Another hidden renewables tax buried in complexity
Here in Renewables World we now have to pay companies to make less of the products we want. It’s a sign of how fragile and dysfunctional the Australian grid is.
“Big energy users like factories and farms will be able to earn money by saving energy during heatwaves and at other times when electricity prices are high,” the Australia Institute’s energy lead Dan Cass said.
They call it “wholesale demand response”. We call it planned blackouts. All over the country equipment will be switched off when its needed most so that our green grid doesn’t fall over, or create billion dollar price spikes.
With some of the most expensive electricity in the world, there is already a strong price signal driving companies to use electricity efficiently. This new “price signal” drives them to be less efficient. Because the grid is now incapable of providing regular reliable electricity whenever it’s most useful to companies, the government is adding a whole new layer of complexity to try to squeeze out the spikes they can’t handle.
This move will mean more people will have to be employed in account-management, but the products made will shrink, so the price of those products will rise. It’s not possible that this change would increase the Australian GDP.
It’s all being rushed in to start in October 2021*, presumably because no one has the confidence that the Australian Grid will survive the next two summers without either price bonfires or a major blackout.
Electricity users will get paid to cut energy use under historic new market reform
Electricity consumers will be paid for reducing their power demands under a radical change to the market that will be introduced next year.
The historic rule change announced today will allow what’s known as “wholesale demand response” — where the wholesale market can pay users for cutting electricity consumption, rather than paying electricity generators to increase supply, when the system is under strain.
Big conglomerate generators and retailers don’t want this change, because it’s partly aimed at them. They like the price spikes and this threatens their profits:
The shift, which will begin in October 2021, has been adopted by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) despite opposition from big energy generators and retailers, who were using the COVID-19 crisis to pressure for delaying the rule changes.
Instead of making the market fairer and more transparent by removing all renewable subsidies, and asking renewable generators to pay fair prices for transmission costs, stability costs and back up of their unreliable product, this is a desperate workaround that leaves former agreements in place but adds a new layer of complexity to try to get rid of the spikes so the generators can’t game the system.
This is a change to enable the forced transition to renewables.
Head of energy policy at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre Craig Memery said it was “a critical reform that will bring much-needed benefits to consumers, and a key part of a secure, zero-carbon energy system”.
The propaganda makes out this is a win for all:
[AMEC] argues it will reduce electricity prices for consumers and improve reliability on the network, by allowing demand response to compete with “peaking” electricity generators that typically receive very high prices for supplying additional electricity during times of heavy demand.
“The benefits of wholesale demand response will flow through to all households and businesses through lower electricity bills and improved network reliability.
Obviously, the ABC repeats the propaganda and doesn’t ask any hard questions about how Australian citizens get richer by doing less.
Nobody mention the real costs:
Instead of “earning money” consumers will pay via their shareholding and superannuation losses, and via the increased prices of products. Some consumers will gain jobs, but more will lose their jobs as the net efficiency of a Greener economy means companies produce less, move overseas, generate less profit and thus employ fewer Australians. Less profitable companies will also pay less tax. Meaning that individual taxpayers will have to make up for lost tax income or the government will have to offer less services.
And so yet again, the cost of a green economy is buried so deep not even a PhD can unravel “who pays”.
They call it a win for environmental groups, which tells us it’s there to prop up the renewables industry, but of course, the only parts of the “environment” that will benefit from this are the unintended parts. Wind Turbines are the new top predator in the ecosystem. So lizards living under wind farms will be happy because predatory birds will be killed off.
Complexity breeds corruption:
Somehow we have to estimate what customers would have used to pay them for what they didn’t. This is a market of nullities again.
Under the change, large electricity users (such as big farms, factories and commercial enterprises) will be able to bid reductions in demand into the wholesale market and get paid for taking their demand out of the system.
Over time, demand response is expected to be extended to households and smaller businesses who sign up with companies that “sell” power reductions from thousands of customers into the market at times when wholesale prices are high.
Obviously all complexity comes at a price and provides more loopholes for dishonest players to profit just as China and others did when naive Western governments started paying companies to “save carbon” based on guesstimates of infrastructure changes they wouldn’t have done otherwise. Hands up who thinks companies will adjust their useage to game the system and imply they are taking out more demand than they actual did?
h/t David B
*Corrected, thanks John Hultquist. Not 2020 but 2021
Madness, when we need to re+start manufacturing and need reliable and affordable power, government comes up with this absurd plan. Nuclear now!
360
More COAL now, Like China is.
A new HELE coal-fired power station in each Eastern state would solve these problem.
480
So employed tax payers will pay more tax to hand to companies to cut their production, profits and jobs so as to reduce electricity usage. That is the ‘economics’ of the madhouse – it will cause a swift economic contraction coupled with increasing unemployment.
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AEMO POWER MATTERS
Bend a knee to this avatar. Pray they do not turn the power off at your business. There will be a tithe.
90
Nuclear is not the answer.
We’ve hundreds of years of coal waiting to be dug up and burned and it’s criminal negligence to leave it in the ground as our green pestilence demands.
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An excellent point.
Accommodating the ” CO2 is bad ” alliance in bypassing the obvious HELE option, is just a continuation of the current politics of voter appeasement.
That’s what has brought us to this moment of stupidity so we need political courage and a return to logic, real science and real engineering: urgently.
Sadly the only way out of this mess is to expose politicians, past present and future who have a finger in the false pie of CO2 Is Evil. Both sides of politics have “indulged”
The smelly package of Union Super, Liberal and Labor support for wind and solar money sinks Must be opened before we can get back to real management of our Nation. Vested interests are had for all of us.
KK
114
Actually nuclear is the perfect answer. It kills two birds with one stone so to speak, plus the are other spin offs that creates jobs and new industries. Of course it’s not going to happen due to the childish fear of so many.
50
Nuclear is far better than “renewables” but it’s still not cost effective the way HELE, or even regular coal fired power is.
Nuclear is a political choice rather than the best option.
KK
22
Actually, the proposal has come from the Australian Energy Market Commission, chaired by economics professor, John Pierce.
That Energy Minister, Angus Taylor has endorsed the “plan” is a sign of the desperation of the government, unwilling to stand up to the idi0cy of the leftist greentards who have made thermal plants financially unviable in this country due to the raft of crippling regulations they are subjected to in our distorted energy “market”.
Here are the main (and usual) culprits that have forced this crackp0t scheme to be devised in the face of our collapsing infrastructure
90
I can see a time coming when companies that want to stay in business will be investing in large diesel generators just to keep going. Then I expect the greens will protest to raise taxes on diesel fuel and put them out of business that way.
Roll on the production of small, portable nuclear generators, the only ones protesting would then be the unreliables with distributed generating stations.
270
Wait! I can see …
I can see a spike in internal/inhouse large diesel generator installations.
Ooh! ka-Zillions of them!
And
none of them on-gridAll of them off-grid.
I think I’ll buy/build a fleet of diesel tanker trucks. Lot’s of work a-commin’ in.
Diesel is very cheap AtM so of course, they’ll all be diesel powered.
170
Spot on. Many companies already have backup gas/diesel electricity generators on standby to prevent shutdowns when power outages occur.
110
…..and some States also have diesel generators as back up !
Infact if it wasnt for those diesels, SA may well have suffered blackouts on Wednesday .
