And the bonfire continues
As cold fronts sweep across the south east of Australia electricity prices are setting records nobody wants to set. The wholesale prices for electricity –across a whole month — soared past $300 a megawatt hour in three states of Australia. In NSW the cumulative cost of wholesale electricity for May alone worked out at $2.4 billion dollars. It’s enough to build a power plant. Back in 2015, before Hazelwood old brown coal plant closed and Australia installed more renewable energy per capita than anywhere else on the planet, the average price in NSW was $35/MWh. Back then it cost $260 million for the whole month. (And Hazelwood wasn’t even in NSW. ) The point is not about one coal plant, but about how recently the system still worked and how fast it fell apart. Hazelwood coal plant in 2017 was 53 years old and still selling electricity at $30 per megawatt hour when it was shut down. Since then the whole grid has so much more capacity yet so much less ability. There’s no resilience left. A few speed bumps wiped out the whole road train.
Wholesale electricity prices are higher across the Australian grid than they have ever been
The graph comes from Tristan Edis at WattClarity who blames the current fiasco on coal and gas producers “selling at international market prices” saying it’s not a failure of solar or wind. But as Ben Beattie points out we’ve installed 3GW of rooftop solar in 2021, so getting the same power out of it in 2022 is hardly “success”. When the weather systems rained on the coal mines, they clouded up the solar plants. We’re now a weather dependent grid but it didn’t have to be this way. And in January the price of international black coal was $200 a ton but Australian brown coal plants were still winning bids here in Australia at $22/MWh.
If only we had more brown coal plants in good condition?
The wind and solar plants ARE the vandals on the grid
The excess of random wind and solar at subsidized prices mean that cheap reliable providers get driven out of the market and we had no other alternative. It’s exactly what the Soviet-genius energy comptrollers were aiming to do. On top of that, the unloved baseload generators that haven’t been blown up aren’t being repaired and maintained properly. Plus the expert climate modelers said that winter nights would be warmer and they aren’t, and coal was a dead asset, not a $400 a ton asset. And gas wasn’t worth exploring for and we’re a nuclear free zone. It was the same circle of brains that made all the wrong predictions.
When coal and gas hit bonanza prices, Australia should be reaping in the dough. If we had enough brown coal or nuclear plants to lighten the load on the gas and the black coal it would be fine. But we have no back up for the back up anymore. We just have back up for the renewables.
A sneak peak at June prices shows that things are a bloodbath. The average price for the first nine days of June is $440 in NSW and $520 in Queensland. (See the AEMO)
Its completely amazing how the spinsters blame coal for what is clearly a problem caused by wind. The spinsters turn things around 180 degrees. Black is white, white is black. We live in a post-1984 society.
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Yes, it is a characteristic of these people that they reverse the truth of everything, call good evil, darkness light etc..
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I call it reality inversion.
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The data shows this has nothing to do with Russia. Supply is being squeezed. The price goes up. Can the Federal Government do anything meaningful? No. Its all driven by the states. If it wasn’t WA would have high prices.
If AEMO starts buying in competition to the free market this will make prices rise faster.
Perhaps we can swap high quality Australian coal for low quality (35% ash) Chinese coal? No doubt ALL the coal shipments come back empty.
The gas is more interesting. In Melbournistan we face running out of it beginning 2024. It is already TOO LATE to fix this coming disaster. At that moment price is a non-issue.
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The Victorian Government is about to approve the Western port LNG intake system. this is their BIG plan. Last week the BIG plan was to get rid of methane altogether.
Its ALWAYS about an election. NEVER about an outcome benefiting Victorians.
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And where will the LNG come from?
I supposed some place where oil and gas exploration isn’t banned as it mostly is in Vicdanistan and much of Australia.
And given everything in Australia takes place at a glacial pace, how many decades will it take to build due to all the greentape?
In fact, I bet Andrews knows it will never get built.
And if Howard hadn’t facilitated giving away Australia’s gas supply to the Chicomms on a bizarre 30 year contract at the world’s cheapest prices with no provision for inflation or market prices, we might have some of our own.
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https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/how-australia-blew-its-future-gas-supplies-20170928-gyqg0f.html
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The gas will come via the WA 15% reserves for WA. However, this gas has no $40/GJ AEMO cap. Then there is the ship problem. The local protester problem. The water depth problem. The safety problem. The pressure problem. The electrical power to run it all problem.
This is going to end up as the desalination plant finance Mark 2 deal. That was A$23 BILLION.
Its cheaper to turn some brown coal into methane while we “drill baby drill”.
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Geoff, it just makes me want to cry…
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“And where will the LNG come from?”
As Geoff+Croker comments
“The gas will come via the WA 15% reserves for WA”.
If any government has the cojones to suggest building a gas pipeline from WA and/or the NT it could well solve Australia’s energy problems for many years.
Some here may not know that a 1,600 km gas pipeline from Dampier to Perth and Bunbury was built between 1982 and 1985 and a 1,378 Km gas pipeline from the Pilbara to Kalgoorlie was built between 1994 and 1996.. Commencement has just begun on a 580 Km gas pipe from Geraldton to the Goldfields at a cost of $460 million.
Perhaps the ALP government will examine the possibility of extending the pipeline from Kalgoorlie to the Eastern states or a pipeline from the NT and/or the gas fields in the North of WA
Many here support coal to the max with good reason but coal is anathema to the majority of Australians whereas gas is less disliked. But as Geoff+Croker notes transport by sea or road has problems whereas once built a pipeline is less difficult to manage
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“to suggest building a gas pipeline from WA and/or the NT”
Plenty of gas in NSW and Victoria.. They shouldn’t need to spend huge amounts on pipelines to bring it from WA or NT.
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As i pointed out in the previous discussion on this topic,…
The West-East Gas interconnector is still in the discussion basket, as it has been for several years, and has been dusted off again this week.
But, it is a $6.0 bn , multi year project, that wont solve the current problem.
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Subsidy-seekers choosing to live close to central city subsidy centres- like granary weevils.
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RobB, where is your evidence that it’s only unmarried women who are blaming coal for the problem? ToM
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Well if I called them spinners you’d think I was I was blaming cricketers.
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Reading today’s Australian newspaper it appears that Graham Lloyd has finally grasped the issue of renewables and their intermittancy, unlike Geoff Chambers who continue to push the line that improved transmission and increased deployment of wind and solar. When will the penny drop?
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Chambers, like so many at the Oz these days, is totally paralytic on Koolaid.
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GlenM:
Graham Lloyd has been ‘sceptical’ about renewables for years. He has been constrained by Editorial pressure not to stray too far from the “acceptable line”. Now that the public is starting to realise the consequences of political actions (and inertia) for the past 13 years he has been let off the leash.
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Yes, at long last he has come out from cover and declared it as it is. I suspect they he has always felt this way, but has never been upfront with his belief.
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Never heard of preventative maintenance or return on shareholder’s investment, and the latter being compromised by forcing power station operators to adjust generating output to favour wind and solar business intermittent supply.
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The energy starvation policies of all Australian Governments, federal and state, are extremely cruel, bring much human suffering and cause massive economic destruction.
When is a major party going to have the cojones to say “stop This madness!”, look at the real science, look at the economics, and admit they have been fooled by some of the world’s most powerful and evil people (and their slave army of useful idiots of the Left)?
Apart from economic destruction, no one seems to care about about how these energy starvation policies are causing people to be cold and miserable in their own homes in places like Melbournistan. This is unacceptable in a (formerly) rich and prosperous country such as Australia.
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Perhaps it’s time for a newspaper to publish the daily fuel mix and prices of electricity much as they do the weather …..or a TV channel to do likewise ….”The AEMO for this morning/ evening is running at ……blah blah ….”” Maybe Sky News ???
People don’t know about AEMO.
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Gerry, that is a great idea. I am going to write to Peta Credlin, Andrew Bolt and Paul Murray and suggest that one (or all) of them just have a five minute segment at least once a week with the graph showing the power production from each power source. I would bet that 95% of our population would have no idea that during the night coal and has usually provide about 90% of our power if we are low on wind.
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The most annoying thing is how the government does everything against the interests of the country yet simultaneously convinces people of the exact opposite – and enough people believe it to keep the government in power.
Destroy the electricity grid with wind and solar, govt convince people that wind are solar are the solution.
Destroy manufacturing and industry, govt convinces people that they are creating jobs
Poison the minds of kids with woke gender nonsense through the education system, govt convinces people that they care about your kids
Sell off our ports, govt convinces people that foreign investment is great
The list goes on
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6:30 am and NSW price is a bit over $900 !
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Albo asking the coalie to get fired up
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10891127/Anthony-Albanese-calls-coal-power-stations-come-online-climate-change-strategy-shock.html
Begging them to come back on line, while promising to shut them down.!
Albo looks like the Aussie version of Biden.. a muddle-headed dingbat !
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Rational thinkers have to keep asking the question of the anti-energy lobby: without their hated coal, gas, nuclear and real hydro (not SH2) power, where is inexpensive reliable energy going to come from?
You will soon discover that:
1) They have no answer.
2) They simply don’t care.
You will then understand that this is not about ‘saving the planet”, an utterly flawed pre-hypothesis lacking in genuine evidence, but it is about removing or reducing energy, a fundamental input to modern civilisation. It is ultimately about destroying our civilisation and returning us to pre-Enlightenment feudal times where the common people have a poor standard of living where they would freeze in the dark, no freedom of movement, no free speech etc. and are under the control of a small clique of ultra rich and powerful Elites.
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David:
Since Canberra claims to be net zero on electricity I suggest that they only get electricity when renewables are ACTUALLY working. That should concentrate a few minds.
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Tony in OZ would know, but is Liddell still down to 2 units?
