When does it make sense to build 122 giant industrial turbines that can’t operate for nearly half a year?
The EPA has approved Robbins Island Mega Wind Factory in a remote island off Tasmania that will have to stop working for five months of the year so it doesn’t hurt the Orange-bellied Parrot. It will however be able to kill eagles and other birds for the other seven months of the year.
Green electrons are revered, Orange-bellied parrots are sacred but our way of life is up for grabs. It’s a cult.
This is infrastructure that only works about 30% of the time anyhow, and now will be reduced to something like 17%. The theoretical capacity will be 340MW in the first stage, supposedly growing to 900MW if they can somehow build the extra 170km transmission lines and perhaps get the taxpayer to help build another undersea cable across the Bass Strait. (If the company was going to pay, why was the Tasmanian government spending $20m on the “business case”?)
It will be one of the largest wind factories in the Southern Hemisphere (the biggest being West of Melbourne), but as Tom Quirk showed years ago, when the wind stops in Tasmania it often also stops in Victoria. So the two giant wind factories with supposedly 2GW of random unreliable power between them will both probably be useless together.
In 2019, this mega industrial proposal was the point where the Greens suddenly realized that skeptics were right and wind-farms were ugly bird killers.
Coming in a hundred years, the Greens will figure out that we can save birds and forests if we burn brown coal:
Robbins Island wind farm proposal approved on condition of 5-month annual shutdown due to orange-bellied parrots
By Erin Cooper, Meg Powell, and Monte Bovill, ABC
A contentious wind farm proposed for Tasmania’s north-western tip has been given the green light from the state’s environment watchdog, but under the condition it doesn’t operate for almost half the year.
Philippines-based multinational renewables company ACEN has sought approval to build a wind farm with up to 122 turbines on Robbins Island and a parcel of land called Jim’s Plain, north-west of Smithton.
The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has granted conditional approval for the project, which has been vehemently opposed by environmentalists and some Circular Head residents.
Notice the speed with which the EPA operates:
Some 383 representations were received during the public consultation period in January and February 2022.
Plenty more birds to kill:
Dr Woehler [from BirdLife Tasmania] questioned the location for the proposal, describing it as “incredible the EPA hasn’t thought at all about the 20,000 migratory and resident shore birds that use the area”.
“You cannot have a wind farm with 120-plus turbines in the middle of wetlands that are important for migratory shore birds, resident shore birds, orange-bellied parrots, eagles.
Is this the point where the Greens realize they’ve been used by Big-Money?
Robbins Island is home to more than half of Tasmania’s shorebird population, including many critically-endangered species. Not to mention the disease-free population of Tasmanian devils, bird species that migrate from the other side of the globe, and iconic wedge-tailed eagles.
A request for Robbins Island and its surrounding waters be declared a significant Aboriginal area, to be preserved and protected from injury or desecration, has been submitted to federal environment minister Sussan Ley, RenewEconomy has learned.
h/t
Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.
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And the second thing they do is hand out brown paper bags stuffed to the gills.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-01/australian-election-commission-financial-disclosure/100794808
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LMAO. If I wasn’t laughing, I’d be crying. I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time after the turbines are running that another environmental study will be done to indicate there is no effect on the parrots and the recommendation will be to run year round.
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In any other industry… If you shut your business down for 5 months of the year, and it operated at 30% capacity for the rest of the year, you would go broke.
How can they make money out of this venture?
Subsidies?
What utter madness is this?
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In any other business;
1. If the Contractor or Supplier could only work part of the time, they would be fired / job not started with those credentials
2. If the fuel supply was intermittent ( Coal, or Oil or Gas), the Powerstation would not be built.
Not exactly Rocket science for those planning fowk ( who should be put ON a rocket – I wouldn’t waste a seat INSIDE) to look at daily Wind output figures.
In any other business, …
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The politicians, the ones who make the decisions, already have many examples of fellow politicians and ex-politicians “earning” $thousands a year “working” one day a week or one day a month as “advisers” for several different organisations. They may even be doing it themselves. They think it’s normal.
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FrankH.
Seems like you know politics.
Do lousy people enter politics or does politics make people lousy.
Seriously, it does seem like so many in politics are not public servants but are making fortunes in ways that would put the average citizen in jail. And the farther left they are the worse they are.
