GNE - Genesis Energy

[Snoopy]

This might help you understand https://www.interest.co.nz/business/...-margin-almost

And I suggest the transpower Web site is worth a good read to get an understanding of various forms of generation and their capacities, the HVDC link capacities northbound and southbound, and also the demand curves for NI, SI and total NZ electricity

Applying some simple maths to the data will allow you to calculate approximately how close to the wind we are sailing at the moment

Even I did not realise it was as close as it turns out to be. I calculated about 250MW spare capacity. Turns out it was 50MW, which us far too close for comfort

Which makes a project like Lake Onslow an urgent necessity to green light, regardless of political leaning. Failure will directly reduce GDP as more industries turn to electricity for process heat

But meanwhile (the next 13 years at least), Huntly is a necessary evil no matter the cost or emissions

That link you gave seems to have been updated

https://www.interest.co.nz/economy/1...-margin-almost

It seems like a ridiculous pretense of an argument being set up in that article. They are saying there is too much water in the hydro lakes, which means that if the wind suddenly drops then the idle thermal station will take too long to fire up ((I think they are talking about the Rankine units at Huntly, the Taranaki Combined Cycle turbine also referred to in the article is set to close in 2023). But firing up a thermal power plant wouldn't be a problem if there was less hydro energy available so that Huntly could run all the time (!!!)

"the wrong part is that plentiful hydro power means thermal power plants are used less, so their fixed costs go high relative to their actual earnings."

The solution is surely to replace Huntly with local generation and domestic battery storage. If it is costing too much to run Huntly, then pay consumers a decent price to let their home generation supply the grid instead.

Cheaper and safer than running 50 year old worn out boilers.

SNOOPY

[kiora]

5 years?
"Microsoft said Wednesday it has signed a power purchase agreement with nuclear fusion startup Helion to buy electricity from it in 2028"
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/10/micr...n-in-2028.html

[xafalcon]

The solution is surely to replace Huntly with local generation and domestic battery storage. If it is costing too much to run Huntly, then pay consumers a decent price to let their home generation supply the grid instead.

Cheaper and safer than running 50 year old worn out boilers.

SNOOPY

Your suggested solution shows you don't have much understanding of the costs and capabilities of current technology

Let's look at home battery cost v's capacity. Using tesla powerwall as a benchmark. Current cost $18000 installed - battery and gateway only, nothing else. Usable capacity 13.5KWh. And Lake Onslow cost of $16B and 8TWh capacity. A total of 592,592,593 powerwalls would need to be installed at a cost of $10.67T. Clearly being 667 times more expensive than Lake Onslow is a show stopper in its own right. And the need for 100 powerwalls for every man woman and child in NZ is also problematic

Electrochemical batteries are only intended as short term storage. They have a finite lifetime of approx 20 years. Compared against hydro (pumped or otherwise) with a 100 year lifespan. This increases battery cost by a factor of 5, to north of $50T, or 3000 times the cost of Lake Onslow

The idea of replacing Huntly with local generation is potentially possible. But would require resource consents which for greenhouse gas releasing projects could be next to impossible to obtain. However maintaining an existing facility does not have this impediment

Finally, owners of home power generation systems are already paid well by their electricity supply companies. This is not currently an impediment. I see it as an encouragement, and am installing more home generation to take advantage of the returns. FYI our $22000 system generates returns of $3000 (no electricity purchase), $3500 (no commuting fuel cost, we use EV's) and $1500 cash back from our XS electricity sales each year

Hopefully this give you some better context about option costing, lifespan and usage

[Snoopy]

Your suggested solution shows you don't have much understanding of the costs and capabilities of current technology

Let's look at home battery cost v's capacity. Using tesla powerwall as a benchmark. Current cost $18000 installed - battery and gateway only, nothing else. Usable capacity 13.5KWh.

I would use a different yardstick. What about a V2G equipped second hand Nissan Leaf?
https://www.evcity.kiwi/vehicles?veh...issanLeaf30kwh

There is a 2017 30kWh model listed at EVcity for $18,990. Take off the $3,450 government subsidy and I get a net price $15,540. Battery state of health is listed at 84%. So the effective storage capacity of your battery is: 0.84x 30kWh = 25.2kWh. So almost double the capacity of your Tesla Powerwall for less cost. Plus you get a commuter car thrown in 'for free'.