We used to have enough coal to cover peak demands, plus a bit of leeway, that situation is now very much in the past. 🙁
NSW desperately needs to increase its coal fired fleet. !
And as Jo hints, a replacement for Hazelwood, using modern brown coal technology would make a huge difference.
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Liddel is still only 2 units pumping out a steady 620MW. With all units full capacity is 2,000MW.
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It gets worse. Liddell unit 2 has been derated 140MW (280MW instead of 320MW) and is expected to be this way for over a month. It’s worth noting that all the outages in NSW and VIC are from AGL now.
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Winter, and we are now getting that price surge in the morning peak, when solar is still doing nothing, as well as in the evening.
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“Winter, and we are now getting that price surge in the morning peak, when solar is still doing nothing, as well as in the evening.
Don’t blame renewables blame governments that lacked foresight. In WA energy prices are regulated by the Independent Economic Regulation Authority. Currently coal-fired energy at $60 to $143 per MWh and natural gas $41 to $74 per MWh,
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I blame you.
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Sure. Plus the greens exhorting the Government to sign up to numerous climate protocols – consequently undermining our energy security. All the wailing from our inner city bourgeoisie should now cease.
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“I blame you.”
Do you really? Gosh I didn’t realise I was such a persuasive communicator else I would have capitalised on it by giving talks in exotic places and charging like a wound bull
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Almost accurate; at the end you meant to say “chatting wind and bull”
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Again.. if you have voted lab/green/teal.. you are part of the problem, and never part of the cure.
The chances of the far-left and very incompetent Lab/Green/Teal Albo befuddled goons doing the right thing and taking the rational human-supporting Tony Abbott view of stopping the RET and building new coal fired power stations, is as close to zero as you could ever get.
You can bet that ANYTHING they do, will just make matters worse..
And for all your yabbering protestations that you support reliable electricity.. you still voted for them, didn’t you.!
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“Again.. if you have voted lab/green/teal.. you are part of the problem, and never part of the cure.
The one flaw in your argument is that I have never voted anything but Liberal since 1972.
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LOL.. A far-leftist who hates the right (because he never is)
.. says he always votes Liberal.
What a confused little man you are.
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” blame governments that lacked foresight.”
Blame the governments (state Labor and Lino-Libs), for wasting all the money on wind and solar and shutting dowen coal , and making it hard to get gas.
Abbott wanted new coal, and to get rid of the RET.. couldn’t proceed due to greenie/lab senate.
Morrison was prepared to finance a new coal and a new gas in Qld. Nope, said Labor Qld.
Yes, we all know the blame lies completely at the feet of the leftist anti-CO2 virtue-seeking.
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The only way most people (might) wake up to the unreliables madness is for a major multi-day grid-down event with major loss of life, social chaos and economic destruction.
We come closer to that situation, the closer we get to the closure of the next proper power station.
And the anti-energy lobby will blame it on the previous failed Morrison government for not installing or encouraging enough unreliables. Well, then explain to them, no matter how many unreliables you have, if there is no wind and no sun, there is no power. And there is no conceivable practical or affordable battery that can replace a proper power station.
Where rational thinkers have been deficient in their advocacy is not explaining the enormous power outputs of proper power stations from relatively compact structures. The ignorant masses think a few dozen windmills will replace a real Power Station. Wrong! Not even tens of thousands of windmills covering thousands of square kms of land can do that.
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It is unlikely that a state will go to a full black out and be there for several days. Before that happens, the grid controllers will shut down the major industrial consumers to keep the domestic and light industrial/retail lights on.
However, that aluminium smelter, deprived of electrical energy for a day due to low solar and no wind across the grid, will go cold and the pots will be ruined. For a smelter like Portland, (in western Vic), it will likely be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. A day without production, is the first day of the closure. The plant is gone, the wages are gone, the export earnings are gone. All gone. Portland has a population of around 10,000, how many of those are directly employed or indirectly employed by the wages flowing out the front gate? One thing for sure, without them, the town is as good as dead, tourism 3600km from Melbourne is a hard sell, especially for a family in an electric car.
It’s the same for any industry that uses bulk electricity, it’s closure date is not an if, it’s a when. And under green energy, it’s sooner that anyone hoped.
And why will no journalist ask the politicians how many houses the solar plant supplied last night?
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I don’t think those potlines can handle more than two hours of power outages before they experience potline freezing which can write-off the entire plant. Tomago and Portland have been shutting down every night for at least the past week as part of “demand management” during this energy crisis.
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The information controllers will blame everything on Coal. The people – being gormless will believe them.
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Did I mention something?
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So it’s OK for b.nice to call anyone with whom he does not agree a moron?
00
my pick at least 10,000 dead needed to sway the public opinion so entrenched is this now
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is there a financial advantage for power companies that have both coal and renewable assets to let their coal assets degrade/break down?
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The energy companies are obviously bigger dumbass retards than we thought.
Have your coal burners subsidise your unreliables!?!? I don’t see any logic in this other than to try to serve 3rd world logic to 1st world populations in the hope that brainwashing and propaganda has done a thorough job.
Just remember that the current government has pulled off a similar stunt to the New Zealand mob & only received 32% of the vote! That’s how twisted & ridiculous our world has become & also explains the logic of the power generators!
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DLK, if you own FF and windmills/solar, then you certainly have a clear financial benefit to close down or reduce production in the FF generator. Why sell 100 units of electricity at $40/MWHr when you can shut down 50% of your production and sell 50 units into a demand driven market at $400/MWHr. 100% on, $4,000 per hour income. 50% on, $20,000 income and at only half the effort.
This can be fixed by enabling long term contracts, ALL generators need to commit to supply electricity 24/7 in a profile that matches the average/seasonal adjusted demand curve. To make it competitive they need to bid on supplying say 1% of the profile, or for a big generator 10%, etc. The result, ALL generators would effectively have to provide back-up. For solar, they could install batteries to cover the morning/evening peaks and of course all night. Alternatively they could purchase power directly from the FF units at a negotiated price. And if the sun doesn’t shine during the day, then the solar generators have to buy power at the spot price to cover their promised supply. The cost difference coming out of their profits. Let them pay for the coverage of their intermittent supply, not the consumer.
When that is all balanced out, and the generator has to be reliable, let’s see who the cheapest generator is. My money is on brown coal.
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Only because of the geological parameters and resultant low mining costs for these deposits, not because it is lignite per se.
What parameters ? Axis of strike very close to the surface for 100’s km, cumulative thicknesses up to 230m. It’s so prone to spontaneous combustion it cannot be stockpiled for long, so short conveyor belts supply the fuel directly to the generating boilers. I’ve recorded the demand gauges in Loy Yang power station at both 3pm and 3am – almost no change in demand due to the Portland aluminium smelter (which itself was built where it is to extract some export value from those same lignite deposits). Quality control over mined fuel is an ongoing issue.
Are there any black coal deposits with similar geology favourable to cheap mining costs ? Yes, although not to the same extent in Australia. Wyoming/Montana’s Powder River Basin is one such, where very thick black seams are folded anticlinally with the fold axis very close to the surface and striking for over three hundred km.
This next point has been repeated on websites many times but the fact seems to just disappear into the imaginary ether. Export thermal black coal has very directly required quality characteristics to attract the $$$300+/tonne prices that have so excited the masses – ash <15%, low S, P and other elements deleterious to boilers, Specific Energy around 27-28 MJ/kg (aka 6500 kcal/kg), moisture < 8%. Aus power stations are deliberately designed for lesser quality fuel – ash 25%, 20 MJ/kg, with a higher tolerance for S, P etc, moisture perhaps = 10%. This design is deliberate to allow for export potential of the higher quality coals.
[All the "knowing" comments on coal-fired generators consistently ignore the critical geoscientific parameters. Let's see if this persists.]
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Spot on Eng Ian.
Fix the market pricing mess to stop the manipulation by generators …(some of whom own coal mines as well as coal and RE generation plants !).
That will render the “supply/demand” cost justification null and void,….leaving only a supply issue to be realised……IE Wind&Solar poor performance.!
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Everyone should move to Western Australia
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Why?
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it up – they do not have any problems with power prices – government interference in power pricing, capacity and fuel reserves for coal and gas. Note: they also use a significant amount of renewables
Check
ABC
The West Australian
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29c per kWh doesn’t seem very cheap to me.
Without unreliables it should be about 10c in a free market situation.
More unreliables ALWAYS means higher consumer electricity prices. No exceptions that I have discovered.
https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/energy-policy-wa/household-electricity-pricing
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“In Western Australia, the majority of electricity is generated using coal and gas, with smaller amounts coming from diesel and renewable sources (wind, solar and landfill gas).
…
In 2016, renewable energy accounted for: over 13 per cent of all electricity consumed on Western Australia’s main electricity grid… about 7 per cent of all electricity consumed in Western Australia.
…
Renewable energy mix 2014-15; Wind 62%, Hydro 8%, Solar PV 25% and Biogas 5%
…
Page reviewed 26 November 2021″
link
daily reminder reminder that utopia is an “imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect”
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WA has a small monopoly grid that has largely avoided disaster because it didn’t have an extension cord to the NEM so our experiments over here had to be less “brave”. We are rushing to catch up though. The one black coal plant and mine is being neglected and run down. Solar panels are everywhere. The Duck Curve is starting to bite at midday. A few odd blackouts hit parts of perth hard last summer. I get the feeling we have ridden on momentum but speed bumps are just starting to hit…
Wholesale prices here are low but the retail prices are artificially set by Soviet control and I’m sure it’s no accident that we “matched” the East Coast retail price. Someone in the WA government looked at what people in the East would put up with and said “well they are not marching in the streets in protest”. So we got the same price. Stupid decision – we could have attracted industry with cheaper electricity.
