I’m speaking this afternoon in Perth — 3 ways to destroy a good electricity grid

Three ways to destroy a perfectly good electricity grid

Council for the National Interest (CNI)

Royal Perth Yacht Club 2:30 til 4:30

Australia II Drive, Crawley Bay, Nedlands.

Free Entry

UPDATE: A great success and a lot of fun. These events are always so well run. If you live in WA check out CNI. A smart, polite and friendly crowd.

9 out of 10 based on 110 ratings

192 comments to I’m speaking this afternoon in Perth — 3 ways to destroy a good electricity grid

  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    I hope it all goes well for you.

    Luck is meaningless. I wish you a receptive audience.

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  • #
    Mall

    Keep fighting the good fight.

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  • #
    MudCrab

    I’ll bite, the first way is to make the SA Government your role model.

    Just a bit confused on what two and three are going to be.

    Adelaide CBD had a partial blackout for several hours on Friday. What was interesting about this was the public now instantly associate blackouts with the SA Government. Weatherill has nailed his colours so hard to the renewable mast that people knee jerk blame in his direction and seem to have little faith in his plans to fix the problems that are largely his own creation.

    With a State election coming up in March 2018 one might think that SA would soon be saved by a brand new Liberal government but even Steve Marshall seems to be a renewable junkie to enslaved by his focus groups to dare use the word ‘coal’ in public and reluctant to admit that power prices and availability are even a problem.

    Two weeks ago I – being a Good South Australian Voter – was subjected to one of those automated phone polls. One of the questions was ‘What do you consider the most important…’ before giving me four selections that I needed to choose from.

    Not ONE was ‘electricity prices’.

    I don’t know who sponsored that phone poll – media group, Lib, Labor, Alien Space Bats – but whoever did clearly did not remotely consider the farcical state of SA power supply just might have been an election issue.

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    • #
      MudCrab

      * Steve Marshall seems to be a renewable junkie TOO enslaved by his focus groups

      See? Power in South Oz is so bad that even our grammar is suffering! 😀

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Mudcrab:
      There was a blackout in the Adelaide Hills on monday, affecting about 8,000 homes. Claimed to be due to a tree being felled and hitting a power pole. Crafters, Stirling, Piccadilly and Upper Sturt last to regain power.
      I’ve had at least 5 blackouts this year, fortunately none longer than 4 hours.

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        I’ve had at least 5 blackouts this year, fortunately none longer than 4 hours

        Has the quality of South Australian wine gone off too?

        I just get head-aches.

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        • #
          James

          How much do you drink in a sitting? If the power is going out regularly your consumption might have gone up!

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        • #

          We get here in Germany (Bavarian Discounter) South Australian wine for 1.79 Euro per bottle. Really good smooth stuff.

          Still wondering how the make the price.

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          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            Johannes, they make that price by going broke.

            I don’t know if you know it, but here in Australia we have real, genuine social scientists. Many years ago, when Australia was a fledgling economy built on gold mining and wool production, our government set up a body of scientists called the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, to enable Australian industry operators who lacked the resources to engage fully in research and development to engage in entrepreneurial science. Yes, the same CSIRO that was hijacked by left wing government to build Australia’s contribution to the Global Warming scam. But the Climate Change department is only one of many arms of the CSIRO. In our farming industry it still holds the rank of Fairy Godmother.

            After World War Two Australia had a huge influx of migrants, mostly penniless, from mainland European countries fleeing Communism, who introduced us to what we call “table wines”. Prior to that time most of us Anglophones knew only the fortified wines. I, a young bloke, tried these wines. Some were good, some bad, and I didn’t know how to find out which was which without opening the bottle. So I stuck to beer. Australian winemakers planted new vineyards to supply this new market, but in bout 1970 they stopped picking the black grapes. There had been a drop in the demand for red wine.

            Nobody asked me about it, but if they had I could have told them why. They had bottled an awful lot of poison and labelled it red wine.

            Somebody must have noticed this, because they got to work with the CSIRO to study the art of winemaking, and by 1980 or thereabouts they stole a march on the rest of the world in quality control in winemaking. These bright lads and lasses then went around the world winning prizes at prestigious wine shows. There is no better way to generate demand for your product, so the word then went out that there was a big future for exporting Australian wine to the world, using this new technology.

            Any government with an ounce of brains would have been offering all kinds of incentives for winemakers to ramp up production to do this, so they could levy taxes on this new income. But not the Hawke government. They whacked on a wine tax, which crippled new investment in the industry. That tax drove all profit out of winemaking, so the next development was that as investors withdrew from the industry our leading corporate producers were taken over at severely depressed prices by foreign interests, notably French. This, in turn, gave those foreign interests ownership of the new, world leading Australian technology.

            So that’s how we socialists do things in Australia, the good and the bad of it. At least we can still buy your good quality Bavarian Discounter wines for Au$5 to Au$8 a bottle. Perhaps there is no tax on your bottle.

            10

      • #
        Allen Ford

        “Claimed to be due to a tree being felled and hitting a power pole.”

        From my observations of tree fellers, they are superb craftsmen who can fell a tree within a millimetre, so if a power pole was wiped out by a falling tree, the feller must have been a dud to start with.

        So, not only is SA the home of incompetent electricity managers, but crummy tree fellers as well!

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      • #
        AndrewWA

        I live in Nedlands, Perth for the past 25 years.

        Have never had a power blackout in that time.

        Now that’s a reliable power supply!

        It help s that we’re on the “Hospital Grid” and live close to where Sir Charles Court used to reside.

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    • #
      ROM

      .
      Jo no doubt has her speech well prepared.
      .

      But if there are comments on Battery back up for the so called Wind and Solar renewable energy, the experience of the large and brand new experimental Grid battery complex in Brussels, Belgium might be worth a mention.
      .
      Dated November 12th 2017 so this item is very current.

      Wind power backup and storage batteries explode into flames and send a toxic cloud over the city of Brussels

      A wind power storage battery has exploded into flames at a power station located near the city of Brussels. The fire resulted in a cloud of toxic fumes that flew over the city and force thousands of people to stay at home. The battery was part of the first real live testing of power batteries being used to store wind power in Belgium. After less than one month, the test miserably failed with the battery being destroyed by fire and residents hiding in their houses to escape the polluted cloud. Here is the story.
      On Saturday the 11th of November 2017, around noon, people in some western areas of the city of Brussels (Belgium) could smell a strong and irritating odor that some described as being similar to the smell of “burning plastic”.
      A little later, the population was informed of a fire going on in the Electrabel-Engie power plant located at Drogenbos. Electrabel-Engie is the main electricity producer in Belgium, and operates a gas turbine power plant in Drogenbos, a village located at the western limit of the city of Brussels – where the wind did come from at the time of the accident.
      &
      Starting in October 2017, the facilities at ENGIE’s Energy Storage Park should be able to draw electricity from the grid when too much power is being generated, store it in the batteries and then reinject it into the system when needed.
      So apparently they indeed started-up the real size testing of their carefully selected batteries.
      But it took less than one month for the first of them to blow up into flames and forces tens of thousands of inhabitants to stay hidden in their home to avoid the toxic cloud that resulted from this experiment.

      More>

      Grid batteries and the connection with Renewable Energy storage could get real interesting if the reliability of the batteries let alone the cost and the replacements of those grid batteries begins to be a major problem as without battery storage, everything about the long term use of intermittent, non-despatchable, non-predictable Wind and Solar Renewable energy is just plain green propaganda crap that has no future in providing long term useable energy in the huge amounts needed to sustain and power a Nation let alone a global civilisation at any level.

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      • #
        Peter C

        Exploding batteries could be a turning point. Especially if it happens to the Elon Musk, Power battery in SA.

        I recently had my own Lithium battery catch fire in my garage, while charging it. It was a scary thing indeed. And it was only 1500mAh.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Yup…now imagine a 1000 KWH battery going up….larghe smoking hole in the ground.

          The right thing by considering should be forcing the lithium batteries to be considered class 1 fire hazard, or , let people install them bt wiave any right to have the firies turn up if their house catches fire.

          Poor old Stds Aust got jumped on from a great height while trying to do the right thing, the problem is no one told them they had to pony up to the globalist play book to allow renewables to trash our economy by people strapping lithium devices to their houses. Stds Aust are probably still licking their wounds for being sensible and pragmatic….now they are off to a new round of consultation to find the “right” answer this time…..

          http://www.standards.org.au/OurOrganisation/News/Documents/Next steps agreed for on-site residential battery storage standards for Australia.pdf

          The Victoriastan firies sensibly wanted to force people to install said incendary devices in houses in fire proof rooms.

          https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/battery-sector-fights-fire-risk-rules.3538968/#.Whuit7AUlaR

          “The fast-growing solar battery storage industry is engaged in a furious 11th-hour battle to kill new regulations that would force homeowners to build a separate “fire bunker” housing for battery installations.

          Industry and consumer groups have until August 15 to challenge draft recommendations issued by Standards Australia that could dramatically slow the uptake of residential battery storage.

          Final draft recommendations include a ban on in-house battery banks and are designed to avoid a repeat of the pink batts debacle in which a well-intentioned environmental initiative proved deadly.

          Industry groups and manufacturers say modern solar batteries are designed not to overheat and have described the new rules as overkill.

          Sales of battery storage have risen to 6750 battery installations last year, up from 500 in 2015, according to a recent survey. Solar energy equipment supplier SunWiz forecasts at least a threefold increase this year.

          Currently there are no Standards Australia regulations for in-home battery installations. The Clean Energy Council issued industry rules last year limiting home batteries to “a dedicated equipment room or battery room”.

          The council said installers should take account of ventilation, extreme temperatures and exclude “habitable rooms” including bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, sunrooms, bathrooms or laundries. Its rules included an exemption for “all-in-one” battery and inverter control systems.

          However, the draft Australian Standards go much further.

          Lithium ion batteries are classed as “fire hazard class 1”, and under the draft rules they must not be installed inside a domestic dwelling, within a metre of any access or egress area or under any part of a domestic dwelling.

          To qualify, lithium ion batteries must effectively be housed in a 3m x 2m fire shelter with eaves.