70
Every company that relies on having a working data centre to support its business.
20
… particularly the banks.
50
Sheer madness
Australia is irrelevant on the world scene in regard to emissions
We should have the cheapest power in the world
Coal backed up by gas if needed as we move towards nuclear
If we want to reduce our reliance on China then need to increase cheap and available on demand electricity
I feel as though we are living in Alice in Wonderland and policy setting by the mad hatter
390
while the
electoratedoormouse snoozes on.170
Not Alice In Wonderland, some dystopian Blade Runner world where armed standover men take your money and you CANT stop them!
20
Australia is pretty irrelevant on the world scene apart from being a quarry. I am surprised at times we get the attention we do, although these days its more about the feels than anything of substance. You only have to live in the northern hemisphere for year or two to realise how off the radar we are.
Not complaining btw, off the radar is fine, for all the whining i hear OZ is one of the best gigs on the planet.
20
Paid by who exactly? How will this reduce consumer pricing?
160
Scylla or Charybdis?
32
I still hear people complain that “prices weren’t this high when power generation was publicly owned”. This is a classic example of the fallacy…. the problem is not generators doing what generators do, it is the regulator distorting the market.
It’s a normal, natural thing for consumers to pay more for reliability. You probably do it yourself when you buy a reliable car instead of driving a cheapy that spends half its life at the mechanic’s. You do it when you call that plumber you know will come quickly and do the job properly.
If we could buy power security, many of us – not just big business – would do it. That would encourage reliable suppliers and discourage unreliables….. but we can’t have that now, can we.
It’s also the other problem with government – you pay more than once.
273
the last time I called a plumber to fix my electricity problems, the results were shocking…
(sorry…)
260
:D….. I’ll pay that one.
90
Amd heres me thinking water and electricity dont mix….
50
Those were the days my friend,
We thought they’d never end,
When power was
CHEAP !
RELIABLE !
STABLE IN FREQUENCY
ABUNDANT!
FOSSIL FUEL’ED
PUBLICLY OWNED !
And then the pollies let the ruinable ‘academics’ take over running the power system.
From the engineers.
Utter nutters !
196
Public utilities (which underpin our way of life) used to be run by engineers
Now they have been pushed 2 -3 levels down the management chain of command
This decline has been progressively occurring over last 20-30yrs
This has coincided with PC correctness and all the other b–l sh–t we’ve had to put up whilst we’ve seen the destruction of our essential services
310
No they weren’t. They were run mostly by State Labor Governments and their union executives. The unions held massive power over utilities when they were government owned.
Joh B-P was the first Australian Premier to successfully challenge the stranglehold of the unions in power generation, transmission and distribution. Normally the unions would cause so much chaos that the LNP (or that flavour) would get booted out at the next election and things would be back to normal with the union executive running the show.
Thatcher in the UK was about a year ahead of Queensland in taking on the unions that ran the power generation in the UK.
Corporatisation and privatisation of the power supply industry in the UK and Australia resulted in considerable price drops because Labor governments lost their direct influence over the sector. Power stations were the ultimate closed shop to entrench the bad practices dreamt up over decades of union bullying.
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” resulted in considerable price drops”
When was that Rick? I must’a slept through that.
10
Through the late 1980s and the 1990s. This report has a chart on page 7 that shows the inflation adjusted residential price relative to 2016:
https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Planning_and_Forecasting/Demand-Forecasts/NEFR/2016/Retail-electricity-price-history-and-projections.pdf
Queensland shows the most significant drop from index of 0.71 in 1986 to 0.48 in 2001, before intermittent power was enabled to connect. The other States are less spectacular but all show drops through the same period.
51
When Hawke took over the leadership of the ACTU in 1969 he announced that the power generation industry would be the thin end of his wedge. Then through the 70s we saw repeated strikes in both the power stations and the oil refineries, where a strike by a very small number of people could shut down a state. I recall repeated occasions where a strike by 70 workers shut down fuel supplies to NSW.
When Hawke’s successor Simon Crean tried to pull the same stunt in Queensland Joh B-P knew that his workers liked their jobs, and called the union’s bluff. Simon Crean returned south with his nose bloodied. We didn’t see any more power strikes.
You are wrong to infer that privatisation reduced government influence on management. Our problem today is wholly caused by government management by remote control. See Hazelwood.
One big unmentioned factor in the low prices was the purchase in February 1980? by the NSW Electricity Commission of six new 660mw generators (Bayswater and Mt Piper) when they already had six such generators under construction.
This brain snap was brought on by the second oil shock. The expectstion was that scarcity of oil would bring a big increase in the demand for coal fired electricity. However the countries around the North Sea relieved the oil shock by digging up their oil, which left those six generators stranded.
So, by the time Mt Piper was brought into service more than a decade later, those generators, already paid for, were able to keep us in marginal cost power for a decade and a half.
80
Can’t. It’s gone. Dust to dust …
(the dust to bust has yet to happen.)
30
I did not “infer” that privatisation reduced government influence. Privatisation reduced the influence of Labor governments through union control of then public enterprises.
It was a Federal Liberal government that formally encouraged intermittent generators to connect to the grid. That started the rot. I doubt any engineers thought about it that much. Intermittents were so tiny in output that they had no measurable impact.
If any informed electrical engineer had sat down and thought about intermittent connection to a grid they would have opposed it. As it does not make any economic sense. It only makes sense if separated from the grid and storage costs still need to fall a long way before that is economically viable against grid coal generation.
My earliest appreciation of the impact of intermittency was in Tasmania in 2007 because wind generators were causing voltage variation by then on the relatively small network.
When you look at intermittent generation now it has created a great deal of work for the electrical industry. An increasing portion of all economic activity is directed toward the new form of generation. The fact that combined intermittent and storage can never produce the energy it took to build it means that an increasing proportion of economic activity will be directed at building the electrical system. That is all good for electrical engineers. And all those being educated now taught the dangers of “greenhouse” gasses. So they are saving the planet by building a new electricity supply system. Despite the fact that they are actually adding to the problem.
80
Rick I usually agree with you.But not on this occasion.
Pubiicly owned power corporations like the SEC and ETSA gave Australians cheap power for generations.
In fact the SECV was established in the 1920’s with John Monash in charge to do exactly that.
In SA ETSA was established to do the same in the late 1940’s because of rorting by the Adelaide Electricity Company.
They continued to do exactly that, PROVIDE CHEAP POWER, until they were privatised.
Go back & look at the prices per mega hour wat in the 1990’s ( On AEMO )
Privatisation bears a big share of the high prices we now pay for power.
It’s not just ruinables.
We now pay the extra costs of the private companies employing lots of ‘retail and marketing staff
( And a high proportion of these jobs are overseas so they don’t even employ many Australians. )
Those costs did not exists in the SEC or ETSA days.
Yet another imported foreign ideology to stuff things up.
26
Rick and Ted.
Thanks for that outline.
