https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-17/solar-flooded-australia-told-its-okay-to-waste-some/104606640 Skip to main content ABC News * Just In * For You * Politics * World * Business * Analysis * Sport * Lifestyle * Entertainment More Search the news, stories & people Log in * News Home + Just In + For You + Analysis + Rural + Watch Live + Health + Indigenous + Politics + Science + Elections + World + Environment + Investigations + Business + Fact Check + Local news * Sport + AFL + NRL + Football + Tennis + Cricket + Netball * Lifestyle + Wellbeing + Relationships & Family + Food & Recipes + Personal Finance + Home & Garden * Entertainment + TV & Movies + Books + Music + Pop Culture + Arts Your ABC Account Personalise the news and stay in the know Log in to personalise * Facebook * YouTube * Instagram * Twitter * Emergency * Backstory * Newsletters * Zhong Wen Xin Wen * BERITA BAHASA INDONESIA * TOK PISIN * ABC * ABC iView * ABC Listen * Triple J * ABC Kids * ABC News ABC News News Home Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power Share Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power By energy reporter Daniel Mercer * Topic:Energy Industry Sat 16 NovSaturday 16 NovemberSat 16 Nov 2024 at 7:02pm A solar system on a roof with foliage in the foreground. The popularity of rooftop solar in Australia has been nothing short of remarkable. (ABC News: Jess Davis) abc.net.au/news/solar-flooded-australia-told-its-okay-to-waste-some/ 104606640 Link copied ShareShare article Amid the growing warmth and increasingly volatile weather of an approaching summer, Australia passed a remarkable milestone this week. The number of homes and businesses with a solar installation clicked past 4 million -- barely 20 years since there was practically none anywhere in the country. It is a love affair that shows few signs of stopping. And it's a technology that is having ever greater effects, not just on the bills of its household users but on the very energy system itself. At no time of the year is that effect more obvious than spring, when solar output soars as the days grow longer and sunnier but demand remains subdued as mild temperatures mean people leave their air conditioners switched off. Such has been the extraordinary production of solar in Australia this spring, the entire state of South Australia has -- at various times -- met all of its electricity needs from the technology. What South Australia could not use itself, it exported to other states. And everywhere, it seems, demand for power from the grid -- that is, demand for power not being met by rooftop solar -- has fallen to record lows. But all of this solar is prompting some hard questions, and gnashing of teeth, for one, simple reason -- there is, at times, too much solar power in Australia's electricity systems to handle. To deal with this abundance, experts say Australia needs to come to terms what appears a counter-intuitive argument. It needs to accept that much of this solar will have to be wasted -- or spilled -- sometimes. When it rains, it pours Jess Hunt, an electricity market designer based in Adelaide, likens Australia's abundance of sun-powered electricity to another natural resource -- water. Ms Hunt says it is simply unviable and unnecessary to capture every drop of water that falls to the ground. A person watches on as the Warragamba Dam spillway is seen outflowing in november 27 2021 We don't try to catch every drop of rain that falls. There are calls to treat solar the same way. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts) Similarly, she says it makes no sense to store every ray of sunshine that hits a solar panel. "Spilling solar shouldn't be seen as a cause for hand-wringing," Ms Hunt wrote on social media. "We are heading for a world of plentiful, cheap energy where spilling solar will be analogous to rainfall that does not go into a reservoir." At the heart of the concerns about Australia's occasional over-abundance of solar is a technical phenomenon known as minimum demand. The term refers to the demand for power from the grid. Necessarily, it excludes the demand that is met by rooftop solar panels -- so-called behind-the-meter sources of supply that are provided by customers themselves. When the amount of rooftop solar in Australia was immaterial, it wasn't a problem. The smoke stacks of the Bayswater power station. Coal plants not only provide electricity -- they also help keep the grid strong. (Supplied: AGL) The proportion of demand for power being met by solar was tiny, and conventional generators such as coal- and gas-fired power plants carried on almost totally unaffected. But as the amount of small-scale solar has grown to truly monumental levels, the dent it has put in demand for power from the grid has become equally large. Rooftop solar is now such a dominant force in the system, at times, it is pushing the minimum level of demand for power from the grid to critically low levels. The problem of physics Alex Wonhas, the chief executive of battery developer AMPYR and a former executive at the Australian Energy Market Operator, said the problem was a