South Australians have so much wind power, too much, that in Quarter 3 last year the AEMO had to intervene to cut off excess wind and solar generation. Ever since the Great Blackout of 2016 new rules mean that there must be enough back up power running to cope with the fickle vagaries of intermittent energy. (Obviously, this wasting of sacred green electrons wouldn’t need to happen if people weren’t so persnickety about blackouts!)
This graph is from the Quarter 3 AEMO report for 2018. It is technically about both wind and solar, but it appears to be mostly wind. Solar is not a star player in Q3 because it’s winter.
Would we put up with any other industrial output that had such a dismal performance. Imagine this was your car….
AEMO Quarter 3 report page 7
Synchronous generation is the kind that comes from machines that spin at 50 Hz (like coal, gas, hydro, nukes). These keep the system stable. Happy happy hertz.
But ten percent of all the wind and solar power had to be thrown away in SA because there wasn’t enough reliable back up power to guarantee the stability of the system.
During Q3 2018, total curtailments of non-synchronous generation (large-scale wind and solar farms) in South Australia increased to around 150 GWh (or 10% of South Australian non-synchronous generation) (Figure 6), with curtailment occurring for 26% of the time during the quarter. This was the highest amount on record and around 70 GWh higher than the next highest quarter (Q3 2017). Key drivers were record high wind generation (Section 1.3.4) and insufficient synchronous generators being available to meet system strength requirements.
The reliable generators had gone home for the day (so to speak) because they couldn’t make enough money in a screwed market where intermittent and unsynchronised electricity is preferentially subsidized. So in order to make up for the damage done by a subsidy designed to drive fossil fuels out of business, we added another subsidy to keep them running. As you would.
The extra subsidy to counter the first subsidy cost $7m that quarter.
We may have the illusion of free market competition but increasingly the government controls more and more of the industry.
“Fascism is an economic system in which the government controls the private entities that own the factors of production.” Antifa, where are you?
Over the quarter, AEMO intervened on multiple occasions to direct synchronous generation to remain online to ensure adequate system strength in South Australia and thereby maintain the grid in a secure operating state. On average, directions were in place for around 40% of the time during the quarter (Figure 5), with a cost of $7.4 million, which was $0.35 million higher than the prior quarter. This compares with directions in place for 50% of the time in Q2 2018 and 30% in the period since the system strength unit combinations were introduced in September 2017. Key drivers of system strength directions during the quarter included periods of relatively low prices (<$50/MWh) and high wind output (>1,100 MW) which resulted in synchronous generators seeking to decommit from the market for commercial reasons
After the SA system black, the AEMO brought in new rules which “… allow for wind to go up to 1200MW without restriction if three gas units are operating, and beyond 1200MW if four are offline.”
No wonder the renewables team want us to buy them a big Interconnector.
REFERENCES
AEMO Quarterly Energy Dynamics, report. Q3 2018
I wonder what the next step is? The Left already controls the sources of information and government now ostensibly controls the means of production.
260
You mean they are full of it, like the barbers cat?
120
Full of wind that is 😉
140
and p*ss
70
Don’t forget that they seem to have effectively brainwashed enough younger people to maintain suitable peer pressure on those who dare think anything to the right of Mao. Who needs to control the populace when they’ve been successfully conditioned to seek out and vilify their ‘wrongthink’ peers?
300
The next step is probably a wider use of something like the Orwellian method of the memory hole to rewrite history. They have already used that approach with regards to historical global temperature data to support their CAGW scam. I can imagine they will do the same thing with many of the good aspects of Western civilisation while exaggerating the bad ones. Who knows, they might convince enough people that the Allies were the bad guys. Lies are so easy to fabricate and spread these days.
210
Gee ! What the spruikers for Renewables could do with that Headline together with the Jonova logo above it, and not show the rest of the story ! They could spin it like “Skeptic Jonova, in her Science Blog admits that renewable energy delivers over 100% of the State’s eletricity needs ” or words to that affect. And the brainwashed Greens supporters will believe that occurs on a regular basis !
170
I have been keeping an eye on the wind production figures and the roughly 1200 MW constraint appears on most windy days in SA. I presume we are not paying the wind operators to curtail their production as happens in the UK?? Why are we allowing more wind farms to be built in SA given this situation?
340
Because wind is good and on some days we dont have enough wind so more wind must be the answer. The real crunch will be when they run out of people to sell their meaningless certificates to.
180
correction:
“They don’t have enough meaningless people to send their certificates to”.
40
What is the next step?
As “renewables” are incompatible with reliability as well as low cost the next campaign of the Left (US = “liberals”) will be to make us think electricity consumption is greedy and antisocial (except for the Elites).
There will be Soviet style (and “1984”) campaigns showing how wonderful it is to be too hot or too cold and that people can get by just fine with a hand operated fan or more blankets.
There will be campaigns to reduce “consumerism” in favour of a more “environmentally friendly” North Korean lifestyle (except for the Elites).
We are already seeing claims from the Elites that meat consumption is bad for the environment and we should eat more carbs (unhealthy) or insects (disgusting) instead of meat. (This won’t affect the Elites.)
In fact everything that is good and decent about Western Civilisation is under attack and targeted for destruction (except for those things enjoyed by the Elites whose consumption of these things will be unaffected such as the flying to “climate change” conferences in private jets).
560
I recently watched an Adam Curtis documentary called Hypernormalisation. For me there were some new ideas, some old, and some of each expressed in an interesting way.
Somewhat depressing actually.
Also extremely long, at 2h45mins…
This part at 21:15 stuck in my head when it comes to the destruction of anything good and decent.
120
Eat more insects and save the planet (unless you are an Elite, then you can eat steak).
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e.pdf
70
It’s only $1.5 billion of other peoples money, why not build a new interconnector? It doesn’t spend itself you know.
The 2018 South Australian Energy Report makes for some interesting reading. I particularly like the way the colour scheme has been inverted in figure 17 on page 41, with more green on the graph seeming to indicate things are better, until one looks at the legend…
Figure 19 on page 42 shows an interesting relationship between 30 minute spot price and wind generation – and just how many ‘negative price’ events there were. Those poor poor wind generators, they really need our
supportmoney…220
I also really appreciate the log scale used for positive spot prices, and the linear scale used for negative spot prices, now that’s some pretty smart data presentation right there…
191
Thanks James, certainly some revealing information on the unreliable SA power grid:
– temporary emergency diesel generation provides off-market back-up power when supply scarcity risks are high
– Barker Inlet, a 210 megawatt (MW) reciprocating engine power station due for operation in 2019, will be capable of increasing output to full capacity within five minutes.
– South Australian Government policy is supporting the installation of 40,000 residential batteries through a Home Battery Scheme, which will help shift rooftop PV generation to cover the evening peak
– New synchronous condensers are being installed
– High and growing rooftop PV penetration is also reducing minimum operational demand, with times of negative demand forecast by 2023-24.
Blind Freddy could see that having 1950 MW of nameplate wind capacity and 930 MW of rooftop solar in a market where demand rarely goes above 2000 MW (Except peak summer when demand can reach 2700 MW) was going to result in instability.
Yet installed generation capacity (registered, including rooftop PV) in South Australia increased 14% in 2017-18 (almost 800 MW) to 6,205 MW. By end of July 2018, committed and publicly announced additional supply developments in South Australia totalled 8,184 MW across 56 projects. AEMO classifies about 700 MW of this as committed for development. Are they crazy, or simply feeding off the subsidy dollar? Time-weighted average prices were 11% lower than the year before, due to increased supply and fewer high demand periods.
AEMO forecasts risks to supply in the next five years in South Australia, due to the region’s interconnectedness with Victoria. To avoid unfairly penalising one region for a supply deficit spread through several interconnected regions, an equitable load shedding principle applies in the NEM.
AEMO can direct synchronous generators to stay online. Security directions increased substantially in the last year, with over 140 issued in South Australia as of 23 September 2018.
A new “Protected Event” be declared by the Reliability Panel, to better manage the risk of interconnector failure causing generation to disconnect and leading to South Australia being islanded and a black system occurring during destructive wind conditions in South Australia.
The ISP highlighted that an upgrade to the interconnection between South Australia and New South Wales is expected to be economically beneficial under almost all plausible scenarios – so let SA build more intermittent unreliable generation, and then invest even more to maintain system reliability?
More than 32% of South Australian dwellings now have rooftop PV systems installed – as they try and escape from the highest electricity prices in the world.
In 2017-18, there were an estimated 56 sales of EVs in South Australia20, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), bringing the total to 201 vehicles. Wow, a whopping 201!!
But good news, “emissions” are down – SA is saving the world. Never mind the cost.
SA prices are now driven by gas prices – remember when SA used coal?
As at 23 September 2018, AEMO has issued over 140 directions to South Australian generator units to ensure the correct level of system strength was maintained at all times. When is this madness of building even more intermittent unreliable “renewables” going to stop?
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Robber:
It will end in a big blackout, and people will blame the Government. The loonies will then claim that it was because they didn’t go to 100% renewables.
Battery Point is intended as a replacement for Torrens Island; funny how more renewables always leads to more diesel generators.
