UPDATE: MELBOURNE hospitals are enacting emergency procedures to prepare for the potential loss of power. Hospitals are switching off non-essential electrical equipment, including some lights, to minimize energy use. This is a “Code Yellow” alert asking hospitals to check their back up generators are ready. The Victorian Minister insists this is not about the “threat” of blackouts, but because hospitals need to be “good corporate citizens”. Pull the other one. At the very least, this is about reducing electricity bills. h/t Chris in Hervey Bay.
See further UPDATES on “The art of blaming coal” at the bottom.
How much fun can you have? The AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) projects that as temperatures hit 42C in Victoria, prices are forecast to rise over 100 fold. The AEMO is furiously busy issuing market notices.
The ABC tells us it is 42C, that Portland Alumina has reduced production, but for an ‘undisclosed price’ (why can’t taxpayers know what they are paying this group, not to produce aluminium today?) Meanwhile the AEMO has put the RERT plan into action: “Under the RERT scheme, AEMO has contracted 884 megawatts of “demand side response” across Victoria, NSW and South Australia.” Translated, that means the AEMO has organised 884MW of controlled blackouts to prevent the system breaking. What’s the cost!
For the next three hours Victoria is short of reserve by an eye-watering 1090MW. There is an Actual Lack of Reserve, level 1 (LOR1): “The Actual LOR1 condition is forecast to exist until 1800 hrs. The contingency capacity reserve required is 1120 MW. The minimum reserve available is 32 MW. “ South Australia has been upgraded to a LOR2 (2nd level) requiring 350MW but having only 32MW available. (Why the exact same number?). The next level up, LOR3 would mean “unexpected load shedding blackouts are likely.“
These industries would not be shutting down and prices would not be this high if Hazelwood power station was still open, last March it was producing 1,400MW at $30/MWh.
Total NEM demand is just about 30,000MW, but this is far from being a record high (which I recall as being around 35,000MW). Fossil Fuels are producing 25,000MW of the total, or 83%.
Right now, Australia’s entire East Coast wind fleet is working at 20% capacity, and producing about 700MW and falling.
Victoria:
…
SA:
…
Or you can watch the state level electricity flows. Right now SA — the leading international star of renewable energy — is getting 350MW from Victoria, which is in turn, getting 700 MW from NSW and Tasmania. Queensland is sending 1,000 MW to keep the rest of the grid alive. Look at those prices! Tasmania, through some miracle of government run markets, is paying people to take electricity during these highest peak, most valuable hours of the year, when every other generator is about to earn millions.
Go figure?
…
Apart from wasting millions of dollars, the Australian NEM might get through today just fine. But if anything goes wrong…
Australian Electricity Generation by source:
Questions for the crowd:
- What were the highest MW peak demand days for the whole NEM and individual states ever recorded?
- How much will SA energy companies pay for electricity this afternoon?
- Who will calculate the total cost for electricity, for paying people to not use it, for lost productivity, for lost opportunities (companies that wouldv’e but now won’t invest in Victoria or SA and the jobs lost)?
The art of blaming coal
In the news at the moment people are saying coal is unreliable. But in the current bipartisan hostile anti-coal government scene — who would invest in and repair old stations? The rest of the world is building new coal. Only in Australia is there a bizarre subsidy-bubble where renewables make more “sense”. (OK, sorry, obviously the UK and Germany — also bonkers. Probably Spain, Italy, Denmark too.)
TonyFromOz points out that only 3 of 49 coal units are out of action:
Australia has 16 coal fired power plants and 49 Units at those plants. Currently, just three of those Units are off line. One is Liddell Number Two, now down for more than seven Months, and I have questions whether it will ever come back on line if the plan is to close the plant down, so why would they bother fixing it back up and realistically wasting the money if they plan to close it down. Then there are two Units in Queensland down, one at Gladstone and the other at Kogan Creek.
So, that takes 1520MW out of the system. That leaves us with the total Nameplate for the remaining Units at 21500MW.
Yesterday at around 4PM, just on Peak Power time, those 46 Units were generating 20200MW. So, they were, all of them, running virtually flat out, generating at a Capacity Factor of 94%. Barring a few plants in Queensland, all of them are older than the best case hoped for lifespan of 25 years for wind plants.
UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald is blaming the failure of one coal station for the high prices yesterday: h/t Dave B
Cole Latimer — The Australian Energy Market Operator has kicked off emergency measures to protect power supply after Victoria’s Loy Yang B brown coal-fired power station failed on Thursday afternoon, sending electricity spot prices soaring.
As temperatures rose around southern Australia Loy Yang B’s generators failed at around 4pm, instantly taking around 528 megawatts of energy out of the state’s grid.
The price rises to the cap were predicted by the AEMO yesterday before Loy Yang B’s generator problem. The prices simply did what the AEMO said they would. How can this be due to coal power?
___________________________________
LATE NOTE: Explanation of AEMO Terms
LOR1 – Lack of Reserve: The safety margin is smaller than it should be, but services won’t be affected (as long as nothing breaks).
LOR2: Things are even more marginal, and services will (hopefully) not be affected. The AEMO can start bringing in diesels and “demand response” type activities. (ie. This costs real money).
LOR3: Even more serious, and load shedding is possible.
All foreseeable to any rational, technically proficient and financially literate person.
Why can’t the politicians and green blob see the obvious?
Obviously they are blinded by their own ideology.
520
There are people at the highest levels in our governments whose primary objective is to destroy the capitalist system, no matter the cost to the people.
They must be called out.
You could start anywhere, but I suggest the Hawke government’s promotion of gross abuse of their bank deregulation by Alan Bond and others in collusion with three of our “big four” banks. That was half of the Australian government’s contribution, in my view deliberate, to the crash of 1987, where they were outsmarted.
Carry through then to the willy-nilly running up of public debt. Public debt must be funded by private capital by way of taxation. Public debt is private capital already taken out of private management.
I fear that this power situation could have the capacity to crash our economy in a single day if equipment is damaged by an overload. And those who cheered the demolition of coal fired power stations would cheer again!
271
The simplest way to look at the grid is that it is missing a power station in capacity eg Hazelwood.
Government’s answer is to allow yet more power stations to turn off. Mad.
The only thing the people can do is change the government.
The unknown is that we have no confidence that anything will be different.
Without a BIG clean up of the political class and public service nothing will change.
170
Well and good, Geoff, but the sleeping partner in all of this is the bureaucracy.
How to you effectively neuter the co-conspirators?
100
We need a Trump to drain the swamp.
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Geoff
Like this only slower?
http://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=ttalk&th=1898368
20
Boy, SA and Victoria pay a dear price!
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They are canaries in the coal mine. (excuse the pun)
Unfortunely, it now maybe too late for the rest of us.
The RET, contractual requirements with the sale of NSW powder providers make it unlikely to change momentum in time for NSW to avoid the same fate.
160
A different bird analogy
The chickens are circling the roost
40
The vultures are circling the roast
20
At the rate we are deindustrializing it may be a long time before we see record peak demand again. Maybe more population than industry driven. No Toyota, no Point Henry, many data centres gone.
250
no bitcoin mining either
70
I am at Evansford, near the Waubra Wind farm and there is no movement of the turbines. So much for them bragging about coping on the last high temperature day.
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Waubra Wind Farm
Source: Output: 2% (4 of 192MW
http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy
Great eh?, wind power the Clive Palmer of electrical generation, high maintenance ugly and unproductive.
311
Forgot about this fire today at Waubra http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/5177592/massive-air-attack-helps-contain-large-grassfire-near-waubra/?cs=62
And right amongst those noble turbines oh dear.
80
“massive air attack”
Count the cost!
I have never fought a grass fire under Victorian conditioned, which are usually much worse than ours. (Because if climate) But it seems here that there may have been overkill. For the fire to have been contained to a relatively small 100 acres in a 35/40 km/h wind,, it must have been under control before the big tanker left Avalon.
I am heavily prejudiced against the excessive use of aircraft at a fire. At the forest fires in our area where I have seen aircraft in use, if three quarters of the aircraft had been left in the shed the fires would have been out much sooner at a fraction of the cost. The lads (and now lasses) love them, but nobody counts the cost, and much of the work have seen them doing was ineffective anyway.
61
My old eyes are not very good at proof reading small print. 3 typos at least!
10
All along the range at Glen Innes – all 100 odd units are non-functioning. Same for the last 3 days. Don Quixote slay these beasts.
200
I thought they slowly drove the fans to keep bearings lubricated and to impress casual observers.
101
They do normally but these are exceptional circumstances and AEMO may have said they can’t draw the power from the grid. Anyway a few days not turning shouldn’t cause any harm to the bearings and shafts, unfortunately.
101
My own plan for power needs:
I have an older pickup truck with enough parasitic load that it needs a battery tender. My tender is a plug-in style but they make solar ones. If I had a solar panel I could hook it to the tender. Then I could get a big tank of water on the hill and produce a bit of hydro power, backed with large rubber bands. Next I would need a circular horse walker to wind the bands. I already have the horse.
With all of the above, the truck should start when I need it to go to town to buy beer.
[Ref: Heath Robinson, Rube Goldberg]
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Does the horse drink to much beer on the way back from town? 🙂
70
The horse doesn’t make it to town, Will. He just walks in circles hauling one end of a pole, the other end of which is attached to a bevel gear which drives a horizontal shaft which the horse steps over each round. That system drives whatever machinery is attached to it.
20
Ted:
This is cruelty to the horse. Change to politicians – they love going around in circles, indeed it seems to come naturally.
All you have to do is make them do some useful work. While it may seem impossible at first sight, an ingeneous use of electric shocks and, if the politicians are Democrats, donning a Trump mask should have them running hard.
20
It wasn’t just the horses. I remember old Bill Redding telling me that his first job was turning a shearing machine at Bylong. The good old days, we call them.
It seems that our current crop of politicians is trying to take us back there.
20
Playing energy games with Australian businesses will only drive them offshore, what the self identifying political elites don’t realise or care about is the people that built any successful enterprise on Australian soil have a huge personal amount of ‘skin in the game’ unlike them with self voting pay rises, gold plated super, taxpayer funded entitlements, MSM protection and totally unaccountable positions of responsibility regardless of hopeless performance.
Not only does Trumps USA offer lower operating costs but the promise of continuing business friendly government initiatives, maybe stay away from California until some sanity is restored, compare Trumps USA with good people trying to get ahead here dealing with 1000’s of draconian bureaucratic departments and councils overreaching their basic separation of powers.