But it’s hard to find people who understand the SWIS and the market here. I have been looking. It’s “under the radar” and mostly ignored by the rest of the country. So if any readers here have knowledge of it, do share. I’m interested.
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Look at the money paid out in the wa capacity mechanism
00
wagerup power station is paid not to operate
00
more government screw-ups?
00
Currently (8:30 in WA) renewables 34%, coal and gas 66%. Eastern states renewables 39.6%, hydro 10.2%, coal and gas 50.2%.
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Aren’t so lucky to be allowed access to all that GAS that keeps the price down
NSW, Vic, Qld, have locked up a lot of access to gas..
.. and the green agenda to shut down coal, has made that un-economical for proper maintenance.
There is no way all your petty excuses can get around the fact that the greenie/leftist anti-CO2 agenda is totally to blame for the current electricity crisis.
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then they would start claiming that western australia is going to sink into the ocean from large numbers of people unbalancing the continent
and that it can only be prevented by creating aerial cities (hat tip to Jonathan Swift’s Laputa),
this impossibility to be paid for, of course, by the taxpayer.
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DLK, actually such a thing was already cautioned about by a clueless US Democrat congressman who claimed Guam would tip over and capsize due to too many US Navy personnel being stationed there.
This was not a joke! See video:
https://youtu.be/cesSRfXqS1Q
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Rottnest and surrounds tell a story in the rocks that the scaremongers like to ignore.
NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF PENGUIN ISLAND AND CAPE PERON WITH REFERENCE TO ROTTNEST ISLAND
W. R. Morgan, MSc, F.A.LG.
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Isn’t there a famous island over there which is full of Koalas?
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Rottnest Island.
Not koalas, quokkas.
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As Australia’s energy grid is systematically destroyed, one wonders where else such self-destruction has been implemented.
The only example I can think of is the communist Pol Pot’s regime and his Year Zero (ឆ្នាំសូន្យ, Chhnăm Sony). Like most other socialist/communist leaders Pol Pot was also a wealthy Elite.
Thankfully, for the Australian Government the marketing people (maybe even “Scotty from marketing”?) changed Pol Pot’s “Year Zero” which might have a somewhat tainted reputation, to “Net Zero“.
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The really big issue is that we currently have almost certainly the very worst people in charge in all eastern states, at both state and federal levels, to actually fix the problem.
Gross incompetence abounds, as well as moronic anti-CO2 ideologies.
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Electricity supply is State Government primary responsibility and the State owned power station and transmission lines were privatised by the States.
Wind and solar installations can only obtain planning approval and development application approval from State authorities. Federal can recommend of course, as the Morrison Government did for 4 gas generators and 1 coal fired power station for VIC, NSW and QLD. To date only 1 gas fired generator has been approved, NSW for the Hunter Valley.
AEMO is a cooperative of governments and other members.
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And the NSW government is going to spend 1.2 billion dollars on transmission to connect some far flung wind farms to the grid. When I was selling farm produce(cattle, pumpkins, corn, chaff and the rest) it was up to me to pay the freight to market. Why do we pay to have electricity brought to market? I’ll write to Perrotet to ask. I’m sure he will answer.
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I doubt you will get a reply but if he does answer, it will be that you did not build the roads yourself and nor did the transport firm that carried your produce.
The remote subsidy farmers do “pay” for the transmission losses by only getting paid for what is delivered.
The problem is that all these new transmission lines are bound to have low utilisation due to the low capacity factors of the generators and they can often provide nothing when it is most needed.
You would not take your produce to market if you had to pay people to buy it. A different matter if you got a subsidy that paid you for the produce even if it was taken to the tip.
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Such power transmission lines are engineered to cope with the sporadic bursts of high energy wind is capable of delivering a requirement which does not come cheap; australia’s renewable rorter class is in a full ascendancy hitherto unseen though imperilled as are all of us by imminent hyperinflation.
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I remember at the time Gillard Labor Federal Government announced the Renewable Energy Target and what is now several billions of dollars a year handed to the owners of those supply sources that PM Gillard in a light hearted joking manner referred to “gold plated poles and wires”, feeder transmission lines from wind and solar installations to main grid.
Her comment made me realise that she understood the high cost involved and that the transition to renewables was a politics based agenda, too bad about the ramifications.
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“…said that winter nights would be warmer and they aren’t”
And the future summer days and nights will not be the warmth they have been in the past either. Since February here in SE Queensland it has been wet wet wet. Run off/floods have been the most obvious but what seems to have been less commented on is the amount of water that has also seeped into and remains in the ground over a vast area. The land is sodden. Since February there has been loads of cloudy overcast days in addition to rainy days so we have all this sodden ground just lying there getting colder and colder. The stuff perma-frosts are made of. Then the icing on the cake courtesy of the early and viciously chilled arctic blasts. If the solar minimum effect continues into next summer I can’t see the ground drying out too quickly and so SE Qld weather will continue to cool and we might start looking like Sydney weather. Four seasons in one day could even be on the cards longer term.
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“viciously chilled arctic blasts.”
Perhaps antarctic blasts?
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Or polar blast, its definitely a cold air outbreak.
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David – I agree about it being unacceptable. However, the problems grew in Scott Morrison’s watch, and both Anthony Albanese and resources minister Madeleine King are clearly favouring coal right now. Too little too late? Probably, but our Labor government wasn’t there to start any earlier. Was it really Scott Morrison’s fault – well you can argue that he was up against a fericiously powerful anti-energy team, including Labor, but he was put into power to not cave in to them, and he failed. If Labor can control its own idiots then we may well see Australia’s energy systems rescued, in spite of ‘climate change’ rhetoric to the contrary. I have my fingers firmly crossed (scientifically proven to be the most effective course in the circumstances) that Anthony Albanese and Madeleine King will do the right thing for Australia. Time will tell.
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Mark I think you’re wrong but I’ll apologise at some future date if you’re proven to be correct.
IOW I don’t think Labor/ Greens Teals have the vaguest idea about energy today or for the future.
Have a look at Mark Mills’s video below or the transcript to try and understand their/ our problems for the future.
It’s very simple we’re either following the real data of the real world or the delusional nonsense from their fantasy world. IOW physical factual data versus silly fairy tales.
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Sorry to Mike not Mark for my reply.
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I certainly don’t pretend to be able to see how this will go. However, pro-coal comments from our Labor leaders are not entirely unexpected (Anthony Albanese said some years ago that if he ruled the roost coal exports would continue to at least 2050), and our resources minister has said some good things too. Like I said – fingers crossed.
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I agree with your thinking, Labor doesn’t have to worry about the Teals, so Albo might do something revolutionary like underwriting more gas fired power stations.
A new coal fired power station would be fantastic, but there are moderates in his own party who would be horrified.
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Nevile I agree with Mike. I got the impression from Albanese that he is not implacably against the use of coal and gas. Remember he has just spent considerable time in WA where energy prices are not the topic du jour and which is very rich in gas. As I’ve posted elsewhere I strongly support building a pipeline(s) from A and/or the NT to pipe gas to the Eastern States. In fact `i think there is a gas pipeline from NT to Qld
30
Pipelines from WA or NT to NSW or VIC (Qld is just next door.. you doknow that don’t you?)
.. what a pointless idea, when Victoria and NSW have so much gas of their own.
Sheer idiocy, actually.
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We have our own gas supply. Albo will twist the arm of Santos to give us a fair price and as much as we require forever. The rest they can sell on the overseas market.
‘Santos seeks to speed up Narrabri gas as energy crisis hits home
‘Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher will attempt to fast-track the oil and gas giant’s controversial Narrabri coal-seam gas project by up to a year amid the worsening east-coast energy crunch and a “frightening” lack of new projects to boost local supply.’ (SMH)
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Not so, the problems commenced from after 2010 when the Labor Federal Government created the Renewable Energy Target and subsidies for profit by shareholders in those private sector businesses.
The privatisation of power stations and transmission lines was of State owned and operated assets, planning approval and development applications for wind and solar installations is State and Local Government Councils based. Federal have no powers.
Of course federal have tried to force changes in gas supply, electricity pricing based on company laws which is Federal responsibility, forming AEMO Cooperative to gain coordination of electricity supply and other initiatives but cannot dictate to the States.
Snowy 02 is a Federal Government project but required States to approve and that resulted in the Federal Government paying the States $6 billion for their shares in Snowy Hydro in return for approval. The original Snowy Mountains Scheme was Federal but it took over ten years to gain State approvals needed before the project could begin.
It has become fashionable to blame Morrison, unfortunately not many who do this check what areas of responsibility and powers each level of government holds.
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I’ve been an avid follower of Jo’s blog for years & her consistent message re-energy generation in Australia. This has highlighted the stupidity & yes at times insanity of successive energy policy & the cumulative effects of this across the economy, industry & ultimately standard of living and that if we, as a nation, keep heading in this direction it will be ‘lights out’ & ultimately extreme discomfort, and yes mortality, for fellow Australians.
I always assumed some sanity or balance would play out within our energy policy space, but alas here we are in 2022, Jo still conveying the same sane message that obviously policy makers ignore, and the nation as a whole is entrapped in an exponential curve of diminishing energy security, duh?
Now Australians have decided to give the other political party the keys to the stupid space, & entrusted Mr Magoo aka Chris Bowen, as navigator of the Titanic!
I tell yah I’ve been around a few 65yrs & this don’t look & feel good. The only space left to go is a black hole of energy grid implosion. I guess that’s where we need to go , rock bottom to see the light. Bit like the AA for the Australian Electrical Grid & associated policy. Watch this space over the next 3yrs. Unfortunately your predictions are in the money Jo!
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Canberrans have just had their electricity price REDUCED by 1.25%. They are 100% “renewable”. This reinforces to them the very low cost of “renewable” generation. They simply wonder why the rest of Australia has not done the same. This is the seat of power and the people driving energy policy. Albo can stick this information in Dutton’s face and say we told you dills that “renewables” were cheaper but you did not listen.
