Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power | Hacker News Reader

Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power

abc.net.au

6 pointsspeckx5 comments

Our World in Data shows that in 2023 Australia got about 18% of its energy from Solar, and about 45% from coal:

https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/australia#what-sou...

Australia has a substantial amount of battery storage in the pipeline to replace the coal, and solar potential far beyond their continent's electrical consumption needs.

https://openelectricity.org.au/ (formerly OpenNEM)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40808618 ("HN: Australia electricity grid with 100% renewables and 120GWh batteries")

https://x.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1803297472057581977 | https://archive.today/wpk78 ("Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand) Results: last week: 81.4% RE | last 147 weeks: 98.7% RE (1/5)")

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-26/australia... | https://archive.today/z5t0a ("Bloomberg: Australia Sees Key Role for Batteries as Coal-Fired Plants Close")

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-co... | https://archive.today/2owbd ("Australia’s rapid shift from coal-fired power to cleaner alternatives is underwriting a boom in battery projects able to store solar and wind energy. The country has at least 250 planned battery developments with a potential capacity of almost 130,000 megawatt-hours, a pipeline that’s second only to China, data compiled by BloombergNEF show. While Australia still relies on coal for more than half of its electricity generation, many major plants are set to close in the next decade.")

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/10/24/australia-has-7-8-gw-... ("PV Magazine: Australia has 7.8 GW of utility-scale batteries under construction")

https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/energy/resources/oth... ("Australia receives an average of 58 million PJ of solar radiation per year, approximately 10,000 times larger than its total energy consumption. However, Australia's current use of solar energy is low with solar energy accounting for only about 0.1 per cent of Australia's total primary energy consumption.")

https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-battery-storage-map-of-austr... ("Battery Storage Map of Australia")

Quite a decent write-up I think.

Yes, we should be overbuilding solar and wind because not using some is cheaper than trying to deal with not having enough.

The GB NESO grid recommendation for 2030 is approximately 50GW offshore wind, 50GW solar PV, 25GW of onshore wind, 25GW of battery. Typical peak demand is currently around 40GW (summer) to 60GW+ (winter).

Headline directly contradicted by expert quote in the article:

> "Spilling solar shouldn't be seen as a cause for hand-wringing," Ms Hunt wrote on social media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com