physical one. Dr Wonhas said traditional sources of generation such as coal- and gas-fired plants, as well as electricity, provide the services that make the grid resilient and help it ride through shocks. These include inertia, the physical property that makes balancing a moving bicycle easier than a stationary one, and "system strength", which helps maintain the heartbeat of the grid. An old windmill stands in front of wind turbines in a paddock near the Hornsdale Power Reserve, South Australia Like solar panels, wind turbines typically don't provide so-called system strength services. (Reuters: David Gray/File) By contrast, Dr Wonhas said wind turbines, solar panels and batteries did not typically provide such services. The result, he said, was a grid that could be left dangerously short of resilience when minimum demand fell too low. In other words, when too many conventional generators were squeezed out of the system. "The minimum demand problem typically happens in the middle of the day on weekend days when you have a lot of solar output but maybe not a lot of demand," Dr Wonhas said. "At that time, the electricity grid effectively becomes a little bit unstable. "It's a little like cycling on your bicycle when it's moving very slowly -- the inertial forces of the bicycle become less and really very difficult to keep it straight. "That's the same challenge of operating an energy system during those periods of time. "You have to either increase the load (demand) during that time to make it more stable or you have to basically reduce the solar output or other output." For all these challenges, Dr Wonhas noted times were changing. In batteries we trust? Drone photos of the Kwinana big battery Stage One There are high hopes batteries can help Australia soak up much of its excess solar. (ABC News: Glyn Jones) Importantly, he said improved technology for inverters -- which enable assets such as solar panels to connect to the grid -- was allowing green energy to provide the system with strength and security services. Equally, he said batteries would significantly help deal with the problem "in a number of different ways". It was for this reason, he said, that investors were flooding into the space, stumping up billions of dollars to build batteries that would add dozens of gigawatts of storage to the system. "To put it simply, batteries are the solution to the minimum demand challenge. "Batteries can actually start to provide those services and can help to stabilise the grid. "And we are seeing increasing applications of batteries to help to manage the minimum demand challenge. "They can firstly absorb a lot of the energy in the middle of the day and then obviously release it at a later time. "As a result of that happening, we see an absolute wave of battery projects now coming into the electricity market to fulfil that role. "But batteries can also go even further -- with the latest technology they can actually provide inertia so they can basically pretend to be a coal or a gas plant." an aerial photo of some solar panels Solar farms are among the hardest hit when rooftop systems squeeze other sources offline. (ABC News: Michael Franchi) Despite his bullishness of the potential for batteries, Dr Wonhas acknowledged that it would be impractical and too costly to store every unit of electricity generated by solar in Australia. He said there would inevitably be a "trade-off" between cost and efficiency once enough storage was built to handle most of the excess solar. "Buying batteries at the moment has become cheaper but it's still relatively expensive, say, compared with the cost of solar energy," he said. "So, there's simply an economic trade-off decision whether you want to build a battery for every single kilowatt hour that comes out of a solar panel or maybe at some point say, 'We already have enough ... but that's okay because it's still the lowest cost outcome for consumers.'" No stopping solar 'juggernaut' According to Ms Hunt, building more batteries to cope with the surge in solar was only part of the solution to the minimum demand problem. She said another, arguably better option, was to increase demand for electricity during the middle of the day when solar output was highest. This, Ms Hunt argued, was ultimately likely to be the cheapest and most efficient way of using Australia's solar riches. And to that end, she said encouraging consumers from householders to industrial customers to shift their consumption as much as possible was the key. Aerial shot of a group of houses, all of which have solar panels on their roof About one in every three Australian homes now has a rooftop solar installation. (ABC News: Glyn Jones) "While I agree that we need to replace coal with flexible storage and gas, I don't see this as a solution for managing minimum demand," Ms Hunt wrote. "It will only buy us a handful of years before the rooftop PV juggernaut rolls on and we have a grid stability problem again. "We need to get better at demand flexibility so that we can use solar as productively as we can, and we to change our mindset." 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