by Jo Nova
With all the calm language of a paid ad agency, the ABC is breathless because an esoteric measure called “minimum operational demand” has hit a record or two. This glorious moment may have only lasted 30 minutes, and it isn’t actually a useful thing, but it’s a “record”.
In fact, “minimum operational demand” is a grid management headache, not a badge of honor. It’s the midday moment when solar panels all work — and it’s becoming such a problem that two states in Australia have said all new solar panels need “smart” controllers so that the guys in the central control rooms can turn the darn things off. That’s how good it is.
Renewable energy records tumble around the country as rooftop solar power soars
by ABC Energy Propaganda Reporter, Daniel Mercer
Soaring power production from households and businesses with rooftop solar panels has sent records tumbling across Australia as output from fossil fuels falls to all-time lows.
The record so-called minimum operational demand excludes the power generated by consumers with their own solar panels, which met 92 per cent of South Australia’s overall needs at one point on October 17.
The surge in power at midday forces the rest of the reliable generators to spin their wheels, running inefficiently, while they wait to be allowed back to do what they could have done all along without all the stopping and starting. It’s a miles per gallon kind of thing. Solar power makes the whole grid less efficient.
Here’s South Australia on October 16th setting a record in vanity-electricity:
The Duck Curve in South Australia. SA, Minimum operational demand. Click to enlarge. @AEMO,
The achievement is that the grid is so overdeveloped that it had twice as many generators as it needed at midday. Briefly, rooftop solar was making 92% of all the electricity the state could use.
Solar panels are the roadworks on the grid freeway that slows down the trucks and cars that are doing something useful. They provide poor quality electricity, which needs back up, frequency stabilizers, storage, long transmission lines, huge subsidies and large holes in the ground to store all the waste. Not to mention slave labor too. What’s not to like?
Having one “generator” supplying the whole state makes the grid more fragile — all it takes is one cloud bank to roll in, and a Gigawatt can disappear, just like that. A few years ago we came close to a crash on the East Coast because lightning hit the grid, and badly installed panels tripped out with minor frequency wobbles. As many as a third of the rooftop solar panels in South Australia bailed themselves out just when we needed them. Solar panels also cause surges at midday that can push the grid up to 253 volts (when it should be 240). The surges may be breaking appliances, and it costs more on your electricity bill too.
This AEMO graph below shows the exotic but mindless concept of “Instantaneous renewable penetration”. It creates the illusion that this concept is a long term meaningful attribute, when really this is just the peak half hour in a three month period, or 1 part in 4,000 of what we really need. This represents just the leading creeping edge of the fantasy. 99.99% of the time, the world doesn’t look like this.
AEMO Q3 report. 2022.
The fine print:
28 Instantaneous renewable penetration is calculated using the NEM renewable generation share of total generation The measure is calculated on a half-hourly basis, because this is the granularity of estimated output data for distributed PV.
If they could have estimated the five minute peak of solar, they would have.
Other posts on solar
- Solar Owners worried Big Brother AEMO wants to turn off their panels at noon in emergencies
- SA: Still at risk of blackout, one third of solar PV “switching off” to save state, needs $1.5b interconnector bandaid to NSW
- Jeopardy: What happens when your single largest generator is uncontrolled and coordinated by clouds? Watch Western Australia
- White elephant solar panels: “force-feeding” high voltage, raising costs, breaking things, shutting themselves down
- Even AEMO head admits solar panels are a big “disrupter” in Australia – fears big players may abandon grid
- Solar subsidy death spiral: $2 billion in Australia, rising 50% pa as electricity prices rocket
- Bill shock debacle: Solar rooftop subsidies in Australia doubling, will cost $1.3 billion this year, $160 per household
- Some days one thousand MW of solar vanishes in Australia
- Blackout threat from rooftop solar panels in Western Australia
- Even in sunniest Queensland, solar can’t run without big subsidies — so big they have to be kept secret
- Solar overload — “Costs a fortune” as the super Duck Curve flood of electricity hits Australia
- NSW can’t keep coal plants, or aluminium smelters running, prices hit $14,000MW/hr
- 2 million expensive solar panels cut Australian total CO2 emissions by 1%
- Deadly: a quarter of all solar panels pose high or severe risk
REFERENCES
AEMO Reports, Q3 2022 Quarterly Energy Dynamics, PDF
Clean Energy Regulator 2022, Small-scale technology certificates
Where were they at the 7:00 am and 7:30 pm peak usage period when this glorious “free” power is most needed?
