By Jo Nova
Following the footsteps of Cuba
It’s not even summer and the Australian grid is having heart palpitations.
The Blob are in concert — blackouts might be at hand, and they want us to blame the heat (it’s code for climate change). Let’s get a grip, we’re only talking about a Sydney forecast of 33°C (all of 91F).
The ABC calls this “sweltering” and files it under “extreme weather events”. Channel Nine call it a “major heatwave”, which it might be if it were London.
For most of the last week, the AEMO (Australia Energy Market Operator) has been flashing red lights and ringing the LOR3 bell. That means they’ve been forecasting a full Level 3 Lack of Reserve, which means they can see blackouts coming. A level 3 is the most serious warning alarm. Not only is there no reserve power available if something goes wrong, there’s not even enough power for normal operations.
A week ago the AEMO saw blackouts coming for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — but by hook or by crook with finagling, they’ve got enough promised power now to turn off the sirens, though the lights are still flashing. Think of this an emergency room visit where the heart attack didn’t quite happen today, and probably won’t happen tomorrow, but the patient needs to pay attention.
Quite often in the last few years the AEMO would issue a level 1 warning and forecast a few hundred megawatts of shortage for a couple of hours. But by yesterday morning, in forecasts for Wednesday’s mildly warm day they were looking down the barrel of a 1,700 MW shortage. The full emergency period was not just an hour or two long but started at 11:30am and ran right through to 7:30pm at night.
And of course, it’s old coal’s fault:
Discussion at WattClarity suggest that Australia is running short of spare coal and gas plants to operate. It’s a combination of forced outages, unforced outages, and some maintenance taking longer than expected. Nearly one third of all thermal units bigger than 150MW in generation are out of action.
So geniuses, if a lack of coal causes blackouts, what’s going to happen when we shut down more coal?
Andrew Forrest’s Squadron Energy said the warning underscored the dangers of an energy system still largely reliant on coal.
“AEMO has confirmed that the combination of high temperatures across NSW and Queensland, along with coal plant outages will cause tight electricity supply forecasts in the coming days,” said Squadron boss Rob Wheals. “We know that Australia’s coal fleet is nearing the end of its economic and technical lifespan, with coal plant outages driving high price periods.”
— By Perry Williams, The Australian Heat spike puts NSW power grid on edge
There’s plenty more of that at Squadron Energy’s site, where they say ““Coal is killing affordability and reliability. Renewables are the answer.” The mystery is why even The Australian thought any of it was worth printing, except as a giggle.
Twenty years of Soviet style management is what is killing our grid
We got exactly what we paid for: Government subsidies to boost unreliable energy have, shock, created an unreliable grid. We used to have enough coal power so they could take a few units out for maintenance and it didn’t matter. But when we pay more for random generators, we drive reliable ones out of business. We then expect the owners to run vast finely tuned 500-ton machines faster and slower all the time to “fit in” with the wind and solar machines we don’t need. This reduces efficiency, which increases their costs, and no doubt the maintenance time. Then we kill off the long term prospects for the industry, call them stranded assets, and wonder why companies don’t value them, build new ones or fix up the old ones properly.
Crazy subsidies, make for crazy thinking, and then we get Squadron Energy telling us coal is killing affordability…
The Australian Grid is running close to the edge
The latest update suggests the level 3 alarm for Wednesday and Thursday has dropped to a level 2. The AEMO tell us the reserve requirement on Wednesday for our most populated state is 1,202 MW but, not so reassuringly, “the minimum capacity reserve is 0 MW”. That means, they think, that if everything works as expected, and the weather is not hotter than forecast, or more cloudy, or less windy, and nothing breaks, then the system will be just barely OK.
Usually the people in the control room like to have enough spare capacity on call, so if the biggest single generator trips out, the back up is there to keep the lights on. The minimum capacity reserve is not just a nice thing to have, its considered an essential part of normal operation. It’s the difference between the first world and the third world.
h/t David of Cooyal in Oz.
REFERENCES
AEMO notice 120894 contained the LOR3 1,731MW notice at 4:37am Monday. Later notice number 120946 updated the situation in NSW and number 120949 has cancelled the LOR3 in NSW for Thursday too. The AEMO have put out something like 1,000 notices in the last three weeks. It didn’t use to be this way.
Production lines run best when they have attained an equilibrium.
