By Jo Nova
This week the agitprop-media was full of contrived good news about electricity prices in Australia, associated suggestively, in the loosest, most meaningless way with the word “renewables”. Not one of them said that long term prices were still higher than when we started trying to force unreliable wind and solar power on the grid, and not one of them said prices would be one half of the price now if the country was lucky enough to run off brown coal.
These misleading stories were disguised adverts for renewable energy pretending to be “news”. They were on display at The Guardian, The ABC and The Sydney Morning Herald, and every other paper across Australia. Not one journalist apparently had the wit to ask the AEMO how this compared to long term prices. But all of them obediently repeated that prices this December were 48% cheaper than the December before that, as if Australians like to discuss that sort of thing across the BBQ. Were monthly average wholesale prices good for you Jim?
Australia’s wholesale power prices fall by almost half as carbon emissions drop
Wholesale power prices across Australia’s main electricity market almost halved at the end of 2023 compared with a year earlier, stoking hopes households may soon see smaller bills.
Spot prices in the National Electricity Market (Nem) that serves the eastern and southern states fell to an average of $48 a megawatt-hour (MWh) in the December quarter, down 48% on the previous year, the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) said in a report released on Thursday. Carbon emissions also dropped to record lows.
The newspapers were conveniently parroting the half-truths and half-lies of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) which had issued a media release designed to mislead. What none of them reported was that current prices were merely a partial recovery from the obscenely high peaks of 2022, and things are still not as cheap as most of the years when the grid had more coal.
This graph below from the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) shows annual prices, but the trend is clear. The more renewables we have, the more expensive electricity becomes. That’s a cause and effect thing. Renewables didn’t cause the last downward spike, but they did cause the long increase. Thank renewables for the price spikes at 6pm, the big batteries, the $12 billion Snowy 2.0 elephant and the $20 billion wish list for interconnectors. Unreliable generators make reliable ones more expensive.
If our whole electricity grid was 100% brown coal, electricity would be half the price
The newspapers blame fossil fuels for the freak pricing of 2022, but if Australia had more brown coal generators running, and allowed more gas exploration, we could have avoided some or most of the “war time” peaks. The peak was due to Net Zero policies trying to change the weather. Australia ran out of gas and couldn’t ramp up brown coal plants it had already blown up. If we could have shifted back to brown coal, we could have saved a fortune on electricity, and made a bonanza selling more black coal and gas to our desperate allies.
The thrill this week was that December prices returned to “just” $48 a megawatt hour. But this was nowhere near as cheap as brown coal was still supplying and winning bids at. The prices for the last quarter available here show that in Victoria, brown coal generators were still supplying electricity for $16/MWh, or one third of the whole monthly average cost. The negative prices for wind and solar power just prove the market is screwed. No business can operate by paying customers to use their product. It’s only subsidies drawn from the poor of Australia that keep the unreliable generators swimming in profits they do not deserve.
The cheapest energy in Australia is brown coal, bar none, and the “newspapers”, the academics, the Minister, and the paid staff of the AEMO are hiding that from the taxpayers and subscribers who pay their wages.
The data is quietly buried on page 18 of an 81 page report.
But the pattern is the same every quarter. Brown coal is always the cheapest reliable generator:
What do we pay them for? Neither the AEMO or the AER issue a press release telling the teachers, truckies and farmers of Australia that brown coal is far cheaper than any other reliable source. It’s like informed consent for voters — how can they judge how much the weather-control fantasy costs if the so-called “public servants” are not telling the whole truth?
One and half cents a kilowatt hour — that’s the price brown coal suppliers were still bidding and winning wholesale auctions at in 2023. Inflation my foot…
The news that matters to Australians is that the less coal power we have, the more expensive our electricity is getting.
REFERENCES
AER Victorian wholesale quarterly prices
They are certainly experts of mass psychology.
It’s like doubling (or more) the price of an item or commodity and then advertising that you are having a sale and have slashed the price by half (or whatever). Which, of course, is exactly what they have done.