Natural gas and Victorian brown coal to the rescue again so that the SA population can actually read about it before and after work!
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And also, nearly all of that wind power is contracted to the ACT, so hands off SA – find your own!
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Rowjay mentions this:
And here’s a thought.
What happens to power delivery in SouthAus when Loy Yang A closes down ….. imminently, evidently.
All of that (remaining) power will be needed in Victoria, so the Interconnector will be pretty much useless would be my guess.
Tony.
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I’ve got screen shots of SA 95% intermittent one day and 100% fossil fuel the next , take away the fossil fuel and SA would probably have state wide blackouts more than they had a supply of electricity.
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Tony,
Just looking at that chart, South Australia are heading for BIG trouble.
I was on the construction crew for the installation of the 12 gas powered diesels for 211 MW output.
There was talk of another 12 going in, but I believe the powers that be have opted for a big BATTERY instead.
I’m just glad I don’t live in SA.
I was in Adelaide when ALL the power was removed in October 2016. Not a pretty sight.
Tony, I enjoy your work and dedication.
Thank you.
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You just don’t understand how it works, Tony
… Victoria feeds SA with 450MW via the interconnect,
… then SA feeds Vic with 450MW via the interconnect.
So that’s 900MW gained right there !! 😉
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A few years ago when my fan (a simple electrical device with no electronics) gave out, there were quite a few left on verges for hard rubbish pick up.
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Bunnings No 1 sales item in summer!
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Yes, when the AC goes out of spec, inductive loads (like fans) are more likely to suffer than resistive loads (like heaters). Spare a thought for the biggest inductive devices on the grid: the large generators themselves. They are suffering from the polluted grid in much the same way as your fan. Not long ago someone here posted this video of a small hydro plant connecting to the grid. It gives a good idea of how important grid synch is for the generators.
With all the rain we’ve had lately, the roads are covered with potholes. It might be for that reason that the first graph in the article reminded me of a nasty pothole; one that gas and coal are forced to rattle through every day. Hardly the best for longevity, or for fuel economy.
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So there is record production at exactly the time it is not needed or wanted?
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At a cost of $8tn:
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Sounds like a bargain, LoL….
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Try again – at a cost of $8tn: Chart
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I haven’t been able to find where that $8tn figure is from
Any clues?
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Apologies, it’s 5 trillion not 8. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/02/big-oil-small-oil/
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The “problem” is not just about minimum operational demand, but also about the almost constant curtailment of renewables that happens behind the scenes:
http://nemlog.com.au/nlog/nem-and-regional-curtailment/7d/
Curtailment is when AEMO shuts off power from large renewable energy providers. So what happens during curtailment? Are these generators still being paid for energy no one needs, like the UK wind farms? Do those generators still report this generation output, to maintain their already feeble capacity factors? And how do they explain this waste to their investors?
Of course, rooftop solar is outside the NEM and so cannot be constrained! So what happens when too much unneeded solar is being pumped into the grid? No one knows!
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It is rare for AEMO to force an intermittent generator to curtail. They most often voluntarily curtail because they have no way of recovering losses when wholesale price falls below the cost of LGCs; around $60/MWh at present.
The coal generators have a bid block close to the allowable floor price (I think $1200.MWh these days), which guarantees the intermittent will voluntarily curtail. At 1220 hours Thursday 3 Nov, all mainland States have negative pricing. South Australia is the lowest at MINUS $41/MWh. That price means the intermittent are making about $20/MWh by selling the LGCs they are creating.
The coal generators can inevitably recover the notional losses during the evening peak almost every day. During the evenings they bid just under gas to ensure they are scheduled and then get the price paid to the highest cost gas generator scheduled.
There are some times when grid problems cause curtailment and there is some arrangement for the intermittents to get compensation under those conditions but it is a fraction of the total curtailment. Every sunny day, my on-grid system automatically cuts back since a neighbour installed a large solar system that pushes the street voltage up. I do not get compensated for that lost potential. That becomes the incentive to eventually instal another battery.