          The council’s voluntary code outlines the concerns. “Some lithium-based batteries can fail due to internal overheating, in a process known as ‘thermal runaway’,” the council says. “The normal chemical reactions within the battery during charging are exothermic (heat-generating).

          “If this heat is not able to dissipate, or the battery is overcharged for a long duration, the rate of chemical reaction can then speed up, which in turn increases the battery temperature further, in an increasing cycle until the battery is physically damaged.

          “Once this happens, there is a risk of fire and/or rupture of the battery, with emission of toxic material,’’ the council says.

          Standards Australia chief executive Bronwyn Evans said the draft report was a “comprehensive document” that was “the result of many hours of work from experts representing industry, government and community interests”.

          “The work is being driven by a range of stakeholders from all parts of industry who have an interest in standards in Australia that support the safe uptake of battery-storage systems in all buildings, but particularly in homes,” she said.
          Dr Evans said the standards were devised to give consumers and industry confidence in innovative solutions.

          “They should give markets and governments confidence when making regulatory and investment decisions and get the balance right between all the different interests and voices in the room,” she said.”

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      • #
        Will Janoschka

        The only worse idea is\are the three LNG storage tanks (43m diameter) at the Everett terminal in Boston. They are 1.4 km straight down the runway from Logan airport! One engine failure on takeoff; the whole east coast goes up in a flaming ball of methane! Much like why Noah built the Ark! Oh woha are we! 🙁

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        • #
          Mark

          …and how many holes in your Swiss cheese must line up that would force an aeroplane to travel exactly as intended into disaster? They are not stuck on rails, Will.

          40

          • #
            Will Janoschka

            …and how many holes in your Swiss cheese must line up that would force an aeroplane to travel exactly as intended into disaster? They are not stuck on rails, Will.

            That would depend on ‘skill of pilot’ Can you imagine the skill level of a Boston pilot? 🙁

            50

        • #
          michael

          It is very unlikely for an LNG tank to explode- the tanks are very strong and it is thick liquid which is hard to evaporate. The plane explosion wouldn’t cause it to explode but an LNG leak is very awkward for the fire service to handle- they stop leaks and then contain it away from buildings and let it burn as it lighter than water and heavier than air and spreads out wide.

          43

      • #
        Allen Ford

        Let’s face it, incompetent pollies and bureaucrats have been stampeded into investing in immature wind and solar technologies, very immature technologies, without engineers doing the necessary spade work to iron out all the bugs before widespread adoption.

        One of the secrets of past German excellence in tech based industries was to have their boards and managements dominated by engineers and real scientists, not the human fairy floss that has grown up in Oz and elsewhere. Given the calibre of their pollies, such as Angela Merkel, I wonder how long Germany can maintain its standards.

        Oz has not got much time left to wake up to itself.

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        • #
          ROM

          Allan Ford @ #3.3.3

          Mulling over the last few hours on this newly hatched Grid Battery fixation of the greens and the irrevocable ignorance of the politicals and a large section of the academic ivory tower dwellers on the faults , failures and etc of the grid battery technologies currently being promoted at extortionist perices by various brown paper bag dispensers of the grab the money and cut and run scammers in renewable energy , most of those politicals, elitist greens and their running dog media who seem to have had little or no contact with the reality of real world outside of their models and ivory towers, plus most of the opinion writers and reporters in the media, Grid batteries are now being seen apparently as the newest grand savior of every energy situation on the planet.

          So looking at this picture of grid battery storage , I have come to the identical conclusion you have just stated above
          Grid battery storage as is renewable energy is destined to be one of the great failures nd eventual cast offs at a colossal cost in wealth and human society, of the 21st century.
          .

          The whole Green pus filled carbuncle of renewable energy’s inability to supply reliable cheap and above all, despatchable power when needed, where needed, is supposedly about to be solved by using highly experimental, completely unproven, incredibly costly, dangerous in many circumstances, very short life which even the claims of life times and cycles are unproven in real time commercial storage operating conditions plus with some types of batteries almost completely incapable of being disposed of safely at end of life and their life cycle limitations except by burial due to the chemical breakdown of the battery’s chemical elements, all of these plus many other factors are almost invariably going to destroy the concept of batteries as a grid storage system in the eyes of the public, the politicals and business and by default even eventually in the media when all the items above begin to go wrong either in individual grid battery systems or as a failure of the whole class of newly minted and very undeveloped and at this point for most such battery systems that are being promoted and sold to governments of so many variations and types, a bunch of almost completely unproven and very costly in resources technologies.
          .
          So many times in my life I have seen what appears to be quite promising developments thrust upon potential users and businesses and even the public long before the new development has had all its faults ironed out and has been proven to be reliable and safe addition to the running of people’s lives and society.
          And usually such poorly prepared developments are destined for the round file rarely ever to be revived again for further assessment.
          .
          It strikes me that this is where Grid battery development or the quite marked failure to first find and develop a reliable, safe, long life, cost competitive grid battery system , IF such a Grid battery system is at all able to be developed is about to become all very unstuck.
          Many engineers who have worked on battery deveolopments for many years are expressing some big doubts about the whole concept of Grid battery storage given the immense scale and tottally prohibitive cost for what is in reality a very small storage capability compared to society’s use of and requirement for power particularly for power for non interruptible industrial processes.
          .
          Unfortunately, the politicals, the elitist and outright ignorant greens plus most of the media in their ignorance just gloss over, pass over in effect the requirements of Industry for ultra reliable electrical Grid power and concentrate instead on the emotions of the domestic consumer of power, a sector which only uses about a quarter to a third of all the electrical power produced.
          .
          I suspect that a lot of politicians will rise and fall on the basis of their support for any one of a number of the innumerable number of types of very extortionly priced, unproven grid battery storage systems when those battery technologies eventually fail to live up to the guarantees those politicals in their ignorance and naivete in believing the grid battery scammers, provide a cast iron rock solid guarantee to the public on the performance and pricing of the Grid battery technologies they are espousing.

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          • #
            Allen Ford

            Battery fun has already started, ROM, according to this gem:

            A wind power storage battery has exploded into flames at a power station located near the city of Brussels. The fire resulted in a cloud of toxic fumes that flew over the city and force thousands of people to stay at home. The battery was part of the first real live testing of power batteries being used to store wind power in Belgium. After less than one month, the test miserably failed with the battery being destroyed by fire and residents hiding in their houses to escape the polluted cloud.

            Keep your eyes on SA!

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        • #
          jorgekafkazar

          It may be too late for Wustralia.

          10

  • #
    James

    I just read Stephen Marshall’s entry in Wikipedia. Looks like what I would expect from a Labor politician. The Liberal party should try a true conservative as their leader!

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    • #
      PeterS

      Yes they should but so far it appears they won’t as the cancer has spread to far. The only option left is for the Liberal Party to implode to let a new one be formed out of the ashes with the Australian Conservatives perhaps acting as a seed. Either that or we have to accept the wished of the people this country is headed for a leftist socialist state for a very long time. At least we should be given a choice. As long as Turnbull and his kind rule the Liberal Party we have no real choice but to have one form or another leftist party in control.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Bernadi is quietly building his base. He says he had 15,000 members some months ago so he is getting close to the same numbers as the (now depleted) Liberal and probably the same as the active numbers in Labor (not counting those signed up for branch stacking even if they knew).
        If he set up in WA he has a real chance of taking every Liberal held seat by offering those who aren’t going to vote Liberal again a choice that doesn’t involve Shorten.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        … no real choice but to have one form or another leftist party in control.

        Socialist or Communist? Would you like fries with that?

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  • #

    http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/

    Like Matt Ridley says, renewables, give them land, lots of land,
    …just to boil the kettle. Inter-mittant, in-ter-mitt-ant.

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  • #
    robert rosicka

    Good luck Jo knock em for six .

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  • #
    PeterS

    Hasn’t anyone apart from myself got the message? Australia is well and truly on the road to more and more renewables, whether it be 20%, 50%, or 100%. Nothing now will stop it come hell or high water. I’m not suggesting we give up trying but let’s face reality. We have lost and we just have to wait it out until the collapse happens so we can rebuild Australia. Meanwhile we can press on explaining ourselves using this and other similar forums, not so much to stop the final outcome from happening but to keep the lamp glowing to act as a beacon of truth for the people willing to admit they got it wrong for voting either of the major parties when the darkness sets in.

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    • #
      robert rosicka

      As I’ve been saying start voting green which gives you a choice of three parties then sit back and watch the chaos .
      The brainwashed sheeple won’t act till the lights go out permanently.

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      • #
        PeterS

        I just don’t have the will to vote green, be it LNP, ALP or Greens. I won’t need to – more than enough are voting for these parties to keep this country on the highway to hell. It would be so wonderful and refreshing to see a party like the Australian Conservatives form government but of course that’s just dreaming – it just won’t happen as too many people are simply either brain dead or don’t care.

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    • #
      Peter C

      I agree that things look bad right now. Maybe nothing can stop all this madness right now.

      But we might have one or more defections from the Federal Liberal Party within weeks.
      Some parliamentarians know what is wrong. That might even cause an election.

      Jo and Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones are still talking and have a fairly wide audience.

      Keeping this blog going is one thing we can try and do to turn things around.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Defections although understandable will only lead to even more voters leaving the Liberal Party making it even easier for ALP to win government. The problem is the Liberal Party now more than ever needs the support of the non-left minor parties, such as One Nation and the Australian Conservatives to shore up their base to win government but it’s not happening because of Turnbull’s stubbornness and ego. He thinks like a President despite the fact we are not a republic. ALP and the Greens have done an excellent job of cementing a large base despite some of their disagreements. As the Liberal base keeps shrinking, the ALP+Greens alliance keeps growing relatively speaking. If that continues long enough there will be only one major party and a whole bunch of minor parties. That’s a recipe for disaster for this nation. It’s time the Liberal Party formed strong alliances with minor parties or else face extinction. My preference is to start from scratch and let the Liberal Party die but that will mean the ALP will be in government for a very long time.

