South Australia generating electricity from rubbish and diesel powered jets, if they could only burn government regulations instead

A little update on our favourite green state.

SA tries to fix a Big-Government mess with a Bigger Government:

Man-made regulations created the grid-crisis in South Australia, so the Weatherill government has decided to take what didn’t work and “do more”.

Australian rulers subsidized unstable energy, and lo, created an unstable system.  The SA state govt thinks it can solve it by running an opposing scheme simultaneously. The Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme meets the Energy Security Target (EST). Don’t laugh. The Electricity Price Target (EPT) is probably next. This is magic wish-fairy governance where the guy in charge doesn’t take the effort to understand the cause of a problem and unwind it, he just waves a wand and issues a decree.  Perhaps Weathrill thinks the hamstrung-market can squeeze some stable electrons out the ether, but cheap stability only came from coal in SA. His kind of stability-on-command comes out of wallets instead.

The fairy plan looks so bad even the wonder-hero, Elon Musk, is getting nervous that electricity bills will stay painfully high (making his battery power solution not look so attractive to the rest of the world). SA is going to be held up as the global text book example of how not to run a state. It’s the impossible bind for Tesla — the only politicians crazy enough to buy their biggest battery are too crazy to run an efficient, productive polity:

Battery giant Tesla has joined power generators, retailers, major energy users and experts in voicing concerns about a central component of the South Australian Government’s $550 million energy plan.

The SA scheme operates in a similar way to the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET). But instead of incentivising new renewable projects, it would require retailers to source 36 per cent of the state’s electricity needs from gas generators and other synchronous power sources.

Join the dots: There are no other serious synchronous sources in SA outside coal, nukes or gas. Coal and Nukes are forbidden on religious grounds, but gas prices are at record highs. So the SA govt chooses gas, gas and more gas, plus some diesel in the interim.

Everyone –Elon Musk, industry, the AEMO, even, fergoodnesssake the owners of the gas power plants themselves, can all see what’s coming — pocket-busting power bills.

Fellow power retailer Alinta said while it supported the Government’s pursuit, it was not convinced and thought it “would lead to inefficient pricing outcomes [at least in the short term], sub-optimal dispatch outcomes, increased uncertainty and deter new investment in generation in the South Australian market”.

Energy Users Association of Australia (EUAA) chief executive Andrew Richards echoed those concerns by writing “we believe it will add significant cost to the annual electricity bills of South Australian energy users without necessarily altering the nature or structure of the local market to provide greater system security”.

The EST is a second-degree fixit to solve a side effect of the first-degree fixit. The solution is to stop trying to change the global weather with our electricity grid. Until the RET is axed, and every other clean-green-scheme — every fixit will need another fixit, and so on forever.

SA to emulate Soviet Union

As it is, the SA solution is to get the government not just to pick the winners, but to own them. (Let’s face it, private industry won’t be building two “spare” gas generators to sit around, and do nothing most of the time, just wait there, burning capital, to rescue the state at peak moments. Governments are the only organizations that are inefficient and stupid enough to do this.) The state is becoming a money-hole, where capital goes to die. Only West Australian GST dollars plug the drain.

Do I hear diesel jet engines?

On August 1, the SA Govt announced an updated “plan” which includes something that sounds like giant jet engines running on diesel:

They will operate on diesel fuel over the next two summers before being relocated to a new site to become a power plant and be switched to gas, the Government said.

The Government has bought nine new General Electric aero-derivative turbines through US company APR Energy.

In his $550 million energy plan announced in March, Premier Jay Weatherill had proposed the installation of temporary generators before a new Government-owned generator could be built.

Together, the turbines will be capable of quickly producing up to 276 MW of energy, more than the 250 MW originally outlined in the government’s plan. The state-owned generators will be tested monthly and only used when required to prevent an electricity supply shortfall.

Those blackouts, which occur when the total demand for electricity exceeds supply, occurred three times last summer.

The power plant will have a lifespan of 25 years.

The Australian helpfully pointed out that other states use GE turbines like this to cope with summer demand — namely Indonesia, Algeria, Greece and Egypt. Add SA to that list of economic powerhouses.

Fast-starting turbines running on diesel will temporarily back up South Australia’s intermittent power supply for the next two summers..

The GE TM2500 turbines, a derivative of the jet engines used by Boeing and Airbus, will be purchased from APR Energy.

Mobile plants have been used to provide peak summer demand in Indonesia, Algeria, Egypt and Greece. They will initially be installed at two sites — the Adelaide Desalin­ation Plant at Lonsdale in Adelaide’s south and the Holden factory at Elizabeth to the north.

Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the generators “are the type of generators every modern city in the world is putting in”.

“Every modern city” in this case means Lombok, M’Fila, Rhodes, Camama and Cazenga. Yeah.

South Australia, leading the world in solar-rubbish-power

Things are getting pretty desperate. The new plan is to put the solar panels right over the landfill (sorting out the end-of-life arrangements right there with pre-disposed panels?)

“The solar farm is designed to integrate with the landfill gas ­renewable energy facility situated at the Uleybury Landfill and supplement its output, therefore combining base-load and solar PV technologies that will produce renewable energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Mr Faulkner said.

“The collective electricity generated from both energy sources will be over 11,000MW hours per annum, which is enough to power more than 1800 homes.

So 1,800 homes will get stable rubbish-power, and the other 727,000 homes, not so much.

My sympathies to all the South Australians who didn’t vote for this.

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 124 ratings

219 comments to South Australia generating electricity from rubbish and diesel powered jets, if they could only burn government regulations instead

  • #
    Mark

    ‘The collective electricity…’ = good electricity!
    No nasty private thingumyjigs here.

    181

    • #
      Geoff

      All this tinkering is going to lead to private power grids. No government, no regulator.

      221

      • #
        John in Oz

        We are already being forced to provide our own private power grids.

        It started with the push for solar panels which could assist in providing power throughout the day (sometimes), is being extended to include batteries (as long as there is sufficient sunshine to re-charge them but reducing the power previously available to run the house through the day) and now the sales of portable generators is booming due to mains power failures.

        The fool that calls our governments drongos is no idiot.

        130

      • #

        Yes. My first reaction to this article by Jo was: Mad Max time on the way. No unified action, but every man for himself.

        120

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Which is exactly why I got my elderly parents to put more solar on their roof than needed….

          11

      • #
        Wayne Job

        My understanding is that you are allowed to generate your own power, but you are not allowed to supply anyone else. The way things are going there may be some bootleg electricity around in the near future.

        00

    • #

      Once again, will someone please show me just ‘one’ Green scheme that has actually worked and had no unintended consequences.

      663

      • #
        Just Thinkin'

        Would the “Red Thumb” person please show the one that “Worked”, please?

        293

      • #

        Ironically, I had Sunrise turned on this morning (not normal) while making breakfast and a segment came on about future jobs. The thing that came to mind was that, after more than a decade of tales about how renewable energy would be a major job provider, this wasn’t mentioned at all in the segment. I wonder why?


        Edited to fix “was” to n’t – Jo

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        • #

          Fixed!

          this wasn’t mentioned

          , but I guess you knew what I meant. 🙂

          130

        • #
          aussiepete

          I had Sunrise turned on this morning (not normal). When I read this, just for a split second, I thought this was some kind of new technology that I hadn’t caught up with, like maybe a by-product of climate science lol

          40

      • #
        David Maddison

        Not even Big Batteries are “green” (or work). Most cobalt used in lithium batteries is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by child slaves.

        220

        • #
          toorightmate

          about the Congo – sssshhhhhh.

          180

        • #
          Roger

          IVL Environmental Research found that Lithium Ion batteries – think Elon Musk and Tesla – release 150kg to 200kg of CO2 per 1kWh of capacity during manufacture using ~ 50% renewable energy.

          That’s 15-20 tonnes of CO2 per car ! and how big is the battery Musk is planning n SA ???

          30

        • #
          Egor the One

          By the Left,
          By the Left,
          By the Left Left Left……………The GloBull Warmers Marching Song !

          20

      • #

        Okay, you ask, I provide.

        The Port Kembla Wave Generator has been an effective artificial reef. The Melbourne desal was a good place for Mick Gatto to site his cranes. The RET has been very good for the brochure industry: when people complain of high power prices they get brochures explaining how they can save power by not using power…

        Oh, and red-thumbing on JoNova is now classified as a Green Job. GetUp got up!

        430

        • #
          Forrest Gardener

          Why do they need to generate waves in Port Kembla? Aren’t the waves in the ocean wavy enough? It’s Michael Munna’s Coal Powered Fire Stations all over again!

          10

      • #

        Seriously Red Thumbs, show me just one scheme that has worked out as planned and I’ll add it to my blog story (Renewable Energy – Friend Or Fraud?) that there does exist in this mythical kingdom at least one success story. Until then, I’ll just keep updating the steaming pile of examples that represent renewable energy.

        70

      • #
        AndrewWA

        It obviously isn’t this power scheme at El Hierro – the smallest of the Canary Islands.

        This reads like Weatherill’s South Australia.

        Power costs in May 2017 – Euro 1.20/kWh (AUD 1.80/kWh)

        El Hierro Performance Update

        30

      • #
        ROM

        Bemused @ #1.2

        Once again, will someone please show me just ‘one’ Green scheme that has actually worked and had no unintended consequences.

        Bit of a challenge there “bemused”!

        Hmm!
        The DDT ban
        Nope!
        The World Health Organisation puts the number of AVOIDABLE deaths from malaria due to the Greens forcing the banning of DDT at somewhere between 45 to 50 million people, mostly small kids over the 30 or 40 years the governments observed the ban.
        —-
        Banning CFC’s under the 1988 Montreal protocol
        Nope! Didn’t work.
        The Ozone Hole is still there as it was there probably through the last few hundred thousands of years as the Sun and solar particles do their annual thing with the upper atmosphere as the Earth proceeds around the sun in its endless orbit..
        And the replacements for the CFC ‘s other than LPG are a damn sight less efficient and far more toxic than those CFC’s banned under the Montreal Protocol
        ——
        The unbelievable criminal level actions of Greenpeace and its attempts over more than a decade to have Golden Rice banned because it is a GMO.

        Greenpeace’s unending attempts to ban Golden Rice for no other reason than it was a harmless GMO product that used sunflower genes and a gene from a very common soil bacteria to produce Vitamin A in the rice seed.
        The lives and health and well being of millions of the poorest who could only afford rice in Asia didn’t count for a dam with the fanatical Anti-GMO ideology of an increasingly anti human and ultimately evil Greenpeace and the WWF and greens.

        A absolutely criminal ten year long legal fiasco by Greenpeace that cost a million little asian kids each year and often their parents, their lives from severe Vitamin A deficiency, a human immune system requirement, which the Golden Rice unlike normal vitamin A deficient rice, has been bred to incorporate the required Vitamin A into its grains.

        A mere handful of Golden Rice a day provides enough Vitamin A to ensure health . But no! The wealthy western $600 million plus per year income Greenpeace couldn’t allow that life saving handfull of GMO rice to be eaten by those kids and thier poorest of poor family.
        Better they die a sad miserable death than have that deadly GMO rice to eat.
        ——-
        Of course locally the greens pressures to stop sharks from being captured and disposed of when they frequent well used swimming and surfing spots and have repeatedly attacked swimmers and surfers show that the greens now believe sharks are more valuable than human lives.
        ————

        Greens anti-coal pro-renewable energy that has led to 350,000 households in Germany being cut off from power as they can no longer afford to pay the excessively high power prices which are due to excessive renewable energy subsidies and costs.
        Like wise ;The Guardian; UK;

        An estimated 15,000 people died unnecessarily between December and March because they were living in homes they couldn’t afford to heat, new figures show.
        The news has led campaigners to hit out at what they claim is an inadequate Conservative pledge to help freezing people by insulating homes.
        Fuel poverty campaigners reckon the number of excess winter deaths surged last winter to 49,260, of which around 14,780 were due to people living in cold homes.
        The Energy Bill Revolution estimates that the average number of excess winter deaths over the previous five years was 27,830, so last winter saw an increase of 77 per cent above the five year average.

        ——-
        The price the poorest Australians pay because of the stupidity and arrogance of the greens and their fanatical aversion to cheap coal powered electricity and the complete lack of empathy, sympathy and compassion from the greens and the wealthy elites in academia, politics and the bureacracy;

        ACOSS; Australia;

        electricity prices have increased significantly, which is having negative impacts on at-risk households.
        A study by KPMG found that in 2015/2016 around 160,000 households were disconnected for non-payment of their electricity or gas bill, up approximately 47 per cent since 2009.
        In some states there has been a threefold increase in electricity disconnections as a result of non-payment due to hardship since 2008.
        Others are forced to ration energy, foregoing heating or cooling and risking their health and wellbeing

        —-
        You win “bemused”.

        I can’t show you a single item where the greens policies and actions have not had very serious adverse to the point of death of hundreds and thousands of ordinary people and kids that have occurred because of the fanatical anti-human greens actions and policies.

        180

  • #

    Try a CPT. Coal Power Target. Or Chocolate Power Target. Coal is that chocolate sunshine which the Vics and Crows have in el cheapo compounded form but which NSW and Qld have in lush, primo grade, like a fine Madagascar Criollo…or maybe a piquant Brazil Forastero…or…

    You can tell I like coal, can’t you?

    251

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      This is government, by TLA.(i) It is a joke, at least to us outsiders.

      An American computer company, known for its love of TLA’s, once sent out a MFS (ii) copy to LAM (iii), stating that TLA’s should henceforth be excluded from all CMC (iv).