Now try to explain to Canberrans that they are at the pointy end of a massive and intricate Ponzi scheme! No one in power gets this.
Even if the lights go out, they will be saying we just need lots more W&S to solve the problem. I am confident I will not see a new coal fired power station in Australia.
Anyone who is connected to the grid and not part of the Ponzi scheme is paying for all those who are enjoying the benefits – like all of the bureaucrats in Canberra with their REDUCING electricity bills.
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The 100% renewable network they have when they don’t have a 100% renewable network. Is this all smoke and mirrors or what? And a map of where ‘their’ wind farms were as at 2016 is in this doco.
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Oops something went haywire with the link. This is what it was meant to go to an ABC article. Sorry.
21
And 2nd link failed. Mods can you fix or just remove and I’ll post again later. The correct 2nd link
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When I researched that ACT Government claim I found that they are not being truthful, the ACT relies on NSW coal fired power stations for electricity but do have wind and solar installations within the ACT, and others they have invested in outside the ACT.
So the deception is that on paper the investments theoretical capacity is in line with ACT electricity usage.
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As has been said many times regarding the ACTs claim of 100% RE..
Where are they getting their power from on windless nights ?
They are simply Lying B’stards !
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How do these horrendous wholesale prices flow through to hit the public? That is when action might happen, certainly not until then. Does it take a day, week, month, n months, or a year?
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Canberrans have just had a 1.25% reduction in electricity price. They are 100% “renewable” and have a contract of difference to wholesale price so the increasing wholesale price has provided windfall benefits.
Canberra is where policy is made and all Canberrans will be getting the message that “renewables” are so cheap why isn’t the rest of Australia doing this?
There is no appreciation that they are at the pointy end of a massive Ponzi scheme. Actually I was at the very pointy end and have enjoyed a free ride for over a decade now but at least I know it is a Ponzi scheme that others pay for.
The gas price increase is already hitting in southern Australia. Billing is usually 2-monthly so the latest bills will have some increase.
Retailers who do not have generating assets are in a liquidity squeeze. They will have to increase prices dramatically and quickly as their forward contract prices rise dramatically. Some are already ib dire financial state.
The current prices will not have full impact for at least a couple of months.
Most generators are doing extremely well; particularly those with S$W assets. They have no exposure to fuel costs and are enjoying the high revenues from high wholesale price. I have not seen any negative prices for a while so they will not be curtailing output. There only issues are low wind and low sun.
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Can you explain who is getting these benefits please. As far as I know, the benefits is to two parties to the CFD’s who can eliminate the volatile Spot Price to an agreed, stable retail price. In other words, the wholesale price will only affect retail price in the long term and in no way will anyone pay the spot price. See my comments below.
20
All residents in Canberra have had their electricity price cut by 1.25% so they are enjoying the benefit of being 100% “renewable”.
ACT electricity has locked in contracts for difference on enough wind and solar power to provide the Territory. The strike price is around $74/MWh. That is what they pay the W&S generators. At the present time, the wholesale price is around $350?MWh so ACT electricity pocket the difference of $275/MWh. This is a windfall benefit and they are passing on a small portion to all electricity consumers in the ACT/Canberra.
It will be an uphill battle to convince anyone living in Canberra that “renewables” are not cheaper than fossil fuel generation. They are getting a tangible benefit from the strategy to go 100% “renewable”. They will wonder why the dills in the large States have not done the same thing.
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So last Thursday evening when renewables accounted for just 3% of electricity generation where were Canberrans getting their 100% renewable electricity? Who missed out so they could enjoy it? Sounds like BS to me.
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Where ever it came from, ACT electricity paid their contract strike price and pocketed the difference to the wholesale price. ACT electricity are sharing their windfall gains with their consumers by lowering the retail price.
Asking the question means you do not understand how a Ponzi scheme works. They can keep building to the point until they collapse. Then the questions get asked and people realise they are in a Ponzi scheme – getting benefit that others are unwittingly paying for.
The whole South Australia electricity network is a giant Ponzi. It hangs as a parasite off the interconnector to Victoria. Remove the interconnector to Victoria and South Australian electricity prices instantly double.
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” Where ever it came from, ACT electricity paid their contract strike price and pocketed the difference to the wholesale price.”
So, the difference then is paid towards the market operator who has supplied the electricity at a price of $350. There is no windfall!
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SA renewables supply is so reliable that a new interconnector is being constructed from New South Wales.
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“…the wholesale price is around $350?MWh so ACT electricity pocket the difference of $275/MWh.”
The fact is that the $275 will go to the retailer (ACT electricity) who has paid the full $350 to purchase the power from the spot market. So they pay the net $75 to the generators, which is what they have agreed to in the CFD. There is no windfall to anyone.
If you don’t get that you do not understand how CFD’s work.
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https://www.environment.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/987991/100-Renewal-Energy-Tri-fold-ACCESS.pdf\
The average wholesale price for wind over the past 30 days has been $337/MWh. ACT electricity last reverse auction went for $77/MWh. So that is what they pay that particular generator. Price was a little higher for earlier auctions. The particular wind generators will earn about $337/MWh. So the generators pay the difference between what they earn and the $77/MWh contract FiT. ACT electricity then buy their electricity in the wholesale market with almost no exposure to the increase in fuel costs.
This guardian story gives the following figure for ACT electricity wholesale price:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/06/island-in-the-energy-price-storm-renewables-help-act-cut-power-costs
So other retailers have exposure to rapidly rising spot or futures that are exposed to fuel prices whereas ACT electricity is essentially locked into contracts that have no exposure to fuel price.
You can see how the story is being widely promoted as a great success for ACT electricity. No other retailer has offered lower electricity prices in Australia this year.
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“If the market price is higher than the FiT price, the distributor will be paid the difference—and the savings passed on to ACT consumers.”
But the full price of $350 HAS ALREADY BEEN PAID to the market operator. Any difference between the Strike Price and the generator’s agreed price will indeed be a gain for the ACT but remember that this price is the subject of negotiations periodically and has nothing to do with the CFD. Any gain is likely to be small and exists for all time, not just when the market goes bananas.
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And if Canberra had locked in long term contracts from coal gentailers they could have done it at ~$50, (wholesale energy component only), maybe less, at the same time as they were locking in higher priced renewables. Imagine how happy the electricity consumers would have been with cost reductions related to that……
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The answer is that they do not flow to the public!
The NEM allows generators and retailers to enter “Contracts for Differences” (CFD). These allow the parties to reduce the cost to a much lower agreed price that only they know. This market is private with the result that no-one really knows what the final price of generation is.
So, the heading “Cold snaps and blistering electricity prices down under — where one state burnt $2.4b in electricity in May” is totally misleading.
It is only retailers that do not have “Contracts for Differences” for their uncontracted portions of their total demand that are exposed to the spot or wholesale price. These are the retailers that are going bust right now. They were doing well as long as the wholesale price was below their retail price. All good things come to an end.
I have tried to explain this several times in previous posts, but the concept of Contracts for Differences is a difficult one that requires one to do a bit of research and reading. Unless you do, you will not understand what I am talking about and will never have a clue to how the market really works.
One further thing that needs to be understood. The wholesale price will influence the “Strike Price” for CFD’s. If they are high for longer periods, generators can demand higher strike prices at their regular contract price negotiations. This will enable them to invest in new projects. It is the interference of parties in this mechanism that will stifle investment.
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The reverse auctions that ACT electricity held were public. The strike price is known. The last auction went for $77/MWh.
ACT electricity is the only retailer that has next to no exposure to rising fuel prices. All other retailers have or will have exposure. Those without generating assets will eventually be paying the current wholesale price or at least the real cost of generation with the higher fuel prices. It will be much higher than $77/MWh.
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Oh well, if the price is disclosed to the public, they will of course know. However most do not have to disclose.
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There is no doubt that the ACT customers benefit from having large slabs of hydro as part of the mix. However this is not an argument for having lots of wind and solar as well. This is similar for all states, no matter what the mix.
That ACT consumers have this advantage in no doubt good for them because they happen to live in the ACT. It is the only thing you can crow about. For the rest of us, we have to deal with what we face. That is soaring fuel costs and lack of supply.
Government inaction is to blame. I think the term “paralysis by analyses” applies. That we have a 3-year election cycle contributes to this. Planning for electricity system typically takes 10 years or more.
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“having lots of wind and solar as well”
Where is lots of wind and solar in the ACT ?
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First of all there’s no climate CRISIS or EMERGENCY or donkey Biden’s EXISTENTIAL THREAT, none whatsover.
BUT we are now living in the easiest or best conditions for Humans for 200 K years or 200 years or 50 years or 20 years.
Just look up the data for calories intake or life expectancy or wealth etc and WAKE UP.
OH and fossil fuels TODAY STILL generate over 80% of TOTAL global energy, no ifs no buts.
So why with this very fast incredible change in Human well being since 1800 would we ever want to change anything?
We know that TOXIC S & W are an UNRELIABLE disaster and ditto for TOXIC batteries etc and that mining for these rare earth materials is impossible unless we continue to surrender proper health and safety checks for the poorest workers involved in these projects.
The Chinese C P even use genocide and slave labor to supply these TOXIC S & W disasters etc for the GLOBAL market.
The TOXIC S & W disasters are a sick joke and will never be able to supply RELIABLE energy at night or during wind droughts or cloudy days etc. Just look up the tiny King Island data for yourselves.
And if it can’t work without BASE-LOAD fossil fuels on King Island it could never work for an entire country like Australia. Here’s Mark Mill’s latest 5 minute video with all the data and a full transcript is available.