10
Yep, i bought power security via a generator and house rewiring
20
This is my “Planet of the Humans” moment:
– The dates : 1st-7th June 2020
:
– In the maroon corner:
King Coal, represented by:
MPP_2 – the 17 year old unit 2 of the black coal supercritical Millmerran Power Station
:
Nameplate capacity – 426 MW from one 17 year old unit
:
– In the red corner
ACT 100% Renewables, represented by:
MLSP1 – Mugga Lane Solar – 13 MW Nameplate with 50,000 solar panels
ROYALLA1 – Royalla Solar – 20 MW Nameplate with 83,000 solar panels
ARWF1 – Ararat Wind – 80.5 MW Nameplate with 27 turbines
CROOKWF2 – Crookwell 2 Wind – 91 MW Nameplate with 28 turbines
HDWF1, 2 and 3 – Hornsdale Wind – 309 MW Nameplate with 99 turbines
SAPHWF1 – Sapphire Wind – 100 MW Nameplate ACT contracted with 32 turbines.
:
Total Nameplate – 613.5 MW from 133,000 solar panels and 186 wind turbines
:
Scoresheet – Maroon corner:
Date MWh produced
1/6/2020 : 10,408
2/6/2020 : 10,403
3/6/2020 : 10,449
4/6/2020 : 10,452
5/6/2020 : 10,449
6/6/2020 : 9,622
7/6/2020 : 10,087
:
TOTAL POINTS: 71,870
:
Scoresheet – Red corner:
Date MWh produced
1/6/2020 : 8,961
2/6/2020 : 6,413
3/6/2020 : 4,792
4/6/2020 : 4,101
5/6/2020 : 1,529
6/6/2020 : 715
7/6/2020 : 3,195
:
TOTAL POINTS: 29,706
:
The red corner ran out of puff – again – they definitely need a lot of backup in their corner if they are going to be competitive. The lightweight low footprint maroon corner won handsomely with a remarkably consistent 100%+ performance.
350
Ah wind….
Once they puff up their chest….there’s nothing left….
20
If a company shuts down for a while, they get paid for it, but what about the people who suddenly have no work to do, Even if it is for a few hours, I guess they will be sent home without pay? Reducing effective income will really help the economy on that downward spiral.
180
As I read it, they are talking about paying for power not used….. not compensating them for lost production…..
Everyone loses.
130
The big players in demand management are aluminium smelters. They now have direct access to get the big payments when the wholesale market tops out at AUD14k/MWh.
Most smelters can cut back to about 20% of consumption for up to 4 hours without major loss. However it creates all sorts of extra work in adjusting to the new conditions. People actually work harder to ensure the plant stays in control. Bringing back up to full production has its risks as well.
Think of how much a 1000MW plant can make in 2 hours by cutting back to 200MW. It is way more than the lost output and a strong incentive but it is not risk free. The more they do it, the better they get at it.
The smelters have been increasingly involved in demand management as coal plants have been removed. This change gives them access to make real money out of the inconvenience.
72
After 20 years of trying and $60 billion dollars later, it would appear that there is finally a realisation that the only way to run a society off renewables is to pay everyone to turn off the power. Most likely, the geniuses that came up with the idea of using the “off switch” to solve the renewable problem, will be patting themselves on the back for being so clever and increasing their taxpayer funded remuneration accordingly.
310
You get that kind of logic when the main selling point for new technology is that it generates tons of new jobs by making the grid less efficient and less reliable, resulting in everything becoming more expensive.
140
It’ll all end in tears when the bleeding hearts of the frantic left can’t recharge their phones to connect with social media to send out crying emojis.
230
A hot spell this summer with a blackout will be the end. The average Joe Bloggs will quickly realise the problem when he can’t run the air-conditioning (the blackout will shut down his solar panels too).
Shortly after that a number of politicians will worry about their re-election prospects (the sort of worry that leads to changes in P.M.s and policy).
140
When we have leaders who give the go ahead for protesters to gather in large numbers while the rest of us face fines for congregating in much smaller numbers, is it any wonder this nation has lost the plot?
280
There is that saying that
“If a person’s brains were dynamite and went off all at once it wouldn’t even raise their hat”.
130
Yes I’ve heard that many times, and is apt. Also people are expecting governments will continue to save the day forever. That’s like believing in black helicopters dropping bank notes and food parcels to a deluded crowd to try and avoid a collapse in our economy and society. That will all end in lots of tears and misery.
90
In moderation because I used the word b…k in a completely different context? You got to be kidding me.
50
Welcome to the Jo Nova Sin Bin club Peter
25
Thanks again to 18C for its contribution to our 1st Amendment rights (whoops, we don’t have that down here)
40
Under the current circumstances 18C is moot. It’s Jo that has implemented such a draconian restriction. As far as I know this blog site is the only place in the whole world where the phrase and word in question are banned. Astonishing.
40
Yes I’ve heard that many times, and is apt. Also people are expecting governments will continue to save the day forever. That’s like believing in b…k helicopters dropping bank notes and food parcels to a deluded crowd to try and avoid a collapse in our economy and society. That will all end in lots of tears and misery.
41
There that worked. Jo, you are so obtuse for instigating such a ridiculous filter.
31
It happens. I sometimes post on other sites and go straight into moderation despite moderate comments. Sometimes here too. We commentors don’t have automatic right of publication.
If it’s that bad here, would there be half so many comments as there are on every thread?
34
So the word b…k is moderated, temporary or not, elsewhere as well? I don’t believe you.
31
I was talking about moderation in general Peter, not that word in particular. Hmmm.
02
Don’t worry Peter. By the time I got there you’d been published twice,
10
S…..
C’mon man. Don’t be “obtuse” yourself. Jo has made it perfectly clear that the filter on certain words is to make a point.
We can argue all you like about it being over-blown (I might even agree with you. There is a point at which such things lose their value because they cease to provoke awareness and just provoke impatience) but Jo’s page means Jo’s rules. If I couldn’t stand it, a I’d go elsewhere.
33
How is it being obtuse to criticise a site for placing restrictions on simple words, such as b…k? It’s not the only one. The restriction on free expression here is a joke. Is there a restriction on providing feedback as well now?
11
Jo Yes, please delete.
03
Re http://joannenova.com.au/2020/06/desperate-signs-australian-companies-will-be-paid-to-use-less-electricity/#comment-2337231
And the Great Moderation continues – Greenspan would be impressed
32
Just use power normally and when the grid buckles let it go down.
Playing silly buggers with turning stuff off is just another form of appeasing the left wing destruction of the grid.
Its like playing the moronic “micro agression” game -its unwinnable because the left just define anything that involves standing up to them as agression, which shuts down any form of debate, which is the intended result.
Nope…let it go down.
Maybe with a few stiff class actions against the AMEO top leadership , they might change thier tune….
321
I like that idea.
101
I was hoping it would be applied to South Australia to limit the damage but the grid operators are too damned good at load shedding and keeping within the interconnector constraints.
It seems Victoriastan needs to go down again at some point (since the likely shortfalls are just too big to cover even with all of the interconnections and Snowy Hydro). Unless NSW can beat us to the punch with Liddell’s phased closure.
100
Hi Jo,
You have done it again!
Meanwhile, just to confirm that what you are saying is absolutely relevant, and not to take away from “Rowjay”‘s excellent, detailed comment above, what can we say about wind’s performance during the last week or so here in Eastern Australia?
Well, the best we can say, with that 7000 MW -plus installed wind capacity is, um, pathetic.
At future times, readers may care to note the time-stamp on this comment, and go to the relevant monthly data at anero.id:
https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2020/June . (For best viewing of this pathetic result, click on the “MW” button to the top right of the chart labelled: “Wind Energy Production During June 2020”.)
