The Renewables Lobby subsidy and handouts are still growing. In 2018, Australia must get 16% of all our electricity from “renewables”, up from 14.2% last year.
That’s 28,000 Gigawatt hours of magical green electrons from generators that give us nice weather as opposed to generators that cause droughts, floods, cyclones and spread crocodiles, dengue fever, cause wars and change butterflies.
Welcome to modern Australia where our grid is designed by witchcraft, run by superstition, and panders to every whim of the Giant Renewables Industry Lobby.
The noose tightens in Australia.
Renewables must supply 16% of our electricity in 2018, and even more in 2019.
Source: 2001-2030 Annual Targets and renewable power percentages, Clean Energy Regulator.
Prices are rising too: Could there be a connection here?
Even the ABC now says “Something has gone terribly wrong with our electricity prices”. Prices went off the ranch from 2007, rising much faster than the CPI. This is also the point Australia started ramping up the intermittent renewables. Before that the Snowy Hydro Scheme –the only reliable and cost effective form of renewable power — had been operating for decades. Correlation is not causation, but it’s true to say we had cheap electricity when we didn’t have much wind and solar.
Australian Electricity Prices, 2018, CPI, Graph.
Many of the costs of intermittent power are hidden. They risk grid stability, require longer transmission lines, more expensive gas and diesel back up to cope with faster ramp rates, they drain our hydro dams, use up good farmland, need storage and batteries, billion dollar interconnectors, plus higher costs to stabilize frequencies, they drive out the cheapest operators, which changes the bidding pattern (see the bid stack here). They also “require” an ongoing subsidy of $80/MWh.
Turnbull and Frydenberg say they want a technology neutral scheme. So let’s start by axing the RET.
The Chinese are laughing at us.
All foreseeable if any due diligence had been carried out. Ideology, propaganda and politics have all created the perfect storm.
No short term turn around is likely with the current media and political class in power and control.
Unfortunately we may have to have an economic crisis before the masses revolt.
Not sure how we can protect ourselves from this mass stupidity until the turn around occurs.
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Prices rising?
It’s those wascally gold-platers again!
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When former PM JG said in 2012 that the largest contributor to electricity price rises was “poles and wires”, the transmission network and not the carbon tax, she was absolutely correct.
What people forget is the reason behind the surge in network maintenance costs.
On the AEMC web site we find some key dates mentioned, “The National Electricity Market (NEM) was established in 1998 and the AEMC was established in 2005.”
One of the earliest reports (only the 2nd in their history, but they started in 2005) of the AEMC Reliability Panel stated:
So there was no high reliability standard covering the whole east coast prior to 1998, then a 99.998% reliability standard was imposed, and the maintainers of the “poles and wires” are basically ordered to meet this standard because they are regulated and not making choices under market conditions. At that point network costs were going to go up. The transmitters have admitted as much, where on their Energy Networks Australia web site they now (2018) say:
Given that we have to pay for reliability goals one way or another, one pertinent factor in this whole central planning discussion was just exactly how much value consumers place on reliability. In 2013 the AEMC noted that if Value to Consumer of Reliability (VCR) was much different to what the reliability standard implied, they would have to adjust the reliability standard to bring its implementation cost more in line with what consumers were willing to pay. About a year later the market surveys and modelling they had commissioned suggested, surprise surprise, that their reliability target was just about right where VCR said it should be. Isn’t it amazingly lucky that a centrally planned pricing decision made in 1998 was still accurate to the consumer’s true demand 16 years later! Do you believe that? Hey, they have three independent reports from AEMO, ROAM, and Deloitte to prove it, amazing as that may be. So no change, the wise heads at the AEMC kept the reliability target at 99.998%.
When the price rises came to a head in 2014, a bunch of documents were released about it at the AEMC web site, just look them up.
One of their findings was
Surely this means that the “gold plating” cost is set in stone because the actual gold plating has already been done (i.e. invested) back in the early 2000s and now the cost of all that “gold” (i.e. reliability) still has to be paid back through fixed electricity distribution charges.
So the government pushed the only other button they could push to cut prices, they changed the rules on network operators to encourage more efficient spending of asset upgrades and to reduce the regulated rate of return that they are allowed to earn. Must be nice to just cut a companies profit margin if their prices are too high, eh? That’s regulation for you.
Of course the RET and associated subsidies were the next largest cause of price rises, and this was predicted qualitatively (perhaps not quantitatively) in that same AEMC report from 2007. Just see section 5.4.1:
So yes, we will be paying the extra price of the gold plating for many more years, and it was a government decision that began the gold plating, and the other government policy of the RET will continue to force us to pay to undermine our own reliable supplies which will increase the average price, all of it predicted by the AEMC in 2007.
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Clarification to above, obviously where I said “the only other button they could push” I mean the only other politically feasible option for the government to push at that time. Scrapping the RET was another button, but they obviously did not think they could push that button back in 2014.
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Look on the flip side of that 16% ….. from the point of view of percentage.
That leaves 84%.
All of that comes from non renewable sources, eg coal fired power and natural gas fired power generation.
Of that 84%, close to 75% of that is coal fired power, solid, reliable, power on demand, power that follows the demand.
If that total 100% per year averages out to around 23000MW per hour, then if 75% of that comes from coal fired power, then coal fired power delivers around 17250MW per hour.
Yep, that sounds about right.
Enough to preserve the majority of that Base Load of 18000MW.
Hmm!
That’s just about what coal fired power is delivering now, after 10 weeks of keeping daily data for power generation from every source.
Imagine the cost if you will, to raise that renewable power target to the required level, for what amounts to ….. not very much at all, and yet, coal fired power will just keep humming along very nicely thank you very much, until they start taking it away that is.
16% versus 84%.
Ask you resident renewables supporter this question the next time he starts rabbitting on about wind and solar power. “Where does that remaining EIGHTY FOUR PERCENT come from?”
Tony.
471
For the sake of clarity.
That 84% total is made up of 75% coal fired and 9% natural gas fired power.
Tony.
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Tony, I’m interested in what sets wholesale prices in Qld, as Qld has very little wind, a good amount of rooftop solar, and always seems to be selling surplus power to NSW.
So why did Qld prices go from $60/Mwhr in 2015/16 to $93 in 16/17 to $73 in 17/18? The major generators CS Energy and Stanwell are government owned.
I found one reference: “In June 2017, the Queensland Government announced the Powering Queensland Plan, which included a direction to Stanwell Corporation to maximise output dispatched and return the 385 MW Swanbank E gas-fired power station to service from 1 January 2018. Since this announcement, Queensland wholesale and forward contract prices have fallen materially.”
So is the Qld government controlling prices?
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It’s a national market, so I presume that one state can’t stay cheap when other states are offering to pay more for the product. Hence high prices in SA and Vic will “infect” NSW and Qld. Ain’t interconnectors a great thing? Plus the RET is rising and affects all states squeezing thw wholesale prices up.
Prices in WA have also gone up at a retail level. Though that’s partly because of the RET and partly because our state govt runs the monopoly and has figured that if Eastern Staters can pay $27c KWh so can West Australians. Since it’s not at the screaming-protests-in-the-street point, McGowan is using our electricity network as another tax to offset the defecit.
10
As I indicated above, I suspect that the Qld government can “game” the market. So the year before they wanted maximum revenue, so they kept supply tight. Then last year was election year so they intructed Stanwell to fire up Swanbank gas to increase supplies despite the fact that they always seem to be exporting to NSW. And despite the exports/imports, it is a state by state price, not a single intergrated market – e.g. last year NSW $82; Qld $73; SA $98; Tas $87; Vic $92/Mwhr.
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Hi Tony,
I checked your sight and the grid power tracking, it’s great and the explanation is clear and accurate! Great job, just wish everyone here would keep posting the link to get more media exposure.
now I do have a problem with this comment because ALL the power stations, knowing their days are numbered will stop capital improvements and start ramping down their maintenance costs so within a short period of time they will become unreliable! Now the first time there is a major dropout/blackout, coal will be demonized, slandered and ridiculed.
No one will hear “How come the unreliables didn’t pick up the slack?”
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ColA,
thanks for the kind words. As to what you mention here: (my bolding here)
I actually DON’T think that this is happening.
You can tell what’s happening at the plants with a degree of accuracy, well, I can anyway, having watched them for such a long time now, on that daily basis, with both of my long term Series.
You get a good idea as to what’s going on because you can see the respective Units at each plant go off line. If it’s a staged drop, usually over 6 hours or so, then it’s maintenance, and if it’s a vertical drop, (which does not happen all that often) it’s a fault. With the faults, when they come back on line, usually within 24 to 36 hours or so, then they go relatively quickly back up to full power, say over two to four hours or so, sometimes in steps, sometime back up to ‘full whack’ pretty quickly. If they come back on line after maintenance, two to five day off line, then they take longer to get back up to full power, say 6 to 10 hours, and in steps again, as they check things out along the way, good management by the engineering people.
Then there are Units which are off line for Months. That’s a lot more than maintenance, and when they come back on line, it’s 12 to 24 hours back up to full power, always in three or four steps, and at each step, they stay there for three to six hours.
Over the last 18 Months I have been watching on that daily basis, and virtually every plant in the Country still in operation has had Units off line for Months at a time, and that’s more than scheduled maintenance. You can call it Upgrades, and in some cases they actually do, (Stanwell, Bayswater) but it’s obviously ‘Life Extension Maintenance’ if you can see the distinction here.
Currently, there are six Units off line, one each at Bayswater, Liddell, Eraring, Stanwell, and 2 Units at the old Gladstone plant in Queensland. Bayswater has had its Units off line in rotation, as has Stanwell, both long term with each of their 4 Units. Eraring has had individual Units off line, also for extended periods, as has Gladstone.