Voters need to seek out good people and throw out the grafters and criminals.
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“Voters need to seek out good people”.. Not a chance! Good people don’t go into politics because they don’t want power over other people.
Anyone who wants power should’t be allowed anywhere near it, and that wipes every candidate out in a democracy. The system can only give us the results we have, it is designed that way.
“Do lousy people enter politics”.. of course! Would-be dictators every one of them!
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As you rightfully, IMO, say, lousy people enter politics or does politics make people lousy: THIS is the question that ALL political REAL Journalists should be asking. I’ll have to right this down forthe next local Hustings. MAybe too we should all be writing direct to our MPs and asking them directly. ( Luv to be FLY on the wall then ). Brilliant! Oh an afterthought, “oor Donal’ ” trying to drain the swamp. …hope he has a good supply of Louse powder!
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Somewhere hidden in the paperwork there will be a commitment to pay them for the downtime.
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Just what I though! As in the UK, especially Scotland, it matter naught whether the winds blow, or not. The landowners still get their rentals and the wind companies get payments for downtime for any reason. To little or too much wind. What a crazy system.
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The new Federal EPA and Minister Plibersek will surely step in and stop this crazy plan?
If they have time while getting around the bans on logging in National Parks to clear land for transmission lines for the new dedicated wind and solar grid.
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Ahh…the new federal EPA… because more layers of centralised bureaucracy are always the solution…
In all of human history, was there ever a government department that managed to solve more problems than it created?
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James, I agree with you in most departments.
The western military services did an excellent job in WW2. But, not so much since.
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No mention about Galahs?
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The galahs are safe and well fed in Canberra!
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I’m loving that you called it a Wind factory and not a wind farm. Industrial wind plant is also equally acceptable. Keep up the good work Jo.
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huuh, in my book, the only plant that does well with / without wind is GRASS. Taller plants get trashed and threshed, but grass can always produce my meat.
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If the LNP had any brains, they would use the term “intermittents” instead of renewable, for the next 4 years. But who am I trying to kid? David Littleproud thinks Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a good thing.
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Yes…it’s well passed time the non-left take control of the language….use it in the media, use it in Parliament, use it in conferences…..
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Intermittent energy sources, plant food gas, earth-based energy sources, ……….any other terms ?
Twitter, YouTube …….
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There is no cure for stupid
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I find this decision not even a little surprising. All common sense has been thrown out the window by the green zealots that infest all levels of govt in this country. What they ruined to not solve a non problem is truly horrific.
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It’s not just Tasmania coupled with Victoria, the argument in Europe was the same that when the wind stopped in one place it blew somewhere else. Now they know it’s not true.
There is just so much nonsense. My favorite boast of the Australian Nuclear people is that nuclear is safer than coal because nuclear has no emissions. The only more outrageous statement is from China which argues that despite output of more CO2 than all other nations combined, it is an ‘historic’ victim and deserves carbon credits and donations and gets them.
And the BLM march in Melbourne in the middle of the pandemic when random people protested slavery two hundred years ago in other countries. Just a little late. I can only guess that like China, they want compensation for historic injury but being oppressed by a 50% increase in tiny Carbon dioxide over a period of 250 years is beyond logic.
What is good is that the Polar bears were never in any danger. The orange bellied parrots though could be relocated for a lousy hundred million surely? Wouldn’t that be about a million dollars per parrot for a good home somewhere else? And perhaps another million dollars per eagle. After all, the government has plenty of money.
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But the polar bears could be relocated to Antarctica. Penguins are delicious.
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I assume this installation will be a nett load on the grid for the months its just idling as they keep it ticking over.
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Aye, a Lot of people don’t Know that. hmm, do the germans do it better?
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Ontario: Where The Green New Deal Was Tried, Failed And Repealed
Ontario gave a Canadian version of the Green New Deal a decade to prove itself and it failed — spectacularly so — for the province citizenry.
In February 2009, Ontario, Canada passed its Green Energy Act. The act entailed: increased integration of wind and solar energy into Ontario’s electricity grid, shutting down coal plants and creating 50,000 green jobs in the first three years; allowing First Nations communities to manage their own electricity supply and distribution (the ‘decolonization’ of energy), empowering Canada’s indigenous communities; and reducing costs for poorer citizens through clean and sustainable energy provided by renewable energy. That part of the act received an endorsement from Ontario’s Low Income Energy Network – a group that campaigns for universal access to affordable energy.
