This innocuous snippet from parliament seems to hold a lot more...

This innocuous snippet from parliament seems to hold a lot more information, I think, which pertains to the techonological step change which is occurring in the power & fossil fuel industries right now under our feet.

We are witnessing history being made with a need to adjust 180 degrees to our environmental surroundings or perish.
The stats on environmental disaster across the globe are too accurate and regular to dispute.

We have relied on fossil fuels for a hundred years and are indeed greatly indebted to the discovery of oil and live each day using consumables produced from oil. Without oil we simply would not have got to our current level of comfort in the time we have,  globally, and the human expertise we have utilised  such as Slip for example in getting to this place of comfort has been monumental across a civilisation.

Indeed if oil was not present right now we would not be able to build the equipment such as the very battery storage units that will ultimately lead to oils curtailment as opposed to oils elimination. We simply need oil to survive everyday life and will need oil for at least another 50 years for a great deal of consumables.

With this need comes reluctance to give it up in all its forms or even most or even some of its form until such time as we have an excellent, reliable, trustworthy working alternative.

This is also true of power grid supply.

With a power supply that is going to transform a nation the new kid on the block must be a walking talking pissing genius which MAY take a decade or more to develop. Like solar panels transition to its current glory, this took 20-30 years realistically, Wind on industrial scale has been much faster and BESS will be faster again.

Indeed BESS (in vehicles or static supply) is coming so fast we can’t bring online enough product ie lithium or otherwise (vanadium) fast enough before our smart little minds are trying hydrogen or something else. Thus lithium is a star for those listed companies in the ASX.

We need a working alternative which  provides so much more reliability than the incumbent player.

Something akin to the current elite sports player. Management (you), will be very reluctant to drop your current star in her/his position even though their form has faltered of late (now that you have some hindsight) as the disruption to the group may/will be and can be negative or even catastrophic to the playing group.

The new player needs to have such excellent form on the board but also needs to be able to retain that form far beyond reasonable limits going forward. They also, at all cost, must fit in seemlessly with your current playing group and allow a transition to occur if you sniff a transition occurring or are purposefully creating a transition to evolve to meet a consistently/historically greater opponent.

I could compare the fossil fuel powered power system incumbents against the new microgrid/Solar/Wind player on the block to the Australian Wallabies playing the almighty All Blacks or in Rugby League NSW v QLD.

The incumbent champion has such good form and such good players, even on your best day when everything goes exactly right you may win by a point only, but most times you loose and some times you get thrashed.
When you win by that point it is the best feeling and you think you have summited that peak. You look out and see another peak coming but because you have done it once you are confident of success again..... a slight change, many times unseen by management/coaches/leadership presents itself on the day and your team is smashed to an often embarrassing scoreline........ it is hard to comprehend this has just occurred?????
You think your team is not good enough and in today’s instant gratification world the punters want answers....so you tweak the team a little and....well you know the rest.

The Wallabies have tried their hardest to beat the All Blacks over many games.

NSW have tried as many times to beat the champion QLD team likewise.

With delays for microgrid development or wave energy development for that matter we blame the new guy which in this case is EMC or CCE, but we don’t see what the actual holdup is. The incumbent has done the job in a complex network and you have to fit in somewhere along the path. If the customers (Western Power, Synergy, Government, DoD. CSIRO etc) needs a change through a hiccup or incremental problem in the vast network or the need to bring forward a reserve player (such as another diesel generator or multiple diesel generators) to fill the gap/outage/perceived outage ........ the new guy still gets the blame, but he can’t complain or be seen to be not worthy as the client will not offer more contracts. The new guy needs to suck it up and get on with the transition as best he can without offending his clients who may be very powerful such as CSIRO, DoD, Government etc.

The power system needs to be harmonious & synchronous, when things change a small percentage it creates problems. Think Hazelwood coal fired power station being pulled from the network or the power cable to Tasmania dropping out. The incumbent (power owner/generator) knows the new player (microgrid/BESS) is coming and ready to play but you still want the backup of what you have been comfortable with.

So what do you do,  you bring forward a backup or future planned procurement purchase of say 20 or 50 diesel generators as is the case with Hazelwood or Basslink to sync/steady the network in case things go belly up or even because some other large contract in the future is coming to fruition faster than anticipated.

This has a huge role on effect for the Microgrid builder be it DECMIL or EMC  who continually need to bend to conform. This is what has and is happening with CCE/EMC over the past year, in that they need continual flexibility to fit their magic microgrid into the legacy system and No complaining or revealing of secrets with important clients.