I can only imagine the damage and resulting costs from brown outs and blackouts on industries where there is insufficient back up power to keep the normal operating conditions, not to mention industries like Tomago where many operations can only be run with grid scale power.
Given a choice between switching of voter’s air conditioners or an entire plant what choice do you believe our career politicians will make? Especially when they know the result of industry shutdown will be diminished by main stream media and search engines will make sure sites like Jo’s will be missing from searches or just plain buried.
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It’s a real shame that a forced ‘shut down’ Aluminium Plant doesn’t have a lot of votes. But the Owners, Management and Workers do have a vote.
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An aluminium smelter can turn down it’s electrical load and still operate. It just produces less aluminium.
Do do this, it just has to raise the anodes slightly on a string of pots. The resistance of the pot increases, the voltage drop over the cell increases and the string current drops. Of course, when you are talking in the order of 300,000 amps running through the string of often hundreds of pots, it really makes a difference.
However, like all good things, there is a limit. If you pull the anode too far up, the current flow falls too low to keep everything liquid, at that point, the aluminium in the bottom of the pot sets, (this is really bad), when the cryolite sets, you really have crossed that point of no return. Time for the jack hammers.
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Thankyou for highlighting the ridiculousness of this.
The MSM no longer report news – their product, their only output, is anxiety.
That’s what they peddle: anxiety.
When you make people anxious, they click (MSM earns income), that watch (ditto).
If everyone understands that their product is anxiety, it’s easier to ignore them. No click, no watch, no income.
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Aren’t potential blackouts news?
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Yes they are, good news, the sooner we have a couple of good ones, maybe we’ll look at what’s actually going on.
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What we need is either Melbourne or Sydney to go “dark” on a really hot day- you know, > 35˚C. Make some of these idiots really squirm or lose their jobs. Victoria came close on 25/1/19, when due to bushfires and some hot conditions there was massive load shedding, rolling outages.
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Yes, but there is a need for “town criers” to tell people about it.
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“Aren’t potential blackouts news?”
Not at all! If you don’t know when you can’t do anything about it, and it won’t change a single voter’s ideas about ruinables. Only when the power suddenly goes off for 12hrs will it register with the hoi polloi. That’s when you need the town criers telling people the ruinables caused it, and the answer is LESS solar and wind, not more.
If telling people that ruinables would cause blackouts worked, then a lot more people would be against it. They aren’t, so the anxiety before the blackout means nothing.
Bring it on, its only when the blame game starts afterwards that we have a voice.
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And there is only a significant potential for them due to the insanity of the Left and their obsession with wind and solar plantations which are destroying people’s lives, the economy and ultimately nations and enriching the Elites of the Left.. The anti-science, anti-engineering policies of the Left must stop. Those policies have no purpose but to destroy Western Civilisation. America will soon have TRUMP to fix things, Australia has no one, although Dutton is admittedly less bad than the alternative.
Posted from Khendi, Nepal, 28.09879°N, 85.32842°E, elevation 2265m.
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Perhaps there are enough stupid people out there who believe all this rubbish of coal and gas causing every problem known to mankind.
Having spent over 30 years prospecting in the Outback I mostly retreated back to the east coast when the temperature reached 42+ deg and this was generally the first or second week of November. Now 42 and 33 deg are extremes?
It’s called “covering your arse” in the face of blackouts!
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Aneroid shows that all wind is punching out 14.4% of nameplate at 1400 hrs. The AEMO is blaming coal plants, as does good old Twiggy, but it seems wind is not producing as much as it could. Queensland is keeping the lights on in NSW. Price in QLD is minus$18.89 while price in NSW is Plus $160.82. Coal plants give cheaper electricity by the look of that. Hey Twiggy.
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The wind not blowing is not the same as an unplanned outage in a coal plant. You don’t turn on the wind power if coal power is coming up short so you can’t blame wind power.
You know it makes sense because you are such a clever little boy.
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Sorry, I clicked the downvote by mistake.
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He knows. But he’s a compliant denier of reality.
And, anyway, he’s on the dollar drip-feed. So it pays him to not know.
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NSW residents must all arise this morning & switch on every single electrical appliance they possess.