At least read his transcript and start to THINK.
https://www.prageru.com/video/how-much-energy-will-the-world-need
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I suppose I should include the full transcript of Mark Mills video in case some of our donkeys can’t find it. Here it is.
“We’re headed toward an exciting all-renewable energy future. Wind and solar will power the world of tomorrow.
And tomorrow isn’t far off!……..
…It’s time to wake up.
You’re having a dream.
Here’s the reality.
Oil, natural gas, and coal provide 84% of all the world’s energy. That’s down just two percentage points from twenty years ago.
And oil still powers nearly 97% of all global transportation.
Contrary to headlines claiming that we’re rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels, it’s just not happening. Two decades and five trillion dollars of governments “investing” in green energy and we’ve barely moved the needle.
This was supposed to be easy. Why is it so hard?
In a word: rocks.
To get the same amount of energy from solar and wind that we now get from fossil fuels, we’re going to have to massively increase mining.
By more than 1000%.
This isn’t speculation. This is physics.
Copper, iron ore, silicon, nickel, chromium, zinc, cobalt, lithium, graphite, and rare earth metals like neodymium. We need them all.
And then those metals and materials have to be turned into motors, turbine blades, solar panels, batteries, and hundreds of other industrial components. That also takes lots of energy, which requires even more mining.
As a World Bank study put it, these green “technologies … are in fact significantly more material intensive” than our current energy mix. That may be the understatement of the century: raw materials account for 50-70% of the costs to manufacture both solar panels and batteries.
Until now it hasn’t really mattered that much because wind and solar still account for only a few percentage points of the global energy supply. They’re an applause line for environmentalists—not a major energy player. And it’s unlikely they will be in the foreseeable future.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say we sharply ramp up mining. Where would these new mines be located?
Well, for one, China.
That country is today the single largest source for most of our critical energy materials. The United States is not only a minor player but is dependent on imports for 100% of 17 critical minerals. Do we want to give China more political and economic leverage? Europe has made itself dependent on Russia for 40% of its natural gas. How well has that worked out?
Ironically, we have all the minerals we need right here in North America.
But good luck trying to get them out of the ground.
Proposals to build mines in the United States and, increasingly almost everywhere else, meet fierce opposition if not outright bans. To give just one example, in 2022 the Biden Administration canceled a proposed copper and nickel mine in northern Minnesota. This was after years of delays, navigating a maze of environmental regulations.
Yes, the same environmentalists and green-leaning politicians who tout all the benefits of electric cars are the same people who make mining the materials essential to build those cars—like copper and nickel—all but impossible.
Try to square that circle.
So far, we’ve only talked about today’s energy needs. What about tomorrow’s?
Future energy demand will be far greater than today’s. That’s been true for the entire history of civilization. The future will not only have more people but also more innovations. And entrepreneurs have always been better at inventing new ways to use energy than to produce it.
It’s obvious but worth stating: Before the invention of automobiles, airplanes, pharmaceuticals, or computers, there was no energy needed to power them.
And as more people become more prosperous, they’ll want the things others already have—from better medical care to vacations to cars.
In America, there are about 80 cars for every 100 citizens. In most of the world, it’s about five per hundred citizens.
Over 80% of air travel is for personal purposes. That’s two billion barrels of oil a year.
Hospitals use 250% more energy per square foot than an average commercial building.
And the global information infrastructure—the Cloud— already uses twice as much electricity as the entire country of Japan, the world’s third-largest economy. The massive data centers at the heart of the Cloud alone consume almost 10 times more electricity than the world’s 10 million electric cars.
E-commerce has taken off and is propelling record growth in warehouses, increasingly filled with energy-hungry robots. America’s truck freight index more than doubled in the past decade to deliver the goods to and from those warehouses.
These are today’s known trends. While we can’t predict the future, we can predict there’ll be more innovation—in robotics, drones, quantum computing, biotechnology. And new industries not yet imagined.
All of it will require more energy—a lot more.
Fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and yes, renewables will be required.
But if you think we can get it all from wind and solar, dream on”.
I’m Mark Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, for Prager University”.
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that’s exactly what the globalist cabal wants to do.
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US petroleum consumption per day in 1973 was 17 million barrels. US petroleum consumption per day in 2022 is 20 million barrels – despite far more people, far more commerce, far more vehicles on the road, far higher GDP. The West has become far more energy efficient across the board. This trend will continue. Even the homeless American YouTube vlogger and skater Jake McCollum who sleeps in and lives out of his car doing Uber Eats and Door Dash deliveries has recently switched his ride from a broken-down old Acura to a shiny new 2022 Prius hybrid – even if his dad in Dallas did have to co-sign to guarantee the car loan:).
Capitalism is all about building a better mousetrap.
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The problems for our society is not a problem of capitalism v socialism with one being the bad wolf and the other the good wolf. The problem is greed. Greed exists in people no matter which political/social system we use. The revolution needs to be against greed.
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So, greed is not good? We need to tell Gordon Gekko. 😃
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I think people are beyond caring abut the price of electricity. The question they ask is, can windmills and solar panels provide the power ? People are answering yes to this question, and they expect it to cost more. That means little to them. They don’t care about industry and it’s needs, that is not something most encounter in their day to day lives. Many exist in the service economies, they do each others dishes and get paid for it, and get paid well, they can afford electricity increase, and besides, you just put solar panels on.
That is terrible thinking but it’s what I see as going on in peoples heads. And in the end it is true. You will need to put a battery on your house and solar panels to afford and provide reliable electricity, despite the many problems the real world throws at such simplistic theory.
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In the modern era, wind energy has a very dark past (as well as a dark present) and was developed by the National Socialists who were also extreme greens and many of whom were occultists, as documented in the books:
Die Geschichte der Windenergienutzung 1890-1990 (The History of Wind Energy Utilization 1890-1990) by Matthias Heymann
and
Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex by Rupert Darwall.
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I have difficulty admitting that a Labor PM has actually fixed something.
Albo has fixed Global Warming in Melbourne. It took less than two weeks. There has been a dramatic reduction in burning fossil fuels; just way too expensive. It is the coldest June so far since 1949.
I actually put the cooling down to the urban heat effect. People used to warm their houses with gas, now they just use blankets inside cold houses. Remove the gas heating and the place just cools down.
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ABC radio this morning interviewing a Professor of Economics describing how we should build our new energy grid…………..just in case anyone was wondering why we are in the trouble we find ourselves
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Is he the IPCC stooge?
It is a crazy world when someone with no idea on a topic interviews someone who thinks they have a clue but is actually clueless. Blind leading the blind comes to mind.
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The dispatchable generator payment is getting attention at the moment and will likely be accelerated to be in place sooner than the proposed 2025 date. There are grave concerns from the IPCC zealots that this will benefit fossil fuel generators – no surprise there. They would prefer that only batteries get a reward for keeping some energy available.
This raises an interesting question of dispatchable power or dispatchable energy. A battery has a very limited supply of energy as it does not produce any. Unlike a coal plant that has essentially an inexhaustible supply of energy and can deliver its rated power for long periods, a battery has a single shot of a couple of hours before it needs to source more energy. Two hours is not much good when there is a wind drought for two weeks.
With so many Labor governments now in power around the country, energy reality a b……
I will stoke up the fire and watch all of this unfold with great interest.
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AGL crisis deepens amid Bayswater outage
Two more units at the Hunter Valley coal plant, which supplies power to 2 million households, are now out of action.
From the Australian
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From 2014 stage adaption of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four.
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We all saw this coming and it’s been discussed to death here and on other conservative sites for over a decade. The killer blow has been the removal of coal from the grid and the inability of RE to provide baseload generation.
If you think back to the early days of the RE dream, even the green zealots knew wind and solar were not capable by themselves of providing a reliable supply and we allocated billions of taxpayer dollars to develop tidal, geo-thermal, solar thermal and wave systems that all had spectacular failures. Despite these failures, the green zealots persisted anyway and turned to very expensive batteries that don’t actually provide storage, but load regulation, which is very different.
The situation we now face is very dire and it’s probably the worst case scenario of what we were considering, because at this very point in time with the grid now on the verge of collapse, the zealots are more defiant than ever and refuse to accept the reality that their RE dream is simply not possible and these people are now running the show and have infiltrated all major political parties. Unfortunately, we need to let the system fall over so as to provide the hard education to the general public, because the media, education systems and political class have pushed the lie of RE for too long and people will now only learn the hard way and it will be a very, very hard way indeed.
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What we are seeing is a glimpse of the future, with several turbines broken at the moment simulating Liddell 1.6GMW and Eraring 2.8GW shutdown over the next 3 years or so. The not so crazy members of the left (the ones just along for the ride and virtue signalling kudos) are seeing this future as are we hence the calls now for “RAPID” roll out of renewables.
Its all down hill from here
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Agreed Serge.
But what then?
Once they destroy the next power station it will take years or decades to build a replacement, given that nothing good happens in Australia fast. And that’s only if Australians decide they don’t want to revert to the Stone Age. I am not convinced they understand or care.
The quickest solution, if anyone actually cared, would be to buy or lease hugely expensive to run gas turbine generators. GE has a model based on a 747 engine which I think produces 80MW? I can’t remember the model number.
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After the transition has formally failed, which will be a combination of outages and absurd pricing, the silent majority will become the new angry mob and demand a fix. This won’t be an easy path forward because the zealots will never admit they caused the problem and will therefore always maintain their rage for more RE to fix the problem of RE. The only solution is to go back to coal or ramp up gas production reserved for local usage for the next decade and at the same time put in a plan for nuclear after 2030 to appease the net zero fools.
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Many years ago now, I was on holidays in Vanuatu. I was wandering along a backstreet in the capital, when I heard the unmistakeable muted scream of a gas turbine. After a bit of amateur detective work, I found a large corrugated iron building…the powerhouse. No security back then , so I wandered in to discover from memory, two RR 747 engines, one going full song, generating power. A worker discovered me, and was only too happy to give me the Cooks tour of the place.