But, oh dear: look at today’s data, at: https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/.
We find, during what is already an abysmal month for wind farm performance, that at 3 pm this afternoon, 11 June 2020, total wind output managed just 86.8 MW.
Now that is a Rafe Champion “choke point” that’s up there with the best of them!
Keep up the good work, Jo.
Best regards,
Paul Miskelly
P.S. For future reference, today’s wind energy performance page will become, after today’s date: https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2020/june/11 .
230
Currently
NSW COAL 94%, gas 4%, wind 2%
Vic Brown coal 86%, gas 7%, hydro 7%, Wind ZERO%
Qld COAL 80%, gas 18%, wind 2%
SA Gas 79% wind actually providing 21%
Tas Hydro 95%…. because they can.
190
Canberra must be in the dark again 😉
171
Aren’t they always?
150
Canberra is frozen solid due to cold Winter’s grip.
They are all praying to the ever blessed St Greta for Gaia to send
More Global Warming.
But St Greta is not interested
And neither is Gaia.
Nor is the Sun interested.
So Canberrans will freeze
Good for their Alarmist souls
:-).
86
Now Andy, you are just being kind to SA.
That 21% is all of 350MW !
If you had looked at any period between 3pm and 7pm you would have found it difficult to see any wind output at all…right when it is really needed !
70
“ . . . wind farm performance ”
Unless you feel that harvesting subsidies makes a farm, you ought not call them farms.
They are intermittent electrical power facilities.
East of us, in Washington State there is such a place (one better than most) that calls itself Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility. Give them credit for the name.
Note that the Wikipedia article used the term “farm” while the owner – Puget Sound Energy – does not.
A demerit for Wikipedia.
120
FARM ,..is a good description..
They occupy large areas of land..
They sow seeds of “Green” power instability
They fertilise the power market with shortages to force prices to grow
They harvest profits from that price disruption and green rebates
101
I’m sure they make more money on power market derivatives than generating electricity.
41
And that’s the point the the greentards just can’t (or refuse to) grasp – the “low” price of power from renewable sources is entirely due to derived profits flowing under the carpet to keep the things operational and the construction/deployment debt from default.
30
“Derivatives”
Such a harmless sounding word for what is actually government sponsored miss appropriation.
41
Also a harmless word for financial instruments of mass destruction.
41
Great work Paul. How do we get the mainstream media to pay attention?
40
Meanwhile, over on the Tallblokes Talkshop is an article on UK consumers face £2-3bn annual bill to prevent green-energy blackouts
110
The GWPF Brink Of Darkness pdf he links to should be compulsory reading for the likes of S Long at the ABC.
The UK is much more comprehensively enslaved by the renewables racketeers than Australia simply because spivs are much thicker on the ground in Europe. They’ve extracted nine billion pounds in renewable subsidy this last year on top of which renewables entailed system balancing costs shot up from three hundred million to twelve hundred million pounds making me wonder if they are not on track to overtake the subsidies themselves in coming years.
And their Prime Minister talks of an EV led recovery; so many disjoint visions swarming together, so much pelf to extract on the side.
60
Four hours in the bin. I was about to repost without marking the link.
10
Let’s hollow out Australia’s industrial capacity and call it a win.
Mindless garbage.
180
So much for PM Morrison’s grand plan to get Australia moving again. I now understand why Turnbull is so angry. He has been made the scapegoat while Morrison acts as though he’s doing nothing wrong. Meanwhile Snowy 2.0 is still going ahead and he’s still making out that reducing our emissions is the way forward. Now we have this betrayal by our so called leader.
251
PeterS,
Mr Morrison is chairman mal’s clone…
Remember when he brandished a lump of coal in parliament…..
chairman mal’s clone is another show pony who does not
have Australia’s best interests at heart….
You’ve heard of The deep State?
93
There are at least two deep States. One, is made up by the extreme left in the ALP and Greens who desire to bring down Western democracy by rewriting history and using propaganda to implement some sort of neo-Marxist regime change. Two, is made up of clueless buff00ns in the LNP who unknowingly are allowing our economy go to ruin. Then there are those in the ultra-extreme left who also are achieving both ends with escalating violence. I wouldn’t call them a deep State; they are more like a mixed mob of terrorists and simple minded/deluded fools.
141
LNP innocent?
And then we recall JHew and MalEx444.
10
Morrison is not perfect but he is far from the abomination that Turncoat was as PM
54
‘So much for PM Morrison’s grand plan to get Australia moving again.’
We’ll all be back to work by Xmas and from there it should be easy sailing to the next election.
17
I like your optimism but I prefer reality. Things are not as rosy as you think. You will find out soon enough. The left are making sure of that.
61
The green left has been successful in getting their way because they have had the MSM in their pocket, but this is coming to an end and the whole world will change in a blink.
Morrison will tread water and keep us afloat, that is his brief.
35
No, the main reason the left have been so successful in brainwashing much of the public is because people like Morrison pretend there is no problem. Not acting on the ABC, which happens to be funded by the federal government with our money is a prime example of what I mean. You follow?
151
Yes sir, but I’ve heard that the government wants to use superannuation monies on large infrastructure builds. Surely that would be a positive outcome from the pandemic.
Morrison cannot move on Auntie because the green left would say he has fascist tendencies, so we’ll have to be patient.
16
All talk but no action. I’ll believe it when I see Morrison somehow using that money to build new coal fired power stations, dams and other essential major infrastructure items.
80
As for not moving on the BAC, it proves he is a coward. Leaders who are cowards only make matters worse in the end as they let the real enemy take over in small moves.
71
Bill reckons there are far right wingers around here, have you seen any?
On the post, could we classify it as revenue neutral?
22
Peter,
” I’ll believe it when ”
And: when the sanctioning of New wind$farms and Solar$Farms is ended.
Don’t hold your breath.
KK
30
The renewable industry is not happy.
‘ …. 82% of subsidies is concentrated in the Australian Government’s ‘Clean Coal Technology’, with the remaining 18% of funds allocated to the renewable energy ‘Project Solar Systems Australia’ $75 million.’ wiki
02
“‘ …. 82% of subsidies is concentrated in the Australian Government’s ‘Clean Coal Technology’”.
Is that real?
10
Why not just contract all your manufacturing to China now?
40
“ It’s all being rushed in to start in October, …”
While OZ is usually a day ahead of me, it is not nice to try to jump a full year ahead:
“The shift, which will begin in October 2021, …”
Or, ref: Rip Van Winkle
40
John. Thanks! Corrected.
32
n the U.S you were once charged less if you used more electricity. Any large user was able to get on that rate plan by asking. There were a few requirements but it was basically simple.
This is the behavior of a company anxious to sell as much product as possible. Then the state decided to streamline electricity production. We were to get more electricity when we needed it with no problem.
Then the joke began and it was on us.
60
I stopped following the political circus after that. Needless to say, the consumer got higher prices as an incentive to tell the state where to go. And we didn’t do it.
Never trust government with your utilities.
51
Just the utilities?:
government is the biggest money making business of all.
And it’s not making money for us: we are being fleeced, drained, robbed, taxed and overtaxed, micro-managed and most recently, confined to quarters.
Europe collapsed years ago, the United States is in chaos and Australia is on the verge of complete shutdown of basic industry.
Utter madness.