It won’t send your power bill over the top as the whole grid will go down. Teach the CC morons a huge lesson. The people are still in control. Crash the grid & maybe the message will get thru. Stop the insanity before we all are bankrupted. Stop the energy subsidies before the financial system goes “ belly up “! The general election may not come soon enough!
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My solution is when the Coal generators come on line again is to keep them going. See what happens AEMO.
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People have been telling this government that renewables won’t work to cover the energy grid until they are blue in the face.
Blackout Bowen stands there and says, “Nuh, we’re going wind and solar. Nyah, Daddy WEF said so!”
Airbus Albo stands there and says, “when’s the next overseas conference?”
There is no climate emergency, Summer is hot in Australia and the BOM are manipulated figures to make it appear more dire than it is.
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Have you noticed that when EV sales fall the Climate Cult shouts “ hotter than ever” just to let you know that government misinformation is alive & well.
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“The general election may not come soon enough!”
Why?? It will make absolutely no difference at all! Put Baldy in power and there will be no change in the electrical generation system made, they are a Uniparty when it comes to WEF.
If he was screaming for a ‘warp-speed’ building project for new coal plants while starting on nuclear, I’d believe he was different to Elbow, but no, they are the farmers and the pigs from Animal Farm.
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Just imagine, Graham, if a million EVs were to plug in this evening for a quick charge.
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The German problem with renewables and a twelve day wind drought. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/alternative-energy-crowd-gets-desperate-wind-drought-refuses/
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I certainly won’t be doing anything differently, if I need it, I will use it.
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A coal plant does have an unfortunate tendency to fail after it has been blown up.
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What hope have we got when even the Australian parrots the same BS and fra-d and seems to believe that perhaps the answer is more unreliable, toxic W & S?
Why can’t the average person use their brains and very simple logic and reason?
We need more reliable 24/7 base-load energy and we need it ASAP.
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The average petson is dealing with their family, their job and life’s usual dramas. Why would power be an issue to them beyond cost? They are not future oriented, they expect to be able to flick a switch and its there. Up till now thats how it has been, despite the occasional bit of noise about issues they dont understand.
The industry and the politicians seem to be in the business of gaslighting the public on this topic , so if it goes pear shaped it will be quite a shock and scapegoats will be needed. The negative talk about coal power is just preparing that ground.
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Perhaps the nightly news can start a blackout weather segment where any regions facing LOR1, LOR2, or LOR3 are highlighted. People don’t know how many of these near misses are happening. Or is it pointless to warn people of potential blackouts that (so far) usually don’t happen?
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How about named blackouts. We have named storms, why not named blackouts. Alphabetic, as usual: Blackout Albo, blackout Bowen, Blackout Chalmers, …
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If renewables are so affordable and reliable (which they are not and possibly never will be) then the coal-fired industry would be dead already.
When virtually all our power was coming from fossil fuels we had absolutely no problems with “affordability and reliability.”
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Coal and oil are products of millions of years of pressure put on vegetation. They are natural substances and should be recognised as such.
If they are used to produce other natural products such as plastics why does anyone worry?
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Coal, Oil and Gas are really types of Solar Energy. The Sun shining on Planet Earth was the original source.
Now hop to it and get those Solar Plants humming.
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Carbon dioxide makes the world work as a living entity.
Non-scientists tend to lie through their teeth to get what they want. What they want is a redistribution of the World’s wealth as evidenced by all the COPS that have ever been.
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The grifters got what they wanted in overtime at COP OUT29. A fund of $460 billion dollars a year until 2035 to be distributed amongst developing countries to tackle climate change. No doubt recipients won’t have to produce receipts at the end of the year to show what climate saving things they’ve bought
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-24/cop29-pacific-nations-walk-out-of-climate-summit/104640338
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“No doubt recipients won’t have to produce receipts at the end of the year to show what climate saving things they’ve bought”
They will have to buy a lot of climate scientists to do research to prove they need to add more money at the next COP. Its a money-go-round for climate scientists.
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If grid collapse is imminent, a wise person would store potable water, canned foods, propane and other fuels, necessary medicines, cash money, and ammunition.
The AU govt has “managed” itself into an untenable position. Politics and Propaganda will mean very little when the power goes out for a week or two, or a few months.
This is going to be painfully educational. All the excuses/blame/finger pointing will be meaningless.
Have a plan to survive, because the only person you can rely upon is yourself. Govt will not help you. They got you into this mess.