All those parked up 747’s in the desert on the USA…maybe there is a market for the engines ? ( although I think after they are flown in, the engines being the only thing of real value, are removed and repurposed ). At full throttle, I imagine they burn a bit of kero, and they are noisy, but I’m sure Chris Bowen could organise some large sheds with sound proofing.
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When do we start? Is the question. In Australia’s case can do is not an option.
00
Put them outside each TEAL member’s house, since they refuse to have windmills and solar farms in their neighborhood.
00
It’s ironical that within 1 month of an election that was dominated by greens and teals we get concrete evidence why voting for green colours is a disaster. The unfortunate situation was that except for some of the minor parties the major parties were just as bad on this issue. Anyone who’s been warning about this green cliff the economy is about to crash over had been called a denier equating to holocaust denial yet exactly what has been predicted is happening. It is actually idiots like Bowen who are the deniers who can’t see that it’s this lust for renewables that is cause both of the high cost and unreliability. I had to be one of those clever smart arses that say I told you so. “ But I told you so! “ Getting rid of coal was actually the system they designed. Taking supply out of the market with pure supply/ demand economics it was always going to lead to higher prices. No doubts our two major parties are Dumb and Dumber
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(Here he comes again, ‘broken record’ Tony)
While we look at the cost here, an important factor, let’s not lose sight of actual power generation and power consumption. It (naturally) rises in Winter, but again, (broken record) let me point out this.
The MINIMUM power consumption gets down to is a year round average of 18,000MW. This occurs while almost all of us are tucked up sound asleep at around 4AM, every single day of the year. That’s the lowest point, and everything else is on top of that, so it’s the BASE, hence the Base Load ….. 18,000MW.
Over the last five morning that minimum power consumption has been.
Monday – 20110MW
Tuesday – 20250MW
Wednesday – 20280MW
Thursday – 20720MW
Friday – 20650MW
And it’s still only the first week of Winter, because, as it always has, it will get even higher than that. I’ve seen it as high as 23000MW.
Those totals for the last five days are 87% of the year round average hourly power consumption. I know, with power consumption you can’t use averages, but it is an indicator.
When power consumption only falls to a low point of 20,000MW, you need some form of power which actually CAN deliver that amount of power. Every morning now, even with ten coal fired Units off line (Vic one, NSW four, and Qld five) coal fired power is delivering between 14500MW and 15,000MW of that total. That’s at a Capacity Factor of 80%+ from those online Units, even with the coal supply restraints some of them are having, and from Units with an average age of 40 years.
You have four renewable power sources, and when the Country is consuming 20,000MW, those four renewables are delivering just 4,000MW, and that’s not a one off, it’s the year round average for those four renewables at that time.
Now, if we have renewable power ideologues who ONLY advocate renewable power, just how soon can you imagine (even in your wildest dreams) that those four renewables can make up that gap?
4AM – 20,000MW ….. Or Australia ….. just stops!
Tony.
300
Well said Tony. And if hydro is included as a renewable source, we’re lucky at the moment to have our dams full because of la Nina- more rain, more snow. When there’s another rain drought hydro won’t be able to supply 6,000MW when needed to plug holes in the wind drought in early morning and evenings (as they did last week).
See my post https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2022/06/07/energy-crisis-or-ideology-crisis-the-rubber-hits-the-road/
30
i like broken records especially when they are playing good music LOL
40
That’s a good point to keep reiterating.
Peak demand might occur during a summer heatwave, but peak baseload will occur during the long cold nights of winter when there is no solar and often no wind. Trying to find an extra 16GW of baseload from batteries and pumped hydro is something that would take far longer than adding the same amount of nuclear and batteries would be an impossible solution anyway due to cost and short lifecycle. One other point that needs noting is the current high usage of hydro to top up the generation shortfall. That’s been possible due to record precipitation across the Snowy catchment and the situation could be vastly worse if we were in a drought with low dam levels.
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NetZero
31
Dictator Dan in VictoriaStan
21
Ruling Class – Climate Agenda
11
The crazy Ardern loony now wants to impose a new burping and farting tax on the NZ farmer’s animals because of their so called climate change.
BTW NZ emits just 0.1% of total global co2 emissions so once again this is a wasted extra EXPENSIVE COST for ZERO change AGAIN.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/09/new-zealand-introduces-a-climate-change-meat-tax/
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Her master, Herr Klaus Schwab would be most pleased with one of his most loyal and clueless students.
121
Time to loan Dame Edna out to the land of the wrong white crowd, our coussies across the dutch. They reckon there are some 50million (o)possums potentially blowing their trouser tubas in unison with the cows and sheep…. So who is going to cover them? Seems they were a present from Oz and just like a certain under arm delivery have led to an ongoing stink. Count of three, two, one “Come on possums, Tremble your gladdies.
10
Cassie of Sydney says:
June 10, 2022 at 8:25 am
And in Teal News…
“Teals ignite gas war with claims of profiteering
Climate 200-backed teal independents have maintained calls for higher 2030 emissions reduction targets despite the energy crisis, and called on Anthony Albanese to restrict LNG exports while phasing out coal and gas from the electricity grid as soon as possible.
Independent MPs Zali Steggall, Allegra Spender, Kylea Tink and Zoe Daniel on Thursday attacked gas companies and accused LNG exporters of paying “very little corporate tax” and reaping “huge profits” at the expense of Australian energy users.
The teal independents, who want to accelerate the transition to renewables and urged against new incentives for coal and gas, backed in the ambitious medium-term emissions they took to the May 21 election.
Despite the gas sector contributing almost $500bn a year to the national economy and the crisis being blamed on offline coal-fired power stations, Ms Steggall said Labor should use a super-profits tax to fund household subsidies and make the NEM more efficient.
With coal and gas expected to be included in a draft Energy Security Board capacity mechanism to shore up investment in baseload generation, only West Australian teal Kate Chaney supported freeing up supply of gas and “possibly coal” in the short term. Ms Spender, who supports a 50 per cent 2030 emissions reduction target, said while gas would play a role over the next 10 years, “the direction has to be in renewables”.
Resources Minister Madeleine King said the government will urgently review the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism, a trigger allowing it to force LNG exporters to put more gas into domestic reserves. Ms King said the gas trigger rules, due to expire on January 1, would be improved so the government can “ensure future supplies of gas”.
The ESB’s draft capacity mechanism, to be released in the next fortnight after energy ministers ordered a focus on investment incentives for renewables and storage technologies, is expected to feature coal as a short-term option. Under the mechanism, retailers would purchase energy contracts in advance to lock in supply and investment.
Ms Steggall said increasing the use of gas or coal would “exacerbate and prolong the underlying cause of this energy price crisis while failing to … put in place a solution”. “It would mean rewarding the fossil fuel companies for a problem of their own making, but with greater windfall,” the Warringah MP said.
Ms Daniel said the crisis should “not be used as cover for backsliding to extend the life of coal or gas as energy sources”.
“Nor should fossil fuel producers and suppliers be able to make huge windfall profits as a direct consequence of Vladimir Putin’s … war on Ukraine. If anything, it proves that we must move rapidly to develop and secure renewable energy and storage to protect our communities from the variables of global energy markets,” the Goldstein MP said.
Ms Spender, who said the government should be tougher on gas companies paying “very little corporate tax”, told The Australian that unlike solar, wind and batteries, coal and gas were “vulnerable to price spikes”. “The current energy crisis is a fossil fuel crisis. Renewable energy is the cheapest energy in the country right now,” the Wentworth MP said.
Oil and gas lobby group APPEA hit back at the independents, saying their claims “misrepresent our contribution and don’t reflect the way our tax system works”. Acting APPEA chief executive Damian Dwyer said the oil and gas industry “pays over $5bn a year in payments to all levels of government, totalling more than $150bn since the late 1980s”.
“These payments include PRRT collections, which have delivered over $40bn since its introduction and the latest budget shows these will rise by over $4bn over the next four years,” Mr Dwyer said. “The full scope of our economic contribution is far wider than just payments – employing tens of thousands of workers, delivering energy security to households and businesses and facilitating regional growth.”
Ms Tink, who won the previously safe Liberal seat of North Sydney, said failure to incentivise renewable energy over the past decade had fuelled the energy crisis. “We’ve paid too little attention to our nation’s energy security, letting exporters reap huge profits without protecting our own domestic supply,” Ms Tink said.
Ms Chaney, who claimed the blue-ribbon Perth seat of Curtin, said “the current perfect storm affecting gas prices may need to be addressed by freeing up supply of gas and possibly coal in the short term”. “This should not be used to justify a long-term increase in investment in fossil fuel operations,” she said.
Kooyong MP Monique Ryan blamed the Coalition for failing to plan for renewable energy alternatives and said “it is important to develop short-term solutions to the domestic energy crisis but that is no reason to revise the realistic emissions reduction targets that I support”.
Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie called for “immediate and strong federal government intervention”, including pulling the gas trigger.
Thanks Wentworth
Thanks North Sydney
Thanks Mackellar
Thanks Curtin
Thanks Kooyong
Thanks Goldstein
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This would be a dangerous move for a world suffering energy poverty. If Chinese citizens are freezing to death, there will be considerable pressure for China to use its might to take energy resources from Australia.
What the Teals do not get is that wind turbines and solar panels, needed for the green dream, consume a massive amount of resources. How can Australia expect to get wind turbines and solar panels from Chine if Australia does not supply China with the resources they need to make them.
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LoL.
Good point Rick.
Australia needs to export gas and coal to China so they have inexpensive reliable energy with which to make expensive unreliable solar panels and windmills for The Dumb Country to use.
