\n<\/p>\n
\u201c[The clutch] is like 1950s technology\u2014it\u2019s really boring,\u201d Westerman said (\u201cboring,\u201d for grid operators, is the highest form of praise). \u200b\u201cThe marginal cost of putting this in is like nothing compared to the cost of the\u00a0plant.\u201d<\/p>\n
A company called SSS has built these clutches for decades. One is nearly operational in the state of Queensland at the Townsville gas-fired plant, which Siemens Energy is converting into what it calls a \u200b\u201chybrid rotating grid stabilizer.\u201d Siemens says this project is the world\u2019s first such conversion of a\u00a0gas turbine of this\u00a0size.<\/p>\n
That particular retrofit took about 18 months and involved some relocating of auxiliary components at Townsville to make room for the new clutch. So it\u2019s not instantaneous, but far easier than building a\u00a0new synchronous condenser from scratch, and about half the cost, per Siemens.<\/p>\n
Some novel long-duration storage techniques also provide their own spinning mass. Canadian startup Hydrostor expects to break ground early next year on a\u00a0fully permitted and contracted project in Broken Hill, a\u00a0city deep in the Outback of New South\u00a0Wales.<\/p>\n
Broken Hill lent its name to BHP, which started there as a\u00a0silver mine in 1885 and has grown to one of the largest global mining companies. More recently, the desert landscape played host to the postapocalyptic car chases of Mad Max 2. Now, roughly 18,000 people live there, at the end of one long line connecting to the broader grid.<\/p>\n
Hydrostor will shore up local power by excavating an underground cavity and compressing air into it; releasing the compressed air turns a\u00a0turbine to regenerate up to 200\u00a0megawatts for up to eight hours, serving the community if the grid connection goes down and otherwise shipping clean power to the broader grid.<\/p>\n
But unlike batteries, Hydrostor\u2019s technology uses old-school generators, and its compressors contribute additional spinning metal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a\u00a0clutch spec\u2019d in for New South Wales, because they need the inertia,\u201d Hydrostor CEO Jon Norman said. \u200b\u201cIt\u2019s so simple; it\u2019s like the same clutches on your standard car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Transmission grid operator Transgrid ran a\u00a0competitive process to determine the best way to provide system security to Broken Hill in the event it had to operate apart from the grid, Norman said. That analysis chose Hydrostor\u2019s bid to simply insert a\u00a0clutch when it installs its machinery.<\/p>\n
The project still needs to get built, but if up-and-coming clean storage technologies could step in to provide that grid security, it wouldn\u2019t all have to come from ghostly gas plants lingering on the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a\u00a0different feeling [in Australia]\u2014there\u2019s a\u00a0can do, go get \u200b\u2019em, \u200b\u2018put me in coach\u2019 attitude,\u201d said Audrey Zibelman, the American grid expert who ran AEMO before Westerman. \u200b\u201cWhen you\u2019re determined to say how best to go about this, as opposed to why it\u2019s hard or why it doesn\u2019t work, the solutions appear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201c[The clutch] is like 1950s technology\u2014it\u2019s really boring,\u201d Westerman said (\u201cboring,\u201d for grid operators, is the highest form of praise). \u200b\u201cThe marginal cost of putting this in is like nothing compared to the cost of the\u00a0plant.\u201d A company called SSS has built these clutches for decades. One is nearly operational in the state of Queensland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[2029,1289,611,11244,2977],"class_list":{"0":"post-27549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-australias","9":"tag-clean","10":"tag-energy","11":"tag-march","12":"tag-percent"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}