WELCOME to Chairman Dan’s unreliable-energy ‘devolution’! Expect more skyrocketing electricity prices, blackouts and load-shedding as Australia’s virtue-signalling, climate theory-obsessed politicians continue their jihad against what was Australia’s once proud boast – cheap, reliable, efficient baseload power.
LATEST shock report on Australia’s southern states skyrocketing power prices via The Australian (Climatism bolds and links added):
***
AVERAGE wholesale energy prices in Victoria and South Australia have more than doubled since this time last year, as experts warn that blackouts and supply issues are likely to increase as state governments chase aggressive renewable energy targets.
More than 2000 Victorian households remained without power yesterday after two days of heat triggered equipment failures and blackouts, opening up distributors to compensation claims.
The outages struck as new data showed the average wholesale energy price in Victoria climbed to $139 this month, up from $62 in January last year. In South Australia, the wholesale average price for January climbed to almost $170, up from $84 a year ago, whereas prices fell in NSW and Queensland to about $75.
The pricing data has angered energy experts, who say blackouts and supply issues are likely to increase and prices are likely to rise as the Victorian and South Australian governments pursue renewable energy targets without prioritising power sources that can supply baseload power.
Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood said Sunday’s and Monday’s blackouts and high pricing showed that the state had botched its energy transition program by allowing baseload power sources — such as the Hazelwood power station — to be replaced by renewables, which delivered intermittent power.
“We’re dealing with a complex transition and it hasn’t been managed very well so far,” Mr Wood said. “That’s why we’ve seen local outages and high prices on the weekend, and that’s the reason why wholesale prices are substantially higher this year than last year.
“It’s a reflection of a failed policy. We’re transitioning away from centralised, cheap but dirty power stations, but we’re not replacing these stations with sources that are just as stable.”
The Andrews government last year broke away from other states and territories by instituting its own Victorian Renewable Energy Target, with a plan for renewables to power 40 per cent of the state’s energy needs by 2025.
Mr Wood said the energy supply could get patchier and the state could emerge as a net importer of electricity as the government replaced coal-fired power stations with solar and wind and other intermittent power sources, which did not fire 24 hours a day.
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg confirmed that the weekend power outages were the result of distribution rather than supply issues, but said the state government needed to do more to boost reliability.
He urged Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to rethink the renewable energy target while branding South Australia’s renewables plan an experiment gone “horribly wrong”.
“Reliability standards for networks are set by state governments,” Mr Frydenberg said. “AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) have highlighted that supply in Victoria is tight and that is why we have called upon the Andrews government to drop its reckless state-based renewable energy targets and mindless bans on gas.
“Jay Weatherill’s ‘big experiment’ has gone horribly wrong. South Australia has the highest prices and the least stable energy system in the country and, despite the bravado in the lead-up to summer, their energy problems remain. Just a couple of weeks ago, South Australia’s prices reached $14,200 a megawatt hour, while at the same time they were $89 a MWh in NSW and $85 MWh in Queensland.
“The wind turbines, which can produce 100 per cent of energy on one day and zero on another, were not blowing when needed most, providing less than 5 per cent of power and Jay Weatherill’s big battery less than 1 per cent.”
Australian Power Project chief executive Nathan Vass warned that Victoria’s energy supply with a larger proportion of renewables likely would have buckled under conditions such as those of Sunday night.
“Batteries and solar would not have saved Victoria as over 17,000 Victorians had no power throughout the night, when the sun isn’t shining,” Mr Vass said.
“Pairing renewables with battery storage wouldn’t have done much to alleviate the blackout. By way of example, the Tesla battery facility in South Australia only provides power for an hour to 30,000 homes.”
Release of the wholesale pricing data in South Australia — and data showing South Australia still has the highest prices in the National Electricity Market — prompted state opposition energy spokesman Dan van Holst Pellekaan to savage a claim by Mr Weatherill that his $550 million “self-sufficient” energy plan was producing the lowest power prices in the national market.