Now call me cynical, but I cannot see why they would be carrying out this ‘Life Extension Maintenance’, (a very costly exercise to say the least) at Liddell, and they are, as each of their individual four Units has been off line for long periods of time over the last year, if they were planning to close that Plant any time soon, even as early as they say, 2022. If they were going to close it down, then they would just be running the Units into the ground for as long as possible, waiting for them to cough and die, and that would be that, all the while just concentrating on those Upgrades ONLY at the nearby Bayswater Plant.
The same is happening with the Two Plants in Victoria, Loy Yang A (4 Units) and B (2 Units) and Yallourn W, (4 Units) as each of those has also had single Units off line for extended periods of time, also carrying out that ‘Life Extension Maintenance’ as well.
Call me cynical (again) but I am of the opinion that ‘lip service’ is being paid to this ‘close them down’ meme to say the right things that they perceive people want to hear in this current climate (sorry, couldn’t help myself there) while still carrying out the necessaries to prolong the life of ALL those remaining Plants.
Watch data for so long and you see things.
It’s been a really interesting exercise. I keep thinking, well, I’ll perhaps stop doing this soon, but the more I look, the more I see, the more I learn, the more I want to tell people.
And where you then mention this:
They’re already demonising it every time one of those Units goes off line, and even closures for scheduled maintenance are being called failures now.
However, at each and every case, those ‘from full power back to zero’ times are managed very well thank you by the grid controllers, with a variety of different options available to them, and utilised at EVERY time, to the extent that the general public never knows they have even happened, until a number days after the event, when himself over at the Renew site spruiks about another failure, and in nearly every case, I’ll write about it within hours of it happening, explaining how it was handled. (Ho Hum!)
Tony.
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Thanks Tony,
Yes your observations appear to be correct, particularly about ‘Life Extension Maintenance’, they are keeping the plants humming along, good to know.
Liddell is getting ‘Life Extension Maintenance’! does anyone think AGL might be ‘gamming the system’??
I was in BHP Pt. Kembla in the last 5 years prior to BHP Newcastle shutdown, I was closing No. 2 Blast Furnace and the number of times Newcastle rang me and begged for parts (they had a very similar furnace) only for their management to say they didn’t have the $$ and my management said not to give parts away and pay for shipping. Newcastle had no Capital $$ for 7 – 10 years and was then starved of maintenance $$ until management could justly claim that the plant was so old and rundown it was not economically viable! Thus my somewhat cynical assumption!
00
I found the rest of the ABC article blowing about in the street. It says:
Despite substantial targeted subsidies by government to the renewable electricity sector, the market has failed to deliver cheaper electricity prices. It is clear that only socialism can repair the damage done to our electricity sector by market failure.
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That’s a quote from the ALP’s energy policy document; 50% RENEWABLE ENERGY BY 2030.
Who am I going to believe Bill Shorten or my own eyes?
Turnbull or any other future LNP leader who follows his policies is well and truely wedged.
Either policies to reduce CO2 emissions per head are necessary to ‘save the planet’ or they aren’t.
If they are necessary then the ALP’s policy is better at doing it, at least in theory, therefore undermining any LNP election advantage on electricity costs.
If reducing CO2 emissions is not that important why do it at all?
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They are delusional and believe thier own nonsense.. dangerous stuff….
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It appears muhc of the population also believes it or don’t give a damn because Shorten is going be our next PM unless something significantly changes with the LNP.
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“They” are not delusional. They actually lack the ability to connect the dots. They see that the auction price for wind energy in Victoria is now at $50/MWh:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/victoria-sees-huge-interest-low-prices-renewable-auction-66061/
That is clearly lower than the current wholesale price. So it seems obvious that adding more of this while reducing fossil fuel generation will lower the price.
To connect the dots “they” need to realise what the additional wind generation actually achieves. In Victoria each additional MWh of wind energy will save about 500kg of brown coal. That translates to a saving of about $3/MWh – spend $50 to save $3. But it gets worse. At some point the brown coal plant is unable to respond to the demand variation and needs to be replaced with gas plant operating at a cost of $120/MWh; producing 2MWh from gas for every MWh of wind, resulting in average price of $97/MWh. That excludes any of the cream in the form of cross-subsidies currently around $80MWh. So each MWh has a true cost of around $177/MWh despite the auction price of $50/MWh.
This is too complicated for “them” to understand.
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How does a wind generator make money at $50/MWhr?
Look at Ararat, 75 towers, 240 MW nameplate, cost $450 million, completed in 2017.
At a 30% capacity factor, that equals 631,000 MWhr per year for a gross income of $31.5 million per year, nowhere near enough to cover depreciation, operating costs, let alone a return on investment.
However, if you add in the sale of Renewable Energy Certificates at $80/Mwhr, that’s additional income of $50.5 million per year.
Stockyard Hill Windfarm west of Ballarat commenced construction in May 2018. 149 turbines, nameplate capacity 530 MW. Hard to find definitive capital cost, but Reneweconomy quotes $700 million. So again, 530 MW x 30% CF equals 1,393,000 MWhr per year for gross income at $50/Mwhr of $69.6 million. Deduct depreciation and operating costs and there is no way that can provide a return on investment. But strangely, Reneweconomy then reports Stockdale has been sold by Origin Energy to Chinese company Goldwind for $110 million. Please explain.
And more: AGL Silverton 200 MW, $450 million. Lal Lal 228 MW, no capital estimate provided.
30
Without the cross-subsidy they will not break even at $50/MWh but with LGCs at $80MWh they make good money. The 2019 forward price is $77/MWh but drops to $35/MWh for 2021. If the RET remains at the current level the LGC price may fall further however I suspect some will be withheld to keep the price up. This is a way the wind generators can game the system.
20
Oh, I found another slip of paper. It says:
Following South Australia’s successful transition to renewable energy, state governments have banded together to blow up each other’s coal power stations. A spokesperson said ‘We are at war with the climate. We must destroy Australia’s coal fired power stations in order to increase productivity.’
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Don’t worry, Australia is not the only country suffering from renewable energy madness (also termed ruinable energy madness and unreliable energy madness).
90
Misery loves company.
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I voted against the Liberals because I believe that the NEG showed that they were out of touch with reality. Now Labor are set to confirm they are in La La land also, by getting the States (and the ACT) to reject the NEG.
What the Liberals should do (but won’t) is
Shove the whole mess back on the States that caused it, by issuing no more RET Certificates and telling the States to issue their own. The new Certificates should be valid only in the State of issue. (Claim that it “isn’t fair” for SA to be subsidised more by other States etc.).
The federal Liberals can parade their ‘virtue’ by claiming to support the RET targets and the Paris Accord while ignoring the whole thing, like approx. 190 other countries.
That way the States who are keen on renewables get the cost placed on their own electricity bills.
Follow that up by making the States perform in other areas e.g. education and Health Care. Hand out a lump sum and leave it up to the States as to how it is spent. If they want loads of highly paid bureaucrats let them wear the blame, just don’t reward them with more money.
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With Labor running most states, that would be a disaster for Australia!!
We NEED a Conservative Federal Government with enough guts to stand up and say “We will do what we know is right for Australia!”
30
Let me know when you find one.
50
Did you vote for sharkie?
00
“generators that give us nice weather as opposed to generators that cause droughts, floods, cyclones and spread crocodiles, dengue fever, cause wars and change butterflies.”
Well said. AXE the RET. Stop “lasering in on prices” and bringing in massive fines for industries to close them faster and more rules and an emissions intensity tax and carbon credits.
The question in my mind is whether Malcolm is completely mad or is the RET so complex in his mind that he cannot understand it? I cannot believe politicians do not see this is entirely their fault?
210
He understands it because I sent him a letter and explained in excruciating detail by analogy. Here is what I said – the RET by Cola Analogy.
Imagine we have two Cola Producers – Lets call them Coke, And Pepsi.
Now some looney has decided that Coke is bad for the environment (Coke of course is also Coking coal…. ) but environmentally friendly pepsi is the favoured brew that prevents storms, sea level rise and dying polar bears. The Ret works like this.
For every case of Coke produced Coke must pay Pepsi for an CGC (Cola Generation Certificate) at the market price equal to the production price of 2 cartons of coke just for the right to produce it. This means that Cokes Production cost is multiplied by 3 (1 unit to make the Coke and 2 Units Paid to Pepsi). Not content with this the government has stipulated that Pepsi Must get market priority, so Coke cannot be sold until all the Pepsi has been sold which allows the Pepsi to be sold at a minimum equal to the now market manipulated cost of 3 times production plus markup. The government has further stipulated that consumers can’t be allowed to specify they only want Coke, so all cola must be sold anonymously as Cola and impossible to tell apart.
Now look at this scenario, substitute Coal Generators for Coke, and Renewable generators for Pepsi. If the government applied these rules to the Cola industry would this be acceptable or even legal ? NO it wouldn’t. So why is it acceptable applied to the electricity industry.
Most of the Generators are private companies just like Coke and Pepsi, how can this travesty be allowed to happen!
371
Oh and let me point out, that this scheme would not only let Pepsi sell via “market priority” at Coke Price x 3, but remember they also got the 2 units from Coke in CGCs meaning Pepsi get a subsidied income of 5 x Coke. For every 1 unit Pepsi sold they get 5 x coke .
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Good work.
The question in my mind for Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison, Frydenberg and the rest is whether the whole rotten structure makes any sense to them? After 18 years of the RET are they simply blind to what it is doing? Don’t they understand that everything was fine until they forced Federal regulation on a working State market, that they are responsible, that they have done what Rudd, Gillard could only dream. Taken over a State’s right.
So are they wilfully blind or is the RET Act so convoluted, so deceitful, so well crafted, so opportunistic that our brilliant legislators do not understand it. Possibly.