102
And yet, there are those who are doing well and profiting handsomely out of all of this.
As someone said upthread, what we need is to have a few class actions aimed at the administrative failures within governance.
It may be the only way to turn things around.
The new widespread victimhood concept is insanely attractive but in practical terms a painful dead end.
51
Suddenly its not about saving the planet but more about saving their butts.
Shysters should stick to selling diet pills and pyramid schemes not government policy!
90
Spreading to machinery too
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-05/darwin-couple-lose-20000-to-tractor-ad-scammers/12214526
Been common in US for a while
30
Don’t panic!
The climate is under control … no coal …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-10/adelaide-cbd-records-coldest-morning-since-1944-bom-says/12340480?WT.ac=statenews-sa
40
Pretty good going seeing how busy the BOM has been adjustimg the past. Just imagine if we had real records.
10
To borrow from Instapundit, law prof Glenn Reynolds: So Australia follows declining Germany? NEVER go full German!
30
The NEM and the AEMO are Ponzi Schemes.
Perpetrated by OUR Brubbnmnts…
41
That glorious bureaucracy [AMEC] argues “it [their plan] will reduce electricity prices for consumers and improve reliability on the network…” I have a simpler plan: “terminate all electrical generation/transmission.” “Electrical prices to consumers” will drop to zero, and the “reliability of the network” will be improve to 100%–as in there will be no electricity 100% of the time.”
60
RC,
As industry sees it, they improve reliability of the network by defining “no” power as a steady, reliable outcome.
Foolish. When industry gets less electricity, output drops, less is sold as national income and so people end up with no money to spend apart from Monopoly money. Geoff S
10
I used to work on comms, we slways said our networks would run beautifully if it wasnt for all that customer traffic. It seems our elite thought processes have been taken up by the power industry.
10
So instead of paying a few users to cut back on high demand days we could –
A. Overbuild and gold plate the generators and pay them to be idle for most of the time, or
B. Pay all households not to use aircon on hot days.
in this poll – Red thumbs will equal A, and Green thumbs will equal B
120
Peter Fitzroy:
You forgot option C: Get rid of all of the Solar and Wind generators and go back to a system that uses reliable power generators.
270
Peter:
We already do option A. Both wind ‘farms’ & solar are idle for most of the time, yet we spend more and more money on those generators.
And last summer some people were asking for aircon not to be used on hot days. That must have been so unsuccessful that they have resorted to paying for stoppages. If you have read TonyfromOz’s posts on usage for air-conditioning you would know that the vast percentage goes for high rise office buildings and shopping centres. The latter are already used as refuges on hot days by those without aircon or short of money, so a sort of public benefit.
210
Peter, you’re forgetting that we are dealing with an option C.
C. Build a second grid running off sun and wind that only works occasionally and be forced to retain 95% of the old grid to manage the times when the wind stops or sun isn’t shining.
The issue here is that you are only advocating Options A & B because option C was a dismal failure and as old coal fired power stations get retired there is now a realisation that building more wind turbines makes no difference when there is no wind and more solar panels doesn’t solve the situation of “night-time”.
The idea people should be paid to not use power is an absurd idea aimed at concealing the failure of another absurd idea. In terms of voting on comments, forget the thumbs, we need middle fingers to vote on yours.
161
As usual your logic is like a pretzel – all twisted. How about we maintain/adopt the only two main options that the whole world knows actually works and is still being implemented for the foreseeable future? These are coal and/or nuclear. End of story.
151
Stupid question Peter
95
Fitz gets a red thumb because his question is dishonest and illogical. It is a classic example of the logical fallacy known as a False Dichotomy.
We are not limited to the two options that he proffers.
130
And just for clarification, Demand Side Management (DSM) is common worldwide. Even the vaunted USA uses it
015
“And just for clarification, Demand Side Management (DSM) is common worldwide. Even the vaunted USA uses it”
I see that you are moving on from the False Dichotomy fallacy to the Red Herring fallacy.
80
DSM is valid. AS A LAST RESORT. This is because the costs it applies to industries is huge due to process disruption (or the backup generation needed to avoid it) so they receive compensation as a result when it is required
What is being implemented in Australia is using DSM in day to day operations. So huge costs flow through to industry on a regular basis and they get a kick back through DSM to factor in to their revenue and the wholesalers then need to flow this back into their rates. So the final result is that ELECTRICITY BECOMES MORE EXPENSIVE
90
peter doesn’t care about industry, he wants it all gone.
Gone to China where THEY can produce the extra CO2 needed for the world’s plant life.
He wants Australia to degenerate into a third world country.
Doesn’t realise he will still be on the bottom rung of the ladder as it sinks into the sewer of the greenie agenda..
30
Putting more useless wind and solar is would be useless overbuilding.
The only “gold-plating” is that needed to try to cope with their regular NON-SUPPLY.
Adding is new HELE coal fired plant in each state is a forward looking plan into the future.
Without them, Australia has no future.
You seem to want Australia to degenerate into a third world country where, despite copious amounts of coal, their s inadequate electricity supply, and where thugs and looter can have free rein to do what they want
That is the Australia would become under a green leftist/marxist agenda.
Time to WAKE UP, politicians, and do what is needed.
50
Or you could just have a well run grid that catered for real user needs. Its amazing how peaking for RE is somehow OK but peaking over coal cant even be spoken about and we have to make up gold plating. Logic fail sems to be par for the course.
30
Was this designed by Enron? It’s how they made millions possibly billions just before their collapse. The key ingredient was shortage of supply. Enron created shortages on its own. Will that ever be necessary with renewables?
60
There’s really no need for this absurd plan. We have decimated the manufacturing industry in this country already, so the big users like car manufacturing have gone. That’s why SA can boast about their wind power. In Victoria all you need is Alcoa and the oil refineries to shut up shop and move their activities overseas and the state will have oodles of electricity. Alcoa are located in Portland Victoria which is a Liberal held state seat. So the presiding Labor government don’t really care. What about the jobs lost, I hear you say, surely Labor care about that? Nup, its all about getting inner city green votes. Victoria has already experienced “controlled outages” during the last 2 summers and complete blackouts were only prevented because Alcoa and the refineries were requested to stop production. But that is expensive – so will this compensation be enough for these companies?
100
For the month of May, average wholesale electricity price in Victoria averaged $38.29/MWhr per AEMO. That continued into the first few days of June, but then it got colder. For June 9-11, average daily prices were $119.25, $109.93, $93.78/MWhr.
Similar price hikes occurred in NSW and SA.
Under the dictatorship of Chairman Dan, here’s how it will work in future, already modelled under the CV19 state of emergency experiment.
The government may at any time declare an electricity state of emergency when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
Electricity consumers will be instructed to reduce their usage by say 20% – in summer no more air conditioning, in winter no more heating. Smart meters will be used to monitor compliance, and the police will be sent around to fine offenders. However the government will issue hand powered fans for summer cooling, and blankets for winter heating, free of charge.
Industry? They can buy their own diesel generators.
Desperate signs indeed for our future.
100
In Victoroa it means that in Winter folks will freeze.
And in the heat waves of Summer folks will cook
Because they cannot afford the power offered.
When the electorate wakes up to this do without strategy
There will be voter back lash.
Will the Liberals & National parties be ready for that voter backlash ?
Or will they be so covered in greenwash as to be indistinguishable from Dan & his cronies ?