“South Australians are furious about the outrageous price of electricity they pay and tired of the Weatherill government’s refusal to accept responsibility,” Mr van Holst Pellekaan said.
SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said wholesale power prices were “notoriously volatile”. “Since August, wholesale power prices in South Australia have been consistently cheaper than Victoria, and in September and October, SA had the cheapest wholesale prices of mainland states in the National Electricity Market,” he said.
In Victoria, Mr Andrews blamed the outages on the Coalition’s decision to privatise the state’s energy assets in the 1990s. “Fact is, there was more than enough power being generated to meet the demand yesterday — but the private companies and their distribution systems failed yet again,” he said on Twitter.
Mr Andrews said he would push for distributors to pay compensation to households that were left for long periods without power.
TELLING observations of VIC / SA demand during the peak of the energy meltdown on Sunday 28th at 15:30…
I captured the generation chart at at 15.30 Sunday. Victoria not meeting demand… Note: SA pumping out 199MW of Diesel Gen, Battery useless at 1MW…! pic.twitter.com/rEvwE1R8uQ
— tomfoolery2007 blocked by @climatecouncil Flannery (@climatecancel) January 28, 2018
“PEEL away a few layers of this little onion and all that’s left is a ‘business’ model wholly dependent upon mandates, renewable energy certificates, production tax credits and fines on retailers for refusing to tolerate the chaos delivered by wind and solar power.
In Australia the direct and immediate cost of subsidies to wind and solar power outfits will exceed $60 billion over the life of the Federal government’s Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target. Largesse that has left Australia with among the highest retail power prices in the world (wind powered South Australia, tops the list).
No other industry in Australia’s history has enjoyed subsidies on that scale, ever.”
No but, yeah but these things is well cheap to run, except ya gotta keep them subsidies comin’ cos’ choppin’ em will send us broke and all.
Way back in 1984, wind cultist Christopher Flavin’s told us that “in a few years’ time wind energy will not need to be subsidised.” 34 years on, the subsidies just keep on flowing and, without those subsidies, the so called wind ‘industry’ would disappear like a snowflake in summer.
No matter where they ply their trade, the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers will never be accused of running a consistent theme when it comes to wind power’s (supposed) ability to compete with conventional generation sources.
Whenever the political brains trust start challenging the true and hidden costs of wind power to their constituents, these boys start babbling about the wonders of wind being “free”; their “technology constantly improving”; their costs coming down…
MORE than 437,000[Climatism correction. See below ‘Update’] homes across Victoria are without power.
The number has skyrocketed since about 6.15pm amid oppressive heat and humidity.
The tally just before 9pm stood at 37,585, which included Citipower, Powercor and United customers, plus figures from AusNet.
Melbourne’s west has been hit hard, with homes in Sunshine, Seddon, St Albans and Altona North affected.
The outages stretch from Truganina and Hoppers Crossing down to the suburbs surrounding inner Geelong.
The Bellarine Peninsula is one of the hardest hit by outages, with more than 15,000 households in the beachside towns of Ocean Grove, St Leonards, Indented Head, Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff left sweating in the heat.
A Citipower spokeswoman said 35,000 customers across the supplier’s three networks were without power as of 8pm.
It’s sparked outcry among customers, who have taken to social media to vent frustrations…
Memo to government. It’s your responsibility to provide basic services like energy to households who pay heavily for it. On days like today pedal power ain’t going to cut it.
OUR friends over at Stop These Things (STT) analyse the dire power issues faced by Victoria and South Australia whose socialist state governments have embraced the unreliable-energy ‘de-evolution’ with predictably devastating results…
Tom Koutsantonis reckons his state’s wind farms were delivering the goods for South Australians and Victorians, as well.
So, always ready to rain on Kouta’s parade, let’s drill down a little closer to see what SA’s whirling wonders were actually doing on 18 and 19 January (when South Australians needed power most).
