Australia: solar, wind pipeline enough to go 100% renewable

From RenewEconomy:

Last Friday, tens of thousands of school students went on “strike”, imploring politicians to finally Get Serious about climate change policies, and urging a switch to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

Can’t be done, they were told.

Readers may remember, however, that ANU researchers Andrew Blakers and Matt Stocks in February said that if Australia continued at its current rate of wind and solar deployment, then enough to meet the equivalent of 100 per cent of the country’s electricity needs could be delivered by 2030.

Now, new research from the Norway-based research company Rystad says the pipeline of wind, solar and storage projects in Australia will likely reach 100GW before the upcoming federal election in May, including those in “concept” stage, and those seeking development approvals[DAs], already have DAs, have won contracts, are under construction, or are already built.

[N]ot all these projects will be built at the scale envisaged. There may be local issues, connection hurdles, financing challenges and market headwinds. But if they were, they would deliver enough megawatt-hours to deliver Australia’s current demand.

[G]etting to 100 per cent renewables for electricity is not simply a matter of building lots of solar and wind farms. As Blakers and Stocks noted, it needs a plan, and it depends on where this capacity is built, and how it is connected. It also depends on how much storage there is, in both capacity and duration.

Rystad describes the 100GW level as a “symbolic milestone” and says it follows a “blistering start” to the new year in which 6.65GW of new capacity from 62 assets were added to its data-base in January and February – more than double the capacity and number of assets that were added in the same period last year.

It's abundantly clear that renewables are much cheaper than coal, and, even "firmed" their output is cheaper than the wholesale price of electricity in Australia.  The rapidity of the roll-out of renewables will lead to coal power stations becoming uneconomic and prolly closing.  That's fine if the grid has enough "firmed" capacity to replace them.  But because of foot-dragging by the regulators, regulations don't reward storage.  For example, the change from a 30 minute settlement period on electricity trading on the grid wasn't changed to a 5 minute period, which would make storage more profitable, because legacy suppliers (black and brown coal) threatened a strike when peak demand requires additional supply.  

That means that there won't be enough storage to back up this 100% renewables grid, unless the regulations are changed, pronto.  

The other essential will be a network of HVDC grids connecting the regions strong in renewable resources with demand centres, and allowing surplus electricity to be traded between states, for example from regions with temporary surplus wind power to regions with temporary deficits.