65
Has anyone noticed a moment in the last year when NSW generation matched the load. It seems to me that if AGL are allowed to close Liddell then NSW will not have enough power to meet baseload requirements without prices going through the roof. Time for Queensland to cut the inter connector.
71
Why would Queensland cut the interconnector when they can profit from the high prices in NSW?
40
While it’s off topic, that Queensland Interconnector is always a source of immense amusement for me.
As you all know, I made a Submission to the Queensland 50% Renewables Plan, which sank without trace, (as did all submissions) and as I was informed by one of the Panel Members ….. “They didn’t read any of the Submissions at all, as they had people to do that for them.”
Anyway, I applied to be present at the Rockhampton meeting of the State Tour to ‘sell’ the Plan.
At that totally structured and controlled event, I asked two questions of the two Panel members in attendance, all I was allowed, (as after the second question, the Moderator was aware that I may not be all that amenable to the Plan, and assiduously avoided my raised hand for a further question) both questions concerning what was actually being said at the time. One question was about the closure of coal fired power plants with respect to actual power generated versus CO2 emissions, mentioning the power that was regularly transmitted into NSW via that Interconnector.
The answer was that no coal fired power plants would be closed in that time frame (2030) and that those emissions from the generation of power (here in Queensland) which is transmitted into NSW do not count in Queensland, as the power is being consumed ….. in NSW.
Tony.
100
Powerful accounting.
Only possible when high on CO2.
40
In the words of Colonel Jack O’Neill, “Ya think?”
40
The most depressing thing is that there is no sign of those in charge coming to their senses at all or investigating the science and the real causes of the problems. Nor are they investigating the whole hollow structure of Climate Alarmism which is not based on any evidence at all, other than repeated Alarmist assertions and distorted date. The current unrest in the USA sponsored by the Democrats in their attempt to wrestle back power from the electorate. In Australia there is precious little critical thought being applied to anything, any more, right from Energy Sources to Coronavirus. The politicians have let the mob and their academics take over the running of the National power system.
From the engineers.
70
The engineers are all for it. The employment involved in building intermittent energy sources, energy storage and network stability is endless.
It is a current fact that existing ambient sources of intermittent electricity and the storage required to service an on-demand electrical system cannot produce more energy than that required to build it. So eventually the entire economic activity gets directed toward making electricity. That is good for employing engineers. How many engineers will stand against those employment opportunities?
31
Only ruinable engineers Rick.
23
That’s right. Real engineers are interested in solutions that require minimal interaction after deployment. Ruinables require constant monitoring and adjustment of all other portions of the grid to prevent a collapse and that is not a solution but a stop gap.
30
It’s not even a gap stopper.
00
Manager – We need to do XXX.
Engineer – Easy.
Manager – How much is it going to cost?
Engineer – Not my problem……
70
Very good.
50
Peter Fitzroy,
My apologies, I see that I ought to have been a little less subtle in my earlier comment.
“High demand” periods are, by definition, those where the available generation resources are having trouble meeting the demand. In a grid that is increasingly renewables-only, such periods will occur when the wind doesn’t blow, and/or the sun doesn’t shine, because of course the generation is effectively curtailed by the lack of the resource.
So, yesterday afternoon, indeed through most of the day, by this payment scenario, on a high-percentage renewables’ grid, many users would have had to have been paid to go without electricity, simply because wind was performing so poorly.
The other point that I made there is that this is no mere cherry-picking on my part – picking out the one bad day, if you like. Look at the operational data for even just the last few months: there have been many such bad days for wind already this year.
Now couple these points to the data given by “Rowjay” above. Those generators in the “red” corner are in fact those from which the ACT purchases its electricity, so that it can claim proudly to be 100% renewables sourced. You can see that its largest suppliers by far are wind generators. As I showed above, yesterday, and particularly during the afternoon, total wind generation output was stuff-all.
So, by rights, yesterday, large users in the ACT should have been forced to cut back, to shut down.
Are you beginning to understand the significance now, Peter, of what constitutes “high demand”, and the, perhaps unintended, deleterious consequences?
I’ll leave it to others to determine which organisations in the ACT ought to be defined as “large users”!
Paul Miskelly
130
To add to what Paul mentions above, and with reference to yesterday, we can point all we like at those times when wind power is so low, and we can quote those low figures and probably say how we told you something like this would happen, and this was the second lowest power generation from wind power in Australia’s history of wind generation, and the lowest was just six days ago.
At that 3PM point in time, with wind generation only generating 86MW from a total Nameplate of 7728MW (and just read that again and ask yourself how much money has been spent on these 64 wind plants with around 4200 individual generators on poles with fans out the front) so that was at a Capacity Factor of 1.1%. At that time wind power was delivering 0.3% of all generated power, barely even discernible from ZERO.
We can point at that and say, well look how bad it is.
But of far more importance, what are we supposed to do if and when occasions like this DO HAPPEN? We can’t just wait around for the wind to pick back up again.
At times like this, you’d have to turn off not just a few high end consumers. You’d have to turn off the ….. WHOLE COUNTRY.
Across the whole day yesterday Australia consumed 592GWH of power. Wind generation and solar plant generation delivered in total 25GWH or 4.2% of all generated power.
You tell me what the Country does if that’s all we have for the future.
Tony.
120
Paul, there can be, at the present time, no real argument on the intermittency problem for renewables. That being said, there are a number of solutions being installed to overcome this problem. Examples include grid scale batteries, H2 production, pumped hydro. Further out examples are liquid sodium, or even compressed air. This is a young field, and is making great strides, but it can not as yet provide a reliable solution, except for a tiny part of the demand equation.
ACT can parasitise the renewable production from the entire east coast grid, as it represents a tiny part of the total demand, (and so a tiny renewable production can be supplied to a tiny customer demand) and so you can make the claim that you have 100% renewables.
However, this thread is about Demand Side Management (DSM). Here you the problem of peaking demand. No system is designed for negating peaks, as there is no economic sense in that. It is a different topic to renewables.
215
Stop with the bear baiting. Batteries are not a power source but a reservoir like pumped hydro. Hydrogen eh, Finkel must laugh himself to sleep at night incredulous at his luck in having landed in such a bog ignorant administration.
140
NONE of those things actually work Fitz.
They are duds.
Expensive toys by ruinables ‘experts’
Blinded by a fake religion to their own stupidity.
70
I stated this before but since you have repeated your misconception on DSM, I will repeat it here
DSM is valid. AS A LAST RESORT. This is because the costs it applies to industries is huge due to process disruption (or the backup generation needed to avoid it) so they receive compensation as a result when it is required
What is being implemented in Australia is using DSM in day to day operations. So huge costs flow through to industry on a regular basis and they get a kick back through DSM to factor in to their revenue and the wholesalers then need to flow this back into their rates. So the final result is that ELECTRICITY BECOMES MORE EXPENSIVE
90
Actually this type of support to industries like Aluminum smelting is all about delaying the inevitable closures until after the next election.
Job losses tend to make people think but supporting high profits from renewables can be easily hidden using a bit extra from everyone’s electricity bills.
Renewable electricity: the sort of electricity you have for both sides of politics when you need more added to that Swisse account.
KK
40
Unfortunately, the “great strides” that Fitz claims, are akin to telling a man drowning in 1000m of water, that he should be encouraged that it has shallowed to 998m. There is still no realistic end to this problem in view.