If not. If they do understand this evil piece of deceitful legislation, then they should be prosecuted with creating, employing and oppressing us. The RET is illegal, a piece of greedy, manipulative and wrong legislation which is evil and not legal under the power of parliament to create.
The government is using its power to force electricity retailers to overcharge us in a hidden way for the direct cash benefit of wind and solar extortioners. The money does not even go to the government, so it is legislated theft. Governments can tax and fine and charge. They cannot force the enrichment of third parties. Not since Magna Carta.
Of course, as John Roskam, head of the IPA wrote to me, it may be acceptable to ‘modern jurisprudence’. Translated that means the b******s can get away with it. They have so far.
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Our State parliaments need an ethics overhaul and criminal review too. Daniel Andrews using taxes to pay for Labor party employees during an election. It’s not even the $384,000 but the $1,000,000 of our money used to frustrate the investigation by the ombudsman. At least the police are investigating criminal charges now.
Then the document all parliamentarians are asked to sign. The declaration that they are not possibly dual citizens. Some who signed even had two passports but everyone with overseas parents were aware of this and perhaps 20 parliametarians signed repeatedly. This illegal act carried a mandatory 1 year conviction and jail sentences which in itself would prohibit them from ever sitting again. Like Pauline Hanson, they should pay the money back too, millions in some case. Hanson went to jail. Not one of these l*ars has been prosecuted. Some have just been reelected.
The sale or gift of publicly built utilities like Hazelwood and Liddell. Power plants built with our money and in the case of Hazelwood, we received $2.3Billion and forced them to spend another $1.6Billion. Now our Federal government has forced them to close in close cooperation with the Labor State government which increased coal by 300%. At what point is our government behaving deceitfully, criminally? Malcolm Turnbull and Daniel Andrews both claim it is a ‘private’ company matter. How dec*iful! In the case of Liddell, AGL cannot wait to make a fortune in a power station for which they paid nothing. Does anyone really think taking it back is ‘socialism’?
First, remove the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2001. It is illegal. Then return the price of coal to what we received only two years ago. Stop the forced secret cash payments to windmill and solar operators for merely operating. Stop the handout of public tax receipts to hide the fact that Alcoa, Liberty OneSteel, Port Pirie, Pelican Point and many industries are running at a huge loss thanks to the RET. Stop Snowy II, the giant uncosted $12Billion monster being built with our money. Stop the NBN and admit it is 1970s pre satellite huge waste of $60Bn of public money.
Stop the NEG which is nothing of the sort. It is as bad as the RET, fixing a shocking ripoff with punishing every large energy user with fines of up to $100Million for a problem created wholly by government legislation.
CO2 is not pollution. It is the gas of life as much as Oxygen. We are all made entirely from CO2, like all living things from ants to trees. We are carbon dioxide life forms. We all burn. This is all dec*it and th*ft. It must stop.
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Whence can it come?
What source can it possibly have—as we approach the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century?
30
A subsidy of $80/MWh from citizens’ pockets to support
renewable energy,…is that too much to ask for being green?
Risking grid stability by relying on intermittent technology,
say,is that too much to ask for being green? Loss of good
agricultural land to solar farms,I ask is that too much to
pay for being green? YES, YES ‘n YES!
151
Remember the $800 million pipeline from Sugarloaf South? Used when the drought broke to dump water into the flooded Goulburn river at the worst possible time. Never used again. Run by legislation through hundreds of properties against the protests of all owners. A total ripoff.
At the same time the State governments was busy banning dams, banning gas exploration, banning agistment in the high country, banning reducing forest floor fuel, even picking up stick for a fire. In Victoria, according to the head of Energy Safe Victoria, they spend $100Million a year to trim trees, mainly in Melbourne just to prevent a suburban bushfire. For less they could put all power underground.
Our money flows like a river to parliaments who show no sense in spending it, no responsibility, no foresight and no concern. When was there last a bushfire in say South Melbourne? When was the last time an Elm Tree burned? Why are they not acting to fix the problem instead of paying protection money to sub contractors? There are so many institutionalized ‘environmental’ ripoffs it does not have an end.
Then all the government bodies to oversee private industries. Clean Energy authorities which are nothing of the sort and based on the presumption that in this century, CO2 is pollution?
This is not science. This is a form of madness by the science ignorant Greens, socialists and communists who have captured environmental movements, universities, political parties and individuals. They are now moving quickly on their ‘progressive’ agendas which include their anti semitic core beliefs, from Germany to Victoria Stan to the people’s republic of Yarra where we are apologizing with our cash for improving the place. How long before good people in Caulfield have to wear Yellow stars?
It starts with repealing the RET. Seize back our parliaments. The Black Hand will not prevail.
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this is behind paywall in Telegraph & Times but note below that people aren’t looking at them, or reducing usage, ****but the final paras tell us they will “reduce energy bills, help keep the lights on and deliver billions of pounds of savings to our economy”! go figure:
29 Jul: Daily Mail: ‘I got rid of mine’: Ex-energy minister behind UK smart meter rollout says he binned home power reader as he slams £11bn drive to fit one in every UK home
•Mike O’Brien removed device from home because he couldn’t keep track of it
•Ex-energy minister said bad assumptions were made in designing programme
•He slammed decision to let the big six oversee roll-out instead of operators
By Sebastian Murphy-bates
Former energy minister Mike O’Brien said then-energy secretary Ed Milliband, during the Gordon Brown Government, made bad assumptions in designing the programme.
They were wrong to think users would monitor their electricity and gas use and consume less as a result, he told the Telegraph.
‘I had an early version, after a while I barely looked at it, didn’t use it. We got rid of it,’ he said.
Mr O’Brien and other former ministers also slammed the decision to let the big six energy companies roll out the programme instead of distribution network operators.
They said this mistake was caused by constant lobbying from power companies that the government caved into.
***The programme was also rushed into service by politicians and bureaucrats desperate to meet climate change targets…
Mr O’Brien said: ‘Far from opposing us, the Tories were saying we weren’t being green enough. These were the days of David Cameron chasing huskies.’…
However, according to one expert they ‘couldn’t tell the difference between a spanner and a banana’.
Meters now stop working when a household changes supplier, and many don’t work in mobile phone blackspots as they use technology that relies on the signal.
Energy companies also pressured customers into installing a smart meter even if they didn’t want one…
****The Energy Department said more than 11 million smart and advanced meters were installed in Britain and more than 400,000 were being installed every month.
‘Smart meters are expected to take £300 million off domestic energy bills in 2020 alone, rising to an annual saving of £1.2 billion by 2030,’ it said.
Smart Energy GB’s head of policy and communications, Fflur Lawton said: ‘For most households, having a smart meter installed could help them save enough energy each year to power their home for a week.
‘What’s important to remember is that smart meters will reduce energy bills, help keep the lights on and deliver billions of pounds of savings to our economy.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6002319/I-got-rid-Ex-energy-minister-UK-smart-meter-rollout-says-binned-his.html
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“An annual saving of £1.2 billion by 2030”.
And all for an upfront cost of about £20 billion.
Paid now, by the consumer, through higher energy bills.
And the crooks who promote these “smart” meters tell the consumer “they are fitted free of charge”.
When will the people wake up to these green scams?
80
When their lights go out….
50
Original steve has put his finger on it. The penny will only drop when the fridges and aircons stop functioning and all the lights go out for prolonged periods. I am afraid that until then the public are just too apathetic.
30
We don’t know if the minister has simply tossed the in-home display in the cupboard, or actually requested the smart meter(s) be removed and replaced with “dumb” ones…
50
comment in moderation re: 29 Jul: Daily Mail: ‘I got rid of mine’: Ex-energy minister behind UK smart meter rollout says he binned home power reader as he slams £11bn drive to fit one in every UK home
30
while jo’s ABC links suggest a degree of concern, what most of their audience hears 24/7 year in year out is more like the following:
16 Jul: ABC: How government inaction fuelled Australia’s renewable energy boom
By business editor Ian Verrender
Banks refuse to finance coal-fired generators and our major energy producers see no future in them. The reasons are simple: They take far longer and are hugely more expensive to build than large-scale renewable plants. Plus, they cost more to run.
Most also view a carbon price as inevitable at some stage, which would make coal-fired generators unviable and their bankers nursing multi-billion-dollar losses.
It is a triumph of economics over ideology. While coal will remain an important part of our electricity industry for another 20 years, its influence rapidly will diminish as the new technology takes over…
Renewable energy may be the cheapest way to produce electricity but, because of its intermittent nature, it requires back-up. Gas turbines, which unlike coal generators can be quickly turned off and on, are ideal…
It is the rise in gas prices rather than the march of renewables that has fed directly into our electricity prices…
Base load power usually is described as the minimum we need to keep things ticking over. But engineers describe it as the lowest amount a coal-fired generator can produce before it has to be shut down. Given they take days or even weeks to fire up, that can spell trouble.
When our grid was powered mostly by coal, we were producing vast amounts of excess electricity for the simple reason our generators could not be turned down far enough at night. Even at base load, they were producing far too much.
That is why gas, pumped hydro and increasingly, batteries, will play an important role into the future. They can be turned on and off easily, making them far more efficient to operate…
It is one thing to reject science, that carbon emissions from human activity have altered the earth’s climate. It is another to discard economics.
Our financiers, businesses and consumers have shifted to renewables for the simple reason that they are cheaper. Perhaps it is time our leaders followed.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-16/how-government-inaction-fuelled-the-renewables-boom/9996458
likewise u can have admissions energy costs are rising fast in UK as more renewables enter the grid:
27 Jul: UK Telegraph: Thousands left in limbo as Britain’s cheapest energy supplier Iresa goes bust
By Jillian Ambrose
Iresa Energy, which is also the country’s most complained about energy supplier, collapsed on Friday after a lengthy, public battle with the regulator over its poor customer service and billing.
