Five Asian countries will build 600 coal plants, wreck world, but who cares?

Earth, missing heat. Cartoon.

….

Australia and the UK can close one coal plant each, but Asia will build 600.

There’s a socially awkward moment coming at the G20’s next dinner, but despite the combined selfish evil of the theoretical Asian Planet Wreckers, no one will really say much, put trade embargoes on, or boycott the Olympics.

Ultimately, everyone at the table knows that Carbon Voodoo is a Western dinner party game, not a serious pollutant.

China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units

Jillian Ambrose, The Guardian

Five Asian countries are jeopardising global climate ambitions by investing in 80% of the world’s planned new coal plants, according to a report.

They are all developing nations, apparently, so they can be forgiven, even though the list includes number 2 and 3 on the Worlds Biggest Economies list, and one of these fledglings just left the nest and landed on Mars. 

Spot the craziness:

Carbon Tracker, a financial thinktank, has found that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units, even though renewable energy is cheaper than most new coal plants.

Why are they knocking back all the cheap solar and wind power? Could it be that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam are filled with stupid people who can’t add up. Or is it that they can do the sums and they noticed that every nation with renewables also has expensive electricity?

 

 

10 out of 10 based on 123 ratings

185 comments to Five Asian countries will build 600 coal plants, wreck world, but who cares?

  • #
    Dave in the States

    Carbon Tracker, a financial thinktank, has found that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units, even though renewable energy is cheaper than most new coal plants.

    Proof that it is not cheaper. And proof that they know co2 doesn’t pose a threat. Of course, they are happy to see the competition in west scuttle their own economies.

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    • #
      Jojodogfacedboy

      Honest, the Western Nations just economically suicided themselves.
      Our politicians certainly deserve the middle finger salute as they made it illegal to even sing.
      Now that’s dedication.
      Oh by the way…
      Canada is turning itself into a musical as we celebrate a ‘Gay Pride Summer’.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      At least America was going to be saved by President Trump until the coup against him.

      Now look what’s happening with China Joe and his Marxist handlers Harris, Obama, Clinton and Pelosi and the UN in control.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Why is China still classified as a developing country? Anyone who’s been there will see that their cities and infrastructure are as least as advanced as in the West, generally more so.

    Because of the naivity of the West, or more likely Leftists of the West conspiring to destroy the West and enable China as a replacement civilisation, they are exempt from ridiculously named “carbon pollution”.

    And the exemption of so-called “developing countries” of “carbon pollution” doesn’t make any sense anyway because Leftists keep telling us “renewables” are cheaper than proper power generation. So why would these countries choose carbon-based electricity generation if it would be cheaper to install solar panels and batteries?

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    • #
      Scissor

      I agree that China’s major cities have the amenities and infrastructure as you say, but get past the facade of the first and second tier cities and China absolutely is third world.

      I’ve been travelling to and working some in China spanning decades and especially on my last assignment, in Wuhan actually, I had to go to facilities well into the countryside. The poverty and lack of infrastructure there rivals the worst conditions that I’ve seen elsewhere, e.g., Brazil, Venezuela.

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      • #
        Harves

        So, as long as China spends its billions on its military and interplanetary travel rather than lifting it people from poverty, it can rightfully remain a poor little developing nation.
        So funny.😂

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      • #
        Ian

        “The poverty and lack of infrastructure there rivals the worst conditions that I’ve seen elsewhere, e.g., Brazil, Venezuela.”

        Best not to state reality as it damages people’ prejudices.

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        • #
          Harves

          Could that have anything to do with their form of government… you know, that undemocratic form that leftists tend to support?

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          • #
            Hanrahan

            With China it’s “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.

            According to wiki: China’s population reached 1 billion in 1982. As of November 2020, China’s population stood at 1.412 billion. That’s with the one child policy being in place. That policy led to many demographic problems today.

            Their population is impossibly large and no form of government would be able to raise the living standards of so many people to that of the west.

            I contend that the world as a whole cannot raise the standards of everyone here today to the point where they have clean water, reliable electricity and a living wage. Those who say that international trade will lift all boats are either idealistic fools or liars, most likely the latter, justifying off-shoring jobs for more profit.

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            • #
              Sceptical Sam

              ……the world as a whole cannot raise the standards of everyone here today to the point where they have clean water, reliable electricity and a living wage.

              Today? Yes.

              Tomorrow, is another day.

              China managed to lift 600 million people out of poverty over the last three decades. They can do it again. South America and Africa can also do something similar.

              However, cheap Chinese labour (including Uigher slave labour) will not go on forever. Then opportunities open up for others, as global investment – which is footloose in the main – shifts its focus to more competitive suppliers of labour, land and expertize.

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              • #
                Hanrahan

                The world does not have the resources. Peak Oil™ has merely been delayed by adoption of a technology now largely banned, not beaten. Forget CO2 as a pollutant, China is poisoning itself on land, water and air. If raising the next 600 mill out of poverty creates as much pollution as the first tranch did, they MUST invade Australia to find room to live. Good luck growing rice in the Simpson Desert. Just checked: China is 1.2 times the size of Oz so even a takeover will only give them a few years breather, assuming they don’t want to live in the desert, they have some of their own.

                If anyone thinks they would choose to live WITH us I have this nice little bride [Freudian slip “bridge”] you might like. Han Chinese are as convinced of their racial superiority as were the N@zis. Rude and crude Aussies would be the new Jews.

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              • #
                Sceptical Sam

                Resources?

                Of course the world has the resources. You fail to consider Nuclear. Fission or fusion. Take your pick. It’ll happen.

                Rice in the desert? Speak to Israel and its intellectually superior entrepreneurs. With fusion, water is not an issue.

                China’s pollution is the modern day equivalent of that generated by the mills in the Midlands? Great Britain fixed it. China can too. As can Indonesia when it gets going, and India.

                The fundamental thing is to generate the wealth that facilitates the clean-up. Coal fired power equals wealth. Coal fired power equals cheap, plentiful and reliable power.

                If the Han Chinese understand that (which, it would seem, they do) then they are certainly intellectually superior to the limp wristed soy-boy greeny comrades that are driving the West into an abyss. Race has nothing to do with it. Except the West is losing it.

                I don’t need any bridges at the moment, thank you. Especially if they’re duly made from the Chinese equivalent of steel.

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        • #
          clarence.t

          Sorry you feel injured again, Ian !

          Wouldn’t want your deep-seated prejudices to be damaged by reality, would we. !

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        • #
          el gordo

          China is a capitalist nation, but they see the Third World differently. Premier Xi said a few uplifting things to save his goose after the pandemic.

          ‘ … underscored the trend that the Chinese economy will not only grow in size but also evolve into an innovative and rules-based market economy that will bring benefits to the common prosperity of the world, they added.

          ‘Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said that Xi’s speech holds great significance as it not only announced that China has achieved its first centenary goal-to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and eradicate absolute poverty-but also laid out the major tasks of the Party on the way to realizing the second centenary goal.’ (China Daily)

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        • #
          el gordo

          Absolute poverty …

          ‘In Brazil, 4.2% live below the poverty line as of 2016. In China, however, that number is 3.3% as of 2016.’

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          • #
            Hanrahan

            Poverty is where you eat your pets.

            Absolute poverty is where you eat the rats.

            The day I believe China has only 3.3% living in poverty is the day I believe they have eliminated the wuflu [ie zero cases as they claim].

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            • #
              el gordo

              Okay we need to look at malnourishment, there is poverty.

              ‘In 2016, 8.7 percent of the population was undernourished, which is half of the number that was undernourished in 2000. While this is indeed a significant reduction and commendable achievement, there is still an abundance of hunger in China. There are still more than 100 million malnourished Chinese, the majority of those people living in rural locations.

              ‘A poor diet leads to a high rate of growth stunting in children (9.4 percent). Additionally, anemia in children occurs at a rate of 19.6 percent. These qualifiers of hunger in China pose significant burdens for 1.4 million citizens.’ (Borgen Project)

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      • #
        William

        Yes, they China has people dying in attrocious conditions as they manufacture wonderful economic and environmentallu friendly renewables *cough*

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    • #
      Ronin

      If you have nuclear power and weapons, high speed rail and a space industry, you are not a developing country, we have none of those.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Exactly and we have more people (per-capita) living below the poverty line. We demand Third World status and the right to build Hele coal fired power stations.

        ‘ … 3.24 million people in Australia (13.6% of the population) live below the poverty line. 774,000 children under the age of 15 (17.7% of all children in Australia) live below the poverty line. More than one in eight adults and one in six children live below the poverty line in Australia.’

        (Poverty in Australia 2020)

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        • #
          Hanrahan

          You are making big claims. Please define “poverty” in the two countries. Wanna bet most of the 13.6% poor Aussies have internet and a mobile phone and have a punt on Melbourne Cup day.

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        • #
          Hanrahan

          China’s poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms.

          3.24 million people in Australia (13.6% of the population) live below the poverty line. 774,000 children under the age of 15 (17.7% of all children in Australia) live below the poverty line.

          What is the poverty line in Australia?
          In Australia, the poverty line is generally defined as 50% of median household income.

          According to estimates of Credit Suisse, there were 4.4 million dollar-millionaires in China, ranking second after the United States in the world.

          Do you see what I see?

          10

          • #
            el gordo

            Yes I do, they are a capitalist nation with pockets of poverty.

            The minimum wages in Australia is around $700 a week, there are a lot of us still living below the poverty line, but nobody is starving

            10

          • #
            el gordo

            The other point worth considering, India is also in the space race as their people remain below the poverty line.

            ‘Two-thirds of people in India live in poverty: 68.8% of the Indian population lives on less than $2 a day. Over 30% even have less than $1.25 per day available – they are considered extremely poor. This makes the Indian subcontinent one of the poorest countries in the world; women and children, the weakest members of Indian society, suffer most.’

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    • #
      truth

      All logic and reason was suspended along with democracy itself in the Western ‘democracies’ once leaders of the time were persuaded to accept the brain-dead notion that science and the scientific process should be replaced by the Left’s post-modern post-truth notion of post-normal ‘science’…in order to accommodate the Left’s consensus… and to ensure that no questioning of the consensus would ever be tolerated and no proof of their dodgy hypothesis ever demanded.

      That was the Communist Chinese dictatorship’s moment-of-the-millennium….the moment when they could foreshadow the total collapse of the West and democracy.

      What’s happened since is a relentless weakening of democracy and the death of reason with no prospect on the horizon of anything but misery and military conflict for our children who are being miseducated and indoctrinated by Left wing teachers to believe the Left’s snake oil ….and never ever verify.