US state of Pennsylvania spruiks power to entice Aussie firms
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/…/us…aussie-firms/…/e874806a92c931a5ed9fa855a5b46f73
Dec 29, 2017 – @sidmaher. The state of Pennsylvania has sought to poach Australian companies with a promise of “abundant” energy, sparking renewed warnings from Australian business leaders that the nation risks losing jobs to offshore rivals unless it tackles its energy problems.
Orora CEO says cheap energy means US trumps Australia | afr.com
http://www.afr.com/business/…/electricity/orora-ceo-says-cheap-energy-means-usa-trumps-a...
Aug 10, 2017 – North America is much more promising for growth and expansion than Australia, says the CEO of $3.3b packaging giant Orora.
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Unfortunately Yonni, Trump gets no good press in Oz. I cancelled my subscription to The Australian, [the one rag you might expect to be fair] because of hopeless bias against Trump. Ergo Australians are unaware of the threat of a resurgent USA.
Can anyone say what a deindustrialised Australia would look like? We won’t become the food bowl of Asia, that needs water from dams and we don’t build them anymore.
220
Methodology
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/19/nyts-botched-hidden-climate-change-report-story-makes-trumps-top-10-fake-news-events-of-2017/#comment-2721332
20
Hanrahan
IIRC Trump is standing on the Murdoch toes hence the slant.
It is interesting to compare the latest Trump disaster headline here with the US scene.
There it has quite often been shown a beat-up before it is printed here.
So much for the latest news.
But then recall the editorial conference on the Christine Keeler item in “How to win an election or not lose by much” (Peter Sellars and Co, mid 60’s) and realise things haven’t changed much.
30
We still have some 40 acres and a mule left; for you folk that would like to immigrate, rather than invade!
50
It’s so good to see that major image there.
I fully understand that the main point of interest is the horrendous cost for that generated power in both Victoria and South Australia, but it’s wothwhile explaining some of the finer points of just what you are looking at.
Okay, I’ll just explain it for Queensland, and you can then work it out for every other State yourself.
See the total Demand. That is the power actually being consumed IN Queensland.
Generation is from Coal fired, gas fired and hydro. Add to that the Wind and Other, and the total comes in at 8174, the total generated power.
There are two Interconnectors sending power from Qld into NSW, (but only into the Northern areas of NSW) and add those two together, plus what is being consumed in Qld, and that total comes to 8174, so generated power is equal to Demand. (what is consumed)
Southern NSW is supplying power into Victoria, as is the Tasmanian Hydro via Basslink.
Because Victoria is getting power from Tasmania and NSW, that enables Victoria to supply into South Australia.
So, it’s never a case of Qld supplying Victoria, Tasmania or SouthAus, and vice versa. The generated power can only be transmitted so far because of the inheerent losses associated with distance.
Add up total Demand for all States, and the total comes in at 30106MW.
Wind and Other comes in at 866MW, which is 2.9% of all required power.
Hydro is delivering 15.6%
Gas fired is delivering 21.6%
Coal fired power is delivering the rest, 60%, the bulk of the power, when so much is being required.
Now, the other question I see might be why Tasmania is at a minus figure. That cost is averaged, the cost of power actually being generated, and the price being paid for that by Victoria.
Tony.
372
What really cheeses me off is the claim by Freydenberg and Co that they are managing the power supply and that we have enough. What these miserable creatures do not tell the public is how many users of electricity have been forced out of business by high power prices. Back home in the Hunter Valley a few weeks ago there was the Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter sitting idle; closed because of high power prices. There were hundreds of acres of lucerne wilting in the heat when a few years back irrigation would have them lush. When I was irrigating ten years ago I was paying 5.9c/kWh for controlled load, now it is 20 to 24c/kWh. When will these brain dead frauds admit that the only reason their grid is surviving is because so many cannot afford to use the power? When will they tell us how much revenue, productivity and how many jobs have been lost due to their stupid policies? When will the populace wake up to the fact they have been lied to and deceived by these dimwits? Angry? you bet.
160
Lawrie, they call it Economic Rationalism.
You and I know there is nothing rational about it!
30
I think most people don’t realise that the only two things keeping the grid working is the large amount of power liberated by Australian businesses shutting down due to high power prices (as well as high taxes, over regulation and feral unions) as well as the quietly installed diesel generators. Diesel costs about 45 times more per unit of energy than coal.
00
In just now from the Herald Sun.
200
Queue pitchforks and torches…..
60
Thank you Chris! Posted.
60
Jo,
Slightly off-topic but while ABC TV has been highlighting the record-breaking heatwave in SE Australia without ANY mention of the electricity supply crisis you have posted, the ABC have paraded a series of climate “experts” to report that 2017 was one of the hottest years EVER and that it is all due to human CO2 emissions. No El Nino in 2017 so there is no doubt that it is human caused, they said.
If you go to the NOAA climate site and adjust the graph to analyse for 2016 and 2017 and re-plot for all months, guess what happens? There is a clear cooling trend through all of 2017 and the overall trend for 2016-2017 is -1.26 degrees. At that rate we are headed for an ice-age in a couple of decades. Someone tell the ABC. Head for the caves!
271
And they played it all on SBS too.
Did you happen to see the half page ad from The Climate Study Group in the Australian today? Page 5.
REALLY DANGEROUS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
THE NEXT ICE AGE
Worth a read.
90
“…ABC TV has been highlighting the record-breaking heatwave in SE Australia…”
Hold on, there have been no record-breaking heatwaves in SE Australia. There were some high days, 39C, 40C, but none record breaking. And not even for 5 days, which are meant to be the threshold for a heat wave. I have lived here for many years and used to jog around Lake Burley Griffin when it was 43C.
Yet another example of the ABC shamelessly promoting the climate change fraud for personal importance and profit.
00
One only hearts such announcements in third world countries, and not all of them these days. Australia is certainly trying its best to go backwards instead of froward like other countries who are building new cola fired power plants like there is no tomorrow.
80
An observation today on my rounds, a Fairfax press rural Victorian factory had two shipping container sized diesel powered generators running complete with black exhaust smoke.
Oh the shame of it!
260
Did you take a photograph?
112
I will next time as I’ve seen them running a few times, for one of the major spreaders of rabid anti CO2 climatology the hypocrisy is palpable.
121
Up in Wendouree?
30
What time was that Yonnie?
See Jo’s first graph above. The AEMO was predicting catastophic conditions on the Victorian power grid from 2-6pm. In the end it was not as bad as predicted. My train worked and brought me home and I can still use my airconditioner. But how did it happen?
I posted this today on an earlier thread.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/01/how-facebook-youtube-twitter-and-google-silence-and-crush-non-left-dissent/#comment-1975448
In the end the result was not as bad as predicted but I think that a lot of strings were pulled in the background. For instance was the Portland smelter shuttered? If so what what the economic cost of that?
Did the bballarat Fairfax diesel generators start up to help avert the crisis?
80
Yes Rob in Wendouree, Peter C I’ve seen these generators running in colder months in passing by, they’re either starting them up for maintenance checks or use them part time to claim fuel use for taxation purposes?
Sorry for delayed replies as I’m automatically moderated ATM.
61
As the Hunchback of Spring st demands hospitals to curb power usage (sick people don’t factor to Marxists) I’ll guarantee state parliament, councils and their ABC will have aircon running flat out in the ivory towers of Victoriastan,.
131
Here, across the ditch, in the developed world, we have standby generators in all the hospitals, just in case a surgeon needs to see which end of the scalpel is holding the sharp bit.
60
Having them gets great bonus points for flag waving.
But do they test to see if they’ll start as needed?
Somewhere recently I read a comment on such and the punch line was “the battery was flat”
40
Recently our hospitals power supply was cut off due to a storm and the backup generators kicked in and all was good until the fuel ran out then it was battery back up for a while till they went flat and then the only power in the place was the exit sign lights but because it was in the wee small hours of the morning all doors were on auto lock .
70
Hi Jo,
Heres a file from 2014 from the French Embassy in Germany ( of all things…) showing a Siemens approach to use of PEM membrane tech to generate hydrogen and *use of coal power* into the bargain.
https://www.wissenschaft-frankreich.de/de/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/3_Hotellier_Siemens_online.pdf
Could be a useful resource?
It showed a pragmatic approach, which was good.
60
OriginalSteve:
Fine but nowhere is the % efficiency mentioned (that I can see). I have been told that it approaches 50% but that was Peter in The Australian comments section, and he just makes up his figures. Even assuming he is right, what is the hydrogen going to cost? If you are putting in 2 units of costly “renewables” electricity then it would be twice (and a bit) costly if you reconverted it to electricity.
Rather stuffs the idea of cheap storage.
Burning it as fuel is a crap idea, firstly because its calorific value isn’t that high. It has a wide explosive range so you are constrained in how you convert it. In a Internal Combustion Engine it has an octane rating of 66 – teach you car how to do the rhumba! Yes, you could use a fuel cell but then you need oxygen as well.
Piping it into homes in place of natural gas would be a lethal mistake. Hydrogen is prone to leaking, even through some metals. Its low energy density means that cities would have to replace gas pipes with others of about 3 times the diameter. It is also colourless and odourless – did I mention its explosive behaviour when mixed 6% to 70+% in air and any spark or flame?
Then there is a sort of suggestion that it could be used to convert CO2 back to some useful chemical. This idea comes up regularly among University Departments looking for grants, and they may well get some as the average bureaucrat is ignorant of thermodynamics. To get around the huge energy requirements (if not glossed over) it is occasionally hinted that solar heat can be used. This also works as the average bureaucrat knows that concentrated sunlight is very hot, and knows nothing about the scale that would have to be used.
And then there is the LITTLE matter of the cost of implimenting this “SOLUTION” for intermittent and variable electricity generation. I would make a suggestion how to avoid that problem, but our rulers aren’t listening.
120
Interesting thoughts, i guess i dropped the pdf on the table for general perusal and maybe help understand the european mindset over this stuff a bit.
The PEM membrane tech looks interesting, maybe sonething useful might come of it.
10
I have seen a hydrogen gas cylinder explode. It wasn’t one of my better experiences.
50
Once again, the good ol’ boys and their amigos in the Middle East, South Korea and Singapore would like to thank the friendly folk of Southern Australia for their continued patronage. Shucks, y’all don’t wanna be payin’ no 14 thousand dollars for no lousy MWh. Don’t just put diesel in your Landcruiser…put it in your grid!
Y’all come back now. And stay green!