It is surreal to watch this slow motion train wreck happen in real time. Decades and Trillions wasted on what provably does not work in reality, is coming to fruition.
Plan accordingly. Stay out of the cities. Know your neighbours . It’s gonna get Real.
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Lance,
Bingo . If the grid fails it won’t be restored quickly . As the grid becomes more interconnected the failure gets bigger when it occurs . There are not enough batteries in the system to provide enough stability to prevent a blackout . Loadshedding won’t help as the crash will be too big .As the internet fails (data centres etc) you wont even be able to post here….
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Yes Lance it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the likely black event , I’m well covered here with a back up supply of pretty much everything including power .
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I posted on the daily unthreaded the ground level solar for the last 3 days:
4.9kWh
2.1kWh
1.2kWh.
Clear sky this time of year 8.4kWh per day.
Today has started out similar to yesterday – humid with drizzle.
The reason why I looked this up is that my off-grid battery went low last night. First time that has happened in spring or summer months.
So clearly the rooftops across Victoria will not be doing much. And wind is not doing much.
There is a fundamental truth in maths that any big number by zero is still zero. So you can have a trillion wind turbines but their output can still be zero.
My current prediction for Snowy 2 is up and running by 2049. Florence has now done 1600m of the required 17,000m but there is a good chance another machine will be coming to help with its workload.
I learnt yesterday that the geotechnical assessment of the ground conditions for the project were well below par for a tunnelling project off this scale.
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Snowy 2.0 is a White Elephant’
It’s the same thing as ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul’.
They will pump the water uphill using electricity when it is cheaper. They will let the water flow downhill when the electricity price is higher. Probably the same amount of electricity being used and then generated.
Maybe we need a Perpetual Motion Machine. Now, where do we get a load of those?
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This whole scam has been based on the premise of excess power at night which will disappear with the shutdown of the coalies.
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It’s an arbitrage.
The problem with arbitrages is that they eventually regress to the mean.
At that point Snowy II is truly a white elephant.
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“Florence has now done 1600m of the required 17,000m but there is a good chance another machine will be coming to help with its workload.”
Double the machines, double the chance something will go wrong.
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Florence has 3 sisters- Lady Eileen, Kirsten and another recent addition yet to be named. The last one cost $75 million. She was bought in August and must be costed into the revised $12 billion budget (Turnbull’s initial $2 billion estimate was nowhere near the mark and we can expect further cost revisions).
I propose Florence’s latest sibling is dubbed Dame Digger, but I’m open to suggestions…
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They don’t want the masses to know that. That’s why they dumbed down the education system.
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Back in the day, they would do geotechnical assessments before tunnelling began.
That’s why this project was judged to be infeasible 60 odd years ago when the original Snowy Hydro was built.
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Yeah. But they didn’t have Malcolm Turnbull in those days to tell them how it should have been done.
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Who would have guessed, with the grid on the brink of collapse due to RE policies that we already knew would fail, the fake media are now trying to convince us that a normal warm summer day is “extreme heat”, caused by climate change. If the grid does collapse we already know they will blame climate change and the failure of the coal plants, and of course they will tell us that the solution is more RE. What’s playing out is a bit like giving a sick patient more and more cyanide to cure them from cyanide poisoning.
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We definitely need more Green FFs to save more land for wilderness areas and we desperately need to stop the toxic , unreliable W & S disasters as fast as we can.
And we need to understand that FFs have allowed us to save an area the size of Nth America because we’ve been able to grow more food on less land over the last one hundred years.
Less farming land and more food is the best outcome and the data is readily available online.
See the first section of Dr Goklany’s study.
https://co2coalition.org/publications/fossil-fuels-are-the-greenest-energy-sources/
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The VIC govt pays companies that use a lot of electricity to cease production when it gets a bit warm! And this is after Ford, Holden, Toyota and Alcoa, to name a few are no longer manufacturing here.
Companies will just pack up when the energy costs tip them over the edge (like Quenos recently – a big gas user). We can all just work in tourism or solar panel cleaning I guess…
We are living in a banana republic with imbeciles at the helm. What’s that saying about weak men create hard times…..
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Ah yes. Demand management – I call it a controlled blackout.
Rather than cutting power to thousands of households pay industry that use huge amounts of electricity to have a day off.