      The advent of Biden Inc …an administration that’s holding possibly hundreds of political prisoners in solitary confinement since January mostly for misdemeanors and wrongspeak online…that’s storming homes of mums and dads and old folks for similar reasons…that weaponizes BigTech and the FBI to cancel the freedom of speech rights of the American people and declare them white supremacists……that advent removes America’s right to call itself a democracy…and strips it of its moral high ground.

      With that …and with no electoral alternative to the Left here… since Australia has a Wet Left government in power whose guru and lord of preselections is a lobbyist and a comrade of Gore and Naomi Klein and other assorted uber-rich global Socialists….unless we start to make huge demands on our ‘leaders’ …for absolute incontrovertible proof of CAGW…instant end to all subsidies for RE and for its storage, firming and transmission…and an end to its favoured dispatch status….an end to the risk premium on coal…an end to the war on coal by banks and insurance companies etc etc…..we’re stuffed.

      90

  • #
    lindsay phillips

    Good morning Jo,
    Great story (yet again)!
    When I saw this story on Climate Change Dispatch a day or so ago (by Gabrielle Reyes), I started to get really worried!
    But then, a few moments later, my mind harked back to an incredibly stress-relieving story the same site had 2 days prior (Tony Thomas/29 June) I felt “Totally at Peace” with “Mother Earth” again!
    As long as I know that Fridays for the Future and PETAA. (Primary English Teachers Assn. Aust.) are continuing to work through our children’s minds to save us all from sudden and irreversible immolation by about January 1 2030, I can sleep well at night!
    (I’m pretty sure Tony is a frequent contributor here also.)
    BTW. If your “Irony Antenae” are a bit jaded by the years of indoctrination by the lame-stream media/Democrat/Silicon Valley/Hollywood/Junk Science retards, I suggest you need a healthy dose of frontal-lobe re-boot from AwakenWithJP.com!
    Warmest regards, Reformed Warmist of Logan!

    121

  • #
    David Maddison

    There are a lot of things wrong with the following article, such as a supposed desire for China to reduce “carbon” emissions by 2060 which of course they won’t and it’s so far in the future it doesn’t matter. This is a typical warmist oriented article pretending China actually cares about emissions. There is a very good reason China pays only token attention to unreliables and are focused on proper power production such as coal and nuclear.

    China is facing its worst power shortage in a decade. That’s a problem for the whole world

    By CNN

    5:01pm Jun 30, 2021

    https://www.9news.com.au/national/china-news-power-shortage-crisis/d32ebdbb-be14-4c78-abc2-5f43d429a554

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    • #
      RicDre

      It’s hard to believe anything Xi-N-N say about China.

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    • #
      Ronin

      Not sure I would believe anything from the Clinton/Communist News Network, but it’s nice to see the smartest people on the planet have power woes, just like the rest of us plebs.

      150

  • #
    Robber

    Did I miss something in the recent announcements from Chairman Xi and President Putin?
    Surely they mentioned the climate emergency, and invite the Great Greta to show them the way, surely?

    230

  • #
    TdeF

    Consider that China opened one new coal power station a week last year.

    And AGL is are going to destroy Liddell, a coal power station built with public money which they bought for $1? Why?

    Because with the hidden cash rebate system of the RET, they can make more money if they shut it.
    Consider also that AGL refused $250million cash for it. Simply because it’s worth more than $250 Million if they close it. How is that possible? Who wouldn’t sell something they bought for $1 for $250,000,000? That is the key to Australia’s electricity cash theft, our massive carbon tax which isn’t actually a tax but theft.

    None of this is a secret. Why isn’t the NSW government outraged? Why aren’t the politicians?

    And the ridiculous lie that replaceables are cheaper is a cover for the fact that you can obviously make much more cash if you close coal. Electricity prices have tripled even though the same old power stations supply 80% of our electricity at the same cost. Why?

    We Australians in our taxes paid for Hazelwood. We paid for Liddell. We paid for Yallourn. And all the other power stations. Our woke governments are robbing us to pursue the votes behind hating the element carbon. And the companies who bought these power stations are are promised fortunes in ridiculous cash incomes stolen from our electricity bills. It is legislated massive theft driving electricity prices though the roof.

    The Federal governments should get out of electricity completely. Nationalizing electricity in tiny Canberra is literally a power grab and has done immense harm. Even the city of Canberra had over $35million in raw cash coming from rebates because they bought their own wind farms. Why? Public money bought the windmills and they are printing cash. Why should public servants get this cash? The whole rotten system is wrong, theft and fundamentally illegal.

    AGL refused $250million cash for a $1 power station because it is worth more to them closed.

    No government can order you to pay cash to their friends, a system which has been copied in the UK. This has been illegal since Magna Carta. But no one says anything.

    We are being robbed. And in China, India, Vietnam, Japan, half the world’s population is moving rapidly for the world’s cheapest, cleanest, commandable power. While the idiots in the West are being crippled by an irrational fear of Carbon Dioxide and 33 years of Global Warming.

    Global Warming is history now, man made or not. After 33 years we can say with absolute certainty, Global Warming did not happen. We can say with certainty that rapid sea rise did not happen. The world is not noticeably warmer, colder if anything.

    We can say with absolute certainty that in Australia, windmills and solar panels are a complete failure. We do not need to build more to prove that. Hazelwood was running at 98% capacity when it was turned off. Why?

    So why do we hate coal? And why do China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, 3.3 Billion people love coal? Half the world’s population and half the world’s economy, China and Japan being #2 and #3 in GDP.

    Clean energy is a lie. Electric cars are a lie. And we have government departments who know it. We being robbed.

    Global warming was a lie. It did not happen.

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    • #
      Murray Shaw

      Really need to give this post more ticks TdeF.

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    • #
      Lance

      “Or are we being robbed?”

      Robbery, Theft, and Fraud have different legal definitions. Robbery requires threat or force to deprive one of property. Theft requires a taking without permission or consent and the intent to permanently retain the property taken. Fraud is a taking by deception whilst knowing the deception to be based upon falsehoods.

      I could be mistaken, but it looks more like fraud to me than robbery or theft.

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      • #
        Ronin

        I think we are being robbed, we know they are doing it to us, the threat is pay up or we’ll cut you off, we are taking your dosh and there is stuff all you can do about it because they are being aided and abetted by the biggest bully in the land.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Yes it’s more like fraud but it’s also a deliberate attack on our way of life. In that case I would also classify it as economic terrorism or economic warfare, depending on how one looks at it. It’s also very likely the drivers are foreign as well as domestic. It’s deliberate since all the facts are there proving that shutting down our coal fired power plants in the name of preventing some CAGW by reducing our emissions is obviously a lie being told by people who ought to know better since they are supposed to be intelligent and knowledgeable of the facts. It’s their job to be so. If they fail at that then they are responsible for their policies and actions as no one else can be. That’s why we elect leaders in our democratic process.

        One day it will be seen that way if it’s left to run its course because the obvious result will be an economic collapse, assuming it doesn’t collapse before then due to some other event(s) thus making this discussion moot.

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        • #
          Annie

          Sorry, red accidental from scrolling.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          IMHO we have the current covid sc*m because people woke up to the CAGW scam.

          Both at thier core are designed to lock people down and exert a huge State control grid over the population. The CAGW sc*m would have used Agenda 21 to empty the countryside, herd peopke into cities to limit movement and force a vegie diet on them.

          Covid works similar – it locks people down and more critically, smashes supply chains of goods and food.

          Bottom line in all this is a human induced ( just like Stalin did to the Ukraine ) of a famine. Starved people offer no resistance.

          And they have a seed vault in the artic controlled by globalists….why?

          50

          • #
            PeterS

            Why? To prepare us for the next stage of their evil agenda. Things are going to get a lot worse before it’s all over.

            20

      • #
        TdeF

        Governments only have the rights of taxation and fines. And taxation should be for a common purpose, not the enrichment of public employees. And the Australian electorate made it very clear a carbon tax was not wanted. So the scheme was made law to hide direct subsidies in the wholesale electricity prices to directly benefit owners of wind and solar generators with cash from electricity sales. It is not broken out in your electricity bills. You have no idea it exists. That was the idea. And it does not go into General Revenue, as mandated for all taxes, so it is not a tax. It goes directly to generators of acceptable power who get money for every kw even it they are not sold. So they are paid double.

        No government has the right to direct payments to third parties. So who is paying for all these solar panels and windtowers and distribution systems? You are. As directed by successive Australian governments.

        That is why you pay so much for your electricity. And the Chinese government not only gets the income from selling all the windtowers and turbines and solar panels and owners of solar panels get rebates and direct cash, they are major investors in the power companies and you pay for the lot.

        That is a new thing, government mandated, legislated theft. Fraud? No, you are told nothing about it. There is no deceit. But it should be illegal in any Westminster government. The people did not want a Carbon tax, so we have the world’s greatest Carbon theft.

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        • #
          TdeF

          The scheme is extremely devious. Generators of electricity get credits. Generators of forbidden electricity are forced by law to buy these credits or they are heavily fined. So they have to pay twice. And while the government runs the internet trade, they do not touch the money and soil their hands with a carbon tax. It is a free commercial transaction, a farce.

          And of course retailers buy the cheapest electricity they can, so coal, gas and diesel electricity costs twice as much because you are paying two people, one who supplied nothing.

          This kills the demand for forbidden electricty and provides literally windfall profits for wind tower owners who are just printing cash, paid double. And we pay the world’s highest electricity prices, especially when you consider that coal is free too.

          And nothing is said. By either party. And the money flows like a river, cash for nothing. It is also the greatest tax on the poor in Australian history given that people under $20,000 a year pay no income tax. But they cannot afford our electricity. And all supported by the Australian Labor Party and the Greens who care nothing for the ordinary workers or people in poverty. They are the parties of the rich and the upper middle class public servants who were able to enjoy the pandemic on full salary from home.

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          • #
            Robber

            Well said TdeF, but one correction: It is not the generators who are forced to buy the certificates, rather it is the retailers in proportion to their electricity sales.

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          • #
            Lance

            The RE generators provide Real or True power. That works for a grid phase angle of about 0.95 to 1.0, and as long as the thermal power plants are on line to supply the inrush or startup energy to instantaneous motor loads.

            The thermal plants provide Apparent power, true/real power, and reactive power, in addition to the synchronization signal the RE must have in order to connect to the grid. At power factors of 0.85 to 0.9, only the thermal plants can handle the reactive power.

            IOTW, the RE needs the thermal plants much more than the thermal plants need the RE.

            The only thing the RE plants can do is reduce the Real/True power generated by the thermal plants, ie, reduce fuel consumption to make Real power. The reactive power and synch signals must still come from synchronized thermal dispatchable generation.

            The RE does not assist with transient loads, reactive power loads, voltage stability or frequency stability, nor does RE provide the synch signal to the grid.