And Lake Onslow cost of $16B and 8TWh capacity. A total of 592,592,593 powerwalls would need to be installed at a cost of $10.67T. Clearly being 667 times more expensive than Lake Onslow is a show stopper in its own right. And the need for 100 powerwalls for every man woman and child in NZ is also problematic.

I get your point about relative storage costs per kWh being in favour of Onslow. I have no disagreement with you on that. The point I was putting across was quite a different one: On using home-generation and home battery storage to allow the closure of Huntly right now - not in fifteen years time when Onslow is built.

Electrochemical batteries are only intended as short term storage. They have a finite lifetime of approx 20 years.

Twenty years is a good life for a motor vehicle. You could buy a new Leaf (or whatever the equivalent would be then) after twenty years, and play the whole V2G ev-game again.

The idea of replacing Huntly with local generation is potentially possible. But would require resource consents which for greenhouse gas releasing projects could be next to impossible to obtain. However maintaining an existing facility does not have this impediment

If you are going to have a commercial scale fossil fuel filled power plant, I see nothing wrong with Huntly as a location. I don't have a problem with the scale or the location of Huntly, close to Hamilton and Auckland. Rather, I was questioning the need for such a power station to manage the grid stability, with all the associated stand by running costs, and environmental costs.

Finally, owners of home power generation systems are already paid well by their electricity supply companies. This is not currently an impediment. I see it as an encouragement, and am installing more home generation to take advantage of the returns. FYI our $22000 system generates returns of $3000 (no electricity purchase), $3500 (no commuting fuel cost, we use EV's) and $1500 cash back from our XS electricity sales each year

So you are saying that your cashflow return, including energy substitution, on your home power generation system is: ($3,000+$3,500+$1,500)/$22,000 = 36% ?

Sounds good. But only the $1,500 element of that is your cash return from 'the electricity system'. Try buying that $1,500 of power back from your electricity supplier, and I'll bet it would cost you a lot more than $1,500 (the unfair bit of your 'selling to the system' deal) . And the reason for that would be - in the words of your power supplier.
"We need to charge you more than we pay you for energy, because we have to maintain the the power transformers and lines to your house whether you buy electricity from us 24/7 or not."

My argument is that if you had household generation (which you do), much of those external infrastructure costs relating to your home generated power are technically no longer needed. Retailer 'Electricity distance travailed costs' would disappear, as there would be no need to keep building every increasing capacity into a lines system into which no extra electrons were required to flow (because you generate all your new 'incremental power' at home). Jacking up your 36% return is the $3,000 in power 'not bought'. But that $3,000 saved would only hypothetically, substitutionally be charged to you at $3,000, because that power price includes all kinds of behind the scenes line costs and management costs and mark ups from the wholesaler power prices. The actual saved 'energy cost only', were you to count that power generated by micro home generation, would be a lot less than $3,000.

I feel that I am getting bogged down in detail here, but the nub of my argument is this. Whether the spare capacity in the overall NZ electricity system system is 250MW or 50MW or something else, these numbers are only meaningful in relation to the total power requirement of the NZ grid at peak times. If you start to take power users off the grid, by people opting for home generation and home battery storage, then the overall spare grid capacity can increase relative to grid demand, even if the ability to generate that 'spare capacity' remains the same. Do enough of that 'off the grid micro-generation' and the need for national scale back up power reserves - including Huntly and Onslow - disappears.

SNOOPY

[xafalcon]

I would use a different yardstick. What about a V2G equipped second hand Nissan Leaf?
https://www.evcity.kiwi/vehicles?veh...issanLeaf30kwh

There is a 2017 30kWh model listed at EVcity for $18,990. Take off the $3,450 government subsidy and I get a net price $15,540. Battery state of health is listed at 84%. So the effective storage capacity of your battery is: 0.84x 30kWh = 25.2kWh. So almost double the capacity of your Tesla Powerwall for less cost. Plus you get a commuter car thrown in 'for free'.

SNOOPY

Let's look into this more closely

Nissan Leaf V2G equipment costs about $8000 if you import it yourself. Then add about $1000 installation cost. Your leaf battery now costs $28000

A 30KWh leaf has a usable capacity of 27KWh, the rest is inaccessible by design intended to provide longer battery life. So you have a 22.6KWh battery.