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Rick,
The equation of whether or not with batteries and solar is getting complicated . Initially it was simple – cost/benefit . Now you have to factor in all the factors that come with extended blackouts . Food storage and temperature control (aircon) in the middle of summer when demand peaks . Not as bad as freezing but expensive if your freezer stock thaws . If you have batteries , theoretically you should be able to go “off grid” – if I am to install batteries that will have to be an option .
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Just a reminder that residential solar contribution to AEMO system totals is NOT measured. It is estimated. And it is NOT estimated by AEMO. Solar-friendly folks do it using a small number of fully monitored houses that are scaled up by inverter sizes of every installation.
This modelling is riddled with real and potential problems. Solar panel maintenance being #1.
Propaganda relying on modelling “science” at its finest.
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But the reduction in grid demand through the middle of the day is obvious and a problem for the dispatchable generators. They are constantly operating at negative wholesale price through spring and early summer between 11am to 2pm.
In fact the total demand has increased but not being seen by the grid. There is a considerable portion of that new demand being met by behind the meter generation.
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I didn’t say that solar was not “contributing” and impacting midday dispatch – just that there is NO actual measurement for it (like large-scale solar and FF generators do).
But you miss a major point that these solar-friendly companies who do the residential-solar estimating for AEMO, do also estimate “behind the meter generation” and submit it to AEMO.
You see they have some “typical” sites that they fully monitor (internal use and exports).
Then they scale this data up based on inverter size for every non-monitored site and assume many things in that “model”.
Like, that their typical sites internal-to-export ratio is the same for everyone else – they have no other real time data to go on – smart meters just can’t cut it.
When a solar owner goes on vacation or it’s a holiday house/AirBnB, etc, who tells their model to adjust the internal-to-export ratio?
And you begin to see how “solar-friendly” folks can manipulate the residential-solar data feed to AEMO ….
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Russell, that’s a very good point, and especially when the ABC and AEMO are celebrating “records” to a tenth of a percentage point.
All junk numbers.
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The issue is not with the amount of solar output. It is the demand destruction and high volatility in demand that is killing coal generation. That is reflected in the massive daily dip in demand on a sunny day.
The demand destruction is obvious for all dispatchable generators. It does not matter how solar friendly the guesstimates are, the lunchtime demand is collapsing. And there is no price signal for all the rooftop solar. The only thing that limits it is the local over voltage. And distributers are spending money to get that power up the grid so the automatic curtailing is reduced.
As more rooftops get connected, the coal generators have no where to go other than off because there is no demand. They just have to get off the grid. So low cost coal is disappearing and being replaced by high cost gas that can dance to the tune of the rooftops.
Unit 3 at Liddell went off for good in April this year. The whole station is supposed to close down in April 2023. There will likely be higher prices next winter as the impact of Liddell closure ripples on but with enough batteries and gas generators added it will be another coal plant gone for good. Give it 4 or 5 years and another coal station will come off line as the daily demand dip deepens.
If you are not making your own power you will be exposed to ever rising grid power costs. There is no coming back from where Australia is now until China stops supplying all the “renewable” stuff Australia wants.
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Solar panels are the roadworks on the grid freeway that slows down the trucks and cars that are doing something useful. They provide poor quality electricity, which needs back up, frequency stabilizers, storage, long transmission lines, huge subsidies and large holes in the ground to store all the waste. Not to mention slave labor too. What’s not to like?
Report: Ford Electric Truck Battery Replacement Costs Over $35,000
A month or two ago I had to replace my car. I bought a 2019 Ford F-150 XL with slightly higher-than-average mileage for its age and an impeccable service record. The truck is in great shape, and, supply chains being what they are in 2022, I paid more than I wanted to for it.
It still cost less than a replacement battery for an electric vehicle.
OK, maybe not every replacement battery for every electric vehicle — but Tim Esterdahl of “Pickup Truck Plus SUV Talk” fame looked into the costs of battery replacements for an F-150 Lightning, which he’d been driving for a week to review, and he found some pretty startling numbers.
There are two possible batteries for the Lightning: the standard, designed to give the driver about 230 miles of range, and the extended range version, which increases that to about 300 miles, Esterdahl said.
Esterdahl is clearly the kind of guy who wants to get the bad news out of the way first, as he showed a screen shot of the price for the extended range battery to start.
It was $35,960.
That’s not a typo; the decimal point is in the right place. If your first thought was, “That’s more than I paid for my whole car!” you’re not alone.