Looking more like the profile of a terrifying Swiss ski run, that’s the entire output from SA’s wind farms on 18 January.
With a promising start, delivering almost 1,100 MW for a brief spurt, the team determined to down tools after breakfast, with a precipitous 500 MW collapse in less than 90 minutes. (To put that in perspective, Weatherill, Koutsantonis & Co have been cheering about the demolition of SA’s last coal-fired plant, which had a solid and reliably delivered capacity of 520 MW.)
Thereafter, output collapses 650 MW – from 700MW to 50 MW – over the course of the afternoon; precisely as demand for power peaked.
Weatherill, Koutsantonis and their wind worshipping cronies keep pointing to his $150 million mega-battery as some kind of miraculous saviour. Maths is clearly not among their strongest points. 100 MW (the notional capacity of the battery) fits five times into the margin of the first collapse, and 6½ times into the final post-lunch collapse on 18 January.
Here’s their combined effort on the following day, 19 January:
Having put in an almost respectable effort before morning tea – topping out at 1,000 MW – again, as the day warmed up and power demand surged, output plummets: a full 700 MW – from 1,000 MW to 300 MW – by mid-afternoon, where it bobbed along until 6pm.
At $150 million to get 100 MW worth of Tesla’s battery storage (said by its boosters to deliver 129 MWh), the cost of tooling up to accommodate 700-1,000 MW wind power output collapses every other day would pretty soon add up to $billions.
As pointed out by The Australian, the yawning gaps in SA’s wind power output weren’t back-filled by wind power lovingly stored in Musk’s Marvel, but by the trusty and reliable coal-fired plants still merrily chugging away in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. But that fact wouldn’t fit their narrative now, would it?
With a deranged and delusional leadership in charge, South Australians can look forward to rocketing power prices and rolling blackouts for years to come.
EXPECT more skyrocketing electricity prices, blackouts and load-shedding as Australia’s virtue-signalling, climate theory-obsessed politicians continue their jihad against what was Australia’s once proud boast – cheap, reliable, efficient baseload power.
THE latest attack on Australia’s energy security as noted on my twitter feed…
South Australia blows up cheap electricity, jobs, wealth, in ideological anti-coal quest
Today the South Australian government destroyed the smoke stack of the Playford B Plant, one more part of what’s left of the cheapest base-load electricity generators in the state.
For about $8 million a year over three years, they could have kept some coal power going and wouldn’t have needed to spend $400 million on emergency diesel generators they don’t want to use, and over $100 million on a battery that can supply 4% of the state for one hour. They also would’ve paid less than $120 million for two days of electricity last week.
On the upside, they can feel good and pretend to be “world leaders”. Virtue signalling is expensive, eh?
….
The plant employed 185 people, the coal mine 200. Other businesses in the town, who knows? People are leaving.
SA, a star in the race away from being a competitive, powerhouse rich state. Creating wealth and jobs in China.
The concrete and brick structure at the 240MW Playford B power station, named after long-serving South Australian premier Sir Thomas Playford and mothballed in 2012, leaves only the 200-metre high stack at the nearby Northern power station standing in Port Augusta, 280km north of Adelaide.
That is expected to be demolished in April or May as part of a decommissioning process undertaken by Flinders Power, an offshoot of former power station operator Alinta Energy.
Before announcing the closure of Northern in mid-2015, Alinta unsuccessfully sought $25 million in subsidies over three years from the South Australian Labor government to keep it operating until this year, to ensure an effective transition occurred, after a rapid rise in renewable energy made it unviable.
However, the Weatherill government, which is ideologically opposed to coal, rejected the offer.
It’s wrecking the town too:
Locals in Port Augusta this week expressed frustration…
Deirdre McKerlie, who works at KD’s Hair Flair, told The Australian that not having a transition plan was “just stupid”. She said Port Augusta hit “rock bottom”, with many businesses unviable and residents moving away.