Now lets look at production. A total of 600,000 leafs have been manufactured worldwide 2010-2022. The vast majority are 24KWh with SoH in the low 60% range. Many have long since been recycled

But let's assume that all these were still functional and were all imported into NZ and connected to NZ power grid, there would be approx 7.7GWh of storage, or about one thousandths (0.1%) of what Lake Onslow offers. V2G equipment cost is $5.4 billion v's $16B for LakeOnslow. Then add the cost of the car's.........

But you don't actually have a car, because it is connected to the power grid. What you have is a physically large but small capacity stationary storage battery

Clearly this is an unrealistic concept

[xafalcon]

Twenty years is a good life for a motor vehicle. You could buy a new Leaf (or whatever the equivalent would be then) after twenty years, and play the whole V2G ev-game again.

SNOOPY

Yes, 20 years is good life for a conventional car. But is unrealistic for an EV with current battery technology

How long does a cell phone battery last before you replace it? I get about 4 years before battery life is too short. Expect a car battery to last about 3 times as long. Car manufacturers guarantee their batteries for about 5-8 years of normal use depending on the manufacturer. V2G is not considered normal use, and invalidates any battery guarantee

Let's look at Nissan Leaf batteries. I know them well as I am an EV technician and swap batteries regularly. Many 2013 leaf batteries are now unusable for all but 30-70 km distances, and have SoH below 50%. These cars had no V2G use, just regular driving. If an additional daily discharge-recharge cycle was added, it would be reasonable to expect a similar degradation after 5 years. No sane EV customer would entertain this as an option

There will be no "playing the whole V2G game with a 20 year old EV, or even a much newer EV

V2G is not, and never will be "a thing"

V2L is useful, and has a place

[RTM]

Yes, 20 years is good life for a conventional car. But is unrealistic for an EV with current battery technology

How long does a cell phone battery last before you replace it? I get about 4 years before battery life is too short. Expect a car battery to last about 3 times as long. Car manufacturers guarantee their batteries for about 5-8 years of normal use depending on the manufacturer. V2G is not considered normal use, and invalidates any battery guarantee

Let's look at Nissan Leaf batteries. I know them well as I am an EV technician and swap batteries regularly. Many 2013 leaf batteries are now unusable for all but 30-70 km distances, and have SoH below 50%. These cars had no V2G use, just regular driving. If an additional daily discharge-recharge cycle was added, it would be reasonable to expect a similar degradation after 5 years. No sane EV customer would entertain this as an option

There will be no "playing the whole V2G game with a 20 year old EV, or even a much newer EV

V2G is not, and never will be "a thing"

V2L is useful, and has a place

Thanks. Interesting post.

[xafalcon]

I feel that I am getting bogged down in detail here, but the nub of my argument is this. Whether the spare capacity in the overall NZ electricity system system is 250MW or 50MW or something else, these numbers are only meaningful in relation to the total power requirement of the NZ grid at peak times. If you start to take power users off the grid, by people opting for home generation and home battery storage, then the overall spare grid capacity can increase relative to grid demand, even if the ability to generate that 'spare capacity' remains the same. Do enough of that 'off the grid micro-generation' and the need for national scale back up power reserves - including Huntly and Onslow - disappears.

SNOOPY

You are missing the reality and sheer size of what's happening. More users are joining the grid as population rises and industrial processes are electrified

Coal has massive energy density. This is why it is so widely used as a heat source. To displace this with electricity is going to take a massive step change in generation capacity. A few domestic customers (like our household) becoming net solar energy producers/exporters just won't make any meaningful difference

Industrial load shedding is not a viable option as most processes require steady state operation 24/7. Much much more generation capacity will be required for the imminent energy transition. And intermittent generation by its name and nature, does not, by itself, fill this gap. Electricity storage is needed to facilitate increasing intermittent generation, but must be economically viable. And electrochemical batteries are several orders of magnitude (currently approx. 600X) more expensive than alternatives, and batreries have a relatively shorter life cycle

Meanwhile, the lights must stay on, so Huntly will keep operating until (and likely well beyond) a suitable storage solution being implemented

[Muse]

awesome posts xafalcon...very informative.

[kiora]

"The breakdown of one of the country’s larger electricity generating units is making an already tight winter for supply even tighter, but there is sufficient generation, says system operator Transpower.Genesis Energy’s Huntly power station unit five went down on June 30 and could be offline until the end of July.Unit five can generate 400 megawatts (MW) in its slow-to-fire gas turbine. Genesis is still investigating the cause of the failure"

https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/e...985b-446239310