Esterdahl said that was for the battery only, though he estimated that labor to install it would be “fairly inexpensive.”
If that seems high, you could always opt for the standard range battery for a mere $28,556.47. (I bet the dealership would spot you that 47 cents if you asked really nicely.)
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Getting more are more like the 18V rechargeable tools we can all buy from the hardware stores. The skins are cheap, the batteries cost heaps.
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Make sure you register the purchase of these battery powered tools with their namesake for warranty. You might get an extended warranty on the battery. I have, having purchased one of the popular brands of power tools.
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Had EGO battery go before warranty expired and they replaced, having registered on purchase online
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I bought a cheap rechargeable stick vacuum cleaner on line. When the battery packed up within the warranty period they sent me a complete new vacuum cleaner, including battery, which shows how cheap they are to the importer.
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Madness; but deliberate madness.
ANY domestic, “grid-feed” solar rig that does NOT have a serious battery system AND a fully-synchronous, PURE sine-wave inverter is a threat to the grid..
As for “grid feed”; who is monitoring ever singe dodgy domestic rig for “quality” of any alleged grid feed?
Unless any such putative grid feed is precisely locked to the grid frequency AND voltage, it is more of a menace than a benefit.
How much actual grid feed is there? What is the “line” impedance of the grid running down suburban streets as compared to the output impedance of the toy Chinese inverters?
“Peak sunlight” may well be in the middle of the day, BUT, when are the PEAK grid DEMANDS?
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Comment 1: The 253V is the limit that solar panels should reach, before shutting down for (about) an hour. The more Solar panels feeding the local ‘grid’** the higher the voltage goes as each installation tried to export its output. Where I used to live was a hive of panels (panels to the right of me, panels to the left. And panels on the 4 houses across road) and on sunny days my solar would shut down for an hour.
**Despite the belief of Greenies household solar DOES NOT feed the national grid.
Comment 2: Note that there was gas being used even though “solar was supplying the demand”. This would be the reliable generators (possibly throttled back a bit) supplying the regular frequency and voltage etc. to stabilise operations. So lot of solar meant gas was being burnt to export electricity to Victoria (probably at a lower price) and when the sun got low, lots of gas being burnt by OCGTs and imported brown coal fired from Victoria. Neither of these are low emission generation.
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When you say that your solar panels shut down, did the panels stop supplying your residence, or only stop exporting to the grid? I haven’t looked at the latest standard to determine exactly what has to happen during these high grid voltage scenarios.
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Stopped supplying residence. Same as with nextdoor neighbour’s place. Panels installed 2010/11.
The panels didn’t have a built-in inverter (some newer ones have that) so the Fronius inverter shut off panels at 253V and checks the input from the grid for a drop in voltage and would restart supply if it does.
Both our inverters showed a record of peak voltage on the outside line of 270V (mine) and 273V (his, and some time before). I suspect that one neighbour had a “cowboy” installer as some were supposed to boost the acceptable output to maximise output time. Quite illegal and action was taken to stop that. The neighbour in question had panels burn out and had to replace them in under 9 years.
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From the same article…
Ahhh…on top of the delusional comments about using power, there’s mention of magic Pumped Hydro that will appear despite no one wanting to approve the building of new dams…
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“So, if it’s really sunny and windy in Queensland we can send it south and return the favour the next day.”
IIRC more workable new magic implied there too
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In other words, you can’t just plug the car in to charge it when you get home. You have to go home at lunch time for several hours to charge the car because that’s the only time that solar produces enough power.
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But but but Albo said we could charge our electric vehicles at night from the solar panels!
Was he fibbing???
What we need are Lunar panels.
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Please see the latest WHO definition of ‘fibbing’.
There is also George Costanza …
https://youtu.be/lqfgOlm-w2U
a 10 second synopsis.
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“Lunar”?
Isn’t that spelled “Loony” in this context?
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AGAIN Dr Roy Spencer finds that the USA surface temp data sets could be about 50% too HIGH.
This is using the USA surface temperature record BUT then using the proper Urban Heat Island Effect to reduce that inflated data by 50%.
And this seems to be close to the UAH V 6 satellite data.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/11/de-urbanization-of-surface-temperatures-with-the-landsat-based-built-up-dataset/#comments
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The voltage variation cannot be discounted and has a real impact.
