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By Jo Nova
Last winter’s debacle in Australia could be repeated this year, but at even higher prices.
Despite adding more cheap renewables per person than nearly anywhere on Earth, for some inexplicable reason our retail electricity prices rose 18% last year and are set to rise another 20 to 30% this winter.
Last year was a bloodbath on the wholesale electricity market. Those costs have fed through to retail.
AER Australian wholesale electricity prices.
The Energy Minister Chris Bowen blames the Russians, and says we need more renewables.
Shock power bill jump to hammer households
Perry Williams, The Australian
Power bills for households will soar by hundreds of dollars a year from July 1, adding to soaring cost of living pressures as the regulator blamed supply challenges and volatility for the steep cost hit.
Customers in Victoria face a 30 per cent jump on ‘safety net’ prices while households in NSW, South Australia and southeast Queensland will see bills soar by up to 24 per cent.
The Victorian ruling by the Essential Services Commission estimates power costs will jump by $426 for residential customers to $1829 […]
By Jo Nova
Tantangara Resevoir: A whole ecosystem to fill with invasive feral fish and a necrosis virus too.
The Snowy 2.0 Pumped hydro scheme will cost families big money, spread pests, endanger fish, and kill trees but it will allow some renewables investors to make a profit, and that’s all that matters right?
Overseas readers are invited to submit more stupid schemes, with points for delays, cost, incompetence, environmental damage and sheer lack of any public benefit.
Ted Woodley does the best synopsis of the Snowy 2.0 debacle I’ve seen, pointing out how it sets all the worst kinds of records, being delayed 300% with costs up 1000%. It was supposed to be built in four years and cost $2 billion, but will end up taking 12 years (at least) and probably cost $20 billion by the time the cost of the extra transmission lines is added in. As readers here know, the boring machines are the slowest on Earth, one having made it only 200m and being paused for months under a pile of sand.
It was supposed to pay for itself, and make electricity cheaper, but is already chewing through a $1.4 billion taxpayer “injection”, […]
By Jo Nova
What if the news media formed a global monopoly to control the news?
Imagine if the media and tech giants of the world banded together behind-the-scenes to rule certain stories were “misinformation” and all their agencies thus reported the same “news”?
That’s what the Trusted News Initiative aimed to do — decide what ideas were and were not allowed to be discussed.
It’s like “free speech” but without the free part.
Not only could the media bury things but they could get away with it if no upstart competitor could red-pill their audience.
It would be the death of the Free Press
In a world like that the people would be ruled mostly by whomever it was that decided what was “misinformation”. Those controllers would be the defacto Ministry of Truth.
We all saw it happen over the last three years, so it’s good to put a name on the beast, but even better, Robert F Kennedy is suing them for anti-trust violation.
Trusted News Initiative, TNI,
The Trusted News Initiative is everything journalists should hate. It’s basically there to “protect” voters from hearing about things like the Hunter-Biden Laptop, good climate news and […]
This is a public service announcement for Victorian voters in their election today. Rebel News has footage of preferences-dealer Glenn Druery admitting he set the “Sack Dan Andrews” party up deliberately to harvest votes which will eventually return to Labor in preferences. Druery wants Labor to stay in power. This seems like the sort of thing Victorians might want to know before they vote.
See Rebel News and spread the word. Where was “the ABC”? — Good luck to Victorians.
Reader Yarpos suggests Turning Point Australia to see how your preferences flow before voting.
9.5 out of 10 based on 50 ratings
STICKY POST: Thursday December 1: Meet Jen Marohasy and myself tonight at the screening of two short films, Bleached Colorful, and Finding Porites, showing the real state of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s on at 6.30pm at The Windsor Cinema, Nedlands. Tickets here.
9.9 out of 10 based on 71 ratings
Giles, Weather balloon
By Jo Nova
Things are far far worse at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology than even we realized.
“If you think your public forecasts have gotten worse, that’s because they have,” one meteorologist says.
While Australia is flooding and lives depend on forecasts, the management of our weather bureau is cutting back on meteorologists and on weather balloons, but they’re making sure they do frivolous exercises in rebranding with a new kindergarten logo and calls to be “The Bureau”, and not the BoM.