190
Those diesel burning turbines have ben running today, and burning about $300 worth of diesel for every MWh generated. A high cost but Weatherill will spend lots of other people’s money to avoid blackouts brought on by his own incompetence.
He may still get back with support from Xenophon, who looks likely to pick up some Liberal held seats thanks to almost universal disinterest in the Liberal party platform. “Vote for Us and nothing will change” isn’t IMHO a winning strategy.
190
Cheap power at the price! Check out the AEMO graph that Jo displays at the top of her post. Victoria will pay $14,000/MWhr. Who would not start up their diesel generator to get some of that money?
70
Are there any stats on how many generators we import? We couldn’t make them here, power is too expensive, 🙁
90
We used to. As was our relic Southern Cross 32 volt one and our relic EMF welding generator
30
Rumour hath it that selling and installing gen sets are the star growth industries in SA
30
I guess selling diesel would be up there too
30
Posted this in the last thread but wondering what it meant .
Issued by Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd at 1500 hrs on 19 January 2018
CANCELLATION – ACTUAL NEGATIVE SETTLEMENT RESIDUES – VIC to SA – 19 January 2018.
Refer to market notice: 60848
AEMO has ceased taking action to minimize the further accumulation of negative settlement residues on the VIC to SA directional interconnector.
The negative residue constraint NRM_VIC1_SA1 ceased operating at 1500 hrs on 19 January 2018.
This is an AEMO autogenerated Market Notice.
20
These massive price spikes can be attributed to the following coal fired power stations :
Hazelwood
Whatever coal fired power stations SA had and blew up .
120
“Only in Australia is there a bizarre subsidy-bubble where renewables make more “sense””. Sorry, but the UK is another country that has the same bizarre-subsidy bubble, as coal-fired power stations are forced to close.
170
Phillip:
What we need is a conference of all your Energy policy people and ours at some suitable location. I suggest Atlantis.
100
Atlantis may be a possibility in about 5,000 years when the ice fields thicken up a bit and the seas fall towards the next low tide.
60
KK:
I was thinking they should be dumped there THIS YEAR. I suppose the idea is impractical as there would be an outcry about polluting the oceans.
60
Not so far off! OTOH Can someone find reference to the measured STATE of oceanic CO2 @ 2Km depth? Temp 275K Pressure 200 Atmospheres! If a near solid it is more dense than water. 1.6 kg/l! Is it dissolved? Does it float? Such would expand 1000x released into the atmosphere, with the absorption of latent heat freezing ever-ting\body!! Just what is at the bottom (10km) of the Marianas trench? What does Earth’s precious CO2 actually do? I is so sorry! I know; should wait for weekend stuff! 🙂
70
BTW CO2 goes liquid at room temperature and 25 atmospheres with vaporization enthalpy near 10kJ/mole. 50Kg will keep your beer cold for ever\many years! 🙂
30
Phillip, fair point. I’ve updated the post. That was unfair of me.
40
Thank you Joanne!
10
O/T but not too far
“Sponsored Poetry: The Latest UN Initiative to Make Us Act on Climate Change”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/18/sponsored-poetry-the-latest-un-initiative-to-make-us-act-on-climate-change/
Jo – what about entering a Ruarui collection?
60
Yes, nothing mote deadly than Vogon poetry…..
Poetry will sway us…rrriiiggghhtttt…
Where do they find these people? Maybe the fairy garden was full and they had to keep the excess bodies busy somehow…..
30
Government directed poetry*
in the Leninist Acadamy,
Lysenkoism in The Humanities.
Will pre-modernist poets be
treated much more negatively,
censored on campus,
imprisoned or gulagged maybe?
*Will Lysenko poetry be the
fourth worst in the universe?
40
You could easily set that to a great rap tune…… 🙂
20
Original Steve, It would need a coupla’ lines inserted
to belt out a rhythm )
10
I think its pretty good as is…pity we dont know anyone who could write some rap to show the CAGW nonsense for what it is….
The gummint will hand out its dime to sponsor plays called “kill the deniers..”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/act-government-donates–to-kill-climate-deniers-project/news-story/1dc34e7614ced0ca80939889403b6541
10
Re yr link:
Part of the totalitarian mind-set,
– not critical argument but hostage taking.
There,fixed!
20
Hey! dey gots Lysenko; we gots Ruarui! No match at all! 🙂
60
Urgent message for Australian politicians – being static about building more coal and gas power plants (never-mind the thought of going nuclear that is liable to cause them collective dizzy spells) does not generate energy. No, not even static electricity.
Renewables are totally incapable of producing Australia’s 24/7/365 power demands, even if politicians reversed their greens-driven no new dams policies.
150
True to form, not a sniff of this debacle from the MSM propaganda meisters anywhere internationally. As Tony has said many a time, just pull the plug on the coal fired base load maintainers and watch the Green ideology unravel.
And so it begins.
110
Reneweconomy’s NEM Watch shows it well.
30
That main image shows Total Demand at 30106MW, and that was not even Peak Demand, as it finally reached 31510MW at around 4.30PM to 5PM. Coal fired power at that time was delivering 19600MW, so 62%, while gas fired power took that percentage of CO2 emitting fossil fuelled plants up to 83% of the requirement, with wind power delivering 3.2% of that power.
Dear old South Australia, which places so much pride in its Wind Power had that wind power supplying 4.3% of that State’s requirement, so with gas fired power and both interconnectors tapped out on Victorian coal fired power, that meant that CO2 emitting fossil fuels were supplying 95.7% of South Australia’s power.
The irony. How it must burn!
Tony.
350
Love your in-depth analysis, Tony.
What contribution does Weatherill’s diesel generation frantic grasp contribute? Fuel for SA diesel generators is all imported and transported by diesel (trucks or trains) pathways that may pass over underground coal energy supplies.
Global madness at work!
170
Indirect use of coal fired power doesn’t count in politics.
Only appearances count and a turning wind renewable speaks a thousand words even if it is in maintenance mode and being driven by coal fired electricity until the next breeze arrives with the Sun tomorrow.
KK
90
Tony
http://pickeringpost.com/story/-south-australia-about-to-be-historically-and-energetically-hammered/7919
BTW your Qld report may have another run
50
Pickering makes a good pount here:
“Labor’s South Australia is now quiet, like before a major storm, a heat storm, that will rain only old and young dead bodies.
But all nations have their South Australia’s… and the most poverty stricken US States have their Labor (Democratic) Governments too.
The consistency when related to poverty indices is uncanny.
Ideological socialism is supposed to aid the poor yet the statistics are clear… if you live in a Labor (or Democratic) governed State like California, Washington or South Australia, then prepare to be poor…..”
80
Prepare to stay poor! Your children, no mater how skilled they may become, shall remain even more poor! 🙁
40
Batteries Rupture At ‘Green’ Royal Adelaide Hospital
https://news22741224.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/batteries-rupture-at-green-royal-adelaide-hospital/
Four giant batteries installed inside the new $2.4 billion Royal Adelaide Hospital to help the facility meet the Weatherill government’s strict low-emission targets have ruptured without warning, spilling 80 litres of sulphuric acid.
The building, which spans the equivalent of three city blocks, has a four-star green rating.
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How Green is that!
They spilled 80 litres of corrosive toxic sulphuric acid out of its container.
Did it get into the drains?
90
You’d think they’d engineer a correct amount of bunting for a possible maximum spillage of battery capacity, but now Musk is considered an environmental demigod………
40
Yonnie
In the sense of containing the word is bunding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunding
Bunting is decorations like flags etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunting_(textile)
So, in the sense of South Australia you are no doubt right that there was an approved amount at the grand opening ceremony
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Yes I saw the mistake damn auto correct 🙂
Freudian slip perhaps?
30
Ill bet the drains are clean…..
40
That is despicable. Weatherdill and his daffydills will have blood on there hangs.
61
Interesting that the MSM want to decry a coal fired generator that goes offline, but nary a mention of regular and sudden collapse of wind power! And the fact that they basically never reach full capacity!
Something I haven’t heard elsewhere, but over the local radio today, was a mention that the AEMO had instructed 3 gas fired generators be taken out of mothball, and fired up to provide energy security. Apparently one of those was in SA, and one in Vic. I think the other was in NSW.
Anyone else have any info on this news piece?
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At six pm weather zone are saying SA didn’t have to use their gen sets .
60
Thats odd…?
The nem log clearly shows SA ‘s diesel generation starting up at around midday and running all afternoon up to 9 pm
Similar to yesterday also
120
Can you explain how to read those tables?
00
If you use the “”Stations” tab, it will come up as an easy to read graph
10
Example for SA
10
Yet Anero.id lists the SA diesels SATGN1 & SATGS1 but shows zero generation?
00
Yes, seems like they ran every other diesel generator except those portables. ?
10
Example..
00
I guess the “image” function doesnt work…
….or i dont know how ?
00
Scientific Co-ordinator Speaks
‘Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist with the bureau, said the heatwave was “significant but not in an overwhelming sense”, and may be notable more for its duration than intensity.
‘By contrast, the intense heat event last February – that forced NSW to curtail electricity demand to stabilise the power grid – will likely feature in the full State of the Climate report being compiled by the World Meteorological Organisation when it is released in March, said Dr Trewin, speaking in his capacity as scientific co-ordinator of the global review.’
SMH
40
There is a certain irony to blame an issue at a coal fired plant for the power supply issues when if the government hadn’t chosen to shut down coal fired plants there would be no power supply issues. Unfortunately in Victoria and South Australia the lunatics are running the asylum.
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I wonder how much power would be saved if all public service and parliamentary offices turned off their air conditioners. With the new improved smart meters power could be shut down in all green voting electorates to save power and inflict a dose of karma.
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Orwell is the only word that comes to mind…read all:
19 Jan: RenewEconomy: Coal unit trips in heatwave as Tesla big battery cashes in
By Sophie Vorrath; RenewEconomy editor Giles Parkinson contributed to this story
The vulnerability of Australia’s ageing and increasingly intermittent coal fleet was highlighted again on Thursday, when a unit of the newly purchased Loy Yang B brown coal generator in the Latrobe Valley failed in the midst of another heatwave, sending prices soaring…
http://reneweconomy.com.au/coal-unit-trips-in-heatwave-as-tesla-big-battery-cashes-in-85623/
19 Jan: RenewEconomy: Frydenberg slapped down on Twitter after ignoring coal failure
By Sophie Vorrath
While much of the social media conversation around yesterday’s eye-watering NEM prices focused on the fact that a unit at the newly purchase Victorian coal power plant, Loy Yang B, had tripped and failed just when it was needed the most, Frydenberg opted for a bit of political point scoring, with the Tweet below…TWEET
Here is a list of comments tweeted in response to the Minister, including from energy market experts, analysts and players …
http://reneweconomy.com.au/frydenberg-slapped-down-on-twitter-after-ignoring-coal-failure-50351/
20
Interstingly, when the price of oil world wide starts to drop, in places like Nigera, “terrorist” attacks by the local warlords cut oil production just at that moment and seem to force the price up again….
