Batteries could fortify the grid as Alfred lays bare vulnerability

ABC News

10 Mar

In terms of media releases, the wording was about as blunt and descriptive as you're likely to see.Cyclone Alfred, explained south-east Queensland poles-and-wires company Energex, had "hammered" large...

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Basically, nowhere.\"And you will see, unfortunately, that we have created more vulnerabilities.\"According to Mr Greet, Australia was preoccupied with a debate about the merits of fossil fuels compared with renewable energy.But he pointed out that such discussions only related to sources of generation and did not take into account other parts of the system. Hundreds of thousands are still without power as crews rush to find the faults along the network.(ABC News: Brendan Esposito )Worse still, he said Australia was no longer even doing an official stocktake of its overall position through a process known as the national energy security assessment.\"The last one was done in 2011,\" he said.\"Now, that's pretty piss poor. Security is much more than just electricity generation. So we've sort of faffed around.\"Hence we have no idea that when we're faced with extreme weather events what will be the effects because we don't understand what our energy security is.\"We just talk about power poles going down, people being disconnected from electricity in a cyclone and blackouts like the black system event in South Australia.\"But we don't really address some of the root causes of our security.\"Ex-Cyclone Alfred latest: Live updates: Follow our blog for the latest newsPower outages map: Get the latest on blackoutsMonitor live rainfall totals and wind speedWatch live: Webcam video feedsListen to your local ABC Radio station for news and updatesOverhead vs underground powerJosh Stabler, who owns and runs consultancy Energy Edge from Brisbane, said the answers to those questions were not necessarily straightforward.Mr Stabler said while the effects of events such as Cyclone Alfred could be widespread and damaging, they were also unpredictable and rare.He noted it had been 50 years since south-east Queensland was last directly affected by a tropical cyclone. Extreme weather events have exposed the power grid's weaknesses.(ABC News: Brendan Esposito)Therefore, he said designing an electricity system that could easily withstand the hit from a cyclone could be considered overkill.\"We get the best electricity system we can afford, not the best electricity system we can build,\" Mr Stabler said.Most obviously, Mr Stabler pointed out that overhead powerlines were a key weakness in many Australian networks.Indeed, Energex and other network firms including Essential Energy in northern NSW pointed out that many of the disruptions to supply were being caused by trees falling on powerlines.Despite this, Mr Stabler said Australia had built so many powerlines above ground because the costs of putting them below ground were so much greater. Overhead powerlines are exposed to the fallouts of extreme weather events.(ABC News: Danielle Bonica)He said there were exceptions to this rule such as Canberra, where a small and dense population made undergrounding power relatively easy to do and afford.Elsewhere, however, he noted Australia's electricity network was notoriously \"skinny\", meaning it was spread thinly across vast distances to service a relatively small number of people.\"Queensland is an enormous state,\" he said.\"Powerlink owns the largest network of transmission lines in the world.\"If you were to put that underground, it would be so wide-ranging in its impacts.\"It seems like a good idea, but the expense would just be insane.\"Paul Budde, an independent telco analyst who is also based in Brisbane, said the nexus between phone and internet services and energy security was growing stronger all the time.He said putting powerlines underground, where feasible, made overwhelming sense. Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde says energy security is tightly linked to phone and internet services.(ABC News: Dean Caton)He said much of the power infrastructure in Western Europe was buried, making it much more resilient.But he agreed with the costs being simply too high for many parts of Australia, especially those outside densely populated inner cities.Even in 2010, he said, the costs of undergrounding conductors in metropolitan Perth amounted to about $4,500 per household — a figure that was only likely to have risen since then.\"In Australia, most of the network is above ground, particularly outside the big cities,\" Mr Budde said.\"And that makes it extremely vulnerable, and even more vulnerable as we get climate change and more ferocious storms, etc.\"So the importance of having a good network is critical.\"The current cyclone, there are 300,000 houses without electricity, so there are 300,000 houses without telecommunications.\"The benefit of batteriesMore likely, Mr Stabler said there were practical steps electricity providers could take to strengthen the system while not breaking the bank.Chief among them is the adoption of batteries to help consumers — and the system more broadly — ride through the shocks of something like a cyclone.According to Mr Stabler, medium-sized batteries that could be installed at a substation to serve an entire suburb or neighbourhood would offer the most benefits. The Bohle Plains battery, on the outskirts of Townsville, is capable of powering 4000 homes for about an hour.(ABC News: Baz Ruddick)He said this was because the unit cost of the battery — or the price paid for each unit of energy a battery can store — would be relatively low for a medium-sized installation.At the same time, he said they would allow households unable to get a battery — either because they were renters or could not afford it — to access the benefits of storage.\"Having batteries at a substation level will help communities,\" Mr Stabler said.\"Batteries in your home are a good idea but they're really expensive in terms of total installation costs.\"If you can make them consumer networked or grouped, there's a substantial cost benefit.\"Echoing the comments, Mr Greet said adding more rooftop solar, batteries and other forms of so-called distributed energy resources would undoubtedly bolster the strength of the system. Rooftop solar coupled with batteries can help increase energy security.(ABC News: Jess Davis)He said it was only natural that spreading sources of generation and storage widely across an area would make it less vulnerable to the loss of any one power plant or line.Mr Greet said a good example arose in the Black Summer bushfires that devastated the eastern states in 2019 and 2020.Households slash power bills by turning into modern power plantsExperts believe virtual power plants could play a vital part in our future energy system.Read moreSome towns such as Cobargo in southern NSW, he said, were badly exposed when fires severed the limited powerlines connecting them to the grid.\"That meant people couldn't get petrol, they couldn't get money, they were completely vulnerable,\" Mr Greet said.\"One of the lessons out of that was that communities may well be better with distributed energy resources.\"And by that I mean solar, community wind and batteries and, if I was to be futurist-thinking and even handed, small modular (nuclear) reactors.\"But this allows the community to have the assurance of energy during an emergency.\"Telco analyst Paul Budde said efforts should also go into making Australia's electricity networks \"smarter\".For example, he said this could allow poles-and-wires companies to remotely tell when powerlines were brought down rather than having to rely on crews driving out to inspect an area.He said that would make repairing lines quicker and easier.Given the link between telecommunications and energy, Mr Budde said more could be done to bolster mobile networks to \"overcome\" problems that affected the power system. Mr Budde says mobile networks need to uncouple from the problems affecting the power grid.(ABC Kimberley: Esse Deves)He said this was already happening at mobile towers where generators and other facilities were being rolled out to ensure services could either withstand a shock or resume operations more quickly.Similarly, he said there was significant potential for satellites to provide a back-up.\"What you will see over the next five to 10 years is more of these satellites will be able to link directly into mobile networks,\" he said.Posted 17h ago17 hours agoMon 10 Mar 2025 at 3:35am, updated 16h ago16 hours agoMon 10 Mar 2025 at 4:06amShareCopy linkFacebookX (formerly Twitter)Related storiesGet the latest on power outages in Qld and NSW Topic:UtilitiesPhoto shows A map of southern Queensland highlighting areas affected by power outagesThousands still without power and phone reception as ex-cyclone wreaks havocTopic:CyclonesPhoto shows A man crouches down to inspect tree roots as a large tree is fallen on a building behind him.Track rainfall and wind speed as Alfred moves inland Topic:CyclonesPhoto shows Rain cloud on top of cyclone graphicRelated topicsExtreme Weather EventsFloodsStormsUtilities","kind":"highlight","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1}}}