William Paul Bell

Australian National Electricity Market Model - version 1.10

This working paper provides details of the Australian National Electricity Market (ANEM) model version 1.10 used in the research project titled: An investigation of the impacts of increased power supply to the national grid by wind generators on the Australian electricity industry. The paper provides a comprehensive reference of the ANEM model for the other project publications that use the ANEM model to analysis the sensitivity of four factors to increasing wind power penetration. The four factors include (1) transmission line congestion, (2) wholesale spot prices, (3) carbon dioxide emissions and (4) energy dispatch. The sensitivity of the four factors to wind power penetration is considered in conjunction with sensitivity to weather conditions, electricity demand growth and a major augmentation of the transmission grid of the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) called NEMLink (AEMO 2010a, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b).The sensitivity analyses use 5 levels of wind power penetration from zero wind power penetration to enough wind power to meet the original 2020 41TWh Large-scale Renewable Energy Target. The sensitivity to weather is developed by using half hourly electricity demand profiles by node from three calendar years 2010, 2011 and 2012. The sensitivity to growth is developed by incrementing the nodal demand profiles over the projection years 2014 to 2025.

The Effect of Increasing the Number of Wind Turbine Generators on Generator Energy in the Australian National Electricity Market from 2014 to 2025

This report investigates the effect of increasing the number of wind turbine generators on energy generation in the Australian National Electricity Market’s (NEM) existing transmission grid from 2014 to 2025. This report answers urgent questions concerning the capability of the existing transmission grid to cope with significant increases in wind power and aid emissions reductions. The report findings will help develop a coherent government policy to phase in renewable energy in a cost effective manner.We use a sensitivity analysis to evaluate the effect of five different levels of wind penetration on energy generation. The five levels of wind penetration span Scenarios A to E where Scenario A represents ‘no wind’ and Scenario E includes all the existing and planned wind power sufficient to meet Australia’s 2020 41TWh Large Renewable Energy Target (LRET). We compare the relative effect of five different levels of wind penetration on energy generation to the effect on emissions. We also use sensitivity analysis to evaluate the effect on energy generation of growth in electricity demand over the projections years 2014 to 2015 and weather over the years 2010 to 2012. The sensitivity analysis uses simulations from the ‘Australian National Electricity Market (ANEM) model version 1.10’ (Wild et al. 2015).

The Effect of Increasing the Number of Wind Turbine Generators on Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the Australian National Electricity Market from 2014 to 2025

This report investigates the effect of increasing the number of wind turbine generators on carbon dioxide emission in the Australian National Electricity Market’s (NEM) existing transmission grid from 2014 to 2025. This report answers urgent questions concerning the capability of the existing transmission grid to cope with significant increases in wind power and aid emissions reductions. The report findings will help develop a coherent government policy to phase in renewable energy in a cost effective manner.We use a sensitivity analysis to evaluate the effect of five different levels of wind penetration on carbon dioxide emissions. The five levels of wind penetration span Scenarios A to E where Scenario A represents ‘no wind’ and Scenario E includes all the existing and planned wind power sufficient to meet Australia’s 2020 41TWh Large Renewable Energy Target (LRET). We also use sensitivity analysis to evaluate the effect on carbon dioxide emissions of growth in electricity demand over the projections years 2014 to 2015 and weather over the years 2010 to 2012. The sensitivity analysis uses simulations from the ‘Australian National Electricity Market (ANEM) model version 1.10’ (Wild et al. 2015).We find increasing wind power penetration decreases carbon dioxide emissions but retail prices fail to reflect the decrease in carbon dioxide emissions. We find Victoria has the largest carbon dioxide emissions and of the states in the NEM Victoria’s emissions respond the least to increasing wind power penetration. Victoria having the largest brown coal generation fleet in the NEM explains this unresponsiveness. Wind power via the merit order effect displaces the more expensive fossil fuel generators first in the order gas, black coal and brown coal. However, brown coal has the highest carbon dioxide emissions per unit of electricity. This is suboptimal for climate change mitigation and the reintroduction of a carbon pricing mechanism would adjust the relative costs of fossil fuels favouring the fuels with the lower emissions per unit of electricity.