            RE can only exist apart from the total grid by being “islanded” and running as their own, independent, grid. But that can’t happen because the RE cannot handle grid scale transient loads or largely inductive loads. IOTW, they can run water heaters, and small appliances, but not large motors, nor can they withstand the instantaneous loads from motors in large size or quantity.

            I’m surprised the electrical power engineers don’t hold a mutiny or protest over this. They understand it best. Perhaps they just want to retire and not get fired. This can’t go on. At some point, the AU grid will collapse and restarting it might be nearly impossible.

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            • #
              Ross

              Clearly those electrical power engineers don’t get to sit in the same room as the decision makers. The decision makers now being the more lefty bureaucrats, politicians and their advisors. The latter 2 are forever counting their possible Green preferences for the next election. It’s why Daniel Andrews is Victorian premier. The first thing he did when elected was tax coal- the Greenies loved it. From a Victorian point of view maybe the electrical power engineers, as you put, had more influence with the previous government owned State Electricity Commission (SEC). Whereas now, the electricity generators are owned by companies (AGL etc) who are the service providers, so are more likely to appease their “customers” wishes. Originally the idea of privatising the SEC was a good one. They had inefficient work practices and way too unionised. But now I can see that a more centralised power grid had many benefits. Which is why China probably works so well regarding its infrastructure development. That democracy thing doesn’t get in the way.

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              • #
                Lance

                Absolutely, Mr. Ross.

                Management only wants to hear from the engineers when things go wonky so they can solve the problem or blame the engineers.

                The power engineers actually understand the entire system of generation, transmission, distribution, maintenance, etc. That makes them essential and essentially enemies. It’s a love hate relationship. My brother did it for 32 yrs.

                When the utility companies were vertically integrated, they owned the problem.

                Now, they break a utility up into Generation, Transmission, Distribution, Management and Maintenance. Generation and Maintenance are deemed “cost sinks” and the rest are deemed “profit centers” and “overhead”.

                Profit is made from distributing and managing power. Costs are allocated to generating and maintaining power. Kind of backwards, but that’s how Management sees things.

                This charade works right up until a whole grid fails. Then it is time to bail out if you are in Management or Sales. The stiffs in Generation and Maintenance have to clean up the “spill”.

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            • #
              truth

              Remember the former and inaugural head of AEMO …the late Matt Zema…ie before Turnbull chose Hillary’s pick for her expected ClintonInc administration energy czar….said at an energy conference just weeks before his untimely death….that RE could not supply the NEM’s electricity…

              Zema to energy executives…before the SA meltdown…

              “The renewable developments and increased political interference are pushing the system towards a crisis.

              South Australia is most vulnerable with its potential for wind to supply 60% of demand and then to cut back rapidly.

              Each new windfarm constrains existing ones and brings demand for more transmission.

              The system is only manageable with robust interconnectors, but these operate effectively only because there is abundant coal-based generation in Victoria…
              … wind, being subsidised and having low marginal costs, depresses the spot price and once a major coal plant has a severe problem it will be closed…… wind does not provide the system security.

              But the politicians will not allow the appropriate price changes to permit profitable supply developments from other sources.

              And the original intent of having the generator or other beneficiary pay for transmission and services over and above energy itself has now been lost so there are no market signals, just a series of patch-ups that obscure the instability and shift the problem to include Victoria.

              In the end the system must collapse…”

              Any pretence that it’s a free market and RE is winning out because it’s the cheapest energy as we’re continually told by the Left including almost all of Australia’s ‘journalists’…is an obscene lie that betrays Australia and hastens its demise as a 1st world nation.

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        • #
          truth

          Morrison’s a master at doing policy he knows his supporters voted against…doing it while being non-committal…dodging questions on it …giving a vague impression he’s in sync with his supporters and is about to do what he was voted in to do…even while he’s moving the country inexorably in the opposite direction…..hence his stunt with a piece of coal in the parliament and his hints before the last election and since… that he was likely to build a new HELE coal plant…while simultaneously and relentlessly killing coal by moving the country towards being 100% dependent on 100% weather dependent wind and solar and their weather-dependent props…..and allowing banks and insurance companies to cancel coal with their bans on insurance for fossil fuel-related business and coal investments and their risk premiums on coal.

          Never discussed …by MSM or politicians…when they say Australia is not meeting its commitments or signing up to new targets….never ever discussed…. is the fact that Australia alone is being forced down this suicide path…no other country on the face of the earth is being forced by its own government…to obey the diktat of foreigners…to try to survive when 100% dependent for its energy lifeblood …on the weather.

          Every other country…all of our trade partners and competitors…all potential adversaries ….every single one of them….will have baseload power in several forms forever…with coal…gas…nuclear…big hydro…and/or interconnectors to source them from neighbouring countries.

          Meanwhile our Left wing leaders of both parties force Australia into a position of greater weakness by the day…imported fuel supply reserves that will last only weeks …a nobbled crippled demoralized energy-starved military…a country that can be shut down in a heartbeat for lack of energy to make electricity.

          Why is this not treason?

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    • #
      PeterS

      Excellent summary of the situation. To the point, factual and clear. To complete it we need to recognise the nation as a whole needs to wake up and react to this lunacy before it’s too late. Time is running out fast.

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    • #
      Ian

      “That is the key to Australia’s electricity cash theft, our massive carbon tax which isn’t actually a tax but theft.”

      What carbon tax? Surely it was repealed in 2014.

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      • #
        Ronin

        No Ian, it was restored on the quiet by 444 Malx.

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        • #
          C. Paul Barreira

          Jo gave some of the details here in October 2017.

          [Thanks Paul, posts can be hard to find now with search engine “help”. – Jo]

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        • #
          Ian

          The NEG was abandoned in 2018 by Scott Morrison.

          “Australia’s new prime minister has abandoned the country’s policy for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Climate scientists say the move means the government has effectively dropped its commitment to the 2015 Paris climate agreement.”

          https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06675-9

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          • #

            Indeed, our emissions trading scheme started on July 1 2017, thanks to Malcolm Turnbull who snuck it in deceptively. He managed to do what Rudd and Gillard could not. Strangely he never bragged about one of his greatest political achievements. Can’t think why?

            The scheme is small at the moment, but if/when Labor wins, they will be able to ramp it up without even a vote in the House. Just turn the knob…

            May 2016: Secret deal:

            Australia already has an ETS – carbon tax – starts in 5 weeks

            The legislation was done on the last day Parliament sat in December. The Coalition government knew it would be popular with the voters who all want “carbon action” so they… buried the news. No cheering. No speeches.

            It apparently starts on July 1, and applies to 150 companies — about half our emissions. It’s a Cap N Trade system with “Caps” that can be screwed gently down as the climate warms to fill government coffers and raise electricity prices. The Direct Action plan auctions can be phased out and the SneakTax phased in. It could end up being the main game. A blank cheque.

            It’s called “Safeguard” — it was safe for politicians and guards them against their failure to meet pointless, symbolic international agreements to slow storms. A Safeguard for politicians but a SneakTax for the people.

            What does it mean? It’s time Australia got a new central political party.

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            • #
              Ian

              Jo you write ” the scheme is small at the moment”. Has it not been abandoned then?? The link I put in in my comment above indicates it has as does the link below;

              https://utilitymagazine.com.au/federal-government-to-abandon-neg/

              Mr Morrison confirmed to The Weekend Australian the intention to ditch the NEG.

              “The NEG is dead, long live reliability guarantee, long live default prices, long live backing new power generation,” Mr Morrison said.

              Former Minister for Energy, Josh Frydenberg, told the ABC, “No one is more disappointed than I am.

              “As Bismarck said: politics is the art of the possible. It was very clear that that legislation couldn’t proceed so our focus now turns to the reliability aspect of the national energy guarantee, which is very much needed.”

              Clean Energy Council Chief Executive, Kane Thornton, said clean energy is now the lowest-cost form of investment in new power generation and does not need new subsidy, but it does need policy certainty.

              “The clean energy industry is disappointed that the government has walked away from the National Energy Guarantee (NEG). The NEG was no-one’s preferred option and the proposed emissions reduction target was basically useless

              24

              • #
                Ian

                Jo and Ronin and C. Paul Barreira does Australia have a carbon tax or doesn’t it?

                03

              • #
                Ian

                Iasked this question quite some time go

                “Jo and Ronin and C. Paul Barreira does Australia have a carbon tax or doesn’t it?”

                It is instructive that there no answers as yet. Perhaps there will be later.

                03

              • #
                Kalm Keith

                In answer to your question;

                Yes, I’ll know as soon as the “carbon tax” is lifted.

                20

              • #
                C. Paul Barreira

                I’m not entirely sure that a more precise answer than Jo’s—and Jo did provide an answer—is entirely necessary. For another way to look at the matter is to ask after the costs imposed on businesses and individuals as a result of the obsession with catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (CAGW). If, as happened for many in the wake of the blackouts of 2016 in South Australia, businesses installed their own generators (and many did), then this was, for all intents and purposes, a tax on those businesses with “carbon” as its focus. Or if a business received a grant from the state government and spent the millions concerned on solar panels then this, too, was just such a tax on the general public. A similar point, expressed a little differently, is made above in the thread opened by TdeF at 6.2.3. Or, Ronin, at 6.5. And so on . . .

                There was, in the 1980s, you will recall, much chatter about rational economics. It seemed to me then, and it still does, that a central point of it was a question, especially directed to government: “What does it cost?” Given the depth of acceptance of CAGW, what many call “climate change”, then the costs to taxpayers of this (alleged) imperative warrant close scrutiny. Many of Jo’s posts and a great many of the subsequent comments have discussed these matters in considerable detail. So, for taxes on “carbon” just look around. Any expenditure of government, business and individuals, direct or indirect, that has CAGW as its fundamental justification, depends upon a carbon tax however it might be expressed. I’ve no doubt it can be quantified, but, ugh, what a job?

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              • #
                Ian

                C. Paul Barreira. Thank you for your reply.

                Although you make several points discussing various aspects of taxation neither you or Jo address the question I asked which was “does Australia have a carbon tax?”. TdeF introduced the term “massive carbon tax” in his comment to which I replied that Australia does not have such a tax. It doesn’t.

                12

            • #
              truth

              Morrison’s coal stunt was meant to shore up his then great friend Turnbull’s PMship…and keep the Australian people believing in their ‘no carbon tax ..no ETS ‘ scam despite the fact that Turnbull was trying to sneak one in at every opportunity.

              Morrison had been pals with Turnbull since the latter’s Goldman Sachs days.
              Morrison would have been party to or completely onside with …..the Gore interference and ultimatum prior to the coup IMO.

              Those cosy restaurant assignations between Turnbull and Palmer ….with MSM there to record their cleverness …were almost certainly to pass on Gore’s demands to Turnbull in preparation for the coup….and IMO Morrison would have known about the scam to put the screws on Abbott.

