South Australia's energy plan energises National Grid management

South Australia's energy plan deals a blow to state-federal relations

The last couple of days have brought the differences between state and federal energy policy into stark contrast. South Australia has unveiled an energy plan in which the state takes a much greater role in the energy industry. The plan includes storage, a new gas plant and greater powers for the state over the National Electricity Market.

theconversation.com

If nothing else the SA Energy Plan has brought into focus many apsects of the National Grid and it's management of supply and demand.

SA Gov. "Explainer" site

Interested in large Networked Energy grids?

This is the worlds largest interconnect (by distance) and possibly one of the more diverse in supply sources, demand patterns and user profiles.

Major production technologies not in the East Coast mix are Nuclear, Geothermal, large scale Wave or Tidal. Most other techs are represented in some way albeit Coal being the dominate (though falling) player by raw capacity.

Pressures / Players include :

  • Networked VS Centralised supply and storage.
  • Virtualisation Of "Inertia"
  • Aggregation of many nodes (Virtualisation of producer/consumers)
  • Stability of supply. ( technically there is ample generation capacity)
  • Network Infrastucture capacities and redundancy
  • neoliberal market led ideologies (and ideas of service and management).
  • Jurisdiction level intervention in privatised markets
  • renewable energy rollout and penetration
  • retirement of obsolete infrastructure
  • Market concentration and barriers to entry across many areas.
  • Federalism
  • Industry lobby influence
  • Retiring or Rolling Back entrenched technologies (Broadly: brown / black coal then natural gas ) and much more, much more.

Nascent technologies meet the entrenched with restructuring industrial mixes, climate change and of course ideologies and politics in a Federalised system... hours of fun for all.

Probably best not to bring the kiddies.