Our hydro dams are, in effect, colossal batteries, and are vital to back up the many other types of renewables we have, including solar, wind, run of the river hydro, and geothermal. Geothermal is a base load, and we don't have control over the output of the others the way we do with hydro. This is why Labour was proposing to build a colossal pumped storage hydro scheme, because they understand this as well as anyone.

We need them, we will always need them, and we need a national grid to bring power from them to the rest of the country. Your solar doesn't do anything on a cold winter night.

[–] Rangelus 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Who said anything about removing our hydro?

[–] Ilovethebomb -3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely nobody apart from you, stop creating strawman arguments.

Yet, to achieve that we need nothing less than a fundamental transformation of our electricity system from a 20th century model dominated by gentailers involving large-scale generation, long distance transmission and concentrated market power to a 21st century one based on local generation, use, trading and storage of renewable sources of electricity.

The author of the article does seem to think we won't need them in the future though.

[–] Rangelus 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely nobody apart from you, stop creating strawman arguments.

If you aren't suggesting that the article recommends removing hydro from our network, what, exactly, is your problem? The idea is that rooftop solar, wind, and other locally-based power generation systems will eventually reduce or eliminate the demand for large centralized hydro and coal generators. Why is this a bad thing? What is your problem with having this as a goal?

The author of the article does seem to think we won’t need them in the future though.

Not needing them is not the same as removing them is it? So if hydro is going away, how exactly is rooftop solar and other local generation a bad thing that won't work, as you have implied?

[–] Ilovethebomb -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm actually not sure what you're trying to say here.

[–] Rangelus 1 points 11 months ago

Shocking

[–] Dave 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's very common for solar installations to have batteries these days. That goes a long way to reducing peak load.

[–] Ilovethebomb 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've seen the cost involved with house batteries, they're not cheap at all. You still need the grid to back you up, especially if electricity is your sole source of heat.

[–] Dave 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I thought your point was that solar doesn't help peak generation? Batteries are far cheaper per amount stored than they were 10 years ago, and power is more expensive.

Also one massive difference now compared to 10 years ago is that many banks will lend you cheap money in order to install solar (among other things), including battery systems. The only criteria is that you have a mortgage with them. Solar is massive business at the moment, when I checked it seemed there are dozens of companies doing solar and battery installs in Wellington alone.

[–] Ilovethebomb 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

From Wikipedia

The highest peak demand recorded in New Zealand was 7,100 MW, recorded between 18:00 and 18:30 on 9 August 2021.[70] The previous record was 6,924 MW, recorded between 18:00 and 18:30 on 29 June 2021.[71][72]

Correct, solar isn't doing very much at that time of day, meaning you need a house battery to store and release energy in order to actually use the energy you generate.

Now, it's not cost effective to size your battery to the point where you never need power from the grid, so most people will likely spec them to see them through the evening peak, most of the time. On days of peak demand, I imagine most of them would end up using power from the grid.

Things get even more absurd when you introduce EVs into the mix, because you then would be charging batteries off your batteries in order to use the car the next day.

The whole energy storage thing can be done much cheaper, and without the nasty chemicals in batteries, at grid scale with hydro.

[–] Dave 1 points 11 months ago

I agree we are a long way from not needing a grid. I think the point of residential solar is that if you have solar panels on lots of houses, then part of the peak can be managed by stored power in batteries. You do this by using variable cost power (like some companies already do) along with battery systems that can schedule power from the battery for high cost times. All this technology already exists ,and means we don't need more capacity (especially long distance line capacity) for moving the power, or for producing it because the issue is peak production not total production.

Pumped hydro is a great idea for power storage but the poster-child project has been cancelled now so it remains to be seen what will come of that.