Coincidence?
Maybe the ACCC should investigate if it becomes too common an occurrence.
20
The ignorance of the media reporting is amazing. We hear that “the Loy Yang B coal-fired generating station failed” or that a “unit at Loy Yang B tripped”. Your average media consumer interprets this as “an entire coal-fired station failed”, reinforcing their media-encouraged antipathy to coal-fired generation. Presumably a circuit breaker tripped, disconnecting the station from the grid, which is a scenario that could happen at any station, regardless of the generation technology.
20
19 Jan: Reuters: Heatwave tests Australia’s power grid
Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Joseph Radford
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which runs the national electricity market, expected a decline in reserves in the states of Victoria and South Australia on Friday afternoon, but no disruption to supply.
It asked generators that feed power into the grid to be on standby to supply extra power in those states.
Forecast wholesale spot power prices for dispatch on Friday afternoon in South Australia and Victoria have spiked to the capped level of A$14,200 ($11,366) per megawatt hour (MWh), AEMO said on its website…
Alcoa, one of the biggest electricity users in Victoria, is one of several industrial customers asked by AEMO to go on standby to reduce electricity demand if necessary on Friday afternoon.
“If managed appropriately Portland smelter can be safely curtailed for short time periods (up to one hour) to provide much needed capacity during peak demand periods,” Alcoa said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Nyrstar, operator of the world’s biggest lead refinery at Port Pirie in South Australia said it was running as usual.
BHP declined to comment on whether its operations could be impacted.
https://www.reuters.com/article/australia-power/heatwave-tests-australias-power-grid-idUSL3N1PE1JG
20
Forget the statistics, costs, etc, etc.
The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop.
100
In the absence of El Nino world temperatures have remained high. Do we have an answer to counter this anomaly?
20
Here’s your answer el gordo:
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/01/2017-fakest-year-on-record-at-nasa-and-noaa/
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We still have to contend with this, Spencer is an honest broker.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_December_2017_v6.jpg
Temperatures have to fall below the line and stay there, otherwise the denialati will slowly disband and infiltrate the lukewarmers.
00
el gordo Jan 20,18 at 10:36 am
I cannot disagree more! Dr. Spencer has never used any science in his spouting! He has never discussed with the designer\fabricator of the NASA instrumentation what such instruments are attempting to measure; and the actual limitations of such measurement. All has been about fantasy temperature at fantasy locations.
Please attempt to define the concept of temperature in any scientific terms. Easy to measure; impossible to define. All is the same political SCAM! drroyspencer.com
All academic governmental bribes in attempt to maliciously disorient skilled citizens!
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What about CET?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/hadcet_graph_ylybars_uptodate1.gif
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As I said, Easy to measure; impossible to define. Different matter has different expansion rates when storing power. Claim of absolute zero ‘temperature’ has been abandoned as such is characterized only as a logarithmic asymptote. Can you provide some non circular definition of ‘temperature’? Your temperature anomaly is even more ‘anomalous nonsense’! Is it anything other statistical noise? In what way? 🙁
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The skilled citizens are those that can pick up a piece of unknown metal and still beat it, with crude hammer into desired shape! College graduates though eager to do; have been brainwashed by professors that have no skill!
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They have ignored the words of Popper on falsification and must ultimately pay the price.
You may find this interesting, the El Nino pulse is no longer an enigma.
http://climatechangedispatch.com/further-proof-el-ninos-are-fueled-by-deep-sea-geological-heat-flow/
30
They keep claiming water, now 700°C water at the bottom of the Marianas! Why?
00
19 Jan: Australian: Heatwave puts pressure on national electricity grid
by Luke Griffiths, Adelaide
A heatwave gripping southern Australia has put so much strain on the national power grid, some Victorian hospitals have been forced to issue a “Code Yellow” alert amid fears of blackouts.
Victoria’s Department of Health has warned all Melbourne hospitals to check their emergency generators are working in case they lose power this afternoon to ensure the safety of patients and staff.
A Department spokesman confirmed all Melbourne hospitals were asked to check emergency and back-up power supplies, in case there was a power outage.
Some hospitals were forced to issue a “Code Yellow” alert, which means that health services may be required to conserve energy by turning off non-essential lights and equipment…
Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital has powered down lights in the corridors and turned off non-essential electrical equipment in a bid to conserve energy.
More than 1,900 homes and businesses remain without power in Adeliade tonight as blackouts hit late this afternoon, however a spokeswoman for SA Health said regular testing of back-up hospital systems was standard procedure and no specific memo was issued this week.
It comes as a number of Victorian and South Australian companies are being paid to reduce their energy consumption this afternoon as soaring temperatures put extreme pressure on the national electricity market.
An AEMO spokesman confirmed that its “demand response” measures had been enacted in Victoria and South Australia, a process that sees companies such as Bluescope Steel and Visy enter into agreements to use less power in an effort to secure the wider electricity grid.
AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman said today’s extreme weather conditions have been planned for, with a focus on ensuring an “operating buffer” to manage unforeseen incidents across the system.
“We now have a range of dispatchable resources that can be used to strategically support the market as required, including battery storage, diesel generation and demand resources,” she said.
Nathan Vass from the Australian Power Project said micromanagement of the electricity market was far from ideal.
“But it will become all too common if governments and regulators fail to acknowledge that new baseload generators need to be built to replace ageing assets,” he told The Australian…
“My view is we need to replace like-for-like, and new high efficiency low emission power stations would ensure lower average wholesale power prices, reduce the need for big industrial users to cut production, and help meet emissions goals.”
Earlier today, Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said there needed got to be “sufficient security of supply, dispatchability power, power on demand that can meet these very hot summer days.”
The Institute of Public Affairs’ Daniel Wild said “the reason why so many people can escape the blistering heat today with air-conditioning is coal and gas”.
“Governments should be technologically-neutral when it comes to energy generation. But they have consistently subsided wind at the expense of coal, resulting in high prices and less reliable energy supply,” he said.
South Australian Energy Minister said the state-owned diesel generator “can step in quickly and respond within minutes and we have a battery that can step in within seconds” if required.
“The Tesla battery has been dispatched dozens of times so far this summer to stabilise the national grid, and was used recently by the national operator to stabilise Victoria’s grid when a major coal-fired power station went offline,” he said.
“In fact, so far this summer there have been fewer lack of reserve warnings for South Australia than for either NSW or Victoria – which means our power supply has been more reliable than the coal-reliant grids in the eastern states.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/heatwave-puts-pressure-on-national-electricity-grid/news-story/ef9ebbd91d8fb5758be25ff646e63fb7
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finally, it’s incredible all this intentional chaos in the energy sector is allegedly a necessary response to manmade global warming.
in honour of CRI/UEA’s Dr. David Viner quote: “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”:
18 Jan: NBC15: Snowfall blankets all 50 states
MADISON, Wis. (WMTV)— Wisconsin isn’t alone when it comes to the cold and snow. The latest blast of wintry weather brought accumulations as far south as the Gulf Coast! Wednesday morning started off with snow cover in all 50 states and 52.3 percent of the country covered in the white stuff.
To have snow on the ground in all 50 states at the same time, is a fairly rare feat. The last time all 50 states had snowfall on the ground at the same time was on February 12th, 2010…
This season has already featured three snowfall events in northern Florida!
http://www.nbc15.com/content/news/Snowfall-blankets-all-50-states-469826403.html
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plus a bed-time story:
18 Jan: TBO: Tampa Bay record lows burst pipes, threaten berry and fish farms
By Josh Solomon and Tony Marrero, Times Staff Writers; Times staff writers Sara DiNatale and Megan Reeves contributed to this report
In winters past, when they ran the irrigation system at Parkesdale Farms to preserve the berry crop in a protective shell of ice, the icicles measured inches.
But on Wednesday night, one of the coldest nights in years, the icicles hung more than a foot long…
The mercury there dropped to 22 degrees, Parke said. There were record lows across the Tampa Bay region as residents battled to save crops of fish and plants, deal with burst pipes and power blackouts and, in one extreme case, a patch of black ice that sent a BMW skidding on the Veterans Expressway…
For the first time in recorded history at St. Petersburg’s Albert Whitted Airport, it froze.
The thermometer there bottomed out at 32 degrees Thursday morning, cracking the 1959 record of 33 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
Record lows were set all over the region: Plant City’s 22 degrees broke the 1977 record of 24; Ruskin’s 27 degrees broke the 1977 and 1981 record of 29; at St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport, it dropped to 31, the lowest in two decades.
The temperature at Tampa International Airport tied a record low of 29 degrees, which was reached back in 1965, 1977 and 1981. And Brooksville tied its 2003 record low of 23 degrees…
The normal low this time of year is 51 degrees, according to 10Weather WTSP, and the normal high is 70…
In Hernando, fearing for the future of farms
The temperature gauge at JG Ranch off Wiscon Road in Hernando County read 21 degrees at 7 a.m. Owner George Casey said it felt even colder.
The recent cold snaps are “not normal in any way” for Hernando farms, he said, and the effects of the colder-than-normal weather have been dire.
“This is the coldest I have seen it in years, and it has affected us very dramatically,” said Casey, 76, who has farmed most of his life. “This weather really sets us on our heels and has hit the entire industry hard.”
His strawberries looked fine Thursday morning, encased in a quarter-inch of ice. But it’s been so cold his plants have stopped growing new berries. That could lead to a two- to three-week shortage before production recovers.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any farmers making money this year,” Casey said. “And the question is: Are there any financiers ready to finance them next year?”…
Fish farmers fear worst for their stocks
Florida’s fish farmers scrambled to cover their ponds with plastic to protect them from the deadly chill.
Many expect their fish to perish anyway.
Aquaculture — the growing of fish, plants and other underwater species — is a roughly $70 million industry in Florida. Between the earlier cold snap and this week’s near-record-low temperatures, some fish farmers in the bay area are projecting “considerable” losses to their crops, said Craig Watson, director of the University of Florida’s Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory in Ruskin…
http://www.tbo.com/weather/Tampa-Bay-record-lows-burst-pipes-threaten-berry-and-fish-farms_164634457
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And it’s a shame, because we grow some of the best strawberries in the world here in Hillsboro County, Florida.