The company is the latest casualty of ***fast-rising energy costs that have forced standard energy tariffs across the market higher in the last few months…
—
yet u then get straight-out propaganda such as this:
26 Jul: The Ecologist: Misconceptions over onshore wind rife among MPs
by Brendan Montague
Parliamentarians wildly overestimate opposition to onshore wind power, according to a new survey…
The YouGov survey, commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU – RICHARD BLACK, EX-BBC), shows that just eight percent of MPs know that onshore wind farms are now the cheapest way to add electricity generating capacity in the UK…
The most recent Government survey shows that just two percent of the population strongly opposes the technology – but only nine percent of MPs think that the figure is less than five percent…
The MPs’ survey comes as a separate poll of the British public, by YouGov for RenewableUK, revealed that a majority of voters support lifting the Government’s de facto ban on new onshore wind projects…
Richard Black, director, ECIU: “It’s a damaging myth, because investing in onshore wind is likely to reduce energy bills – so this is really something that MPs and anyone else who professes to care about energy bills should be getting their heads around.”…
https://theecologist.org/2018/jul/26/misconceptions-over-onshore-wind-rife-among-mps
one good sign though. only websites like the above, plus BusinessGreen, REnews, ClimateAction, EnergyLiveNews & Utility Week bother to report such nonsense.
70
This demonstrates a complete lack of any understanding of how a power grid operates. Where does the vast amount of excess electricity go? Where did this so-called editor get his education?? With this level of understanding it is crystal clear why they cannot connect the dots between wind energy auction price and wholesale power price.
50
But is the wholesale cost the main factor ?
This is the historical cost for NSW
YEAR NSW
1999 23.35 ($/MWh average annual cost)
2000 28.27
2001 37.69
2002 34.76
2003 32.91
2004 32.37
2005 39.33
2006 37.25
2007 58.72
2008 41.66
2009 38.85
2010 44.19
2011 36.74
2012 29.67
2013 55.1
2014 52.26
2015 35.17
2016 51.6
2017 81.22
2018 82.27
2019 76.06
https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-dashboard#average-price-table
So 1999 was 2.3¢/kWh = 3.7¢/kWh adjusted for inflation
Now it is 7.5¢/kWh
So it has gone up 3.8¢/kWh in real terms.
So for the average NSW bill of 15 kWh per day that translates to an extra $208 per year.
But I think the average bill has gone up a lot more than that.
The usage rate is now about 30¢/kWh.
110
On top of wholesale increases, consumers are also paying for the extra transmission lines to distant renewables generators, the LRET and SRET (large and small certificates). Plus the other subsidies / grants / Feed in tarrifs and the FCAS as well as the Big Battery, the emergency diesels, and the feasibility study for Snowy Hydro 2.0. We’re also paying for “demand management” — all the money that pays off industries and people who choose to switch off at peak time.
Yes. The conglomerate gentailers are gaming the system (as well as government players and any player that can) — and there are other reasons for price rises. But our auction market worked with the generators we had pre 2007. Now we apparently need a whole new bidding system as well as subsidies to recognise the value of baseload players and subsidies to keep some dispatchable energy “on standby”.
220
Thanks Jo, I can see how all those extra costs would add up.
20
Good point about transmission lines. In Spain, it’s hard to take a picture of countryside without cables. Wind power infrastructure costs don’t stop at those massive concrete bases.
For all the expense and mess (of a now ageing wind fleet) Spain’s turbines produced 18.4% of its power in 2017, just ahead of coal at 17.4%. Yep. That’s all you get.
Spain’s market regulator says to go ahead and close down coal anyway. If France proceeds with nuclear closures (to meet one of the Socialist Party’s “target” thingies) we’ll find out just how good ageing wind turbines south of the Pyrenees really are. (More likely Macron will double-talk his way out of the nuclear reductions. Failing that, he may have to triple-talk. If Spain then refrains from ditching its coal that part of Europe may be okay for a while.)
People say they can’t stand the sight of the towers. Live around wind power in Spain long enough and it’s those cables you come to hate most. I dread to think how much loss is incurred – and fudged.
130
https://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/spain/spainishnationalelectricitygrid.shtml
This map shows all the power generators too.
30
Europe had an awful period of time called the Dark Ages…now the greenies are instituting a new Dark Ages ( literally ).
10
A new “dark age” characterised by the dominance of hypocritical moral puritans – pushing guilt, shame, racism, and sexism.
Bullies and thugs claiming to be the victims.
Luddites claiming to support technological advance.
…
00
Sounds just like the Inquisition of old….. but with the new green religion at its core….
00
It’s pretty obvious prices are going to go up more under either major party although it will be much more and faster when Shorten becomes our next PM. Our only hope to get prices back down is for a massive change in energy policy, and the only way that can possibly happen is for Turnbull to be rolled even at the risk of losing the next election, which is going to happen anyway with Turnbull and his cohorts in control.
40
Yes…funny how no matter who you vote for, you get the same agenda…
Globalists control both parties, so…
40
Which is why Turnbull has to be rolled, energy and migration polices turned on their head and a massive multi-million dollar public re-education campaign is issued to explain to the public why the changes a renecessary. Otherwise, over the cliff we go no matter who wins government next time.
20
You would have noticed the sharp turn to independents in Longman, both majors are worried by this unhelpful intrusion.
Abbott has nothing to lose by standing up for the little people, otherwise he will spend his remaining years on the Opposition back bench.
I see the ginger group crossing the floor or the states rejecting the NEG, which would mean the Coalition gets thumped and won’t recover for a decade. So on a matter of principle, for the good of the nation, the ginger group must demand new Hele and explain to the electorate why.
Keeping in mind there are a lot of brainwashed people out there, what can they say in a few soundbites to sway the masses?
10
this is a poor and inaccurate analysis. The One nation and Labor (ie one of your worried majors) vote “jumped”. Greens were statistically steady and the combined vote for other independents dropped.
Party 2016 GE 2018 BE
Labor 35.4 40
Liberal 39 29.6
ON 9.4 15.9
Green 4.4 4.8
all others 11.8 9.7
and of course, ON are not independents.
10
Thanks for clearing that up, we can now all agree there was no swing.
00
Craig Garland in Tasmania’s north-west is a true independent.
00
And it is only going to get worse. That 16% “renewables” includes about 10% hydro that is very reliable except for drought years.
That means currently only about 6% comes from wind and large solar. So by 2020 to meet the 20% target, wind/solar must increase from 6% to 10%. Add to that more rooftop solar that is outside the LRET target is expected to continue to increase significantly.
That 67% increase will force coal/gas to reduce their average contribution from 84% to 80%, and midday rooftop generation will further reduce their average utilisation, yet those generators must still be available when wind/solar contribution is zero. So with lower utilisation, what are coal/gas generators to do to remain economic but to bid higher prices? Yet the ESB would have us believe that by 20/21 wholesale prices will drop from $85/MWhr to $50/MWhr. I havve yet to see any explanation for that brave prediction. Dr Finkel’s estimate of the levelised costs of generation would say that no generation source is economic at that price.
100
Ah! But renewables will still get the $80-85 subsidy on top of that $50 until 2030. By that time the reliable suppliers will have been driven out of business, and the cost of reliable electricity will be born by those who can afford generators. In the name of “fairness” the Governments will borrow enormous sums to install giant batteries, and raise taxes to pay for the interest on those borrowings.
Our Forest Gumps will preen themselves as having “solved” the problem.
50
Can anyone confirm if this comment from a former UK canal boat blogger, now returned to Australia, is correct?
http://www.narrowboat-waiouru.co.uk/2018/07/what-happened-to-blogger.html
30
Not true, it’s perfectly legal to go off grid, even with power lines in your street.
It is much more expensive though.
30
I can’t confirm it.
It is not illegal to go off grid in NSW.
SA used to have legislation that you had to pay the service charge if the lines ran past your property. I think that has changed now, but a friend who built 2 years ago in a rural area went off grid because it would cost too much to have a line put in the 200 metres to the power lines.
I wonder if this is a case of the local Council being difficult, e.g. as they are responsible for services they don’t want to miss out on any revenue. Council officers are not the most reliable sources of information and often their ideas about their powers are years out of date.
32
It certainly looks like it:
https://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/w-a-sees-solar-future-but-battery-storage-and-evs-are-not-allowed/
Two years later it seems the policy is to penalise solar owners, rather than threaten to cut them off:
https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/power-surge-to-hit-solar-homes-ng-b88515496z
But more recent stories are talking about “Micro Grids” taking over from traditional ones, particularly in remote areas, and many could be installed by utility providers rather than keep throwing money at existing long cable routes. And the final sentence of my original quote suggests the canal boat blogger is not aware of standard “Anti Islanding” requirements.
But whatever the truth, it seems as if bureaucracy is even worse “Down Under” than here in “Blighty”!!!
50
Going off grid?
don’t forget to cap the sewer lines …
City caps sewer of Florida woman living off the grid
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/gone-viral/os-off-grid-sewer-capped-20140225-post.html
30
To quote from Jo’s headline piece
“Even the ABC now says “Something has gone terribly wrong with our electricity prices”..
.
That statement has intrigued me.
The ABC with its continent wide distribution of stations and a few miserly in numbers staff to man those stations along with its luxurious Taj Mahal Sydney headquarters populated by the masses of puffed up, perfumed, pampered, out of touch, elite smashed avacoda set and goat cheese circle of ABC employees in those Sydney headquarters must be a user of a hell of a lot electricity.