Roger Corbett, former Woolworths CEO, owns a business supplying voltage regulation equipment to industry. He told me that with the huge surges in power from solar, clients where his voltage regulation equipment has been installed have seen up to 10-12% reductions in their power bills. Not to mention sensitive PLCs and other equipment being fried or operating erratically…
Please keep highlighting the utter anti-engineering, anti-reality of the ABC and the renewables carpet baggers. These are the type would sell arsenic to people and tell them its for their health, as long as there was a buck in it for them….
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A 10-12% reduction in their bills when they install a voltage regulator? Wow. prophet of boom. That’s a very interesting story.
Just another renewable expense on the grid isn’t it — that we need to pay for “voltage regulators”.
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“10 to 12% savings?
I keep wondering if anyone considers the added cost of roof repair when the roof is covered with solar panels?
I guess it’s a potential boon to the roofing industry to have a solar panel engineering contingent.
(I think roofers have enough self awareness that this could be beyond their paygrade.)
Silly me, they’re shipping Carolina woodchips to Drax.
And mandating EVs with no grid support.
California Dreamin’ Mushroom Reality goes global.
Maybe it’s me, but the Climate/Renewable debate seems a swirling drain of cultural dumbification.
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‘Lights would go out’ under Cannon-Brookes’ 1.5 degree target: AGL
Angela Macdonald-Smith
Senior resources writer
AGL Energy chairman Patricia McKenzie said the faster closure of coal power plants as demanded by the company’s biggest shareholder Mike Cannon-Brookes is just not possible because replacement capacity cannot be built in time to keep the lights on and prevent prices shooting higher.
Writing in The Australian Financial Review on Thursday, Ms McKenzie said that aligning AGL with a 1.5 degree warming pathway would require the closure of all the company’s coal power generations by at least mid-2029 and for all coal plants in the National Electricity Market to shut by two years later.
That would require 98 gigawatts of new supply to be built by 2030, compared to 2.2 GW on average over the last five years.
“Simply put, we do not consider that the replacement renewable generation, firming and supporting transmission can be built quickly enough and this would put an unacceptable pressure on energy security and affordability,” Ms McKenzie writes.
The comments come as Mr Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures gained more powerful allies in his campaign to overhaul the board and ensure AGL, the country’s biggest coal power generator and CO2 emitter, goes on the fast-track to decarbonisation.
The support from key proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services and Ownership Matters for most or all of the candidates put forward by Grok makes it more likely his picks for directors will get elected at the November 15 annual shareholder meeting.
It also represents a further blow to Ms McKenzie, who was dealt a double-whammy from ISS, which highlighted “governance concerns” in relation to her role, given her previous support for the now-abandoned demerger.
Standing by the board
Grok put forward four “independent” directors to enlarge the skill-set of the existing five-strong AGL board, arguing their candidates have important expertise needed to help steer the embattled electricity supplier through the transition to clean energy.
Duty to shareholders
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What many forget when estimating the required windmills & panels is that by 2035 much of the current renewables will be past, or very close to it’s use by date. The amount of renewables to replace the coal.gas fired generation is very much greater than it is estimated by the windmill mob.
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As I watch Mike Hyphen’s activities I have said it before and I say it again, easy come, easy go.
And it looks very much like damn the rest!
That’s us!
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Peta Credlin authored an article last weekend that reminded me that Liddell shut down a single 500MW turbine in April this year. The other 3 are supposed to shut down permanently in April 2023.
Next winter in Australia could be REAL interesting. Hopefully Europe will provide some early guidance this northern winter.
The one certainty in Australia is that energy prices will rise. Buying a solar panel today means you have locked in today’s coal price. The coal price is going one way – UP.
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Renewables, recycling, Green, ….. Ach it’s all the same Green blob rubbish – but L@@K what was on Satellite tv tonight: Concerns all of us ( Europe & USA ) involving the Far East as well. “Dokumentarfilm im Ersten: Die Recyclinglüge – ARD Mediathek” The Lie about ReCYCLING and being Green. Didn’t understand it all , but it
wasis eye-opening – as was the Lady in UK who was doing her best. https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/dokus-im-ersten/dokumentarfilm-im-ersten-die-recyclingluege/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL3JlcG9ydGFnZSBfIGRva3VtZW50YXRpb24gaW0gZXJzdGVuL2YwMTFjNmY0LTc1MGUtNDc5Mi1iZDgyLWRkZDM4YTNhMWU4Yw We should be demanding our money back from our Councils for their part in promoting it all. and Burning the rubbish would at least ( as in Copenhagen) is a very green way of providing power. – is that why , as I’ve mentioned somewhere before that Denmark has effectivley almost given up on Windpower despite being an early Pioneer.90
Good news is that climatologists have extrapolated, and their models are predicting this free and green surplus energy will start
wastinghappening during night also !50
The guys in the control room wont have to resort to “smart” controllers to turn solar panels off.