      It took some people, quite some time, before they realised, that it was a joke. Especially so, in the Head Office of the company.

      Americans don’t really get the significance of April first – AFD (v).

      (i) Three Letter Acronyms

      (ii) Memorandum to Field Staff

      (iii) Location Administration Management

      (iv) Customer Marketing Communications

      (v) All Fools Day

      231

      • #
        Raven

        Roger that, Rereke.

        Back in the day when plying my trade in corporate sales of computers and network infrastructure, the conventional wisdom was that “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”.

        Sometimes we’d get together for a long lunch and a drink with colleagues. There was always one guy with a client like Jay Weatherill who would buy what ever was put in front of him . . always that one wood duck.

        120

  • #
    Phantor48

    Weatherill sounds like a real tool! Would you be willing to trade him for Trudeau?

    291

    • #
      James Murphy

      We’ll swap Weatherill and Koutsantonis, plus the rest of the government, and the invisible opposition for a few of your nuclear reactors.

      You can keep Trudeau – even Labor/Greens voting South Australians do not deserve prolonged exposure to that vapid clueless dolt!

      391

      • #
        C. Paul Barreira

        South Australians will do no such thing. The politics of the single policy, from Labor/Greens/Xenophon—and the silent Liberal opposition—are just fine by the electorate. Voters today don’t like dissent: much, much more than they distrust politicians. Being “a team player” is a priority in this state. Voters have few if any doubts about RET; they share the absurd nonsense of “renewable” energy with their politicians, journalists, academics and bureaucrats. In the words of Team Nick Xenophon, “Climate change is real”. Definitions are out, slogans are in, a legacy of Leon Totsky from a century ago. One-party states—real or de facto—are like that.

        191

      • #
        toorightmate

        How in heaven’s name did the SA people elect these idiots.
        Then add Hansen-Young and Xenophon?????

        140

        • #
          King Geo

          toorightmate says “How in heaven’s name did the SA people elect these idiots”.
          That is the key question. One has to seriously question the IQ of the SA electorate. How are the polls? Don’t tell me the Weatherill Govt is ahead & likely to be re-elected next March. If so god help SA.

          91

          • #
            David

            god help SA

            I don’t think so. HE is too busy laughing at the idiots.

            30

            • #
              King Geo

              And myself also – LOL. But you have to spare a thought for the poor sods in SA – I wonder how many lives will be lost as a result of the Weatherill Govt’s RET fast-tracking? Not just the poverty stricken unable to pay their escalating electricity bills & deal with blackouts, but also those suffering from depression because of lost jobs, ie resulting from business’s struggling to cope with “bill shock” as well. I would imagine most manufacturing industries in SA will leave the state, that is if they haven’t already.

              30

      • #
        Phantor48

        You can keep Trudeau – even Labor/Greens voting South Australians do not deserve prolonged exposure to that vapid clueless dolt!

        Perhaps if we threw in Wynne and Notley to sweeten the deal???

        20

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        What is the RETurn policy for such a swap?

        20

    • #
    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      I agree with Geoff.

      On a matter of principle, you should never vote for a politician with a French sounding name.

      Remember what happened during the Hundred Years War!

      200

      • #
        David

        the Hundred Years War

        Which actually went for 116 years but the French were mostly absent for the last 16.

        🙂

        20

    • #
    • #

      Jay Weatherill is free-to-good-home. He is so well house-trained that he will turn off all lights and appliances at the point when not in use. He even turns them off when in use. He has been vaccinated against all non-green, non-globalist, non-collectivist opinions. Being a Port Adelaide supporter, he has already been desexed, though not de-loused.

      50

  • #
    skeptikal

    So 1,800 homes will get stable rubbish-power, and the other 727,000 homes, not so much.

    Maybe they’re only expecting 1,800 homes to still be inhabited after they’ve finished destroying the state.

    350

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      By “stable rubbish”, I assume they mean horse droppings and discarded hay?

      180

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Rereke Whakaaro:

        3 Councils have joined forces to establish this Green bubble. I have been unable to sort out what the power output would be despite the figure given. A continuous supply at 11000 MWh would go far to fixing SA’s power crisis, but since the SA taxpayers aren’t funding another Weatherill wonder advertisement I assume that it will supply 11000 MWh in a year. That would be enough to enable one house every hour to boil a kettle (provided it was one of those low powered ones the EU wanted).

        Basically it is supposedly mostly paper waste that would be compressed into cubes. The local paper said that this would squeeze the gas out which would be fed to a small gas turbine. It seems to me that a supply of Weatherill press releases would boost output of methane greatly.

        50

    • #
      Annie

      Do they not already have rubbish-power; ie wind and solar?

      80

  • #
    TdeF

    It’s long past a joke.

    In news this morning, Jay Weatherill is hiring and training people in Adelaide who will go from door to door to advise householders how to be more Green? The same man is hiring jet engines on the ground to generate Green electricity? Giant diesel too. What does this man know about CO2 that we don’t? Obviously kerosene and diesel fuel are Green fuel.

    The owners of gas turbine Pelican Point are the same as at Hazelwood. They shut it off last year because they lost $15million. It has restarted but no one knows the deal. Meanwhile Weatherill is going to spend another $350million building his own gas power generator? Why? He could just buy Pelican Point tomorrow and run it at a loss? This power plant will also be crippled by the RET.

    Now even energy welfare billionare Elon Mush suggests that it is all nuts and you can only agree.

    However the good people of South Australia can buy up all the old flying doctor service bicycles to power their iPhones.

    Better still, go back to 1928 with pedal radio. They can send their SOS signals by morse code and Victoria can dispatch camel trains for rapid response.

    431

  • #
    Leonard Lane

    This is so sad, and previous examples have not taught the SA Government anything. First, I will admit that the following to examples are beyond my understanding. I accept that they are occurring as truth. But, I simply cannot understand how people can do these things to themselves by continuing to support the greens and the left.
    1) Venezuela. Once one of the richest and most successful countries in South America. Supported, cheered, and voted in Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez quickly started moving from Socialist to hard-core Communist, he kept public support until his dictatorship no longer needed the voters. When he died, his “not so gifted or bright, but equally evil” successor took over and Venezuela spiraled into hell on hearth. Now, the same Venezuelans who brought their country down with foolish votes and support for their destroyers want their country and their freedom back. Why did they continue to support their corrupt and evil leaders until it was too late??
    2) How can South Australian voters and public support SA’s spiral to economic and social disaster by continuing to support the Greens and Leftists who are destroying their state?

    Is this the inevitable result of letting the Greens and Marxists destroy the family structure, the schools, and their government?

    400

    • #
      ColA

      Start with the fact that there are NO BALLS in the SA opposition to the labor/green leftard intentions to destroy the State.
      And the MSM wankerarty are right in there cheering them on and leading the sheeple up the fairy path to doom.

      80

    • #
      joseph

      And don’t forget the contribution made by the dumping of the neurotoxin fluoride into the water supply . . . . . . .

      31

  • #
    Lionell Griffith

    It is nothing but governments doing what governments do. Failure by design begets more funds, more power, more people. That begets an even larger failure recycled until the whole civilization collapses into a trash heap. The best outcome is full employment for archeologists studying the trash heaps. See every failed civilization in the past for instructive detail.

    Is there anything in sight that justifies the belief that this time it will be different? I don’t see it as long as we don’t understand that government is nothing but legalized force and coercion. Force and coercion cannot create, innovate, or produce values, necessary for living and thriving.

    All force and coercion can do is keep things from happening, taking stuff that has already been produced, breaking things, and killing people. If used for anything but preventing and fighting violation of individual rights, it becomes a net loss for most and eventually for everyone.

    Time for a different path.

    230

    • #
      clive hoskin

      Albert Einstein quotes ;The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

      00

  • #
    • #
      Robert Rosicka

      Anybody remember their forecast bought out for south Australia during the floods , drought conditions .

      60

  • #
    RicDre

    I think SA’s next move is to implement an Electrical Generation Unification Plan and if that doesn’t work, they will implement Directive Number 10-289 (see Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand for details). The book describes how well this approach would work.

    90

  • #
    David Maddison

    Cheap energy made Civilisation.

    The Left know this which is why they are deliberately destroying Civilisation with artificially high energy prices.

    142

  • #

    Go you good thing! The state of SA is going to hell in a handbasket, but kudos to Weatherill. He’s writing legislation that will ensure the state won’t be able to back out of its commitments easily. Perhaps he thinks all the paperwork will provide a soft landing for him when he eventually hits the bottom.

    170

  • #
    Don B

    When will Australian voters awaken from their catatonic condition?

    161

    • #
      Don B

      New York Times:

      “Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.”

      What is the point of Australia’s energy self-flagellation?

      190

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        To appease the lunatic NWO…..

        Nothing quite like sacrificing a whole population on the green altar….

        These people are seriously messed up.

        80

  • #

    In Britain diesel that is not used for road transport, does not carry excise duties, which double its price. This includes diesel for stationary generators. To stop people putting it in their cars it carries contains a red dye. So, South Australia has a Watermelon Energy Policy – Green Renewables backed by Red Diesel. A good metaphor for climate ideology.

    130

    • #
      David Maddison

      Wasn’t there some scam in the UK making it highly profitable to set up large numbers of diesel generators to sell power into the grid?

      10

      • #
        Gerry, England

        No scam – government policy courtesy of Call Me Dave allowing Huhne(convicted criminal) and Davey to run the energy department in his Liberal government. The intention is the same as the batteries, to buy time for real generating plant to spin up and cover for the loss of wind and sun. Buying time at a huge cost of 3 times the going rate of electricity. I think they have cut the agreed price but now started this battery rubbish as the investment in diesel is marginal now. Of course the problem we will have is just like SA, real generating plant will not be economic for private investment and will close unless more taxpayer cash is chucked at them or the state thinks it can do what private investment can’t. And that’s never been a successful idea.

        10

      • #

        Yep – the STOR energy scheme. I looked at the prospective revenue for a proposed scheme back in 2013.

        00

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    For the last 20 minutes I’ve been sitting here too stunned to move.

    Jo’s brilliant outline has been so we’ll put together that nothing can be added that would be of any use, but still I want to try to understand how we came to this point.

    Perhaps Weatherill and his fellow travellers in Canada and Victoria have never really known what it means to the average citizen to be able to live in a community where meaningful work is available.

    Perhaps this new political class has never known the reality of having to have a job to make ends meet.

    What is so bizarre is that people who need work are being led by people who have no understanding or empathy with their needs.

    From here in Newcastle down to SA and Vic we have had appalling destruction of industry and jobs by politicians who display no empathy for the common people.

    Massive transfers of money from government through vehicles like the school building scheme, the Desalination Plants and Victorian roads projects show how easy it is to reward friends and buy future support.

    Our tax dollars are NEVER EVER “wasted”.

    But while ever the media refuses to report events properly and engages in the type of obfuscation practiced by CNN an N and our ABC Joe average is going to keep voting to shoot himself in both feet.

    KK

    381

    • #
      el gordo

      The power of propaganda is clear for all to see, they want to save the planet and hope their grandchildren can find some casual work in a cottage industry.

      At some point in the not too distant future the weather gods will prove the Klimatariat exaggerated the danger of global warming and a couple of nuclear power plants will replace the renewables.

      140

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I think people will eventually take things into their own hands, literally.

        I abhor violence, I do however think that based on human nature, if you squeeze and squeeze and tick people off ( exspecially australians, who have no qualms using bayonets in jungle warfare in WW2 ) then you have to expect that the population will come after those responsible.

        The simple reality is there is only 3 missed mortgage payments between civilisation and anarchy.

        80

        • #
          el gordo

          The crow eaters can vote with their feet and move elsewhere if they aren’t happy.

          30

          • #
            James

            I did 14 years ago. I enjoy 11 cent per kWh electricity, which is reliable, except for the ice storms we get about every 10 years. I also have to enjoy 70 cent per liter petrol, one dollar for a dozen eggs, 75 cents per liter for milk, and decent houses can be bought for around 100000 dollars.

            80

          • #
            King Geo

            el gordo – “The crow eaters can vote with their feet and move elsewhere if they aren’t happy”.

            Yes come to WA where most of our base load electricity is generated by natural gas. “Weathrill’s Wind Power Debacle” should result in a mass exodus from SA – expensive electricity – no jobs except for those business’s selling/hiring diesel generators.

            30

            • #
              el gordo

              I’m in NSW and this morning a provider rang and promised me ‘the highest discount if you don’t have solar’.

              40

    • #
      Dennis

      Australia has many government created roadblocks to business but one statistic that interested me was published in the Australian Financial Review a couple of years ago, numbers rounded off, the total cost on average for a business here employing skilled labour (all operating costs including wages divided by the number of skilled workers in Australia) was/is A$600/day.

      In the US the cost was/is A$400/day.

      In India the cost was/is $200/day.

      Then consider all the red and green tape, our taxation system, our small population making it difficult to production to achieve economy of scale by numbers produced and others, and then consider the union problem.

      110

  • #
    Graham Richards

    The SA electorate must shoulder a large slice of the blame for this fiasco. They keep on voting for these Lefty green clowns. Hope they’re enjoying the fruits of their folly!

    210

    • #
      C. Paul Barreira

      The electorate has no options.

      61

      • #
        Robert Rosicka

        And here lies the crux of the problem , compulsory voting with nothing but village idiots to vote for ,no matter how you vote even if you vote informally you’re still giving your vote to a village idiot .