I can imagine the ABC’s budget director going to the CEO or what ever they call the Head of the ABC’s increasingly irrational leftist supporting politically correct agenda these days, possibly something along the lines of “Comrade Minister for Politically Correct Propaganda “, and suggesting that the ABC’s big earners will have to take substantial haircut in their pleonexia levels of remuneration so that the ABC can continue to pay its power bills.
.
The thought brings a smile as it might yet be another case of a “Revolution eats its children’
Unfortunately once again we, the ‘Irredeemable Deplorables from Australia’s Fly over Country” will be forced to foot the bill for the ABC at an unreal and excessive price as promoted by the ABC plus every other item that the politicians, most of whom it seems don’t even know or can fathom out which way you should tiurn a tap to get water or which way you should turn the tap to shut the water flow off , decide that they are going to Save the Planet all over again with yet another ill conceived and uncosted, unresearched, unproven, “It seemed like a good idea at the time” project.
Expert Politicians they might be with years of experience in Union politics, university politics, parliamentary members employment in politics who have displayed the correct political loyalty and will therefore be promoted even if they don’t know how to pick up a dog’s turd by the clean end and etc.
Knowledge of how the real world outside of politics actually works is NOT even a basic level of knowledge requirement to be a politician although a coating of Teflon is always an advantage so that even when the worst excesses and exploitations of the voters taxes are revealed , it just slides off such a Teflon coated politician without leaving any apparent mark or any semblence of that politician ever being educated as to the public’s real desires and wishes.
100
🙂
40
Well I always wondered if Shorten will surprise everyone and allow nuclear power stations here in Australia. One can dream. One thing is for sure. The LNP are too scared and cowards to do that even they should have done so a long time ago. But I think reality bites and Labor will also never do it despite it’s the only way if one is committed to reducing emissions so strongly as they are.
00
The resident grid experts here will be able to make something of this analysis of power price volatility in SA on July 9th 2018, from -$1,000 to + $14,000 in multiple consecutive 5 minute periods.
Commenter Elon’s Musk notes: “With gas prices at $9.34/GJ the fuel cost for gas generators alone will be $9.34/GJ * 3.6MWh/GJ @ 30% efficiency = $112/MWh.” They were apparently running 7 out of 8 gas generators at the time.
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2018/07/monday-9th-july-sees-sustained-high-prices-in-south-australia/
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2018/07/high-sa-prices-on-monday-9-july-business-as-usual/
40
beowulf:
You have to separate CCGTs from OCGTs. The 7 out of 8 refers to the CCGTs which run as ‘base load’ and have higher efficiency than the 30% quoted, more likely 55% (newer plants are over 60%) so their gas cost would be nearly half that quoted -$61.
OCGTs are the ‘peaker’ plants so beloved by the renewables advocates as the solution to non-generation from wind or solar or both. They have higher costs to run – maintenance costs are higher – and in SA they rarely bother to bid for supply below $300 per MWh.
Should there be some problem with supply as was the case with a line out near Adelaide, which in turn forced the flow from the Heywood interconnector to flow towards Victoria. Apparently the authority was worried about spikes in supply disrupting the system, but the effect was to make supply from Victoria unavailable. This meant that the local generators could ‘game’ the system and the OCGTs could make lots of money too.
I would make a comment about local politicians who think this is OK but it would get cut.
60
[…] This story has to get told outside the echo chamber where it is old news. […]
20
VIDEO: 6mins58secs: ABC Sciencey: Sciencey – Top Five Things You Need To Know About Renewable Energy
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/sciencey/series/0/video/SC1605H013S00
4mins58secs: Professor Andrew Blakers, College of Engineering & Computer Science, ANU:
predicts over the next 5 years, solar and wind will push up to 100G and more solar & wind installed each year and coal will fall and fall and fall…it really is game over. wind and solar are the outright winners, far ahead of new gas and coal.
Presenter Dr. Niraj Lal, physicist: increasing supply doesn’t have to be the only solution, so can reducing demand.
Matt Coleman, General Manager, Networ Solutions, Greensync: virtual power plants will be massive.
11 Jul: ABC: Speech by Justin Milne, Chairman of the ABC at American Chamber of Commerce, Sydney
We are all engaged in the debate because we know that our taxes keep the ABC in business, so it’s no surprise that so many Australians offer opinions, both brickbats and bouquets.
Let me assure you, by the way, that those brickbats are taken seriously, because we can and do make mistakes. At this moment, for example, there are more than 60 ABC microphones open all around the country. Four television networks and 10 radio networks are broadcasting 24/7. And online articles are published every minute or so. Given that volume, unsurprisingly we are sometimes wrong, and some of those brickbats turn out to be well-founded complaints. Irrespective of that, I can assure you that our 4,000 people are dedicated to telling the truth and providing accurate and impartial content. And for the vast majority of the time they are spectacularly successful…
But the biggest question facing the ABC is not whether one journalist or another makes a mistake today. Nor, frankly, is it even a question of bias. The vast majority of Australians – some 80 per cent – think the ABC is not biased. Nonetheless I have come to discover that complaints come equally from men and women, from Catholics and Protestants, and from places as far apart as Port Douglas and Port Lincoln. Labor supporters are outraged that we are ‘captive to the right’, and Liberals complain we are a ‘hotbed of communism’. Situation normal…
Australians clearly value a diverse media ecosystem, but within the sector, it turns out they value the ABC above all others. In fact, according to multiple independent surveys, 81 per cent say they trust the ABC: a figure that is 20 percentage points higher than commercial media, and more than double the level of trust in Facebook.
The reason for this is obvious to me. Around the world, trust in all kinds of institutions is under challenge. Partisanship is on the rise, debate is becoming polarised, and even reported facts cannot always be trusted.
By contrast, trust is what we do at the ABC. We don’t push a proprietor’s line. We don’t take sides. Neither the Managing Director nor I can direct our journalists to say one thing or another, and most importantly, neither can any political interest. And it is this slavish endeavour to be accurate, truthful and impartial which entirely distinguishes the ABC from commercial media.
This is well understood by Australians, and it is the chief reason why they trust us so much. It’s also why, as citizens, most Australians are content to pay a few cents a day for public service broadcasting that gives them facts, content and analysis that is not conditioned by the interests of proprietors, sponsors or politicians…
http://www.abc.net.au/future/securing-the-future-of-the-abc/9963104
20
participant in ABC Sciencey, Professor Andrew Blakers, ANU, who predicts 100G solar & wind will be installed per year in years’ time:
Nov 2017: The Conversation: What’s the net cost of using renewables to hit Australia’s climate target? Nothing
by Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University/Bin Lu, PhD Candidate, Australian National University/Matthew Stocks, Research Fellow, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University
Andrew Blakers receives research funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and similar bodies.
Matthew Stocks receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Currently, Australia is installing about 3 gigawatts (GW) per year of wind and solar photovoltaics (PV). This is fast enough to exceed 50% renewables in the electricity grid by 2030…
Cheapest option
Electricity from new-build wind in Australia currently costs around A$60 per MWh, while PV power costs about A$70 per MWh.
During the 2020s these prices are likely to fall still further – to below A$50 per MWh, judging by the lower-priced contracts being signed around the world, such as in Abu Dhabi, Mexico, India and Chile…
https://theconversation.com/whats-the-net-cost-of-using-renewables-to-hit-australias-climate-target-nothing-88021
6 Apr: The Conversation: Solar PV and wind are on track to replace all coal, oil and gas within two decades
by Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University & Matthew Stocks, Research Fellow, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University
Andrew Blakers receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency
Matthew Stocks receives funding from ARENA for the Australian Atlas of Pumped Hydro.
Solar photovoltaic and wind power are rapidly getting cheaper and more abundant – so much so that they are on track to entirely supplant fossil fuels worldwide within two decades, with the time frame depending mostly on politics. The protestation from some politicians that we need to build new coal stations sounds rather quaint.
The reality is that the rising tide of solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind energy offers our only realistic chance of avoiding dangerous climate change…
We will have sunshine and wind for billions of years to come. It is very hard to imagine humanity going to war over sunlight…
The cost of PV and wind power has been declining rapidly for many decades and is now in the range A$55-70 per megawatt-hour in Australia. This is cheaper than electricity from new-build coal and gas units. There are many reports of PV electricity being produced from very large-scale plants for A$30-50 per MWh…
Solar PV and wind have been growing exponentially for decades and have now reached economic lift-off. In 2018, PV and wind will comprise 60% of net new electricity generation capacity worldwide…
Together, PV and wind currently produce about 7% of the world’s electricity. Worldwide over the past five years, PV capacity has grown by 28% per year, and wind by 13% per year. Remarkably, because of the slow or nonexistent growth rates of coal and gas, current trends put the world on track to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2032…
Straightforward and cost-effective initial steps are: to hit 100% renewable electricity; to convert most land transport to electric vehicles; and to use renewable electricity to push gas out of low-temperature water and space heating. These trends are already well established, and the outlook for the oil and gas industries is correspondingly poor.
http://theconversation.com/solar-pv-and-wind-are-on-track-to-replace-all-coal-oil-and-gas-within-two-decades-94033
30
IO wonder if the Prof has every tried to charge a 3 trailer electric road train in the middle of the outback somewhere….
They really have no grip on reality….
30
29 Jul: ABC: BOM weather: The top questions asked of Bureau of Meteorology forecasters
By Shelley Lloyd
VIDEO: 16mins14secs: AskBOM: BOM’s Adam (Morgan) and Jonathan (How) were live on Monday, 9 July 2018 to answer questions about ‘What is a cold front?’.
With more than 1.5 billion views of the BOM website in the 2016-17 financial year, and more than 35 million views of its weather app, the bureau is looking for new ways to talk to Australians about the weather.
Senior meteorologist Adam Morgan said the bureau had started running a series of live question and answer sessions called #AskBOM using Facebook Live.