When the tax on exported solar power is introduced, that was approved in August 2021, home solar panel owners will turn them off themselves.
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South Australia is tiny and demand even smaller but a lot of the solar is in sunny South Australia, funded by all our electricity bills. Now they claim they alone are occasionally self sufficient? Sure, as long as the rest of Australia paid for it. At the same time they are complaining about lack of gas from Victoria.
No one can get away from the fact that solar and wind are only available for roughly 30% of the time and so far at enormous cost. So what is the point of all this expense? Even the South Australian government has built its own massive diesel generator plant at Elizabeth for when it all fails, again.
And in twenty years, what will we have? Broken windmills, failed solar, nothing at all. Unreliables are a blight on the country, make believe. And who is going to pay for the cleanup of all the windmills, windmill blade, old solar panels? This is not investment, it is total waste.
And we are paying for these useless things with our biggest export, coal. (shhh! Don’t tell the ABC)
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And in the US, the demand for diesel fuel oil means a huge problem in diesel shortage and rocketing prices. Remember when the US, Australia and Europe touted diesel as the new wonder clean Green fuel? And the French were forced to buy them and then vilified for doing so. There is no end to Green hypocrisy.
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And you wouldn’t read about it, but you can’t beat this story from NASA. “Common pollutants from cars and industry” help break down methane in the atmosphere.
OH radicals (generated by ultraviolet rays) react with methane and break it down, and are regenerated by nitrogen oxides. And various governments have decided to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by banning diesels and the use of fertilisers. They also worry about methane emissions from cows – I don’t know what they will do about the methane from termites, because they haven’t signed the Paris Accord.
So the Dutch wanting to shut farms down (compulsory) because the cows emit methane and use of fertiliser emits nitrogen oxides. The only result will be less food.
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Which is precisely what it is all about.
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It is a DEATH CULT and ALWAYS has been.
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The imbeciles who are all in on banning animal farming may want to reflect on the fact that it was the domestication of animals which created civilised society, by virtue of the fact that humans, for the first time in their history, were able to give up the hunter – gatherer lifestyle. This enabled them to settle in one place all year round, and freed up a part of the population to become artisans, producing and inventing useful items for the further advancement of society. The animals themselves also provided useful transport and helped to cultivate the land for the growing of fruits and vegetables, thus eliminating the need for both hunting and gathering. This is clearly in evidence when you look at societies existing today who did not domesticate animals. No matter what Bruce Pascoe has to say.
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“surges at midday that can push the grid up to 253 volts (when it should be 240)”
Actually the Australian power standard is nominally 230 volts +/- 10 volts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/NZS_3112
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The Australian Standard voltage is now aligned with IEC. Single phase residential voltage is 230V +10% to -6%.
So should be in the range 216 to 253V.
The street voltage here gets to 258V on a sunny day. My solar system has backed off by that voltage.
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I haven’t done anything about it, but should install a power monitor that plugs into a powerpoint and records aberrations in the power supply.
Surely there are inexpensive gadgets on the market for doing this. Are there?
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The Venezuelan Daily announces: Our country has established a new record in the number of children for one banana.
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The curse of intermittent wind and solar.
On Wed at 1.30 pm, in SA solar provided 75% of demand, wind 55%, gas 5%, with the surplus exported to Vic.
But at 6.30am this morning, solar 3%, wind 20%, battery 3%, gas 29%, with 45% of SA demand supplied by Victoria (that was 69% coal).
What happens to SA when Vic has no surplus capacity?
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NSW is investing in a high power link to SA so they can import that zero cost power. In return, SA get power from Queensland coal generators wheeled through the NSW network when the zero cost power is not available.
All this investment to lower the cost of electricity in NSW – ha, ha, ha ,ha. (The jokes on them and it was an LNP government that took the bait)
Victoria has suffered the impost of SA’s flight of fancy so now it is time for NSW to share. April 2023 will be when the fun starts after Liddell goes off line for good.