              Morrison was/is leader in the parliament of the Photios faction that also got Turnbull …Zimmerman…and most of the Wets into parliament…and Michael and Kristina Photios ….who get their stable of WetLeft Quislings into parliament while simultaneously purging conservatives….in order to corrupt the electoral process IMO by having their WetLeft PM and his Cabinet of Photios footsoldiers do LW CAGW Green/Labor policy that the country expressly voted against.

              Lobbyist Photios is close to Gore…and to Naomi Klein…and he has brought Gore to Australia since then…to indoctrinate Queensland school kids on CAGW…with the help of Palaszczuk.

              Craig Kelly was the biggest thorn in their side with Abbott purged…and now he may lose his seat as an independent…the Photios candidate …Kent Johns has been trying to get his seat for years.

              Soon the Liberal Party will be close to 100% Photios/Gore footsoldiers …Federal and State [which is also infested starting with Gladys herself]….and it will be time…is already IMO ….for a new conservative party.

              There’s nothing for conservatives to vote for in a party that does GreenLabor far Left policy…a party that’s forcing Australia to become the roadkill for the Global Socialist plan to control their Socialist world from Europe …ie until China takes the gloves off and brings them to heel as well.

              Conservatives can’t vote for a party that at the same time allows the Left to scramble the brains of Australia’s children…to indoctrinate them into dysfunctional LW activists…and a party that on top of all that legislates….at the behest of the Greens…abortion policy for cusp of birth ‘terminations’ that most reasonable people would see as State-sanctioned murder.

              Morrison will always deceive …obfuscate… dodge and weave….he knows no other way …unfit IMO.

              10

    • #
      Ronin

      Going back a couple of decades, I had ONE power retailer, Energex, they did a good job and life was good, now we have to pay for two dozen retailers, their boards, head offices and CEOs and million $ office refits when the CEO changes, we also pay for their door to door salesmen to hassle us with the exact same product, and totally opaque plans.
      I’m fed up to the back teeth.

      160

    • #
      Chad

      #
      TdeF
      July 3, 2021 at 7:32 am ·
      …….. Electric cars are a lie. And we have government departments who know it. We being robbed

      ?? How are Electric cars a “lie” ..?
      ..and how are they robbing us ?
      EVs are just regular cars with a different drive train and fuel source.
      Sure they have some pro’s and con’s to adapt to but its no big deal compared to the pretend democracy we accept daily !

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      • #
        TdeF

        The most blatant lie is that they reduce CO2 output.

        In fact if you use fuel like coal, oil, gas to power the car directly you generate less CO2 than thermal conversion in a power station and transmission losses. If you want to buy one, fine, but you are paying double and even triple because you can, not because you are a good person doing the planet a favour.

        Consider also that fuel is heavily taxed, up to 90% in some cases and that electric car users want exemptions from registration, stamp duty and the many other taxes and penalties which apply to petrol cars which actually generate less CO2. They do not want to pay taxes. Great. Why should anyone? But the idea is that we pay and like the windmill and solar rebates, they receive.

        Plus electric car owners want the rest of the community to urgently spend billions building thousands of fast recharge points at the public expense for a tiny proportion of society. How about NO for an answer? Governments never paid for petrol stations but the upper middle class demand to be paid for by everyone else, because they are saving the planet and deserve to be subsidized by everyone else while they skip the taxes we all pay.

        It’s just not true, there is no CO2 saving in electric cars, and certainly none against hybrids which do not need recharging stations. In fact electric cars are overweight energy guzzling monsters which means we have to build more power stations for the rich and up go our electricity prices again. All at our expense. Most of them carrying 600Kg in dead batteries, wasting energy far beyond hybrids which are 500kg lighter. A 60 litre tank only weighs 60kg.

        And these extra heavy cars (Telsas weigh as much as 2.5 tonnes) mean we all have to pay for road repairs.

        Hybrids make real sense, doubling our fuel supplies and not needing recharging points and actually halving total CO2 output, as if that matters because there is no Global Warming, not for the last 33 years. Electric cars are the leeches of the power grid. And everyone else has to pay for them. Again. They are the middle class status symbol of today. But they need to pay their way because they are not doing anyone a favor.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Weight, Telsa X 5,421 lbs, S is 4674 lbs, 3 is 3552 lbs. ( 2.5tonnes, 2.1tonnes, 1.6 Tonnes). And yes they have regenerative braking but it is only 70% efficient and no different to a mild hybrid. A 600kg battery still weighs 600kg when flat. An empty fuel tank weighs nothing, average 40kg. They are energy leeches. But of course it’s up to the community to build more power stations and charging points. Any costs should be paid exclusively by electric car owners. Sales would stop tomorrow.

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          • #
            TdeF

            And in a mild hybrid, the battery weighs about 50kg but you have to subtract the 20kg in a normal car battery, so the additional 30kg weight is negligible to get all the advantages of a fully electric car with none of the downside. A hybrid range is often over 1,000km.

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            • #
              Hanrahan

              A hybrid still has a 12 V battery, it runs the computer and ancillaries but mine is 12 years old. It doesn’t have to crank the engine to start.

              10

              • #
                TdeF

                Thanks. That part of the car appears unchanged and independent of the 300Volt hybrid battery. So there is no weight saving generally. Still we are talking 20kg, not 600kg.

                20

        • #
          Chad

          TdeF
          July 3, 2021 at 7:21 pm ·
          The most blatant lie is that they reduce CO2 output

          Sorry but that is not true !

          In summary, we conclude on the basis of recent studies that fossil-fuelled cars generally emit more than electric cars in all phases of a life cycle. The total life cycle emissions from a fossil-fuelled car and an electric car in Australia were 333gCO2/km and 273gCO2/km, respectively. That is, using average grid electricity, EVs come out about 18 per cent better in terms of their carbon footprint.

          https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/116599831/climate-explained-the-carbon-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars

          electric car users want exemptions from registration, stamp duty and the many other taxes and penalties which apply to petrol cars

          Are they ??…..please give a reference …from “users”

          01

    • #
      John Watt

      Some of the energy realities:
      A decade ago Australia had some of the cheapest distributed energy in the world. These days our energy is some of the dearest in the developed world. (Probably supply industry privatization concurrent with subsidized renewables contributed to this dilemma).
      The economy and manufacturing are suffering as a consequence.
      We aren’t building new coal-fired generation and probably aren’t doing the level of maintenance we should be.
      Reliability of coal-fired generation relies on having a number of generators available as back up in the event of breakdowns. Closing down coal-fired stations diminishes the reliability of electricity supply.
      Dr John Nicol’s unchallenged analysis from a decade ago suggests CO2 is not the driver of the climate catastrophe so why are pretending closing down fossil fuels is a necessary/good move? Makes the Thunberg petals feel good? Makes Gore and his mates serious profits?
      Solar has been over promoted in the suburbs. Take the trouble to catch up with AEMC’s analysis and proposals on this issue.
      Solar, backed up by batteries and a diesel generator is potentially a cost-effective energy source for consumers in areas remote from major power sources…avoids transmission losses , reduces transmission asset expenditure.
      Even at currently exorbitant electricity prices, fuel cost for EV’s are well below corresponding petrol/diesel costs. EV’s are best suited to short city-based trips. Charging stations are in short supply. Perhaps the capacity in our street lighting supply cables can be used to feed EV charging stations during daylight hours. Possibly the excessive daytime solar generation identified by AEMC can be directed to EV charging.

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      • #
        TdeF

        “CO2 is not the driver of the climate catastrophe”. I thought it was 33 years of rapid tipping point Global Warming? Now there is a Climate Catastrophe? What happened to the promised Global Warming?

        “fuel cost for EV’s are well below corresponding petrol/diesel costs.”

        As I wrote above, owners of electric cars should pay for everything they demand. Extra power stations. Recharging points. Road repairs as currently paid for very heavy vehicles. And the only reason car electricity is below petrol/diesel costs is that petrol/diesel is mostly taxation.

        Once electric car owners have pay their own way for road repairs, maintenance and lighting, new roads and continuous repair, car electricity would be many times more expensive. And why should everyone else pay? And who is going to pay for the new generation capacity for all those electric cars? I would guess at twice as many power stations. No one wants more windmills.

        Hybrids make real sense. And they can run fully electric and are self recharging and far, far lighter. There are no additional demands on everyone else. And they generate less CO2 than anything else.

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      • #
        Chad

        Solar, backed up by batteries and a diesel generator is potentially a cost-effective energy source for consumers in areas remote from major power sources…avoids transmission losses , reduces transmission asset expenditure…

        ?..”potentially” ?….
        Once you go beyond the eastern states grid…..that is pretty much how the rest of the country functions. !

        01

  • #
    PeterS

    I never could understand why these facts about how many coal fired power stations are being built, when told to most people it doesn’t even register let alone make them realise the hypocrisy and useless notion of closing down ours. The information is not new – they have been on public domain for all to see for years. Even people like PM Morrison who used to clamour about how coal was important before he became PM now is on the other side and beating his chest about how great we are at reducing our emissions to net zero evnetually. Why are we as a nation such a bunch of whimps and not fighting back at this lunacy. If not turned around soon it will destroy our economy and way of life.

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    • #
      Lance

      PS, good points. I wonder if the general population understands that the interconnectors mean nothing if the dispatchable reactive power and grid synchronization frequency signal don’t exist because the coal/gas plants are insufficient or nonexistent?

      There is a certain “failure imminent” minimum of synchronous generation that cannot be overcome.

      I’m uncomfortable below 75% total generation being dispatchable. 66%, to me, seems like the bare minimum. Below that, the grid is facing voltage or frequency collapse.

      There are transmission stability, distribution stability, voltage stability and frequency stability that pretty much govern the viability of a grid. At transmission level, the generator bus, load bus, and slack/swing/Reference bus determine stability. The RE generators do not appear at the transmission level and do not provide slack bus assistance. Too much RE and it is “lights out” for everyone.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Those facts and a lot more ought to be brought to the attention to the state and federal “leaders” by the experts in the industry via the appropriate Ministers. If they already are then the “leaders” are acting in direct violation of their role and responsibility, and IMHO is acting in a way that could be classified as economic terrorists. If such information is not being brought to their attention then the relevant Ministers are reprehensible. Either way, our representative governments are letting us down very badly. It’s up to the people to let them know they are not representing them properly before it’s too late.

        80

        • #
          Lance

          The profitable thing to do is to contract for reactive power generation and re-sell it on demand. Contract for that capability when you know the grid is stressed, say days above 35C and hours between 3 PM and 8 PM. Examine the base load and day ahead wind outlook and contract for the difference between the restricted output of the thermal plant and the predicted capacity factor of the RE, then pre-purchase the “spare” Real and Reactive power and sell it at a premium.