On January 1, 2019, Ontario repealed the act—one month before its 10th anniversary. The 50,000 guaranteed jobs never materialized. The “decolonization” of energy did not work out. one-third of indigenous Ontarians now live in energy poverty—their electricity bills more than doubled during the life of the act, making their electricity costs among the highest in North America. Its promises turned out to be false, and the actual results made people’s lives worse.
Ontario’s contracts with renewable suppliers guarantee electricity suppliers that they “will be paid for each kilowatt hour of electricity generated from the renewable energy project,” regardless of whether the electricity is consumed. While that does not make sense, the new contracts were an improvement over earlier contracts that guaranteed payments close to 100 percent of the supplier’s capacity, rather than electricity generated. So if a producer supplied only 33 percent of its capacity in a given year, it would still be paid as if it had produced almost 100 percent.
The Council for Clean and Reliable Energy found that “in 2015, Ontario’s wind farms operated at less than one-third capacity more than half (58 percent) of the time.” Regardless, Ontarians paid multiple contracts as if wind farms had operated at full capacity all year. Ontario’s contracts also guaranteed exorbitant prices for renewable energy—often at up to 40 times the cost of conventional power for 20 years of operation. By 2015, Ontario’s auditor general concluded that citizens had paid $37 billion above the market rate for energy. Since these plants will continue operating, they will pay another $133 billion from 2015 to 2032 on top of market valuations.
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog-1/ontario-where-the-green-new-deal-was-tried-failed-and-repealed/
Say after me:
“the only way people will learn is the hard way”
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All based on an unproven pseudo science story from the United Nations who now control every energy system which was the idea. In the modern world the way to political power is electrical power. Who cares about facts and science, certainly not the UN. They have had a department for man made government controlled Climate Change since 1988, in fact for exactly as long as Global Warming has existed. How it heats the oceans is unexplained, but who cares if everyone believes it?
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But the science is settled.
sarc
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“the only way people will learn is the hard way”;
“the only way people will learn is the hard way”; and again,
“the only way people will learn is the hard way”.
Yep.
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Thank you John Connor II.
The Liberal government that allowed this to happen was decimated by the electorate. They lost their party status! This was the result of not having done a proper cost/ benefit analysis and having failed to examine the climate change deception.
The elected Conservative leader promised to stop this madness and especially to stop the harm to residents who have been forced to live with trespassing noise emissions…both audible and inaudible. He shook hands and looked into peoples’ eyes making this promise. Nothing has been done to date to protect people being harmed. Residents have exhausted themselves trying to seek protection.
Someone needs to calculate the losses if these contracts are allowed to run their full course.
Long term contracts need to be broken.
This government needs to cut their losses now.
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That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard of.
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Oh ! sorry,Jo. Scots Nats our blinking SNP! and Jack McConnel was a former ( hate ther term) first minister and of the Labour party https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Jack+McConnel&t=opera&ia=web seemed like a good guy School teacher type ( he was one) but some daft ideas. IMO. Hence my take on all our Scot-ish government stuff – have no time for them at all, let alone the SNP. and why UK in general has this affinity for the French, I dunno – the bread, Wine, weemin, or wot – just that now we are not “allowed” to travel too much, drink too much unless we give Tax tax tax to them. Stuff that! ( is there something Australian in me now ?)
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Robbins Island wind farm is one of the reasons the Tasmanian govt want the rest of Australia to pay for the Marinus Link. The planned route for the transmission line has had to be changed because of strong protests on the original forest path.
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Circus Canberra, watch the show, the blame game and finger pointing is already underway as the transition into politician’s worst nightmares reaches crisis point.
Terry McCrann in The Daily Telegraph today – Whitlam-flavoured coal plan won’t work.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Whitlam mess Version 2.0 ………. Thanks to the – sure, entirely bipartisan- lunacy of force-feeding wind and solar into the grid, coal fired power stations are price takers, not price setters. Cutting the price of coal into a power station – if indeed you can achieve that – won’t cut the electricity price, just cut the station’s losses. In sum, 2022 ws 1972 redux. Will 2025 be 1975 redux as well?