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        • #
          robert rosicka

          I think your dreaming if you think Libs , Nats and minors could get along .
          Libs are fighting themselves and picking fights with Nats who also don’t mind a bit of argy Bargy , one nation is destroying themselves and all three in a room trying to agree on something would be a crap fight .
          The government never fix anything till it’s broken and they might be dysfunctional but they aren’t broken yet .

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          • #
            PeterS

            Robert, yes I know I’m dreaming and as I said it’s not going to happen under the current Liberal Party. If it had a completely different leader with vision and true leadership qualities it could happen. I very much doubt it ever will. The Liberal Party in its current form is clearly disintegrating. The leader has caused a caused a shift towards the left of politics within the Liberal Party. As a result large numbers of conservative and centre right voters have already left the party. As the Liberal Party keeps disintegrating the hope of them forming a government rapidly vanishes. It’s very much like the divide and conquer strategy. Some even argue that Turnbull is a mole that’s doing exactly that but of course that’s pure speculation. There’s a lot that will have to change before we ever get drug of socialism out of Australia. Until then we just have to put up with the ALP+Greens in power in due course.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          PeterS:

          My comment in WE Unthreaded 4.2.

          Basically there is no hope until the economy collapses, which it will do fairly soon after the Left gets control. The question is will democracy survive? If it does then in about 7-8 years Australia can start on the long road back. It won’t be nice or cosey in the meantime.

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          • #
            jorgekafkazar

            It seems the solution to failed Socialism is always more Socialism. Wake up, Australia!

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          • #
            PeterS

            Graeme I doubt very much “democracy” in its current form will survive. History if full of evidence that no political system stays around forever. Our current forms of Western democracies (none of which are true democracies) will die and be replaced something else. History would dictate that we would go through a very dark period (ie, some form of dictatorship) before things get better again. I wish that were not the case but anyone with an objective mind can’t ignore history although that’s exactly what mankind keeps doing over and over. I can already hear the cry “it’s different this time”. Wrong wrong wrong.

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          • #
            Robdel

            In 7 or 8 years, with Labor in and all the boats arriving, Australia will become unrecognisable. Fortunately I will be dead by then.

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      • #
        Mark A

        AB is a fence sitter and Alan J sided with the the enemy

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    • #
      jorgekafkazar

      “…[W]e just have to wait it out until the collapse happens so we can rebuild Australia….”

      You’re assuming that things will get better after the collapse. I’m sure many Germans asked themselves in the 30’s, “How much worse can things get?”. And they found out.

      A collapse can be used to the advantage of those who cause it.

      “[The Nazis] had no intention of cooperating . . . knowing it was to their advantage to let things get worse . . . thus increasing the appeal of Hitler to an ever more miserable people.” –The History Place

      The time to slug it out is before it happens. It won’t get any easier once the lights go out.

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  • #
    Peter C

    FORUM

    Topic: The National Energy Market (NEM)

    Sub Title: How Canberra is Destroying Australia’s Electricity Market
    and
    Three Easy Ways to Destroy a Perfectly Good Electricity Grid

    Speaker: Joanne Nova

    http://www.cniwa.com.au/

    Perhaps some one can send a report of the proceedings later today.

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  • #

    While seemingly just my butting in here to add this week’s link to the Base Load data and analysis, it would seem that Victoria might just be about to find out what it does take to destroy a perfectly good grid, and that was to close down Hazelwood back at the end of March.

    This last week, the normal Summer months rise in power consumption began, and day time power usage spiked, and stayed high for five days, and is still happening, even over the weekend when power consumption is lower.

    Three of their remaining ten coal fired Units are down, and I suspect that two of them might have some problems, because they are not usually down for longer than a week, as in this case. That took almost a third of Victoria’s coal fired power off line. Even with imports from the three surrounding States, they were still so low on power generation that they had EVERY gas fired Unit in the State running, and some of them barely generate 10 to 20MW. That was 2000MW plus for the five days, and because of that, power prices spiked in Victoria to up and beyond $200/MWH.

    Hazelwood with 1400MW and two of those three offline Units comes in at around 2500MW, so there would have been enough to cover that spike and have backup in place but now they are almost running everything and hoping the other States can kick in as well, not a good way to run the grid in Victoria, or for that fact, across the wider Australia.

    That gives me the impression that Victoria may be the State which will have problems this Summer, and that might also wash over into South Australia.

    Australian Base Load Electrical Power – Week Ending 25th November 2017

    Tony.

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    • #
      robert rosicka

      Well if Victoriastan goes dark and the wind isn’t blowing in SA yes they will also go dark and that expensive AA battery will be useless .

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    • #

      Gentlemen, start your (diesel) motors.

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    • #
      ROM

      Got a taste of a blackout last night Tony, when somebody apparently hit a power pole with a stack of wires and maybe a transformer on it right near the centre of Horsham.

      Its a very long time indeed since I have experienced a decent blackout that ran for more than a couple of hours but this one ran to about nine hours [ and counted ourselves lucky it was for only that long ]

      Only our NW sector of Horsham was without power unlike a full on general blackout that will be the case if the Vic generators and the interstate suppliers can’t fill the demand.

      Then we could be looking at days of being powerless out here in the bush as we are second [ third ? ] class citizens under Despot Dan’s Green driven Vicistan so the green elites inside of the Goat Cheese Circle will get their power back on first no doubt.

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    • #
      AndrewWA

      Thanks Tony
      Your efforts very much appreciated.

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    • #
      Analitik

      Nope. South Australia will go down first.

      Victoria has interconnectors to NSW and is also attached to the Snowy scheme + BassLink. If South Australia has enough wind generation to self supply, then the majority of Victoria’s wind farms will also be generating due to the geographic proximity. If the wind isn’t blowing and Victoria’s grid is stressed, South Australia’s almost certainly will be too and the Heywood and MurrayLink interconnectors are at the western edges of the Victorian grid, far from the generators and interconnectors.

      Most likely the offline Victorian units are undergoing maintenance in preparation for a demanding few upcoming months

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      • #
        Analitik

        Further to this, today all the Latrobe Valley coal plants are full steam ahead aside from Loy Yang A Unit 1 (560 MW) and Yallourn W Unit 1 (360 MW) which are offline (so 80% capacity online)

        A renewables advocate could accuse AGL and Energy Australia of conspiring to boost the wholesale price by taking the units offline…

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        • #

          Again, further to this as well, in good old Queensland, you know, 50% renewable by 2030, and shh! I’ll bet you won’t hear this anywhere else.

          The Labor incumbents have re-opened the Swanbank E CCGT gas fired plant after an upgrade, and being CCGT, it’s not a ‘Peaker’, but a plant specifically designed to run for extended periods of time. It’s a 385MW plant and is slated to be up and running in early January.

          Last week, I noticed it was up and running, albeit at ‘testing’ levels of power, around 100MW output, and it went up slowly to that level and stayed there for three and a half days, shutting down for the weekend. (So I guess that even power plants operate to Union rules)

          Monday Morning it came back up at 150MW at around 8AM (again, Union hours) stayed there for 27 hours, and almost two hours back now, it rolled on up to 350MW and is currently stable at that.

          All this in a State where they already have 110 to 125% of their actual power consumption coming from coal fired power, so it’s not like it’s actually needed, even if a few Units go down for maintenance, and currently only one coal fired Unit in that State is off line.

          At that 350MW mark, it’s making the owners $27,000 an hour just from the sale of the electricity it is generating. It’s owned by Stanwell Corp, which is a wholly State owned Corporation. (I guess they’re just addicted to the money, eh!)

          So now, with that operating, they’ll need to open a further TEN plants the same as the Clare Solar plant, umm, just to get back to parity right now, let alone add towards that target of 50% renewables by 2030 meme, and that’s all it is, a meme, because it will NEVER be achieved.

          Tony.

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            Antoine D'Arche

            maybe (very quietly) adding in back up for the southern states for this summer? Prevent the big blackouts/ interconnectors tripping which would otherwise occur. Make it appear as though renewables are working just fine.

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          • #
            Geoffrey Williams

            Worked on the Swanbank job as a drafty some years ago.
            It is so good to hear it is doing so well.
            Thanks Tony
            GeoffW

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    Phillip Bratby

    Well done Jo. Tell it like it is.

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    Bobl

    Dammit, went out for bbq, to late now to go!

    I wonder if we should set up some Friday afternoon synergistic beer drinking.

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    robert rosicka

    Back on topic , three ways to destroy a grid .

    1 -vote Labor, Green or liberal
    2 – reduce coal fired power
    3 – install renewables to replace no2 .

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      PeterS

      Actually steps 1 & 2 are sufficient. The existing coal fired power stations will continue to close down one by one due to economic reasons leading to massive disruptions to our electricity supply. Step 3 will give us some extra time but will be woefully insufficient to make up for the significant reductions in coal fired power.

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    Kevin Anderson

    Will this talk be on You tube?

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    Michael Reed

    As well as destroying a perfectly good grid other power reliant systems will not
    be able to function when crunch times start to occur with power outages and load shedding.
    By the way I have never given any party ( labor or liberal) the right or mandate to vandalize the grid ,our
    energy security is no longer secure.This crazy virtue signaling is treasonable.The outcomes
    will include(especially in summertime) food spoilages in supermarkets,rendering certain medication useless,traffic chaos,hopitals having to use back up generators ,inability to pump
    fuel and so on and so forth etc ,etc The big question is WHY WHY WHY ? this question is
    also accompanied by the other important question WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS
    MESS? The answer to both of these questions is our successive governments over the
    past decade.These people have not had the interests of their electorates in mind but
    rather slavishly following the rubbish scare mongering non science of IPCC reports
    (This ridulous advice also finds its way into local government i.e. councils) There is no
    easy way out also for the recession that is going to follow this economic suicide note either.
    The only way will be through a partial collapse or worse for the economy will be long
    and painfull .This is all so infuriating and unnecessary it reminds me of the prophetic words
    from Joni Mitchell “you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone”Amen Mike Reed

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  • #

    Great to see you getting exposure, Jo.

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    Fox from Melbourne

    Hope you put it up on YouTube for all the rest of us to see and hear Jo.
    Hope all goes well with it.

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  • #

    You guys should have been there.

    Good presentation. Well prepared with relevant, easily digestable facts. Provoked quite some interest from the audience.