I’m taking this weather personally, too, as the mangos have bloomed early in the yard this year, and now we’ll lose
most of the crop. The dead fish washing up in the back yard are no fun, but that’s just natures way of culling the herd, I suppose.
For about 40 years, our agriculture belt of cold temperature threatened crops has been moving south, or repositioning in place.
If you are south of and adjacent to a lake or inlet, or close to the coast, you gain the two or three degrees necessary to survive.
Cold isn’t the only stress faced by farmers & ranchers. The citrus folks are looking for alternatives in the face of greening and canker, so climate may turn out to be moot for them; on the other hand the trees are, on average, stressed if surviving do cold may make the difference in a bad way.
The economy is diverse. On a night when it touches freezing, the day is likely to be 60F and sunny, and 70F again in a day or two, so those down for vacation golf won’t miss a round. Our climate is pretty benign in general (and our taxes are pretty reasonable) so there is also a lot of development pressure on agricultural land at the margins.
We have closed / are closing our nukes. Crystal River was a fine power plant, rendered politically uneconomic. One is sure Australians will understand. We have little wind, but considerable solar, however it is mostly virtue signalling solar rather than the kind that is a rate killer in most jurisdictions.
Conversion of coal to gas has been happening but not in panic. Many of our coal plants, upgraded to a very high cleanliness standard, are operating fine. We won’t be drilling offshore for the oil and gas know to be in the gulf, yet, but may be able to tap some of this
from onshore as the technology advances, and the reserves remain there, easily accessed, if needed.
None of this changes agricultural impacts, of course; farming has to move as climate changes. It has done so for millenia. Fishing changes as species migrate and their habitat changes, again happening for millenia. Man uses technology to adapt. Happening for a few hundred years.
But here’s the thing. I’m trying imagine what would be happening to us if our politicians said ” sit and freeze, we can’t generate power due to global warming” and our population of elderly, after years of acclimating to Florida, had to endure a spell of freezing without heat.
To quote our Democratic party’s favorite line: “People would die”.
Frankly, even here in redneck land, we think of places that can’t keep the lights on as third world countries.
(Or California, which I believe is on another planet.)
It is fairly incredible to realize that functioning, high-technology democracies seem willing to throw away progress at the margins
for “climate change”. On this cold morning in Florida, that seems more akin to throwing virgins into volcanos than civilized behavior.
Sorry Jo, have to reserve a tiny bit of emergency chocolate for a hot cup this morning. Cheers.
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Our civilized behavior would never throw virgins into volcanoes while they still be virgins! 🙂
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A dose of reality. Unfortunately, most people think themselves insulated from the potential consequences of co2 mitigation policies and UN sovereignty intrusion, or just don’t know about them.
People go along with the MSM memes blissfully ignorant that Gore and Company are deadly serious about sweeping changes of their freedoms, economic and political systems, energy infrastructure, and lifestyles. We are on the brink of a new dark age abyss with these AGW useful fools.
Maybe a dose of reality is what is needed to wake people up?
Meanwhile in the States, the MSM is carefully avoiding the obvious lessons of the hard cold winter east of the continental divide that that a stable, reliable, energy grid essential for times like these. They are actually blaming the bitter cold on the mythical dangerous warming. Hoping the people will continue to slumber.
20
In Canada we are solving problems 🙂
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/renewable-energy-program-electricity-alberta-bidders-contracts-1.4446746
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Coal and natural gas provide 90% of Alberta’s electricity generation.
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Yes but the greenies want it to be wind!
30
Wind and the Greens comes to mind. Alberta and Chinooks also comes to mind, together with a clueless (or deceitful)Leo DiCaprio who links the warmth the winds bring with Global Warming. Maybe Leo should not have left school so early to have a career in the make believe world he now lives in.
50
When I see DiCaprio shouting from the bow of the SS Climate Crisis I think of him doing the same on the bow of the Titanic. Ice? What ice? At the end of the story I see Al Gore dressed as a woman and hiding on a lifeboat.
30
Is government in Australia so stupid as to allow this to happen? Yes, I said it, stupidity. This is not a yellow alert it’s a reason to have protesters surrounding government offices everywhere and stay there until the message is heard, believed and acted on.
If you want out of this you must do something and it must be a thorn in the shoe of every politician in Australia that they can’t stand anymore or you’ll only get more of the same. Facts and reasoning have failed. There is only one option left to you. Take back your country.
Suffer now to get action or suffer even more in the future when you fail to get back the control of things that rightfully belongs to you, the people of Australia.
BB
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‘There is only one option left to you. Take back your country.’
It was once a working democracy, but because of AGW its morphed into a pseudo Marxist dictatorship.
There is nothing to be done, the electorate is blissfully unaware that the science is flawed, so our side is relying on global cooling beginning sometime in the near future.
If the weather fails to meet our expectations within five years, then Australia will become a renewables lake paying homage to Xi.
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Its well known in industry that of all backup generator test starts , its at best 50% successful start.
Now apply that to a hospital backup gennie when the alert shifts to orange or red.
If hospitals, which are critcal bits of infrastructure, have to shut down lights to save a bit of power, you know the whole system is rotten to the core.
Now just hope you dont have a loved one who is on an operating table when either the backup batteries malfunction, or the back up gennie doesnt start.
You would see politicians digging holes and hiding on that day…….
20
That’s a bit shocking, only a 50% success rate for generator test starts…….
You will find that your cruise ship emergency generator will be started once per week and it will start first time every time. Once per month it will be tested on full load.
What industry do you work in where emergency generators do not work?
00
Building maintenance….and yes that includes places like hospitals.
Back up generators are maintained…sort of…..doing regular starts seems to be one of those things people dont really want to do, plus it means swapping out old diesel etc plus if they havent been started for a while batteries go flat, stuff gets gummed up,someone cant find the keys, rats eath through wiring…..
Yep…50% is correct…..
00
Is the electorate hurting? It looks like they are. So this
cannot continue forever. The longer you wait, the worse your chances of success will become until the fight to regain control over your own destiny becomes deadly.
Waiting and hoping is not the way to tackle this problem. You can’t win if you don’t fight.
All over the world this is happening and fear of trouble is keeping you and everyone from fighting back. Meanwhile the noose becomes tighter around your necks and you know it. Look at the history of climate change Joanne has written on this blog alone. Is what freedom and security you have left so dear that you can’t take a risk to restore your democracy?
BB
10
Be resolute, follow the money, follow only the money; never the ‘feel good propaganda’ pap! You AU skilled folk\workers can defeat the banksters, unions, politicians; as they have only talk, never any accomplishment! The US is similar shape, but if the DC area is the swamp; each and every member of the US congress must be considered but a vicious sewer varmint to be dispatched immediately if not sooner! MAGA!
All the best!-will-
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Large wind turbine operated by Terraform Power breaks in half:
https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/mobile/wind-turbine-breaks-in-half-in-chatham-kent-1.3766991
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That’s a big job for the call out maintenance crew.
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The broken turbine was apparently discovered by a hunter scouting for Coyote.
Was this turbine actually connected to the grid, if the wind farm operators didn’t notice it going offline ? And Coyotes in England ?
00
Windmills – “please sir, can I have some more?” h/t Charles Dickens.
30
Temperatures retreated in 2017
GRAHAM LLOYD
Global average temperatures retreated from El Nino highs in 2017 but weather agencies said the long-term trend remained up.
The Weekend Australian
50
The concern for our side is that temperatures remained high without El Nino (look mum no hands) which means NASA and NOAA are dodgy.
I question whether ‘globally averaged’ SST is rational science.
‘NOAA said the globally averaged sea surface temperature was the third-highest on record, 1.21F above average. The globally averaged land surface temperature was the third-highest on record, 2.36F above average.’
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2017 – The Fakest Year On Record At NASA And NOAA
I am no longer going to listen to NASA.
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Good for you!!What does Earth’s precious CO2 actually do? Is it not a more useful compound than even H2O? What is the mass ratio of oceanic CO2 to atmospheric CO2? How do you know?
All the best!-will-
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Long ago, before the 40 days and 40 nights, with 86% O2 atmosphere. Stupid contractor AeroJet General punched hole in Earth’s internal methane (CH4) at 400 psi. One flik da Bic and all oceans are formed with now 78% N2 atmosphere Wad happened to all dat oxidized C? So very glad we have\had an all powerful GOD!
All the best!-will-
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During 1997 I was working in the North Kimberley doing diamond pipe prospecting and helped a mate set up the tourist facility “Faraway Bay” netween Kalumburu and the King George River. (It has since been sold).
At the time the project was under WA EPA assessment and one of the EPA officers was also trained as a geologist. Cutting to the chase, it seems that the EPA et al, consider Australia over populated and that destocking Australia the only option. The environmental goal is to rid Australia of unwanted people, presumably the current enemy du jour, capitalist white people.
If there is insufficient energy to maintain the existing population, then what to do? Emigrate ? To where, exactly?
And if this is a covert policy by the intellectual dwarves (ID) are running our institutions, why are they then importing large numbers of 3rd world peoples into Australia?
Given that the ID’s also don’t understand economics, it does seem we are going to be living in interesting times.
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One of those who caused trouble with a feedlot a while back?
40
Look at europe for your answer……
I think the IDs understand things perfectly – this is not by accident.
According a source in Israel, the number fo european Jews, especially French ones, emigrating to Israel is growing rapidly. It is no longer safe for them in France.
1930s is happening all over again, except globally….
What we will see in Australia is by design.
Then understand why gun control is such a “sacred:” thing to Marxists…..
The pump appears to being primed.
11
The NEM is “national” excluding WA, yet prices in $/MWhr vary enormously by State.
Jan 19 NSW $70 – Jan 18 $78 – Jan month to date $72 – Jul/Jan avge $85
Jan 19 Qld $77 – Jan 18 $75 – Jan month to date $77 – Jul/Jan avge $76
Jan 19 SA $1012 – Jan 18 $1074 – Jan month to date $184 – Jul/Jan avge $98
Jan 19 Tas $42 – Jan 18 $160 – Jan month to date $88 – Jul/Jan avge $90
Jan 19 Vic $523 – Jan 18 $905 – Jan month to date $147 – Jul/Jan avge $97
20
Here in diesel land it is starting to warm up again expected top of 36c. A slight breeze but it is Saturday so we might be OK, watch for this time next week as it is expected to get really hot again
20
Sometimes you just shake your head in wonder at the way the media gets it ar$e about.