And it works because these days most people seem to lack critical thinking skills, have poor memory retention and poor attention spans, all a result of a deliberately dumbed-down education/indoctrination system.
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Or, as Orwell put it:
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Thanks for reminding me of that quote, Robert.
He truly was a prophet wasn’t he?
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What is also smoke and mirrors are these proposed tax cuts. Last year the Albanese government cancelled to Low & Middle Income Tax Offset. (LMITO) That cost around 10 million Australians approx $1500 less when they did their tax returns, according to the ATO.
So now they want to put money in the pockets of low and middle income earners after taking it out last year.
Under the proposed changes, Aussies earning $45,000 will get a tax cut of $804 from July 1 this year, which equates to an extra $15.46 per week, while those on $75,000 will get a cut of $1,554, or $29.88 a week.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/interest-rates/anthony-albaneses-new-tax-cuts-for-everyday-working-aussies-could-stall-interest-rate-cuts/news-story/357d88681c42faf0c5e4ed3cca69c4b2
The LTMIO took away up to $1500 a year or $28.84 per week, in reality those on $75,000 will now be $1.04 better off than they were two years ago.
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What the AEMO is doing with brown coal is pure bastardry. Not sure the graph comes up exactly. This is December 2023. If you click on wind and brown coal only. I have NEVER seen a baseload machine power reduction like that. No tapper no nothing just throttled to a flat output. Effectively, this is unloading several hundred tonnes of spinning mass. Not to mention thermodynamic shock loads. BASIC OUTCOME? THE DESTRUCTION OF EVERY BROWN COAL FIRED GENERATOR IN VICTORIA! Every last erg is being wrung out of every available set and then flick.
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As usual Jo, you hit the nail smack bang on the head. And that, precisely, is why I like supporting you.
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Present company excepted, most people, especially media, politicians and Uniparty voters don’t seem to make the obvious observation that:
The more “renewables” (sic) that are installed, the more expensive electricity becomes.
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Have a heart David. You cannot prevent carefree customers from purchasing electricity off ‘peak availability’.
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And not just in Australia, but worldwide.
This graph, h/t Jt @cliscep…
https://cliscep.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/leccy_vs_wind_graph.png
demonstrating the correlation between wind power prices and cost of electricity to consumers,
– more extensive the wind power,
– more expensive the cost .
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With renewables, electricity can be so cheap, they actually pay you to use it!
It’s a miracle.
(Almost as good as diverse generation is good for grid stability on a really cold day!)
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There is something wrong with this story. Those prices per MWh for solar and wind were all negative. So price/MWh was still cheaper than for brown coal. Demand distorted and subsidized, I know, but prima-facie still cheaper. Did Jo miss the negative sign in front of the reported prices for solar and wind?
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Didn’t you know about the electricity pricing scam?
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There are 2 possible explanations.
First the producer has to get on the approved supplier for whatever tranche is up – i.e. say the next hour. Only the cheapest make the list but they don’t have to supply at that rate but at the rate that the most expensive approver on the list gets.
Second the renewables supplier gets Certificates that they can sell to improve their return. This is a sort of carbon tax on the usual reliable means (coal, gas) of generation, but is, I believe, charged to the retailer, making reliable generation more expensive. These Certificates can be purchased by those who need or want them, or those wanting to ‘big note’ themselves as per the ACT which claims to have “100% renewable electricity” which is a farce. They bought a lot of Certificates from SA Wind Farms but not one kilowatt could be physically transferred to Canberra as there is no interconnection (yet).
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If the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian & our ABC simultaneously proclaim anything, it’s obviously a contrived lie to help Albozo & his band of merry clowns out of some hole in which they’ve found themselves!
And the politically immature virtue signallers fall for the pathetic attempts to fudge the facts every time! Remember the call to vote “ yes “ to constitutional change with a promise to release facts only once they had the result they wanted .
Oh & by the way where’s my $275.00 cut in electricity rates. The 3 members of Abozo’s
propaganda machine conveniently forget to remind Albozo of his broken promises & deliberate lies, Albozo & his merry clowns are what we call A DIL. DEVIOUS IMMORAL LIARS
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I think they based it on this press release.
https://aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/east-coast-wholesale-electricity-prices-fall
It was probably coordinated with anti-Energy Minister Simpleton Bowen.