    So glad that I’m not doing things like that. Jo sailed right through mis-speaks like “kilowatt-ounces” and “breaded dragons”. Thoughts colliding with mouth. It happens to the best of speakers; especially when they’ve got a lot to say in a limited time. [As opposed to poli-speak which involves speaking for long periods with brain in neutral.]

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    Dave in the States

    I was going to say God be with you but the presentation has already been done it appears.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      One should not assume that God is limited by a one-dimensional, linear manifestation, of time.

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        Eddie

        That’s why it’s still worth praying that an envelope doesn’t contain bad news.

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        Lionell Griffith

        Assumptions are wishes that are called assumptions.

        If you call a rose a skunk, what does it smell like?

        If you call a skunk a rose, what does it smell like?

        So much for calling a thing a different name in an attempt to change the thing.

        Question: Can God be brought into existence simply by assuming he/she/it exists?

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          Eddie

          Can a God be put out of existence simply by assuming they don’t exist?

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          • #
            Lionell Griffith

            Both my post and yours assumes something that must be proved. Assumptions (aka wishes) cannot either make something exist or not exist. In fact, they are irrelevant to the existential state of the thing assumed. That is my point.

            Without proof, any statement about the thing assumed is empty of meaning and without connection to reality. The statement can be treated as if nothing was said. True, you may have intended to say something but the only your intent exists and not the thing intended.

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            • #
              Eddie

              Mere absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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              • #
                Lionell Griffith

                However, absence of evidence makes any statement about the thing assumed, neither true nor false. It is simply arbitrary without cognitive content. Proof of existence must be provided to establish the cognitive content and to establish its truth value.

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            • #
              Eddie

              True, the state of existence may not be influenced by my assumption/understanding of it, except in my mind.

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            • #
              Another Ian

              LG

              “Assume” – the word that makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”

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            Graeme No.3

            Eddie:

            Are you refering to Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods?

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            • #
              Eddie

              Im not familiar with them Graeme.

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              • #
                Graeme No.3

                Have you ever read any of Terry Prachett’s fantasy novels?
                Based on a flat planet held up by 4 gigantic elephants supported by a huge turtle. If you read a lot of green articles you will find it closer to reality than they are.

                That particular book answers your question about the fate of gods if people stop believing in them.

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              • #
                PeterS

                Trouble is Graeme the lefties not only believe Gaia exists but also pay homage with billions of our dollars.

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            clivehoskin

            Karl Marx once said “My goal in life is to de-throne God”

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          dadgervais

          True, Religion is founded on an unproven assumption. Atheism is founded on the opposite unproven assumption.

          Of course, Arithmetic (Pareto), Logic (Aristotle), Geometry (Euclid), Boolean Algebra (Boole) are each based on 5 unprovable assumptions/axioms: as every AXIOM-atic system must be.

          Nothing can ever be proved without first assuming something.

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          Will Janoschka

          Question: Can God be brought into existence simply by assuming he/she/it exists?

          Certainly! Every thought must exist. Whether such is manifest physically is a whole different question. Being at best an image yourself you cannot in any way demonstrate that God is not manifest physically to God.

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            el gordo

            We are talking about collective thought, or group think on a large scale.

            The scientific paradigm shift on the yarn that god made humanity, may depend on the validity of UFO.

            I once saw a fleet of them and became an atheist over night.

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            • #
              OriginalSteve

              it depends…Scalar tech can move balls of plasma around with seemingly zero inertia.

              As Asimov said, any technology sufficiently advanced, has the appearance of magic to those who dont know how it works ( paraphrasing).

              My thoughts also are that God exists outside our own realm of congitive ability, as such I find mathematical probability is a good choice of “whats in the black box” proof …..

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                el gordo

                A parallel universe?

                When the stone age people of Sydney first spotted Captain Cook’s Endeavour going up the east coast, they probably thought it was a large canoe with a big white bird clinging to it.

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              • #

                any technology sufficiently advanced, has the appearance of magic to those who dont know how it works

                It was Arthur C Clarke who said that.

                Incidentally, I started reading SF back in the early 70’s, and luckily I started out with a compilation of short stories by Isaac Asimov, and in that small paperback was NIghtfall, an amazing little piece really, and it got me hooked on SF, and here I preferred SF to Fantasy, as I liked my SF to actually have some Science about it. From that, I hurriedly got hold of the (original) Foundation trilogy, which still stands up today, and umm, it’s mainly about Hari Seldon, a mathematician who used Maths as the basis for psychohistory, an algorithm based science that enabled him to predict the future. That got me interested in Maths more than school did, and how much of everyday life is based around Mathematics. Every few years or so, I go back and read those three old books, still amazing to this day.

                It’s also a little weird how SF turns out sometimes. I always wondered about my christian name, Anton, and how I went through life and made it to the age of 19 before I actually met another person with the same name. I always got the comments about my foreign sounding name all through school, so I just got used to Tony.

                In my 20s I asked Mum how that name came about. She told me that both she and my Dad were SF fans, and they would share those pulp paperbacks during the first few years of their marriage. I was the first born, and while Mum was heavily pregnant with me, I suppose they were casting around for a name, you know, first born and all that. Anyway, my Dad was reading a short story in one of those cheap SF paperbacks and the name of the main character was ….. Anton. He brought the matter up with Mum, and they both liked the name, as it was sort of unique, neither having heard of the name before that, hence my name.

                From then on, after I found out about that, and our previously unknown liking for SF, I shared those SF books with my Mum after I had read them. There was only one of them, amongst many from the three SF main authors I read (Asimov, Heinlein and EE ‘Doc’ Smith) that she didn’t like, and that was I Will Fear No Evil by Robert Heinlein.

                Very little SF these days stands up when you compare it with Isaac Asimov. Perhaps Peter F Hamilton comes closest IMHO.

                Tony.

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                ROM

                Ah! Tony, another long term fan of SF here particularly of Isamov and Authur C Clarke plus a few others.

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    Another Ian

    Around this area

    “The big slide in renewable energy tells the real story”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/26/the-big-slide-in-renewable-energy-tells-the-real-story/

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      Robber

      This should be a headline in the mainstream media, but will it get a mention? From Bjørn Lomborg on WUWT:
      Renewable Energy a Flop.
      “Half a century ago, in 1966, the world got 15.6% of its energy from renewables. Today (2016) we still get less of our energy at 13.8%.”
      “Most of the renewables are not solar PV and wind. Today, almost 10 percentage points come from the world’s oldest fuel: wood. Hydropower provides another 2.5 percentage points and all other renewables provide just 1.6 percentage points, of which solar PV and wind provide 0.8 percentage points.”
      “Neither will most renewables in 2040 come from solar PV and wind, as breathless reporting tends to make you believe. 10 percentage points will come from wood. Hydropower provides another 3 percentage points and all other renewables provide 6 percentage points, of which solar PV and wind will (very optimistically) provide 3.7 percentage points.
      Oh, and to achieve this 3.7 % of energy from solar PV and wind, you and I and the rest of the world will pay – according to the IEA – a total of $3.6 trillion in subsidies from 2017-2040 to support these uncompetitive energy sources. (Of course, if they were competitive, they wouldn’t need subsidies, and then they will be most welcome.)”
      “Most people tend to think about electricity for renewables, but the world uses plenty of energy that is not electricity (heat, transport, manufacture and industrial processes).
      Actually, if the world miraculously could make the *entire* global electricity sector 100% green without emitting a single ton of greenhouse gasses, we would have solved just a third of the total global greenhouse gas problem.”

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    John

    Jo, would love to hear you speak publicly so would you please give your potential audience more notice next time of an upcoming event.
    Thanks in advance

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    • #
      Eddie

      I guess a yacht club only has so much capacity. I dont think this eas the first outing of this talk & it probably (?) wont be the last.

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    John

    All the best for the event Jo.

    All levels of government have been vandalising the grid for too long.

    Will you be making the transcript of your address available?

    It would be great if you could post it on your blog for those of us who could not make it (I live in NSW).

    Keep up the good work in your fight against this vandalism.

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    Another Ian

    Another around this area Jo FYI.

    From the link at

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/11/blowout-24.html

    “Australian Council of Learned Academies: The Role of Energy Storage in Australia’s Future Energy Supply Mix”

    Then the first comment

    “Euan Mearns says:
    November 25, 2017 at 5:13 pm

    I have scanned the ACOLA report, particularly the bit about modelling storage. There’s not a single graph of supply or demand. On p33 they say this:

    1.3.3 Modelling limitations
    The model developed for this report is not a power system model of Australia’s electricity grid and cannot simulate consumer or generator behaviour. Nevertheless, it does carry out an hour-by-hour calculation of the energy supply balance and calculates the storage required to compensate for extended low supply periods.

    Like Blakers they opt to use models based on meteorological data instead of the real generation data that is available. As Roger points out, 105 GWh ~ 4 hours worth of storage. I am left wondering if their calculations are 3 orders of magnitude out? They produce this table:”

    More comment at the link

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    • #
      ROM

      When I saw that excruciating title “Australian Council of Learned Academies’: my immediate reaction was what a load of ivory towered, bird brained, self centred wankers that lot must be !

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    David Maddison

    Jo, will you be putting the talk online?

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    Ross

    Graham No.3 above suggests nothing will happen unless the Australian economy collapses. I cannot see that happening but this guy suggests the good times are coming to an end. It is a very long but detailed read. While I do not agree with everything he says and think he is a bit pessimistic at times, it is well worth the time and effort to read it.

    The author is the CEO of Freelancer (a successful listed company, in Australia)

    https://medium.com/@matt_11659/matt-barrie-australias-economy-is-a-house-of-cards-6877adb3fb2f

    How do site readers reconcile the Queensland results? As a kiwi I’m not up on the details of the election fight but does it suggest there are other major issues outside of energy problems?

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      PeterS

      It’s mostly a good read although I too don’t agree with all of it. It’s really unnecessary to go through so much detail in any case. All throughout history good times are followed by bad times and then are followed by good times, etc. In other words it’s cyclical. Yes our current “good times” will come to an end one day, I have no doubt about that. One can wonder what will the “bad times” look like? I don’t think we can speculate on that just now. Let’s wait and see.