This does mothing to address the underlying issue of lack of generation and the mums and dads in suburbia are totally oblivious because…”we never lost power”.
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Yes, the true story is that we lose power regularly but because companies are paid for their losses, no one notices or cares.
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The media indeed have a lot to answer for when in comes to reporting of science and natural phenomena. We learned that during COVID. They couldn’t wait to totally exaggerate all aspects of the fake COVID pandemic. There seems to be some philosophy within media management that the more fear you can stoke, the better ratings, likes, reposts , newspaper sales that eventuate. The same seems to apply now to reporting of the weather. They are almost these days the “enemy of the people”, as one wise person once said. Conspiracy theorists would say its because these instructions come from some nefarious controllers of the world and Big Media are part of that club. They might be right. As for the unreliability of coal – I check the Australian Energy Market : Aneroid website https://anero.id/energy from time to time for the Victorian main coal generators. So Yallorn W and Loy Yan B are both running at above 100 %. They’ve now been doing this for years. How is that unreliable or inefficient?
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“these instructions come from some nefarious controllers of the world and Big Media are part of that club. ”
The six billionaires who own the world’s media? It just makes it funnier when they cock up something in lockstep and print some giant event like an assassination before it has happened in some timezone.
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Tasmania would be rolling in Hydro-Volts had it not been for Bob Hawke scrounging for votes. During the 1983 federal election campaign, Hawke publicly committed to stopping the dam if elected and Green votes ensured that outcome! Today Greens and Labor still play in the same cess pit
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Being in Nepal, I am now used to the wonderful Net Zero lifestyle of random or scheduled power outages, electricity only used for minor loads like lighting (in fact, only lighting up here in the hills, when it is available at all), no room heating (at 626am my guest house room is 2.3C), no hot water on tap or hot showers, wood or dung for cooking fuel etc..
(Posted from Chandanbari, Nepal 28.11049°N, 85.34007°E, elevation 3270m.)
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You’ll be all trained up for the outages when you lob back home.
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Do we all have to report our co-odinates now? Is some aspect of new legislation that I missed.
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Not yet . . . and only if away from home – is it one of your approved journeys?
/Sarc
But maybe not long before it isn’t – certainly here is Sir Starmer’s Commisariat, where cutting Winter Fuel Allowance to all but the poorest [those with a gross income of less than about £13,000] is ‘necessary’ and, seemingly ‘fair’!
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While this may not seem on topic, it actually is, and it needs an explanation, and relates closely to what was mentioned about the coal fired power generation fleet maintenance, ironically, where the blame is sheeted home to, and as Joanne mentions ….. don’t these people listen to themselves.
Joanne mentions this:
Back in 2017, I started the first of what is now five ongoing series on power generation. At one of the ‘believer’ sites, someone picked me up on the absolute minimum power consumption for the whole (AEMO) grid, and I used that figure of 18,000MW, around 4AM every morning of the year, when nearly everyone is tucked up tight in bed. I was told (in no uncertain manner) that the 18,000MW I ‘quoted’ was patently false, and (the usual response from them) please supply a reference for that.
That was the prompt to start that Series about ….. Base Load, and here note that this is not used as an adjective, as all believers do, but as an actual ‘Entity’, something that is an actual physical total.
So, each week I would check and detail the data and make a Post about it. I would check each State on a daily basis at that minimum power time, and average that across the week, and then add the totals for each State to give an Australia wide total for that Minimum power generation.
(blah blah blah) but you get the idea.
Here’s the link to the Post for week 52, so one full year of daily data, and hey the average for the whole year was, umm, 18,020MW, which umm, sort of supported what I had said all along. Again when I mentioned this, and then showed the data Posts, one response was this ….. “Yeah, that’s what’s being generated, but it’s not what is being actually consumed.”
I mean, how can you argue with people like that? Generated power EQUALS consumed power. There’s no ….. just sitting there waiting. But hey, people have no concept about the first thing about power generation.
Okay, and here’s the point leading directly back to what Joanne said about maintenance.
Right from when I first started doing all this, I had been checking data from sources I could use, and that wonderful Aneroid site fast became my ‘goto’ site for data, as it was directly using that SCADA five minute real time data of actual grid power generation.