I don’t understand why it was released prior to a public holiday. That timeslot is usually reserved for bad news. This is marketed as good news.
Perhaps Alba-sleazo and Chrissy Bowen thought a drop in prices was indeed bad news as it goes against their plan to further lower the standard of living of non-Elites.
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The story was also reported in The Australian. The commentators quickly pointed out that the consumer costs had gone the other way.
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Amazing financial magic! They con people into 20 years of debt, with the promise of subsidies and tax breaks, to install solar panels that in all likelihood will need replacing while they are still paying for the first lot.
Nett Zero will be an “own goal”.
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Australia is one of the minor countries where renewables could eventually work out quite well, but only if people respected electric generation for what it is with it’s strengths and weaknesses. Running off with a desperation to meet NET-zero are creating increasingly serious problems.
The negative side of the renewable game is that Australia has a high density of population in a handful of cities.. Every farmstead off the grid is not going to solve the problem.
On the plus side is a huge amount of land with just tens of millions in population
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I disagree. “Renewables” don’t work well, not even in principle.
Because of the diffuse and low density nature of the energy source, solar and wind, you need an enormous amount of expensive infrastructute to collect a small amount of power.
Furthermore, due to its random and mostly unpredictable nature, and low overall availability, you need even more infrastructure than suggested by the nameplate capacity of the plant (about three times more, at least) plus you need hugely expensive storage that can store power for the maximum number of cloudy, windless days in winter that are likely to occur (plus a safety margin).
Compared to high energy density, compact, reliable and inexpensive coal, gas, nuclear and real hydro (not SH2) it can’t compete at any level.
The one place in the world where renewables might possibly work is the Australian territories of Flinders and King Islands in Bass Strait, right in the Roaring Forties, so plenty of wind and also solar, but they are a miserable failure there as well and need substantial diesel backup.
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Would be interesting to know exactly what percentage is diesel, but I doubt that Tas Hydro will release that info.
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Or South Australia.
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USA has 12x the population of Australia. If W&S cannot work in Aus, how the heck could it work in America?
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The generator on a stick and the other things are just there as an economiser for the diesels, not as any viable replacement, this is a petri dish for the rest of OZ.
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They can only work as “economisers” for expensive base load sources, and compact grids.
..they are not factors in most main grid systems.
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Plimer conveniently ignors the UN definition of Net Zero as being the ballance between human emissions and HUMAN created sinks !
…NOT natural sinks !
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Why do we need to have the UN define what net zero is? It’s a sum. As far as I can figure, the UN concept of Net Zero is a small fraction of the CO2 net zero equation.
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Raving…”On the plus side is a huge amount of land with just tens of millions in population”…so let’s cover the “huge amount of land” in millions of sun mirrors, wind mills, overhead cables and big batteries that go boom,what could possibly go wrong? AND it still would need fossil fuel back up generation, and the spectacular views of shinning steel and glass as far as the eye can see would be so much better than the natural landscape. I’ve heard animals and plants thrive in the shade. The ALP/GREENS/TEALS will be held responsible for the devastating environmental destruction ruinables will have on the planet.
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We should be the lucky recipients of some of the cheapest electricity costs in the world, but instead today we are infested with useless TOXIC W & S and a very UNRELIABLE grid.
China, India and the developing world are building Coal plants at world record levels and will continue to do so until 2060.
And there’s no guarantee that they’ll finish in 36 years either and we forget it’s also voluntary and Modi’s successor(s) could easily tell the world to take a hike when the time comes.
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AGAIN here’s the Wiki data for co2 emissions from countries, regions etc from 1970 to 2021.
AGAIN note that the USA, the EU and Japan COMBINED are emitting no more co2 emissions per year in 2021 than they were in 1970.
But also note the SOARING co2 emissions from China, India, and the NON OECD countries and the 53 countries of Africa haven’t started to build their equal share of COAL plants YET.