Surely that failure of the Loy Yang B unit at that critical time would give them some sort of hint, eh!
The report actually said the two things in it that stand out like the proverbial.
(a) It took out 540MW, and straight up that tells me that’s a lot of power to do without, so they needed a lot of power to come online to replace it, so they NEED something of that size to replace that loss.
(b) Unreliable!!!!! Hey, I’m willing to bet that the journalist who wrote the article is not driving a 23 year old car. (the same age as the Unit which failed) If he is old enough to have been driving that long, and he purchased a new car in 1993, odds on that he’s not kept it till now as his daily driver. He would have surely traded up to a more recent car, probably even more than once.
Surely he would have read his own article and realised that even a coal fired Unit as (relatively) young as that one is by comparison to other coal fired Units should be replaced ….. on a like for like basis, with a Unit of similar sized power generation.
The same might be said for people who read his article.
But no, this failure now becomes THE CAUSE of this whole saga.
It’s all so predictable really.
You’d maybe think that this might be a wake up call for not just the people, but for those in power, to ponder that maybe we should actually be thinking about replacing older plants with new ones.
It should also scream out loudly that surely something like this might happen again if we were to just close them down altogether, eh!
As it was, that Unit was only down for two hours before it came back up, and then within another hour, was back generating its full power.
Go on then, how many readers here have a 1993 car, and if you have, then consider this. When you purchased that car in 1993, did you get in it, push you foot flat to the floor on the accelerator, and not take it off except for a couple of days a year until today, and is it still running as good today as it did when you drove it out of the showroom in 1993.
Tony.
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They just don’t get it! The pollies and MSM are gullible, naive and stupid. Mechanical equipment is bound to fail at some point. Has nobody been stranded by the roadside waiting for assistance due to mechanical breakdown?
The power grid is an essential service. It’s a necessity for so many reasons. In the past, when we had abundant coal fired plants and one of those plants failed it hardly mattered, another would take up the slack. As you rightly point out, renewables cannot be called upon to take up that slack. In fact, renewables cannot be called upon, ever! Unless of course the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Even then, they cannot guarantee their laughable nameplate power.
I love your posts Tony. Written in a way that all of us can understand.
Cheers
Wal
70
I like your comment Tony. In regard to cars though, we haven’t bought a new one since 1979! We always buy secondhand which means that someone else has suffered the initial large depreciation in value. Our current cars are 11 years in one case and over 20 years old in the other but we do the regular maintenance that they need. As pensioners we can’t afford to waste money by buying new every time some fresh model is being raved over.
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Maybe there is a need for programmed maintenance scheduling for journalists.
But first, clean out the socialists masquerading as lecturers at the schools of journalism?
30
The cars I enjoy date 1960, 1984, 1987 they are very reliable. But to be fair Tony they arent designed to run at optimum output continually, power station equipment is, but only for so long and with good scheduled maintenance.
I wonder if the same reporter will be (or does now) report on wind turbine failures? rhetorical question only, I’m sure they are glossed over/ignored as is the failure to produce when eveything is working.
60
Yarpos
Old time figuring on this was
Max horsepower X
Max continuous horsepower 3/4 X
Also applies to that idea for humans that “the best work is done under pressure” IMO
00
How reliable are wind and solar? Solar gets less efficient as it heats up – they have an optimum temperature to run at and their efficiency is only what, 7%? Are wind turbines reliable? They are mechanical, have moving parts and like most mechanical things are impacted by heat. Too much and they get less efficicient – they never seize,catch fire, blades snap off do they?
So one wind turbine stops running and that never gets reported because they supply so little power it never gets missed. If an entire wind power wind station goes(how likely? whole stations get shut down due to high winds.) Is that ever reported? How reliable are wind generators if they have to shut down because the natural sources used to make the wind power can actually be detremental to a wind generator. I wonder if the MSM would report that and note that it’s unreliable and inefficient.
70
The MSM are trying to discredit coal by calling it unreliable…..
Its just Marxist drivel…
60
Tony, what is the wind capacity in the east coast system?
And at the moment what is that wind producing?
Then we can work out how much wind is NOT producing !!
Would love to see those numbers thrown back at them 🙂
00
ps, last numbers I can find is wing capacity 4327 MW
Now Producing 864 MW
So wind is UNRELIABLE by 3643 MW. !!
10
Only working at 20% capacity. !!
Victorian coal, even when the Loy Yang unit went down, was still operating above 85%.
(quick and dirty calc I hope Tony can verify / correct)
10
>”why can’t taxpayers know”
Because Australia is very poor at civilised public discourse. Either the barbarians go in boots and all with their trolls or the media censors. Either way you end up with “the laughter of fools” on their side and our side keeping our counsel. Australia has a lot of private conversations and demarcation points – we let the lefties go their own way and largely try to contain and isolate them. We identify where the infection is and quarantine it.
40
19 Jan: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: REPORT: New England Faces A Future Of ‘Rolling Blackouts’ As Power Plants Close
New England is facing an energy future of “rolling blackouts and controlled outages” by 2025 as more power plants close down and pipeline capacity continues to lag behind.
The new report (LINK) by the New England’s grid operator comes after the region suffered through a frigid start to the new year that pushed up prices and strained energy supplies. It could be just a taste of the region’s future.
“Taken together, the study results suggest that New England could be headed for significant levels of emergency actions, particularly during major fuel or resource outages,” ISO New England found in a new study…
“Harder to measure are the risks to the region from brief, high-demand cold spells, which present particular logistical challenges for fuel procurement and transportation,” the study found.
ISO’s study found “retirements of power plants with stored fuel, tightening emissions restrictions, and the reliance on a fuel that may not be available when needed most are all challenging New England’s power system,” especially during extreme cold spells…
Environmentalists have played a major role in killing pipeline projects meant to bring natural gas to the northeast. New Englanders can also thank Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the lack of pipeline capacity…
New Englanders suffered through some of the highest energy costs in the world because of political opposition to more pipelines. In the future, it could mean losing power.
The region’s grid operator found “all but the most optimistic case resulted in load shedding, also known as rolling blackouts or controlled outages that disconnect blocks of customers sequentially.”…
Most of the eastern U.S. saw a top five coldest start to the new year on record, which was followed by a big nor’easter storm….
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/19/new-england-rolling-blackouts-power-plants/
10
LATE NOTE: Explanation of AEMO Terms
LOR1 – Lack of Reserve: The safety margin is smaller than it should be, but services won’t be affected (as long as nothing breaks).
LOR2: Things are even more marginal, and services will (hopefully) not be affected. The AEMO can start bringing in diesels and “demand response” type activities. (ie. This costs real money).
LOR3: Even more serious, and load shedding is possible.
—-
I figured we needed to know what these mean exactly.
90
Thanks Jo,
I think we need to know a lot more about the AEMO terms and activities.
How did the AEMO handle the crisis? The prices spiked but not quite to the level or the duration that they anticipated. Presumably load was shed, but how and who was affected? There was an economic impact but it is not transparent.
00
meanwhile……
10
supposed to be a link there 🙂 try again
00
no links for me apparently
00
What was that link referring to?
00
The Australia Institute is blaming coal power stations for failing to supply enough electricity, and for being unreliable. They claim solar prevented worse load-shedding.
One of the reasons they give is that coal powered stations are less thermodynamically efficient at hight ambient temperatures, and thus less able to produce as much energy. Of course, if we had more thermal power stations that effect could easily be factored in.
http://www.tai.org.au/content/coal-and-gas-reliability-liability-heat-report
And their PDF: http://www.tai.org.au/sites/defualt/files/P454%20Can%27t%20stand%20the%20heat%20FINAL%202.31.pdf
P. 30, “As with South Australia and New South Wales, rooftop solar significantly delayed and
reduced peak demand almost certainly avoiding much more serious consequences.”
I must say I don’t understand what figures 13 and 16 are actually saying.
For Fig 13, the text says, “the operational demand peak of 3085 MW that occurred at 6pm would have been reached four hours and twenty minutes earlier at 1.40pm without the reduction in demand from rooftop solar.”
I can’t see on the chart for 6 PM a figure of 3085. It has 3133. I’m not sure how they arrive at 1:40 PM, as the extrapolated line says 3146 there. Nor do I know where the figure of 250 in “Demand would have then continued to rise a further 250 MW” comes from.
Nor do I follow what their yellow and blue chart areas mean. Is the outer total line the total demand, including yellow solar? Is the blue area the demand supplied by non-solar production? If so, why does the legend say “Demand” and not “Non-solar Demand”?
Wouldn’t there need to be mention of non-solar generating capacity to know when demand would exceed that?
Am I missing something obvious?
30
Sometimes, you just get lucky, without even realising it.
There’s that story going around that the failure of a Unit at the Loy Yang coal fired power plant led to that horrendous spike in power prices in two States, Victoria and South Australia.
It can be debunked somewhat with text and an explanation, but not conclusively, and you can’t go back in time to prove it.
Or, can you?
Okay then, go back to the Thread from Joanne immediately prior to this one, and look at those two images which were copied from the AEMO website.
Note those bottom two images, one for Victoria and the other for South Australia.
Those images were taken as a screen print from that AEMO site ….. THE DAY BEFORE those huge spikes actually happened, and both of them are actually time stamped with the date the images were taken, in real time on 18th January.
Both images show the projection for the following 24 hours.
Both images show conclusively that the AEMO expected the prices in both States to spike that high at the time predicted, right smack in the middle of when that Unit at Loy Yang failed, and failed without notice.
So, either the AEMO has a crystal ball that can see 24 hours into the future , and foresee an unexpected failure of 540MW at that time, or it was just the normal run of what they expected those prices to do at that time.
So, here we have conclusive and actual proof that the failure of this Unit did NOT cause those power spikes. They were already expected to spike at that time.
Like I said, sometimes you just get lucky, because without those two actual screen prints, we can only ‘say’ it. Now there is proof.
Thank you Joanne.
Tony.
130
Bugger! Now that was a Senior Moment.
I was one day ahead of myself there.
It did happen on that day, and at that time, so all that text above was to no avail.
So, sorry about that. A Fonzie moment. I was wr ….. wr …. wr
Wrong.
Still it doesn’t explain the prediction for the same to happen 24 hours into the future on the Friday, the day after, something which actually did happen, and without the failure of a Unit at any coal fired power plant.