The BOM created a list of the top 10 questions they get asked about the weather and are using social media to answer them.
The questions are:
1.How is temperature measured?
2.What is “feels like” temperature?
3.How does a weather radar work?
4.What is that cloud?
5.What is a thunderstorm?
6.What is an east coast low?
7.What is a cold front?
8.How do tropical cyclones get their names?
9.What is an aurora?
10.What causes a red sky at sunrise and sunset?…ETC MULTIPLE VIDEOS
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-29/bom-weather-top-questions-asked-of-forecasters/10038022
40
I wonder if Turnbull will learn anything from these by-elections?
How do we get the message across to these dills that if he is going to give us a Labor lite government if re elected, we might as well vote for the real thing.
50
As Turnbull’s background is solid Labor for generations, do you think he or his wife really cares if Labor wins government?
So it depends on his real motives and how he sees it. As we have learned, Turnbull and his Black Hand are in the winner’s circle. None are conservatives. He even claims he is the true inheritor of Robert Menzies progressive ideals in destroying the conservatives.
Sure he hates to lose, but we have had a Labor/Green government since he stole office. More Gillard than Gillard. He has scattered the Conservatives, expelled and destroyed any opposition, taken over the machinery of the Liberal party and introduced his favorite progressive ideals. The Nationals too have been devastated, compromised and lost support and the Liberal National party a spent force.
Learned anything? Nothing Malcolm did not already know. He hates the Liberals, the Liberal National Party, the Nationals and his whole objective is to show Labor what a mistake they made in rejecting him, the most popular Prime Minister in history. When Shorten wins, Turnbull will be quite happy. Job done.
120
I doubt Turnbull will even bother campaigning. Like last time. You see, either way he wins.
110
Anybody who has the slightest doubt about Turnbull should go to the website and follow the time line history commencing when he was still a student at high school.
It is fascinating to read @ http://www.stopturnbull.com
40
His ideal would be that a Green/Labor government won and he was asked to stay on as Prime Minister. You see it’s not about Australia. It’s about Malcolm.
120
Australians would be shocked and angry if they found out what he really thinks about us, and that he proudly declares that he and his wife are globalists.
Sports people are “jocks” and way below him, military is, well, please read all about the the thoughts of the chairman.
30
Gotta pay that.
A new twist and you never know what a couple of million might buy from laba.
KK
10
“Hawke, Richardson, Keating & ors – 6 Labor figures on Turnbull’s pleading to join Labor”
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/07/bob-hawke-graham-richardson-on-turnbulls-pleading-to-join-labor.html
30
Ever since Turnbull appeared in politics he acted more like a Labor politicians. He agreed with Rudd’s policies on energy since day 1. He will not change. He will lead the party to a major defeat at the next election. The silliness of it all is his supporters in the party are following him as if he’s doing nothing wrong. Such conviction can only be put down to one thing. They all have lost torch with reality and with the people. On that point alone the LNP deserves to be decimated at the next election to drain the crap out of the party. Judging by the results of the by-elections Shorten will not only be our next PM for sure it will be a landslide victory for the ALP. I’m not going to blame the voters this time because we need to get rid of the fake LNP to allow the real one to return. LNP in its current form winning the election could be the worst thing to happen for this nation in the long run.
80
Little can be done now about debt levels and the addled geo-politics plotted out (then messed up) by much greater powers. The whole world was lined up for the debt boom which was supposed to stimulate it out of a crisis created by, er, debt. (Just as well we have Nobel-winning economists to explain how everyone should have known all along, except for those economists who were too busy picking up Nobels.) With endless debt and endless war comes demographic shock, not the by-product but one of the main goals of globalism (aka Common Purpose, Open Society, Sustainable Development…take pick.)
But Australia’s firm stand on illegal immigration, forced on the Lib leadership by the party, shows we are not helpless on all matters and that the Libs are not completely worthless. The Libs are at least not Labor.
Turnbull is electoral cyanide. When the Coalition falls our immigration and our coal fall into the hands of Labor, now a particularly cynical bunch of sell-outs, even compared to Gillard. Think Uphill Snowy and Adelaide Underwater Canoes are horrors? Wait till Labor and the Greens start stampeding their white elephants.
It’s after 9am July 30 2018. Turnbull, Frydenberg and Ben Ean Julie are still there. Do they have to draw us a picture of Sam Dastyari before we work it out?
70
No, please consider the minor parties. There’s no need to throw in the towel yet.
A conservative presence in the Senate can forestall a lot of what an incoming Labor government will try to implement.
60
A suitably constructed Senate while either Turnbull or Shorten as PM would work to a limited extent. However, it will only delay us going over the cliff as energy prices keep going up and our current extraordinary high immigration rate continues to flood the major cities.
80
The whole electrical energy system has been reduced to a smoking ruin by Green Climateers, but when one comes to the only thing that can change it….the ballot box….one is faced with no choice other than Liberals who have created the mess, or Labour who want to make the whole thing even worse. The whole of the humungous ABC, much of the rest of the Media, the schools and universities are continually pumping out pro-Green Climate Change/Global Warming propaganda nonsense in support of the Climate Change/Global Warming fantasy and scam. Shortly the only solution will be a peasants’ revolt
140
The revolt can’t happen with the current state of the people, with a significant proportion who believe in socialism and the rush to renewables, and much of the rest who don’t give a damn, are ignorant or clueless. So what is required for a revolt is first a lot more pain, and that will come in due course. It will happen a lot quicker under Shorten, which is why we should “welcome” him as our next PM, which now appears is inevitable anyway. Furthermore, it will shake the crap out of the LNP, which needs to be done if we are ever going to get the real LNP back.
30
The real lnp is gone replaced by a left leaning party that completes with labor on fashionable left wing causes. Think about the last few years, had the recent referendum had anything to do with cost of living? Do they even care? Our superannuation saving being continually eyed as a source of government funding. Legislated theft in the RET and water markets. QLD lnp agreeing with the stupid plan to replace light weight degradable plastic bags with heavyweight noon bio degradable bags for no effect of the ocean. We permanently have two left leaning parties, that has permanently shifted where centre is. The historical centre ‘rationalist’ position is occupied by one nation, balance between business (jobs) and welfare, low cost of living, small government, low debt, low tax and free speech, this is the ground of the the people, ground which the welfare addicted ABC now calls right wing.
Read the policies people, the two males are now well left of the people who now need to choose new representation.
60
Grr, the virtually unusable virtual keyboard strikes again… worst one “two males” should be “two majors”
40
I think unless we have a truly significant event ( i.e. grid down for 3-4 days and people start actually asking the hard questions beyond the brain fluff of “whats happening on Neighbours?” ) then nothing will change….
People have to experience actual physical discomfort and a mild panic to “get it”.
Once they realise they have no food, supermarkets are shut, ATMs shut down, their kids are hungry ( which no child should have to experience…) and its stinking hot or cold, they will wake up.
I’d hate to be a green/eftist pollie on that day…vengeance will hit them like a freight train….good thing they have all those schools with 6′ spiked fences and shiny new “anti terror” laws to keep a lid on things.
See, when you see the latter part of The Plan, you understand things better in context.
Reckon you’ve seen all the anti terror laws? Not even close….they will be used brutally as needed, to make sure the punters stay in line. They will shoot a few to make examples of them, and the sheep will drop back into line. People need to understand the past to know how it will work when it gets ugly. Common sense….
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I tend to agree. Most people are still comfortable and well off. After all we spend billions on pet food for example. If the nation was in terrible strife people wouldn’t even bother with pets in the first place. So yes it will require something like what you said for people to wake up. There’s a much better chance of that happening under Shorten of course, which is why in the long run we’d be better off with him as our next PM for a while. It goes to show the real problem is the people, not the political parties. People by and large don’t give a damn, too gullible or are clueless. SO a big kick on the backside will wake them up.
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‘Most people are still comfortable and well off.’
Not true, a lot of people are struggling.
‘However, while inequality across most of the population remained constant, the report’s co-author Professor Roger Wilkins said the very highest income earners had done better than everyone else.
“We do see some growth in income captured by the very top, but among the bottom 99 per cent we’re seeing very little change in the overall distribution of income,” he told AM.
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Nicholas
That’s the perfect summary.
The key, of course is the ballot box but even that, as you point out, has been short circuited by the new crop of manipulators.
Plunder has more meaning to our political parties than service to the electorate and they will do whatever is needed to achieve personal wealth from tapping the common pool.
Every family, on average, is being plundered by $1000 annually via the medium of their electricity bills.
And that is for nothing.
Certainly corrupt behaviour is not a new thing, but what is different is the extent and depth of that harvesting.
Recent transfer schemes where greateful governments have rewarded supporters include:
# The desalination plants.
# Victorian road construction.
# Government jobs for relatives and friends.
The procedure is to employ someone at huge rates of pay and not supervise their work too closely.
And the most magnificent achievement of all is the global warming industry, literally created out of nothing.
No science.
No point.
Just a tap out of the treasury funneling money to places unknown.
We Are being Robbed.
We have been enslaved.
Maybe we need a court case to test the legality of the internal price transference occurring in our electricity market.
It may not win, but if it went ahead the public may have been exposed to enough detail to work out why electricity is so expensive and be prompted to think about the possibility that the arrangement is not in our best interests.
Linking on from that would be “discovery” of possible actionable envious.
We need the public to be aware but it’s sadly a long way in the future.
KK
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‘# Victorian road construction’.
Any Roads Scholars involved?
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No, just blokes manning the stop/go signs.
On $100,000 a year so the rumor goes.
Sorry, forgot we were talking about Victoria.
That blokes should be workpersons.
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Actually, it occurs for me that the desal plants may be to control the population.
