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Australia; SA
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Expert Reaction
These comments have been collated by the Science Media Centre to provide a variety of expert perspectives on this issue. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Views expressed are the personal opinions of the experts named. They do not represent the views of the SMC or any other organisation unless specifically stated.
Dr Evan Franklin is a researcher with the Research School of Engineering at The Australian National University
Solar PV and wind farms will in future operate and interract with the electricity grid quite differently to those we have today. They will have the ability to offer predictable and dispatchable power, will smooth out the effects of resource variability, will react with unprecedented speed in response to changes in power system supply-demand balance, and will offer grid stability services in a similar manner to the way that conventional generators do today. A solar PV plant teamed with battery storage is a fantastic combination of technologies that can help to achieve all of this.
A large battery storage system, or indeed many thousands of small battery systems, either installed with solar or wind or on its own, can operate as required any time of day or night to provide those grid stability services and to ensure continuity of supply during short periods of marginal supply conditions, such as those experienced in South Australia earlier this year. A large PV facility teamed with, for example, a 100 MW / 200 MWh battery system, similar to some of the recently announced or planned projects in South Australia by various proponents, would almost certainly be capable of dealing with a repeat of the problems experienced on February 8 this year. The key will be in ensuring that such systems are designed and operated in such a way that they can achieve these objectives, and furthermore to ensure that there are market incentives in place to encourage this type of operation.
Martin Sevior is an Associate Professor of Physics at The University of Melbourne
I presume [the farm] will provide 330 MegaWatts of power and 100 MegaWatt-Hours of storage. Thus the system will provide 330 Megawatts of power for a little over 18 minutes or 100 MegaWatts of power for 1 hour.
Provision of fast acting, high-power systems like this provides resilience against catastrophic events, like the state-wide blackout event last September. The location of the system in the Riverland region of South Australia provides geographical resilience as well.
In general, the provision of cost-effective, grid-scale storage capability is essential as we move to a grid where the majority of energy is provided by wind and solar sources.
This announcement is an important step towards this.
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