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      PeterS

      The Qld results have sent a clear message. An isolated and fractured party (ie, LNP) is a dying party. Letting large numbers of One Nation preferences to go to an ALP candidate in preference to a Liberal or Nats one is an example where the LNP have just shot themselves in the foot.

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      RickWilll

      Labor ran effective ads reminding Queenslander that the current LNP leader was the treasurer in the Newman LNP government.
      https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/labor-releases-attack-ad-targeting-nicholls-and-train-contract-20170912-p4yvvv.html
      I am told by a couple of Queenslanders these ads had some impact. Newman has next to zero friends in the Queensland public service and that it a large group to alienate. I think the Newman legacy has lingered.

      Conservative vote gets split now between PHON and LNP and as PeterS stated there were no preference deals so PHON second preference will be split. The aim is to disadvantage sitting members. That has probably backfired for PHON as they have not got a seat yet.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Indeed RickWill. I wonder if Turnbull has got the message? He needs to work with One Nation very closely to have even a snow flake’s chance in hell to try and defeat the ALP+Greens juggernaut. Let’s be realistic, the LNP is toast simply because the Liberal Party is leaking blood and as a result is going through a very slow death. It’s no longer just a party divided is a party lost. It’s now in the next phase of having already lost a large number of supporters and still bleeding. A major surgical operation is the only way it can attract back those lost supporters. The trouble is the surgeon to perform such an operation is nowhere to be seen. All we can see are vultures surrounding the dying carcass.

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      RickWilll

      I expect to see growth linger till 2019. Chinese population has a medium age just over 37 years. Typically it needs to be up around 38 years before private savings overtake private debt. But China is not a mature modern economy so it could go past what countries like Japan and Italy have experienced as they pass that median age.

      Commodities will hold around current levels. (wind and solar generators require a massive amount of steel and energy to create as does the gas turbines needed to keep the lights on). Meanwhile Chinese tourism is accelerating and that will help the Australian economy. Also immigration supports growth at the cost of crowded infrastructure and lower standard of living for current residents. Government debt does not matter as long as it is denominated in the issued currency.

      Australia’s net foreign debt fell in the June quarter to AUD990bn. That is a key statistic to watch as it should be trending down rather than up at this stage.

      Most economic commentators have only experienced growing populations. The world has passed peak growth in population and is expected to stabilise around 11bn.
      https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/updated-World-Population-Growth-1750-2100.png
      Most developed countries have declining populations or increases supported by immigration.

      A fundamental shift in developed countries is reducing reliance of aged on government pensions. That requires individuals to build savings as they approach retirement. The money has to come from government debt or foreign savings. Japan is an example where the population has huge savings through both government debt and foreign savings. Australia is building the private wealth through government debt but, unlike Japan, we have foreign obligations. When the brown stuff meets the fan Australia will be importing fewer of the goodies considered essential today.

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      Graeme No.3

      Ross:

      Interesting article and saying just what I said. We are going to go into a deep depression in Australia. It will only take some crash, some slump and down we will go. All these enthusiastic green leaners are going to find out the hard way that there is no unending supply of money.
      How it will pan out I don’t know and I won’t be around when it does end, except I can be sure that the politicians will blame everything but themselves and try to sell more snake oil. As I said I hope democracy survives, it could be a great country.

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        Lionell Griffith

        The tipping point will be the first bounced check. It is the check that all other checks depend upon to being paid. The whole fantasy house of cards will fall into a painful tangled heap. It is known as “running out of other people’s money.” There will be no more other people with money and no way to produce the wealth that stands behind the money they don’t have.

        The government will only be able to say “Oops, we didn’t mean for this to happen.” I contend they did mean for this to happen because every time government gets out of control, this is what will happen.

        There is no such thing as a free lunch. All lunches will be paid for. Sometimes with cash on hand. Other times with pain, agony, blood, sweat, and tears.

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      el gordo

      ‘…does it suggest there are other major issues outside of energy problems?’

      We have to decide between strategic and commercial considerations, this is a first world problem.

      NZ has signed an agreement on OBOR, thumbing their nose at the Alliance, good move.

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    pat

    posted this on “Unthreaded” without realising jo had started new threads, so figure it’s worth posting here for those who missed it:

    by former UK Energy Minister (Labour), Brian Wilson, who writes regularly for The Scotsman:

    25 Nov: Scotsman: Brian Wilson: Ill wind blows for Scotland’s 2nd Industrial Revolution
    For a few days, the ­problems of BiFab ­commanded public attention. It was almost back to the old days, with workers threatening to blockade the yards. The First Minister rushed home to take ­command. A few heads were knocked together to underwrite the work and laps of honour ensued.

    End of story? Well, it certainly should not be. What happened with BiFab is only the symptom of a far more serious problem which remains entirely unresolved. It might be called “Whatever happened to Scotland’s Second Industrial Revolution?”. In other words, how on earth have we ended up getting so little economic benefit out of renewable energy?…
    ***There seemed to be some media awakening last week to the fact it was not meant to be like this. The bold promises of that “second industrial revolution” were dusted down. I heard the BBC’s Gordon Brewer on television asking Keith Brown, the industry minister, why Scotland has been so unsuccessful in attracting investment in renewables infrastructure with the vast majority of hardware imported…

    The same question should have been asked long ago about onshore wind. While we were listening to endless political rhetoric about the “Saudi Arabia renewables” and world-beating targets, nobody seemed to care about the fact that thousands of turbines which appeared on our hillsides were being built in Spain, Denmark and Germany while every promise of investment in Scotland came to nothing. (Dundee no more, Leith no more, etc)…READ ALL
    http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/brian-wilson-ill-wind-blows-for-scotland-s-2nd-industrial-revolution-1-4621767

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    John Watt

    Hopefully this not the death knell for Qld electricity stability just yet. We do have some reasonably young, reasonably effective coal-fired power stations still on the grid. We have 3 years to get the message across?
    Of more concern is that the jobs to be created by building renewable energy infrastructure are being heralded as a “bonus” for the economy. The reality is that a decade ago we had reliable, affordable energy and we had jobs for people to make and sell useful stuff worldwide. Now we are being encouraged to divert the labour force to make the energy ..presumably , once we regain affordable, reliable energy we can then resume making and selling useful stuff. Who voted for this giant backward leap?

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      RickWilll

      The Queensland economy is on the road to ruining heavy industry. The growing intermittent generation will make the oldest coal plants uneconomic. My bet is Gladstone will go sooner than later. There will need to be more fast response gas plant built. The combination of these forces gas and electricity prices up as has happened in SA and VIC. That probably means BSL goes then QAL. Yarwun may keep going. Margins for coal and gas will remain low.

      Chinese tourism should build but heavy industry will just fade away as experienced in SA. Making movies will get a boost as the AUD falls relative to USD. We may even US tourists coming back.

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      • #
        ROM

        There s always a quote around somewhere to fit just about any situation;

        So heres a couple on the troubles we see ahead ;.
        .
        I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

        Mark Twain
        ————
        &
        .
        If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.

        Calvin Coolidge
        —————-

        Tomorrow !

        Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

        Khalil Gibran

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        Bushkid

        As a resident of the area mentioned, not employed in either of the industries but operating a very small business dependent on the disposable income of many of those employed in the refining and smelting industries, I have to agree that if the present illogical and fantasist ideals the labor state government and likely incoming labor state government, coupled with the federal level current policies and those proposed by the likely next labor government come to fruition, then this region and many of us who are just trying to make an honest living will not be able to. Couple the failing of the local economy with falling house prices (yet again), the cost of living rising everywhere but especially here in the regions, and I can only agree that the future of the Gladstone region is not likely to be at all rosy.

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    pat

    update on sale of Time Magazine:

    27 Nov: Bloomberg: Gerry Smith: Meredith to Buy Time Inc. With Koch Backing
    Meredith Corp. agreed to acquire Time Inc. for $2.8 billion including debt, swallowing the once-mighty home of Fortune and Sports Illustrated after the internet age wreaked havoc on even the most prestigious magazine titles…
    The acquisition also gives the billionaire Koch brothers, who agreed to support Meredith’s offer with an equity injection of $650 million, a foothold in the struggling magazine industry.

    ***Koch Equity Development, the brothers’ investment arm, won’t have a seat on Meredith’s board or have influence on its editorial or managerial operations, according to the statement…

    The Kochs’ involvement may raise new questions about political influence on the news media, especially a ???hallowed journalistic outlet like Time magazine…
    The Koch brothers have spent decades building a network of wealthy political donors who pledge money to conservative causes and their advocacy groups…

    Like its competitors, New York-based Time struggled to reinvent itself as print advertising dries up and the lion’s share of digital advertising dollars goes to Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google…
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-26/meredith-is-said-to-near-deal-to-buy-time-new-york-times-says

    not mentioned by Bloomberg:

    The Hill: Time Inc. reaches acquisition deal with company backed by Koch brothers: report
    The Koch brothers refused to back President Trump during his election campaign, but have improved relations with his administration in 2017, meeting with top officials including Vice President Pence…

    Bloomberg writes: The Kochs’ involvement may raise new questions about political influence on the news media…

    meanwhile:

    26 Nov: Townhall: Timothy Meads: New York Times Columnist: If You Support Trump, We Can’t Be Friends
    New York Times columnist Charles Blow took to Twitter Friday afternoon with a message of unity, no doubt inspired by Divine Providence after rejoicing in the Thanksgiving holiday.