It’s hard to believe, but instead of releasing two weather balloons from each site every day like the rest of the modern world, the BoM has decided to cuts costs and reduce many regional sites to just one or even none each day. This is in breach of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) standards. Weather balloons are the prize “unrivaled” meteorological instrument. In roughly 900 places all over the world, weather balloons are launched twice a day, every day of the year. These radio back temperature, humidity and wind and pressure data as they rise up as high as 30 kilometers (20 miles) into the atmosphere.
The degradation of […]
Always get medical advice, but be aware, if your doctor wanted to say something different from what you hear in adverts on TV, they may lose their job, their business, their marriage and their house. Adjust your filters accordingly. Especially if you live in Australia or California.*
Presumably Californians are still able to phone up doctors in other states. Soon, they may be able to phone their own doctor who moved to another state.
How long before doctors in El Salvador start offering telehealth consultations to Californians? (If only our Covid healthcare was as good as El Salvador‘s).
How bad must the vaccine news have to be if they need to write special legislation so doctors can’t tell you what they really think?
California’s Legislature Votes to Ban All COVID-19 Vaccine Dissent by Doctors
James Breslo, The Epoch Times
…the one-party state’s lawmakers voted to suppress all dissent by doctors when it comes to COVID-19. Assembly Bill 2098 effectively creates a “Ministry of Truth” that assures all information disseminated by doctors in the state conforms with the opinion of the ruling party. It directs the state’s medical board to take action against any doctor who spreads […]
By Jo Nova
Shut down Australia and save 0.01 degrees.
Gone are the days when governments figured out how laws could be enforced before they made them. In their own words this is only “a massive transformation of the economy”, so who cares about the details like, is it possible, and what will it cost?
And of course that all important detail “why bother in the first place?”
The Australian government has just legislated a 43% cut to emissions of a beneficial trace gas, of which Australia makes 1.1% of human output and about 0.05% of the emissions of all the plants, algae and oceans on Earth. We’ve only got 8 years to do it in and even the head of the our largest national scientific institute admits nearly half of the technologies we need are not even invented yet.
Even the minister calls it “insanely late”.
What could possibly go wrong, apart from bankrupting the nation in an effort to change the weather?
Climate target set, now for the tricky bit on cutting emissions
Greg Brown, The Australian
Anthony Albanese’s climate change agenda will shift to creating two road maps to slash emissions […]
by Jo Nova
Decades ago we knew that vaccines carry risks that can’t be tested in a three month trial, or even a two year trial. Just ask Anthony Fauci… @MirandaDevine
Anthony Fauci on the AIDS vaccine in 1999:
“You take it and then a year goes by and everybody is fine. And then you say, okay that’s good, now let’s give it to 500 people, and then a year goes by and everything is fine. Well now let’s give it to thousands of people and then you find out that it takes twelve years for all hell to break loose and then what have you done?”
Australian Health Practitioners Regulatory Authority
Doctors and our Medical agencies should have explained this risk
There may be a legal route for vaccine victims to fight back.
We always thought the Doctor-Patient relationship was sacred, and “informed consent” meant that doctors told the whole truth, and gave their honest opinions. In Australia that was blown out of the water when the TGA banned cheap safe drugs and AHPRA deregistered, suspended or just threatened doctors who spoke their minds. But perhaps there is a legal path open […]
Jim.henderson
Some nice Banker people have turned up to give us the batteries we need to save the world. What could possibly go wrong?
The Leviathan BlackRock will soon spend a billion dollars on big batteries in Australia. It is the largest asset manager in the world — with some $10 Trillion in assets to direct. To put that kind of power in perspective, the entire GDP of Australia is about $1.4 Trillion, so if BlackRock chose to throw its weight around, to hypothetically, improve its chances of making a profit, it won’t need an army, it just needs to hint “nice business you have there”, and the path will presumably clear. There are only two countries on Earth with larger GDP’s — America and China.
If BlackRock was a country the Foreign Investment Review Board of Australia would need to pay attention to potential conflicts of interest. But as it is, BlackRock flies under that radar while it bullies other companies and governments to do things to “save the world” which also happen to make profits for BlackRock.
If say, the voters of Australia voted against Climate Action as electricity bills drew blood, it’s hard to imagine […]
The bad news for Sydney-siders is that floods have been happening to them for all of history and probably a lot of prehistory too, though the ABC and BOM don’t mention it. This week the flooding in Windsor appears to have peaked at almost 14 metres. But in 1867 the water peaked at 63 feet or an amazing 19 metres.