        110

        • #
          el gordo

          If they had a charismatic opposition leader who opposed the current science paradigm, then everything would change overnight.

          90

        • #
          TdeF

          Unlike WA, most South Australians work for the government. While only 12% of people now are in Unions, 40% of public servants are in unions. From Canberra to Hobart, Adelaide and Darwin, you are looking at the equivalent of Washington DC where 98.3% of people voted for Clinton.

          These are mendicant cities cities, living on generous handouts by their friends, so they go along with everything from Womalaide to gay marriage to shutting down manufacturing. Why not? Everyone gets paid anyway. SA did not have to pay for the windmills and solar. We did. What manufacturing is left is shutting down. Then there is administration, teaching, medicine and fixing stuff and very hot summers and the beach.

          Then you get Wetherill’s amazing, seemingly bottomless expense account, a billion in quiet subsidies for Whyalla, Port Pirie, $350Million for his own gas power station, $100million for a giant battery, more tens of millions to rent jet engines and a hundred more for diesel generators, a huge desalination plant which has never been used and a new hospital which has made workers rich and reduced capacity. The last comment published is that the ambulances could not get up the driveway.

          All this from a man who at university dated Penny Wong? Maybe he cannot see the wood for the trees? Clueless in Adelaide?

          190

          • #
            TdeF

            Other people’s GST, the gift that keeps on giving, State taxes paid by hardworking WA sent to help out Labor and Green voters in SA. Money for jam. Or diesel. Or batteries.

            Now why did those powerlines blow over in a wind which never exceeded 120km/hr. While people speculated, it was never explained. Nothing ever is.

            130

          • #
            el gordo

            The Liberals are a fake opposition, not a charismatic individual amongst them. Democracy in South Australia appears to be dead in the water.

            http://www.saliberal.org.au/sa_shadow_cabinet

            90

            • #
              Graeme No.3

              Lucas is good but I think retiring at the election. van Holst Pellekaan has been fighting hard with little help.
              The leader Marshall is in the Koutsantonis class, couldn’t run a small business. Vicki Chapman is lead ingots in the saddlebags.

              30

              • #
                el gordo

                So in your estimation none of them would support the idea that a Royal Commission is required to look into the science behind climate change?

                20

              • #
                Graeme No.3

                el gordo:

                I think few of them have shown any sign of original thinking. If they win then that might change, but the 2 local members that were (fairly privately) sceptical will have retired from Parliament after the election. I suspect that quite a few others may be sceptical but restrained by the fear of loosing votes, but with 4 years to go it would be a good time to bury some green lies.

                30

              • #
                el gordo

                The opposition leader is keen on the nuclear option, perhaps that is the best approach.

                Their unproductive desalination plant cost $1.8 billion and a nuclear power plant could cost up to $8 billion, because its essentially green they might win.

                20

          • #
            Raven

            All this from a man who at university dated Penny Wong?

            Did he really? I didn’t know that.
            Now I’m wondering who was more confused . . . Jay or Penny.

            70

    • #
      Dennis

      Next SA state election is when the voters will have the best opportunity in a very long time to rid themselves of Labor.

      There was an electoral boundary redistribution not long ago which reduced the electoral gerrymander (boundaries biased in favour of Labor). Labor challenged the changes in the High Court and lost the appeal.

      There is always a slight bias electorate by electorate for a number of good reasons but the SA gerrymander made dislodging them from government very difficult. I don’t have the numbers but Labor were assured of far better than 50% of the vote.

      110

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Dennis:

        Labor “won” the last election with 47% of the 2 party vote (Not for the first time). That and the support of 2 independents was enough to keep them in power.

        20

      • #
        James

        Remember the day when Peter Lewis sided with Labour back in 2002 so they could from a minority government. I never did like that guy. Is he still around?

        10

  • #
    pattoh

    If the mild winter is anything to go by, this summer will be interesting for SA.

    My bet is hot sweaty voters drinking hot beer in the dark may have some lively political, economic & scientific discussions.

    150

    • #
      James

      The latest addition to a pub will be the lpg fired automatic start generator! In the late 90’s all the pubs put in poker machines, which paid for the government run bank that lost a few billion dollars (the state bank). Now due to the state messing up the electricity supply, pubs will need generators for cold beer and working air conditioning!

      90

    • #
      el gordo

      Pattoh you paint a humorous picture but ….

      ‘If the mild winter is anything to go by ….’

      The month is not out and normal winter conditions have returned, with cold fronts breaking through the high pressure belt. Summer is too far off to call on short notice.

      60

  • #
    TedM

    Headlines could read.
    “South Australia builds world’s first haberdashery power supply”. Just love Jo’s comment “So 1,800 homes will get stable rubbish-power, and the other 727,000 homes, not so much.”
    Germany spent over $1 billion to stabilise their power grid after installing wind and solar, but SA’s is a much greater mish-mash of questionable power supply components. Just a system designed by a politician with zero technical savvy.

    I was recently visited by some friends from SA, and the jokes started the moment we visited my coastal fishing hut and they saw my solar panels. They were impressed however that my lights stayed on and my kerosene fridge kept working.

    140

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Yes its amazing how a bit of thought and proper engineering can make stuff stable & reliable…..

      40

  • #
    Another Graeme

    Atlas shrugged anyone?

    60

  • #
    Another Ian

    This seems to fit

    “Steve Jobs used to talk about a phenomenon called a ‘bozo explosion,’ by which a company’s mediocre early hires rise up through the ranks and end up running departments. The bozos now must hire other people, and of course they prefer to hire bozos. As Guy Kawasaki, who worked with Jobs at Apple, puts it; ‘B players hire C players, so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players’.” ”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/08/renegade-regula-87.html

    80

  • #
    Penguinte

    More like eccentricity than electricity. Is the blokes brain going to mush? This is Labor in Queensland and NSW building desalination plants at enormous cost just to sit idle and rust away.

    20

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Interesting times….the large search engine employee who dared call into question PC.

    What I found the most revealing is how it publically demonstrates the internal reaction. Its also like shining a light from inside a darkened room and seeing what the shadows reveal.

    Left wingers heads will be exploding today….

    http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/sjws-furious-as-internal-google-manifesto-slams-company-for-political-intolerance/

    70

  • #
    ROM

    For my part I do not believe at all that there is an agenda other than Weatherill’s completely irrational bordering on obsessive fixation with wind turbines and renewable energy or a conspiracy of any sort.

    Rather I think it comes down to what Weatherill’s personality traits really consist of as well as those of his side kick Konstantlikass or what ever!

    So here’s my thinking regarding the utterly irrational mess, [“mess” not being a strong enough description to describe SA’s current energy and governance probllems, ] and the personality traits of Weatherill who is dragging the good people of SA down into this deep black abyss of an wholly undeserved energy poverty and a total governmental and political irrationaility.

    I have left a few of the more extreme personality traits off this list but see how many of the following personality characteristics listed here, some of which may not very obvious, that you can tick off against Weatherill’s publicly displayed personality profile.

    And when you are finished you might understand why SA is in such deep societal and political doo-doo!

    ———–

    The Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised

    GLIB and SUPERFICIAL CHARM — The tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. Psychopathic charm is not in the least shy, self-conscious, or afraid to say anything. A psychopath never gets tongue-tied. They have freed themselves from the social conventions about taking turns in talking, for example.
    .
    GRANDIOSE SELF-WORTH — A grossly inflated view of one’s abilities and self-worth, self-assured, opinionated, cocky, a braggart. Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings.
    .
    NEED FOR STIMULATION or PRONENESS TO BOREDOM — An excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulation; taking chances and doing things that are risky. Psychopaths often have low self-discipline in carrying tasks through to completion because they get bored easily. They fail to work at the same job for any length of time, for example, or to finish tasks that they consider dull or routine.
    .
    PATHOLOGICAL LYING — Can be moderate or high; in moderate form, they will be shrewd, crafty, cunning, sly, and clever; in extreme form, they will be deceptive, deceitful, underhanded, unscrupulous, manipulative, and dishonest.
    .
    CONNING AND MANIPULATIVENESS — The use of deceit and deception to cheat, con, or defraud others for personal gain; distinguished from Item #4 in the degree to which exploitation and callous ruthlessness is present, as reflected in a lack of concern for the feelings and suffering of one’s victims.
    .
    LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT — A lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims; a tendency to be unconcerned, dispassionate, cold-hearted, and non-empathic. This item is usually demonstrated by a disdain for one’s victims.
    .
    SHALLOW AFFECT — Emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings; interpersonal coldness in spite of signs of open gregariousness.
    .
    CALLOUSNESS and LACK OF EMPATHY — A lack of feelings toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless.
    .
    PARASITIC LIFESTYLE — An intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others as reflected in a lack of motivation, low self-discipline, and inability to begin or complete responsibilities.
    .
    POOR BEHAVIORAL CONTROLS — Expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper; acting hastily.
    .
    PROMISCUOUS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR — A variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners; the maintenance of several relationships at the same time; a history of attempts to sexually coerce others into sexual activity or taking great pride at discussing sexual exploits or conquests.
    .
    EARLY BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS — A variety of behaviors prior to age 13, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, sexual activity, fire-setting, glue-sniffing, alcohol use, and running away from home.
    .
    LACK OF REALISTIC, LONG-TERM GOALS — An inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals; a nomadic existence, aimless, lacking direction in life.
    .
    IMPULSIVITY — The occurrence of behaviors that are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation, frustrations, and urges; a lack of deliberation without considering the consequences; foolhardy, rash, unpredictable, erratic, and reckless.
    .
    IRRESPONSIBILITY — Repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments; such as not paying bills, defaulting on loans, performing sloppy work, being absent or late to work, failing to honor contractual agreements.
    .
    FAILURE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OWN ACTIONS — A failure to accept responsibility for one’s actions reflected in low conscientiousness, an absence of dutifulness, antagonistic manipulation, denial of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial.

    20

  • #
    ROM

    If Elon Musk is having second thoughts about getting involved with Jay Weatherill and his glorified South Australian renewables nirvana, my reaction is that it takes one to know one!

    100

  • #
    Ted O'Brien.

    Then there’s this.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/aluminium-hits-212-yr-peak-on-shutdowns/news-story/b1a9d986f3bdc1aad97907399c791d6f

    When the last of our local smelters shuts down, what will the price of aluminium be?

    100

    • #
      TdeF

      We Australians have fought for years to be more than an open cut mine, like Nauru or New Caledonia or so much of the third world. So we invited Alcoa to use our plentiful cheap electricity. We made steel. We refined our oil into petroleum. We build a giant Hot Briquetted Iron facility. We processed and refined metals and gases and chemicals and we invested in jobs and producing value added products.

      Our clients however do not want this, their supplier as competitor. So crippling Australia’s cheap electricity is quickly shutting down our refining. Factories are closing. Electricity prices are the highest in the world. Without subsidies, Portland, Whyalla, Port Pirie, much of our manufacturing will be gone forever. It is unbelievable that some people are actually cheering as we lock up the forests, refuse to catch our own fish, refuse permission to graze cattle, refuse to supply our own people with cheap electricity or cripple those who do.

      It’s all going very much to plan. Lovely weather in Australia. Too bad the people are so poor. Soon the next generation of jobs will be waiting on tables in tourist resorts and cottage industries. The only safe jobs will be in the public service. All thanks to a cunning ripoff called the RET, put in place by a Liberal government who still do not publicly recognize the damage they are doing.

      Now Weatherill and Turnbull will start passing laws punishing everyone except themselves, more interference to confuse and blame and fragment opposition. However remove the RET and electricity prices would halve tomorrow. Then they would halve again. The question is whether manfuacturing, refining, factories and power stations which took a generation to build can ever be restarted. Not if Weatherill has his way. It’s waiter training for everyone.

      230

      • #
        TdeF

        We even made cars, trains, buses, ships, bicycles, airconditioners, transformers, tractors, draglines. We built cars in Elizabeth, Geelong, Campbelfield and more locations. We built Hawker Mosquitoes in Sydney and Wirraways in Melbourne, frigates at Williamstown and submarines in Adelaide. Now, nothing.

        Japanese Toyota, those long term planners were so reluctant to leave the Union had to drag them into the High Court of Australia. So they left, having agreed to pay everyone three years wages for the very right to leave the country. That’ll teach them to build cars in Australia!

        Now we make almost nothing. Transformers and related equipment at Wilson Transformers in Wangaratta. Their electricity bill just went up a cool $1Million, straight off the bottom line. We have real problem harvesting our own fruit or running our own canneries. Bill Shorten took SPC out on strike at the harvest season. Sure he doubled their wages but halved the jobs. A victory for whom?

        Between the Unions and the Greens and Malcolm’s Liberals, the place is going downhill at an increasing speed. Manufacturing is near dead and all those flow on jobs have vanished too, springs for cars, headlights, electronics, elaborate manufacturing of brake cylinders and pads, so much.

        However the master stroke was to make the electricity so expensive no manufacturing could survive. The next was to make it a non tax so it is off budget, hidden deep in your bills and the last was to make sure no one knew we had the world’s largest Carbon Tax. Success for the enemies of Australia. Weatherill is just a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage. As for his energy minister, he is running out of people to blame for the disaster they have visited on South Australia.

        170

        • #
          TdeF

          It is unbelievable that those two bins, largely plastic and else are part of the Australian landscape, when electricity prices have forced South Australia’s only plastics recycler to close. Victoria seems smarter as the many acres of plastic just went up in flames in Coolaroo as the toxic cloud drifted over Melbourne and homes were evacuated.