          At $50 / MWh, you get all of it for free from a thermal plant. The good old days.

          But when the RE can’t provide reactive power, offer to sell it to the grid operator at $500/MVAR and $400/ MW. They have to have it. There’s no alternative except a blackout.

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          • #
            PeterS

            I’ve been contemplating for over a year at getting a backup generator. I think I better get with it and buy one.

            70

            • #
              Ronin

              Don’t get one from Bunnings.

              20

            • #
              Lance

              Get an inverter generator that can be paralleled with a second one. About half the fuel costs. More expensive up-front, but not terribly so.

              Just use heavy extension cords and power only the critical things: Well pump if you have one, refrigerator, and then a microwave and perhaps your internet. Get small.

              Do NOT connect directly to the breaker panel unless you manually trip the main breaker or have a mains disconnect or are powering an isolated sub panel, else you might kill a lineman working on the main distribution lines.

              And be prepared to change the oil in the gen set every 25 hours. Have lube oil on hand and a waste oil bin. And fuel, with stabilizer or it might not work when you want it to work. Prepare your mind to pay twice what you normally pay for power. That’s how it works out.

              Coal keeps looking better and better, eh?

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              • #
                PeterS

                Noted, thanks for the tips.

                I get conflicting advice. Some say petrol is better than diesel, others say the opposite. I suppose it depends on the make and model.

                50

              • #
                David Maddison

                PeterS, there are also LPG (US = propane) powered generators. Apparently the advantage is that the fuel never goes bad, unlike petrol.

                40

              • #
                PeterS

                Are there any Thorium based ones yet? 🙂

                50

        • #
          Mal

          The NSW minister for energy is Matt Keane
          A hard left greenie masquerading as a a liberal.
          He is also Minister for the environment
          What a conflict of interest
          I doubt he would understand any technical argument presented which conflicted with his idealogy
          If NSW continues the current policy of shutting down all coal fired power stations by 2030, then we will have the electricity grid collapse
          End of Australia, welcome to the new dark ages

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          • #
            PeterS

            It won’t end there. Our politicians will then beg for China’s assistance”. The irony is they will then build all the coal fired power stations we will need in no time. Perhaps even some nuclear ones. Our political “leaders” should be ashamed of themselves for leading us over the cliff. It can be reversed so easily. The again they won’t, either because they are incompetent fools or they are complicit with the those behind the scenes to destroy our way of life. Either way it doesn’t matter – they deserve life in prison and nothing less.

            50

            • #
              Sceptical Sam

              they deserve life in prison and nothing less.

              Only life?

              Turn it up.

              They gave Martin Bryant 35 life sentences, plus 1,035 years without parole.

              And he only killed 35 people.

              20

              • #
                Sceptical Sam

                Then, as you’d know, there’s poor old Chamoy Thipyaso from Thailand who was sentenced to 141,078 years in prison for defrauding more than 16,000 Thais in a pyramid scheme worth $204 million at the time.

                But they let her out after just 8 years.

                Who say fraud doesn’t pay?

                30

      • #
        Chad

        Lance
        July 3, 2021 at 8:58 am ·
        There is a certain “failure imminent” minimum of synchronous generation that cannot be overcome.
        I’m uncomfortable below 75% total generation being dispatchable. 66%, to me, seems like the bare minimum. Below that, the grid is facing voltage or frequency collapse

        Why do you keep pedaling this theory/guess of “minimum FF requirement “ ?
        We all know that Wind & Solar can never be a reliable continuous grid supply,….
        …..but at the same time you cannot ignore the fact that some grids do run with less than 50% FF input !

        00

    • #
      Hanrahan

      ScoMo’s wimpy attitude might bring him down. They never learn, it was their carbon™ policies that brought down his predecessors with the possible exception of the best of them, Tony.

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      • #
        Ian

        “They never learn, it was their carbon™ policies that brought down his predecessors with the possible exception of the best of them, Tony.”

        “Tony” didn’t need carbon policies to bring him down. He had plenty of other broken promises, poor policies and general bungles to ensure his demise as PM

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        • #
          clarence.t

          ““Tony” didn’t need carbon policies to bring him down”

          Nope he had the taxpayer funded ABC, and slimy backstabbing and undermining by Turncoat and his LINO mates, to do that.

          Tony’s carbon polices are what lead him to the huge landslide victory the previous election.

          230

        • #
          Hanrahan

          A hostile press can “prove” anyone a liar with a little selective editing.

          40

    • #
      Serp

      Aren’t we there yet? Look around and ponder the destruction of the economy and way of life and estimate the likelihood of recovery given the ongoing surrender of parliamentary rule to health bureaucrats.

      50

  • #
    John R Smith

    Doesn’t look like John Kerry will be able to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere any time soon.
    As a potted plant, I am breathing a sigh of relief.

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  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    In the West we have been lied to under the pretext of Science. In Australia our education system and our leftist media have brainwashed the population so the the average person in the street completely belives that CO2 is evil.
    In China the the people there are also controlled by the media. But I’ll bet that most of them don’t give a damn about CO2 or climate change. And China has a large number of very large cities where EV’s will work well for them by removing tne pollution from those cities. The Chinese will be happy and say ‘look what we have achieved under communism’.
    GeoffW

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    • #
      PeterS

      Yes and when the West is in ruins China can extend their “successes” over to the West.

      50

      • #
        PeterS

        .. by building more not less coal fired power stations. In Australia it will be a given since we have so much high quality coal.

        60

        • #
          el gordo

          They would build whatever is applicable to the location, a new coal fired plant in the Hunter is a certainty and renewables in the centre.

          22

          • #
            PeterS

            That’s right, China would build one there, and in many other places. First, they need to take us over. Meanwhile:
            In March 2019 Hong Kong-based Kaisun Holdings signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China Energy Engineering Group (CEEC) and Australian firm Cavcorp to build the plant in the Hunter Economic Zone. As of May 2021, there have been no updates on the project, and it appears to be shelved.

            Plant Details
            Sponsor:
            Parent company: China Energy Engineering Group Hunan Electric Power Design Institute Co., Ltd (CEEC-HEPDI); Cavcorp
            Location: Kurri Kurri, New South Wales, Australia
            Coordinates: -32.8290775 151.4676353 (approximate)
            Status: Shelved
            Gross capacity: 2 x 1000 MW
            Type: Ultra-supercritical
            Coal type: Bituminous
            https://www.gem.wiki/Kurri_Kurri_power_station

            The day Australia builds a new and significant coal fired power station (not a puny one as above) is the day the nation wakes up. We are not there yet and I seriously doubt we ever will be, but we live in hope.

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            • #
              PeterS

              Correction; the Kurri Kurri one proposed was not puny. Sad it was shelved. Japan is building a number of these types as we speak.

              70

              • #
                Geoffrey Williams

                2 gigawatts is fine, and 3 or 4 of those around the country would be very useful. GeoffW

                40

              • #
                el gordo

                Its been shelved indefinitely because of the soured relationship. The World Bank was going to fund it.

                ‘Kaisun Holdings announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese state-owned power provider and a tiny Australian private company to build two 1,000MW power stations.’ (Guardian)

                And I agree with Geoff, small is beautiful in our context.

                20

          • #
            clarence.t

            “renewables in the centre.”

            Nope. Tyranny of distance! Niche supplies only.

            And you still need “reliables” as back up.

            60

  • #
    clarence.t

    Speaking of coal fired power…

    Perhaps Tony can explain what is happening here with a large negative price in Qld this morning.

    https://i.postimg.cc/NjwPDjyS/Qld-neg.jpg ..???

    10

  • #
    Lance

    If you want to understand “why” all of this is happening, you have to understand the Chinese board game of strategy, “Go”. The game is about obtaining and defending territory while denying territory to the opponent. Similar to Chess, but in some ways much more complex.

    https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/Chinese.html

    When China controls AU ports, power generation, mining, real estate, etc, they are “obtaining territory” and denying territory to the AU. In terms of “Go”, they are winning the game.

    China controls the Panama Canal, having underbid others to operate the locks and canal. That is a strategic move because it means China now controls operation of the main shipping channel to the United States to and from the Pacific Ocean. So what if they lose money? They gained “territory” and can defend it by closing the canal for “maintenance” any time they want to do so.

    The US was stupid to allow it.

    140

  • #
    clarence.t

    OT….. According to UAH, Australia just had its 7th coldest June in 43 years.

    60

    • #
      Harves

      C’mon, everyone knows that low temperatures are just ‘weather’.

      30

      • #
        clarence.t

        Yep, we have had cooler than normal weather for most of the first half of the year 😉

        40

    • #
      Hanrahan

      OK, I live in the tropics but it still gets [relatively] cold sometimes. Not this year, we haven’t had a cold day [today it was almost HOT] and only two cool nights where I switched on the rev. cycle aircon for a few hours pre-dawn. Clouds are a blanket at night but spoil the bright sunny days tourists love.

      00

  • #
    TdeF

    I wanted to emphasise how rapid man made Global Warming announced in 1988 to US Congress did not happen. Rapidly rising seas did not happen. Drowning Manhattan did not happen. The seas has not risen over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as predicted by ABC Science expert Robyn Williams, 100 metres of rise. Nothing happened.

    Now no one predicted ‘Climate Change’. It was a deliberate segue to hide the obvious fact that Global Warming did not happen. It was not rapid, not man made, not tipping point. And Bill Nye the Science Guy made it clear what he expected, so it was not about Climates. The world was going to end very soon in a ball of fire. This was 2019.

    Now that the Chinese have spread their killer bioweapon and no one now doubts that it was made by them in their laboratory built by the French and funded in part by Dr. Fauci, once it escaped as was likely, they deliberately spread it around the world as rapidly as posisble. And the Democrats called Donald Trump a Xenophobe for trying to stop 3/4 million Chinese who brought the virus to the US alone in 2021. Now they blame Trump for not moving faster. The release of the bioweapon Wuhan flu was the way war is declared in a nuclear age.

    And this with the complicity of the EU, UN (WHO). And now we are seeing the complicity of the UNESCO in attacking us for a single bleaching event in only some areas of the massive Great Barrier Reef.

    These non elected quasi world governments, EU, UN and China are openly threatening world health and peace. And their instruments are hidden taxes, prohibitions and the IPCC, WHO and now UNESCO, all infiltrated and controlled by the Chinese and their Belt and Road African partners.

    Unlike China, all our coal is free. So why are we paying the world’s highest electricity prices? And why are all the smart countries buying coal, which we are not allowed to use?