As the renewables increase their market share the reliable generators will require higher prices to offset their costs, but with more renewables flooding the market (at times) wholesale prices will drop as wind farms get a subsidy. So the reliable suppliers will shut down, except for diesel and Open Cycle GTs, both of which are short term operation but more expensive to run (and higher emissions than those current CCGTs).
The end result is that every electricity user in SA will resort to their own diesel generator, possibly with solar PV panels and batteries. Those who cannot afford the $45-50,000 will have to move out of the State, like the business users who are already doing that.
320
So Graham, the interesting question for me is at what cost/KWh does it become useful to go off grid (meaning to buy your own diesel). I presume this would be a ceiling to Socialist Electricity Prices. (Unless they ban private diesels). Are there any economies of scale where it makes sense for a set of apartments to “do diesel together”? Or is it really awful — I see prices of $350/MWh from OCGT. But can people buy CCGT and run it cheaper?
Looking for someone who knows a lot more about diesel gens than I do…
171
Thinking right outside the box, could there come a day when a town could attract business and industry by building a small plant to supply locals? Or is that something that only works for a capital city?
I’m just thinking that the RET does not apply to electricity supply that is not connected to the main grid. Redbank Coal in NSW is 130MW and will sell electricity to a Chinese group for 8cKWh. What does it cost to build a small coal plant?
200
jo,
If there is a chance of a (rural) community power plant, it might involve something like this; coal slurry diesel US DoE.
20
Try;https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc682856/m2/1/high_res_d/367254.pdf“
20
My understanding is that for home produced diesel electricity the price point is about 60c per kWh which suggests that would be the upper limit of cost for the unreliables since people would make their own if unreliables became that expensive.
There are also home generators available that burn natural gas (already supplied to most houses) instead of diesel or gasoline. Effectively you would replace electric wires with a gas pipe. Those generators use a standard internal combustion engine. There was also a company in Melbourne called Bluegen that made fuel cell systems for home use that converted natural gas directly into electricity plus 200 litres of hot water per day but they seem to have gone out of business.
Of course, if too many people started making their own electricity the government would ban home production or heavily tax it to ensure the unreliable producers and the Elites would remain in business and also keep donating to the Lib/Labs.
A similar model has been suggested for another government disaster, the NBN broadband network. Since it is expensive and slow it has been suggested that people will alternatively use wireless 5G. To ensure NBN stays in business some of the more unenlightened that govern us have suggested a data tax on 5G to force people to use NBN.
90
Perhaps Bluegen is still in business but now relocated to Germany?
https://www.bluegen-net.com/
10
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_Fuel_Cells
00
Weve been through that in the US. Early on businesses, colleges, and communities built small power plants. This had begun well before WWII. The college I intended had a discrete plant. In Dayton, several businesses had discrete plants. What caused consolidation was the pollution controls, and the economies of scale in implementing same. The cheaper, more reliable bulk power was preferred in the marketplace, and as they became less economical most were shut down tho a few remain for research…SIU at Carbondale for example. Imagine that…a market preference guiding investment.
Carbon Dioxode sequestration is wrong headed on any level i can think of, but it is still likely that natural gas and coal will provide the cheapest reliable power. The left will need another reason to attack fossil fuels. They will find one. Its not about energy.
70
A German company sells a small quiet diesel plant, meant to be located in their basement, that will power a house.
There have been discussions here in the past about going off-grid. I did some figures recently, based on RickWills’ data, and concluded that it was nowhere near viable for a house in suburbia. I couldn’t see diesels being allowed to run outside in our suburbs.
100
The exhaust system for CO generation should not be overlooked OR ELSE these green minded folk will perish – just like dinosaurs.
40
I think with an electrostatic particulate scrubber and passing diesel fumes through a water “bath”, you cold probably run a diesel in the suburbs.
The key would be the fumes, as noise is easy to suppress…..
70
Steve,
In WA some people are installing gas gensets for standby, especially where reticulated NG is available. It is a good option where the fuel doesn’t go stale and isnt stored on site. High use of gensets is a pain. Oil and filter change every 1-200hrs and a rebuild or new motor every year or two. The fun soon wears thin.
110
It’s more about backup power for the inevitable blackouts.
20
That is what should concern us in the suburbs, where our day to day life is being threatened by renewables.
As a side note, I’m reading posts and watching videos of people who live in vans, RVs, motorhomes etc. My parents did this when they in their sixties. They bought an RV and traveled around and up and down Australia for two years. They were connected to the grid the whole time, as they camped in caravan parks, but there are many people, worldwide, who live almost entirely off the grid.
A van or RV with solar panels on the roof, along with a suitable battery set-up can be a viable off-grid solution. Of course, it’s not for everyone and realistically only for the very few.
I don’t understand much about generators. However, many years ago, I was staying in a country hotel, the type that you had to walk down the hall to the bathroom. One night during a storm, the power went out. As we all sat in the dark in our rooms, there came the sound of a TV. The bloke in the room next to me had a generator and was watching TV.
What kind of generator could that have been?
10
Jo,
My farm is off-grid. It works out ok if you take a keen interest in the setup. It’s not for everyone, in fact, not for most. Right now i have a tracker to repair and a genset to service and 400 NiCad flooded cells that need the electrolyte checked. It is not practical to have this stuff in suburbia when a decent grid can do it for a fraction of the cost and much more safely.
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Jo:
An interesting question but I don’t know the answer. No-one publishes costs only wants your name so they can sell you a system.
Most systems use solar PV, battery, and a diesel generator. The solar reduces the cost of fuel (and having to refuel) as you are limited to less than 20 hours or installation of either bulk diesel supply or continuous gas supply.
Then there is the quesion of how much you use. Most off-grid users have eliminated most of their electricity needs and use wood for heating and cooking.
I can say that for the average house you are looking at approx. $50,000 capital cost or around $1 per kWh over 6 years.
For straight out diesel I have heard (unreliably) that 50-55¢/kWh is the break even cost.
30
Further to diesel costs I used Google and the answers are that diesel will give between 0.3 and 3 kWh per litre. Absolutely useless info.
This is for remote irrigation and is a few years old but seems reliable.
https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/665660/comparing-running-costs-of-diesel-lpg-and-electrical-pumpsets.pdf
10
They would absolutely have to ban private FF diesel generators if enough people resorted to them wouldn’t they…that’s if emissions really are the motivation?
Extrapolating that worldwide…diesel …even modern diesel as far as I know…but certainly older diesel…along with burning of forests etc..produces a great deal of particulate in the form of black carbon …soot..that eventually deposits on the Arctic ice cutting down the reflectivity of the ice and setting up a global warming cycle of its own.Climate scientists testified about BC to Congress in 2010 and James Hansen said mitigation of it should have priority because its effect is so great and mitigation of it would have almost immediate effect.
Since then it’s been crickets and the use of diesel and burning of forests for land for palm oil plantations continues.
I think it was inconvenient to have it known that the problem could be anything but CO2…not enough political power to move the world towards global Socialism to be gained by mitigation of BC.
In fact if mitigation of the black carbon problem actually resolved any excessive polar and glacier melting problems …warmists could no longer hold countries like Australia hostage over CO2-induced GW from coal…especially since Australian coal is very clean-burning re particulates.
So it’s ironic in the extreme that the State that wants kudos for its RE policies has to rely so much on diesel.
30
Websearch ‘small gas turbine generator’
https://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-101/issue-9/features/small-low-cost-highly-efficient-gas-turbines-provide-the-utility-industry-with-a.html
Two firm-power case studies featuring this technology have been developed. Case 1 is based on a 250 kW load with six 50 kW generators, and Case 2 is based on a 750 kW load with four 250 kW generators. In each case, annual load factors are 52 and 100 percent. Estimated annual costs and the costs per kWh are summarized in Table 3. Firm power at less than 5 cents per kWh from multiple assemblies fueled by natural gas is obviously competitive with most power from central station generators delivered over traditional transmission and distribution facilities. The cost of power for the previous cases rises to a little more than $0.09 per kWh, with diesel fuel at $0.85 per gallon–which is still competitive in many areas.
The efficiency of small gas turbines supplying only firm power approaches 30 percent. This efficiency can be increased to 75 percent as a cogeneration project by using exhaust heat for heating water, absorption refrigeration or cooling, space heating and industrial processing. As a cogeneration application, the project can be economically feasible, even with more expensive fuels such as diesel.
40
GADAB
Thanks for that.
10
It all depends on fuel costs.
Firm power at less than 7.2 cents per kWh ($A72/MWh) from multiple assemblies fueled by natural gas is obviously competitive with most power from central station generators delivered over traditional transmission and distribution facilities. The cost of power for the previous cases rises to a little more than $0.13 per kWh, with diesel fuel at $0.32 per litre — is still competitive in many areas.
How valid these figures are today I don’t know. Certainly they look good even with an OCGT (at 30% efficiency) and a $A 360,000 cost outlay. A CCGT is probably beyond hope, as it requires a boiler driving a steam turbine generator, which off the shelf means about 400MW size.
10
Dr Finkel calculated levelised cost of OCGT at $123/MWhr, but it clearly depends on NG cost. That could be competitive if you go off grid and save the supply charge as well as the usage charge.
