Natural-gas peaker plants may soon be under threat in a very real way(現実的なやり方で危機に瀕する→現実に存亡の危機に瀕するだろうぐらいか).
“I can’t see a reason why we should ever build a gas peaker again in the U.S. after, say, 2025,” said Shayle Kann, a senior adviser to GTM Research and Wood Mackenzie, speaking at Greentech Media’s Energy Storage Summit. “If you think about how energy storage starts to take over(支配する？) the world, peaking is kind of(いわば？) your first big market.”
The data shows a very clear trend.
Today, lithium-ion batteries are competitive with natural-gas peaker plants in select cases. In a few years, competition will intensify across the country. And with costs only headed downward, Kann called overtaking peakers “a sweet spot” for battery dominance across the U.S.
In four years, new natural-gas peakers will become increasingly rare(4年で新しい天然ガスピーク電源はbecome increasingly rare急速に数を減らすであろう). In 10 years, it's possible they'll stop getting built altogether.(10年後，altogetherすっかり建設が止まるであろう)
“Peakers are expensive. Energy storage should be really good at displacing a peaker(蓄電技術がピーク電源施設を綺麗に一掃することになろうshould be really good at), and also you can use multiple values(そして複数の価値を利用出来るようになる？),” said Kann. “But not even incorporating the multiple values, energy storage is starting to get very close to the point where it can just beat a gas peaker, head-to-head, purely on an economic basis. A decade from now, energy storage always wins.”
Over the next 10 years, the U.S. needs to add 20 gigawatts of peaking capacity to its grid. Over half of that capacity will come on-line in the latter part of the decade: 7,440 megawatts between 2018 to 2020 compared to 12,645 megawatts between 2023 and 2027. That gives energy storage more time to build an economic advantage.
If technology changes faster than expected, the economic argument for storage becomes more compelling.
While the U.S. market includes less than a gigawatt of storage today, it will replace a third of peakers under a base-case scenario in the next decade(現在ギガワット以下の蓄電量しか有していないアメリカの(電力)市場であるが，次の10年で基本シナリオのもとで１／３のピーク電源が置換されるであろう。). If the market grows faster, storage may replace nearly half of those 20 gigawatts of peaking capacity.
“Time and time again in adjacent sectors like solar(太陽光のような近接分野で再三再四), and even in energy storage, technology costs have the capacity to fall faster than almost anybody expects,” said Kann. “Including us.”
These changes are catching regulators off guard. The most recent example: the California Energy Commission's decision to reconsider a gas peaking plant planned for Oxnard.
The California Independent System Operator found the peaker plant would be more expensive than storage -- in an analysis that used prices from 2014. After GTM pointed out the discrepancies between those costs and current industry pricing, NRG Energy, the plant’s developer, suspended its construction application.
That project isn’t completely dead, but the suspension leaves an opening for clean alternatives to meet the capacity need instead.
In South Australia, the need for grid stability and renewables integration prompted the installation of a 100-megawatt Tesla battery in record time. Tesla brought that battery on-line last month.
Gas peakers will still get developed in South Australia. But Tesla's battery could be a sign of things to come.
A report on the two projects from Wood Mackenzie and GTM Research found that batteries -- both alone or paired with renewables -- are not yet competitive with gas peaking plants in that region. But they’re on their way. In 2025, analysts project that standalone and renewable-hybrid batteries will beat out open-cycle gas turbine plants for meeting peak load.
Every year, said Kann, storage is closing in on that economic “sweet spot” that will allow it to beat out peakers.
Want to watch the rest of GTM's Storage Summit this week? Watch the livestream here.
グリーンエネルギーには「根拠なき熱狂」がつきものであり、それについての注意が必要だ。短期での売りや、レバレッジをきかせたファンドを当てにするのはよそう。前述のモーニングスター社のデータで、10年間の運用成績が最低だったのが、ギネス・アトキンソンの代替エネルギー・ファンドだったことを参考に挙げておこう。
William Baldwin
There might not be much of an ancillary services market left for other projects.
JASON DEIGN MAY 18, 2018
Figures show that Tesla’s "big battery" in South Australia is so good at delivering frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) that there might not be much room left for copycat projects.
As first reported in RenewEconomy, in its first four months, the 100-megawatt, Neoen-owned Hornsdale Power Reserve, built with Tesla batteries, snapped up 55 percent of all FCAS revenues in South Australia, according to an analysis by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, based on data published by the Australian Energy Market Operator.
In addition to gobbling up FCAS revenues, the McKinsey research showed that Hornsdale’s arrival cut ancillary services prices by 90 percent across South Australia’s eight FCAS markets.
The problem is that Hornsdale has done such a good job of mopping up FCAS revenues that it might have significantly altered the business case for further battery plants.
Exactly how much Hornsdale makes for its owners is not clear, since the figures are not disclosed and in the McKinsey analysis, “We just looked at the societal impact,” Godart van Gendt, the McKinsey expert associate partner who carried out the analysis, told GTM.
However, it is clear that a 90 percent drop in FCAS pricing is going to make things hard for any future players looking to make their money from ancillary services.
“The second and third batteries being built will need to take account of the fact that the ancillary services revenue continues to come down,” said van Gendt.
There are other sources of revenue for battery plant operators, of course. Even the Hornsdale plant doesn’t only rely on FCAS.
