ELECTRICITY STORAGE ECONOMICS: CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS
10/12/2020, 10-11am (AEDT)
This second ERICA webinar, hosted by the Victoria Policy Energy Centre, Victoria University, explored the economics of energy storage.
It is now obvious that variable renewable generation is the cheapest source of electricity production. But back-up in the form of dispatchable storage or dispatchable generation will be needed (amongst others) to ensure reliable 24/7 supply. How much and what type of storage is likely to be valuable? And how do the technical characteristics of different types of storage and their ability to provide ancillary and network services affect attractiveness to consumers and investors? In this webinar, three of Australia’s prominent researchers in this field talked about the work they are doing to answer these questions.
Dr Steven Percy (Research Fellow, Victoria Policy Energy Centre, Victoria University) presented an analysis of the ancillary service markets and modelling of FCAS and arbitrage revenues for batteries, pumped hydro and hydrogen storage, evaluating how the technical operating limitations affect their role and profitability in the market. Dr Jenny Hayward (Research Scientist, Energy Technology group, CSIRO) gave an overview of the CSIRO’s GenCost project, aiming to provide electricity generation and storage technology cost projections on an annual basis. Dr Dylan McConnell (Research Fellow, the University of Melbourne Climate and Energy College) considered the value of electricity storage in an energy-only wholesale market and give a 2020 update to their 2015 paper exploring the value of a price-taking storage device in energy-only markets. A/Prof Bruce Mountain (Director of the Victoria Policy Energy Centre, Victoria University), hosted the event.
Meet the host
Associate Professor Bruce Mountain
Director of the Victoria Policy Energy Centre, Victoria University
Bruce is the Director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre at Victoria University. Bruce is an energy economist with specialisms in the economics of regulation and in the economics of wholesale and retail electricity markets. Expertise and skills: energy economics, renewable energy technologies, power market analysis, power generation, distributed generation and electricity in general.
Meet the speakers
Dr Steven Percy
Research Fellow, Victoria Policy Energy Centre (VEPC), Victoria University
Steven leads the energy storage and wholesale electricity markets research at the Victoria Energy Policy Centre. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering (University of Melbourne, completed in 2018) and Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (University of Sydney, 2009. Steven worked as a Research Engineer at CSIRO Energy Technology, Australia (2009-2014) and has held research positions at IBM-Research, Melbourne, Australia and the University of California, Berkeley, California, USA. He has expertise in providing advice to governments, regulators and interest groups about wholesale energy markets. At VEPC he developed the VEPC NEM Dashboard and NEM-SEED model, a National Energy Market optimisation model allowing electricity market forecast and scenario analysis. He is skilled in programming, machine learning and optimisation. His research interests are in energy transitions, renewable energy, energy modelling and renewable energy markets, battery storage economics, energy policy, market power systems, market dynamics and distributed generation.
Dr Jenny Hayward
Senior Research Scientist, Energy Systems Program, CSIRO Energy
Jenny is a senior research scientist in CSIRO Energy in Newcastle. She leads research projects on technology cost projections and the models she has developed are used to project the cost of electricity generation technologies for AEMO and the Australian Government. Jenny has made economic modelling contributions to roadmap and renewable energy projects, including the National Hydrogen Roadmap and the Low Emissions Technology Roadmap. She has contributed to studies undertaken by CSIRO on energy storage, carbon capture and storage, remote area power systems, the techno-economic potential of solar fuels and concentrating solar thermal, sustainable aviation fuels and ocean renewable energy. Dr Hayward’s focus is on developing new methods and modelling approaches to provide robust projections of the capital costs of existing and emerging electricity generation and fuel conversion technologies.
Dr Dylan McConnell
Energy systems research fellow, the University of Melbourne Climate & Energy College
Researcher, Energy Transition Hub
Dylan is an energy systems research fellow at the University of Melbourne Climate & Energy College and researcher at the multi-institutional Energy Transition Hub. Dylan’s work is focused on electricity infrastructure and governance, and the energy transition in liberalised electricity markets. He also specialises in operations research and the optimisation of electricity systems. His work is interdisciplinary and has been published in forums including the Journal of Energy Policy, the Journal of Applied Energy, the Electricity Journal, and the Journal of Environmental Sociology.