    Just kidding. The author of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” told his followers point blank that Trump fans need not apply for friendship…
    TWEET: Charles M. Blow‏, NYT – Nov 24 2017
    If u support Trump, we don’t have anything to talk abt & we can’t be friends. This isn’t abt parties or ideology; This is abt right & wrong

    He followed up his Tweet saying that Trump’s lying was the cornerstone of his rejection of his political adversaries.
    TWEET: Charles M. Blow‏, NYT – Nov 24 2017
    Lying is a foundational sin; It makes all other sins possible. Trump lies ALL THE TIME. That for me is a deal-breaker out of the gate!…

    Blow also offered a pretty lame life mantra.
    TWEET: Charles M. Blow‏, NYT – Nov 24 2017
    This is my mantra: Equal rights for everyone, global warming is real, equal pay, #BLM, #LovesIsLove, #believewomen. And I’m anti-Trump!
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymeads/2017/11/26/new-york-times-columnist-if-you-support-trump-we-cant-be-friends-n2414339

    and on 23 Nov:

    TWEET: Charles M. Blow‏, NYT – Nov 23 2017
    Read my column, “Thankfully Recommitting to Resistance,” and let me know what you think.
    If anything, resisting Trump feels even more urgent than last year.
    LINK to NYT: Opinion: Thankfully Recommitting to Resistance

    political advocacy is only bad when it doesn’t suit FakeNewsMSM agendas.

    which reminds me, how come Joanne Nova hasn’t been signed up by our MSM as a regular columnist on the “science” and economics of CAGW?

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    Old Ghost

    Yes, an excellent delivery Joanne. Thank you. And yes it seemed to me that each of the (perhaps) 100 or so listeners @ the yacht club yesterday afternoon was highly appreciative of your thorough data. As to physics vs. metaphysics and/or the tangible vs. the intangible, I suggest ontology might perhaps be worth a browse to address things (negatively?) apparently assumed by other commenters.

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    Professor Howard Hayden, Ph.D., Author of Energy: A Textbook – speaks of A Dozen Energy Numbers You Ought to Know… that the cocktail-party experts do not know.

    Useful to know that the typical yield of unreliables is around 1 W/m².
    Nuclear provides around 400,000 W/m².

    It’s easy to lose sight of that when proponents mish-mash units to frustrate direct comparisons.

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    Mark McD

    “I’m speaking this afternoon in Perth — 3 ways to destroy a good electricity grid”

    Isn’t that only one way? 😀

    Sorry… I will go now… 😀

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    Robber

    AEMO declares a Forecast LOR1 condition for the VIC region for the following period: From 1530 hrs to 1700 hrs on Wed 29/11/2017.
    The contingency capacity reserve required is 1154 MW. The minimum reserve available is 953 MW.
    Melb temp is forecast to be 34C on Wed, with Adel at 36C. Hope the wind is blowing, and the interconnectors from SA, Tas and NSW are working.
    Musk battery in SA due for commissioning Dec 1.

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      A note to the local folks on the ground near the batteries: Keep an eye on how they QA the Musk-rat’s batteries… Having worked with them, it will be interesting to see what % of the Energy is consumed in running the cooling systems / pumps under Full Load Amps. As a matter of fact, it will be interesting to know exactly what the FLA are over a short period of time. These things are quite delicate at the edges of their power band, and hard to keep in balance. Above all, don’t just take what they say and tell to the MSM. We know that they can’t do math, but are good at connecting Nouns to Objects with verbs.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Are you suggesting SA might get their Christmas fireworks display earlier than usual? That would be so nice.

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        Robber

        Don’t batteries operate best at 20-25 degrees C? So building them outdoors in a hot environment at Hornsdale Wind farm will mean lots of cooling required (perhaps a big windmill?)
        Nameplate capacity 129MWh. If we assume 80% efficiency, that means 103 MWh available to put into the grid, so over 4 hours that’s 25 MW per hour. That compares with SA peak demand of about 2000 MW, so the world’s biggest battery can supply only 1.25% of the second smallest state in Australia, or 0.1% of the AEMO grid peak requirement. The average household consumes 4,900 KWh/year equal to 0.55 KWh/hour. So let’s say at peak demand each house requires 1 KWh/hour for 4 hours. That means the Musk Battery can supply 25,000 homes for 4 hours, and then it’s lights out.

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    Dennis

    Want a reactor in your backyard?
    GRAHAM LLOYD
    Volunteer communities are being sought for Australia’s first small nuclear reactors, which could be in operation by 2030.

    The Australian

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      Annie

      Must suggest that to our local ‘progress’ (regress) group who are investigating a solar micro-grid for this area;not if we can help it. We can get weeks of cloud and fog all winter…some progress.

      20

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        ROM

        AH! Annie ; Replace those weeks of cloud and fog witha nice blue glow from those speeding nuclear particles and their Cherenkov radiation with an unground silo installed SNR , ie; Small Nuclear Reactor such as the newly licensed for commercial development NuScale transportable , inground silo reactor with an operating life of 20 years before being liftred out of its containment silo for transporting to a centraliased and dedicated refueliing and refurbishing establishment.

        The Chinese and Russians may get there first but the replaceable, transportable Small Scale Nuclear Reactors dispersed across the width of the nation and firmly contained in their individual in ground silos and linked into the grid at its critical points does have some very big advantages such as being able to still run sections of the Grid if some parts of it are knocked out by terrorism or violent collisions or storms but that only happens in SA, and etc and for the green pest woosts who fear the deadly CO2 that coal gives off , another big, big worry to keep them awake at night waiting and lisrtening for the Big Bad Boom as it goes off.

        Ah, now that would be revenge indeed for all those rural innocents who are forced at the expense of their long term Health to live in the vicinity of newly built wind farms over which they had no say whatsoever.
        .
        Which the French judicary has just ruled that a turbine cannot be installed closer than ten times its maximum height to a pre-existing dwelling.
        Which with the latest and largest turbine at a maximum height of 220 metres that means that no turbine of this size can be built closer than 2.2 kilometres from a pre-existing dwelling.

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    Dennis

    EXCLUSIVE
    Push for new coal-fired station
    NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian speaks to the media in Sydney, Friday, November 24, 2017. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett) NO ARCHIVING
    ANDREW CLENNELL
    NSW Nationals will push Premier Gladys Berejiklian to build a coal-fired power station in the Hunter region.

    The Australian

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      pat

      Dennis –
      heard five minutes of Alan Jones show this morning. a caller phoned in to say Nationals want to build coal-fired power plant in Hunter Valley, but their coalition partners in Canberra would probably be against it.

      Jones does the usual I’m in favour of coal, BUT….it not in prime agricultural land, etc. caller agrees not on Liverpool plain, but Hunter Valley okay or whatever. Jones ignores the caller was talking about a coal-fired power plant and says all the coal is being sent overseas.

      meanwhile, Fairfax gives a minority more media space:

      28 Nov: Brisbane Times: Peter Hannam: NSW coal mines in the pipeline are ‘bigger than Adani’, Lock the Gate says
      The amount of new coal mining output being assessed by the Berejiklian government eclipses the Adani megamine proposed for Queensland and dwarfs its carbon emissions, according to analysis by Lock the Gate.
      A review of 10 major new mines or extension projects with key decision points during the coming year shows the potential for 75 million tonnes of annual coal production in NSW, more than the 60 million tonnes Adani hopes its Carmichael mine in central Queensland will produce each year.

      Even though some of the new mines will be underground, the total land disturbance from the 10 projects would total 39,000 hectares, also larger than Adani’s proposed 28,000-hectare disruption, Lock The Gate calculates, using published data from the projects.
      Water use would also be greater, with 23.5 billion litres a year for the 10 ventures compared with Adani’s 21.5 billion litres.

      And greenhouse gas emissions from the new fleet of mines would be about 50 per cent greater, at 181 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent versus Adani’s 120 million tonnes, the anti-coal group said.
      “We have already increased the volume of the coal we produce [in NSW] since 2010 by more than Adani is expected to bring to the surface,” Georgina Woods, a Lock the Gate campaigner, said. “And now we’re proposing to do the same again.”…

      Lock The Gate predicts mining and the controversial coal seam gas project proposed for Narrabri in the state’s north-west will be also prominent issues when NSW voters go to the polls in March 2019.
      Land, water and carbon emissions from the new mines will be the focus of a “Time2Choose” campaign Lock the Gate will launch on Tuesday…

      Stephen Galilee, chief executive of the NSW Minerals Council, said Lock the Gate had combined thermal and coking mines – such as Hume Coal and Rocky Hill – in the 10 projects, which showed they “don’t know what they’re talking about”.

      “We challenge Lock the Gate to name a single mining operation in NSW they support,” Mr Galilee said…
      “Mining operations in NSW use 0.1 per cent of land in NSW compared to 76 per cent for agriculture, and there are around one-third fewer operating coal mines in NSW now compared to five years ago.”…

      “The Coalition has approved over 1.3 billion tonnes of coal since it came to office in 2011 and NSW Treasury forecasts that 9.6 billion tonnes would be mined in NSW by 2056,” (Jeremy Buckingham, the NSW Greens energy spokesman) said…
      https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/nsw-coal-mines-in-the-pipeline-are-bigger-than-adani-lock-the-gate-says-20171127-gztbpw.html

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    Another Ian

    O/T

    Jo FYI

    “Mirrors and Mazes: A guide through the climate debate”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/27/mirrors-and-mazes-a-guide-through-the-climate-debate/

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    pat

    27 Nov: ClimateChangeNews: EU commission urged bank to support Azerbaijan gas pipeline
    Letter from top officials to the president of the EIB said Europe’s commitment to the pipeline ‘must not wane’ and called for publicly-backed loans
    By Karl Mathiesen
    A letter, released under freedom of information laws, from the European Commission vice president Maroš Šefčovič and climate and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete to the bank’s president Werner Hoyer made clear the importance of the project to the EU.

    The bank is considering loans in excess of €2 billion to two sections of the pipeline, from Azerbaijan to western Turkey and from Greece to southern Italy. Much of the work constructing the Turkish section has already been completed.

    The letter, dated 13 July 2017, said the project was “vital and irreplaceable” for the diversification of EU gas sources and security of supply. Almost a third of natural gas imports in Europe come from Russia – a reliance the union is keen to lessen.