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My money is on the significant reduction to the restriction of operations. The Greens will concede because they already know that a more acceptable level of say a couple of months will be necessary to maintain economic viability. Plus money talks as they say. Existing windmills are already killing sea eagles and that is acceptable so the same will apply to parrots of any hue.
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Oh well, “nobody gives a **** about parrots”:
https://youtu.be/bKZcltBPh4g
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[…] By Jo Nova […]
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Labor Have No Bloody Idea How To Fix Energy Crisis
Pauline Hanson December 09, 2022
You just have to look at Labor’s ridiculous plan to pour another 10 billion dollars into unreliable “renewable” energy to see that Anthony Albanese’s government hasn’t got any bloody idea what they are doing or how they can solve Australia’s energy crisis.
The public have to realise we have only had higher electricity prices since we went down this “green” energy path to disaster.
Labor is closing reliable baseload power stations and refusing to replace them with new ones be it coal, gas or nuclear.
Until we get common sense and realise that spending billions more on solar panels and windmills won’t cut it and that we have to have a true diversity of power to deliver the needs of Australians, you will all continue to suffer serious power price pain.
We’re going to have blackouts, we’re going to have increased electricity costs, and you are going to have Labor to thank for it.
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Thanks Ozzie,
oh! what foolish things people do.
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Pauline seems to have been listening to Malcolm Roberts.
One Nation appears to be the only political party with a realistic understanding of the energy issue.
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Makes about as much sense as changing place names back to their native language that few speak. It’s like that here in New England: due to it’s history there are so many native place names, but very few of the people living here now speak the native language or even know what those place names mean let alone where they come from.
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Hmm, almost seems like they don’t want us to have electricity.
I like electricity.
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Me too Honk, in fact I couldn’t live without it . .
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Orange-bellied Parrot
The entry on Wiki claims the parrots were almost gone but have staged a come-back.
Still there are only a few dozen.
What could be dumber than the proposed construction and operation of massive machines in the habitat?
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John,
Did you check the status of the Norwegian Blue Parrot?
That didn’t need bat-busters to die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw35VUBdzo
Auto
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When we first used Zoom to teleconference, I had a Norwegian Blue on my bookcase behind me. Took folks a while to pick up on it.
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In California’s Altamont Pass they have had wind farms for decades. They kill millions of birds each year as this is a north-south path of travel for birds. The thing is over time the wind generators have stopped working so many work and many do not.
California has over time eliminated all but one of their nuclear power stations, stopped building coal fire plants, and natural gas fire plants. This is leading to Governor telling the people to limit powering Electric Vehicles and brownouts.
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And a wind farm was prosecuted for exceeding their endangered bird kill allowance. Yes, wind farms in the U.S. actually have a kill allowance…
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the intermittent inhabitants of Parliament House in Canberra…dumber than a box of rocks, and not half as useful.
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Wrong thread… doh!
[Duplicate on “wrong” thread will not publish. Comment on “correct” thread was released. – LVA]
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A comment apt in anticipation for the electricity scene in Oz –
“Socialists seem to come with a built in excuse generator.”
From comments at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/12/09/transient-climate-response-from-observations-1979-2022/
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Speaking of orange bellied parrots, back in the Howard days, his environment minister tried to block a wind generation facility, iirc in Victoria. He is was taken to court, got no support from so-called environmentalists. I think it went ahead.
Environmentalism, correctly spelled hypocrisy.
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[…] blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post on a big windfarm that can only operate half the […]
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I went to look at the Cape Grim wind farm about 5 years ago – they were thinking of this Robbins Island wind facility after that and Bob Brown even protested about it. One thing that I found at Cape Grim was that they were concerned about the Eagles that next on the cliffs below the wind farm. So they moved the wind towers back – yes – 100metres from the edge of the cliff! Nobody seemed to care that the Eagles have to fly through the blades to get to their hunting grounds. They didnt seem to realise that they were not Sea Eagles!
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nest!
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Also…when the wind don’t blow.
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[…] Renewable Energy: Health and Ecosystem Consequences:*** Report: Millions of bats are slaughtered annually by onshore wind turbinesBat species native to Great Lakes on brink of extinctionMega wind facility approved that can’t operate half the year […]
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