So why is it OK for OECD countries to WRECK their ENVIRONMENTS and WASTE tens of TRILLIONS of $ for a ZERO RETURN FOREVER? Any ideas?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png
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Leading “the way” is just the right thing to do.
How a reasonable person approves such habitat destruction that is ridge line wind farms only on an economic ground is saddening. As is the volume of protest.
She’ll be right mate.
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We obviously have to destroy the environment to save the environment, nontcha know…….
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Stop spending taxpayers money on ‘GREEN” PROJECTS
when a project cannot support itself let it die.
Governments should not be involved in pushing their favourite scams onto their voters.
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My thought is that Snowy 2 should be renamed Turnbull’s Folly, and any offshore wind turbines known as Bowen’s Mistakes.
On second thoughts there are too many in that last category. Should we have Bowen’s Stuffups, Bowen’s Mistakes and Bowen’s Lunacy?
We cannot have Bowen’s Lies because Albo has chosen that one.
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Bowens Buggarrups perchance?
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As a sailor who’s about 10,000 miles off the east coast alone, we’re never going to use terms as long as that. Just “bowen” wil do. “Should we cut through the bowens?” or “the current’ll be better outside the bowens” work quite well.
Of course the rule of never being down wind of a bowen works as at sea or on land.
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Like being stuck in the ‘doldrums’.
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If I was green and doing it correctly, I would mostly be concerned with incorporating renewables into the grid. Fossil fuel sources would be retired or upgraded as necessary and superflous.
EVs, induction stoves and heat pumps would be introduced as per the convenience of incorporating them. Forcing these thing on people just creates resentment.
Pricing is a political decision. Using pricing to force uptake distorts the economics.
Example: What will happen to Australia’s renewable grid when thecpopulation doubles? What happens to Australia’s emissions in totsl?
Green hype fakes reality.
The really big issues are the developing world and immigration.
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Gets me angry because it’s not about how much fossil fuel you burn.Rather it’s how much renewable energy gets used. With greens the emphasis is on reducing fossil fuel, rather than making it superfluous. The reduction in fossil fuel usage comes naturally from the increased uptake of renewable.
One can increase carbon pricing to encourage renewable usage but it’sapproaches a limit where renewable just cannot replace carbon ( in the vicinity of NET ZERO) and the price of carbon is jacked through the roof to make it ridiculous.
Fascinatingly, what is frightning about the developing world is the slow uptake for renewable in contast to the much more desperate need to increase fossil fuel usage. The alternative is to say these countries cannot develope.
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The graph is Wholesale energy prices – a mere fraction of retail price. The gap between wholesale and retail is increasing, and will continue to increase as alll the expensive stuff like increased LGCs; FRACs costs,;Snowy 2; tens of thousands of kilometres of new power lines; synchronous condensers ; etc are built to enable more intermittent energy.
The cost of LGCs alone adds twice the cost of coal fired generation a decade ago to the cost of “renewable” energy now.
USA currently benefits from the 4 years Trump was in office that put the USA behind places like EU and Australia that have gone the full nutter. Another Trump term will really separate US from the rest of the woke mob and that will accelerate the shift away from stupid.
The ACCC enquiry into supermarkets is going to be revealing. Have you noticed how much ice cream has increased over the last few years. Ice cream is a bit of milk combined with other ingredients and a lot of energy. Its freight and storage is also energy intensive because it has to be kept cold. Think of the amount of power that goes into supermarket freezers. And as turnover declines because prices are astronomical, the cost of energy for freezers gets spread over fewer items sold.
The cost of electricity impacts on the price of every consumer item.
This article does not get to the seat of the big lie. The RET is theft by deception. The higher the “renewable” target, the higher the margin for “renewable” energy. LGC pricing is going up because the target has been increased. LGCs are now at $48/MWh, which is more than average wholesale price in the Abbott years. Retailers are the bagmen collecting that graft.
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That is precisely the reason why many smaller supermarkets have gone out of business.