10
@Graeme No.3
January 3, 2019 at 10:53 am
It all depends on fuel costs. …
No need for a steam turbine. A conventional CCGT might be beyond hope but a Cheng Cycle machine is definitely a possibility. The Cheng Cycle uses steam injection from a waste heat boiler to massively increase efficiency and peak power from a modified standard gas turbine. Websearch ‘cheng cycle gas turbine’
http://www.chengpower.com/cheng_cycle%C2%AE
The Cheng Cycle® incorporates full heat recovery massive steam injection and uses an energy-storage heat-recovery steam generator (HRSG) design with automatic control of thermodynamic feedback for stable operation at maximum efficiency.
http://www.chengpower.com/projects lists seven Oz installations.
http://www.chengpower.com/cheng_cycle%C2%AE/cheng_cycle%C2%AE_sjsu_501kh
The San Jose State University (SJSU) Cogeneration Plant installation was completed in December of 1984. The plant includes the Allison 501KH gas turbine, absorption and centrifugal chillers, backup boiler plant with water tube boilers, air emission systems, compressors, generators, water purifiers and other mechanical equipment in the campus central plant. The 5.6 MW Cheng Cycle® plant provides steam for heating and cooling for campus buildings. Electricity for the campus is also provided by the cogeneration system with surplus electricity sold to the local electric utility.
00
Well, in South Africa, with its scheduled “Load Shedding” in addition to unscheduled failures of its poorly maintained distribution network, the Government is introducing a law to licence ALL generators – even the small home ones that don’t feed back into the grid. Most cynics think that this is the first step to charge people to generate their own power! (Possibly because the bankrupt ESKOM monopoly may end up being sold).
00
The Australian government in allowing this form of electricity market, appears to have studied and learned how ENRON fleeced consumers.
110
Had a skim.
There are a few interesting assumptions that are just casually thrown about. In Section 2.3 the report claims that the sales of EV in South Australia for 2017-2018 was 56 vehicles and that brought the total in the state to 201.
Wow…
Despite this the report then goes on to claim sales by 2027/2028 will be 15000 a year. Now current car sales in SA from the ABS website seems to be about 6300 a month (about 75000 a year). Now the ABS also tells me SA population grown is only 0.7%, so assuming sales match into population grown (and assuming I can do maths real good like) the total car sales in 2027/2028 will still only be about 80000 a year.
So EV is going to increase from literal novelty to about 1/5th of the market within 10 years?
Okay…
Off topic, but anyone like to buy a bridge? 😀
110
Any body with money and sense is leaving South Australia – the mendicant state.
So who has the dollars to buy the dinky toys?
30
I also read that report. I was amazed that they claimed they could survive without mass blackouts. It could only be justified by the fact that the claimed SA power use would somehow drop through “efficiencies” and that they used averages throughout, instead of instantaneous power consumption.
10
@J. Murphy
The colour scheme on Figure 17 (green for higher spot prices) makes perfect sense once you realise who the intended audience is.
20
Germany
“Can wind and solar replace fossil fuels?”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/01/can-wind-and-solar-replace-fossil-fuels/
50
ScoMO and Angus tell us that no less than 48 companies intend to build dispatchable power plants…yet….not a sceric of it in the news cycle this morning.
140
“We are already seeing claims from the Elites that meat consumption is bad for the environment and we should eat more carbs (unhealthy) or insects (disgusting) instead of meat. (This won’t affect the Elites.)
In fact everything that is good and decent about Western Civilisation is under attack and targeted for destruction (except for those things enjoyed by the Elites whose consumption of these things will be unaffected such as the flying to “climate change” conferences in private jets).”
Correct.
The Elite follow their false god of “Gaia”, however if you dig a bit deeper and you find its actually New Age belief system ( driven by the teachings of New Ager Blavatsky et al ), pretty much the same that drove the 3rd Reich. Interestingly, we find the Nazis followed a form of norse pagnism and appeared to have a greenist influence that ran through their beliefs. Hitler claimed to be Catholic, but it was clearly for show – real Christians don’t run a murderous campaign against fellow humans, regardless what anyone will tell you – its anti-Biblical what Hitler did. The other point that’s really important is that Roman Catholicism is basically paganism wrapped in a paper thin veneer of Christianity, which is why it can happily co-exist with CAGW teachings, as CAGW is effectively earth-worshipping paganism.
“Can two walk together lest they be agreed?” ( Amos 3:3 )
The CAGW thing is just New Age teachings by govt decree and govt enforcement, which means we are effectively in an undeclared/silent religious war by govt against those who hold different beliefs. Its a new Inquisition of sorts.
When you look at it it through this lens, the Elites actions follow a pattern of behaviour and pursuant of a value system that is consistent with that belief system.
190
You’re absolutely spot-on. Watch the onslaught against everything Christian (the broadening of the SSM scope to persecute those not willing to support [we don’t have the protections they have in the US here], tax $$ taken away from schools, hiring criteria overruled by government, etc.) take off first in Victoria under Dan II, and then federally after the election. We all know the Catholic “Church” for what it is, so to have them and the Pope mainly preach climate change rather than how to save souls is not that surprising, but I find it alarming that so many protestants are following suit.
140
Rupert, depending on your theology – i believe Revelation outlines the End Times countdown to Christs 2nd Coming – and as such, in the End Times, many churches will go through the great “Falling Away” from the Christian faith, so what you are seeing is IMHO a fulfillment of what God said would happen.
Jesus said you cant serve two masters – SSM and/or pagan CAGW are anti-biblical – so we see not only individuals with hardened hearts, or those mislead by Satan. What you seeing us peoples true colours being exposed. God is a God of righteousness, honesty and truth – He is allowing people to stand up for thier god, whoever they consider that to be, so when judgement falls, they cant say they werent warned, nor do they have any excuse. Gods patience is finite, and his actions are just. The world is owned by God, and run by Satan- Satan wants to take as many peopke with him into corruption and misery as he can. God desires all to be saved.
The scripture below speaks to every human right now – the last sentence reflects my thoughts….
14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.
But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
(Joshua 24:14-15)
90
Recent contact with a small branch of the uniting church after and absence of sixty years has left me astounded at the change in vision and expression of the way.
The current version seems to have been appropriated from the US bible belt and isn’t the message we were given way back.
Since when did anger and fire and brimstone form the core of the way.
As a contrast, the people involved are great, and have amazing reach into the community that is helping bond so many.
KK
40
It has been said that the Uniting Church are the Greens at prayer. There appears to some conservative congregations of the UCA, particularly in the Bush, who are not accepting the SSM marriage nonsence.
50
I have found an existing Congregational church with great people but verbally like the Bible Belt.
God’s wrath is waiting. Very literal.
This group doesn’t seem to believe in the CAGW Meme but SSM etc, not sure.
KK
30
SSM traditionally stood for Squadron Sergeant Major. I wonder how the SSMs are coping with this anomaly.
50
🙂
30
Len,
I’ve written before about the abuse that people with sexual ambiguity have suffered from the very group claiming to be their Champions.
The descriptor used by the “rights movement”, LBQGTIR, does not help and prolongs the isolation of the group from mainstream acceptance. I suspect that, even now, very few sexually ambiguous people, have been given a relevant explanation of their condition.
The Gay thing is just another example of how politics comes before the needs of the people.
There is a known physiological process by which “gay” people are created during pregnancy.
The secondary process which occurs when such people mate, it’s possible in some cases, creates another level of ambiguity.
While I accept that being able to identify as part of the Human Rainbow crowd might be comforting, a real understanding of the situation would be much more comforting.
The reason I mention this is that both CAGW and the “Gay” issue share a common bond in that the Truth has been hijacked for political ends.
KK
30
OriginalSteve the Nazis did have a group dedicated to environmental issues.
The “Green Wing” of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents
I always thought the Greens movement have morphed into a modern version of an ecofascist group.
90
Peter, i think the Elite are nazis, they just sent it underground after WW2. Now we are seeing it openly publically resurfacing, which is why – to use a biblical phrase – is why we must gird our loins for the fight ahead. The battle is four minds and our childrens minds and our grandchildrens minds. Evil will destroy, but goodness builds up and heals.
The Elite appear to be corrupted and practice evil, do we want our children to be thier pawns ,or worse, become thier willing henchmen and activists?
Nothing good can come of evil….
101
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” H. L. Mencken
See more at icecap.us
100
I could be wrong but the way I see it is the Elite at the moment are the socialists. The nazis of today are standing aside for now and letting the left create chaos. When the crunch occurs the nazis will step in and do their thing by proclaiming they can “save” us. It has worked before and it could work again. Alternatively, the socialists gain in power thanks to the growing strength of the MSM propaganda convincing most people that is the way to go. Either way we are in for a hell of a ride down the plug hole.
81
PeterS:
The claim that the Nazis were right wing is based on Stalin’s assessment. At the time he had opposition from Trotskites whom he called Left Wing Deviationists, so the National Socialist Workers Party had to be right wing deviationists.
Many astute observers in Germany in the early thirties called both as Bolsheviks. And transfer between the two was common and required little adjustment (see Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts).
Any change came after they assumed power and Hitler got rid of the leaders of the Brownshirts to appease the Army, and to a lesser extent the big Industrialists.