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  • #
    Mal

    Co2 is Not a pollutant
    Australia produces 1 molecule in 10 million parts of the atmosphere
    We are irrelevant to any global warming of climate change
    But we have political leaders who will commit economic suicide for our country
    What is their agenda
    Is covid just a prelude to even greater economic destructiom from the so called renewable energy fantasy

    100

    • #
      TdeF

      Our political leaders are often people who have had no other job. As Bill Shorten, Albanese, Joe Biden. And they want to keep their jobs so they do everything the Green minority want even though in a representative government, the Greens have only one seat. So extremist Green policy and fantasy is Liberal policy, Labor policy, National policy. Does anyone really believe Global Warming is reality? I doubt it. In 33 years it has not happened. Sea rises have not happened. And bushfires and hurricanes are a fact of life.

      No one seems to care about the poor. But transvestites in sport is now a major issue of human ‘rights’. Except they have a right to compete in mens events right now but demand their ‘right’ to compete against women. The media are partly to blame because they support the insanity. The greatest threat to hard fought 20th century womens’ rights are in fact men dressed as women. And the greatest threat to our quality of life is the rise of an openly bellicose China. And more practically the refusal of Australian governments to allow us to use our own coal for our own lives.

      So we in Australia are going to save the planet on our own when at least half of the world population are burning as much coal as they can source. Perhaps if we just sent them money not to burn coal? But we already do that. China receives such carbon credits as cash for building hydro. If China set out to undermine democracy, they have done a great job.

      Donald Trump was a breath of fresh air because he was not a politician. Which is why the entire establishment planned to get rid of him.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Mal, I want my CO2 molecules back. They are powerful molecules indeed. I am not prepared to give them away.

      30

  • #
    David Maddison

    As for India, remember when the Victoriastan Government refused to sell brown coal to India, for their own good you know…

    Peter Batchelor, who was the minister responsiable is a life long hard core ALP hack, no surprise there…

    Note different and contradictory claims:

    *Supposed “voter backlash”.

    *”carbon-intensive and harmful to the environment”.

    *”Victoria’s coal is an increasingly valuable resource”.

    Victoria puts a stop to coal plans

    December 10, 2009

    Fears of a voter backlash have seen the Victorian Government put the brakes on plans to allow the mining and export of the State’s brown coal to India.

    The controversial plans for Melbourne-based company Exergen to develop a $1.5 billon scheme to mine, dry and ship up to 12 million tonnes of Latrobe Valley brown coal to India were revealed in October after government documents were leaked to The Age newspaper.

    Victoria’s Minister for Energy and Resources Peter Batchelor has now ruled out the Exergen export plan.

    “The Government has no plans to allocate coal to Exergen or to any other company outside of a competitive tender process,” a spokeswoman for Batchelor’s office told MINING DAILY.

    “There are no immediate plans for a competitive coal allocation.”

    The Victorian Government’s decision comes on the heels of reports from last month that Exergen paid for an exclusive meeting between its executives and Premier John Brumby while its coal export plan was before cabinet.

    Brown coal from the Latrobe Valley is considered to be especially carbon-intensive and harmful to the environment.

    Batchelor’s spokeswoman said that such environmental factors will need to be taken into account in future decisions regarding the State’s coal resources.

    “Victoria’s coal is an increasingly valuable resource and any future allocation strategy will need to consider the economic development opportunities and environmental impacts,” she said.

    https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/victoria-puts-a-stop-to-coal-plans/

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    • #
      TdeF

      “Brown coal from the Latrobe Valley is considered to be especially carbon-intensive and harmful to the environment

      This is total myth pushed by the anti coal people. This myth is pushed as usual by Wikipedia but if you read carefully, they are skirting around the truth. Hydrocarbons are roughly the same and coal really only varies with water content which is 66% in brown coal/lignite in Victoria and Germany and sometimes 75%. So the energy per tonne is 1/3. Dried brown coal is close to the same energy and CO2 per tonne. As even the Wikipedia article admits

      “Processes which remove water from brown coal reduce the risk of spontaneous combustion to the same level as black coal, increase the calorific value of brown coal to a black coal equivalent fuel, and significantly reduce the emissions profile of ‘densified’ brown coal to a level similar to or better than most black coals

      As a Victorian I am still steaming that the Brumby Labor Victoria government banned a $400Million sale of brown coal to India after a campaign by the Age newspaper. They raved that the villains were going to remove the water and make it blacker! A heinous crime apparently, but somehow the Indians did not fancy paying for the shipment of coal which was 2/3 water.

      Compression water removal was an invention by a collaboration of Monash University and a private Bacchus Marsh company. $400 million lost.

      And the coal stays in the ground. Benefiting no one. Typical Green result. I am leaning to the idea that public servants should not vote.

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      • #

        They are now utilising USC coal fired power plants for brown coal as well. They are using the superheated exhaust from the plant to heat the coal, crushed to fine powder before it is injected into the furnace. This gets rid of the moisture, and the efficiency levels are almost the same as for black coal fired USC plants now.

        The German plant at Neurath started using this technology back in 2012, and the original information (now long since gone) was eight pages, and towards the end, it quoted that this technology was also being proposed for retrofitting at the Hazelwood plant in Victoria. Instead, that Hazelwood plant was just bl0wn up.

        That can be seen on the schematic diagram of one Unit shown at this link. A little right of centre is the tall structure of the furnace/Steam generator. Near the bottom right of the furnace you see the Lignite (brown coal) mills where the coal is pulverised to that fine powder. From there and going up a little you see that the coal enters a blue coloured area, and to the left of the furnace you see that the blue area is titled Air Heater. (amazing things, these schematic diagrams of a coal fired Unit, as you see how technical it all really is)

        China is also utilising this same process for their own brown coal fired USC planst as well, and emissions are now down to similar emissions from their own black coal USC plants.

        Tony.

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        • #
          David Maddison

          And in Australia, the DUMB COUNTRY, we let these vast brown coal resources stay in the ground and prefer intermittent, low grade electricity production with windmills which predate by centuries the Industrial Revolution that bought us on-demand inexpensive and reliable coal energy.

          Incidentally, when they closed Hazelwood Power Station all the tropical fish species including Barramundi which had been introduced into the cooling pond of that power station also died. The lake was also a year-round recreational area because it was at a constant 26C.

          When the fish died (or more appropriately, murdered) vast numbers washed up on shore, so many that front end loaders had to be bought in to scoop them up.

          I didn’t hear a single “green” complain about that animal genocide.

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        • #
          TdeF

          All good information. Germany is in the same spot.

          My other point was that Australian Innovation, hard work and investment was trashed by a Victoria Labor government because the radical left Age newspaper hated coal. If we use our own coal, it is a simple matter to remove the water but if you want to export it, brown coal is useless because 2/3 of the cost of shipping is for shipping water.

          In other words if we perfected the process, our vast brown coal reserves could be exported, creating a huge windfall for Victoria but it was the government of no hopers who care nothing about jobs which stopped this Australian export and innovation.

          Meanwhile Herr Andrews says we can get billions and jobs from the Chinese Belt and Road, something we must do because in his words, “Victoria has no natural resources“! So forget the brown coal, gas, forests, farming, wine, fish, .. we have to get billions from China to stay alive? He has singlehandedly locked up our resources and his eletricity prices have made manufacturing impossible. Whose side is he on? No need to answer that.

          It’s been a long time since the Labor party cared about anyone but themselves and absolute power. The same for the Greens or as Adam Bandt said “Tell them what they want to hear and when we get power, we will do what we want”. Spoken like the true Communist dictator he would be.

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  • #
    Robber

    China builds reliable coal generators, in Australia we erect wacky windmills.
    Just imagine if we ended up with 100% wind-based power.
    To do some simple sums, based on Australia’s average electricity demand of about 24,000 MW:
    Macarthur wind farm in western Victoria has a nameplate capacity of 420 MW consisting of 140 3 MW turbines built at a cost of $1 billion in 2013.
    On average, at a capacity factor of 30%, generation equals 126 MW.
    So to meet total demand would require 190 Macarthurs with 26,600 towers at a cost of $190 billion.
    If they were placed 2kms apart they would stretch for 53,000 kms, that’s 1.3 times the earth’s circumference.
    But wait, there’s more.
    When the wind doesn’t blow, assume batteries provide the backup.
    For one hour’s coverage, that’s 24,000 MWhr, equal to 186 times the capacity of that “big” battery in SA that reportedly cost over $50 million.
    But if we wanted 24 hours of backup for one wind free day, that’s over 4,000 “big” batteries at a cost of $200 billion.

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    • #
      TdeF

      And the lifespan of such a system, costing $390Billion? 20 years tops. Plus no one seems to cost in the infrastructure, the system which has to be built to collect power from 26,000 towers. And the polllution when it all has to be torn down.

      Plus it is nice to talk of 30% capacity but that hides the awful truth that power is not always there when you need it, nor as much as you need when you need it. It is not commandable. You would not drive a car which only worked sometimes and when it worked, it delivered random amounts of power which had nothing to do with what you needed. In fact such a car would be illegal to drive as it was dangerous.

      I remember being in a factory in India when all the machines stopped and the lights went off. Everyone just stood around and waited. you cannot run a society like that.

      We had a great system built by our fathers, a reliable, cheap adequate and commandable system. It has only taken governments and climatebaggers ten years to destroy it. This talk of building something better is rubbish. And at least half the world agrees.

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      • #
        David Maddison

        TdeF, regarding the longevity and cost issue, people don’t seem to care because:

        1) The deliberate dumbing down of the education system. No one of the Sheeple seems to understand the nature of electricity production.

        2) No understanding by the masses, politicians (and in some cases even “scientists” and “engineers”) of engineering systems or knowledge of the fact that real power generation systems have lifespans of 50 years minimum for coal, gas and nuclear to 100 years for, say proper hydro (not SH2).

        3) No understanding or concern for costs. The Government just keeps endlessly borrowing or printing money (or imposing more taxes) or all three for “free stuff” for the Sheeple and no one cares because most of the population are net tax consumers anyway and selfishly leech off those few of us that still work or produce (or have done do in the past). It doesn’t matter to Joe or Karen Six Pack whether a windmill last 5, 10 or 20 years or its cost of replacement compared to minimum 50 economical or more for real power generation.

        4) No understanding that we don’t need to “transition” to unreliables anyway because that is fed by a fraudulent claim of anthropogenic global warming which is further promoted by (and profited) by the Chicomms.

        5) A vast army of useful idiots to keep the lies flowing and to mock and humiliate, un-person, deplatform or even assault or kill anyone who questions their lies.

        6) And all this because the Left want to return us to the state of physical and mental enslavement as existed before the Industrial Revolution and The Enlightenment. The social hierarchy will then be the Leftist Elites and the Serfs or Party Members and Proles as George Orwell called them.

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    • #
      GlenFromAus

      But wait, there’s more!!!!!