          As we uselessly seperate our rubbish into recyclables and else, we are utterly wasting our effort. Can we ever be grateful enough to the Greens and Malcolm’s Liberals. Meanwhile Bill Shorten promises to make it much worse, if that were even possible.

          150

          • #
            OriginalSteve

            Wow…imagine that…cripple a country so it can be easily invaded and taken over…..?

            Sydney house prices are so high, bt I wonder who will have jobs to pay for them? That woudl hurt the banks as people default on loans and the green funny money dries up…..

            I am confident we will see riots in Oz, but only at the point whereby the average punter realizes the problem lies close to home, not overseas….you would call that t****n, would you not?

            30

        • #
          GD

          We built Hawker Mosquitoes in Sydney and Wirraways in Melbourne, frigates at Williamstown and submarines in Adelaide. Now, nothing.

          We also built the Snowy River Hydro Scheme and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. What’s our latest effort? The NBN.

          00

      • #
        KinkyKeith

        The only reason that the present liberal government shut down Julias Karbon Tax was to implement their own and redirect the flow of AUD$ into their own paddock.

        KK

        10

        • #
          TdeF

          It seems no one in the Liberals understood their own law. When their LGCs were under $20 each, 2c kw/hr, no one noticed. Now they are pleased the LGCs have dropped from $89 to $85! However we pay double that at a retail level, $198 to $170 per Mwhr or in our terms, 19.8c to a new low of 17c a kw/hr plus whatever we pay in state taxes to prop up those business who cannot afford it. Plus the 30,000 families getting electricity bail outs because they cannot afford to pay their electricity bills. Plus all the flow on costs as everything goes up because everyone has to pay these costs.

          Will someone please Malcolm he already has his Emissions tax! On Natural gas it is currently running at $400 a tonne at retail! Gillard was only $23.

          50

      • #
        PeterS

        Meanwhile actual third world countries as well as others like Japan are collective building many hundreds of coal fired power stations. Australia must be the dumbest nation ever.

        10

  • #
    TdeF

    With the destruction of electrical reliability, electrical adequacy, manufacturing, jobs and even traditional family values, Weatherill is fast becoming Australia’s own Hugo Chavez, leading his lemmings over the cliff driven on by the Marxists pretending to be Green socialists. The people are heading back to the 1920s where unemployment was 40%, if it wasn’t for all the money pouring in to keep those senate seats alive and Green influence Federally.

    Weatherill has effectively threatened that any attempt to rectify the legalized theft of WA’s GST money will mean he passes a State law to take the money from National banks. King John at work, like the RET. Again everyone else paying for his profligate spending on his own uncosted irrational fantasies. However it is possibly this last threat which will see the Liberal opposition amazingly well funded at the next election, if only in SA.

    160

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      SA is living proof of the over indulgence in consumption of the green Kool Aid….

      The NWO mob never do anything without a small scale test first, so SA was deemed to be insignificant enough to be a crash test dummy.

      Now they will roll their deluded agenda out to the rest of Oz….

      Has anyone created a legal class action against the SA gummint for its handling of the power situation?

      80

      • #
        TdeF

        Lawyers to the rescue? No. Only at the ballot box and that day is coming. However with Malcolm’s Liberals ruling the party room, what hope do we have? Possibly only Abbott, Bernadi, Hastie and some more but they are in the minority.

        What was wrong with British Christian hard working family values anyway? Now we are afraid to open a Synagogue in Sydney because of fears of violence? Churches are burned to the ground in Melbourne and the ABC cheers? Of all these things, the one thing which must happen soon is repeal of the RET. People are really suffering while our pollies worry so much about Gay Marriage and nothing else. They will punish the people who pushed up electricity prices. What chicanery.

        110

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          I would think that if that wer eto happen, the whole electorate would need to be in a “ready to brawl” mood…..

          Unless the punters have the big picture ( and I think we do here, but seriously , Home and Away is about as far as it goes for most people….) so unless you spell it out about run down of industry etc they just wont get it…people are glued totheir damn smartphones but rarely sit back and look wider than their own little world…..

          10

        • #
          David Maddison

          Regarding that outrageous decision to deny a building permit to a synagogue in Sydney because it would be a “terrorist target”, here is the court decision. Being a terrorist target occupies the majority of the decision along with the usual minor planning issues like parking, set back from the street etc..

          https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/597fbf62e4b058596cba8e75

          Applying that “logic”, you could equally deny building permission for any other facility where large numbers of people might congregate such as shopping malls, churches, sporting arenas, hotels etc..

          What has Australia come to? Our ANZACS would be turning in their graves!

          40

      • #
        ROM

        Don’t for one moment think that the South Australian’s government hands arent in every SA citizens pockets about as deep as they can go to get that electrical power money.

        Weatherill and his side kick Konstalikass have another couple of octopus type money sucker equipped tentacles into every South Australian’s pocket.
        ——
        The Advertiser ; April 2015;

        Adelaide desalination plant too expensive to run

        “A 5 per cent reduction is laughable after a more than 300 per cent increase on the average water bill over the last decade, so this is a bit like someone taking $100 from you and giving you back $5, and expecting you to be very excited by this.

        30

  • #
    John F. Hultquist

    My bold below.

    They will initially be installed at two sites — the Adelaide Desalin­ation Plant at Lonsdale in Adelaide’s south and the Holden factory at Elizabeth to the north.

    Some folks, especially my sister, think I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the two locations mentioned have been in the news in recent years.
    With another beer or two, maybe I’ll remember why.

    40

    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      It seems those sites already have the transmission capacity, i.e. poles and wires. All Jay has to do is reverse the current!?

      Recycling in SA!

      70

  • #
    PeterS

    Although SA has its issues don’t forget that Socialism is not only alive but spreading like a cancer elsewhere here in Australia and much of the rest of the world. There are a number of factors, not the least of which is the growing despondency among the public. Most feel there is nothing we can do about improving the quality of government given both sides are incompetent. Still we should send a loud and clear message at the next election if we are far from happy. Just don’t vote for either major party as a protest. Otherwise, we can all ignore the ill wind and watch our nation decline into the abyss, and have only ourselves to blame for not voting for an alternative party to see if we can at least arrest the downward spiral.

    70

    • #
      el gordo

      Is there an alternative party?

      31

      • #
        PeterS

        Yes there are several but the question is are they any better or worse? My point is we will never know since if we are inexplicably stuck with the main two parties then we might as well resign to the fact this nation will continue to decline into the abyss. I would ratehr take the risk and try something different to see if at least we can slow down or even arrest the decline. If we end up speeding it up then so be it – at least we can get it over and done with and do a reset.

        00

  • #
    pat

    and despite the madness, we are led to believe:

    7 Aug: Australian: David Crowe: Newspoll: Turnbull widens lead as vote falls
    Weeks after two Greens senators quit because they breached the citizenship rules, Greens leader Richard Di Natale has gained a boost with the party’s primary vote rising from 9 to 11 per cent, its strongest result since May last year…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll/newspoll-turnbull-widens-lead-over-shorten-as-primary-vote-falls/news-story/40af403449838b858a3038ca39d5845d

    while the crazy Nikki Haley tells the FakeNewsMSM(NBC) in the US:

    8 Aug: The State: Haley says climate change ‘is real,’ administration will accept scientists’ report
    By Bristow Marchant
    U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Tuesday that she sees no reason the Trump administration wouldn’t accept the results of a new federal report on the effects of climate change.
    ***“I HAVEN’T SEEN THE REPORT, but I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t,” the former S.C. governor told the “Today Show” Tuesday morning…

    “Just because we pulled out of the Paris accord doesn’t mean we don’t believe in CLIMATE PROTECTION,” Haley said. “We’re very aware that we need to do that. (But) we’re not going to sell out American businesses to do that.”…
    http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article166006467.html

    20

  • #

    This is an image of the GE TM2500 Aero derivative turbine that South Australia will be getting, (shown at this link) and he’s getting nine of them.

    Please don’t say it ‘fell off the back of a truck’.

    Please.

    Tony.

    90

    • #
      ROM

      Actually Tony, it looks more like something I might have tried to build in our farm workshop a long time ago.

      And one of those machines, a mobile in field vacuum type clover harvester which sucked up clover burrs plus tonnes of dirt, sorted it all out and threshed the pods for the seeds which was somewhat unique and worked very well indeed to the point of harvesting enough seed so that we could export clover seed to some half dozen contries wasn’t all that far off looking like that gas generator.

      50

    • #
      joseph

      Tony, or anyone else,

      Do you know of an image that’s been created of the very big Tesla battery.

      I live only a few hills away from where it’s to be intalled and I’m really curious.

      30

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        All will be fine as long one runs into it with a fork lift…it will go up pretty quickly…

        Look for anything green on the outside and red on the inside….

        10

      • #
        Freedom of Beach

        The battery? I suspect it will be the colour of Green Virtue and shaped like a huge rectal thermometer. In fact, there is likely to be more than one, and they will be trial inserted into the posterior of the Labor caucus members of South Australia, who will then hold hands ‘in series’ and see if it can power them to a re-election. When that fails, they will be inserted in the the Opposition members of parliament

        20

    • #
      Robber

      Where is the fuel tank?

      30

      • #
        ROM

        It probably uses a 100 mm fuel pipe to a Singapore refinery owned tanker temporarily moored in Adelaide’s Outer Harbour.

        🙁

        60

        • #
          Dave

          TM2500

          700 litres diesel per MWh
          9 of these = 276 MW
          That’s 193,200 litres every hour

          Four full semi tankers per hour?

          This is Green Madness

          Oh – and then there’s the de-mineralised water!
          1,814,400 litres per day?

          Cheap things to run!

          60

          • #
            Raven

            Oh – and then there’s the de-mineralised water!
            1,814,400 litres per day?

            Cheap things to run!

            Crikey . . ye of little faith. 🙂
            Just stack ’em next to the desal plant . .

            And when all this blows over and Jay has been consigned to history, SA can convert and use the engines to power the submarinese they aren’t going to build . . because these turbines are really a derivative of the turbine plants used in many navy ships.

            See . . Jay has it all worked out.

            40

          • #
            David Maddison

            Dave, isn’t one of the sites of these things fhe unused desal plant? That can provide the water!

            20

            • #
              Rod Stuart

              No, a desalination plant does not produce de-mineralised water.
              At best it could provide the feedstock for a demin plant.
              However there is one at Pelican Point, so perhaps they plan on trucking it from there.
              More diesel fuel to haul the water, as well as the fuel!

              00

              • #
                toorightmate

                Weatherdill is so bloody stupid, he would probably opt for distilled water over demineralised water.
                Just think of how many people the still could employ????

                00

    • #
      Raven

      You have to hand it to GE, though.

      When the wind doesn’t blow and the GE wind turbines stop turning, GE are ready and waiting to ride to the rescue.
      What’s that you say Skip? . . a jet engine on a truck, Skip? . . you can install them in 11 days, Skip?

      Of course, GE have their own very serious problems.
      The new CEO that GE just appointed in the hope of pulling the company out of their stock death spiral is John L. Flannery. I wouldn’t like to infer some relation to Tim (hot rocks) Flannery, but ya know . .

      Before that, Jay buys a big battery from Elon Musk based on all the due diligence one could expect from a Twitter exchange.
      Never mind that Tesla has never posted a profit in it’s entire existence, surviving as it does on corporate welfare. The good old reliable tax payers.

      Come in spinner.
      What intrigues me is that, both GE and Elon Musk found the same wood duck.
      And probably neither will be around when their respective warranties run out.

      Or to look at it another way, Jay has picked two losers in a row.
      Good one Jay.

      50

    • #
      Peter C

      TM2500 apparently stands for Truck Mounted

      It is a LM2500 gas turbine (Land Marine), the same as power unit used in our ANZAC class frigates ,mounted in a container with a generator set. The LM gas turbine engine is in turn derived from the GE GF6-6 Fan Jet aero engine.

      These gas turbine generators can also run on gas. Now it we were to get fracking this unit might have some value.

      http://wtui.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/WTUI_NewUserPrestentation.pdf

      20

      • #
        Raven

        According to user “Derpalupagus” on Reddit

        [fuel consumption is] Somewhere around 8,000 lbs/hr at full load if I remember correctly. It’s been a while since I did a 2500, so don’t quote me. Id have to look at the code.
        A tractor trailer of LPG wouldn’t last very long at all, and anyway, I would never try to run something as dirty as LPG through a 2500. You’d be replacing the engine pretty quickly, aeroderivatives are extremely sensitive to fuel quality.

        The LM series aeroderivatives are land and marine (LM) versions of an on-wing design. The prime mover (compressor and HP turbine) are essentially identical to the aircraft version, and fuel quality is as critical as for an aircraft in terms of reliability. The TM2500 has an LM2500 as its prime mover so these rules apply.
        LPG is crap fuel, and the fallout (including glycols and other heavies) can coat the nozzles, turbine blades, and pretty much anything that comes in contact with the fuel. AgentJayZ is correct, LPG fuel is used on turbines but it has to go through some extensive pre-treatment. water and metals separation, and filtration before it gets to the turbine.
        For the TM2500, fuel delivery is normally the site owner’s responsibility and they have to provide fuel analysis results before the turbine can be started. Otherwise, the engine woud need to be replaced or overhauled as the hot end becomes damaged by the LPG fallout, costing millions of dollars.
        The question was “how long a tanker of LPG would last”, and the answer I gave was correct. I would never hook up an LM engine to a tanker of anything and push start. There would have to be pre-treatment installed and and the fuel quality proven first, which is the responsibility of the customer by the customer.
        Feel free to ask AgentJayZ, I’m sure he’ll agree with me. I’ve been in this industry for over 25 years now, and I’m a recognized expert. Don’t have a YouTube channel, though. Sorry.