In those early days back in 2008, I could see we had that now ancient thinking ….. ‘rolling reserve’, where older coal fired plants waited for scheduled maintenance. They would ‘scroll up’ and at the required time, come on line as the operational plant ‘wound down’ for the maintenance. That’s all they did, come on line for maintenance periods, and also if there were even some major problems where large levels of power were required, and no one had even the faintest clue it was all happening, or even knew what was going on, as it was all just so seamless.
So, back to my Base Load Series.
What I found was that the two major power consumption Seasons were Winter and Summer, where it was ‘all hands on deck’ for those coal fired plants, the major sources of power generation ….. both then and STILL NOW in fact.
During those benign Months where power consumption, across the board was (considerably) lower, them that was the time when that scheduled maintenance was carried out. You could watch as it happened at that Aneroid site, Units at those plants in States going off line in almost sequence, starting in the first Month of that benign Season (Spring and Autumn) and lasting right up to the start of the Summer and Winter Seasons. And, at times during those Summer and Winter Seasons, it was not uncommon to see every Unit at every Plant delivering its full power, and times in the benign Seasons when up to ten Units or even more were offline for maintenance.
So ….. here we are now with one week to go until the start of Summer, and maintenance rolls on.
The only difference now is those existing Units at the still operational Plants are now getting so long in the tooth, that maintenance has either been wound back, or takes longer, or they’re finding more little problems due to age.
Huh, those ancient coal fired dinosaurs (and how wind power daydreams that they could last perhaps half as long as them) deliver power on a scale that wind cannot even get within cooee of.
2023 whole of year
Coal Nameplate – 20,000MW. Power delivered – 118,000GWH
Wind Nameplate – 13,460MW. Power delivered – 27,600GWH
So coal fired power delivers more than FOUR TIMES the power of those Industrial wind plants.
Why am I reminded of that old adage ….. Flogging a dead horse!
Tony.
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The Aneroid site is great but there is a problem with its reporting accuracy, I just checked a few minutes ago and Aneroid said Callide was generating 242Mw, but another site that shows the units online and their output showed 3 units online and producing 602.68 Mw.
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Further on, how do the wind/solar proponents intend to provide reactive power to support voltage stability or the synchronized inertia of thermal plants to support frequency stability.
The Public is woefully ignorant of AC power system stability requirements. In 1 to 5 minutes, the entire grid can collapse. That is a Fact of Physics. Test it at your peril.
The ONLY thing that keeps the grid stable is the synchronized rotating inertia of thermal power plants and their ability to inject or absorb reactive power. Anything else is a band-aid or avoidance of reality.
At Megawatt or Gigawatt scales, NOTHING can replace thermal generation for grid stability. Nothing.
AU is about to find that out, and that, right soon.
I’m saddened by the general ignorance of the population and the criminal actions of government. You will find out soon, for yourselves, what this means, in an undeniably real circumstance. It isn’t hypothetical. Get prepared for that reality or suffer the consequences. Black Grid Restart can take weeks to months. Think about it.
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Well said Lance.
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People in general, do not understand how precarious their lives actually are.
Everything, and I mean Every Thing, in their lives depends upon dispatchable, stable, electricity generation.
There is not ONE thing in modern living that is immune. From water, to waste, to wifi, to AirCons, to traffic lights, to jobs, to food, etc. Any failure at grid level is a “near extinction event”. That failure is horrific.
We are not capable of understanding how tragic a continent wide grid failure is. Civil war is on par with it.
None of this is “theoretical”, but rather imminent reality. Who thinks that a nationwide power failure is survivable? Everyone in a city is first to lose. It won’t be pretty. It will be memorable for the survivors.
It is so avoidable. Why cannot those in power see the folly of their actions? The stupidity is stunning.
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“Everyone in a city is first to lose. It won’t be pretty. It will be memorable for the survivors.”
Talk to any South African…
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Every electrical engineer should be shouting facts from the rooftops. Just as too many academics keep quiet while lies are told and believed, engineers have an obligation to make the public aware, give up on the politicians and bureaucrats who seemingly are brain dead, of the disaster coming down the line.
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“Every electrical engineer should be shouting facts from the rooftops.”
Sadly they’re shouting “Solar on your rooftop! Get it now!”
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Water and sewage are transported by electricity, turn that off and stand back.
