JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
When grilled on the insanity of building solar installations and then blocking out the sun, the British Secretary of State fails to answer:
Video 45 seconds
https://files.catbox.moe/3qysg9.MP4
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Net zero
https://i.imgur.com/BBZdbVJ.jpeg
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spains-power-generation-nearly-back-normal-after-monday-blackout-says-grid-2025-04-29/
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From comments:
>”Low grade spiv” @AlboMP
Perfect description of the fool!
>There’s a reason (Albo’s flatmate) Dan Andrews, while Premier of Victoria, went to China with no Australian media & ’til this day no one knows what he did there 👀
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Moorcroft pottery in the UK is not a big employer, but it is an historic and iconic name. Another victim of net zero.
“Industry commentators have blamed an increase in energy costs.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwynq8jgg3lo.amp
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This article by CHRIS UHLMANN:
An extract/teaser – The Trouble in Spain/Portugal –
Electricity flows through the grid at a constant frequency, which is 50 hertz in Australia and Spain. Think of it as a rhythm; the steady beat of a metronome. Every generator and every appliance must stay in time. If a few fall out of sync, the system usually recovers. But if too many do, it’s like a drummer losing tempo in a tightly conducted orchestra. The harmony collapses – and so does the system.
Electricity systems were built around machines that spin big wheels – coal, nuclear, hydro, gas – whose speed sets the frequency of the grid. It is an engineering marvel with a century of experience behind it. These are called synchronous generators. The big wheels inside them, spinning at 3000 revolutions per minute, don’t just produce power. They also help stabilise the system. They keep the rhythm steady and absorb shocks when something goes wrong.
Wind and solar work differently. They generate only when the sun shines or the wind blows, regardless of when power is actually needed. That means supply often peaks when demand doesn’t and can vanish when demand surges. And because they don’t spin large wheels, they can’t directly support the grid’s frequency. Their electricity has to be converted, through inverters, to stay in time with the grid.
But when trouble hits, these inverter-based generators can’t offer the same stabilising force. They can’t ride through shocks.
But the tale to date eerily echoes a warning made in a 2021 engineering paper by University of Queensland researchers Nicholas Maurer, Stephen Wilson and Archie Chapman. They found that when power systems rely heavily on inverter-based generators like wind and solar – especially above 70 per cent of total supply – the grid becomes dangerously vulnerable to sudden disturbances. Their simulations, using Australia’s National Electricity Market as a model, showed that the system could survive a single failure. But if a second shock followed too quickly, there wasn’t enough time to recover, and the system would cascade into collapse.
Sound familiar?
We’ve seen this before – on September 28, 2016 – when South Australia suffered a statewide blackout. As Matthew Warren later wrote for the Australian Energy Council: “The more material issue was the insufficient levels of inertia in the system to slow down frequency changes and enable load shedding … in other words, the SA grid was configured in a way which made it more fragile.”
SA was the canary in the coalmine. Spain is the mine. And Australia is digging a very large hole for itself. The federal government wants 82 per cent of electricity to be generated by weather-dependent sources by 2030. And the more we have, the more fragile the grid will become.
Spain’s blackout is all the more alarming because, unlike Australia, it still has a solid base of reliable power. About 20 per cent of its electricity comes from nuclear and up to 15 per cent from hydro, depending on rainfall. These sources provide steady, inertia-rich generation that helps stabilise the grid during shocks. We are building a more fragile version of the Spanish system: more solar, more wind, less firming, and no link to a stronger grid.
The purpose of an electricity system is to deliver affordable, reliable power. Politics
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