Hydrogen as smoothing solution for excesses from South Australia's advantage in solar and wind twin resources

South Australia had ample areas (in yellow) of sunshine for solar farms and areas (in blue) for wind for wind farms but its real advantage was the areas in green where solar and wind coincided.
Map courtesy South Australian government energy department.

South Australia’s outstanding coincidental solar and wind resources gave it a natural competitive advantage in producing renewable hydrogen.

The state had areas that were best for sunshine and solar panels and others that were best for wind farms. But South Australia’s government energy and mining department maps shows green sweet spots where sunshine and wind coincided were much more extensive than in other Australian states. When sunshine and wind output combined in these areas, the state produced electricity far beyond its own demand.

South Australia’s renewable energy output – passing 50% – became a problem of excesses in the 21st Century. Wind farms were spilling —sending to earth — excess to demand electricity in the middle of the night and solar farms and home rooftop were adding excess in the middle of the day. The problem was how to store energy when in excess and regenerate it when demand rises.

Hydrogen, along with pumped hydro, created an opportunity to store cheap energy in bulk while batteries fix short-term gaps. By smoothing out the peaks and troughs in demand and price, more use would be made of the solar and wind infrastructure that has to be in place to satisfy the peaks. That meant the cost of the infrastructure was spread over more units and units became cheaper.

Following its own party’s and the Liberal state government (2018-22) moves toward hydrogen, the Labor state government in 2022 was elected on a commitment to a $590 million hydrogen plant and a 200MW (megawatt) hydrogen-fuelled power station at Port Bonython near Whyalla on Eyre Peninsula.

The hydrogen-fuelled power station was to provide firming capacity in the South Australian electricity market. The plant’s electrolysers would use excess renewable energy to produce hydrogen, reducing the needs to remotely switch off rooftop solar for households and businesses, and would help unlock a $20 billion pipeline of renewable energy projects in the state.

The Labor government saw its hydrogen jobs plan as delivering cheaper power to industry and businesses, pointing to an independent analysis by Frontier Economics that its South Australia’s hydrogen plant will reduce the wholesale cost of electricity to industry by 8%.Energy minister Tom Koutsantonis said the cheap production of hydrogen would be a game changer: “Its uses are diverse, including manufacturing, firming energy to lower electricity prices, manufacturing green steel, being injected directly into furnaces to offset coal use and use in heavy vehicle and passenger vehicles to lower emissions and lower costs.”

The hydrogen plan also aimed to take advantage of emerging international markets as Japan, South Korea, China and other countries moved to decarbonise their industry with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) forecasting the hydrogen export industry will be worth $1.7b billion to the Australian economy by 2030.