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Stunning stupidity is far too soft a characterization Lance; criminality is on foot and has been since the days twenty-five years ago when silver tongued Senator Robert Hill ushered in the RET legislation and delivered the country to the renewables spivs and initiated the orgy of dynamiting of coal fired power stations which lately has metastasized into fantasies about hydrogen and battery cars.
This living nightmare waiting for grid collapse will persist until we resolve to exploit, again, the hundreds of years of coal reserves beneath our feet.
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Lance,
Thank you..
I hope, here in the UK, Our Mr. Miliband – [Secretary of State for Net Zero (and something else – he can’t quite bring it to mind, but hey, never mind)] – sees this, and at least asks his minions –
‘What’s Reactive power? Have we got any of that – or do we import it?’
That said, he is looking into commissioning a design for flywheels [like King Island] which will either
– provide full back up during a dunkelflaute
or
– provide synchronising power to support frequency stability
when they’re actually built [oh – and actually powered up by sunbeams or something . . .]
See you in the Seventeenth Century folks!
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Ignorance and blind ideology is the common theme for those people with left of centre views when it comes to grid reliability and energy pricing – among a long list of other topics. As you mentioned, you spent 12 months collating data to prove a point on baseload requirements that was rejected immediately because baseload is a word that must be removed from the “green engineering” vernacular and all contradictory facts and statistics must be rejected. The same green logic applies to pricing, where the zealots claim that RE is the cheapest form of energy and 20 years on with large numbers of people now living in energy poverty, the narrative continues, completely ignoring the ever growing collateral damage.
I find the cost analysis disturbing because coal and gas prices are market driven. Both of these commodities are essentially free, aside from the cost of extraction and transport. The market price for these commodities has less to do with extraction costs and is mainly based on demand and supply, which is now rising as we reduce production to “save the planet”. This price comparison gets even more complicated when you generate electricity in a regulated NEM, where RE electrons are given priority over FF ones. If you run a 100% coal grid you have cheap energy and as you add RE to the mix the price must rise because the cost of running a coal plant on standby remains almost the same as it does at 100% usage. This is added to by the cessation of FF mining, which creates higher prices for coal and gas as supply dries up. The green zealots still haven’t worked out that a RE grid will always need 100% backup from something else, meaning you will never have cheaper energy using RE compared with FF and we know they will never understand this very obvious point.
The rush to RE will ultimately fail, because of one of two reasons. The first is the cost of electricity, which will keep rising as we add more RE with the very expensive batteries and pumped hydro solutions. The second is the grid will become increasingly unstable as we remove more dispatchable sources with spinning reserve and unplanned outages will become more prevalent. The only part of this pending collapse that we don’t know, is which of the two forces will prevail first, the cost or the instability ?.
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The only reason the grid has survived so far without large scale domestic or business outages is that AEMO has had the ability to order the few remaining large scale industrial consumers such as the now-subsidised aluminium smelters to switch off (I.e. load shed). How much longer will they tolerate that? They will pack up and leave soon. Then the only loads to shed will be domestic and business. This is in fact a good thing because it might make people wake up and see the madness. Then again, the Left will probably spin in, as they are doing, as not enough windmill or solar plantations. Thus we need someone in a position of power and authority to be brave enough to risk all and tell the truth about this madness.
(Posted from Chandanbari, Nepal 28.11049°N, 85.34007°E, elevation 3270m.)
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Most of Nova’s article here and some of the comments are close enough to the mark. Certainly, no group are planning to spend $70-90 million on repairing and upgrading old coal-fired generators when legislation forcing them to close down within a few years is already enacted. This is obviously not accidental.
What seems to be missed here though is an obvious pattern of behaviour by Westerman, CEO of AEMO. This pattern has been evident for quite a few years now, with Westerman giving it a big boost, which pleases Bowen greatly.
What pattern ? Commonly known as “Crying Wolf”. As you watch, the routine unfolds: “Blackout warning !! Bad weather, caused by climate change, and no power Reserves !! Blackout warning !!” Then within 24-48 hours: “Oh, we’ve managed to scramble through !! But we need more W + S as soon as … !!” Time after time, as the song goes …
The purpose of this cynically deceitful propaganda routine is to generate an underlying sense of panic in a semi-informed population that will give “social licence” to the crash, bang, splatter of smashing more W + S across the landscape, private property and public parks, including many thousands of km of high-tension lines.
In my view, Westerman is a thug.