It would be hard to imagine a more stupid scenario.
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Yes David M and Rick W. It makes you wonder if the people (if it be appropriate to refer to them as people) who drive the renewable energy revolution have a scientific or energy neuron in their brain. Just basic high school physics is enough to blow their concepts to oblivion.
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Indeed. Do they forget that Japan, the dominant Asian country at the time in the 1930s to early 1940s, went to war over an oil embargo? The only way for China to keep their population happy is through a successful economy based on fossil fuels. “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” And these are dangerous children.
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“Ms Tink, who won the previously safe Liberal seat of North Sydney, said failure to incentivise renewable energy over the past decade had fuelled the energy crisis.“.
Nuts.
Renewables subsidies: $22 billion by 2030
Renewable energy subsidies to top $2.8b a year up to 2030
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IS IT IMMORAL TO DRIVE AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE?
Of all the crazy policies we see implemented around us, from decriminalizing theft to teaching children to change their “gender,” perhaps the craziest is government’s determination to force us to drive electric vehicles. EVs like the Tesla are perfectly fine cars, or would be if they weren’t subsidized or mandated. But they are terrible for the environment, and the conditions under which their materials are mined raise serious ethical questions.
Ronald Stein makes excellent points in his column titled “Is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery powered EV?”
The lower image is just one lithium supply mine where entire mountains are eliminated. Each mine usually consists of thirty-five to forty humongous 797 Caterpillar haul trucks along with hundreds of other large equipment. Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year. So, with an inventory of just thirty-five the haul trucks alone are using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site.
Today, a typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminium, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.
Fossil fuels are vastly cleaner, in part because they are so efficient. And electric vehicles, once the mining and attendant environmental degradation are complete, run overwhelmingly on fossil fuels and nuclear power:
We should all know that an electric vehicle battery does not “make” electricity – it only stores electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, and occasionally by intermittent breezes and sunshine. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid as 80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from coal-fired plants, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.
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just some random googling turned up this gloss on Jonathan Swift’s Laputa: “The reason all of their designs fall apart is because they refuse to take measurements from real life, preferring instead to use equations to prove what has to be true.” link
and to quote Kent:
“This is not altogether fool, my lord”
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“Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality” -Nikola Tesla
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Meanwhile back in Ontario…wind power.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/parker-gallant-why-do-we-subsidize-michigan-while-its-governor-tries-to-shut-down-line-5
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Appears Michigan is taking lessons from South Australia. If you eliminate all sources of fossil fuels then you cannot produce CO2. Simples.
That leaves two options – die or move unless you are employed by government and have no constraint on what you are paid. And can afford exorbitant cost of energy and everything else that embodies energy in its production and transport.
Australia milk suppliers are currently in a liquidity squeeze – stuck with rapidly rising energy prices but locked into contracts that did not contemplate rapid energy price rises.
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It appears Michigan is taking lessons from Moscow too…..arresting people who are running against the sitting Governor Whittier.
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Governor Whitmer …..ggggrrrrr…..
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As this mess unfolds, there are ways to reduce your exposure.
Just got this email today from a firm that sells off-grid power supply systems. Most of the components were manufactured in China using last year’s coal. The price is not inflating yet. My experience with this firm is that they provide conservatory rated gear.
This is an example of a system for an economic household:
https://www.commodoreaustralia.com.au/product/self-sufficient-off-grid-solar-system-10kwh-lithium-battery-bank-3-5kw-solar-array-4-4kw-inverter-7kw-surge/
$19k for a system that would reliably supply about 6kWh per day in most parts of mainland Australia.
If you are worried about sequences of low sunlight days then add this beauty:
https://www.commodoreaustralia.com.au/product/silent-diesel-generator-9kva-9kw-single-phase-with-2-wire-auto-start/
$8k for 9kW. Diesel price would be a killer to using this alone but it is capable of that. If I was entirely off-grid I would be looking at a silenced 1kVA generator, preferably diesel, to pair with a solar system.
If you are buying new appliances it is best to get those that do not have high starting demand. That means inverter driven heat pumps for example. All electronic gear is best run on pure sine wave inverter. Harmonics can destroy electrical equipment in short order.
And wood burners are good for heating if you need that. If you have the land, plant trees. China and India are ramping up coal consumption so there will be rapidly increasing level of CO2 to grow trees faster. Thinning plots and lopping large tress will offer wood supply after three years from a small plot and then for eternity.
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Back in 2017, I did the sums to go off grid…it was hugely expensive, so I bought a Chinese made diesel genset, apparently made for mine useage here in Qld. After curing all the leaks of both coolant and oil and fixing the crook wiring, it now behaves beautifully. It is rated at 9kVA and happily runs the house and granny flat. I did a tong test on the in coming to the house with everything except the oven on, and it was just under 30 amps ( single phase ). It should last for about a week on a tank of fuel used with some common sense, and when the grid is up…it costs nothing. I run it for half an hour a month to test it and check for normal operation and charge the start battery. It cost about $6k installed, and weighs almost 700kg, so difficult to steal.
Looked after, it should last a long time hopefully. Since 2017, we have had just on 11 hours of real outages and I have about 45 hours run time on it in total. It won’t pay for itself for quite some time, but as this energy disaster progresses, it may keep the lights on and make life somewhat more comfortable as long as I can source and afford diesel.
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You should redo the sums for the present. You can go a bit lean on a solar system because you already have a generator. If you have the space and a 10 year time frame, making allowance for ever inflating electricity prices, there is reasonable prospect of an off-grid solar/battery system coming out ahead now.
Until the grid is fully socialised, grid power will continue to get more expensive as it increases the uptake of intermittent generators. There is no benefit of scale with S&W generators because the small gains in making the bigger or better location is offset by the cost of transmission.
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There is no need to panic as Albo along with Chris Bowen has the Plan to fix everything. One that we have yet to see………….
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A plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel?
10
Things will not end well for Australia.
We have a staggeringly clueless political class, intelligentsia, Lamestream media and general public.
Rudy Dutschke’s “long march through the institutions” certainly worked in Australia.
The days of Australia being a prosperous and semi-competently run country are long over.
You can see Australia’s future in the socialist utopia of Venezuela.
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What does “renewable” mean anyway?
It is basically a meaningless term whose only purpose is virtue signaling.
Proper power stations are also “renewable” over the terms of their service lives as they are coupled with a sustainable supply of coal, gas, nuclear fuel or water.
Renewables is a meaningless term to describe solar and wind. Unreliables is a far more appropriate term.
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Renewable is as meaningless a term as that other old favorite – sustainable.
20
Cambridge Dictionay
No renewable energy extractor meets this definition. Even a fireplace to burn wood is made using a non-renewable resource despite the fuel being notionally renewable. It could be as simple as a pit in the ground but it still requires human energy to make the pit. Maybe it could be argued that human energy is renewable energy.
10
Like the ship’s captain on a commercial sailing ship apparently remarked to the other ship’s officers, be patient, renewable energy will soon fill the sails again and we can get underway.
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I have seen suggested cost of 8 billion for Bass Strait wind farm .
How much power will it provide and how much per MW.
What would be the cost of a brown coal generator in nearby Latrobe Valley and cost per MW?
[Edited]ED
30
It’s all about virtue signaling at international gabfests and IPCC summits in Bali or Rio. It’s about alpha ape strutting and posturing – ” my renewables are bigger than your renewables ” ” I’ve got more windmills than you ” and hoping the PM of Finland or Meghan Markle flutters her eyelashes at you. It’s about feeling important – and it doesn’t get more important than saving the planet, does it? I mean who doesn’t want to save the world, except those Hummer-driving meanie coal company executives who are causing ocean levels to rise. They belong in jail alongside Trump voters.
10
You reap what you sow.
20
As I have said before, ignorance is a conscious choice.
Never let anyone say “I didn’t know”.
30
The Australian today, Robert Gotleibsen: “The shortage of gas in Victoria and News South Wales is an event created by Victorian politicians and the ignorance of its voters.”
“With a small caveat, Victoria almost certainly has enormous reserves of low-cost, non-fracked onshore gas that, uniquely in the world, can be carbon neutral. The nation is being forced to consider importing gas or reducing Queensland exports by Victorian politicians who are blocking development of the gas …….. It is true that $40 million is required in extra drilling to complete the amazing mapping of the field undertaken by Exxon in Houston that showed the gas reserves approximately equal age size of the original Bass Strait field discovered by BHP in the 1960s.”
“The world’s largest oil company Exxon was so excited by this amazing field that they agreed to spend $100 million on the areas held by Ignite Energy resources (via its subsidiary Gippsland Gas).” Some time later a senior Exxon executive took me aside at a social function, narrowed his eyes and alleged that I made a mistake in that statement. Then he smiled and said: “We were planning to spend $200 million.””
The article is worth reading in full.
So another gas field in Australia locked away by our dopey politicians, predominantly the left Greens, pale and dark with red and similar economic vandals.
But it’s our common wealth, we the people effectively own that gas, and the politicians are supposed to be our elected representatives looking after our best interests as they govern our nation and states.
Consider the enormous field of oil and gas below the SA Coober Pedy District that was headline news several years ago after being discovered, and then silence, locked away, yet not far away the Moomba gas field are still operating and extracting the remnants of what was also an enormous gas field. Then add shale oil deposits in New South Wales and Queensland, and elsewhere, and offshore fields.
This restriction of supply is unacceptable, the transition to renewable energy based on wind and solar that have limitations such as intermittent operation and supply and require enormous areas of land and handicapping proven reliable coal fired power stations considering the enormous black and brown coal reserves in Australia adds to economic vandalism and the undermining of national security. Labor now wants 82 per cent of electricity from renewable energy technology. Based on what evidence that spending a trillion plus dollars would achieve reliable and cheap electricity supply, even with gas generator backup and batteries? The existing power stations well maintained and when that is not cost effective being replaced has to be the best and most affordable option.