According to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), it has been active in all the markets available on the National Electricity Market, which is the interconnected power system stretching down the east of Australia from Queensland to Tasmania. This includes energy trading on the spot market.
>>3271-3272
Nevertheless, it is true that frequency response is seen as a particularly low-hanging fruit for utility-scale batteries, and, for instance, helped create the business case for most of the early battery plants installed on the PJM Interconnection transmission system in the U.S.
Van Gendt questioned whether grid-scale battery projects would work in Australia without FCAS revenues. “In 2018, it wouldn’t be a slam-dunk,” he said.
Australia pays more for frequency regulation overall
Van Gendt said it was important to bear in mind that the pricing drop did not necessarily mean Australians were paying less for FCAS on the grid.
While prices had declined, the volume of FCAS payments had gone up, potentially because the Australian grid is having to work harder to balance a growing fraction of intermittent generation from solar and wind power.
Thus, “to report that the cost has gone down would be inaccurate,” van Gendt said.
To give an idea of what the Hornsdale price reductions mean, RenewEconomy said that if the FCAS payments for the first four months of 2017 had been paid at the prices seen this year, Australians would have paid AUD $35 million (USD $26 million) less.
AEMO, meanwhile, said (https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Media_Centre/2018/QED-Q4-2017.pdf) that in the final quarter of 2017, FCAS market costs were AUD $58 million (USD $44 million), making it the second-highest quarter on record. But things could have been even worse without Hornsdale.
“The entry of two new participants (Hornsdale Power Reserve and EnerNOC) contributed to an AUD $13 million (USD $10 million) reduction compared to Q3 2017,” said AEMO.
That’s not bad considering Hornsdale may have cost around $50 million, based on a statement by Tesla founder Elon Musk. It is also pretty good going for an asset that represents less than 2 percent of the 5.4 gigawatts of dispatchable capacity listed by AEMO in South Australia in 2017.
Opening up new revenue streams
For the broader energy storage market, the good news about Hornsdale is that it may help open up further energy storage revenue streams, such as capacity market trading or wholesale tariff arbitrage, by propping up the grid so it can accommodate more renewable generation.
The need for these kinds of services could grow with an expansion in renewable energy generating capacity. But adding that capacity relies on having a robust grid.
The Australian electricity network has been singled out for criticism precisely because of National Electricity Code Administrator rules on frequency control. Observers say that the NECA rules for frequency control are lax compared to those in other markets.
That could make it difficult to maintain grid control in the face of rising renewable energy generation, GTM revealed last year.
If Tesla’s big battery can help bring frequency control back into line, though, then it might be easier to add more wind and solar into the equation ? boosting the business case for more batteries, even if FCAS is off the table.
プロジェクトを主導するのはオランダ、デンマーク、ドイツにそれぞれ電力を供給する送電系統運用者（TSO：Transmission System Operator）。2017年3月23日、3社のTSOが協定を結び、「北海風力発電ハブ（North Sea Wind Power Hub）」の建設に向かって調査に取り掛かることを発表した。
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) jointly released its official ≫2018 Solar PV Power Generation Notice≪. According to consultancy Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory Co. Ltd. (AECEA), DG projects are subject to a cap of 10 GW in 2018. ≫All DG projects which managed to achieve grid connection until May 31st, will be eligible to enjoy FITs granted by the central government.≪ DG projects which are not recognized by the central government shall seek financial support from respective local governments. AECEA estimates, that approximately 9 GW of DG projects were installed between January and April 2018 (plus approximately 2 GW of utility-scale) and ≫highly likely by the end of May, the 10 GW cap has already been realized.≪
Furthermore, FITs were uniformly reduced by CNY 0.05/kWh ($0.007) and the on-grid tariffs for resource zone 1, 2, and 3 were adjusted to CNY 0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7 per kilowatthour, respectively. The next FIT reduction is anticipated to be between 12 to 15 percent effective Jan 1, 2019, says ACEA director Frank Haugwitz.
Last year, NEA announced a 13.9 GW utility-scale project target for 2018. However, the latest NEA notice stipulates that this target has been abolished and has instructed provinces to stop projects seeking 2018 FITs in any form. ACEA: ≫Support of utility-scale projects in future is subject to further notice.≪ Subsidies for village-type poverty alleviation projects (up to 0.5 MW) remained unchanged and are for resource zone 1, 2, and 3; CNY 0.65 / 0.75 / 0.85 per kilowatt-hour, respectively.
In AECEA’s view 2018 is a transition year for the Chinese PV Market. The consultancy has not only lowered its forecast for 2018 from 40 to 45 GW to 30 to 35 GW, but as well lowered its forecast for the remaining years of the 13th Five-Year-Plan period (2016-2020) to 20 to 25 GW annually. According to solar energy consultant Frank Haugwitz, at the end of 2020, ≫China could be home to approximately 200 to 215 GW of total installed solar PV power generation capacity which would be in line with a 200 GW target, although not officially confirmed, however proposed by China’s National RE Development Center in the context of China’s Renewable Energy Roadmap in November 2017.≪
c PHOTON
イギリスでは必要な系統増強を待たずに接続点までの連系を行った発電設備の早期接続を認めるConnect and
Manageという手法が2010年8月から開始されている（2011年2月より本格運用開始）。その後発電実績を基に送
電会社は系統増強を行うことになる。系統増強までの間は出力抑制を受ける可能性が高くなることを許容する必
要がある。