Assuming they let the dams run dry on purpose, the only way for people to get water is from the govt controlled desal plant in the city….nasty…huh?
Want water? Here…sign on the ‘Green Pledge’ to worship your new occult Overlord and then you shall receive your water….
The more I know about these whack jobs called “globalists”, the more it makes sense as a plausible scenario.
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Abbott says the Turnbull must listen to the results of the by-elections and take action:
“When the voters send you a message, you’ve got to listen. I don’t want to change the leader, I want to change the policy. If you change the leader without changing the policy you just jump out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
Sounds like a warning. If Turnbull doesn’t change soon there will be a leadership challenge. I hope so.
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We hope.
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Tony was explicit, we want new Hele and we want them now.
Turnbull must be planning a return to the big end of town, his tax blunder has given Shorten a free kick.
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Tony is more explicit on reducing power prices. We could achieve that without building any new coal fired power stations for now. We just need to abolish all RET schemes and subsidies to renewables included in our power bills. Building coal fired power stations now is not possible unless they too receive subsidies from the consumers in like manner, which would defeat the purpose and not reduce power prices but actually make matters worse. Someone just has to bite the bullet and scrap the subsidies for renewables. Alternatively, the government can build the coal fired power stations and provide cheap power. That goes against both Liberal and Labor ideologies in different ways. No, the only real option is to scrap the RET schemes and subsidies. Only Cory thus far has suggested that approach. Let’s hope it catches on with the LNP backbenchers.
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You are hoping that the LNP might grow a brain AND a set? No chance, find a good libertarian voice that fits your beliefs, and vote for them, follow up with sting in the tail preferences to One Nation. It’s clear that while ACP probably is a better choice, ONP is herding the masses better than ACP, this is the place for at least your preferences.
#walkaway from the two left-wing majors
(Use hash tag #walkaway on facebook to see what I mean.)
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I personally hope the LNP are completely annihilated and fail even to remain a party so that a new one can come out of the ashes or elsewhere but I realise that’s not realistic. So either the LNP do grow a brain or this nation is heading for the crash and burn scenario for sure.
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‘Building coal fired power stations now is not possible unless they too receive subsidies from the consumers …’
Not necessarily, Beijing would build a couple for a peppercorn, which is their usual MO along the Belt and Road. First thing they do is secure the energy system, whatever the locals require.
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You are now dreaming. Be realistic. Neither Turnbull nor Shorten is going to allow coal fired power stations to compete with renewables. We need a change in leadership and polices first.
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Be patient, the ginger group won’t let us down.
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Clive Mathieson has become Malcolm’s chief of staff, this is significant.
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‘Mr Abbott again called on the government to pull out of the Paris Agreement ….’ 9News
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Good, he’s gradually adopting all the policies of Cory. Eventually he will be fully aligned with Cory. Then all we need is Abbott or someone else who also if fully aligned with them to become the new leader of the LNP. Then and only then will they have at least half a chance of winning the next election instead of the current very likely landslide defeat.
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Cory could come out now and give the ginger group support, why we need coal fired power stations and the reason for abandoning Paris and the RET.
This is big and the next couple of weeks should see if he has the qualities of a statesman.
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lol. all over the FakeNewsMSM today:
30 Jul: ABC: AP: Trump International Golf Links in Scotland partially destroys 4,000-year-old, legally protected sand dunes
The documents were released following a public records request made by Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Britain’s Observer newspaper first reported the studies…
Mr Ward said the Scottish Government should consider Mr Trump’s failure to live up to the commitment when it reviews future building plans for the site…
30 Jul: Observer/Guardian: Donald Trump’s golf resort wrecked special nature site, reports reveal
by Robin McKie Science editor
“These documents show that considerable damage has been done to Foveran Links, and that it is very unlikely that it will retain its SSSI status,” said Bob Ward, the policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, who obtained the reports under FoI…
hmmm 12 July:
12 Jul: BBC: Trump golf course ‘destroyed’ dunes
By Glenn Campbell, Political correspondent, BBC Scotland
That is the conclusion reached in a draft monitoring report by the government watchdog, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).
The findings have been released to the BBC under freedom of information, as the president prepares to visit the UK…
SNH has released a series of documents relating to the environmental status of Trump Aberdeen in response to a freedom of information request…
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-44795229
Wikipedia: Links golf
A links is the oldest style of golf course, first developed in Scotland. The word “links” comes via the Scots language from the Old English word hlinc : “rising ground, ridge” and refers to an area of coastal sand dunes and sometimes to open parkland. Links land is typically characterised by dunes, an undulating surface, and a sandy soil unsuitable for arable farming but which readily supports various indigenous browntop bents and red fescue grasses, that result in the firm turf associated with links courses and the ‘running’ game (the hard surface typical of the links-style course allows balls to “run” out much farther than on softer turf course after a fairway landing- often players will land the ball well before the green and allow it to run up onto the green rather than landing it on the green in the more targeted-landing style used on softer surfaces..
Links courses tend to be on, or at least very near to, a coast, and the term is typically associated with coastal courses, often amid dunes, with few water hazards and few, if any, trees…
Links courses remain most common in Ireland and Great Britain, especially in Scotland. The Open Championship is always played on links courses, and this is one of the main features which differentiates it from the three major championships held in the United States. The first exception to this was the 2004 PGA Championship, which was played on a true links course, Whistling Straits, located near Kohler, Wisconsin. The 2015 U.S. Open was played at Chambers Bay, a British links-style course in University Place, Washington. Royal Adelaide Golf Club is a links course in Adelaide, South Australia and was partly designed by Alister MacKenzie where he stated, “One finds a most delightful combination of sand dunes and fir trees. I have never seen a seaside course possess such magnificent sand craters, as those at Royal Adelaide.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_(golf)
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not picked up so far by any FakeNewsMSM:
28 Jul: Scotsman: Faulty cable to wind farms costs electricity users millions
by Tom Peterkin
Consumers have forked out millions of pounds to switch off Scottish wind turbines while a sub-sea cable to transfer surplus renewable energy south of the Border has been out of action.
Scotland on Sunday has learned that the Western Link running from Hunterston in Ayrshire to the Wirral has been offline since the spring when a fault was found during tests.
The £1 billion “interconnector” runs for 239 miles under the sea and is designed to export electricity from Scotland where turbines can generate more power than is required north of the border in windy spells…
By exporting electricity to England and Wales it was hoped that the cable would cut the amount of compensation paid to energy companies when their Scottish wind farms have to be shut down because electricity supply outstrips demand.
The cash is known as constraint payments and is given to energy companies by the National Grid. But the money ultimately comes from consumers and is added to their electricity bills…
Research conducted for Scotland on Sunday by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), the charity which is critical of subsidies for wind power, found that energy companies have been paid £395 million over the past eight years to stop their Scottish wind farms.
The payments have continued despite the construction of the Western Link, a joint venture involving the National Grid and Scottish Power, with around £32m shelled out this year. The interconnector began operating at 50 per cent capacity last winter. But then a fault was found in a stretch of the cable in Liverpool Bay in the spring…
A recent posting on the Western Link website said: “cable fault was detected which caused the Link to trip”. Later the website was updated to say that it was expected it would be back in operation at full capacity in September…
The Western Link interconnector from Hunterston to Deeside was intended to reduce this cost, though its own £1bn capex has to be recovered from consumers, making it an expensive solution…
REF’s John Constable: “Interconnectors were supposed to put an end to the scandal of constraint payments. This clearly isn’t happening, a fact which raises questions as to whether interconnectors, such as the Western Link, will ever fully address the problem of excess wind power in Scotland…
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/faulty-cable-to-wind-farms-costs-electricity-users-millions-1-4775410
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***obviously, The Observer wasn’t observing the obvious outcome of their relentless advocacy of CAGW policies!
29 Jul: Observer/Guardian: Our scorched Earth needs voters to put more heat on their politicians
by Andrew Rawnsley
Britain won’t be unscathed by global warming. You can’t run from climate change and you can’t hide.
Over the course of Britain’s sweltering summer, the landlord of the building inhabited by the Observer periodically informs us that our air conditioning is undergoing an “automated controlled shutdown” because the weather has become so hot and humid that the system is at risk of damaging itself. So just when you really need cooling air, you can’t have it. One to be filed under: ***you couldn’t make it up…
We can avoid thinking about what this intense heatwave could mean for the future of the planet by taking careless refuge in the consolation that others are having it much worse BLAH BLAH…
Scientists tell us to expect weird weather to become more familiar…
This is a glimpse into a frazzled future, a warning every inhabitant of the third rock from the sun would be wise to heed. Extreme weather events – ferocious heatwaves, epic floods and violent storms – are going to happen with increasing frequency. The most catastrophic consequences will be felt by other, often much poorer countries, but Britain won’t be unscathed. You can’t run from climate change and you can’t hide. Not absent the ability to get to another planet suitable for human life. The question then becomes a political one: what, if anything, are we going to do about it?…
There are now days when Britain meets all its energy needs without burning any coal, something that hasn’t happened since before the Industrial Revolution and a development that would have astonished earlier generations. We produced more electricity from renewable and nuclear energy in 2017 than from gas and coal, making it the first year that low-carbon resources met most of the country’s demand for power…
A growing number of the scientists of climate change fear that global warming is going to be in excess of 2C. Donald Trump, who dismisses climate change as a hoax made up by the Chinese to hurt US industry, has ripped up the commitments made by his predecessor. American withdrawal is a double disaster. The Paris agreement is much less of one without the signature of the world’s most profligate emitter of greenhouse gases. Absent a commitment from the US, other countries are likely to feel less incentive to make good on their pledges and less shame when they break them…
We live on a windy island inhabited by a lot of clever people and surrounded by a lot of sea. With the right levels of public investment and well-targeted incentives for the private sector, this country could be a world leader in tidal and wave power…
Climate change struggles to get into the top 10 of issues that voters tell pollsters that they are most bothered about and almost never reaches the top three…
That could change. It certainly ought to change and is more likely to change as extreme events become a more regular occurrence…
Britons may adjust their attitudes and demand a lot more leadership and action from their politicians, when the weather leads the news.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/29/our-scorched-earth-needs-voters-to-put-more-heat-on-their-politicians
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Hazelwood owners Engie (formerly GDF Suez). excerpts found at electricity info online:
28 Jul: UK Times: Emily Gosden: Unusual vision for the future is a mix of energy, gardening and outsourcing
Engie is little-known outside of town halls, but its boss is working hard to change that
Old tower blocks were knocked down and smart terraced houses built in their place, buildings were clad with insulation and solar panels installed on rooftops and the vans are part of Engie’s 20-year contract to maintain and manage these 1,800 properties, including the gardening.