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      TdeF

      Third world country. We are being rescued by GE who is taking truckloads of our money to provide what we had before, before Weatherill blew up a power station.

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        David Maddison

        Aren’t mobile power plants like the TM2500 mainly designed for Third World countries….like South Australia….?

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          David Maddison

          Here’s a GE video of installing TM2500’s in another Third World country where due to lack of planning and organisation they also needed some extra power fast. It will be much like the installation in Australia’s very own Third World state, South Australia.

          Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.

          https://youtu.be/kqH_HWJMgss

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          Raven

          They’re also intended for disaster relief.

          You know . . the disaster that could befall Jay at the March election if there’s widespread blackouts over summer.

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    pat

    climate “expert” Hayhoe: “In basketball, you play the GAME until the ref blows the whistle.”:

    8 Aug: Politico: Insiders don’t expect White House interference with climate report
    By EMILY HOLDEN
    Several sources involved in producing a government climate change report due out soon say they have seen no indication that the White House might suppress the scientific research that offers the clearest indication yet that human activity is altering the planet’s temperature…
    (ANONYMOUS) Two federal climate program leaders and several report contributors said they don’t expect the Trump administration to stall a scheduled late-November deadline or try to make revisions. Some said the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates the project, is already preparing a website to showcase the report. USGCRP leaders did not comment for this story…

    Katharine Hayhoe, a lead author and climate scientist at Texas Tech University, explained that the research is clearer than ever that humans are causing climate change. The report finds it “extremely likely” that more than half of the average global temperature increase since 1951 is linked to human activity.

    Hayhoe said the report also says that there’s no alternative, credible explanations for why temperatures would have climbed. But the report, which compiled feedback from the National Academy of Sciences as well as a public comment period, does not make policy recommendations. It contains “ultra-cautious,” peer-reviewed scientific conclusions, she said…

    The White House could still accept, reject or request changes to the report, Hayhoe said.
    “We currently have no indication which of those three they are going to choose,” Hayhoe said. “We believe we’re on target, we’re on the [same] time frame at this point. In basketball, you play the game until the ref blows the whistle.”

    White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed The New York Times wrote about the draft report without verifying its contents with the administration or federal agencies.
    “The White House will withhold comment on any draft report before its scheduled release date,” Sanders said.
    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/08/trump-climate-report-environment-241417

    Ethics-challenged Gore says:

    9 Aug: Reuters: Al Gore says ‘ethical reasons’ could end Trump presidency early
    BERLIN (Reuters) – Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore suggested on Tuesday that the presidency of Donald Trump could end prematurely for “ethical reasons,” drawing laughter from a packed movie theater at the European premiere of his latest film on climate change.
    “We’re only six months into the experiment with Trump. Some experiments are ended early for ethical reasons,” Gore said, acknowledging the “provocative” nature of his comment….

    “We have a global agreement and the American people are part of this agreement in spite of Donald Trump,” he told hundreds of moviegoers at Berlin’s Zoo Palast cinema after a showing of his new film, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.”
    “We can win this … All we need is the political will,” he said, adding his hope that the United States would “soon once again” have a leader who was committed to halting global warming…

    Gore said he was confident the American and German people would remain united in their commitment to reversing the devastating effects of climate change already visible around the world on a daily basis.
    He said he was “heartsick” about Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris deal…
    He lauded Germany’s leadership in moving toward alternative energy sources, and said global moves to shift to solar and wind power would drive economic growth and create many new jobs…

    The U.S. State Department last week officially informed the United Nations that it would withdraw from the Paris deal, but left the door open to re-engaging if the terms improved for the United States.
    But, in a diplomatic cable, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told U.S. diplomats to sidestep questions from foreign governments on what it would take for the U.S. government to re-engage in the Paris climate deal, Reuters reported earlier on Tuesday.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-gore-idUSKBN1AO2MD?il=0

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    pat

    even when we’re wrong, we’re right, says the FakeNewsMSM:

    8 Aug: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: NYT Caught Switching Out Documents To Fix Botched Climate Change Article
    The New York Times has quietly updated its Tuesday front page article on a “sweeping” global warming report some scientists fear “would be suppressed” by the Trump administration.
    The NYT reported they had obtained an unreleased draft copy of the National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is set for release in 2018. The paper claimed the NDA draft had “not yet been made public” and “concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now.”

    ***However, The NYT published a “third order draft” of the NCA that’s been available online since January. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published the draft online in March.

    The paper did not issue a formal correction by the time this article was published, and did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s inquiry into whether or not a correction would be issued.
    “We clearly note in the story that this has been reviewed by NAS and was not a secret within the scientific community,” NYT reporter Lisa Friedman told The DCNF about the inconsistencies. “The latest draft was not however public.”

    The NYT then uploaded the actual never-before-seen “fifth order draft” of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) to its website but without issuing any correction or update to their original article.

    A close look at Friedman’s article still shows the publicly available “third order draft” report as what was leaked. Clicking on the link, however, brings up the “fifth order report.”

    “It’s very disappointing, yet entirely predictable to learn The New York Times would write off a draft report without first verifying its contents with the White House or any of the federal agencies directly involved with climate and environmental policy,” a White house official told theDCNF.
    “As others have pointed out – and The New York Times should have noticed – drafts of this report have been published and made widely available online months ago during the public comment period,” the official said. “The White House will withhold comment on any draft report before its scheduled release date.”…

    The Washington Post added to Hayhoe’s remarks, reporting the “version at the White House is the fifth draft, but people familiar with both versions say there is no substantive difference.”
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/08/nyt-caught-switching-out-documents-to-fix-botched-climate-change-article/

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  • #
    Lance

    Regulations, most meeting the definition of rubbish, and also being regularly scheduled in production, might actually provide some modicum of reliable fuel towards whatever purpose they might have utility; toilet paper included. That said, January ought to be popcorn and beer time for those stout enough to observe Nature’s Revenge upon Intractable Idiocy. How odd that an advanced civilization might ignore economics, social stability, national defense, common sense, history, and its own welfare for the sake of an unproven belief system that denies historical facts. Come to think of it, immigration fits in there as well.

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    ROM

    A long time ago when I was much younger Australia built many power stations which we were very proud of as it showed that a little old Australia with its 12 million people could match it with the best in the rest of the world.
    And the newspapers printed many pics and many articles lording our skills and expertise in the technology of electrical power production.

    And we dug coal mines, many coal mines with huge machines to mine all that coal that was fed those modern power stations to produce that miracle of near unlimited energy from electrical power so that we could always expect to have electricity whenever we flicked that switch, be it for lights or heating or to run an appliance or an electric motor or a factory or a refinery somewhere.

    And the newspapers printed many a pic of those monstrous mining machines and the coal they dug out for those power stations and printed many a proud article on the specifications and capabilities of those massive mining machines.

    And industry and refineries that required and used all that power from those coal fired power plants came to Australia and provided employment and materials that the world wanted and was prepared to pay us for, money that led to Australia becoming a wealthy nation, one of the wealthiest on the planet.

    And men and women of sensible political persuasions and with a wide and comphrehensive vision for the future of Australia consulted with the best civil engineers in the world and said, we have all that water in those mountains of SE Australia that now run into the sea.
    We can harness those waters and turn them into power and irrigation water to both power our nation and to grow even more food which the world so badly needed in those post WW2 decades past.

    And we dug those tunnels, built those dams and installed those turbines and leveled the land for irrigation and produced more power and more food and more prosperity for everybody!

    And so became what was frequently quoted overseas as the “Sixth Great Wonder of the Modern World”, the massive “Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric project.”
    And we had then an even greater resource of cheap and always there electricity for our Australian industries and populace.

    And spread across the length and breadth of rural and settled Australia were crews of men digging holes, erecting poles and stringing the wires that were to bring cheap, always there electricity to every large and small town and its citizens, every village and nearly every home even those in some very remote places across the length and breadth of settled Australia.
    And we took great pride in our accomplishments of providing cheap always there power to all of our citizens other than for a few in the remotest parts of Australia.

    And for the next half a century Australia and Australian’s prospered as few other nations of the world did and we became one of the wealthiest and most forward nations on this planet.

    ——-
    And then hubris, arrogance, ignorance on a massive scale allied with unbridled stupidity set in amongst our political, bureacratic and academic elitist classes.

    Today the politicians and elite of the land in their ultimate stupidity, ignorance, hubris and arrogance that they know best have dynamited down those great power stations we took such pride in.
    They have filled the mines with water.

    They have installed monstrous wind turbines to generate power, wind turbines that don’t work or produce any power when the wind does not blow and that do not work and produce power when the wind blows too hard,.

    And that destroy the lives of the vulnerable rural people who are forced to live through no fault of their own or with their permission, close to where the wind turbines and the infrasound they generate.

    They have installed hundreds of hectares of solar panels and paid incomphrehensible amounts of tax payer’s money to home owners and businesses to install solar panels that only work and produce power when the sun has risen a couple of hours past and will stop working and producing power a couple of hours before the sun sets.
    And will not produce measureable power when cloud or rain or darkness covers the skies.

    And for when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow and the power stops flowing they have installed gas powered turbines which they will only call on some of the time to try and ensure that some semblence of electrical power still exists for the citizens of the country and state.

    And they will install great battery systems that are supposed to provide power when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine and the gas for the turbines has run out.
    Battery systems nobody has shown yet will work on the scale they hope it will.
    Battery systems that will power the citizens and societies needs for no more than a couple of hours,.
    Battery systems that need all the generation capacity available to recharge after being drawn down when the wind don’t blow and them sun don’t shine.
    A Battery system that will cost the price of half a dozen or more modern hospitals or schools or the pensions of a few tens of thousands of pensioners.
    Battery systems that the mining of the rare earth metals in the most primitive and harshest dictatorial run areas on earth will cost the lives of tens of thousands of small innocent kids sent into the mines to mine the rare metals needed for the batteries.

    And they know even that is not enough so they employ huge privately owned piston engined diesel engines and generators at great cost to try and further ensure that there will be a modicum of power still available when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining and the gas supply runs short or becomes too expennsive and the diesel runs out through too much call on its supplies.

    And when the sun sets and the wind no longer blows or blows too hard and the gas turbines and diesel engines when they run out of fuel or fuel costs too much, stop and the power goes off those of us who grew up in an Australia where cheap always there, as much as we wanted, electrical power was the right of every citizen in this land, we will mourn so deeply those days now long past where men and women of vision and action made Australia into a wealthy nation by providing cheap always there power through using the coal and power station technologies that matched the best methods of power production on the planet of those days past.

    We can only watch now as outright base stupidity, unbridled arrogance allied with sheer ignorance plus an abject hubris and the ultimate in political and burecratic incompetence destroys the great vision and the great electrical power system that the Australian generations of the past three quarters of a century or more went to so much effort and time to build to make Australia and its citizens into one of the great nations on this Earth.

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  • #

    Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor …

    Tinker: no thoughtful trial’n test
    but lotsa post hoc ego propter hoc

    Tailor: add-just ‘n homogenize,
    maybe add some more ad-hoc?

    Soldier: gotta soldier on,
    what else is there to do?

    Sailor: in a failed state,
    maybe immigrate?

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    David Maddison

    O/T

    As we enter into a likely period of global cooling, the cooling signal will be missed because of the constant upward adjustment of temperatures to generate the hottest day/month/year eeevvvuuuhhh on record.

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    Lance

    Rom, what you describe is the rape/pillage of what was earned. Apparently, modern politicians believe they may sell what others before them earned, and that for pennies on the whole. Time to replace illusions and con men with ordinary people who remember building and making what is now bargained away. There is a place for popular, educated, people who bear no responsibility for the outcome of their decisions. It is called Television. Nations deserve better.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      With generations of wealthy families, its often the 3rd generation that squander it all, that and lack of character the founding generation actually had….

      Now we are a bunch of whining soft handed hand-out loving smart phone addicted gossipy nambys….

      Tell me I’m wrong….

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    Geoffrey Williams

    This man likes to play monopoly with other peoples taxes. He spends their money on his bigboys toys – like money is going out of fashion. And the cost of ‘renewable’ electricity just keeps going up to pay off al those foreign investors.
    When will they ever learn?
    GeoffW

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  • #

    Calling SA a world-leader in solar power is not accurate.

    The *actual* world leader would be China who as at the end of last year had over 75GW installed, with plans to double that within 4 years.

    …and of course, seeing as politicians (and their useful idiots) have been busy promoting and subsidising fossil fuels instead of investing in technology, most of the solar we do end up installing will be exported from China, instead of coming from any home-grown industry we could have had…

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    • #

      “World leader” might be far fetched but I don’t think that making a false comparison helps. Compare SA with a similar sized and resourced jurisdiction rather than a whole country with a billion people. You also seemed to respond to “the world leader” rather than “a world leader”. It seems like you are trying too hard to be contrary.

      Somewhere out there there is a world leader for backyard solar and wind…

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      Rollo

      Craig says

      …….politicians (and their useful idiots) have been busy promoting and subsidising fossil fuels……

      In 2016 Hepburn wind made about $440,000 in electricity sales and received a further $750,000
      as a subsidy, through the sale of LGCs.

      Can you now provide an example of the subsidies received by a fossil fuel plant?