Premier Jay Weatherill said “Port Augusta is a symbol of South Australia’s transition from old to new…”
Exactly our point.
The boilers were blown up in November.
The rest will be demolished in April or May. SA, living standards thereafter.
This ETSA PR film from 1954 may be of interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMKPz-kVgcc
Shows the opening of Playford A power station, the first of three powered by Lee Creek coal.
Tom Playford himself appears briefly in the film.
A brief history of the complex is here.
“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences” – Robert Louis Stevenson
•••
UPDATE
Jo Nova on the “secret” air conditioners that one power company (Ausnet) is blaming for Melbourne’s blackout…
Melbourne: 42,000 homes in dark, no fans left at Kmart. Power outages due to “secret” air conditioners?
Melbourne Skyline at night…Image: Alfred Glickman
The temperature reached 38C in Melbourne (100F) on Sunday — something it has probably done most summers since 10,000BC.
CitiPower, Powercor and the United Energy spokeswoman Emma Tyner said that as of 9.25pm, about 41,190 homes were without power across those three networks. – Sydney Morning Herald
Now why would that be? Ms Tyner puts a lack of supply in the nicest possible way:
“The extreme heat has significantly increased electricity use and this has resulted in localised power outages,” Ms Tyner said.
It’s not that governments didn’t plan energy policy — it’s the users who wanted too much (i.e your fault.) Though Victorians used to use more power than this. On Sunday, peak electricity demand was 9,124MW, about 13% less than the all time peak of 10,496MW in 2009. (In case you are wondering, Hazelwood (now closed) produced 1600MW or about 25% of Victorian baseload power.)
Mr Armstrong from Ausnet Services (another power company) blamed unreported air conditioners:
“There are a lot fuses blowing in the hot weather and a significant power pull with people having put in air-conditioners they didn’t tell us about,” Mr Armstrong said. — The Age
Who knew you needed to tell your power company when you put in an air conditioner?
Gone are the days when people could willy-nilly run down to Retrovision and just buy an air con.
Ms Tyner and Mr Armstrong may have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. Perhaps they will get quiet reeducation tomorrow on how to phrase the cause of blackouts. (Aren’t they due to old coal turbines breaking?)
Next, expect people to start saying how normal it is to have blackouts on hot days. “It’s just a part of life.”
If only the same people would say that about hot days.
You know things are serious when Kmart runs out of fans.
A Kmart in Northcote on Sunday was completely sold out of all cooling devices, from fans to air-conditioning units, its duty manager said.
So no willy-nilly fan buying either.
Tonight some people have fans, but no electricity. Others have electricity but no fans.
Welcome to Australia’s deadly game of Melbourne and Sydney blackout roulette. The stakes involve hundreds of millions of dollars of refrigerated food and the operations of thousands of factories and offices who don’t have emergency power contingencies in place.
…Victoria took longer than NSW to wake up but it too has been working hard to reduce the risk of blackouts. For the most part, both states are borrowing ideas from third world countries by getting industry and consumers to cut back on power usage when days are hot. In addition, those organisations with back up power (like phone companies) are being asked to use it so as to cut demand and, if possible, put power back into the grid. Accordingly, highly polluting diesel becomes the saviour.
Could someone teach editors what “record-breaking” means?
Last night the minimum was 22.8C in Melbourne. Tonight was forecast to be 28C. If the Bureau are right, it won’t be close to breaking the record.
THE amount of homes affected by the latest Victorian blackouts varies wildly from news org to news org. The original Herald Sun article which this post is based reported “MORE than 437,000 homes across Victoria are without power.” The article has been updated and overwritten.
Via sister paper Daily Telegraph:
HERE are a few other agencies reporting housing numbers affected:
WITHOUT a shadow of a doubt, the greatest scientific hoax ever perpetrated against mankind is that human’s modern life (including your sandwich) is causing catastrophic “climate change” or “global warming” or “climate disruption” or “climate breakdown”, depending on the day and the activist concerned.