Plus there are additional insurance costs for an increasingly unreliable grid as more wind and solar plantations are added. (Unless the supermarket has its own generators.)
If the freezers go off, all the food has to be thrown away at huge expense and added insurance costs.
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I’ve seen it happen a few years ago at my local woolies, no power for 27 hours, everything perishable into the dumpster, they installed a large standby genny after that one.
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I’ve spent years trying to explain that, and found it very difficult to get anyone to pay attention.
Of course, if wind are selling at negative rates, then the price you are looking at isn’t real. Should automatically make everyone scratch their heads at first glance, but they shrug and get on with life.
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The food industry is REFRIGERATION
… from farm field to home refrigerator.
Keeping food cold slows spoilage
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Being a political device aimed at taking the pressure off the government, the ‘investigation’ of Woolworths and Coles will have a frame of reference so tight that costs on anything other than what they pay at the farm gate or the factories will fall outside the limits placed. To allow anything outside those limits would become an expose on government power policies and red tape costs. The government would be crucified and that’s the antithesis of the reason for holding the inquiry in the first place.
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In the UK we seem to be settling into a bit of a pattern; energy prices drop slightly in the warm season, then rise in autumn when the heating starts to be needed, then rise again after Christmas when we really need it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68055884.amp
Clever no? Headline falls in prices, but the energy companies get to charge higher rates for the bulk of the kWh used.
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Jo we have been warned for decades about tipping points in our climate. Frothing at mouth alarmists have taken every opportunity to scare us into action before it’s too late. The virtuous have proudly supported renewables of all colours but virtue signalling only feeds on itself up to a point.
From the perspective of this climate watcher we are seeing more and more tipping points upsetting the climate virtuous. Europe is back pedalling, Hertz is flogging off Teslas that nobody wants to hire and Javier Milei attacked climate change agenda at the Davos Forum. Carbon benefits of not using cookstoves have been overestimated by up to 10-fold and we can expect more of the same in spades as cartoonists sharpen their pencils.
A tar and feathering of Biden, Bowen and their climate czaristas would make 2024 truly remarkable.
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2024 will be a world turner, no doubt.
We will all be taken around one corner or the another.
I think it goes around the corner the GooglyDavosPharmaAlpahabeticBlackrock Club wants it to.
When all the little conspiracies prove true, the grand conspiracy is revealed.
“Disease X”… harr.
They are hardly bothering to be sneaky anymore.
They are even openly declaring human rights a myth.
To be replaced with a new ethic which empowers the elite to save the planet from climate change, disease and the non-elite.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sjp.12367?af=R
Behold pin heads hammering pins into their own brains and taking us down with them.
https://medium.com/coreybreier-com/takeaways-from-sapiens-by-yuval-harari-1ed12a875a32
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— has been attributed to Mark Twain, who himself attributed it to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disrael
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Now what is the sollution for “cost”.
Pumped Hydro is no sollution as proven by Snowy 2.0
The cost of providing back-up batteries for a wind and solar power only grid is around $10 TRILLION.
What would be the wholesale cost of electricity to cover the cost of the $10 TRILLION battery back-up?
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The wholesale cost will drop. It is often set by wind and solar now at around minus the price of the LGCs. Grid wind and solar compete with rooftops, which have no response to price. They keep pumping out until the grid is oversupplied and voltage goes up. Grid scale wind and solar pull out of the market when the wholesale price goes below the cost of LGCs and they are paying to export.
The cost of current batteries is recovered from arbitrage on energy and payment for FRACs. They get paid to take energy when the wholesale price is negative and send it out when the wholesale price is high during evening and morning peaks.
Both Vic and SA currently have negative wholesale price at 9am 26th. NSW had a brief period of negative price earlier in the day. Air-conditioning has kicked in and/or cloud cover in both NSW and Queensland.
Cost recovery for Snowy 2 could be from general revenue or the cost of LGCs ratcheting up as the RET target increases. The only way more intermittent can be forced into the grid now is to have more storage.