Consider the results;
Dictator in charge – Hitler – Stalin.
Control of Industry
Unions left powerless
Big build-up in armed forces
No more free elections
Secret police
Death Squads
Concentration camps for those not wanted.
Anti-semitism
The one differential seems to be the Nazi worship of Nature, which may well have been a German ideal v the Russian desire to crush the hell out of it..
60
Talking about “Green Wings” see http://golden-dawn-international-newsroom.blogspot.com/p/the-green-wing-and-volksland.html
20
China is the epitome of a Fascist state and Australia is slowly embracing this new world order.
130
I had not thought about fascism is an economic sytem before. It seems to fit with the Mussolini governement.
The question is , why is fascism associted with the political right?
40
It maybe related to patriotism and nationalism, the left leans towards universal ideals like the Belt and Road. Which is a lot bigger than simple virtue signalling.
China is cultivating the best the West has to offer and we have resources and land, Beijing has the entrepreneurs and cash. Our biggest trading partner is a fascist state pretending to be communist, which is precisely why we need a strong centre right government in Canberra.
70
Peter C
“The question is , why is fascism associted with the political right?”
Because that is the way Stalin defined it. (Hitler was not socialist enough, he was just ‘third way’ National Socialist and not for International Socialism.)
This old blog from ChiefIO more or less spells out the whole darn thing … https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/nationalist-socialists/
Also of note is the left has a fetish for pigeonholing things in the most simplistic way possible. They always seeking out the dirty on people so that they can simplistically pigeonholing everyone into their self-defined overly simple categories. And once pigeonholed, in their eyes, you are labelled for life — the left don’t forgive and they never forget, they use what they consider dirt on you and against you — unless it is one of their own in which case the dirt will be well hidden, that is until the next internal power struggle when the knives are always out.
80
Do not be concerned with labels. Evil is evil, and it is easily noticed by those who are not sleep walking.
60
PeterS,
Evil may be just evil in your eyes but I believe most people are redeemable and could be made better with the correct therapy.
Imagine how different the world would be if Hitler had access to a good psychiatrist and some talking therapy early in his political career, or that Stalin was prescribed a course of Lithium?
Mao Zedong on MDMA or Prozac? 🙂
21
Jo, Thank you so much for this on SA’s Windy generators.. There is so much misinformation & propaganda here in SA about how they are going to save us and be cheaper than coal as well….good to see the truth !
230
I dont get it Bill, isnt it blindingly obvious to people in SA that they are paying through the nose for an unstable network being held together with band aids?
160
Just how much can they charge the big battery with the excess ? Once charged it just sits there burning dollars .
80
For about 5 minutes at peak demand !
100
just waiting to sell it back at the $14k ceiling price
110
This portion of the headline states something that did not happen:
This is the footnote to figure 6 (the above chart) in the AEMO report:
It is a “forecast” not actual generation. There is no means to “throw away” that power. The 150GWh was never produced. It is based on an estimate of the potential output given the wind conditions.
With current cost of storage the lowest cost intermittent+storage to achieve 100% of supply would have wind curtailed around 50% of the time. The only reason SA wind generators are not constantly curtailed now is the big battery that is Victoria with a power rating of 650MW and having infinite capacity. The wind generators in SA are getting a free ride from Victoria and want to do the same to NSW.
It is also noteworthy that “intermittent” now only appears once in this report. The new terminally replacing “intermittent” is :non-synchrous”. The UIGF is the only remaining reference to intermittent.
I wonder if anyone in AEMO is beginning to get a view of the future. More rooftop solar in SA will reduce demand for grid scale generation. Growth of intermittent in Victoria will limit the opportunity to send energy east. Curtailment will be occurring more often making the subsidy farms less viable. “Directions” to gas generators will occur more frequently resulting in higher power costs.
https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Planning_and_Forecasting/ISP/2018/Round-1-Submissions/Rick-Willoughby—AEMO_ISP_Submission.pdf
151
Rick,
If you watch the NEM log reports (graphs) it is very apparent that whenever there is a lot of wind in SA, the wind farm combined total outputs are “constrained ” at 1300 MW, rather than being allowed to pump out their max potential of 1800+ MW.
This is the only time the wind power stays relatively steady at a constant output.
20
Both Fascism and Communism are economic systems in which the government controls the entities that own the factors of production. Antifa is out to lunch on this one. Fascism was tried some 4 times and Communism 27 times. Both failed to produce stable economic systems. This is the economic model of ‘renewable energy”.
141
Now that SA is committed to renewables, there will be a continuous clamour for more interconnectors and storage access untill such time as they have spare capacity. Then the push will be on for more RE to feed it. Ultimately, curtailment is a fact of the low value electricity produced by RE. It needs a lot of propping up to make it useful. It needs a beefed up distribution system and a lot of storage (many times that required by baseload, especially if you want to approach 100% RE where the storage needs to be able to carry the full load at times, and for extended periods). These are the hidden costs of renewables that keep ramping up as penetration of RE increases and capacity factor decreases.
190
A report by the US EIA (May 2018) showed the average cost of large scale, long duration output batteries at $US400 ($A 550) per Kw h stored. On this basis the cost for one day battery storage to cover Australian demand of 30000MW would be an absurdly high $396 billion. Lithium ion batteries are said have come down 80% in recent years and no doubt there will be further cost reductions. A further 50% reduction would reduce the above total to around $200 billion, still absurdly high. This amount would pay for enough HELE coal fired stations to meet all of Australia’s demand with about $50 billion left over.
100
Well done Jo.
At first sight the graph, fig 6, looks harmless enough because the overproduction, in black, seems such a small amount compared to the core production, in red.
Then you read Jo’s analysis of the “overproduction”, the amount that could potentially be held up as deserving subsidy from the general public and that is the issue:
they may be making money without providing a needed service.
The bigger issue is that the newly elected libl state government has not shown any inclination to curtail the stupidity.
Back to the graph and the most important features are the large white gaps between the red columns.
That gap in supply has to be supplied by gas or “other”, and this “other” is forced to sit idly by while the magnificent renewables perform.
The obvious economic anomaly of having two mutually exclusive generation systems to supply one base load is nuts.
To replace coal with gas when the renewables go to sleep is apparently O.K. because gas is Not a Fossil Fuel: Really?
The whole issue of Public and Industrial electricity provision in Australia is at Crisis Point considering recent industry closures and lead in times to design and construct the necessary HELE Coal Fired or even Nuclear generators.
There’s too much Money moving around the present electricity system for it not to be a gigantic ripoff.
The fact that Politicians can’t disengage from it points to what’s behind the scenes.
This is Not “Waste”, this is the real thing, modern slavery.
KK
171
To create LGCs they have to actually supply power to the grid. They cannot create LGCs from “potential” or “forecast” energy.
By contrast STCs are entirely based on “potential” or forecast production. People who allow their rooftop systems to deteriorate have been paid for something that is not being delivered.
91
Many old domestic PV systems are upgraded when their 10 year Feed-in-Tariff contract expires, dispite having been paid the small certificates at installment as if it would produce for 15 years. The energy office says small certificates are about half the price of large ones (paid on energy produced) to take account of this and the sub-optimum installation of much domestic PV.
50
Of course the actual TOTAL generation by solar&wind+ GEO across Australia is just 1.5%.
TOTAL generation by fossil fuels is 93.3%, hydro 0.9% and bio+waste 4.2%. Certainly no return on our stupid efforts to PERHAPS increase S&W a little by 2040 and 2100.
And certainly no change to climate at all. Just ask chief scientist Dr Finkel who answered truthfully at the 2018 senate inquiry.
Here’s our TOTAL energy pie graph from the EU based IEA. Meanwhile the non OECD countries just love our coal as they look to a more prosperous future and we stuff up ours, trying to rely on Dr Hansen’s BS and fra-d energy. Barking mad the lot of them.
https://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/AUSTRALI4.pdf
120
What was it in 2018 Neville ?
40
Bill, see below 14.2.2 for Lomborg’s IEA update in early 2018.
20
That data is out of date (it declares 2015). If you read the AEMO report you will see that for the 3rd quarter 2018 intermittents plus hydro achieved 20% of the market share:
72
RickWill:
And you got a red thumb for that comment. Proof indeed that the phantom troll is either illiterate or looney.
61
He/she/it probably thinks 20% is understating it. Assuming thinking is an option.
50
Unless there is a comment stating otherwise I accept any red thumb the function of a wobbly hand meaning to give a green thumb. So it should be counted as a green thumb.
65
The data is out of date but not that much. The data is for TOTAL energy not just for electricity generation.
Lomborg has an update for the IEA and he states that in early 2018 S&W generated just 0.8% of the world’s TOTAL energy. Australia’s S&W is probably still around 1% at best for our TOTAL energy generation.
Note Lomborg also adds that World S&W MAY generate around 3.6% of TOTAL energy by 2040. That’s a big if when you look at non OECD increase in fossil fuels out to 2040. Remember he is talking about TOTAL energy not just electricity.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/where-do-we-get-most-of-our-energy-hint-not-renewables/
70
Electricity is 15% of energy consumption in Australia. With 20% of electricity being produced by intermittents and hydro, 3% of the total energy consumed is Australia is now coming from now so-called “renewables”. Hydro is averaging just over 1% percent so intermittents are now close to 2% of the total and is the fastest growing.