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        David Maddison

        When Lefties talk about fossil “subsidies” they usually mean things like depreciation on plant and equipment, interest, wages etc., all of which are legitimate tax deductible running costs of all businesses. Then they talk about the lower rate of diesel fuel tax that miners and all other businesses get for vehicles not driven on public roads. The portion of diesel tax that is allocated to roads is removed….because….the vehicles are not used on roads….

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      toorightmate

      Craig,
      Are you the love child of Weatherdill and Penny Wong??

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      Craig,

      Wow! That’s absolutely astonishing.

      Fancy that! Who would have thought!

      75GW of solar power. Man, that’s monumental.

      The total generated power power from that 75GW of Nameplate (and yes folks, Craig is entirely correct here) comes in at 66TWH.

      Hmm, that’s at an average Capacity Factor of 10%.

      A measly 10%.

      That 66TWH is the same power delivered from FOUR large scale (2000MW) HELE coal fired power plants.

      Now that’s impressive.

      That 66TWH is 1.1% of China’s total power generation.

      Tony.

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        David Maddison

        Since China is the main supplier to the world of solar panels it is in their interests to install a reasonable number of them for marketing purposes. After all, if China uses then so should others…

        Of course, they produce so little power as you point out Tony, the costs of using them are nothing compared to the profits to be made by selling the panels to gullible countries that have fallen for the whole CAGW hoax.

        For China, installing them is nothing more than a promotional expense. They are not stupid.

        They are laughing all the way to the bank.

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        toorightmate

        Maybe China is trying to be as successful as California and Spain with large scale solar installations (heh, heh, heh, heh).

        10

    • #
      Antoine D'Arche

      Craig, dude, are you for real? You’ve tried to come on to JoNova and post here to make a point in favour of renewables but you clearly haven’t done any reconnaissance mate. There are people who post here who have professional qualifications in electrical engineering, higher degrees in physics and chemistry, and who know this subject matter backward. Some of these people BUILT the grids in Australia. Can operate a power station.
      Only a complete fool would try that stunt on here mate. You would have been better off framing all of that as a question to seek an opinion from these experts.
      Just a suggestion mate – go back through the posts and read EVERYTHING from “Tony from Oz”. And educate yourself, dude. Seriously.

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      Robert Rosicka

      In response to CT , how much of that solar that China has installed is producing power ?

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    Raven

    . . promoting and subsidising fossil fuels . .

    It doesn’t matter how may times you repeat this falsehood, Craig, it doesn’t make it true.

    “The Queensland budget showed the current state government predicted to raise about $11.55 billion in coal royalties over five years and about $1 billion from gas royalties.”

    Perhaps you could provide a link to similar royalties paid by the fabled “renewable energy” sector?
    Oh . . I dunno . . perhaps because it’s “free” energy there is no basis on which to apply a levy?
    I’m sure you can think up something clever . .

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      Dennis

      THE HIGH COST OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SUBSIDIES
      AUG 07 2015BRENDAN PEARSON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE
      The report, undertaken by economic consultancy Principal Economics, found that Australia’s renewable energy sector received subsidies (including the Renewable Energy Target, feed in tariffs and other green policy costs) worth $2.8 billion in 2013-14. This dwarfed the public support for research and demonstration projects for low emissions coal technologies being conducted by the CSIRO and other research bodies (and matched by the coal industry).

      On an output basis, these renewable subsidies translated into almost $412 per megawatt hour (MWh) for solar technologies, $42 per MWh for wind and $18 per MWh for all other renewable sources (including hydro).

      By comparison coal fired power received less than $1 per MWh and natural gas less than 1 cent per MWh delivered.

      In 2013/14, these renewable energy subsidies added between 3 to 9 per cent to the average household bill and up to 20 per cent for some industrial users.

      The report uses the World Trade Organisation’s definition of subsidies, an approach similar to the method used by the Productivity Commission in its annual Trade and Assistance Review.

      At face value, increasing Australia’s share of renewable energy is a laudable goal. The minerals industry is a user of renewable energy and hopes that it will provide a solution to provision of competitively priced energy, especially in remote areas. And renewable energy depends on the minerals sector – after all, every off shore wind turbine contains 250 tonnes of metallurgical coal.

      But renewable energy must win increased market share on its own merits, not be guaranteed it by expensive mandatory targets and feed-in tariffs, the cost of which is simply borne by householders and industrial users. For household consumers, the burden falls heaviest on low income households. For industrial users, the burden shackles export and import-competing businesses in many sectors.

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    • #
      RickWill

      It is speculative. There are certainly incidents of significant subsidence, mostly on the south east coast of USA, usually associated with ground water reduction. Possibly the best example worldwide is Bangkok.

      One of the issues is that coastal areas have attached huge investment in property. When the sea rises in storms, as it always has, it now causes greater property damage.

      Such a case would not be a bad thing other than the costs involved for the private companies because it would bring to light reality rather than modelled data. Most of the Californian coast is rising. I guess some Californians could make a case for losing waterfronts due to the shifting plates. Reminds of Billy Connolly suing God:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sued_God

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    David Maddison

    O/T

    Gore’s latest science fiction movie bombs at box office.

    http://fxn.ws/2wBrcd5

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    Dennis

    Australian Labor Party Constitution

    1.4 The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields.

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    pat

    Matt McGrath’s BBC piece “‘Dodgy’ greenhouse gas data threatens Paris accord” was posted on jo’s “Another BoM scandal…” thread. it included the line: “Under UN rules, most countries produce ***”bottom-up” records, based on how many car journeys are made or how much energy is used for heating homes and offices.”

    “bottom up” also features in the following, though McGrath doesn’t include anything from this Nature Comment from a week earlier, though it seems to me they are pushing a similar message:

    1 Aug: Nature: COMMENT: Prove Paris was more than paper promises
    All major industrialized countries are failing to meet the pledges they made to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, warn David G. Victor and colleagues.
    Authors:
    David G. Victor, professor of international relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego, USA, and co-chair of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, USA.

    Keigo Akimoto, leader of the systems analysis group at the ***Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), Kyoto, Japan
    Yoichi Kaya, president of RITE, Tokyo, Japan
    Mitsutsune Yamaguchi, special adviser at RITE, Tokyo, Japan.

    Danny Cullenward, research associate at Near Zero, California, USA.
    Cameron Hepburn, professor of environmental economics at the University of Oxford, UK.

    Advanced industrialized nations are the key to getting the Paris agreement on track. These countries, conventionally the leaders on climate policy, have made pledges that will cost the most to deliver. They have the deepest pockets and are responsible for most of the emissions since the Industrial Revolution…

    We call on governments that want the Paris agreement to work to revisit their pledges now — well ahead of when the formal review process begins around 2020 — and to be honest about what they can and really will do. They should open up their pledges for voluntary peer review by other nations and by scientists. Only with greater transparency, anchored in reality, can ***bottom-up climate diplomacy yield true cooperation. Ambition is no substitute for action…

    The EU also faces a big gap between words and actions. Progress is being made through the region’s emissions trading scheme (ETS), which should enable the power and industrial sectors to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by 2030…
    Europe’s biggest problem lies in the 55% of emissions that fall outside the ETS, which come from buildings, transport, agriculture and waste. The costs of changing these sectors could be high and the practical difficulties in implementation numerous. For example, European plans to shrink energy use by 27–30% by the year 2030 compared with the business-as-usual scenario are extremely ambitious…
    European woes are deepened by Brexit. It potentially leaves the departing United Kingdom without a host of useful climate-related regulation — including the ETS…

    Other advanced industrialized countries present a similar story of public swagger and lagging implementation. In Australia, for example, a June 2017 review into the future security of the country’s electricity market recommended weak cuts to emissions that would make the overall Paris commitments difficult to meet…

    Underlying these gaps in action is a powerful political logic. Climate change is an issue of huge public interest, especially in countries in which governments feel they must be seen to lead on global solutions. It is easy for politicians to make promises to impatient voters and opposition parties. But it is hard to impose high costs on powerful, well-organized groups. No system for international governance can erase these basic political facts. Yet the Paris agreement has unwittingly fanned the flames by letting governments set such vague and unaccountable pledges…

    Pledges need to be longer and more detailed, with extensive supporting information on who will do what by when, how they will do it and at what cost. Particular attention must be paid to what governments are doing to stimulate private investment in new technologies. Bold goals still matter, but facts matter more…
    http://www.nature.com/news/prove-paris-was-more-than-paper-promises-1.22378

    ***Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE)would seem to have played a big part in the above.

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    pat

    wanted to check out some connections of the Japanese RITE Institute. was amused to find it among the longest Disclosure Statement i’d ever come across at The Conversation, in a piece by Joseph Aldy, who was in the Obama Administration, and who wrote, among other things, “Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Implementing Architectures for Agreement” with Harvard’s Robert Stavins:

    9 Nov 2015: The Conversation: Joseph Aldy: As the US heads to climate talks, it seeks a plan to ‘trust but verify’
    Joseph Aldy, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University
    Disclosure statement
    Joseph Aldy receives or has received funding from the Administrative Conference of the United States, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, American Economic Association, Boston College, Cambridge University Press, Canada2020, Center for American Progress, Center for Disease Dynamics Economics and Policy, Chevron, Council on Foreign Relations, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Duke University, Electric Power Research Institute, ExpoGestion 2011, Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Développement International, Garten Rothkopf, Harvard Kennedy School, Health Canada, Hewlett Foundation, International Monetary Fund, Journal of Political Economy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Moore Foundation, NERA, Office of the Prime Minister of Denmark, Government of Qatar, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Princeton University, Property & Environment Research Center,

    ***Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth,

    Resources for the Future, Rockefeller Foundation, SAIC/LEIDOS, Smith Richardson Foundation, The Hamilton Project, Udall Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina–Wilmington, Vanderbilt University, World Bank, and World Wildlife Fund–United States. Joseph Aldy is also a Visiting Fellow at Resources for the Future, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and a Trustee for the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation. From 2009 to 2010, he was special assistant to the president for energy and environment at the White House.
    READ THE ARTICLE
    http://theconversation.com/as-the-us-heads-to-climate-talks-it-seeks-a-plan-to-trust-but-verify-49420

    talk about a CAGW mover and shaker!
    you would think Russia would run a mile from any ECONOMIC PLANS coming out of Harvard, given what transpired the last time Harvard boys interfered in their country .

    here’s the Matt McGrath radio program referred to in his BBC piece:

    AUDIO: 36mins36secs: 8 Aug: BBC Radio 4: Counting Carbon
    What do Indian cows, Russian CD-ROMs and Italian refrigeration have in common? They’re all symptoms of a massive problem with measuring greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a problem that could be a bigger threat to the Paris climate agreement than President Donald Trump.
    BBC Environment Correspondent Matt McGrath investigates the Cinderella world of carbon accounting and uncovers serious flaws in the way that countries measure and report their emissions. There are huge uncertainties – plus or minus 100% for some greenhouse gases – and gaping holes in the reporting of some of the world’s biggest polluters. Potent warming gases that are supposed to be banned are still appearing in the atmosphere and there’s evidence of blatant cheating in some national greenhouse gas reporting.

    These big gaps in the Book of Carbon, Matt discovers, could unravel the Paris deal from within. If greenhouse gases can’t be measured accurately, reported honestly and verified independently, then many fear that trust will rapidly evaporate and the Paris goal to limit the rise in global temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius this century will fail.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0901fqy

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  • #
    Phillip Bratby

    Somebody should tell the SA Government that 276MW is power, not energy. Idiots in charge.

    20

  • #
    pat

    heard former Liberal & Liberal National Party MP, Steve Dickson (now One Nation), on radio talking about this and he included how this also meant the LNP was supporting Labor’s 50% renewable energy target. pity that is not included in the following

    9 Aug: SunshineCoastDaily: Bill Hoffman: The Labor Budget One Nation says the LNP now owns
    THE LNP has labelled One Nation’s bid to block the 2017-18 Budget a stunt, but its own claim the move could rob essential services of funding fails to stack up.
    One Nation leader, Buderim MP Steve Dickson, combined with the two Katter Australia Party members and independent Ron Pyne to vote against the Budget at its third reading last night with the LNP voting with the Labor Government.
    “The LNP has now voted with Labor,” Mr Dickson said. “The audacity of its representatives to say repeatedly how bad Labor is then every single member then votes with them.
    “That’s just hypocrisy. What do they stand for?”

    Mr Dickson has called for Labor’s Cross River Rail project to be scrapped and the $5.4 billion redirected to the North Coast Rail duplication and improving water security across the state and a new coal-fired power station.
    He has dismissed as a complete Furphy LNP claims that blocking the Budget would leave doctors and nurses unpaid, saying a six-month contingency existed to cover Public Service expenses.
    Advice from Clerk of the Parliament Neil Lawrie supports that view…

    And an LNP spokesperson responding to questions put to LNP leader Tim Nicholls described Mr Dickson’s bid to block supply as “nothing more than a political stunt from a Queensland One Nation Leader searching for relevance”…
    “If the budget was blocked, many important Government services, including – foster carers and domestic violence shelters would struggle to get funding.”
    Mr Lawrie however has confirmed an amount of $25.425 billion was available to pay public servants irrespective of whether the Appropriation Bill was passed or not.
    That Bill was separate, and involved the authorisation of the Treasurer to access $50.851 billion from Consolidated Revenue for the purposes outlined in his Budget speech…
    https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/the-labor-budget-one-nation-says-the-lnp-now-owns/3210459/

    mentions coal-fired power station for north Queensland, dams…later speaks of constituents burning candles and, later still, talks of wanting to reduce the price of energy by 20% for every man and woman in the State and businesses, but no specific mention of the RET:

    AUDIO: 7mins36secs: 8 Aug: 4BC Brisbane Live with Ben Davis: Steve Dickson’s Plans to Block Supply
    http://www.4bc.com.au/podcast/steve-dicksons-plans-to-block-supply/

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  • #
    pat

    7 Aug: AEMC: Modelling of a Clean Energy Target mechanism
    The governments of South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have tasked the AEMC with developing design options for a Clean Energy Target (CET).