The wholesale price is almost irrelevant to the retail cost of electricity. It is quite likely the wholesale price will fall but electricity bills will continue to skyrocket to pay for all the new hardware through increase in service fee and higher cost of LGCs.
The “renewable” promoters would like you to focus on the wholesale price but it is the hip pocket that matters.
It is bit like the Labor Government shifting the focus from high cost of weekly shopping to the supermarkets rather than looking at the root cause – the retail cost of energy including electricity.
None of the transition would occur without the mandated theft. It will have to be continued beyond 2030 and will inevitably increase to pay for all the new hardware.
At current cost of solar panels and batteries, anyone with space can make electrify for around $600/MWh. That is where the retail price will eventually get to in today’s money. It is 10 times the cost of power generated using lignite.
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If wind & solar are so cheap, then why do utilities charge more for renewable energy?
The higher the share of wind & solar, the higher the cost of electricity in Europe.
Why should Australia be any different – apart from higher transmission costs becuase of our size and low population.
https://twitter.com/BrianGitt/status/1645402038988341251
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Why should Australia be any different
Australia is no different. Ask anyone who does not have solar panels on their roof.
The wholesale price is increasingly irrelevant to what electricity costs. Look at the cost of everything you buy. That is a true indicator of the cost of grid energy.
Jo’s article has fallen for the trap of focusing on wholesale price. The focus should be on the increasing level of mandated theft.
The cost of LGCs is going up again in line with increased RET targets. The amount of electricity that benefits from the LGCs is going up due to the increasing target being met.
The cost of LGCs is currently the same as the wholesale cost of electricity during the Abbott years.
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Well said RicWill
I agree 100%
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Maybe I’m missing the point, but as a WA householder where the government runs the power business the actual costs of power (and water) are miniscule compared to cost of provision, maintenance and administration. Bottled gas for non-scheme gas usage is the one where price is rocketing.
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Who is going to buy the LGCs when/if all the coal and gas plants are gone ?
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why do utilities charge more for renewable energy
Perhaps consumers are remembering the old adage – you get what you pay for?
And in the end the value of something with no cost is zero?
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Happy Australia Day fellow posters. Oh, oh, oh, kahloo kahlay. Gosh, renawables are now starting to pay off! That’s starting to smell a bit ripe to me. It’s an obvious talk-up that’s not so mysteriously coinciding with election time sometime this year. Some fake good news is needed to get some much needed cred for Albanese and Bowen who appear to be muddling around in the swamp of expensive as heck energy.
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Has anyone received notification from their electricity supplier that their future power bills will be lower as a result of this 48% fall in wholesale prices? More Crickets……..
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Just like wufu killer vaccine realists we who prefer fossil fuels will have the last laugh when the solar/ windmill dreamers wake-up in solartude
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Jo highlights the typical standard of reporting on “ energy” in most of the MSM outlets in Australia. That would also include newspaper outlets like the Australian who have dedicated reporters. More often than not they just appear to reproduce the media statement from government departments or press releases from some of the solar/wind companies. Typically they will quote how many thousands of homes the new wind/ solar/ battery installation will supply, the cheapest supply cost and then usually accompany the article with a photo of cooling towers from a coal plant. They always neglect to emphasize it’s up to that figure of homes supplied, supply cost is only at peak capacity and that the cooling towers are emitting steam not smoke. But most of all they usually describe the wind/ solar / battery technology as if it’s some form of superior technology that’s saving the planet. It’s very deceitful. Luckily, for some of the articles the errors are highlighted by comment providers. Unfortunately, for radio and TV most of the reports go out un- challenged. So , a sizable chunk of the population still think coal / gas is evil, renewable energy must be cheap because wind / sun are free and that the government can change the weather.
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Jo – why don’t you do a regular spot on Sky News, with Credlin, Jones, Bolt or Dean?
I’m sure they’d love such truths, especially now.
It’s the only way to reach the asleep on a large scale.
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Great idea but unfortunately the people who watch Sky News already know the truth.
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Quite right! People who watch Sky News already know the truth. The real challenge for us is to spread it to a wider audience, the naive, the apathetic and the ones who fell for the scare tactics are the hardest to convince.