The large-scale subsidy farms and rooftop rorts are still attractive investments. With both main political parties supporting intermittents and almost certain increase in the RET in 2019, the subsidies will continue to flow. It guarantees grid electricity prices will continue to increase encouraging more people to make their own electricity; the vast majority being attracted to rooftop solar and possibly batteries due to the subsidies.
Figure 20 in the AEMO report shows forward wholesale power prices for 2019 and 2020 substantially higher than Q3 2018.
82
Amazing Isn’t it?
TWO PERCENT is acceptable.
What?
Maybe to you Rick Will, but sorry, not to me.
Coal fired power is actually delivering 70 Percent plus into the electrical consumption market. Having done research going back many years now, that percentage delivered by coal fired power is actually ….. RISING.
It’s patently obvious to me that wind and both versions of solar power are having ZERO effect on coal fired power. Even after the closure of those ancient and decrepit coal fired plants across the Country it is now obvious that we are in fact getting more from less when it comes to coal fired power.
Tony.
210
Tony,
Please show a modicum of respect for the deranged.
RickWill could not comprehend what you have said in a blue fit.
80
If you look at figure 7 in the AEMO report you will see that comparing Q3 2017 to Q4 2018, grid scale wind and solar are up by 368MW on average. Black coal is down by 255MW on average.
The growth of grid scale wind and solar output over the year was 31% and the rate is accelerating. Labor will up the RET in 2019 and that will supercharge another round of intermittent projects. So this rate of installations shows no sign of abating in the medium term.
The reduction in coal output equates to 1.6% of output so still small impact but impact is growing. At an annual growth rate of 30% and potential to accelerate for a few years it is not a long time before the grid scale intermittents are seriously impacting on coal generator output. They are already impacting on load profile. Two coal power stations have closed in the last 3 years. There are no plans for Australia to build a new coal power station.
38
RickWill,
You should be an Australian federal politician.
You qualify admirably.
Dumber and dumber – when it comes to RELIABLE, ECONOMIC AND CLEAN POWER GENERATION – which needs NO SUSIDIES.
30
Such figures are ignored by the left and too confusing to many in the general public. Let’s just focus on the fact the number of coal fired power stations are on an increase in the many hundreds and nothing we do will stop this massive increase. So what’s the point of focusing on renewables? Clearly even if we could go to 100% renewables right now (and destroy our economy in the process) over the next few months there will be more than enough new coal fired power stations that would wipe out any benefit in reducing our emissions. The elephant in the room is getting impatient not being noticed.
120
Yes.
And when elephants get impatient, what do they do?
70
Spain hasnt learned it lesson..YET.
“Spain will shut down every one of its coal mines this year.”..
https://sputniknews.com/environment/201901011071151375-spain-close-coal-plants-2019/
Fools be they.
More total insanity
https://sputniknews.com/environment/201807081066149020-costa-rica-eliminate-fossil-fuels/
These places will die! They will go into absolute poverty, technologically and economically.
they have bought into this ‘anti hydrocarbon fuel’ Malthusian nonsense religion.
No doubt more will follow the insanity.
80
At least Spain has a number of nuclear power stations. We could close down all our coal fired power stations if we were in a similar position and had nuclear ones. As for the escalation of the cost by closing down their coal fired plants; no problem. They just get further into debt. It’s very fashionable to do so these days.
90
I love Costa Rica touting a necessity as a virtue. They have no chance of building a “fossil fuel” plant while the US refuses to throw more money into the black hole CR has become. So they “choose” to build piecemeal renewables, with lotso panels and windmills on an island that is prone to hurricanes.
They should have some twinning arangement with South Australia so they can celebrate each others achievements.
100
Section 2 of the report covers the WA market, where wholesale prices are around $50/MWhr compared to $80-100/MWhr in the eastern states – less wind in WA?
100
WA has only 11% of its power from renewables, and I’m presuming that this is quoting nameplate so the actual value would be much less. Coal and gas around 40% each. It’s windy here, but not using it means our power prices are kept low.
70
How has WA kept the greenies from taking over? Sent them all to SA and Victoriastan?
90
Seeing as we now have a Labor govt, that’s an interesting question. Should also note that the idiot in charge of the opposition Liberals also favours renewables.
50
McGowan (WA’s Premier) seems to have a brain that works.
Hopefully WA will continue to benefit from him using it in a logical, pragmatic and responsible way.
We’ll see.
10
WA has also got a gas pipeline to the NW gas fields and reserved gas.
70
Yep, and WA also ran a gas pipeline 1400 kms to Kalgoorlie for only $400m in one year. So it shouldn’t be difficult for the other states to connect to either the NW shelf or NT gas fields, and I believe the NT fields have recently been connected to QLD. All that then is required is to negotiate deals with the gas producers to reserve a fixed amount of gas for domestic use at reasonable prices – this is something WA has already done and it’s paying off big-time, with fast turn-on gas plants backing up the coal plants.
50
AND I should add that WA has a major advantage in that we aren’t connected to the “national” grid, so we don’t have the silly goings-on that appear to be pushing up energy prices.
80
Western Australia is still subject to the RET and silly State FiTs.
10
Notwithstanding all of that, for me it’s still cheaper to buy off the grid from Synergy.
00
One thing that concerns me is the comparisons between Renewables and Regular_Non Political Electricity.
Creating electricity with renewables is one thing; having it Grid_Ready is a major issue that so far, has been handled in the usual manner of politics: deception.
If SolaWind presented its product at the city boundaries rectified, frequency regulated, voltage regulated and quantity regulated it would be a start.
Unfortunately, since M#hamed won’t go to the mountain, we are forced to go to the renewables sites, paying all the way for the poles and wires.
These poles and wires payments to the poles and wires companies, have allowed their brand new owners to increase the capital value of their assets by having us pay in advance of the normal needs.
When onsold this company with gold plated assets will bring in a huge Windfall for the chosen few.
How many ways are there to rip off a trusting, gullible public.
KK
90
Even better when you can create an artificial crisis, and fleece the public using it all while telling them its good for them….
If you look back, you had 50s kuds traing to hide under desks from nukes, 60s kuds hiding from communusm, 70s kids hiding from oil shortages, 80s kids hiding from aids, 90s kuds hiding from recession, 2000s kids hiding from drugs, niw is CAGW.
I for one say – no more.
Scare tactics dont work anymore.
The jigs up.
90
I see you have taken over from me as the fatt fingeared taipist 🙂
50
It seems so….during the year I get bored having to be “correct” and type things correctly all the time, and on the holidays I’m chilled out….
Truth be told – I guess I don’t really care if I mess stuff up occasionally, as long as the general gist is correctly conveyed in my posts…. 🙂
40
But it becomes more difficult for the reader!
10
Annie, I try, sometimes I just get bored typing…..my brain is often racing ahead 3 words or thoughts of where I’m up to…
40
Steve, I have that problem with handwriting! My family laugh and tell me it looks like Arabic.
I can usually make out what is meant if there are typing errors. What I find really difficult, while trying to make sense of something, is when there is no punctuation.
10
Same problem. More often than not my typing can’t keep up with my thoughts. We need a better means of transferring our thoughts to text – seriously.
20
Original Steve,
You must be an honours graduate from a Gough Whitlam inspired tertiary institution.
Pretty good at basket-weaving , but illiterate and innumerate.
21
No, just dont care. I have an honors in Elec Eng.
20
Graduated from well known Melbourne tertiary institution in early 90s, specialized in SCADA and broadband connected PLC controls including UNIX and DECNET connected control systems. Got into computing as it was more intersting. Now playing with facial recog and machine learning as it looks like it might be a useful tool.
Meh.
30
DECNET! I was heavily into that and LAT with OpenVMS systems. They were the best years of my computing career. Ultrix was not fun though. Also worked with Solaris and HP-UX. Lots of fun back then.
10
What I find astonishing in this day and age is just how many ‘new’ things have a reliance on electricity, and it has increased almost exponentially in even the last 20 years or so. So many new things you just have to have for the home etc, all of them adding to the electrical power consumption. Even with power efficiencies inherent in all this new ‘stuff’, most of which I can effectively ignore, household power consumption has risen. I’m somewhat @n@l in some things, and before we moved from Rockhampton, I rationalised all the paperwork in my filing cabinet, and hoicked most of it out. That included power bills, every one of which I kept, and going back 25 years, well to 1992, and it was only four bills a year, so the ‘wad’ of paper was only four inches thick. Before chucking them, I spent an hour or so just checking (as you do) and what I found was that my household power consumption remained reasonably static across those 25 years, basically around 22KWH per day. I had aircon in every one of those seven homes, and I used it religiously, as heating in Winter, and cooling in Summer.
Even with all the advances in technology, I was still using around the same 22KWH of power per day in Rockhampton as I was using in Studio Village (near Helensvale on the Northern end of the Gold Coast) 26 years ago.
The point here is that despite efficiencies, consumption was basically the same.