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Dennis
The ridiculous use of targets needs to cease immediately. We have the grid on the verge of collapse and prices to the moon, but outrageous targets are the only thing our pollies want to talk about.
We can achieve the targets but Australia will be unrecognisable in the process. A poor country with no industrial base, much of the population at subsistence level and an small elite with everything we currently take for granted at their disposal. This is where we are heading, but I would hope that people start pressuring their politicians big time before we get there. Sadly there appear to be people who want this destruction to occur.
40
Check UN Lima Protocol signed by the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975.
An agreement to allow manufacturing industry to gradually transfer to “developing nations”, like China, identified by the UN.
30
We do indeed face an existential threat but it is nothing to do with supposed anthropogenic global warming.
It is to do with the Left’s destruction of our energy supply by a deliberate program of energy starvation.
70
A post on the subsidies provided to solar and wind, or any energy source for that matter, would be helpful to understand how manipulated the NEM is.
40
It’s not only the “subsidies” but the whole charging basis of the NEM that is hard to understand for folks not in the industry.
I remember having some blog discussions with the same Tristan Edis many years ago when he was arguing the case for higher feed-in solar tariffs.
He was thinking he could compare normal accumulation “energy” costs with the feed-in and argued that solar prosumers were getting a rough deal.
Of course, maybe deliberately, he was neglecting the network usage charge built into those accumulation “energy” charges under the NEM.
These network usage charges account for almost half of the cost of retail accumulation tariffs.
It had been the most efficient way to distribute the network usage charges *before* solar was introduced.
And he tried to argue that “service charges” covered network costs – which is just so wrong.
I think we eventually got through to the politicians that poorer consumers were paying network usage charges for both themselves and these solar prosumers.
You see – if you pay very little on your bill due to your solar “profit”, you are not paying your “share” of network usage charges BUT someone else is.
That is, richer folks that can afford solar are being subsidised by poorer folks that do not have the funds for panels (or who rent).
Remember, solar prosumers need the network especially on 6pm peak when no sun shines and they should pay network service charge which is based on maximum demand.
And they need that network on peak (without batteries) and also to export their profitable daylight energy that reduces their overall accumulation bill.
That is why the feed-in tariffs have now been reduced and solar is now only worthwhile if you can consume your own generation during the day.
So the greenwash sharpies had found ways to exploit richer value-signalers who don’t understand the NEMs wholesale and metering processes.
40
Thanks for the info Russell, appreciate it.
00
There is another cost to the economy from unreliable energy supply sources, that being government orders to businesses to cease operations during times when electricity supply is at risk.
The businesses are compensated with taxpayer’s monies to close down and the loss of production causes other obviously unforeseen by the politicians consequences that impact adversely on the economy.
30
The aluminum smelters get huge subsidies to compensate them for the non-competitive cost of electricity, which used to be competitive hence them being built in the first place.
E.g. in 2017 the Portland smelter was given $30 million of taxpayer money by the Feds and Andrews gave a furter $200 million to encourage them to stay open for another four years.
That’s $230 million to save just 650 jobs over 4 years or over $88,000 per job per year for 4 years.
I assume the arrangement has now been extended.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jan/20/alcoas-portland-smelter-gets-lifeline-from-victorian-government
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Its what the Chinese call a SOE (State Owned Enterprise), without the support of the state it would be closed down.
20
With due consideration for the enormous gas reserves in Australia the post Kyoto Conference initiative by the Howard Government to encourage more installation of either dual fuel or dedicated gas fuelled motor vehicles should still be favoured. It was Labor after they formed Federal Government in November 2007 that decided to withdraw support for gas fuel.
The developing technology using injection systems offered excellent engine performance and economy and gas emissions considerably lower than petrol or diesel fuels.
Diesel-Gas injected mix of the two fuels resulted in far lower particulates emissions and increased power and torque, a smaller capacity diesel engine could do the work of a larger engine, one example.
And no need to replace the internal combustion engine and vehicles.
20
Spot on Dennis. Aus should run its car fleet on LPG
10
But is anyone actually paying these hyperinflated electricity prices with real cash or are they simply nominal data points whilst the actual generators and suppliers continue operating under pricing regimes decided by long term contractual arrangements in the real world? One would need to be a senior accountant at AGL or the like to know.
10
It will be like in Victoria with both the state and federal governments providing subsidies (bribes) to the big industrial electricity users. So, in Victoria VIVA Energy Geelong refinery and Alcoa Portland aluminium smelter are getting bags of taxpayers money to stay afloat. I’m waiting now for the federal government or some of the state governments to pay all domestic users a “one off” subsidy to alleviate their higher energy bills. The state Labor govts will love it, because they will just blame the previous LNP federal government for their inaction on “climate”. So they will justify using taxpayers funds that way. It will be bribery. Here in Victoria health workers just received a “bonus” from the Labor state government because of all the hardships during COVID. No one mentions that they’re short staffed due to vaccine mandates. All the cafe owners have literally been almost forced to receive refrigerated display cases for their businesses. It’s been a sweetheart deal (again, bribe) to appease that part of the business sector who suffered during lockdowns.
20
Get your hands out for the rebates. If we have entered a high socialism period, which is seems we have, then I want that money.
10
Well yes they’re coming in real price hikes on your bill soon. Ive heard 25% mentioned.
20
‘Plus the expert climate modelers said that winter nights would be warmer and they aren’t …’
True, they thought La Nina cloud would act like a blanket, but they didn’t model blocking. They are seriously in strife.
20
Japan is shy of Nuclear?
They should be shy of Tsunamis instead.
So some Green-wash engineering company built a 330 tonne underwater monster turbines to generate 100 Kwh of electricity.
Giant 100KWh under water turbine?
Wonder if they are safe for fish, whales etc.
Jellyfish mushi anyone.
20
I’ve been playing around with the AEMO demand and price data for a few years now.
See these two Excel files, updated to 31May22:
AEMO_Demand_and_Price_by_State_220531.xlsx
(125 charts)
AEMO_Demand_and_Price_All_States_220531.xlsx
(166 charts)
The chart which covers the same data as the head chart to the main post is RRP_L30Month_Stack, hyperlinked at row 165 of the All_States TOC.
The charts show every useful combination and arrangement I could think of.
AEMO changed the reporting frequency to 5 minute intervals at Oct21 (previously 30).
The charts named Demand_L05 and RPP_L05 show the 5 minute data for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days.
If you prefer to pick and choose states/periods there is an interactive on-line portal of the same data here.
Instant smoothing, 9th order polynomials, mouse zooming etc.
40
The government are depriving the people of an essential of life, electricity.
This is normally the illegal act under the Geneva Conventions of a hostile enemy attacking a civilian population.
40
Friday night peak hour 7 pm and demand far outweighing supply in NSW. Vic brown coal saving the day it seems.
30
Not much wind in SA tonight. Gas and diesel holding it up.
40
A lot of gas and coal in the system tonight (7:35PM, Perth Time).
10
test
10
I know a couple of details and forgive me if they are repeated. Qld govt are ABSOLUTELY running Callide B (I think, the older one that didn’t break) into the ground. Maintenance schedules have been changed from every so many hours etc to when something breaks. Maintenance staff are freaking out and deploring the current management paradigm. Everything is being bet on the new solar farm, wind farm, and hydrogen projects. Multi billion dollar public assets are being destroyed, wantonly. Management ABHOR unvetted questions from staff at their meetings because they can’t answer them. As in, “stop asking so many pertinent questions, and get with the program”. Said program being the destruction of coal fired assets.
Callide can generate power for $36 per Mw/hr. The price though is twice that due to the cost of CS Energy’s top heavy management in Brisbane, which duplicates local staff at Callide, is filled with people too incompetent to run the show locally but too difficult to sack courtesy of ….well we all know this old story. So the production price goes up double. Thanks.
Some of the coal power price rises are due to management of certain companies failing to negotiate well priced contracts, in the belief that well you know, “renewables”. Finding themselves without a chair when the music stops, they have to pay the going rate…. Lol now how do these people keep their jobs.
When the local mine that services Callide changed hands, they found themselves holding a cheap contract for coal they had to honour. So they send the shittiest coal they have. Flow on from there is predictable.
Multi billion dollar public assets, poorly managed, operating outside of spec, and now effectively poorly maintained. Is this not within the purview of the CCC to investigate. Oh that’s right, the CCC is now corrupt and under investigation itself. Welcome to Qld, the banana republic.
110
Mate, this is amazing stuff you’re reporting. Do you know anything else about how these coal plants are being run?
20
Yes.
Define the problem.
10
Any other specific storeis of mismanagement at other coal plants?
10
Cold snaps and blistering electricity prices downunder — where one state burnt $2.4b in electricity in May
Technology Environment Climate Change
Are you willing to pay $4 billion to support ‘clean’ coal-fired power plants?
POWER prices have been going up and blackouts have been increasing. Now some are pushing for a very expensive solution.
……………….
4 bil sounds cheep cheep. Get on with it.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/are-you-willing-to-pay-4-billion-to-support-clean-coalfired-power-plants/news-story/1f1b51d97c0027176c96e5f596860665
20
I have a question regarding gas power plants, and there seems to be a lot of expertise here in regards to energy generation so hopefully someone can shed some light: Which sort of gas plants are used for peaking, is it Open Cycle or Combined Cycle? Because in my mind a Combined Cycle could not be used for peaking (at least not at their full efficiency) because in addition to their turbine they generate additional electricity by using the turbine’s exhaust heat to heat a boiler. And obviously a steam boiler cannot be heated quickly, thus if the plant is being turned off and on constantly the only way to generate electricity would be directly from the turbine. Is this correct? Thnx
10