Every day I circulate a Bcc to a group of old friends who in turn pass it on to their kids and friends. Occasionally I get a response like your Fantastic News to the Trump’s advisers vow article and it makes it all worthwhile. I got a Hallelujah! and Amen to the English transcript of Javier Milei blast at WEF that I circulated.
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Jo, what most people do not know and all commentators do not understand is that wholesale energy (electricity) prices have very little to do with the price of power that we poor people end up paying.
If firstly we strip out the costs of transmission, reticulation and retail, the we are left with the price of the electricity supplied, which of course excludes all of the subsidies to generators, solar rooftop schemes, various programs promoting “green schemes” and the rest, which are too numerous to mention.
Now, the cost of power that is somewhat affected by the wholesale price is more related to the contracts struck between the generators and retailers. The contracts are private and are seldom transparent. Those retailers that live “naked” in the market have long ago been flushed out due to the price spikes in wholesale prices. The retailers therefore are protected by their private companies contracts and only have to negotiate new prices at contract renewal time. This is where the history of wholesale prices in the preceding contract term have an influence. If the have been high, then they could face a price increase. The reverse if they have been low.
So you see, all this comment about the wholesale power price and nothing else, is so much wasted breath, when the more important comment should be about the other cost inputs are so much more important. But it gets little attention because the volatility of the wholesale price of power is so much more “sexy”.
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The problem John is the SKY News from Fox has a relatively small audience, although I see Paul Murray gets played on one of the FTA stations. The other problem is, especially in the <40yo groups, politics is a turn-off, especially if of conservative bent. The religious belief received from the education and media systems in anything climate or environmental forms a barrier very hard to penetrate. I see it in younger family and relations groups, and there is even a refusal to talk about such matters as though one is a pariah.
It is ridiculous when these groups are the ones most hurt by the COL and interest rate rises and yet they are the most resistant when it comes to looking as to why these things are happening. If they had open minds or an inquisitive nature you would think the science would be the first thing to watch and debate. Doesn't happen! 'Sceptic' has poisoned their brains.
In a freedom of speech nation there should be a penchant for knowledge, especially when the matters of interest are personally hurtful to one’s existence.
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Speaking about things that have fallen; Nickel and Lithium prices have crashed and mines closed.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/crisis-talks-held-as-lithium-and-nickel-prices-crash-and-mines-close-5571678
Plus a major automaker recalls electric cars due to fire risk……in some woke newspapers this news was buried on page 45!
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2024/01/25/audi-recalls-electric-cars-fire-risk
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Gins Reinhardt who is usually a savvy investor recently bought millions of $ worth of lithium shares, right before the bottom fell out of the share price.
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Joanne mentions brown coal fired power in this Thread, and that is worth looking at for the sake of comparison.
There are just three ancient brown coal fired plants in Victoria, well, two really, because Loy Yang A and B are at the same site. All up there are just ten Units, and the total Nameplate is 4690MW.
Now, compare that to wind generation. There are 84 Industrial Wind Plants and (around) 3800 individual turbines, and the total Nameplate is 11,409MW.
So, wind generation has ….. 2.43 TIMES the Nameplate of those ten brown coal fired Units ….. almost two and a half times more.
However, when it comes to actual generated Energy delivered to the grid for consumption, it’s a completely different story altogether.
In the most recent year, 2023, those 84 Industrial wind plants delivered 27,628GWH of generated energy to the grid.
The ten Brown coal fired Units delivered 31,667GWH to that same grid ….. 14.62% more than ALL those wind plants.
The year immediately following the closure of Hazelwood (2018) those same ten units delivered 36,000GWH. (that was at a Capacity Factor of 87.6%, and even then those plants were considered as ancient)
Brown coal fired power generation ramps down considerably in the middle of the day, (Hmm! I, umm, wonder why) and yet it still delivers more energy than ALL that wind generation.
