National Energy Guarantee Approval – Next Steps

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

National Energy Guarantee Approval – the NEG has been approved by the states and territories of Australia ‘in principle’ – allowing it to move to the next step. There’s still plenty of discussion to go before we see anything signed off, but it’s a step in the right direction for those who believe in the NEG and its ostensible goal of cheaper, more reliable power with less carbon emissions.

National Energy Guarantee Approval

As with most political decisions in this country, there is a lot of posturing and point scoring going on – depending on who you ask, it’s either a ‘great step forward’ or the governments ‘withholding support’. Regardless of the case, the Federal Government has now released a draft of the energy bill which will be taken to next week’s party room meeting for approval. If you want to learn more about what happened with the NEG during the week, please click here.

The states want to see detailed legislation and some of them have ‘red line’ conditions which must be met before they fit in to the National Energy Guarantee – there’s still a long way before any of this becomes law in Australia.

Victoria were especially strident in their remarks about the NEG. Victoria’s Energy Minister, Labor’s Lily D’Ambrosio, said agreeing to the plan today would be like signing “with a blindfold on”. advising that they won’t support it unless the following four demands are met:

The emission reduction targets can only ever increase and must not decrease.
Targets need to be set in regulation (this one’s going to be a bit of a problem as Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has already rejected it).
Emission reduction targets must be set every three years, three years in advance.
Creation of a registry which is transparent and accessible by regulators and governments.

The emissions reduction target in the NEG is to bring down emissions in the electricity sector by 26 per cent by 2030.

COAG Energy Ministers will have another discussion after the Coalition Party Room meeting on Tuesday. Watch this space! We’ll keep you posted.

Remote NT Solar hits 10 site target.

Posted on July 25, 2017 by Mike — No Comments ↓

The Northern Territory government has reached its goal of offering remote NT solar to ten remote Aboriginal communities – saving the usage of over one million litres of diesel fuel and representing a $27 million dollar investment in renewable energy.

Remote NT Solar Overview

‘Tranche one’ of the program has been completed – according to EcoGeneration, it will generate 3.325MW at the ten remote Aboriginal communities – via the installation of 10,000 solar panels. It’s being jointly funded by ARENA (Australian Renewable Energy Agency) and the Northern Territory government; with its estimated cost over the full timeline of the program at $55m – in order to save the usage of 94 million litres of diesel fuel. The project has been managed by Power and Water and is called Solar Energy Transformation Program (SETuP).

Power and Water CEO Michael Thomson was quoted as saying “The completion of tranche one is on the trajectory to transform the way energy is supplied with hybrid solar and diesel power generation – …the state of the art installation of integrated electricity supply will reduce emissions and local pollution with fewer fuel trucks and barges visiting the communities.”

The current remote NT solar farms will provide approximately of 5000 kWh/day to power more than 570 households, with another 12 communities in line to receive panels, Chief Minister of the Northern Territory Michael Gunner has advised. Ivor Frischknecht, the ARENA CEO, said “We’ve seen the benefits of renewable energy off the grid with mining and we know Solar SETuP can deliver the same results for Aboriginal communities”.

As the installation of solar energy in the Northern Territory grows (despite receiving an average of nine hours of sunshine every day, year round, they have been lagging behind on solar PV installations), expect to see a lot more stories like this. It’s great to see the government and ARENA helping minimise the usage of expensive and polluting diesel fuel in favour of renewable energy. Have a read about the Dubbo Solar Project if you want to read more about solar power for Aboriginal communities.

Alice Springs Solar to end blackouts

Posted on June 29, 2017 by Mike — No Comments ↓

Some big news coming out for residents suffering the solar drought in the Northern Territory – the new Battery Energy Storage System will transform Alice Springs solar and is slated to be one of the largest grid-connected storage solutions in all of Australia.

BESS and Alice Springs solar

Solar Energy in the Northern Territory has lagged far behind the other Australian states in terms of residential and commercial solar uptake (January 2017 PV output was 4,049MWh vs Queensland’s 126,629MWh) – so it’s great to see new government owned company Territory Generation announce the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS).

Territory Generation Logo (source: territorygeneration.com.au)

The cutting-edge BESS will be installed by Vector Energy and will be a 5mW storage system, capable of supplying energy to the grid for up to 40 minutes if required.

It will cost approximately $8.3 million to develop and modelling done by Territory Generation, or ‘T-Gen’, shows that this will be recouped within four to five years. Chief Executive Officer of Territory Generation Tim Duignan, was quoted as saying “We’re replacing aged electricity generators with the latest equipment, to provide efficient and reliable power supply, drive down the cost of producing electricity and to support a transition to renewable energy.”

Duignan also noted that this is an important project as it improves the reliability of base-load power – imperative as we transition to renewables (there are overcast days even in the Northern Territory). Just having solar panels or wind generators isn’t enough – as we saw in South Australia last year if base-load power isn’t sufficient it will lead to widespread blackouts. On that note, in the same week as the ABC are reporting that South Australian power prices will be the highest in the world as of Saturday, it’s good to see projects with clear modelling and positive financials – there is quite a lot of short-medium term pain coming up for energy bills nationwide.

The BESS is set to be completed by late 2017.

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National Energy Guarantee Approval – Next Steps