“This,” Mr (Wilfrid) Petrie says, “is where we are different to everyone else. We believe the future of energy is in being able to reshape places.”
Despite employing 17,000 people in the UK and generating £3.3 billion of revenues last year, Engie is hardly a household name. “We are better known today in local government than by the general public.”…
First, he predicts, the future of energy is in services. Nobody wants to buy a certain number of kilowatt-hours of energy, he declares; they want to buy the outcome, to have their building heated to a certain temperature, say. Second, “energy will become increasingly embedded in buildings and places”; big, old centralised power plants are being replaced by small-scale generation, such as rooftop solar.
Third, there is “a need for renewable and flexible energy” at a local and national level. And fourth, “things are going to be much more data-driven through connected devices”…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/the-uk-energy-provider-that-can-say-theres-no-one-like-us-but-we-do-care-802pw0w23
Wikipedia: Engie
ENGIE promotes low carbon generation from natural gas and renewable energies by no longer developing coal projects and investing in low carbon energy solutions (renewable energy, gas, networks or energy services) and energy efficiency solutions…
00
When they say 16% of electricity must come from unreliable producers does that mean 16% of actual electricity produced or 16% of installed nameplate which at 30% capacity factor means 4.8% of produced electricity so 95.2% still has to come from real power stations.
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Unfortunately it means real GWhr produced – 33,500 GWhr is the target by 2020 with lower targets each year prior, and the Clean Energy Regulator issues certificates based on evidence of electricity generated from each registered operator. The operator then gets to sell those certificates to retailers who then surrender them back to the CER to prove that they bought their fair share.
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Renewables fans normally quote nameplate on all occasions so I would suggest that 30% of 16% is the correct figure. 4.8% of total daily generation is a typical daily figure.
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As Tony has effectively explained several times, 16% of virtually nothing is still virtually nothing, which is what happens sometimes during periods where power is in high demand but there is no wind or sun and as such coal fired power stations save the day, literally. We could in effect have 200% renewables in terms of nameplate and still have blackouts galore if we didn’t have enough coal fired power stations. Of course we could have backup batteries but to be of any real use we would need many of them to last for many hours and so the cost would be in the trillions. Not possible.
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the first funds were allocated in the 2014 Australian Federal budget, kicking of Abbott’s 20 million trees by 2020 initiative.
Jan 2017: Buzzfeed: No-One Knows How Many Trees Have Been Planted As Part Of The Govt’s 20 Million Trees Program
The first tree died.
by Alice Workman
BuzzFeed News they couldn’t say how many trees were in the ground as the final tree-count isn’t made until the end of each project. The majority of projects won’t be complete until June 2018.
The first contracts to plant trees were funded in May 2015, but many of the project sites required “preparation”, so seeds weren’t planted until 2016.
Based on progress reports, it’s estimated 2.89 million native trees have been planted. Thirteen and a half million trees have been “contracted” to be planted at more than 120 locations across the country…
nevertheless, Imran Khan has much bigger ambitions:
27 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: Imran Khan says Pakistan will plant 10 billion trees
The former cricketer and newly elected prime minister is set to promote tree-planting and green jobs, although coal use will continue to expand
By Megan Darby
Imran Khan is aiming to plant 10 billion trees in five years as prime minister of Pakistan.
It is a scaling up of the “billion tree tsunami” his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) carried out in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, restoring 350,000 hectares of forest…
Citing a desire to reduce reliance on imports, it also promotes increased use of domestic coal reserves from Thar province. Much of the investment in coal has come from China, which is described as a “golden opportunity” for Pakistan…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/27/imran-khan-promises-greener-future-pakistan/
27 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: Climate Weekly: CO2 fingerprints found in Europe’s heatwave
Coming up next week
by Megan Darby
China’s #MeToo
Prominent Chinese green campaigner Feng Yongfeng stepped down (LINK) after appearing to admit to sexual harassment of several women, in a social media post that was later deleted.
Feng resigned as head of Nature University after an anonymous letter circulated that accused him of groping female colleagues.
It came as the #MeToo movement gained traction in China’s NGO sector, with health and anti-discrimination activist Lei Chuang confessing to similar behaviour…
UN warning
Development gains across the Arab region could be swallowed up by climate change, a new report from the UN Development Programme has warned (LINK).
The local bureau chief said increasing a decade of droughts had brought “famine and food insecurity, loss of livelihoods and life, and the displacement of millions”…
•The co-chairs of the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement working group are due to deliver new tools for negotiators to land a deal in Katowice in December
•The New York Times Magazine will publish a huge new feature on a decade when climate change might have been averted
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/27/climate-weekly-co2-fingerprints-found-europes-heatwave/
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Who bankrolls you?
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Dear Shreiking, as stated at the top right “This blog is funded by donations. Thanks! ”
I am funded by doctors, engineers, farmers, dentists, scientists, and taxpayers or retirees. We fund ourselves from savings and from small stock investments. I have no conflicts of interest to declare. Who funds you?
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Did you mean ‘shrieking’? We have multitudes of wombats here…
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They don’t shriek, they just pollute and dig holes dangerous to livestock, spread mange here too.
10
Same people as yesterday when I answered your question.
Are you or are you not A Bot?
10
27 Jul: Reuters: German onshore wind installations dropped 29 percent in H1
by Vera Eckert
Germany installed 1,626 megawatts (MW) of new onshore wind power capacity in the first six months of 2018, industry groups said on Thursday, adding that total installations this year could run to between 3,300 and 3,500 MW.
Wind energy is one of the most important drivers of Germany’s transition to renewable energy, with onshore wind power already accounting for 14.7 percent of total power generation volumes in Jan-Jun, according to industry statistics.
The additions in the six months measured in MW were down by 29 percent however from the same period a year earlier, engineering group VDMA and wind energy association BWE said in a statement.
The installed total is now 52,282 GW.
The groups said the projected drop in 2018 – which would be down from a record 5,333 MW in 2017 – was due to a lack of assurance from policymakers that sufficient new capacity would be tendered at auction in coming years.
This comes after the government dropped 20-year fixed payments for new capacity, which had applied to capacity approved before 2017, leaving operators less likely to commit to new wind farms.
The move has already hit the profitability of operators, said VDMA, which represents companies like Siemens Gamesa, Nordex, Senvion and MHI Vestas.
“We need a clear signal from Berlin for a steadily expanding corridor of new constructions up to 2030 in order to quickly fill the project pipeline again,” said Matthias Zelinger, head of VDMA’s Power Systems unit.
This was all the more important as Germany wants to produce 65 percent of power from renewable sources by 2030, for which it needs plenty more wind capacity, he said.
VDMA and BWE’s demands include more transport grids being built while old thermal power plants should be phased out.
Germany’s onshore wind constructions accounted for roughly half of Europe’s total in the first half of 2018, shown in separate figures by lobby group WindEurope, which also named France and Denmark as major drivers.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-wind-vdma/german-onshore-wind-installations-dropped-29-percent-in-h1-idUKKBN1KG28P
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Europe – not EU – has population of 741 millions, says google. so how come Prof Blakers is telling ABC audience we’ll be installing 100GW per year in 5 years’ time?
26 Jul: Reuters: Europe to install 13.5 GW of new wind power capacity this year-industry
by Nina Chestney
Europe looks set to install 13.5 gigawatts (GW) of new wind power capacity this year, slightly lower than last year’s record of 15.6 GW, according to estimates by industry group WindEurope.
In the first half of this year, Europe installed 3.3 GW of onshore wind, mainly in Germany, France and Denmark. A further 1.1 GW of new offshore wind capacity was also added, mainly in Britain, Belgium and Denmark.
For the whole of the year, 10.2 GW of new onshore wind and 3.3 GW of new offshore wind is expected.
“We are on track for a solid year in new wind farm installations but the growth is driven by just a handful of markets,” WindEurope’s chief policy officer Pierre Tardieu said in a statement.
WindEurope expects a drop in France’s new installations because of administrative issues, which have resulted in the country’s latest auction being under-subscribed.
“In offshore wind, Europe is too dependent on the UK, which is striding ahead in current installations and in committing to future volumes,” Tardieu said.
“By contrast, the rate of new installations has slowed down in Germany. Other countries also need to beef up and speed up their plans on offshore wind,” he added.
The new German government has also been slow to reveal when 4 GW of new onshore wind promised for 2019-20 will be auctioned and to confirm auction volumes beyond that.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/europe-wind/europe-to-install-13-5-gw-of-new-wind-power-capacity-this-year-industry-idUKL5N1UM2H7
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behind paywall – just saw on Sky there was a 9.4% swing to Labor in Longman:
Labor’s health lies resonate with angry electorate
The Australian-15 hours ago
Feedback from Bribie Island in Longman found the anger over high electricity bills was directed at the government and turned votes towards Labor…
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