Now we are told ad infinitum that we need to make efficiencies that are actually incompehensible in scale, something that will never happen. On top of that they are seeking to introduce electric cars on top of all that, and then taking away the only reliable source that can deliver those HUGE amounts of power.
People, the average person in the Street, have absolutely no idea whatsoever of what is being passed off as being a perfectly normal thing to do, adding to power consumption, making efficiencies, and then taking power away.
It just will NOT happen.
Look at a ‘skyscraper’. and try and imagine how much power it consumes, and then look at the Skylines in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. One of the talking heads here consistently raves on about how what is happening in South Australia is the way of the future for the rest of Australia.
Melbourne alone consumes double the power of the whole State of SouthAus.
Brisbane alone consumes more than double the power of the whole State of SouthAus.
Sydney alone consumes almost triple the power of the whole State of SouthAus.
(SouthAus consumes around 6.2% of Australia’s total power consumption, and those totals for those capitals are conservative in nature, as it is probably even higher than that.)
Just in those three big States alone, they consume almost 87 to 90% of all the power consumed.
Peak Power in SouthAus at around 6PM might be as high as 1800 to 2000MW. In NSW, that Peak power at the same time can be up around 11000MW. Where are the ‘feasible’ efficiencies in that total going to come from?
You can make efficiencies in private homes in the Residential sector, that perhaps a small percentage might actually adhere to, and hey, who would ever know without the ‘Electricity Police’ visiting your home on a daily basis, but that’s going to be such a minute part of overall power consumption as to go totally unnoticed.
Tony.
170
The facts are that Australia’s population has increased in the last 10 years by 15% but grid scale power production in the NEM has declined over the same period.
Electricity intensive industries are moving offshore.
How many car manufactures are operating in Australia?
How many tyre plants are operating in Australia?
How many conveyor belting plants are operating in Australia?
How many textile makers are operating in Australia?
How many shoe manufactures are operating in Australia?
How many aluminium smelters have shut reduction lines in the last decade?
How many timber mills have closed in the last decade?
It takes a lot of coffee makers and even air-conditioners to make up for these losses.
A good proportion of Australian households are now net generators of electricity and the number is growing rapidly.
59
Rick @6;43pm.
The last paragraph a joke or what?
Get real.
KK
50
Ah Ha,
An overqualified sparkie!!!
20
what the hell is your problem tooright? you were dishing out on RickWill upthread, and he is quite a knowledgable contributor. Now you start on this guy. Just here to deliver put downs based on nothing?
14
Yarpos,
I ‘ve just noticed that Rick has ruffled a few feathers.
I understand why some have gone into rooftop and that, in most cases is a financial decision. Pushing the envelope to promote it as “good for Australia” is another thing.
Maybe I’m misreading stuff but it seems that others have noticed too.
See my comment above
KK
70
Yep, KK.
I’m not sure RickWill is thinking rationally on this.
He’s on a quest. And that’s fine. I wish him all the best – as I’ve said previously. However, I think the evidence is against him.
50
I don’t read RICKWILL as pushing anything. He seems to be describing our current situation.Give him a break.
00
ghl
One example, all good until:
A good proportion of Australian households are now net generators of electricity and the number is growing rapidly.
??
00
Kiwi phonetics ie kuds.
20
Fear is the key to total control.
40
OriginalSteve,
“Even better when you can create an artificial crisis, and fleece the public using it all while telling them its good for them….”
Like ENRON did…
80
Germany’s use of S&W energy has been a disaster and after wasting 100s of billions of Euros on this idiocy we now find that their co2 emissions are the same and they are extending their brown coal mines.
They also have extreme blackouts every day and every year because of clueless, unreliable S&W energy. And yet we want to copy this crazy nonsense here in Australia and now New York thinks they may leap in as well. A definition of madness is repeating a failed experiment over and over and some how expecting a different result. Barking mad to be sure. Here’s a good link from WUWT.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/01/can-wind-and-solar-replace-fossil-fuels/
70
I hope our brothers and sisters in the northern hemisphere, being used as energy crash test dummies, dont suffer to much in this coming winter. The current forecasts are for a harsh one. The impact of a blackout is far greater in their climate.
60
Relatives in the north of England tell me it is reasonably mild at present, although a cold spell is due.
30
Long range weather forecast for NSW & Vic
Jan 06-13 – Fair
Jan 14-20 – Wind, rain
Jan 21-26 – Rain
Jan 27-02 Feb – Rain 50% chance
20
Does the AEMO report indicate how many days in the last three months were windless?
70
The SA Government Home Battery Scheme seems very generous using other peoples money.
I wonder if it will help at all with intermittent supply.
The Scheme provides a subsidy of up to $6,000 and is calculated based on storage capacity – $600.00 subsidy per kilowatt hour for energy concession holders and $500.00 per kilowatt hour for all other households.
These subsidies tend to artificially inflate the price of batteries in this case.
So the biggest winners are companies like Tesla, and the losers are people who need a battery but don’t qualify for a subsidy.
70
Nope.
The biggest losers are the poor blinky taxpayers who have to fork out their hard-earned for these mad-cap schemes invented by economic pygmies.
40
Don’t forget that those batteries have a tendency to keep burning no matter what you throw at them if they catch fire – another possibility if they are charged on a very hot day.
10
Tonyfrom Oz daily reports show wind generation min/avge/max in MW.
For Dec 31 those numbers are 370/1130/1960 MW
He also reports weekly summaries.
Dec 23 wind min/avge/max 280/830/1250
Tony gets his data from the Anero.id site where you can see wind generation average every 3 hours by month, and every 5 minutes by day.
For Dec, you can see wind dropped below 400 MW on Dec 4,5, 11, 18, 23, 31.
Generally seem to be 4-5 days per month when for at least 3 hours wind drops below 400 MW from nameplate capacity of 5400 MW.
June was a very calm month with 5 days with minimums around 100 MW.
80
Thanks Robber. Have saved the link.
40
1 Jan: WUWT: Under current policies, residential batteries increase emissions in most cases
posted by charles the moderator
From Ars Technica (LINK)
Optimizing battery use to minimize emissions is possible, but generally overly expensive.
by Megan Geuss – 12/28/2018
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/01/under-current-policies-residential-batteries-increase-emissions-in-most-cases/
30
Great, more plant food !
30
Happy New Year to you and yours Jo and everybody else. The situation we’re coming into (government ownership and control) is perfectly suited to semi-socialist countries like those in Western Europe, Aus and NZ. The “people” will not bat an eyelid as long as they get their “entitlements” and the illusion can be maintained that it’s other people footing the bill, and if you can add an element of these virtues appearing trendy then so much the better – like frogs in a pot…but the moment it starts affecting their hip pocket then all h.ll will break lose like now in France. It’s only the more hard-line capitalists like the US that will open their eyes earlier and vote in a Trump, but then the machinery of this global industry kicks into overdrive to counter that – there’s lots of $$ at stake (just ask Alex Turnbull :-)).
131
The hard-lined capitalists will eventually succumb to the new world order according to Karl Marx, ‘democracy is the road to socialism.’
10
read all – Daily Tele/Tim Blair trigger TAI:
2 Jan: SolarQuotes: Solar Slashes Peak Electricity Demand On New Year’s Eve
by Michael Bloch
The Australia Institute (TAI) has taken EnergyAustralia to task over recent claims it made regarding the cost of small-scale solar to electricity customers, while ignoring its value.
According to TAI, on December 31 rooftop solar cut peak electricity demand in New South Wales by 776 MW, in Queensland by 550 MW, in South Australia by 411 MW and in Victoria by 601 MW.
“Solar slashes peak demand, which drives down electricity bills for everyone,” TAI tweeted…
The Australia Institute says cutting Australia’s solar subsidy prematurely, which EnergyAustralia would love to see happen, will drive up power prices (and EnergyAustralia’s profits)…READ ALL
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-peak-demand-mb0884/
30
EnergyAustralia are beginning to see the impact of curtailment on their grid scale intermitttents. It is becoming evident to the subsidy farm owners that the rooftop rort is a threat to their farms’ viability.
They provide a figure of $45 being the added annual cost of rooftop solar to households. What a joke when grid scale intermittents are adding hundreds of dollars a year.
111
Yep Rick.
They’ll be pushing for a doubling of the “connection fee” next.
10
read all:
1 Jan: AFR: Solar Asset Fund shrugs off RCR Tomlinson collapse, seeks $25m
by Ben Potter
Solar Asset Fund (LINK), a developer of merchant solar farms which attracted software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes to its initial capital raising (LINK), has emerged unscathed from a brush with the stricken engineering contractor RCR Tomlinson (LINK).
Solar Asset Fund is seeking $25 million in new capital to fund its next project – the 35-megawatt Brigalow Solar Farm in Queensland – after completing its first two projects, the 19MW Swan Hill solar farm in Northern Victoria and the 20MW Chinchilla solar farm in Queensland.
