this is the bullish version - 3.2% is the base case.
3.2% of generation by 2050 is around 2.7GW cumulatively installed. And guess what - we already have almost >1GW installed of small scale PV, NOW.
Using an extraordinarily conservative forecast, its is very easy to predict that we will almost certainly reach around 30GW of PV installed by 2050, equivalent to 35% of generation capacity.
This correlates nicely with the IEA's recent predictions that PV could is likely to meet half of the worlds energy needs by 2060. Oh, and we live on the sunniest continent on Earth, with the most empty space, don't we ?
I was intrigued by how far out these numbers are and I can only suspect that the reason is that Treasury is not taking residential or small scale commercial into account because its not registered generation. That’s an interesting future conundrum in itself.
Adding fuel to this fire is the short term supply and demand situation. Solarbuzz reported today that industry capacity - and inventories - continue to sky rocket and that means even lower PV prices, albeit perhaps only for a short time.
Even if (as you say) I'm half wrong, or 2/3 wrong, its the surprise party I want to be at when it inevitably happens.
C'mon Fergo, gets some "solar" balls will you?
Blakers bull
To say or imply that planning and infrastructure issues are simpler with PV+pumped hydro (as opposed to CCS and nuclear) is quite wrong, given the much greater area of land required by the former. Blakers has asserted there are 'thousands' of suitable pumped hydro sites in Australia, but you can bet there would be major planning issues with any that are in cooee of consumer centres, and major infrastructure issues with any that are not.
Moreover, Blakers has not responded to substantial challenges regarding the plausibility of his whole PV-pumped storage scenario: http://theconversation.edu.au/solar-will-force-coal-and-nuclear-out-of-t...
We are paying the commercial
We are paying the commercial price of Climate Change Denial.
With a parliamentary consensus on the reality of man produced climate change we would be able to develop a credible industrial expertise and programme to tackle it
Instead we have constant negativity and divisive public bickering from the Abbott camp, defending the big polluters.
When is Abbott going to put national Business interest before personal political ambition? Those working on clean energy sources deserve support not constant undermining of effort. We should be building both the technology and the experienced and educated workforce.
A new industrial and scientific environment, in which Australia plays a leading role in energy technology, requires a new Coalition leadership. Eventually - in or out of power the present Denial based one must founder. The sooner the better for both the climate and for sustainable business