Not to dismiss any of the suffering of the current flooding in Sydney, because I’m sure it’s horrible. Just people need to know the Bureau of Met isn’t telling them the whole truth, and climate grifters are exploiting their pain so they can nab a few more grants, or sell some solar panels.
Almost all the Eather family died in the Hawkesbury flood of 1867.
The Guardian laments that For Hawkesbury residents flooding is now a part of life and blames climate change. But nothing has changed since 200 years ago. For the first thirty years of European settlement, floods hit the Hawkesbury river one after the other, people died, and houses were washed away. Back then, people were in danger of starving when the crops failed. Flooding would have been a very big deal.
A little book […]
Marcus Wong Wongm
Effectively — the AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) is the taxpayer funded advertising agency for the Renewables Industry. The point of the latest AEMO super-report, apparently, is to get Australian taxpayers or consumers to foot the bill for the high voltage lines that the unreliable industry desperately needs but can’t pay for itself.
The AEMO has declared we need to rush to cough up $12.7 billion to build new interconnectors in Australia. That’s $500 from every man woman and child and let’s call it what it is, a Gift Card for the Renewables Industry. The net benefit of all that money will be to allow wind and solar industrial plants to connect their unreliable product to the grid we already have, and to the storage products that we still have to pay for, and all so that their green electrons will make the weather 0.0 degrees cooler in a hundred years. Australians alive today will pay now and basically get nothing but views of more criss-crossy-steel-wires and spires, and more wind towers too. Sing Hallelujah.
The 104 page Blueprint imagines all kinds of scenarios except for an actual free market, true competition, consumer […]
Cunning Plan: New Australian PM to set up an Office of Climate Change Threats, but not an Office to study the Threats of Climate Action
Shut down Australia and save 0.01 degrees.
Admiral Chris Barrie will be paid to worry about how seas rising by 1mm a year might affect our supply chains, but not about how making electricity ten times more expensive might destroy manufacturing in Australia.
If we had to actually build our own nuclear submarines will China still be happy to sell us the steel? Will we have an aluminum smelter left in the nation, and how long can we run that on solar panels and batteries? Are 2,000 kilometer long high voltage lines an easy target for hostile forces? Will electric vehicles be easier targets for cyber hackers or EMF weapons? Could dust bombs sabotage 2GW of solar panels? Would paint bombs be worse?
If we managed to build one nuclear submarine by 2040, will it be the most reliable baseload generator left in the national energy market and should we plug it back into the grid so we can build another sub?
So many questions…
Anthony Albanese to order intelligence chief to examine […]
Would you like blackouts or floods with your Green Burger?
Tumut Generation Station No. 3 Snowy scheme | Joe “velojo” A
Here in Weather-Dependent Renewable World the chief crash test dummy is struggling because of yet another bit of terrible luck. We desperately need the only reliable renewable energy we have to generate while reliable but-badly-maintained-coal is breaking — and our national grid sits on the edge of blackouts. But Lordy No! Oh the schadenfreude — the dams are all full. Seems we have too much water thanks to the La Nina we didn’t predict, and the excess rainfall that wasn’t supposed to happen, and the dams that weren’t supposed to fill. Now if Snowy Hydro releases too much water to make electricity they may flood lower areas.
You can’t make this stuff up. Hydroelectric dams serve two purposes and sometimes they conflict. If we are lucky, we might avoid both blackouts and floods, but we won’t avoid the bonfire of electricity bills that are coming.
Ponder the impossible quandry of the Green religion. Like the Escher puzzle of Energy — It’s always the weather’s fault. If only we could use enough renewables to get perfect weather we […]
So it’s a new record. In the 20 years since the National Energy Market formed it has never operated on such a vapor thin margin. Only a few days ago Paul McArdle at WattClarity thought a mere 15% instantaneous reserve plant margin was a headline event, but tonight the grid survived (so far) on a tiny 3% Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin NEM-wide. Things were so tight the NSW Minister for Energy sought emergency powers to force coal companies to provide fuel to coal generators for the next 30 days on his say so. Presumably next on his list would be emergency powers from God to make the wind blow.