But first it has had to take care of some housekeeping at the Swan Hill solar farm. It was built by RCR Tomlinson and completed in July, a month before the group raised $100 million from investors to overcome cashflow problems on solar projects and four months before the RCR board called in administrators McGrathNicol on November 22…
AEMO more exacting
Chinchilla has been completed and is gradually ramping up to its full output through a staged testing regime supervised by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which has become more exacting in its attitude to admitting new wind and solar projects to a grid (LINK) that is suffering congestion because of a huge influx of new capacity (LINK)…
https://www.afr.com/news/solar-asset-fund-shrugs-off-rcr-tomlinson-collapse-seeks-25m-20181227-h19i6x
10
Given that the capacity of the Heywood and MurrayLink interconnector total to more than 850MW and the curtailed amounts are far less than that (assuming relatively constant demand around 1300MW), the curtailment must be entirely due “insufficient synchronous generators being available to meet system strength requirements”. The AEMO must limit reliance on the interconnectors to dump excess power from the SA grid as well as limiting their contribution.
This is a consequence of the amendment that, then SA Energy Minister (as well as Treasurer and Minister for Finance, State Development and Mineral Resources), Tom Koutsantonis took to the AEMC back in July 2016 to try and keep the SA grid stable in the face of increased penetration of wind turbines and reduction of thermal generation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-04/electricity-security-complex-in-sa-says-koutsantonis/7899302
So much for more interconnections being the “solution” for increasing renewables.
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Sorry, “assuming relatively constant demand around 1300MW” was a lazy way of saying that the maximum permissible non-synchronous generation allowable was 1300MW. All due to the stability concerns that the SA government fully recognised and tried to protect against without ever public acknowledging any concerns.
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Yeah but they are a govt so they will stuff it up.
Buy a gennie…..
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The reason that governmental top down command and control always makes things worse than the situation it was presumed to correct is that reality quite stubbornly ignores such diktats. As Francis Bacon [Born: 1561 – Died: 1626] observed “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
The interesting thing is that reality, having been what it is for over 13 billion years, can quite easily outlast even the most stubborn government. In the end, the government falls and reality remains. The problem for the rest of us is to avoid being collateral damage in said government’s war against reality. Historically, that has not been an easy task. In fact, granting to government the power to dictate what is to be is exceedingly dangerous. See the 20th Century for instructive examples.
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this will sound sadly familiar to Aussies. Goldstein gives some cheeky advice at the end, no doubt designed to raise some hackles!
1 Jan: Toronto Sun: Lorrie Goldstein: Tune out climate change debate in 2019 election
In this year’s federal election, the debate over what we’ve been repeatedly told is the most important issue of our era — man-made climate change — will be a farce…
In reality, the political debate over man-made climate change in Canada has been a farce for three decades.
This was aided and abetted by a large portion of the Canadian media, who believed everything Al Gore told them, and who are only now, finally, coming to a belated understanding and acknowledgement of how hard it is to reduce industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a big, cold, northern, sparsely populated country like Canada, with significant oil, natural gas and coal resources…
Over the past 30 years, Conservative and Liberal governments have repeatedly promised to reduce Canada’s GHG emissions to wildly optimistic targets they have never met and will not meet, whatever they say leading up to the Oct. 21 election and whichever party wins it…
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein
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a good read:
1 Jan: American Thinker: ‘Meet The Press’ Preaches Climate Change
By Norman Rogers
(Norman Rogers is the author of the book: Dumb Energy: A Critique of Wind and Solar Energy)
On Sunday morning, December 30, ‘Meet the Press’ had a gala service preaching the climate-change religion…
Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and one of the world’s richest men, was given extensive air time. There was even a plug for his book: Climate of Hope. The book, written with the former president of the Sierra Club, is hilariously ignorant…
The one scientist on the show, Kate Marvel, has evidently given up science for a career promoting climate alarmism. She is contradicting herself by going along with climate alarmist fantasies — in earlier public talks she was highly critical of the climate computer models that are the only basis for climate extremism…
The mayor of Georgetown, Texas, a small city near Austin, touted his city’s conversion to 100% renewable energy…The amount of electricity contracted for is considerably greater than the amount of electricity needed. The city sells the excess electricity into the market. That has turned out to be a losing proposition. To be clear, the city is not actually using the electricity from the wind and solar plants located hundreds of miles away. The electricity generated by the plants is fed into the Texas grid and distributed throughout the state. The claim of being 100% renewable is a bookkeeping claim based on buying more renewable electricity than is actually used. Obviously, the solar farm is not generating electricity at night or on cloudy days. The wind farm generates electricity to the extent wind happens to be blowing.
The staff of “Meet the Press” is either incredibly ignorant or pursuing an agenda of left-wing propaganda, or probably both…
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/meet_the_press_preaches_climate_change.html
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“The mayor of Georgetown, Texas, a small city near Austin, touted his city’s conversion to 100% renewable energy…”
Our own ACT (similar thing to Washington DC containing the national capital) plays the same stupid game claiming to be 100% renewable while siting in the middle of NSW’s primarily coal powered grid
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Yep…and it runs its new white elphan…er…tram…..on 100% renewables….
Cant wait for the 20 somethings to grow a brain through life experience, and consign Leftism to the scrap heap where it belongs….
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Yarpos:
But they contract for “renewable electricity” across Australia, and get it for an average around $76 a MWh. (Without the RET Certificates). So who buys those Certificates (unless the wind farmers out of the goodness of their hearts forego that free money around $80 a MWh)?
our choice is
The Fairy Godmother
Bill Shorten
You (via increased charges from your retailer forced by law to buy them).
Reminds me of the joke of Holland having 65% renewable electricity. Norway generates about 98% of its own electricity from hydro and get a Certificate for each MWh (much like our RET scheme). They then sell enough of those Certificates to Holland.
Results:
Much admiration for Norway as “almost Green”.
More profits for Norwegian hydro producers
Nice warm feelings for Dutch consumers who get a big jump in “renewables” for an increase in the cost of their electricity.
NOTE: No animals were harmed in this scheme, neither were any emissions actually reduced.
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Attacking the insanity of weather-dependent electricity is attacking the problem at too high a level.
I’m not sure of the most effective approach but somehow we need to get back to basics and explain that there is no anthropogenic global warming and the hypothesis that is based on is invalid and the only way supposed global warming can be demonstrated is by selective editing of historical temperature data (at best) or outright fr@udulent alteration of historical data as demonstrated by Tony Heller etc..
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The two major parties in Australia and all their advisers in Canberra are true believers when it comes to CO2 causing catastrophic climate change. Every mildly aberrant weather event reinforces their belief.
The hip pocket nerve is the most effective way to get constituents riled enough to force change. The power of the hip pocket nerve got Abbott to power on the promise of killing the carbon tax; an obvious cost of living increase.
The problem now is that the linkage between the RET and high electricity prices is not a connection most people can grasp. Neither of the major parties have a willingness to make that connection because they are both complicit in the way it operates. Also there are maybe 30% of Australians actually directly benefitting from the RET (me included) so their hip pocket has positive vibes about it. They are not looking beyond their household budget unless they are a business owner or senior manager looking at a business budget.
The only way I have got attention at sites like Reneweconomy is to point out that the financially disadvantaged are paying for the electricity of those who own a roof suitable for solar panels. That hits a nerve because a good proportion of true believers are renting.
Have a go at convincing any true believer that CO2 is not destroying the planet! See how you fare at this site:
https://reneweconomy.com.au
Let me know when you have made a comment on the insignificance of CO2 with regard warming so I can have a giggle.
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2 things I would say about this. One is the UK did the same thing a couple of years back when reliable power sources were closing down leaving the grid very vunerable in low wind periods. The astonishing thing is that none of the geniuses foisting RE onto the grid predicted it.
2 is that now we have examples globally that RE has added costs like subsidies for reliable generation and now battery storage. Combine this with the myriad of stealth taxes and incentives then it is demonstra
ble that RE is not the answer to reduce emissions. Yet politicians keep flogging the dying horse.
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Chasing votes is a matter of following the zeitgeist which today is renewable energy and the truth has nothing to do with it. Hence or otherwise all sides are on board the RE bandwagon.
Added to which, some notable past entrepreneur (P.T. Barnum?) said nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the general public.
My view is that this scam will only disappear when something more lucrative is thought up by our imaginative hedgies and sold to the Big Money mob.
50
Weather Report from various channels;
Scorching hot
Scorching hot
Scorching hot
Translation: Normal temperatures around Australia for this time of year.
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we are supposed to be having one genuinely hotter than normal day at the end of the week. It will be interesting to see if it arrives. So far this summer has been pretty normal, maybe getting a little more rain than average because I am still having to mow green grass.
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I think the ‘normal’ hot is slowly getting lower by at least 2deg/year. Probably same rate as the ‘fake’ so called temperature increase due to CO2.
91
Only governments know how to take something that works, implement policies that will adversely impact on it, and then when it all starts going belly-up, start implementing even worse policies to fix up the mess they created in the first place.
80
Oh I dont know. I worked for a multi-national that was pretty good at that cycle. Centralise, de-centralise, re-org, outsource, insource , just make sure you get promoted or transfered before it hits the fan.
100
But can anything compare with the UN?
An organisation that can take on an horrific problem and make it infinitely worse.
91
“…which resulted in synchronous generators seeking to
decommit from the marketshut down for commercial reasons.”There, fixed that for you.