    “Europe’s commitment must therefore not wane,” Šefčovič and Cañete wrote, adding they hoped the EIB – and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) – would give financial backing to the pipeline “thereby to exemplify that European Union patronage over the Southern Gas Corridor continues” (LETTER)…

    Loans to the pipeline from the EIB and EBRD would qualify as fossil fuel subsidies, said Shelagh Whitley, a leading researcher on the issue at the Overseas Development Institute.
    On Friday, the commission published a report on energy in the EU that called on member states and the EIB to do more to reduce public subsidies for fossil fuels…
    The EIB was contacted for comment.
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/11/27/eu-commission-urged-bank-support-azerbaijan-gas-pipeline/

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    pat

    didn’t watch it, but heard it was yet another ABC CAGW-fest:

    27 Nov: ABC Foreign Correspondent: A poison in our island
    Rising seas caused by climate change are seeping inside a United States nuclear waste dump on a remote and low-lying Pacific atoll, flushing out radioactive substances left behind from some of the world’s largest atomic weapons tests.
    By Mark Willacy
    Now with sea levels rising, water has begun to penetrate the dome…
    “That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age,” says Marshall Islands climate change activist Alson Kelen.
    “It’ll be a very devastating event if it really leaks. We’re not just talking the Marshall Islands, we’re talking the whole Pacific.”…
    “Already the sea sometimes washes over [the dome] in a large storm,” says Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-27/the-dome-runit-island-nuclear-test-leaking-due-to-climate-change/9161442

    27 Nov: Phys.org: As climate warms, mice morph
    Provided by: McGill University
    New research by McGill University biologists shows that milder winters have led to physical alterations in two species of mice in southern Quebec in the past 50 years – providing a textbook example of the consequences of climate change for small mammals…
    More information: Virginie Millien et al. Rapid morphological divergence in two closely related and co-occurring species over the last 50 years, Evolutionary Ecology (2017). (LINK)
    https://phys.org/news/2017-11-climate-mice-morph.html

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    Analitik

    Bring up this page, Jo, and turn off every state except for SA.

    http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2017/november/28

    It’s never hot after midday, is it?

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      Ve2

      To find out what state is producing what, deselect the other states,individual wind farms and the total leaving only the sub-total for the required state.

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    Robber

    AEMO has declared a reserve shortfall tomorrow for Victoria from 1530 hrs to 1700 hrs. The contingency capacity reserve required is 1154 MW. The minimum reserve available is 953 MW.
    That means that should a major unit fail there will not be sufficient backup capacity available.

    They are forecasting a peak demand in Victoria tomorrow afternoon of 8025 MW that hopefully will be met with imports from SA (assuming the wind is blowing), hydro from Tas, and power from NSW coal.
    Right now at 3.40pm on Tuesday, with a Vic demand of 6990 MW, Vic is generating 6230 (213 from wind) and sending 410 MW to SA because the wind isn’t blowing there either (only 40 MW), but receiving 590 MW from Tas and 330 MW from NSW.

    AEMO has been working to procure approximately 1000 megawatts of strategic reserves that AEMO can call on in emergencies, for example multi-day heatwave events occurring concurrently across both South Australia and Victoria.

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      pat

      Robber –

      posted this on a different thread, because it’s a bit confusing what is a current thread, but will posit it here too:

      hardly inspires confidence:

      28 Nov: ABC: Australian Energy Market Operator has ‘done everything possible’ to stave off summer blackouts
      By political reporter Stephen Dziedzic
      The head of Australia’s energy market regulator says the organisation has done everything possible to stave off further blackouts this summer, declaring she wants energy policy to become “boring” again…
      “I think we all want to make it better for Australians, we want to get back to the point where energy is boring and nobody is interested because we’re doing it so well,” Ms Zibelman said…

      She said AEMO could deliver 800 megawatts of additional power from gas generators.
      ***The regulator is also planning to ask big power users and utilities to cut their use of power when demand rises.
      AEMO said that would allow them to pump more than 1,000 megawatts of power into the system if needed.
      Still, AEMO is not guaranteeing the lights will stay on when temperatures soar…

      The operator’s summer readiness report said demand could be “precariously tight” if any major power generators are taken offline for maintenance.
      And Ms Zibelman conceded the grid could still struggle if bushfires or other natural disasters forced several generators to shut down…
      http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-28/energy-regulator-has-done-everything-possible-to-stop-blackout/9200344

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        Ve2

        “To pump more than 1,000 megawatts of power into the system if needed”

        Less than 3% of consumption on an average day. Yeah, that will work.

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      Analitik

      That means that should a major unit fail there will not be sufficient backup capacity available

      Meh, that’s just more scare-mongering by engineers wanting to gold plate the grid. With decentralised generation and storage, this wouldn’t be an issue

      /SARC (just in case anyone thought I was serious about this garbage)

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        Robber

        Behind the scenes AEMO will also be working with large electricity consumers to “persuade” them to cut back on their demand during peak periods. That is likely to include aluminium producers, and those who have emergency backup diesel generators. AEMO cancelled today’s reserve shortfall for Vic, but declared another small shortfall for Thursday. Living on the edge, and it’s not even summer. Peak Vic demand tomorrow is forecast to be 8,600 MW, with spot price from 1530-1700 of a mere $13,000/MWh. Now if only I had a 20 MWh battery that I could use to pump power into the grid!
        AEMO forecasts Vic peak summer demand of over 10,000 MW with reserve shortfalls up to 900 MW, and over 300 MW in SA versus SA peak demand over 3,100 MW.

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    pat

    one man’s CAGW symbol, is another man’s clutter:

    behind paywall:

    27 Nov: UK Times: Electric cars hampered by fear of charge-point clutter
    by Graeme Paton, Transport Correspondent & Chris Smyth, Health Editor
    Councils have been accused of thwarting the shift towards electric cars by refusing to allow roadside chargers to be installed over concerns that they will “clutter” the street.
    Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, said there had been opposition to the installation of electric charge points in some areas after complaints by residents.
    He called for tougher planning laws to give charging operators the power to place devices in the street without seeking permission from councils…
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/electric-cars-hampered-by-fear-of-charge-point-clutter-9lgvtpk79

    More oBikes fished from Yarra River
    Herald Sun-17 Nov. 2017
    Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has described the bikes as “urban clutter

    Reddy Go share bikes dumped over back fence of blind man in North Sydney
    The Sydney Morning Herald-2 Nov. 2017

    Share bike operator given until tomorrow to remove dozens of red bikes strewn across the Gold Coast
    Gold Coast Bulletin-31 Oct. 2017

    27 Nov: DailyTelegraph: David Barwell: Talks between five Sydney councils reveal little “appetite” for bike share regulations
    TALKS between inner city councils on establishing a single set of rules to monitor the rise of bike share operators have stalled, prompting calls for the State Government to take the front foot.

    Representatives from the City of Sydney, Inner West, Waverley, Randwick and Woollahra councils have held two meetings in the last month with the aim of establishing a regional response to the hundreds of dockless share bikes which have appeared across Sydney since August this year…
    While recognising the “social and health” benefits, councils say the dockless system has led to a spike in vandalism, including bikes left up trees and dumped in local waterways…

    19 Nov: Fortune: Clay Chandler: China’s bike-sharing bubble goes bust
    And so it begins. Chinese media report that Bluegogo, the nation’s third-largest dockless bike-sharing startup, has ceased operations, becoming the first major casualty in a fast-paced tech sector many analysts warn is hurtling towards a reckoning.

    Bluegogo was among nearly 30 Chinese startups allowing users to rent bikes with smartphones and leave them wherever they like. The company launched in 2016 with more than $90 million dollars in venture funding. At its peak, Bluegogo claimed 20 million registered users, deployed more than 700,000 bikes, and launched operations in San Francisco and Sydney as well as China…

    Bluegogo’s attempts at global expansion both ended in failure. In San Francisco, the company ran into stiff resistance from local politicians and suspended operations after only four months. In Sydney, Bluegogo supplied bicycles for local bike-sharing venture Reddy Go, but the Australian firm broke off partnership negotiations and dropped Bluegogo in favor of another bike supplier.

    But the full extent of Bluegogo’s financial difficulties in its home market didn’t emerge until this week, when Chinese social media erupted in complaints about the company. Users fumed that the Bluegogo app no longer unlocks bikes and that the company isn’t responding to requests for refund of their deposits. Chinese media descended on Bluegogo headquarters in Beijing to discover offices locked and abandoned. Chinese press report that the company dismissed staff on Wednesday. multiple senior Bluegogo executives confirmed that they have left the company. According to several reports, Bluegogo owes $300,000 in office rent. A Bluegogo bike supplier told the Global Times the company owes it more than $1.5 million…

    China Money Network reports that Bluegogo raised $58 million in February led by an aptly named Beijing-based venture fund Black Hole Capital, and Smart Xintong, a Shenzhen-based healthcare equipment developer…

    Bluegogo’s crack-up follows the collapse of several smaller Chinese bike-sharing companies within the past six months, including Wukong, 3vBike, and Ding Ding. Many analysts predict the industry is headed for a bloody consolidation in which only one or two players survive. The sectors two giants—Mobike, backed by Tencent Holdings, and Ofo, backed by Alibaba Group—have each reached raised roughly $1 billion in funding and are widely tipped as the industry’s final victors…

    There were clear signs of lax management at Bluegogo. The company ran in to trouble with a bizarre June 4 promotional campaign that replaced some of the bike icons on its app with icons for tanks, offering prizes to users who rode bikes depicted by tanks. The promotion coincided with anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when tanks rolled through the streets of Beijing to suppress democracy protests…
    http://fortune.com/2017/11/18/chinas-bike-sharing-bubble-goes-bust/

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    pat

    26 Nov: Politico: State of the (energy) union: How the EU’s really doing so far
    Grading the bloc’s efforts to break down borders and build a greener Europe.
    By Anca Gurzu and Sara Stefanini; Kalina Oroschakoff contributed reporting
    The European Commission’s dream of knocking down national borders and building a single energy union is proving tougher than some might have thought…
    The Commission’s part is largely done, as emphasized in its annual energy union assessment report (LINK) released Friday…

    Now the focus turns to the European Parliament and Council negotiations on the Commission’s proposals, and making sure the energy union is “no longer a policy but a well-framed reality” by 2019, Maroš Šefčovič, the Commission’s energy union vice president, told reporters on Thursday.
    “We, at the moment, are in the most difficult part, in acting like honest brokers between the Council and the Parliament,” Miguel Arias Cañete, the climate action and energy commissioner, said Friday.