WHEN building a product, a key element needed for its success is ’empathy’. It is vital for innovators to step into the consumers’ shoes to build relevant products. If a product addresses a pain point and offers a solution to take that pain away, then the product stands a good chance of being a hit!
THE “climate crisis” is like any other product, requiring a set of components executed efficiently and effectively so that it may thrive within the market place. Empathy has been a critical factor in the successful development of the global warming brand.
THE cuddly polar bear was initially chosen as the climate mascot, stimulating instant and long-lasting empathy for the cause.
BUT, the fluffy polar bear has its geographical limitations, and ‘inconveniently’, is far from endangered. So, a more ‘global’ phenomena has evolved to do the heavy-lifting, bringing climate calamity into every TV and iPhone on 24/7/365 rotation. “Extreme weather” was the chosen one and has been the gift that keeps on giving for “Climate Crisis Inc.” – taking advantage of any and every weather event, gobbling up the gullible in its propagandised path of eco-brainwashing.
*
EVEN though “weather” is not climate, the daily bombardment of climate disaster-porn via the mainstream media provides more than enough evidence for the casual observer to convince them that the climate is in fact changing as a direct result of human CO2 emissions.
HOWEVER, when you dive deeper into extreme weather metrics through the lens of government data and peer-reviewed science, as opposed to scary pictures and videos spewed out by the climate-obsessed fake news media, there really isn’t any data that supports the EW catastrophe meme. In fact, by most metrics, extreme weather events are becoming less extreme and less frequent as CO2 rises.
2017 seemed to be filled with bad weather news. But a deeper look at the global data suggests that attempts to link the last year’s extreme weather to climate change are highly misleading.
THIS excellent 6 minute video produced by the GWPF demonstrates precisely why – sadly – the mainstream (fake news) media, who have largely been captured by the radical environmental movement, cannot be trusted on anything climate change or global warming…
Climate Change Weather Disables US Navy’s Newest Ship!
Brand-new US Navy warship trapped in Canada amid cold and ice
Fox News
A brand-new U.S. Navy warship has not moved from Montreal since Christmas Eve and will spend the winter stuck in Canada due to cold and ice.
The USS Little Rock – unveiled in a ceremony on Dec. 16 in Buffalo, New York and attended by nearly 9,000 people – has not moved far since due to adverse weather conditions that kept the warship trapped at bay in Canada, the Toronto Star reported.
The warship known as a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) cost $440 million to build and stretches 387 feet in length and weighs 15 tons more than the Statue of Liberty. It is capable of traveling more than 46 miles per hour.
Such combat ships are described as agile and designed for rapid…
Davos It hasn’t been this bad since the 1999-2000 meeting. As President Trump might say, they could do with some of that good ol’ global warming. Then again, if you go to a Swiss ski resort in January…
The global economy and geopolitical tensions are taking a back seat to a more immediate problem at this year’s Davos summit of political and business leaders: heavy snow is burying the venue, as Reuters reports.
High in the Swiss alps on Monday, on the eve of the opening sessions, many of the roughly 3,000 delegates struggled to reach the ski resort. Part of the main train line into Davos had been buried in snow over the weekend, forcing people onto buses, and helicopters were disrupted by poor visibility.
Some pre-summit meetings were canceled or delayed as the first waves of delegates waded through snow-blanketed streets with luggage, looking for their hotels…
THE back-pedalling by climate ‘scientists’ continues as it becomes ever more obvious that their alarming projections have been deliberately exaggerated to push an agenda far removed from reality.
THE refined estimate of ECS (equilibrium climate sensitivity – the amount of warming that would occur if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled) is even more significant considering that recent emissions of CO2 have been much greater than originally assumed, according to scientists.
LATEST findings are yet another blow to the “settled science” meme…
Earth’s climate may be less sensitive to man-made emissions than previously feared, a study has found. It raises hopes that the worst predictions about global warming can be avoided.