As always – energy prices in Australia re guaranteed to to go one way. You know the direction because it is opposite to what the ALP and Greens promise.
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We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars desperately trying to solve what problem? Controlling CO2 in the atmosphere?
How’s that going?
Never in the history of man has so much money being spent without any hope of achieving an objective.
Which is why everyone now talks about ’emissions’. We are being told if we have no nett CO2 emissions and no methane at all or nitrous oxide at all, we will all be safe, cool, fed and comfortable?
How does that actually work?
Doesn’t anyone care that it is all so obviously pointless?
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And as world leaders (now including British PM Rishi Sunak) escape the winter at a beach resort on the Red Sea to discuss the end of the world through carbon dioxide and what they are going to do about it, where are the scientists? Why aren’t the great universities of the world in outrage? Or NASA or the American Society of Physicists or the Royal Society or the CSIRO?
Nothing is proven. In fact nothing about global warming is true, not least the warming. Science is being written by activists and even Grumpy Greta now says Climate Change is about ending Capitalism and Racism? What?
Scientists are being silenced or fired (Dr. Peter Ridd). And politicians are deciding what is good for us? It is very much like the Chinese made Wuhan Flu except there is no actual emergency but both are being used by politicians to claim the end of the world is upon us and we need to buy many more Chinese windmills and Chinese solar panels?
We have a week to go before America becomes MAGA again and tens of thousands are now guarding the ballot boxes. That and the coming Northern winter may bring some sense to the world as economies collapse, food is vanishing, diesel and gas run out and death by freezing brings an end to Global Warming.
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And the politicians who have caused this man made disaster ask for Amnesty.
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Well they might!
But they have got to give us a lot of answers first.
There must be a Royal Commission, where people can and must be called to give evidence under oath.
And even before that governments and other powers must cancel the fines and penalties imposed on people for opposing the COVID policies.
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G’day TdeF,
I like the sound of this, but is it reliable? And sufficient?
” …tens of thousands are now guarding the ballot boxes. ”
Cheers
Dave B
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“Never in the history of man has so much money being spent without any hope of achieving an objective.”
As with all such activities, it is ALL about the “spillage”.
50
Hmm! Just ballparking here.
Older wind plants were more expensive, and the newer ones are cheaper. (or, umm, as they like to tell us, but hey, they’re not, really)
So then, if they were more expensive, then let’s take a middle of (whole of time in Australia) life cycle plant, and use Macarthur as a cost example.
Macarthur cost $1.2 Billion for a 420MW Nameplate plant.
We now have 9854MW, so using Macarthur, than that Nameplate has cost us ….. umm, $28.2 BILLION.
Using the Capacity Factor of 30%, that brings delivered power down to an equivalent 2950MW.
$28.2 Billion for 2950MW equivalence.
Puhleeeese, do not ever try and tell me renewable power is cheap.
And that’s just the Capital Cost.
From that, coal fired power delivered five times the power in the last year, so to replace (well, as they like to say anyway, but it will NEVER replace) coal fired power, that’s five times what we have now so that’s $141 Billion. Half the life span so multiply that by two, so $282 Billion, plus the already existing $28 Billion, and there’s $310 Billion, and ….. oh, why bother, the Maths is always so boring eh! And when do they want this by, hence ‘X’ billions each and every year.
Again, renewable power is sooooo cheap. (do I really need to add /sarc)
Tony.
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The majority of folks have no concept of the size of a Billion of anything.
A wonderful “road trip” (linear) YT to help:
Tom Scott A Million vs A Billion
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and this is why I come looking for your comments specifically Tony
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Why isn’t anyone asking why we are now up to COP27? It’s almost as if the other 26 achieved nothing. P.S. – I do know why nobody is asking.
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COP27?
Taxpayer-funded champagne, caviar, international flights, 5-star accommodation,hookers/ “companions” and who knows what else?
What deviant megalomaniac WOULDN’T want to get a snout in this “trough”?
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This makes me think of another hidden cost of the global warming craziness.
My truck — a standard Ford 150 — and many other vehicles do something similar (sort of but different).
At a traffic light or other stop with a foot on the brake, the engine shuts off, so not using gasoline. Then, with removal of the brake, the engine restarts with a little shudder and we are ready to go.