My humblest apologies people.
Tony.
70
So we get shortfalls two days straight at basically the same time and duration and this is caused by a turbine trip on day one. This schmacks of desperation.
00
Hi Tony, I have an image from 18/1 showing $14,000 in SA.
My image service seems to be down, so I have emailed it to Jo, to forward to you.
Cheers
53
For the record
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/19/aussie-heatwave-electricity-shortfall-hospital-emergency-measures-coal-blamed/
20
Looks like one of the SA-Vic interconnectors is down
30
Getting closer
Interconnector still out.
Looks like SA drawing 464 of potential 600 on the other
NSW – Vic 636 of 702
Tas – Vic on red
20
So it looks like SA wouldbe completely cactus if the SA-Vic interconnector went down….
00
19 Jan: SanAntonioBizJournals: Winter storm sets Texas power demand records
By Sergio Chapa
Winter Storm Inga blanketed most of Texas with freezing temperatures and set a new record for electricity demand in the state.
The Electric Reliabilty Council of Texas, which oversees almost all of the state’s power grid, reported a new winter peak record demand of 65,731 megawatts of electricity from 7 to 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Inga plunged overnight temperatures below freezing and dumped snow, sleet and ice on much of Texas, prompting Wednesday morning’s demand to break the previous record set during the Jan. 3 cold snap, when 62,855 megawatts of electricity were consumed in one hour…
The Texas power grid had sufficient generation and transmission resources to keep up with demand, ERCOT officials said…
At the time of peak demand on the ERCOT grid early Wednesday morning, CPS Energy customers consumed 4,216 megawatt hours of electricity, which translated to roughly 15.6 percent of the power consumed statewide…
CPS Energy customers heeded the utility company’s advice and calls for conservation, spokesman Jonathan Tijerina told the Business Journal.
CPS asked residential customers to keep thermostats in the mid-60-degree range, unplug unused electronics and refrain from using washers, dryers, dishwashers and other large appliances…
CPS has automated power demand response programs in place for large commercial customers that can throttle down demand during weather events, but Tijerina said they were not needed during Winter Storm Inga thanks to the community’s conscientiousness.
“We were able to keep demand down, and it was all voluntary,” Tijerina said
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2018/01/19/winter-storm-sets-texas-power-demand-records.html
00
19 Jan: Forbes: Joshua Rhodes: The Home Heating Debate Heats Up As Temperatures Plunge In Texas
(Joshua D. Rhodes, PhD is a Research Fellow at the Energy Institute and the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin)
The Texas grid recently hit a new winter peak record of about 65,731 megawatts (MW).
***If Texas’ residential heating were 100% electrified, as many climate change mitigation strategies call for, that peak might have been closer to 90,000 MW, about 10,000 more megawatts than we have.
Texas recently joined the rest of the country in experiencing some frigid winter weather. On Tuesday, the high temperatures throughout most of the state didn’t break freezing, setting up Wednesday morning to be one of the coldest daybreaks this decade. Clear skies drove temps down into the teens across most of the state and even sent the Mexican border towns into freezing territory, a rare occurrence indeed…
Electricity prices within the Texas grid, known as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, rise as people try to keep their homes warm when they wake up and get ready for work. In some parts of Texas, wholesale electricity market prices spiked to over $5,000/MW. Quite a jump when you consider average prices are usually in the mid-$20/MWh range.
So why the spike? Most of Texas (and in the South generally) uses electricity for heating. In fact, it’s our preferred heating “fuel.” We use electricity to heat our homes and some businesses because these heating systems typically have the lowest upfront costs and we don’t use them that much (we’re a summer peaking state)…
During the summer, because of Texas’ many air conditioners, residential demand increases about 400% from off peak (~9,000 MW) in the spring to summer peak (~35,000 MW).
While commercial and industrial load only fluctuates about 35% from low to high, ERCOT is built to service all those residential air-conditioners that keep us sane. ERCOT’s all-time peak demand is 71,110 MW, set on Aug. 11, 2016. Most summers see new peaks, but during the Jan. 16-17, 2018, freeze, EROCT hit a new winter peak record of 65,731 MW and blew past the previous winter peak by over 2,800 MW…
There has recently been a considerable amount of interest in electrifying everything in the U.S. economy. Doing so can make the economy more energy efficient, as well help fight climate change. With that in mind, the National Renewable Energy Lab recently announced the Electrification Futures Study to look at the consequences of a highly electrified US energy sector.
Let’s use this Texas cold snap as a quick case-study. There are 7.4 million households in Texas, with an average home size of about 2000 ft2. We built an energy model and simulated the average Texas home, equipped with a heat pump, and fed it the past few days’ worth of weather data. As expected, the outside temperatures were too cold for the heat pump to operate and the auxiliary heat kicked on. This meant that, during the coldest hours (when ERCOT happened to be peaking and the home’s auxiliary heat was on), the house was drawing over about 2-3 times more power than when the heat pump was operating normally.
If all 7.4 million Texas homes were operating like this, it looks like ERCOT’s peak would have been instead been about 90,000 MW. That is about 20,000 MW more than the summer peak, and about 10,000 MW more generation (depending on how you count) than ERCOT has in its entire system (LINK)…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuarhodes/2018/01/19/the-home-heating-debate-heats-up-as-texas-gets-really-itssocold/#745d62232ec3
10
the LINK at the bottom of the Forbes/Joshua Rhodes article is to his calculations, which resulted in his 90,000 MW claim.
00
So okay then, no comments here because not many people know about electrical power, and I can understand that.
Texas, you know, where everything is the biggest, eh!
But is it really?
Queensland is three times the area of Texas.
The population of Texas is 27.5 Million people, so really, that population is not much larger than that for the whole of Australia.
And yet read what pat mentions in his text there: (my bolding here)
That’s more than double the Australian Peak Power for a ‘big’ day.
Then, look at what electricity costs in that State Texas.
Residential – 11.24 cents/KWH
Commerce – 8.20 cents/KWH
Industry – 5.49 cents/KWH
That Residential cost is well less than half what we pay here in Oz, even after the exchange rate is taken into account.
Texas as a State consumes 7% less than double the total power we here in Australia consume.
Incidentally, I went to the ERCOT site chasing the Load Curve for that power consumption, and access is denied, security rules.
Tony.
40
I’m not sure if it’s still the case today but I recall when I was in Houston many years ago all the shopping arcades that had direct access to the outside left the doors open during summer so that their customers remained cool as they moved from shop to shop. I asked my friends there how could they afford the electricity? They said it was dirt cheap so why not?
10
Love your posts Tony .
I do know about electric power not just from yourself but also through technical school .
My problem is there is a lack of information or technical information on solar panels feeding back into the grid .
From my understanding there is many thousands of volts delivered from reliable coal fired power stations , the higher the voltage the less the loss in transmission , perfectly acceptable .
Once the power reaches the Sub stations its then reduced from thousands of volts down to industrial/domestic power ( through oil filled transformers ) typically 440v three phase or 240 volt 2 phase
the phases are available through local distribution via either the overhead transformers or the underground transformers usually in the local suburb ( usually 2 streets away )we all live or work in .
So how does a normal domestic consumer with their solar panels send electric back into the grid when they only produce 240v .
I`m not asking the theory just the statistics you do so well
What voltage does our generators produce because if those windymill bird killers are producing 240v domestic power in the middle of nowhere , they are producing nothing .
20
m2: If a householder with PV panels starts to produce more electric than they use, then that extra electric is (can be) sent to neighbours who want electricity.
The grid, stepping the voltage down, bit by bit, then down to 240V supplies less and less as local generation ‘wins’.
If the nearest transformer to you is giving you 240.0V and a local panel is producing 240.1V then you will take the power from the local panel. Once the local panel is giving its maximum output it will start to drop its output down towards 240.0V.
This is happening many times per second.
10
How long can you run a small business like this?
More than 800 properties in North Adelaide were blacked out just after 5pm on Friday.
Businesses and pubs in North Adelaide were forced to close their doors on a night owners say would have been one of their busiest of the week.
Co-owner of Lion Hotel Tim Gregg said it was hard to have to ask customers to leave after the lights went out.
“It is disappointing when you have got people booked in for a meal and you can’t call them because their details are in a system which doesn’t work when the power is out,” Mr Gregg said, sitting in the darkened and empty restaurant area which would have been just starting to fill if the power was on.
“We has to ask people to leave because of OH and S issues.
“It is lucky that it was between lunch and dinner service but the bar would be losing in the thousands of dollars.
Mr Gregg said he had more than 40 staff who were at a loose end until the power comes back on.
The restaurant area would serve hundreds of meals on a Friday night.
“We are anticipating being able to reopen when the power comes back on,” Mr Gregg said.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/soaring-heat-across-south-australia-followed-by-thunderstorm-warning-prompts-energy-warning/news-story/1af45ff55f37bf87aa505d987a7357cc
Soaring heat across South Australia followed by thunderstorm warning prompts energy warning
“This is exactly why we launched our $550 million energy plan – to stand up for South Australians and improve grid security,” Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said.
Following a day of soaring temperatures across the state, the Bureau of Meteorology on Friday afternoon issued a severe thunderstorm warning for damaging winds …”
60
incredible. someone has to be held accountable.
60
What a novel idea!
Have you noticed any connection between the wanton malicious dynamiting of the closed power plants, and the lack of retribution for the damage done by ideological stupidity?
If a few of our glorious electeds were drawn and quartered, preferably we could do a couple a week, I guarantee our power problems would disappear overnight.
But I am just dreaming.
60
This is the year of our Lord 2018!
People’s businesses and life’s work are being destroyed by politics without a care in the world being shown by those responsible.
KK
30
16 Jan: HeraldScotland: Agenda: Government must act on National Grid concerns
By DB Watson
(The author is a retired chartered electrical engineer and the former Manager of Projects for the Scottish office of multinational energy engineers Foster Wheeler Energy)
A REPORT from National Grid (NG) in a November report raised serious concerns as to the ability of the new billions of pounds investment in high-voltage, direct current (HVDC) interlinks that we are installing across the UK to transfer power in all circumstances. NG identifies that this results from our progressive weakening of large tracts of the Grid as we increase the amount of connected renewables, mostly wind turbines.
NG has now, arguably several years after they should, done some system modelling of these interconnectors and its report concludes “system strength will decrease in our transmission network over the next decade” and “we have found an increasing risk of converter instability” (this is where the new direct current lines connect to our existing alternating current Grid).
