By Phil Kreveld
It’s time for Alice to embrace reality. The electrical energy world is how it ought to be, never mind technological restrictions or commercial factors.
Today’s Australian Financial Review carried an article titled Renewables sector tells data centres to pay up, which included the following quotes:
“Data centre power demands not covered by direct deals with wind and solar companies would need to be purchased from a federal government green energy scheme under an industry proposal that could boost Labor’s flagging renewables rollout. The plan by the Clean Energy Council, which represents Australia’s top renewables developers, could improve the prospects of several struggling projects by forcing new data centres to power 100 per cent of their operations with renewable energy.”
Related article: Grid weakness stuffing up data centre connections
“The CEC plan would make the LGC [large generation certificates] purchases mandatory for any power not covered by a long-term offtake agreement, but would only apply to new data centres and new renewable energy projects—leaving existing projects untouched.”
“Tristan Edis, an analyst at Green Energy Markets, said there was a risk the CEC plan would backfire because a huge oversupply of LGCs and ultralow prices could discourage data centres from entering into power purchase agreements.”
These quotes are more than enough to augur a collective blindness to realities of electricity supply and hands a knife to those who would describe the renewable policies of the Commonwealth and most State Governments as unworkable, or even madness.
Here are some realities. Renewable energy investments are flagging, with the Commonwealth Capacity Investment Scheme having accepted bids from companies without the wherewithal to actually build and complete projects, given the climate of wholesale prices. It is ultimately a natural outcome of overcapacity, itself a feature of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan.
Clean Energy Council CEO Jackie Trad opines in the above quoted article as follows: “Australia doesn’t have to choose between powering homes and powering the digital economy. We can do both, provided every major new electricity user helps secure the next generation of wind, solar and battery projects.”
The mums and dads of Australia connect to the low-voltage networks of Australia. They are way ahead in the renewable generation ‘race’, having figured out that installing more powerful rooftop solar and batteries is almost as good as going off-grid and saving serious money. All they count on is a transmission grid that is nice and stable, voltage and voltage angle-wise.
As to data centres, they do not connect to the LV networks. They connect directly to sub-transmission and even transmission voltages. So much so, in fact that the NSW Government wants to charge by way of additional network charges the state’s mums and dads for the transmission grid augmentation necessary to accommodate the date centres. Another example of refusing to see the world as it really is.
No doubt that data centres as such are a necessity of a modern economy. No doubt that they require more energy, of the order of as much as 14% or so by 2050 of the total energy demand. No doubt that these same data centres will have to have very powerful uninterruptible power supplies for their own security, which they meet with their own capex.
Related article: Renewables vs fossil fuels: Why can’t we walk and chew gum at the same time?
Little doubt, given the difficulty for AEMO to keep the National Electricity Market Dispatch Engine (NEMDE) running smoothly for a stable grid, that more investment in transmission grid augmentation will be necessary as a result of more data centre connections.
And there is no doubt at all that there is a blind refusal on the part of our governments, state and Commonwealth, to remove the blinkers of their renewable dreams. A low CO2 economy costs but is required to make our blue planet home habitable for longer.