It suggests that the target set in the Paris Agreement on climate change of limiting the average temperature increase to well below 2C is more achievable than some scientists have claimed.
Apocalyptic predictions that the world could warm by up to 6C by 2100 with devastating consequences for humanity and nature are effectively ruled out by the findings.
However, the study makes clear that steep reductions in emissions will still be needed to avoid dangerous climate change. It also concludes that the aspirational target in the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting warming to 1.5C is less likely to be achieved.
The study, published in the journal Nature, refines previous estimates of how sensitive the climate is to carbon dioxide by considering the historical variability in global temperature.
It focuses on the key measure, known as equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which is used by climate scientists to make predictions. ECS is the amount of warming that would occur if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled.
The concentration has already increased by about 50 per cent since pre-industrial times, from 270 parts per million (ppm) to 403ppm.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body which advises governments, gives a range for ECS of 1.5–4.5 degrees C. The new study narrows this range to 2.2–3.4C.
Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter and lead author of the paper, said his team had “squeezed both ends” of the range presented by the IPCC.
“We can rule out very low climate sensitivities that might imply you don’t need to do very much at all but also very high climate sensitivities that would be very difficult to adapt to.
“That’s useful because it gives policymakers and people an idea of what they have got to deal with and they can make decisions on that basis.”
Mr Cox said his study showed there was less need to worry about apocalyptic visions of the future, such as those presented in the 2007 award-winning science book Six Degrees – Our Future on a Hotter Planet, which had an image on the cover of a tidal wave breaking over Big Ben.
“The very high warming rates are looking less likely so that’s good news,” he said.
“Unless we do something bizarrely stupid, we are not looking at catastrophic climate change.
“But I wouldn’t want people to think we don’t need to act. It means that action is worthwhile. We can still stabilise the system if we choose to do so.
“We are definitely up against it but we aren’t in a position where we are talking about such large climate changes that we are just messing around on the decks of the Titanic. We know better now, I hope, from our work what we have got to do.”
He said his study showed the 2C target set in Paris was “still just about achievable” but limiting warming to 1.5C in the long term could only be achieved by “overshooting” and then somehow reducing the temperature using futuristic technology, such as artificial trees which suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Piers Forster, director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds, said the study “confirms that we will see significantly more warming and impacts this century if we don’t increase our ambition to reduce CO2 emissions; but the possibility of 6 degrees or more warming with associated devastating impacts can perhaps begin to be ruled out”.
In scanning comments generated by the recent flurry of internet interest in polar bears and blogs I noticed that a good many people, fed alarming media stories, are still convinced that polar bear numbers are declining rapidly when nothing could be further from the truth.
In some cases, the media have made a possible future problem sound like a current problem. In others, people are remembering data from 2010 or so, not realizing that the picture has changed — or they assume that a conservation status of ‘threatened’ or ‘vulnerable’ (e.g. Amstrup et al. 2007) must mean numbers are declining (because that’s true for virtually all species classified that way, except polar bears).
The sea ice situation hasn’t really improved or deteriorated since 2007 but the polar bear picture is much better: there is information on more subpopulations and studies show most are holding stable or increasing (Aars et…
The Pentagon released a National Defense Strategy that for the first time in more than a decade does not mention manmade global warming as a security threat.
An 11-page summary of the new National Defense Strategy makes no mention of “global warming” or “climate change”. The document makes no mention of “climate,” “warming,” “planet,” “sea levels” or even “temperature.” All 22 uses of the word “environment” refer to the strategic or security landscape.
The National Defense Strategy, signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis, doesn’t have much to say about energy issues, except that the U.S. would “foster a stable and secure Middle East” and “contributes to stable global energy markets and secure trade routes.”
The Pentagon released the strategy document Friday, and officials were clear that it would make no mention of global warming. The Bush administration added global warming to the defense strategy in…
.jpg)
Climatism 
Recent Comments