In its highly technical report entitled Performance of Phase-Locked Loop Based Converters, NG goes on to demonstrate that as the available system strength (called fault level) falls due to increased reliance on wind turbine generation then when network faults occur there will be many scenarios where the DC/AC converters will become unstable and our voltage will start to surge and oscillate at a different frequency to the 50Hertz that we receive in our homes, which means shutdown. NG notes that this problem would not exist had we been retaining large-scale synchronous generators (such as at Longannet, Torness and Hunterston.)
NG concludes by expressing a wish “to work with manufacturers, developers and any other interested parties to further explore the risk of converter instability”…READ ALL
http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/15829636.Agenda__Government_must_act_on_National_Grid_concerns/
20
watching the news about some hippy shithole in the USA called earth ship or some crap. The claim is they live carbon neutral as they ride motor bikes an cars, mix concrete to build their homes etc etc etc.
31
Apparently POTUS can say sh$T whole but I cant
20
Are you referring to SA and Victoria?
31
What does this one mean? Is Garnaut just spinning again?
south-australias-power-now-cheaper-than-coalfired-states—
ross-garnaut-20171106
30
Not according to the screen shot up the top
10
Absolutely fascinating…
ever since the murrayville interconector went down, the http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/ widget has been down…..it will not load……..even at 9.07pm AEDT.
From the http://anero.id/energy/ website, When the interconnector went down, SA wind generation was either
*not utilised
*generating 0%
*generating 30%
30
redress –
the RE widget won’t load for me either 10.12pm qld time.
10
19 Jan: BlockIslandTimes: Wind farm blamed for higher mainland power rates
By Lars Trodson
The Newport City Council recently passed a strongly worded resolution asking the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission about a recent jump in mainland electric bills, which is being blamed, in part, on costs associated with the Block Island Wind Farm.
At its Jan. 10 meeting, the Council unanimously passed Resolution 2018-01, which states that “Newport residents, as well as residents of other Communities, have received new electric and gas bills that are giving them anxiety and sticker shock due to huge increases; And… the new distribution charges are increasing bills by huge percentages and are compromising residents’ ability to pay necessary life expenses for rent, food, medical needs; And… the RI PUC’s decision to put the significant increase in renewable power costs from off-shore wind and net-metering into the Distribution charge and not the Power Charge so that consumers cannot opt to purchase equivalent power from outside Rhode Island as provided by law…”
The resolution was spearheaded by Newport resident Benjamin Riggs, who has been a vocal opponent of the Block Island Wind Farm for years. Riggs is contending that the costs associated with the Wind Farm are due to the fact that mainland customers are helping pay for the transmission cables that connect the island to the mainland, and that National Grid is purchasing power produced by the wind farm at a fixed wholesale price above the market rate, with those costs being passed along to its customers.
“The genesis of this was that Deepwater was obviously the culprit, and its $650 million (over 20 years) above-market cost is getting dumped into the Distribution charge as per a prior decision by the PUC with respect to the original Deepwater/NGrid PPA (Power Purchase Agreement),” Riggs said in an email to The Block Island Times.
In a letter written to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that he sent last October, Riggs detailed what he believed are the issues with the 20-year PPA, which he called a “continuing violation of the Federal Power Act and PURPA (Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act) that is expected to go on for another 19 years and at this point can only be addressed by an enforcement action initiated by the FERC.”
Riggs wrote that the PPA “provided for the state utility, National Grid, to purchase 100 percent of the output of Deepwater Wind’s offshore windfarm at a fixed wholesale price (with annual escalations) that amounted to 4 to 5 times the market rate for alternate energy, including renewables. National Grid would then resell the power at market rates and recover the difference from Rhode Island ratepayers, payable not as an energy charge, which would allow consumers to opt for alternate power sources, but as part of the distribution charge.”…READ ON
http://www.blockislandtimes.com/article/wind-farm-blamed-higher-mainland-power-rates/51561
00
20 Jan: SMH: Peter Hannam: Hopes for Tasmania’s ‘Battery of the Nation’ dangle by a cable, or two
Indeed, there are reasons to consider the state’s so-called “Battery of the Nation” plan to re-engineer its string of hydro dams to be more feasible than the heavily-touted “Snowy 2.0” project on the mainland…
More details about the Tasmanian alternative will be revealed next month when Hydro Tasmania unveils a short list of about 15 prospective pumped storage sites along the north-west and west coasts.
An “indicative” price for the venture is $5 billion, which includes the additional interconnection and transmission costs. An added appeal for Tasmania is that its Battery of the Nation plan would also unlock as much as 2700 megawatts for private wind farms that would dwarf the 300 MW of turbines currently on the island.
“It’s early days, but the outlook is very promising for pumped hydro storage,” Chris Gwynne, Hydro Tasmania’s director for the program, says.
“We’re certainly confident there’s at least 2500 MW of reliable and cost-effective pumped hydro potential in Tasmania.”…
US-based UPC hopes to develop an $850 million, 450-500 MW wind farm at Robbins Island on Tasmania’s blustery north-west coast even with the existing single-cable connection with mainland Australia.
Further wind farms or other renewable energy projects after that, however, would need a second, preferably larger cable under Bass Strait, Rohner says…
“We’re expecting a second interconnector to be built by 2022, or in that zone.”
Hydro Tasmania also concedes its pumped hydro plans will need one – perhaps more – interconnectors with the mainland.
“The interconnection story is really a critical part of the Battery of the Nation,” Gwynne says…
Even with more advanced technology than the 12 year-old existing cable – which has had its capacity capped to reduce the risk of another failure – the bill for a new one may exceed $1 billion.
That cost is among the obstacles Hydro Tasmania’s plans will have to clear.
“They’re up against thousands of [pumped hydro] sites in NSW and Victoria for which the transmission is easy,” Blakers says…
“The current infrastructure is clearly insufficient during extreme weather events,” (Victoria’s Minister for Energy, Lily) D’Ambrosio says, adding the grid needs to be “fit for modern expectations”, including enabling a transition away from fossil fuels…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/hopes-for-tasmanias-battery-of-the-nation-dangle-by-a-cable-or-two-20180117-h0jm5j.html
00
“Anything may succeed or fail when compared to irrelevant standards”: Dr Thomas Sowell
So long as solar/wind are not compared to the same rules of performance as a Public Utility, they will win.
So long as the Public Utilities ( thermal synchronous generation ) are economically abused by the preferences shown to the “renewables” crowd, they will fail because the economic game is rigged in favor of promises instead of results.
Renewables should be required by law to bid for guaranteed generation deliveries on schedule just like the thermal plants. Failure to deliver as bid would require them to purchase and deliver power from the spot market and absorb the costs of having failed.
This would put an end to the economic fantasy currently driving the issue.
50
20 Jan: Adelaide Advertiser: Matthew Abraham: Heatwave has Weatherill and Koutsantonis sweating on no power blackouts
THE power went off in Yankalilla on Wednesday morning and a heavy, baking hot silence descended on the holiday house.
It was around 8.15am and the Smart TV, all warmed up to bring us the appalling Noddy Toyland Detective, became a Dumb TV. Small mercies.
The wireless broadband shut up shop.
The ducted evaporative airconditioning fell silent.
The coffee machine was cactus. And the electric kettle.
We had to have cold showers because the instant gas hot-water service had no ignition spark.
Gasp. The iPad batteries were running into the red zone.
Outraged, I used the mobile phone to check the SA Power Networks outages page and discovered they had deliberately pulled the plug on our rented hacienda.
It was one of 49 lucky properties chosen on this hot pocket of the Fleurieu to be disconnected from the power grid for “planned maintenance”. Their best people were working on it and thought the power should be back on by about 3.30pm.
Life as we knew it had come to a screeching halt…
Koutsantonis, the Treasurer and Energy Minister, who is quite capable of talking under wet cement, knows that if South Australia experiences another disgraceful summer blackout in the countdown to the March election, he and his few surviving colleagues will have a nice long holiday on the opposition benches.
It is the one issue that will totally blow apart the Weatherill Government’s carefully crafted, pork-barrelled run to the polls.
On Wednesday night, Koutsantonis gave his hand away in a Seven News story warning of approaching Armageddon, in the guise of two forecast 41C days.
Referring to the power generation on tap to handle the expected demand, he said: “In terms of capacity, we’ll be fine. Turn on your airconditioners. It will be OK.”
Sorry? Would you mind repeating that? I don’t think I heard it correctly.
Do you mean that suddenly, after a decade of telling us to turn our airconditioners off in a heatwave and, instead, try sitting in a darkened room with a damp cloth over our heads, it’s now OK to turn them on?
As he spoke, he had the nervous look of a man pushing a pile of chips across the roulette table and telling the croupier “Put the lot on red”.
It has taken them 14 years but the Weatherill Government has belatedly confronted the problems it created with the party’s simplistic push into renewable energy without also ensuring the power network has stability and alternative capacity – battery back-up and diesel generators…
The political reality for Labor – only weeks away from polling day – is that SA voters are highly sensitised to blackouts, expect them and will blame the government when the lights go off.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/matthew-abraham-heatwave-has-weatherill-and-koutsantonis-sweating-on-no-power-blackouts/news-story/095d8fd24de19229467626f40ea88f5e
70
Had Hazelwood not been shuttered, there would be no problems with capacity at present.
If 2% of the billions squandered on renewables been used on Hazlewood, there would be no problems.
It is amazing that mush headed activists, spineless politicians, and greedy lying salesmen have been able to inflict such damage upon an otherwise level headed populace.
SA is one connector trip from a blackout. Think about it.
There is Reliable power and Unreliable power. That’s what matters when things go sketchy.
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To paraphrase Dr. David Viner quote: “Children just aren’t going to know what a regular electrical supply is”
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How about a little demand side management . Shut off all air conditioning to all government buildings till
electricity rates are cut in half .
Time to replace the eco – anarchist’s infiltrating politics .
China at least has admitted it’s building of coal plants will continue as a necessary step to steal jobs .
China must be shaking their heads at the sheer stupidity of western politicians who are blinded by green guilt and
prospects for a new tax stream .
Time for a GET REAL Party .
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Via Simon Holmes à Court
I’ll leave you draw your own confusion
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[…] hour. (Jo Nova saw this coming, had been tracking the summer peak electricity prices as they hit the peak, asked what the cost of the hot spikes would be,and explains why a few coal failures are not […]
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TO KNOW THAT YOU DO NOT K OW IS BEST. TO PRETEND TO KNOW WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW IS A DISEASE
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