Australian Base Load Electrical Power – Week Ending 24th March 2018
Posted: March 25, 2018 Filed under: Australia, Fact Check, Green Energy, Renewables, Solar, Unreliables | Tags: Australia, coal, coal fired power, Electricity, Electricity grid, Energy, Energy Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Power, RET, SA Blackouts, solar, Subsidies, unreliables, wind, Wind Farms, wind power 2 CommentsSUCH an important and informative weekly piece of (hard) work! Aside from the excellent information provided on the breakdown of energy sources used to power the Australian electrical grid, the main figure in contention is highlighted in red – the percentage of coal-fired power used per day versus all other sources of generation. Not surprising that of a day, coal-fired power generates more than 75% of all energy with wind and solar only ever supplying between 5 and 20% max of intermittent, expensive, unreliable and grid destabilising ‘power’. This despite unreliable-energy states having upwards of 50% capacity installed. It’s no wonder Australia’s electricity prices are among the highest in the world. South Australia officially ‘the highest’ with the highest penetration of highly subsidised unreliables – wind, solar….and a giant battery.
By Anton Lang ~
Week 38
This is the continuing Post, where each Saturday, I will detail the power consumption for the Base Load in Australia for the previous week. This will show what is actually meant by the term Base Load, and that is the minimum daily power consumption at its lowest point. Power consumption never falls below this point.
Here in Australia, that level of power is 18,000MW. (See data for the Running Weekly Average For Base Load below)
The Bayswater Coal Fired Power Plant In New South Wales
This data I have collated below is for this last week, and is for the five States connected to the Australian grids, every State east of the Western Australian border, and here I will show that data for each of those five States, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania.
As you can see from these…
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Climatism 
Jamie,
thanks for your kind words here, and for using my Post at your site.
What I think is happening here is that we need to change the way that people think. As I mentioned in this particular Post, they think of a State as such a large thing, large in everything, size, population, and with respect to what I am attempting to get across, power consumption.
You can look at the data in isolation, on a State by State basis without getting context, and it ‘seems’ that South Australia ….. as a State, is managing to (sort of) get by with their large amount of Wind Power, and also the rooftop solar power taking a slight edge off the total power consumption from around 11AM till 3PM or so. It gives the false impression that the State itself is managing to get by with a large proportion of renewable power, even if they have that fallback of the Interconnector to Victoria, and a couple of large gas fired CCGT plants in operation at all times.
The context here is when you look at the total power consumption for the State of South Australia on any given day, and also over any given year, and it’s only 6% of the total Australian power consumption.
Sydney consumes more than TWICE the power of the whole State of South Australia.
Melbourne consumes twice the power of the whole State of South Australia.
Brisbane consumes almost twice the power of the whole State of South Australia.
South Australia consumes around 6% of the total Australian power consumption. Tasmania consumes around 5% of the total Australian power consumption,
So, just under 90% of power is consumed in the three Big States, NSW the most, Queensland now the second highest consumer, and then Victoria, and despite what the ACT says about it being 100% renewable, the ACT is connected to the NSW grid, so 75% of its own power consumption comes from coal fired power.
Most of Australian consumers require their power to be supplied for 24 hours of every day, hence the reason that the Base Load is that total of 18,000MW, when you add ALL the States together, and not just look at them in the isolation of the smallest State consumer.
Tony.
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Thanks for that Tony! More important info for all. Cheers.
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