This is called an auto stop-start feature that required some new engineering because of all the extra cycles on the starter. Also, it is annoying.
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Cyber attacks targetting infrastructure are expected to increase globally putting ALL energy types at risk.
Be sure to have a home backup system.
You can thank das gubermint for making us a target…
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Solar Power Investment Skyrockets Upon Discovery Of Massive Underground Deposit Of Sunlight
SAN RAMON, CA—U.S. investments in solar power reportedly skyrocketed Wednesday following the discovery of pure, unrefined sunbeams lying several hundred feet beneath the Amazon rain forest. “Once considered a pipe dream, we’re now confident that solar power is the future of energy in the United States and the rest of the world,” said Michael Wirth, CEO of Chevron, just one of the dozens of multinational oil and gas companies that confirmed it now plans to invest billions in the extraction, production, and refinement of solar energy in the Amazon. “We’re looking at what could soon grow into a $5 trillion industry globally. We’ll be building a pipeline so we can safely transport all of that 10,000-degree sunlight. And of course, we’ll also need to clear out some of the trees to get it it, but then we’ll be able to access all that good, clean energy.” At press time, sources reported the company was struggling to contain the effects of a sunlight spill that had caused 500,000 square miles of rain forest to burn to the ground.
https://www.theonion.com/solar-power-investment-skyrockets-upon-discovery-of-mas-1849458050
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When a renewable energy believer orders pizza:
https://youtube.com/shorts/37__uaC1pyg?feature=share
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To an engineer’s eyes, this is grid sabotage and there is nothing glorious about destroying your energy grid. The more solar we add, the faster we force out the dispatchable sources of energy that keep the grid running. The next phase of this glorious moment will be regular blackouts and soaring price spikes.
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Last night Andrew Bolt interviewed Mark Mills about the future of their so called Green energy.
Of course it’s just more delusional BS and fraud, yet Bowen/Albo etc want us to spend endless more trillions of $ forever and all for a ZERO return on this lunacy by …….? When will they wake up?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLS5hmufkOg
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“When will they wake up?” In about two years’ time!
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And don’t forget the 3.5min of battery power!
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The terrifying thing is that to grab unreliable power at the rare times it is available they’ll introduce expensive battery mandates. Everyone will be responsible for grabbing and storing their own power. If you have no power, that will be YOUR fault for not having a big enough battery, panels, windmill or even a rainbow coloured unicorn from which to harvest it’s f@rts.
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Reading through the comments there seems to be an almost universal misconception about standard battery backup systems to domestic solar installations. People seem to think that in the case of a loss of household power the battery is there as a backup supply for them.
It isn’t. The battery backup feeds directly into the grid, NOT your home. It is possible for an electrician to rewire this, but in some (most? all?) states such a modification is illegal.
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So, basically, the “authorities” are STEALING the “utility” of your property.
Sounds par for the course.
The Rum Corps is alive and doing fine!
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And you get to pay for the battery.
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And the cleanup after your house burns to the ground.
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Built-in home heating?
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The only solution to this is to not connect to the grid (we aren’t, as we are too far from the nearest power lines) and have Pb batteries which don’t catch fire.
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Doc T, what kind of cost per KWh are you paying? I suspect the cost of mass priced electricity will only stop rising when it gets close to parity with off grid alternatives.
Though I suppose they can make “off grid” illegal…
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California is outlawing small engines which presumably includes generators. But off grid alternatives are not feasible for most people, who live in cities.
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I suspect that California will end up looking pretty shabby. Try cutting a tree down the professional wood cutters with an electric saw. No way you can have the power to cut as quick as these people. I think many will just leave the state.
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Our stupid federal government thinks that with ever increasing energy costs that inflation will ease and interest rates start dropping. No chance in hell, hey ALBO, BOWEN expensive energy equals expensive everything. The way the ALP are going, get ready for 17% Keating style interest rates…Dumb and dumber.
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Australia needs to get this over with. Close down Liddell and Loy Yang A and let the black outs begin. Then people might wake up to themselves and the lies that they have been fed.
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Shows how they need to get the technology and economics right first. Politics doesn’t magically make things work.
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The technology is a dead end and will cause a crisis in the future.
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Two fundamentals that underpin our civilization are a consistent supply of energy and hydrocarbons, Without these our civilization will collapse which seems to the plan.
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