      Those batteries, if they are lithium, can only be depleted to 20% (assuming 80% DOD). So you need to increase the number, and thus the cost, by 1/5: $240billion

      Then, you need to factor in wind-less days. The BOM helpfully notes that – on average – Australia has 2 days windless per week.
      So, for the worst case that those 2 days happen consecutively, you need to *triple* the battery numbers: cost = $720 billion

      THEN …
      In 20 years (at BEST), all those wind towers and batteries will need replacement: cost = $920 billion.

      So basically it is a cost of $46billion per year, spread across electricity consumers.
      Assuming 25million population, the cost is $1860 per year per person (which includes every man, woman and child in Australia).
      So for a four person family: cost = $7360 per year.
      NOTE that this is just for the infrastructure.
      We haven’t begun to factor in the cost of distribution or usage.

      So the “poles and wires” per year cost goes from currently $500 to $7360.

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    • #
      Maptram

      I see a small flaw in the calculations.

      Average demand is about 24,000 MW, so to meet that demand 190 Macarthurs need to be built plus batteries to provide for the days when the wind doesn’t blow. The problem I see is that the batteries need to be charged but the 190 Macarthurs only meet the demand of 26000 MW, so there is none left over to charge the batteries.

      80

    • #
      Mal

      We won’t end 100% windmills
      The grid will collapse well before then

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  • #
    Lance

    5 Asian Countries Build 600 Coal Plants to Obtain Global Economic and Military Hegemony.

    Western Nations close Coal Plants to Obtain “Service Worker Economy” status.

    If a nation doesn’t manufacture things, there is no Middle Class, only Lords and Serfs.

    If a nation doesn’t export goods, it has no viable economy because it has only trade deficits.

    Basic economics, people. Basic.

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  • #

    This has already happened in those Asian Countries constructing these new coal fired power plants. (say, perhaps we should be calling them coal fired ….. ‘FARMS’)

    It’s a waiting game here.

    Pretty soon, someone in a position of political power here in Oz is going to have to tell the public that we cannot do without coal fired power, and then explain why.

    Until that point in time, the public is blissfully and totally unaware of something they take utterly for granted, the supply of a constant and reliable source of electricity, something that without it, they cannot survive, literally.

    When that day of explanation arrives, an awful lot of politicians will be on the phones to their respective Government Superannuation entities asking if they have enough to ‘get by’ for the rest of their lives, and hoping that their constituents (like all of them) don’t actually remember their names.

    That day will come.

    You would be really surprised how many State Governments have been upgrading those coal fired Units to prolong their lives.

    Incidentally, here’s the difference between the high and the low for wind generation for the last seven days. Keep in mind here that when ONE coal fired Unit goes off line, renewables supporters ‘rail’ about how unreliable coal fired power is.

    Saturday -2730MW (the equivalent of five coal fired Units) (a difference of 68% from low to high)
    Sunday – 4060MW (eight coal fired Units) (90%)
    Monday – 2700MW (five coal fired Units) (81%)
    Tuesday – 3200MW (six coal fired Units) (66%)
    Wednesday – 3142MW (six coal fired Units) (62%)
    Thursday – 2086MW (four coal fired Units) (66%)
    Friday – 1254MW (two coal fired Units) (23%)

    Coal fired power follows the Load each and every day, and as consumption rises and falls, so does coal fired power, varying each day by around 20% from the low to the high.

    Coal fired power average per day 16,500MW
    Wind power average per day 2500MW

    Coal fired power is essential.

    Wind power is incidental.

    Tony.

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    • #
      Lance

      “Wind power is incidental”. Yes and Yes.

      Wind power is also a parasite upon the thermal generators, a distortion of market economics, a betrayal of Public Obligations, and a Travesty upon the Nation.

      I’m just venting. Nations need wind power like automobiles need muffler bearings.

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  • #
    Luke

    Egypt going nuclear as well. Surely much like Dubai they could make solar work if it was actually possible / useful.

    https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/el-dabaa-nuclear-power-project/

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  • #
    Lance

    Just in case anyone, anywhere, thinks that analyzing a power system is simple, then have a look and let me know how simple this is after your eyeballs stop spinning.

    This is a synchronous bus analysis. It gets Lots more complicated when the Intermittents are considered.

    https://www.pdhonline.com/courses/e105/Module5.pdf

    Oh. And you need the “correct” answer, and the ability to compensate for those corrections, within 5 seconds to 15 minutes of every hour of every day, regardless of what changes. Or the grid collapses. I’m thinking those power engineers deserve some kind of recognition for getting it right 99.98% of the time.

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    • #
      Ronin

      Who controls the grid frequency, the control center sees it but the power station has to load the generators.

      20

      • #
        Hanrahan

        A strong power station that isn’t already at 100% does it at the nod from the control centre. Kareeya hydro would do it for the northern grid during those months when the dam was no longer topping and low water reduced them to peaking only. The operator could be talking to us techs but always had an eye on the freq meter and a hand on the tap

        That was 50 years ago, in a previous life. The central control room may well have more direct control today but only one station has authority. If two were trying to do it they could end up competing with each other, out of sync, so to speak.

        30

      • #
        Lance

        “who controls the frequency?”.

        For a 50 Hz system, and a 2 pole alternator, the synchronous speed of the generator is 3000 RPM and to maintain frequency tolerance of +/- 0.1 Hz, the speed can vary by 6 RPM.

        The turbine or engine driving the alternator has a governor that maintains speed by adjusting the throttle or steam valves to provide more or less torque to the output shaft.

        When the generators are synchronized with each other, they can engage the grid via switchgear and after that, their rotating mass is also synchronized by coupling of the alternator fields together.

        If too much grid load appears for the prime mover to handle, the shaft torque is insufficient and there is “slippage” between the field and stator winding fields and frequency control is lost. Either another generator has to pick up the load, or loads have to be shed to bring the system back into a controllable range.

        While the generators are able to handle the required torque, if additional reactive power is needed the operator can change the exciter winding voltage in the alternator and either create or absorb reactive power. The alternator has a limited capability in this respect. Maybe 20% of rated output, depends on the alternator characteristics.

        The inverters from the RE sources follow the main grid frequency. They do not assist frequency control in any way. They only follow the frequency set at the synchronous generator.

        40

    • #
      Paul Miskelly

      Hi Lance, (and TonyfromOz will appreciate this too I think),

      I found that synchronous bus reference that you quote here a couple of days ago, and some other interesting recent papers on the topic as well.
      And why?
      Your truly whimsical, but absolutely correct, comment #32 at: https://joannenova.com.au/2021/07/wind-power-headed-for-disaster-in-germany/ got me, er, energised.
      I have been thinking for some time that I ought to go back and brush up on what I’d forgotten about, should others want to search it out too: “The Swing Equation”. So, thanks to you, I did.
      Some other interesting stuff turned up as well, such as the Irish group that published recently on approaches to enabling such as wind machines to contribute to this absolutely essential reactive power. Their scholarly-looking paper, stating as it does all those complex control and stability equations comes up with, well, er, nothing, except the clear implication that this “is an active area of research”!

      Such as Peter Fitzroy might take note of these comments of yours, before rabbiting on yet again about the supposedly great Capacity Factors of wind generation vs that of coal-fired plant. As you have expressed so brilliantly, Lance, the provision of this reactive power is absolutely essential for second-by-second grid stability: if this “swing” generation capability is not available, then blackouts follow immediately.

      Now, to try and speak in terms that PF might understand, what is the Capacity Factor for wind or solar to provide this essential reactive power? Well, zero at best, whether they are operational or otherwise. That’s right, PF, wind and solar have Capacity Factors for reactive power, all day, every day, of zero, nothing, zilch.

      As you state in #6.2.3.1.2 here Lance, wind and solar CF’s are only relevant for Real, or voltage and current in-phase, power. Their specs. are completely silent on any CF for reactive power, and for the very good reason that they are completely incapable of providing it.

      Paradoxically, with this situation now where an increasing proportion of the installed generation capacity is totally unable to provide this essential component of supply power, the continuing operation of each and every one of the remaining synchronous generation units is absolutely critical to maintaining grid stability.

      So much then for Peter Fitzroy’s oft-repeated suggestion that installing more wind generation would offset coal-fired plant outages.

      Lance, I did suggest to Jo some while ago that someone much better qualified than me might contribute an article on “The Swing Equation”, and its importance in this little matter of grid system stability. Could you be persuaded?

      Best regards,

      Paul Miskelly

      40

      • #
        Lance

        I’ll give it a shot in simplified terms and provide links for the deeply curious.

        The “Swing Equation” is used to quantify the relationship between the generator rotor and the input torque under load in both steady state and transient load variations. The rotor angle is defined by the angular difference between the rotor and stator magnetic field fluxes. It is used in stability analysis.

        If the generator output and load are matched, then frequency stability is possible. Within steady state conditions, electrical load changes are small or slow to change and the shaft torque can be maintained by the governor at the turbine and acceleration or deceleration of the rotating system is small.

        If the generator reactive power supply and the load reactive power demand are matched, then voltage stability is possible. Ie, changes in reactive load demand are met by tweaking the exciter winding of the generator to create or absorb reactive power, or reactive changes are met by synchronous condensers or hydroelectric generators. By some combination of these things, voltage at the bus bars is maintained.

        A “fault condition” is a transient, very fast, change in load. This causes massive acceleration of the rotor, ie, all of the input torque tries to accelerate the rotor instantaneously. To limit this acceleration, faults are typically cleared in 4 cycles ( 0.08 sec 50 Hz, 0.067 sec 60 Hz) by HV safety devices such as reclosers or fuses.

        There are about 3 equivalent forms of the Swing Equation to make certain information available more quickly and apparent.

        For the deeply curious, the full development can be found at these links (among others).

        http://home.engineering.iastate.edu/~jdm/ee554/SwingEquation.pdf

        https://electricalbaba.com/swing-equation-derivation/

        20

  • #
    Serge Wright

    The Guardian has always been a sheltered workshop for low IQ journalists but this article sets a new record low. The author is pondering why all of these countries would choose to build hundreds of new coal fired power stations when RE is supposed to be so much cheaper, but has insufficient intellect to deduce the false premise upon which the assertion is based. It’s of no surprise that the Guardian is asking for donations when you visit their site. No one could pay for a subscription to read such intellectually devoid nonsense and their only chance of revenue is by receiving donations from people who take pity on their handicapped workforce.

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    • #
      PeterS

      In other words, they are scam artists pretending to provide factual information but in fact are telling falsehoods and receiving donations for it. There ought to be a law against it. Oh wait a minute; there is!

      60

    • #
      Lance

      Grifters gonna grift. People who think emotionally will support them.

      That’s why propaganda is so important. It justifies a subjective reality instead of the Real/True Objective reality that governs everything except magical thinking.