90
When are the alarmists going to stop just talking about it and start doing something, such as declare war against China, India and Japan for building many hundreds of coal fired power stations that are supposedly the cause of CAGW? I know – they are brainless foot soldiers of the elite who are scamming the West and making billions. Bernard Madoff serving a life sentence in prison must be really annoyed he didn’t think of the CAGW scam before others did. He’d still be free and much richer than ever before.
Costs of Climate Change in 2018
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just noting SE-Qld weather over Christmas/New Year has been mild…and wonderful.
headline at ABC “Just In”:
‘Very dangerous’ storm headed for Sydney eases, as 3cm hail hits the Blue Mountains
but ABC keeps this headline!
2 Jan: ABC: BOM warning of ‘very dangerous’ thunderstorm headed for Sydney, Wollongong eases
The Bureau of Meteorology says severe thunderstorms may still hit Sydney and several regional centres this afternoon, with the possibility of flash flooding, damaging winds and giant hailstones.
BOM first issued the warning at 3:00pm this afternoon, with the storm now passing the outer-western suburbs of Sydney and heading east.
There was another severe storm just west of Wollongong which is also heading east, as well as a number of isolated storms across the state.
***However at about 5pm BOM said the severe thunderstorm warning had eased…GOES ON WITH ALL THE SCARY STUFF
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-02/bom-warns-very-dangerous-storm-headed-for-sydney/10680086
2 Jan: ABC: Cyclone Penny could re-form and track back towards Queensland coast, Bureau of Meteorology says
By Talissa Siganto and Nick Wiggins
Ex-tropical cyclone Penny could re-form off Queensland within hours but there is uncertainty about whether it will track back towards the coast, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) says…
***(BOM meteorologist Rick Threlfall) said this year’s cyclone season had already exceeded predictions.
“We normally see around about three to four cyclones in the Queensland region … obviously we’ve already seen two coastal crossings as well…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-02/cyclone-penny-could-reform-and-return-to-queensland-coast/10678306
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More evidence of dangerous Climate Disruption. It seems every day we get verification that Climate Weirding is real and ABC doing a fabulous service in reporting every event around the world pointing out that it is forecast to be the worst evah or worse than predicted.
90
Its weird…watching an episode of “Vikings” just now ( by accident ) and I see the likeness between the Elite and the raiding of society they do, and the Vikings decimating a monestery on Englands east coast.
Barbarians at the gate….
41
Olin made us do it.
00
Its the fudge factor.
20
2 Jan: ABC: Campers evacuated as fire in south-west Tasmania brings smoke to Hobart
By Ellen Coulter and Lucy MacDonald
Two separate fires, ***both started by lightning last Friday, joined together and are burning at Gell River, approximately 6 kilometres north-west of Lake Rhona, the Tasmania Fire Service said…
Bruny fire deliberately lit
Meanwhile, fire investigators now say the Christmas Day blaze on Bruny Island was ***deliberately lit.
Meanwhile, fire investigators now say the Christmas Day blaze on Bruny Island was deliberately lit.
The fire at the popular holiday destination in southern Tasmania forced the evacuation of 150 people.
One home was destroyed and damage to property was estimated to be more than $300,000.
Aircraft flying in the area as part of the fire-fighting effort had to be grounded because of a drone in the air, operated from a nearby sports oval…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-02/fire-burning-in-tasmanias-south-west-wilderness/10678926
some truths, but plenty of CAGW propaganda:
28 Dec: LiveScience: How Do Wildfires Start?
By Donavyn Coffey
In the United States, 84 percent of the 1.5 million wildfires reported from 1992 to 2012 were human-caused, while 16 percent were sparked by a lightning strike, according to a 2017 study published in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
Last month’s Camp Fire is still under investigation, but malfunctioning power lines are suspect…
For a spark to grow into a sustained wildfire, there must be a perfect combination of factors, such as “dry conditions and really strong winds,” Quinn-Davidson told Live Science. ***And because of climate change, dry conditions are lasting longer and, in turn, causing longer fire seasons…
“Historically, California burned more than it does now, but at [a] lower intensity and slower,” Quinn-Davidson said. “Now, we are seeing fires that are unusual, like the Camp Fire that, at one point, burned through 70,000 acres [about 280 square km] in a day. We’ve never seen that before.”…
The change in our climate, perpetuated by human-made greenhouse gas emissions, extends the window of the annual fire season. But wildfires also burn faster and hotter simply because there is more fuel to burn…
https://www.livescience.com/64378-how-do-wildfires-start.html
30 Dec: UnionOfConcernedScientists Blog: Feeling Blue About Climate Change? You’re Not Alone.
by Kristy Dahl, senior climate scientist
Major climate events in 2018 made it a particularly grim year
During 2017—the year in which Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, three Category 4 hurricanes made landfall in the US for the first time ever, and my home state of California witnessed its most destructive wildfire in recorded history…
There has been much to fuel that grief this year. So much, in fact, that words on a screen and cells in a spreadsheet didn’t feel real enough. Instead, I had to write and draw about this in my notebook to make sense of it all, letting it pour out dot by dot into what I call my “Grief Graph.”
GRAPH…
So what happened in 2018?…
Readers, because I care about your well-being, if you are immersed in this stuff day in and day out, go ahead and skip to the next section. Yes, I’m issuing a trigger warning regarding the following list, which highlights a few of the lowlights shown in the graph above.
1.“Losing Earth.” On August 1, the New York Times devoted its entire weekly magazine to a piece by Nathaniel Rich called Losing Earth. In it, Rich provided a captivating history and timeline of the realization by scientists and politicians that climate change presented tremendous dangers to society and that we were responsible for it. The timeline covers my childhood from ages 1 through 11 (1979-1989)…READ ON
https://blog.ucsusa.org/kristy-dahl/feeling-blue-about-climate-change-youre-not-alone
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best to read in full the letters excerpted below:
2 Jan: Canberra Times: Letter: Blind Freddy knows it’s time
One of the silliest things about the government’s energy policy (or lack of it) is that you do not need to be a believer in climate change or global warming to see coal is not the fuel of the future…
***Barely 40per cent of the energy in the coal is converted into electrical energy; the rest is dumped into the environment as waste heat. Also the system is characterised by a small number of very large power stations transmitting power over long distances. The result of this is that 70per cent of the final cost to the consumer is distribution costs (poles and wires)…READ ON
Roger Quarterman, Campbell
Letter #2: Renewables questions
Douglas Mackenzie (Letters, December 31) quotes that it is “unequivocal” that “the cost of new wind and solar energy, even with hours of storage, is lower than the cost of new coal-fired generation”. He neglected to mention the disclaimer in the Integrated System Plan (ISP) of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) that it “cannot guarantee that the information, forecasts and assumptions in it are accurate, complete or appropriate”…READ ON
John L Smith, Farrer
Letter #4: Climate dithering…READ ON
Letter #4: Praising protesters
The word “courageous” gets used a lot these days, but I would apply it to the actions of those who risk jail time and other severe personal consequences in an attempt to preserve a habitable planet for us all. Anna Molan and others allegedly engaged in activities in September that temporarily interrupted coal export operations (“Canberra woman facing jail over protests”, December 31, p2). It is a strange world when such people are treated as criminals, while our government continues to ignore the inescapable evidence of the disastrous climate changes to which our coal is contributing, and to lie about our global responsibilities to cut carbon emissions…READ ON
Dr Sue Wareham, Cook
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/blind-freddy-knows-it-s-time-20190101-p50p4r.html
***if TonyfromOz is about, he may want to comment on Letter #1.
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Pat
I guess that they didn’t read this
“Climate Change: The Poetry of Dreams and the Prose of Reality”
“George Bernard Shaw so aptly wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” ”
More at
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/climate_change_the_poetry_of_dreams_and_the_prose_of_reality.html
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Another Ian –
thanks for the link. it led me to the writer’s followup piece:
2 Jan: American Thinker: Climate Change — Who Stands to Gain?
By Alexander G. Markovsky
As the ancient Romans asked: cui prodest? “Who stands to gain?”
The global cooling, warming, or climate change movement, whatever it is called nowadays, was not born as the result of immaculate conception. It was conceived in the early 1960s in Paris, France, as a sinister plot to contain American expansionism, as the Europeans called it at the time…READ ON
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/climate_change__who_stands_to_gain.html
10
Wind and solar not real good in South oz right now but there’s always the extension cord .
30
Don’t you worry about that.
Elon’s battery will allow all the Crow Eaters to cook a wonderful roast for dinner.
30
‘… factors of production …’
Capitalism with a human face.
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201812/29/WS5c26c2c6a310d9121405196b.html
20
That beats communism with a non-human face.
20
o/t but a great read:
2 Jan: American Thinker: Mark Felt and the ‘Collusion’ Conspiracy
By J.R. Dunn
One strange element of the attempted coup against Donald Trump is that no one involved has brought up the name of W. Mark Felt. Or perhaps that’s not so strange…READ ON
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/mark_felt_and_the_collusion_conspiracy.html
20
What the truth is about Watergate never believe any politician is completely innocent, including Trump. Thy are all humans.
00
I like how with such a fabulous solar resource in SA the rooftop PV achieved a capacity factor of 14%…..
00