Consider this when thinking of those ancient clunkers. When Hazelwood was still operational, for FOURTEEN Years from 1999 (when reliable data recording started at the AEMO) until 2013, those brown coal fired plants with just 16 Units and a Nameplate of 6290MW operated at above 100% Capacity Factor ….. EVERY YEAR, and the highest was 102.2% for the full recording year. (2004)
Even now, they just chug along, ramping up to 4600MW (from a Nameplate of now 4692MW) as the evening Peak approaches, in fact spending all of yesterday (25Jan2024) at that 100% CF mark.
That same day, yesterday, 84 wind plants delivered 56GWH to the grid, and just those ten brown coal fired Units delivered 112GWH, exactly DOUBLE the generated energy.
I’ll bet NO ONE knew this.
Wind replace coal fired power ….. “Tell ’em they’re dreamin'”
Shut ’em down and see what happens to Victoria, and South Australia as well.
Tony.
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Well said Tony. Thumbs up.
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Yes Tony,.. renewables are being given priority to supply the grid when they have power available. Consequently, the “utilisation” of coal plants is reduced.
It would be interesting to see a graph of coal plant utilisation over the past 20 years ?
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So, with arms cuffed, the carbon liberators can still out do the pretenders.
I’m still sore over the treason done at Port Augusta.
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Here’s more BS and FRAUD from Google against Dr Roy Spencer.
Andrew Bolt asks Dr Spencer some very reasonable questions about the data and why Google attacked him.
The trouble is that Dr Spencer is too genuine a bloke and like his mate Dr Christy he doesn’t get upset very easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZy8mgD05QA
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A mild winter and relatively cool summer on the eastern seaboard has reduced energy demand. The wholesale price drops and theoretically is soon followed by retail prices coming down in a competitive market.
We are at the mercy of weather, its a silly way to run an energy system.
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More weapons grade gaslighting from the usual suspects . Until we brownout or blackout it won’t get noticed . Europe is discovering reality and their media is distracting them by blaming carbon and Russia . In Germany Nordstream would have allowed them to afford heating and power (or leaving their nuclear fleet running …). Schwachsinnig politic .
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Part of the problem in Australia is that the weather only gets cold enough to be uncomfortable but not to die, as is the case in parts of Europe and North America. Australia does get hot but that doesn’t usually kill people.
So lack of energy to keep warm enough to prevent death is not a serious problem in Australia.
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True.
A study published in The Lancet early last year shows 6.5% of deaths in Australia are attributed to cold weather, compared with 0.5% from hot weather. Most deaths are from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, as it’s the heart and lungs that struggle when we are outside our comfort zone.
50
Perhaps we could make their salaries -60 dollars/hr?
00
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/eu-looks-accelerate-development-small-nuclear-reactors
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/auto-insurance-rates-soar-fastest-pace-1970s-inflation-spike
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I’m in Vermont, Own 15 panels in a local solar farm. 10 years ago, I enjoyed credits on my electric bill all the time. Then, niggling little bills began showing up on a regular basis, despite me not living any differently.
This past summer, I worked actively to lower my electricity consumption and got rid of the niggling bills—for a few months. Now there’s something called “non-bypassable charges,” and I suddenly have a substantial bill each month to pay on a fixed income. I can now have a solar credit, while also having “non-bypassable charges,” and never the two shall meet. Never in my life have I gotten a bill before in which credits weren’t subtracted from charges. I view it as theft.
Meanwhile, the state of Vermont and my utility company, Green Mountain Power (along with the Feds) are all subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles. We have a gigantic housing shortage here in VT, but the state is subsidizing car buying and looking to raise fees and taxes all over the place. Unbelievable!
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I’m surprised that Jo didn’t mention that consumers pay retail orices, not wholesale prices. Wholesale price makes up about 35% of the retail price.
Also included in the retail price is the cost of extra transmission lines, FCAS, retailer costs and profit, and batteries.
Batteries produce nothing and are only needed to compensate for wind and solar instability and intermittency. They should be totally paid for by wind and solar generators and their services provided free but unfortunately they charge for their services and the consumer pays.
So even though wholesale price has dropped from the high of last year, other costs have risen considerably.
10