      “Old School” education may not be fashionable, but it created everything we enjoy.

      Objective Reality rules, unless you’re delusional.

      60

      • #
        PeterS

        Well put. The leftists hate objective reality. That’s why they like to rewrite history. Note too it’s a cancer that has already spread to other groups including our so called conservatives. As I said a long time ago we need a completely new libertarian party (as distinct from the US definition of a liberal party, aka communism). Of course that’s unlikely to happen any time soon, if at all. The only new party I see coming over the horizon at this time is the CCP.

        60

        • #
          PeterS

          .. and some people actually are looking forward to it. Who needs enemies afar when we have them right here in our own country?

          30

      • #

        “Objective Reality rules, unless you’re delusional.” ; or your red bandana is too tight.

        00

    • #
      John F Hultquist

      “The author is pondering …” how to maintain her Carbon based life without the pay of the Guardian. Silly Jilly should go back to covering school board meetings and writing obituaries.

      50

  • #
    David Maddison

    As I keep saying we need to start putting morally, intellectually and fiscally corrupt politicians, public serpents and “scientists” and “engineers” who participate in the destruction of Western Civilisation via the Anthropogenic Global Warning Fraud ON NOTICE that one day they will be held to account for what they’ve done via something like a Climate “Nuremberg Trials”.

    To continue to promote this fraud is certain evidence for corruption because the truth is out there and easy to find (even with a Marxist dominated censored Internet, they can just read this site for a start). It is just not possible that someone can genuinely believe in and participate in the fraud unless they have malicious intent.

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    • #
      PeterS

      That’s as long as they don’t keep getting away with their fabrications to the point the whole economy is destroyed and we are potential left with the very undesirable but likely prospect of them asking for “assistance” from China. WAKE UP AUSTRALIA!

      30

    • #
      PeterS

      Also, if it does get to the point I suggested, there will never be any opportunity for the “Nuremberg Trials”. Instead there will be retraining camps for those who refuse to comply with the CCP.

      10

    • #
      el gordo

      Because of the ‘Precautionary Principle’ all the people on your list are free to go.

      03

      • #
        David Maddison

        The Precautionary Principle does not and cannot apply to a fraud.

        It is even questionable whether it would be applicable even if there was anthropogenic warming.

        40

        • #
          el gordo

          The Nuremberg Defence, superior orders, is the most likely outcome.

          One example, Tim Flannery and all those desalination plants sitting idle. He said Perth would become a ghost town without water. In a court of law the prosecution won’t have a case because of the overwhelming scientific evidence at the time.

          13

  • #

    Leftists claim it’s OK for the developing world to use FF because the West has been using it for so long and emitted so much. “Historic justice”, they’ll cry.

    But it’s no justice at all. The West didn’t have the Nuclear option until the 1950s.

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    • #

      Zoe Phin mentions this: (my bolding here)

      Leftists claim it’s OK for the developing world to use FF because the West has been using it for so long…..

      This Post of mine is as relevant now as it always was, originally written five years ago, and Updated in May of this year.

      It details the benefits that coal fired power gave us, to the point now that we have forgotten what it was once like without access to reliable, always there, electricity.

      What happened Decades ago with us in the Developed World is what is happening now in those Countries who just don’t have that access to reliable electricity we do have.

      The Benefits That Coal Fired Power Gave Us – UPDATE May 2021

      Tony.

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      • #
        Ronin

        Don’t forget in OZ, the big cities might have had power from the 1920’s, but rural areas were on their own, just ask parents and grandparents who had dairy farms or sheep properties, it was petrol or diesel stationary engines all the way until the 60’s.

        50

      • #
        PeterS

        Of course we could use nuclear if the CAGW threat were real – kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Of course the sentiment against nuclear is too strong from both sides so forget that idea in anycase. On the matter of nuclear, if it weren’t for nuclear power in the US they would be suffering a similar predicament as we are if not worse given they have been closing down more and more coal fired power stations – over 600 so far. They still have some 500 units left so they are OK for now.

        30

        • #

          They will be constructing new coal fired plants here in Australia long before any Nuclear power plants ….. looooong before.

          Tony.

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          • #
            PeterS

            The only way I can see we will ever have nuclear power stations is if and when the CCP takes over. Even then they will build more coal fired onces in no time.

            20

  • #
    David Maddison

    “Superior orders” was not a defence at Nuremberg.

    As for “scientific evidence” of warming, there was never any of that either. Claims of warming were and are obvious fraud.

    It is inexcusable for any scientist, engineer, public serpent or just about anyone else to claim “they didn’t know” (which also wasn’t an excuse at Nuremberg).

    50

    • #
      David Maddison

      That was meant to be a reply to 22.3.1.1

      10

    • #
      PeterS

      I doubt if a Nuremberg style trail will ever be undertaken. The c0rruption runs wide and deep. The people will take matters into their own eventually.

      30

  • #
    beowulf

    Ozzie wood is fundamentally different to US wood.

    Strange is it not how felling and shipping entire forests from the Carolinas and burning them in North Yorkshire is environmentally friendly, responsible and results in zero accountable CO2 emissions, yet burning timber waste at the Redbank Power Station in the Hunter is environmental heresy that will dump 2,000,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere per year to be added to our national tally.

    Redbank (just south of the Bayswater/Liddel complex) was a generating minnow, and in a sane world it would still have been burning waste coal chitter from nearby open cuts, generating 128MW (not 151 as gets mis-reported) since it opened in 2001, whilst releasing 50% less CO2 than the equivalent amount of timber fuel. In reality it was forced into receivership by repeated operational halts due to anti-CO2 litigation from the usual suspects. The owners finally gave up in 2014.

    It is currently owned by Verdant Technologies Australia t/a Hunter Energy who planned to have it back up and running by August, then December 2020. It still isn’t operating. Switch-on date is now late 2021. In its latest iteration it was going to burn 100% biomass sourced from forest and timber manufacturing operations within a 400km radius to snare its share of green subsidies. After the bushfires, as part of Plan B the company was also asking for government permission to use bushfire waste.

    Not surprisingly the biomass proposal has been met with as much opposition as the old coal chitter plant was, but if it ever gets up and running again, it will be producing 100% more CO2 than burning coal, but it will be green CO2.

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    David Maddison

    Did you know man-made electricity has been in Australia ever since European discovery in 1770?

    Joseph Banks had Leyden jars on the HMS Endeavour.

    If the Left have their way we’ll return to a pre-electrical world, except for the Elites.

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      John R Smith

      “If the Left have their way we’ll return to a pre-electrical world, except for the Elites.”
      This statement is far deeper than may appear at first read.
      It expresses the fatal pathology of success.
      The ‘elites’ fly on aluminum wings created by a culture they despise to a natural getaway where an ‘indigenous’ servant will shepherd them around to commune with nature.
      Which has been conveniently conquered and sanitized for them.
      Mosquito control being very important.
      I live in the midst of blue haired genderless hipsters with prison tattoos and new 4 wheel drive Jeeps that never get mud on them.
      They walk the street with their neurotic inbred dogs, headphones and zero situational awareness, because they are listening to a podcast about the evils of Western colonialism and the machines it produced.
      Then return to their heated/air-conditioned (which will be unnecessary after climate change is stopped) home and get on the internet and complain about the evils of capitalism.
      They have faux educations which qualify them for jobs at ‘Non-Profit’ organizations.
      There are entire rehabed former industrial buildings full of ‘Non-Profits’ working diligently, with religious fervor, to end industrialization.

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    Gerald the Mole

    I wonder how many people of influence in the West are members of the CPP or get funding from them.

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      Hanrahan

      Out of a national budget, buying politicians is chicken feed. So Hunter cost a few mill, Xi could find that behind the couch cushions.

      Obummer never cared enough to rein Joe in, besides he has never explained how he became an 8 figure millionaire on a gov. payroll. These book deals are simple money laundering deals.

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        Kevin T Kilty

        As are the sales of awful art done by the President’s son. Hunter’s book deal didn’t go over well, thus the art. Or the Clinton’s and their charity that laundered donations from foreign citizens through Canada. No matter how one may try, you cannot keep money out of politics. The answer to keeping it modestly under control is to put the worst of the lot in jail. Alas, the accountability that provides a stabilizing feedback is gone here in the U.S. at least for one of the political parties.

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    David Maddison

    This article is about CCP members in Western countries and companies, not as asked about above Western people of influence in the CCP although I’m sure there’s plenty of those.

    Our intelligence agencies have no clue whatsoever, in fact, they’re probably infiltrated themselves. Hence their pronouncements about concerns about “right wing extremism” which essentially means peaceful traditional political conservatives who support free enterprise, traditional families with only two genders, Judeo-Christian ethics, belief in reason and science and objective reality etc..

    https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/chinese-communist-party-database-leak-reveals-infiltration-into-western-companies/news-story/8fa8f08a2e29564413499f7769ae0bae

    Chinese Communist Party database leak reveals infiltration into Western companies

    DECEMBER 14, 2020 10:48AM

    An unprecedented data leak has revealed how alleged Chinese Communist Party members have embedded themselves inside some of the world’s biggest companies, including defence contractors, banks and pharmaceutical giants manufacturing coronavirus vaccines.
    The Australian newspaper has obtained the leaked database of almost two million CCP members – including their party position, birthdate, national ID number and ethnicity – and 79,000 branches, many of them inside companies, universities and even government agencies.

    Among the companies identified as having CCP members in their employ are manufacturers like Boeing and Volkswagen, drug giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and financial institutions including ANZ and HSBC, according to the reports.

    [See link for more. Please limit excerpts to no more than 10% of a copyrighted article.] ED

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    CHRIS

    Clintons = Whitewater. Biden = Hunter. Gore = Qatar. The USA Democrats are far more corrupt than their Republican counterparts (and that is saying something).

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    John F Hultquist

    The great thing about Hunter B’s art bonanza is that “art” is much in the mind of the viewer. Many paintings are auctioned and sold for millions. Unless such things came with a nice wooden frame, I would not offer a farthing. If I had a farthing.

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    another ian

    O/T but if you use Windows

    “Microsoft Warns of Critical Vulnerability Called ‘PrintNightmare’”

    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/07/03/microsoft-warns-of-critical-vulnerability-called-printnightmare/

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    PeterD

    “Australia and the UK can close one coal plant each”

    The Netherlands will close three. If we find a few more countries that will each close a few, we might be able to offset the 600. :-p

    However, the operators of these plants are demanding 1.4 bln euro if they close early. Closure is well before the projected end-of-life time.

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    […] Five Asian countries will build 600 coal plants, wreck world, but who cares? […]

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    iran going nuclear as well. Surely much like Dubai they could make solar work if it was actually possible / useful.

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