Two years ago Australian taxpayers spend $13 billion a year in climate action (Moran). As researchers at ANU noted, Australia was leading the way — installing more megawatts per person than any other nation on Earth. (Blakers) Despite being the fastest growing and sparsest population, on the most remote nation which was practically a quarry and farm built on coal and uranium deposits, Australian political leaders rushed to compete for green booby prizes in Beautiful Weather Contests.
And the toll from the bonfire in prices is just starting with Iron […]
The Renewable Crash Test Dummies: Test in progress
A LaTrobe Valley Coal Plant
Day #3: Huge Yallourn coal plant in Victoria loses 2 of 4 turbines. The AEMO suspends the whole market. Blackout warnings continue. Australians are being asked to conserve electricity. It’s just another day in the forced transition we don’t have to have.
How much lower can we go? Half of the generators from the ultra cheap brown coal Yallourn plant went phht yesterday. This was “unplanned”. It normally makes 20% of Victoria’s electricity. It’s owned by EnergyAustralia (China Light and Power) which is keen to close it early in 2028 and has a special secret deal with the Victorian government to do so. Perhaps China Light and Power is scrimping on those maintenance costs?
Warnings about potential blackouts exist for all five states on the National grid during the next 48 hours. The Minister for Energy, and the head of the AEMO, and several state Ministers have asked Australians to turn off all the non-essential electrical items. The NSW Minister asked people not to use their dishwasher tonight. Go first world modern nation! Meanwhile Matt Canavan wonders why people can’t use their dishwashers but the […]
All the rules are breaking.
The price market broke on Sunday night and now the interconnectors rules are broken too. The whole Eastern five state “National” grid is flying seat of the pants — the reserves are so incredibly thin that there are LOR3 forecasts — meaning Lack Of Reserve Level 3 rolled out for all five states. It doesn’t mean blackouts will happen, but it means all the protective layers of this onion are gone. The system is running bare.
UPDATE: There were some blackouts in Sydney’s northern suburbs last night. “Millions of homes” were apparently told to conserve their power in Brisbane and Sydney. Welcome to RenewableWorld!
ht/ WattsUp, Eric Worrall, and RicDre
The price market broke on Sunday night when for the first time the AEMO imposed somewhat anachronistic price setting clauses it had never used. By fixing the wholesale price in Queensland, market bidding suddenly phase-changed into a twilight world where prices were set too low (at an obscenely high $300/MWh, but not high enough now), and generators didn’t want to bid. So offers to supply “Yo-Yo’d” and the AEMO had to run emergency orders of a different kind to […]
The Queensland grid is in crisis — the forecast price for nearly the entire next 24 hours is $15,000 per megawatt hour.
I have never seen a graph like this one. It’s a “white knuckle ride” as Paul McArdle describes it. The IRPM (or Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin) is just 8%. “This shows total Available Generation of 31,679MW ready to supply aggregate ‘Market Demand’ of of 29,201MW at this point … so a surplus of only 2,478MW NEM-wide.” But only last week there was a record day where the grid demand was 32,000MW — the highest winter demand day for years.
AEMO
Reserves are incredibly thin, not just in Queensland, but also in NSW.
AEMO
Market Notices from the AEMO are flowing like confetti. There is an Actual Lack of Reserve Level 2 (LOR2) in Queensland as of 6pm to 8pm. There is an LOR2 running for NSW as well, and an LOR1 for Victoria. If things shift up to LOR3 that means blackouts are likely, and LOR3s are forecast — in QLD tonight and in NSW tomorrow night. The margins are thinner than they look. Because extra generation on one part of the grid may […]
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 […]
The election horse that mysteriously got away
With virtually no public campaign at all, out of the starting gates, 53% of Australians thought nuclear power was good idea. Only 23% were against it. This was a survey done in April. Scott Morrison could have played the brave man-of-action card — (solving the climate wars with a 50 year old tried and true technology!). It would have been an easy sell once Australians found out there were 440 nuclear power plants in the world, and that even Armenia has one. And so does Belarus. Mexico has two, Hungary has four, and the Czech Republic has six. They’re everywhere.
Prime Minister Morrison may have even had these survey results in the lead up to the election? So why didn’t he play that card? Was it really fear of “the anti nuclear” green hippies, or something else…?
The conservative government missed the chance to sell a big vision, and nobble “Climate” witchcraft
Most Australians want nuclear power to reduce emissions from coal-fired plants – but the Greens will never let it happen
Daily Mail
Most Australians want a nuclear power industry to reduce emissions by […]
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