    The Commission will test a range of CET designs. In particular we will examine the ability of different schemes to achieve energy and emission reduction policy objectives in the face of changing and uncertain future consumer demand; input prices and technology costs.
    A final report is due by October 2017…

    Background
    In October 2016 COAG energy ministers agreed to an independent review of the national electricity market to take stock of its current security and reliability and to provide advice to governments on a coordinated, national reform blueprint.
    The Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market’s final report was presented to the COAG leaders’ meeting in June 2017. It recommended a Clean Energy Target as the most credible and durable mechanism for driving clean energy investments to support a reliable electricity supply.

    The governments of South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have subsequently requested that the AEMC investigate a number of design issues and options for a CET, including differing emissions reduction trajectories, interaction with the existing Renewable Energy Target and the adaptability of the mechanism over time.

    The AEMC’s advice will take into account the potential impact of a CET on the liquidity of wholesale markets and the supply and demand balance. It will also consider whether appropriate frameworks and incentives are in place for network investment, and investment in energy storage and other newer technologies
    For further information, contact:
    Communications Director, Prudence Anderson…
    http://www.aemc.gov.au/News-Center/What-s-New/Announcements/Modelling-of-a-Clean-Energy-Target-mechanism.aspx

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    pat

    8 Aug: San Francisco Chronicle: California should phase out gas-powered cars
    By Janelle London |
    Here’s why California should join that list. It would:

    Fight climate change…

    Today, 27 percent of California’s electricity comes from clean, renewable sources like sun and wind. By law, 50 percent of electricity must come from renewables by 2030, and a pending bill would require 100 percent renewable electricity by 2045…

    Electric cars are economical: Lifetime costs are lower for many electric vehicles than for gas cars…

    California drivers want electric vehicles…

    Ask your legislator to introduce or support legislation to phase out gas cars by 2030…
    ***(Janelle London is the California state director of Coltura, http://www.coltura.org, an organization advocating for a gasoline-free America by 2040)
    http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/California-should-phase-out-gas-powered-cars-11743326.php

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    Renato

    It must be funny living in a State where the majority of the people in the State continually votes for the party that never gets in, and where the party with less votes keeps winning government – and keeps wrecking the State.

    What’s the solution?
    Regards.

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    Rollo

    OT but Here are the main points for the Australian Conservatives energy policy.

    Australians deserve the most reliable and affordable energy in the world.
    With electricity generation, we are technology-agnostic but subsidy-averse.
    We support nuclear power and a nuclear fuel cycle industry.
    We support all forms of electricity generation and will provide them with legislative certainty and legal protection.
    We do not support any renewable energy targets.
    We will remove all taxpayer and cross subsidies to electricity generation.
    We will require all electricity supplied to the grid to be usable – that is, predictable and consistent in output (kWhrs) and synchronous (at the required 50 Hz range).
    We will allow market forces to provide the most efficient power generation available.
    We will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

    Check their website for more info.

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  • #
    pat

    damned if you do, and damned if you don’t:

    8 Aug: Courier Mail: Jessica Marszalek: Seqwater demands higher, fixed water bills
    QUEENSLAND Treasurer Curtis Pitt has raised the prospect of pushing out Seqwater’s 20-year time limit to recover debt rather than raise bills.
    Mr Pitt was speaking after The Courier-Mail reported southeast Queenslanders would face higher, fixed water bills because they were not using enough liquid gold under a Seqwater application for water to be charged like electricity under a total overhaul of the way it bills households.

    “We should state clearly that the Palaszczuk Government will be making decisions that ensure no avoidable or unnecessary costs are passed on to southeast Queensland water bills,” Mr Pitt told state parliament following the release of Seqwater’s submission…

    The massive hole in earnings has been blamed on waterwise residents turning off the tap, with a forecast of a 185 litres per person per day by 2017-18 not eventuating.
    Instead, people are using less than 170 litres a day…

    It’s led to a blowout in debt of $331 million — which will leave a $2.49 billion difference between the utility’s earnings and the cost of storing, treating and distributing the water by July 2018. That coincides with a 17 per cent spike in electricity costs the utility says it can no longer offset with savings made elsewhere.

    A Queensland Audit Office report this year warned Seqwater’s financial sustainability was at risk as it struggled under the debt of the state’s water grid and a weak demand for water…

    In a newly-published submission, Seqwater has asked QCA to introduce two-tariff pricing, similar to that used to calculate electricity bills.
    It complained that its “100 per cent volumetric tariff” was too sensitive to demand…
    http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/seqwater-demands-higher-fixed-water-bills/news-story/5b8266cec38e72de248b40006ef9b356

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    • #
      Dave

      Unbelievable

      They tell you we have to build a DESAL Plant
      Because Tim Flannery said the “Rains that fall will not be enough to fill our rivers and Dams”

      Queensland responds and starts using heaps less water!
      Lawns die, Nurseries go out of business, Mandarin trees didn’t fruit and we become water wise!

      Then it rains like nothing on earth, floods, tank busting stuff.

      But we stay water wise. We don’t use more than the 170 litres per day!

      QLD department says not good enough!

      They tell us we will penalise you for not using WATER?

      Have Queenslanders gone mad?
      Tugun DESAL Plant costing BILLIONS per year!

      Very close to losing the plot – there are a lot of average peeved off Cane Toads!

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  • #
    Another Ian

    Remember back when Trivial Pursuit was a game?

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    Dave

    I forget who posted this link!

    But it is one of the best explanations of GRID Electricity Distributions

    22 minute Interview with Andrew Dobson.

    Almost a Tony From Oz clear message!
    All of the 22 minutes are great!
    Australia is heading toward collapse. Like SA when they blame weather!
    Maybe it was a resonance problem!

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    RickWill

    This in the Herald Sun today:
    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/surging-power-prices-push-victorian-families-towards-brink-of-poverty-report-shows/news-story/3d51475ce5cbf674a238ac8dc306fda9

    SURGING power prices are pushing Victorians towards the brink of poverty, with a new report showing families feel they are one bad bill away from losing everything.

    A new report from RMIT and the Victorian Council of Social Services, released today, has revealed families are risking poor health to stay on top of their rising utility bills.

    Going by the comments there are a few who make the connection between renewable energy and higher prices but on balance among this group the high costs are the result of price gouging.

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    cedarhill

    In studying the history of WWII I always wondered how the Nazis could raise to power in a democracy. Control of all media, which the Nazis had, made it possible since the only “facts” one had were the what the State provided.
    Even after years (decades?) of global warming predictions and demonstrated fakery of the data, voters still believe the propaganda which should put to rest any doubt of how the Left in Germany engineered their takeover.

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    pat

    9 Aug: Daily Telegraph: Make electricity more affordable — drop the GST
    by David Leyonhjelm, Senator, Liberal Democrats
    ELECTRICITY prices are skyrocketing because of decades of government mismanagement. It will take time to undo the damage, but there is something the government can and should do straight away to alleviate the pain of rising electricity prices; it should make electricity GST-free…
    Electricity is an essential service, like water. But while water is GST-free, electricity is not…

    As we are all discovering, these electricity bills are horrendous and getting worse. Households face a 20 per cent hike in electricity bills this quarter, with a typical annual bill increasing from around $2000 to $2400. That’s $400 many households simply cannot afford. In fact, a lot of low-income households report they are going without heating this winter because of electricity prices. This is sure to cause deaths, a scandalous situation in any first-world country but unforgivable in a country so rich in resources…

    And this spike in prices follows a horror decade in which the cost of electricity across the nation rose by an average 8 per cent each year.
    Even though the revenue is passed on to the states, the GST is a federal tax. Thus the federal government could immediately make electricity GST-free without seeking support from the states. Such support would never come in any case; the states are addicted to GST revenue and rake in the dough with every electricity price rise…
    I am pushing the federal government to immediately make electricity GST-free, and if it doesn’t budge now, it will be a key issue on which the Liberal Democrats will campaign at election time…

    The mess we are in is the result of decades of governments discouraging the construction of new, coal-fired power stations…
    The discouragement of cheap power has come in the form of the Renewable Energy Target, which effectively forces coal-fired power stations and electricity consumers to provide annual subsidies of more than $2 billion to unreliable renewable generators. Ongoing threats of carbon pricing are also having a discouraging effect.

    So, to achieve long-term cuts in electricity prices, including for Australian businesses, we need to abolish or suspend the Renewable Energy Target and provide a guarantee to prospective investors in new coal-fired power stations that there will be no carbon price.
    At the very least this should apply while countries emitting more than us continue to increase their greenhouse gas emissions.

    We should also withdraw from the weak and unenforceable Paris Agreement that allows this, and abandon the commitment to reduce Australian emissions by 26 to 28 per cent until the rest of the world does the same.
    Finally, there should be no further rounds of taxpayer-funded handouts under Abbott’s Direct Action Plan, and we should remove the government’s evidence-free ban on modern nuclear power, which offers reliable, zero-emissions electricity.

    A return to cheap, reliable electricity would not only be welcomed by households. Every Australian business and employer, including what remains of our manufacturing sector, would feel the relief. To coin a phrase from Trump, let’s make electricity cheap again.
    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/senator-david-leyonhjelm-make-electricity-more-affordable-drop-the-gst/news-story/df7662b3fe2949e7cc05d3159b24bab4

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    pat

    9 Aug: Lithgow Mercury: Phoebe Moloney: Power bills stress Lithgow residents and charitable services – Survey
    “More people are coming in with issues than usual,” said Yvonne Oldfield who works at the St Vincent de Paul Lithgow Centre.
    “And their accounts range from $500 to $2000.”

    St Vincent de Paul offers energy vouchers and also organises pay-back schemes with energy providers.
    “Overall last month 89 people came in with concerns about cost of living and a percentage of those needed assistance with power bills. It may have been about half of them,” Ms Oldfield said…

    Alex Ferguson, the executive director of Lifeline Central West, said outstanding power bills are now a complicating factor in almost every one of their clients’ financial situation.
    “Through our financial counselling service, without exception, everybody who presents themselves to us has an outstanding power bill. It is a huge problem,” he said…

    “Yes, winter does accentuate the whole thing. But it’s been a trend in terms of power costs generally over the last 18 months,” Mr Ferguson said.
    “We only see a financial impact. We can reasonably believe there are a lot of people going without a level of heating in a personal sense in their home. And that the bills impact on budget decisions, people deciding to go without food and go without some script medicine.”…

    In a Lithgow Mercury poll with 300 respondents, 30 per cent said they use heating minimally, 20 per cent said they “sometimes go cold” and 10 per cent said they cut down on other essential items to afford bills…
    ONLINE POLL – DON’T KNOW HOW MANY VOTED BUT LARGE MAJORITY EITHER –
    cut down on essential items to afford heating
    try to use heating minimally OR
    Sometimes I go cold.
    http://www.lithgowmercury.com.au/story/4843643/unpaid-power-bills-stress-residents-and-charities/

    9 Aug: ABC: Energy prices: Malcolm Turnbull urges companies to ‘ensure no family pays more’ than necessary
    “Australia is blessed with abundant energy so it is simply not good enough that some families and businesses cannot always afford to turn on their lights, heating and equipment,” Mr Turnbull wrote to the companies when he ordered them to today’s meeting.
    He has called for urgent action from energy retailers to make sure people know what the bill will be after a discount period ends…

    A report by the Energy Markets Commission found consumers are paying significantly more than they need to, partly because they don’t get the information they need.
    Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the Government could bring prices down.
    The Energy regulator found households could make big savings if they were prepared to switch provider or change contracts.
    It said there would be savings of up to $900 a year for Queenslanders, $1,400 for people in New South Wales and $1,500 for South Australians if they switched from the worst offer available to the best.
    Mr Turnbull threatened the Government could use regulation to force companies to do more…

    Greens MP Adam Bandt argued reregulation was the best way to drive down prices…
    “Deregulating electricity prices has failed. It is time the Government stepped in and capped electricity prices.
    “The role of Government is to act in the best interests of the people and it’s time to admit that competition has failed to deliver electricity that is cheap and ***clean.”
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-09/malcolm-turnbull-tells-energy-companies-to-take-action-on-bills/8788666

    Greens have no shame and Turnbull & co are a bad joke.

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    bobl

    Jo, you know,
    11000MWh/365 = 30MWh per day
    30 MWh /24 = 1.25 MW
    1250/1800=690 Watts

    So those 1800 houses get all of 700 Watts each or 16.5 kWh per day. Those are pretty lean households. Try cooking your dinner or heating your HWS with 690 Watts.