    Arias Cañete declined to grade the Commission’s work toward building the 2015 energy union vision, saying only: “I’m humble, I will go for the middle ground.”
    POLITICO doesn’t have those scruples. Here’s our report card for the EU’s work on five key pieces of the energy union project…

    4. Working better together
    Goal: To get countries to think outside their national boundaries, work and plan better together, share their energy and rely on each other in times of need…
    Verdict: If last year’s HEAVY WINTER was a reflection of where countries stand on regional cooperation — when some of them stopped power exports ***(LINK) to their neighbors due to huge demand at home — then breaking national mindsets is one of the most challenging pieces of the energy union. Based on where negotiations are heading, there is a risk of a re-nationalization of energy policies that may turn the energy union into patchwork of solutions.
    Grade: C-
    https://www.politico.eu/article/state-of-the-energy-union-how-the-eus-really-doing-so-far/

    ***LINK to premium Politico content – EU Energy Solidarity left out in the cold – can’t copy, but you can read it all.

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      Extreme Hiatus

      “Goal: To get countries to think outside their national boundaries, work and plan better together, share their energy and rely on each other in times of need…
      Verdict: If last year’s HEAVY WINTER was a reflection of where countries stand on regional cooperation — when some of them stopped power exports ***(LINK) to their neighbors due to huge demand at home — then breaking national mindsets is one of the most challenging pieces of the energy union.”

      Yes indeed. The EU, a test run for their global model, demands that all serfs suffer equally! All part of their righteous battle against discrimination and for planetary social justice. Very enlightened, benevolent and caring of them.

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    ScotsmanInUtah

    On the other side of the World

    Sometimes you are on the wrong side of the planet for an important occasion. 🙁
    It is my one criticism of Australia .. you guys are not easy to reach !
    It would have been great to hear Jo speak ..

    Note: Jo you remind of Mark Steyn , though with tenacity and then some

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    Dennis

    In The Australian today …

    RACHEL BAXENDALE
    Industry super funds are being used as a vehicle to transfer millions of dollars to the union movement.

    Add to that the millions of dollars of taxpayer’s monies regularly transferred from Labor Governments to the Union Movement as grants, applied for by unions and rubber stamped approved.

    Former Treasury Executive, Dr Des Moore, wrote a book published after the Keating Labor Government lost office in 1996 after 13 years, 1983 to 1996. In the book Moore pointed out that close to $100 million of taxpayer’s monies was granted to unions during that period.

    He referred to it as “money laundering”, grants to unions returned to their ALP as donations and election campaign funding.

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    Another Ian

    Hopefully!

    AGW RIP.

    “UK big freeze: Alerts issued as -10c blizzards throw Britain into CHAOS” (dstar)

    …-

    “The Greens are losing the international climate
    fight

    Obama is gone. The “green queen” Angela Merkel is struggling over coal. Britain is brexiting the green EU. Japan is silent, while China and India burn coal like crazy. Russia never did care. And so it goes.” ”

    http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/11/27/the-greens-are-losing-the-international-climate-fight/

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/11/reader-tips-4036.html#comment-1139204

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    • #
      PeterS

      “The Greens are losing the international climate fight”
      Actually they have already lost the fight everywhere except here in Australia where they are still winning very convincingly and strongly. While the rest of the world is building hundreds more coal fired power stations, we are destroying ours one by one and not replacing them. Perhaps that will change once the penny drops. Even the ALP has to wake up to the fact we have to rely on a significant amount of coal fired power stations for the next few decades at least, and let the Greens keep running around like chickens without their heads (and intelligence to match). That’s assuming the Green cancer has not terminally infected the ALP. Given the federal Liberal Party is destroying itself and clearly will lose the next election by a landslide, let’s hope the ALP does wake up to reality.

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        Dennis

        The Weekend Australian reported a couple of years ago on a visit to Germany by former Australian Coalition Government Treasurer, Peter Costello.

        While in Germany Costello said that he met a former German Minister for Foreign Affairs who is a Green. They discussed the Australian Greens and while Costello was not willing to divulge the conversation details he said the German referred Australian Greens as being way out to the left of international Green Movement.

        Not surprising for Australians who know that Australian Greens were formed from Communist ranks.

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    el gordo

    The free radicals first penetrated the Greens Balmain branch and being political animals of the first order, they easily took control over the basket weavers.

    10

  • #

    First big day of the season for power consumption. It’s at 29200MW right now, 5PM Wednesday.

    All fossil fuels are currently generating just on 24500MW, so almost 84%, and the breakdown for that is Gas Fired 6500MW and coal fired power 18000MW and there are only 4 Units down, two in NSW and one each in Vic and Qld.

    Wind is at 1400MW, so 4.8%, and Hydro is having a big day at 3400MW.

    Victoria is getting almost 1500MW from its three surrounding States.

    Base Load this morning was 18900MW.

    Portent of things to come.

    Tony.

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      Robber

      Another warm day living on the edge (of electricity blackouts).
      AEMO declares a Forecast LOR2 condition for the VIC region for the following period: From 1530 hrs to 1700 hrs on 30/11/2017. The contingency capacity reserve required is 594 MW.The minimum reserve available is 407 MW.
      AEMO is seeking a market response.
      LOR2: When AEMO considers that the occurrence of a critical single credible contingency event is likely to require involuntary load shedding. AEMO will determine the latest time at which they would need to intervene through an AEMO intervention event.

      AEMO declares a Forecast LOR1 condition for the Vic region for the following periods:
      (1) From 1400 hrs to 1530 hrs on 30/11/2017. The contingency capacity reserve required is 1154 MW.
      The minimum reserve available is 725 MW.
      (2) From 1700 hrs to 1800 hrs on 30/11/2017. The contingency capacity reserve required is 1154 MW.
      The minimum reserve available is 793 MW.

      AEMO declares a Forecast LOR1 condition for the SA region for the following period: From 1530 hrs to 1630 hrs on 30/11/2017. The contingency capacity reserve required is 600 MW. The minimum reserve available is 417 MW.
      LOR1: When, for the nominated period, AEMO considers there are insufficient short-term capacity reserves available. This capacity must be sufficient to provide complete replacement of the contingency capacity reserve when a critical single credible contingency event occurs.

      For this afternoon AEMO is forecasting a peak demand for Vic of 9288 MW and a spot price of $14,000.
      And for SA a peak demand of 2050 MW and a spot price over $10,000.
      Fire up your diesel generators.

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        Robber

        And the heat is on Victoria’s electricity supplies:
        AEMO Intervention Event, Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) – Victoria Region- 30/11/17

        AEMO has entered into a reserve contract and may implement a AEMO Intervention Event by activating that reserve contract to maintain the power system in a reliable operating state during the following period of time;
        1530 hrs to 2130 hrs 30/11/17

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          Robber

          Don’t know what this means:
          AEMO Intervention Event, Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) – Victoria Region.
          AEMO has activated reserve contracts to maintain the power system in a reliable operating state.
          The reserve contracts were activated at 1530 hr 30/11/17 and are forecast to apply until 2130 hrs 30/11/17.
          AEMO has implemented an AEMO intervention event for the duration the reserve contract is activated.
          How do they activate a reserve contract, and what is it?
          Whatever it is, seems to have eliminated the forecast spot prices of $14,000/MWh, now only rising to $335.

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      Antoine D'Arche

      yep, and bring.it.on

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    theRealUniverse

    Good luck with the speach Jo.

    I noted today that the ‘MSM’aka Yahoo 7, almost admitted that SE QLD had the coldest November, not a day over 30!

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  • #

    If you thought dependence on lithium and on diesel (and thus on all the world’s dodgiest straits, sea lanes, pipelines, borders etc) were the main worries of going green…don’t forget cobalt.

    The price of cobalt used for battery cathodes has almost tripled since July last year. Stocks are squeezed. Delivery depends very much on politics and supply in the Democratic Republic of Congo and on Chinese refining. (Ah, so that’s the sort of thing China gets up to in Africa! That’s why it wants to shortcut through Burma and Thailand!)

    While we buy into these endless resource rushes and geopolitical messes our coal is right there in the back yard, centuries of safe supply…

    Bet they don’t talk about all that at Davos or Bilderberg or COP over the lobster sandwiches, do they Malcolm? Do they, Julie?

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Now watch policy prices climb even further against the mythical risk of “climate change”

    The UN is letting insurance industry enforce some of its agenda for it….
    Private iundustry enforcing govt policy is basically Fascism.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-30/climate-related-risks-will-jeopardise-stability-of-banks:-apra/9209912

    “It’s the challenge of our time: ANZ

    Mr Summerhayes said the APRA has established the Climate Change Financial Risk Working Group, which has begun questioning its entities about their preparedness for climate change and its associated risks.

    And furthermore, he predicted that disclosure would become a major trend in global regulation.

    While one of the drivers behind that will be regulatory action, he said pressure from investors would be the main player.

    Mr Summerhayes cited examples from elsewhere in the world, such as France’s energy transition law.

    That law requires listed companies and institutions to disclose their investment portfolio contribution to the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the national energy transition strategy.

    “[And] the UK and business insurance regulators gather data about market practice on sustainability issues,” he said.

    “At APRA we’re planning a survey of regulated entities to gain a better understanding of emerging best practice. As well as an industry wide review of climate related disclosures.”

    He also said Australia’s transition to a low carbon economy was underway and moving quickly.

    ANZ’s loans and specialised finance managing director, Christina Tonkin, said understanding climate change related risks was important for business.

    “ANZ considers that no stone must be left unturned in the pursuit of transitioning Australia and the region to a more sustainable footing,” she said.”

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    Dennis

    “ANZ’s loans and specialised finance managing director, Christina Tonkin, said understanding climate change related risks was important for business.”

    Risks being the risk that your business is at risk because of extreme Green fanaticism coupled to dangerous socialism.

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    el gordo

    ‘Wild weather triggers blackouts in South Australia near the Tesla battery, which was switched on for the first time today.’

    Oz

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    macha

    Not sure if this has already beennhighlighted….SNOWING IN TASSIE IN DECEMBER….WTF??

    http://www.themercury.com.au/technology/tasmania-covered-in-snow-during-the-first-weekend-of-summer/news-story/c57e468872352d9a3c29f7a29a56c5de

    damn that global warming.

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    So, talking this afternoon?

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