Nor is it exactly a “young” field. We have been trying to build a better battery for over two centuries, and we still have not achieved anything remotely close to dealing with the problems outlined. Even if tomorrow’s headline were to announce the discovery of the “magic” battery – light, cheap, reliable, long-lasting and effective, it will still take years before the resources can be developed, the industry built and the technology installed on a grid-level scale.
110
Peter, I suggest you visit the (now sadly dormant since the death of his site partner, Roger Andrews) Euan Mearns site and look through the articles there on energy storage and the comments. If you can do even basic math, it will be obvious that none of the proposed energy storage solutions are remotely practical nor affordable at the grid level without a fundamental breakthrough in physics.
Demonstrate some honesty to us and properly study the very real limitations of grid scale storage.
100
You gotta be kidding.
“Demonstrate some honesty”.
00
“without a fundamental breakthrough in physics”
You have to remember, Peter has proven that he is totally ignorant about physics, or any branch of real science for that matter.
It is a CHOICE he has made and is determined to stick to.
20
Peter F, You’re not serious?!
Weasel words….
30
All conventional grid systems are designed for “managing”, and supplying peaks. No demand is constant, there are expected and predictable variations that can be learned and allowed for.
………. But with renewables, several things happen….
The peaks become more pronounced primarily as a result of the “demand suppression” due to the use of behind the meter Roof Top solar during the day….
And unpredicted “demand surges” on the grid generators as changing weather (sun, wind speed) , cause solar and wind generation to drop rapidly.
Without the high capacity of FFueled grid generators available to either prevent or respond to these variations, the Grid Managers are having to look at these “Demand Side Management” methods to ensure security of the grid infrastructure IE,..avoid a major Blackout !
So, it is directly related to Renewables .
40
“Demand side management”
Peter is offering to turn off his electricity so other can have some… aren’t you !
Or is it someone else who has to do that?
The SELFISHNESS of rabid leftism coming to the fore.
10
Yep, just make sure no-one is allowed to use any electricity…
Pay everyone for not using electricity….
… then you don’t have to supply any electricity at all.
Then went wind and solar produce electricity that no-one wants, pay them as well.
Good thinking !!
Where does all this money come from ?
30
In Victoria it means that in Winter folks will freeze.
And in the heat waves of Summer folks will cook
Because they cannot afford the power offered.
When the electorate wakes up to this do without strategy
There will be voter back lash.
Will the Liberals & National parties be ready for that voter backlash ?
Or will they be so covered in greenwash as to be indistinguishable from Dan & his cronies ?
32
Coming up to a solar minimum that may be crittical for many people.
20
They are already indistinguishable, both in other states and at the federal level. We stopped having an alternative party on the energy front ever since Abbott was rolled over by Turnbull. If voters really want a difference they could stop voting for either major party to send a message. Alternatively, when things go pear shaped perhaps a new Hawke or Howard will step in to change direction the respective party and lead this nation away from the insanity that’s spread to both major parties.
71
It’s nothing to do with voters alas. These decisions are made by cabals of vested interest totally in disregard of public opinion or economic efficiency. We can only hope that the foreign investment brake has been applied while the national interest is still salvable and strap ourselves in for a bumpy descent.
54
I disagree. It has a lot to do with voters. Voters don’t take the time time to study the policies and vote accordingly. That’s the whole point of having democratic elections. It’s not perfect but it is supposed to allow the people to elect candidates that promote good policies and follow through with their promises. Of course the reality is they break such promises too often but still get re-elected. Hence we get the government we deserve.
20
But, quoting you, “They are already indistinguishable” and now, two hours later, the voters are to study the policies and vote accordingly. What happened?
22
Here in Australia there are many more than two parties for voters to elect, at least in preference to the two main ones.
20
Just more corruption and chicanery of sound business, unfortunately it’s a strategic business. Not that any market has been based on soundness for some time, but this is just more of the saboteurs who want to take down this civilisation.
I’m not a great admirer of Winston Churchill but his statements regarding saboteurs and subversives pin point the phrase “arrested development” my emphasis. He knew something we didn’t.
Writing on ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 1920
22
Are you endorsing anti-semitism Boris ?
00
Grow up.
Read it.
Hint. Look for the date.
10
Off Topic :
More infected people in Victoria
And this is why Victoria cannot eliminate the virus :
Yesterday we found out that a protestor at the BLM protest on Saturday was diagnosed as COVID 19 positive.
And he had not down loaded the Covid Safe Ap.
So it would be useful if his name could be released to the public so others at the protest could assess if they may be infected also.
But no, such logic and public health strategy does not exist in Victoria .
“Ms Mikakos said “health authorities could not release the name of the man…. as doing so would be in breach of the Health Records Act.”
Ideology running rampant over public safety.
Do they ever actually think over there in the Victorian Labor government ?
I’m glad that the borders between SA & Victoria are closed.
They cannot control this disease.
So why should we allow Victorians to come here and infect us again ?
13
PM Morrison made one really good point. Those Universities who want the international borders open for students to return won’t get their demands satisfied until the states borders are opened. Check mate. So the Universities will now have to demand the sates to open their borders if they want their students back. LOL.
41
The only people who want the international borders open are the idiots who put themselves above the rest of the country.
“We want our jobs !
And we don’t care how many Australians die as a result”
Well everyone else thinks ” Stuff that for a joke ”
PS : Who really cares about the universities except academics employed in them ?
And where is it that all this renewable ruinable BS comes from ?
Let’em bleed !
30
As we speak they’re bleeding out with Latrobe Uni critical.
But the people we really need to see the back of are the myriad public servants driving all this half-witted Club Of Rome inspired civil policy which sees coal as evil, and then government can actually begin to govern and tell the carpetbaggers to sling their hooks.
While the unctuous silver tongued Robert Hill’s RET bill remains unrepealed this circus continues. Opposition to its iniquity will continue with decreasing force as the population’s access to knowledge is dried up and previous more highly trained generations disappear until within the next thirty years nobody will be able to enunciate the problem, the vocabulary will have vanished with its speakers.
40
Great!
20
The Universities can suck it up. They took the gamble that Chinese students will come here forever. It was inevitable the river of gold would cease for whatever reason. I wonder what they will now do with the Confucius Institutes.
70
When will Victorians wake up to the fact that Ms. Mikakos is a complete dud as a minister for Health ?
A wonderful Laborite multicultural feminist.
But otherwise a complete Dud !
10
When there are so many ‘complete duds’ in the Victoristan government, how can one reliably distinguish between them?
60
Fair enough James.
I was just focussing on Health.
Being naive thought they might still prioritise Public Health over ideology.
I was once in the 1980’s in the Vic ALP and then that was the case
But now ? No they don’t.
🙁
00
Beurocracy breeds off complexity; More jobs for the boys, more jobs for the desk scientists and more jobs for the ‘education industry’!!
Meanwhile our producers and manufactures are squeezed more and more in the name of ‘wholesale demand response’.The result- production will fall and costs increase. And consumers and end user will suffer.
GeoffW
30
I don’t know how the agricultural sector in Australia has survived all the abuse it has been subjected to.
They have no political voice and so are hard done by.
Europe rebuilt itself after WW11 and was looking so good that the harvesters went to work and now have it close to anarchy and collapse.