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    pat

    not a mention of RET/CAGW policies, or anything at all relevant to the situation.
    as with CAGW, it’s simply a problem of communication:

    9 Aug: Adelaide Advertiser: Tory Shepherd: Plan to change electricity bills to ensure customers know whether they’re getting a good deal
    ENERGY bigwigs have agreed for the first time to explain electricity bills to their customers in “plain English”…
    Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg had said the Government wanted to “eyeball” them over power rip-offs…
    Big businesses including Origin and AGL agreed to…

    Mr Turnbull said there was more work to do in the long term but in the short term there was an agreement from the companies to give as much information as they could to customers to help them choose a plan.
    South Australians can save up to $1500 if they move from the worst plan on the market to the best…

    In Question Time he said the SA energy situation was “the worst in the nation”, with the highest prices…

    Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler said the Government was “finally waking up to the very deep energy crisis”, but that Wednesday’s meeting was a “talkfest”…READ ON
    http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/plan-to-change-electricity-bills-to-ensure-customers-know-whether-theyre-getting-a-good-deal/news-story/0e375078b5418602153a4d3917c6ddf7

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    OriginalSteve

    The meme collapses a bit more…..ANU climate scientist… timeout for kids……

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/08/08/climate-scientist-who-questioned-the-ethics-of-children-is-about_a_23069642/?utm_hp_ref=au-homepage

    “Climate scientist Sophie Lewis is about to go on maternity leave. This would be a totally unremarkable piece of information, except for one thing.

    In March this year Lewis wrote a column expressing the serious ethical dilemma she and her partner faced at the prospect of bringing a child into a warming world. As she said:

    Should we have children? And if we do, how do we raise them in a world of change and inequity? Can I reconcile my care and concern for the future with such an active and deliberate
    pursuit of a child?

    Put simply, I can’t. Nowadays, the pitter-patter of tiny feet is inevitably the pitter-patter of giant carbon footprints.

    Reusable nappies, a bike trailer and secondhand jumpsuits might make me feel like I’m taking individual action but they will achieve little. A child born today is inevitably a consumer and,
    most significantly, is a consumer of greenhouse gases.

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    pat

    Guardian comes closest to spelling it out, but even they can’t bring themselves to mention the “Clean Energy Target”, the only one of 50 recommendations in the Finkel Review that wasn’t approved.
    Guardian prefers euphemisms such as “policy certainty” “fully” and “full response”:

    9 Aug: Guardian: Katharine Murphy: Energy executives tell Turnbull they aren’t interested in prolonging life of coal plants
    Executives also tell prime minister that policy uncertainty is contributing to rise in power prices
    Senior energy executives have taken the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting with Malcolm Turnbull to argue ***policy certainty is required to help lower power prices for consumers – and to signal they are not interested in prolonging the life of coal plants.

    With the government under acute political pressure over rising household power bills, Turnbull secured new undertakings from major energy retailers on Wednesday to be more transparent with their customers…
    But the companies also took the opportunity of their summons to Canberra to urge the government to deliver ***policy certainty by responding ***fully to the recent ***Finkel review of the national electricity market…

    Executives told the prime minister, the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, the treasurer, Scott Morrison, and the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, that they were interested in running businesses that were intent on reducing their climate risk, so they weren’t interested in maintaining the lifespan of existing coal-fired plants, like Liddell in New South Wales…
    The message sparked questions from Joyce, who has been pushing for the Finkel response to include extending the life of coal plants and has signalled interest in constructing new ones…

    After the talks, the prime minister was asked whether he would deliver a ***full response to the Finkel review by the end of the year.
    Turnbull hedged, saying the government was waiting on additional information from the Australian Energy Market Operator about the amount of dispatchable power required to stabilise the grid after the departure of major coal plants which are coming to the end of their operating life.
    He said the government would receive that information on 1 September…

    The government will hold another meeting with the same group of executives on 18 August to hear progress…
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/09/energy-chiefs-tell-turnbull-they-arent-interested-in-prolonging-life-of-coal-plants

    reminder:

    14 Jul: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: COAG splits over clean energy target, but 49 Finkel ideas approved
    Four Labor states and governments have formalised their push to purse their own clean energy target mechanism, officially breaking away from the federal government after the Coalition refused to endorse the Finkel Review’s recommendation on the issue.

    The COAG energy council meeting in Brisbane endorsed 49 of the 50 recommendations from the Finkel Review, and endorsed the decision to get rid of the “limited merits review” that affects network spending. However, the federal government said it could not commit to a clean energy target.

    South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, along with the ACT, said they would ask the Australian Energy market Commission to study how a CET might be implemented by the states saying “they can’t wait any longer”.
    These same states this week all committed to zero net emissions by 2050, in a ceremony marking the visit of former vice-president and climate campaigner Al Gore.

    “It is incredibly frustrating that despite the overwhelming community support for a market mechanism, the Federal Government is still resisting committing to all 50 Finkel recommendations,” South Australia energy minister Tom Koutsantonis said in a statement.
    “Opposition from the coal lobby and the right wing of his party is preventing the Prime Minister from acting in the interests of all Australians.”…
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/coag-splits-over-clean-energy-target-but-49-finkel-ideas-approved-97105/

    best headline so far:

    Turnbull wins clarity for customers on high energy prices
    Courier Mail· 37m ago

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    pat

    I have already told my supplier I don’t want any RET or CET, and that CAGW is a scam, but I will be phoning them again tomorrow to repeat my concerns about what transpired in today’s meeting.
    if everyone would do the same, the companies might begin to get the message:

    9 Aug: SMH: James Massola: Turnbull targets power companies over bills, generators call for Clean Energy Target
    Power companies have blamed a decade of political uncertainty in Canberra for sharp rises in power prices, and implored the Turnbull government to adopt a proposed Clean Energy Target…

    While the meeting was supposed to focus on retail power prices, according to sources in the meeting “the point was made more than once that a Clean Energy Target was needed to give the sector certainty to invest”…
    Mr Turnbull confirmed the proposed Clean Energy Target was discussed but said retail prices had been the primary focus…

    After the meeting, Origin Energy chief executive Frank Calabria said his company was happy to sign up to the Turnbull government’s initiative, but he also highlighted policy uncertainty in Canberra over the Clean Energy Target…
    Establishing such a target was a key recommendation from chief scientist Alan Finkel’s recent review of electricity policy but, facing a backbench revolt, the Turnbull government has delayed adopting that recommendation…

    Mr Calabria said that “to deliver a genuine reduction in prices for Australians, we must also find a way through on energy policy, including a Clean Energy Target. This is necessary to unlock investment in much-needed new supply to replace our ageing coal-fired power stations, and transition us to a cleaner, more modern energy system”…

    Australian Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said the longer politicians took to “deliver certainty and investment, the worse the situation will be” and backed the creation of a target.
    “This can only be fixed by solving the climate-energy policy impasse which has blocked new baseload generation investment for the past decade,” he said.

    AGL Ceo Andy Vesey also emphasised the need for targets to help increase supply.
    “The reality is the best way to bring down prices is to increase electricity supply, which is why we are investing in new generation and support a Clean Energy Target to unlock additional supply,” he said.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/turnbull-targets-power-companies-over-bills-generators-call-for-clean-energy-target-20170809-gxs98e.html

    we get the message, SMH.

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    Paul Aubrin

    Man-made regulations created the grid-crisis in South Australia, so the Weatherill government has decided to take what didn’t work and “do more”

    He drove the country at the verge of the precipice and now intends to take a great step forward ?

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    pat

    ABC, whose electricity bills (and everything else) are paid for by Australian taxpayers, ask a “Carbon” man for Tips on how to save money on your power bill:

    buy a solar hot water system
    buy a new fridge
    buy a reverse-cycle air-conditioner
    buy insulation & shade for your windows
    don’t bother with the lighting
    but buy solar panels for your roof
    change your provider, if you can
    Total cost = $???

    9 Aug: ABC: Jessica Haynes: How you can actually save money on your power bill
    Ever had knots in your stomach after opening a power bill?
    You’re probably not alone.

    Earlier this month, data from Carbon + Energy Markets (CME) MarkIntell found Australian residential customers were paying the highest electricity prices in the world.
    And if you’re living in South Australia, you’re likely paying more for power than the rest of the country…

    So what can you do to reduce your power bill while you wait for reform?
    Plenty, said CME director Bruce Mountain.
    He gave us his best tips.
    Firstly, considering heating your water with solar…

    Then, look at your fridge…
    You can check out consumer websites like CHOICE to see what’s going to be the most efficient for all of your needs.
    Then, assess your heating and cooling, and your need for air conditioners, which tends to suck up the most energy.

    “If you don’t have a reverse-cycle air-conditioner for your heating or cooling then that’s the … third most significant thing that you should do,” Dr Mountain said…

    Check out your insulation
    This is a big one…
    “Putting shades over your windows … making sure your house has an eave to shade you from the sun in the summer and allow the sun in in the winter [and] orienting your house to the north…
    How about switching off the lights?
    He said depending on the type of lighting, that might not be worth it…

    Produce your own energy
    “The next thing they should do is seek to produce as much electricity themselves through PV (photovoltaic solar panels) on their own rooves,” Dr Mountain said…
    He said despite the drop in the rebate for solar from the Government, the solar market had been growing consistently and “growth rates are higher than they’ve ever been”.
    “It still is economically sensible for a household to install PV,” he said…

    Switch providers
    Not everyone in Australia has a choice of provider, but Dr Mountain said for those that do, it’s important to be armed with knowledge…

    The Prime Minister said it was important for energy companies to make it easier for people to understand how much they would be paying.
    “Everybody is time-poor. The truth is retailers benefit from customers’ inertia,” Mr Turnbull said…

    So, does Dr Mountain actually follow these power-saving tips?
    Yep…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-09/power-bill-practical-ways-to-save-money/8788554

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    Bite Back

    Excuse my dumb question but this sounds like a snake eating its own tail. The whole objective in SA was to reduce CO2 emissions, right? That’s the snake’s tail.

    Then because the tail had nothing to support it but hot air they need the snake’s head to come around and start eating the tail by producing more CO2. Does that summarize it accurately?

    They are going to need a very long snake to avoid coming up against an impossible situation very quickly. I don’t believe a snake that long exists. On the other hand, SA may die of this foolishness and leave the survivors with the job of cleanup and reestablishing common sense. That’s not only painful but it probably won’t happen because Canberra is in the way.

    If I didn’t know this is real I would think I’m reading old Walt Disney comic books where Mickey Mouse is the people of Australia and Goofy is the government.

    BB

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    Roy Hogue

    I’m afraid to make any comment about this one. Anything I say might make me sound sane and normal, which clearly isn’t wanted by the state of South Australia.

    So I’ll remain silent, sort of the bloggers equivalent of the Fifth Amendment. 😉

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    observa

    Catch 22 for Tesla it seems. Wants to flog batteries to allcomers but doesn’t want to be associated with this rubbish for the obvious as there’s no way his tourist attraction battery can fix that. Well they could with a bottomless pit of taxpayer slushfunds but he knows that’s not going to happen over the long haul and it’s just a unicorn election fix to divert attention away from the diesel gennys.

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      Roy Hogue

      Catch 22…???

      In a free economy, one where no one is manipulating anyone or anything for political purposes, winners and losers are fairly quickly established because the buying public either buys or it doesn’t. The losers get the message real fast because they go bankrupt. The only reason Tesla is in any kind of a catch 22 is because they’re relying on someone manipulating the economics of SA and all of Oz to their advantage. Otherwise they would be out of business before they were even in business because they would realize their product would never fly because of its cost.

      Here in the U.S. Tesla just announced their latest model which comes in at a price tag of $50 k US. Who can afford to buy that car? Even at the peak of my career when I could get consultant’s hourly rates I couldn’t have begun to think it sensible to put that much into an automobile. A run of the mill Toyota is $25 to $26 k. Do you know how much gas I can buy with the difference, yes you at Tesla, are you listening?

      The whole purpose of an automobile is those 4 wheels that go around and around in contact with the road to get the owner from one place to another. I can understand the desire to own nice stuff not the cheapest available. But twice the price…??? Only the certifiable crazy or the zealot out to save the planet, a planet that doesn’t need saving, is going to buy that car. Well, maybe one other will by it, those with too much money and the desire to own a gadget regardless of its price.

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        Roy Hogue

        So now! If Tesla is finding a change in SA government policy is going to work against them, it’s their own fault. I used to not wish misfortune on anyone. But these days I rejoice when fools get tripped up by their own foolishness.

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          Roy Hogue

          And I just violated my intent not to comment. So much for the bloggers Fifth Amendment. But the temptation to comment about Tesla facing a catch 22 was too much.

          A hint to Tesla management. Years ago I tried my hand as an Amway dealer. It turned out I really didn’t like selling so I dropped it. But the wisdom going around among dealers was that if it doesn’t get eaten, go down the drain or up the chimney, don’t sell it. These days you might add Internet such as Facebook and gaming.

          Reliable demand is the thing that keeps the rich getting richer.

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    RB

    Weatherill (what a great name for a CAGW shill, like that climatology PhD student, Fudge) is your typically useful idiot who wants to make history. The socialist making the most useless and selfish elites very rich

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    crakar24

    My sympathies to all the South Australians who didn’t vote for this.

    I voted for the incompetent fool that keeps getting handed talking points to shoot down the incompetent fool that got us in this mess in the first place. Unfortunately the incompetent fool I voted for is as big a green nut job as the incompetent fool in charge now.

    “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle”

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    Robber

    Hold the presses – Jay was right in SA. He promised to bring down electricity prices, and yesterday at midday generators were paying $125/MWhr for the privilege of sending power into the grid. Wind is not only free, it pays you to use it! And at midday today, the bargain basement price is only $2.70/MWhr. And thanks to Jay’s sharing philosophy, the price in Vic is only $34/Mwhr. Or will Malcolm claim credit for that after he spoke to those nasty energy companies?
    For the last two days, SA has had the cheapest wholesale electricity prices in the national market – $72 yesterday, $92 the day before. Cancel those diesel generators, the wind gods have spoken.

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