But hey, nothing new here, the same sort of thing has been happening over the last three thousand years of written history and we still haven’t worked out the antidote.
KK
10
I can just imagine the company I work for that is a high energy user that manufactures food from highly perishable products saying, “sure we’ll shut down.” We’ll send our people home without pay, and then dump all of the raw material down the drain because it has a limited shelf life just to ensure the power supply stays on for someone else to run their home air cons. Lets stick the knife deeper into the back of manufacturing and twist it while we are at it.
110
Thanks to the Greens’ nutty Carbon [sic] Tax, indoor tomato growers in the South Island, who use coal-powered heaters for their glasshouses, may have to shutdown due to overwhelming ‘mitigation’ costs. Headline: Greens Destroy Horticulture To Save The Planet.
In other news today: Mt Hutt skifield opened with 1/2 a metre-deep snow base, overcast with snow showers, cold southerly wind, max temp -4°C.
-57°C at the South Pole.
-18°C on Greenland’s summit.
0.0°C mean Arctic temp, at exactly the same time it’s reached zero for the past 60 years, via DMI.
+49°C in Iraq, hottest spot past 24 hrs.
Therefore Earth’s mean temperature for 12 June 2020 is an astonishingly life-threatening -4°C. Someone please tell Greta and/or the UN asap.
Oh, and by the way, the mayor of Hamilton authorised the removal of the city’s namesake statue after a local tribe elder declared he would ‘tear it down’ tomorrow. Here we go…
50
Update: oops, it’s even COLDER at Concordia in Antarctica, -70°C. PANIC!
40
Peter Fitzroy,
Thank you for setting me straight as to the topic from which I may not stray.
All that I seem to have achieved in providing further explanation is that I have made my point seem even more obtuse to you.
What I was trying to tell you is that, precisely because, in this example, wind fails, and continues to fail, that failure brings on the need for either instant response from peaking plant to fill the gap, or, as you call it, demand-side management. I trust that you begin to understand: in this example, there was not necessarily a demand “peak”, there was a supply “dip”. The result is a totally artificial demand “peak” brought on by wind generation failure.
As the ACT has power purchase arrangements with a number of wind farms, as listed above, the proper demand side management is that the ACT demand should have been removed at these times of failure. Incidentally, I do like your use of the term “parasitise” as to the ACT power distributor’s behaviour on the Eastern Australian Grid. Such behaviour however hardly justifies the claim that the ACT is 100%-renewables-supplied, does it?
As to your mention of “solutions”: we need to keep very firmly in mind – as “Serp” said – that none of the “solutions” that you listed are generators. They, all of them, constitute storage of one form or another. As such, to be properly assessed as to their usefulness in any emissions reduction strategy, their total lifespan CO2 emissions cost needs to be properly and meticulously calculated, and set against any CO2 emissions offsets that their use might obviate. At present, scant attention is being given by policymakers to this very necessary requirement. As an example, the so-called “grid-scale” storage battery at Hornsdale in SA can store a mere few minutes worth of SA’s demand requirements. It is huge, and required the use of vast quantities of lithium and other materials in its construction, the processing of even vaster quantities of materials in total, all of which required the consumption of huge amounts of CO2-emitting fossil fuels, all for very little return, and none of the latter properly debited against any so-called “clean” energy produced by those generators that require that battery to stabilise their shabby outputs.
The same emissions assessment requirement applies to every other of your listed “solutions”, and all of them require the use of vast amounts of fossil-fuels in their construction. See recent publications by such as Prof. Michael Kelly of Cambridge University to gain some understanding of the vastness of the scale of the storage problem, a problem which would never have arisen had policymakers and planners properly assessed the intractable intermittency issues that were then known to be inherent in renewables’ generation behaviour.
Are you beginning to understand, Peter, that Australia may have taken the wrong path here?
110
Paul, consider the contribution of renewables, at grid scale, 10 years ago, and consider what it might be in 10 years time.
As too your pollution bogy man – do you have figures? comparisons between that and coal power (including the production of the coal)? Do you have operating costs?
As to forcing you to stay on topic, that is blog policy, got nothing to do with me. It is polite to wait to the unthreaded, otherwise.
08
Jo Yes, please delete.
13
😀
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By “contribution”, do you mean the reduction of reliability and increased retail price for electricity to consumers or the lining of the pockets for “investors” in Infigen, like Malcolm Turncoat’s son, Alex?
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“consider what it might be in 10 years time. “
Very often NOTHING, just like it has been the last week or so.
The actual pollution from the manufacture of wind turbine, solar panels, and batteries, ABSOLUTELY DWARFS any real pollution from a modern coal fired power plant.
You KNOW that, so why keep making the same mindless comments ?
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“As too your pollution bogy man “
Deep in DENIAL of the massive pollution, child-labour, toxic waste etc from wind and solar.
Why don’t you actually try to learn something for a change, instead of blanking out the FACTS that you don’t like.
Watch Michael Moore film for a start… IF YOU DARE.
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Contribution.. current
NSW: COAL 91%, gas 6%, solar 1%, wind 2%
Qld: COAL 79%, gas 16%, solar 3%, wind 1%
Vic: COAL 69%, gas 9%, hydro 16%, solar 1%, wind 6%
SA: gas 57% wind 40% solar 3% (of a small amount)
Now, do you really want to discuss “contribution” of wind and solar ?
… because its basically NOTHING !!
———
NSW still being fed by Qld and Victorian COAL
When are the NSW politician going to WAKE UP and do something about it.
BAYSWATER II HELE. capacity 2500+MW would solve a lot of problems.
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Peter Fitzroy,
Precisely because many have the expectation that there will be a much greater contribution from renewables in, say, 10 years time, as you put it, then there is even more reason to properly determine their environmental impacts, and their emissions impacts, if any. Wouldn’t you agree?
As to figures: you will find them in Prof. Kelly’s recent papers. Rather than fill Jo’s blog post with floods of numbers that would bore your other reader, that’s why I thought to refer you to that source.
I suggest that you go read those papers and, say, in a week’s time, come back to Jo’s pages and write us a full refutation of the data that he has published there, if you can. No glib responses please, just detailed facts and figures.
That way you will get the “bogeyman” off your back once and for all. Or maybe not?
Be quite sure that I, and many others here, will be expecting a detailed response from you in a week’s time.
Best regards,
Paul Miskelly
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‘Peak electricity providers’ are almost all fossil fuel based generation except some hydro capacity, especially in Tasmania.
So the ‘independent’ AEMC which is not independent at all from ideology – just like the ABC – will find another way to destroy remaining reliable generators while sending the bill to the consumer and lost productivity to businesses, as well as creating even more cover to Big Green so they can publicize their business models as being effective when black/brownouts are averted.
Let me guess what the LNP’s response will be to this: *sound of crickets*
rip Australia, in Year 5 of the perpetual eulogy since the Paris Summit, both sides of our democrazy have decided to burn down the house.
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So we are now modifying “demand” to suit supply. This is the complete inverse of the market economy that made the West great.
This is the wat the Soviets worked, and why it never prospered, the State regulated supply and demand had to manage as best they could and in the end demand just evaporates and everything is reduced to whatever supply eventuates which is the lowest common denominator.
This is the beginning of the end of this great economy of ours. Sit back and enjoy the decline.
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