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Good points. I guess he wouldn’t have the job unless he said what his masters wanted to hear.
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I must be getting old. It’s only 33 degrees on our porch at the moment, but it damn feels like 40. Or are the climate nutters getting into my head??
I think it must be the latter. I chased an old cow out of the sun this morning and into the shade of a tree with the rest of the herd. Now I see they are all out grazing, and it is hotter. Must be me. They’ve done my head in.
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It’s the humidity at the moment which makes you feel more uncomfortable that at what we most enjoy ‘clear heat’.
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I think Vicki is being facetious. Cows like shade when they are chewing their cud, much like going inside for a cup of tea. Where it gets really hot, in the tropics, cows stay in the shade near a water supply during the heat of the day and go out to graze in the cool of the night. They are pretty smart. If they are in the sun during the day they reckon it isn’t all that hot. I’m sure Vicki knows this.
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Vicki,
Here in Seaforth Sydney, with Nor Easterly Gale we tend to mirror Syndey Harbour Reading, which is not that far away as the crow flies.
Was not particularly hot here today, and currently front door open with NE Sea Breeze cooling down inside of house, which did not go above 23C
Sydney Harbour at 3.40pm – 22.1C – Max 22.8 at 0853am
Penrith 3.40pm – 38.5 Max Max 39.7C at 3.33pm
Hence why we chose to live by the Sea – No A/C in our house – just NE Sea Breeze
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Labor refuses to ‘come clean’ on emissions targets prior to election. More like can’t say as that will jeopardise votes and in all probability the election.
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Hmm! I wonder how they hold an election ….. in a blackout.
Tony.
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They would be forced to go back to using the old hand-powered pencils.
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In the daylight hours of the day….
Or if candles are issued, please be careful around the paper ballots…
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Mummym Mummy; what did we do before candles”?
“Electricity”
Candles? Good luck with getting commercial candles, soon; they are made from “Paraffin” wax. This is a PETROLEUM derivative. Think about learning “bee-keeping” FAST.
This is all madness worthy of a Quatermas movie. / “Lord of the Flies”.
And it is carefully DELIBERATE. If the latest ABCess blurb is to be believed,the “window” is THREE YEARS.
Think about that, preferably before the next “election”. As Kanaduh goes,so goes Oz,but ALWAYS harder and faster and deeper. At least the Kunucks have a land border…..
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Quatermas- and I thought you had to be my age to remember Quatermass, 1953.
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I have a theory that all the reports from the BOM and news outlets are from people under 30 who think/feel that 33c is absolutely sweltering because they were raised with airconditioned everything.
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I suspect that very few people understand the studies highlighted by Dr Goklany and the incredible bonus that Green FF energy has given to Humans and our planet.
Here’s a quote from Dr Goklany at the link and his data since 1900 and 2000 also proves his point and that increase of Global land Area ( GLA) of 20.4% for plants and animals is a modern Fossil fueled miracle…..
“Habitat Saved by Fossil Fuel Usage from Conversion to Human Use”
“Use of fossil fuel technologies has enabled human beings to spare 20.4% of GLA for the rest of nature. This exceeds both the habitat lost currently to cropland (12.2% of GLA) and the global cumulative area currently reserved or identified as conservation areas (estimated at 14.6% of GLA) (Goklany 2021). Clearly, conversion of this magnitude of habitat to agriculture would devastate global biodiversity”.
“The increased agricultural productivity allowed cropland in many areas to revert to forest or other non-agricultural use. For example, between 1990 and 2020 forestland in the USA and Western Europe increased 2.4% and 10.1% despite population increases of 30% and 11%, respectively (FAOSTAT 2022)”.
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Bad news- Henry’s Law (qv).
CO2 in the atmosphere is affected negligibly by human emissions.
The concentration of CO2 depends on the surface of the oceans absorbing and emitting according to ocean and atmospheric temperatures.
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I suggest a mass evacuation to Perth; much more pleasant temperature.
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Not in peak summer. If I could afford it, I would move out to Launceston or Hobart every summer.
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Albany is a lot closer
And relatively cool compared to Perth
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Horrid place in winter and in mid summer when the easterlies are blowing.
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Are you sure the ‘hiccup’ wasn’t caused by all those Plastic People paddling around in their plastic kayaks dressed in plastic clothing wearing plastic life-preserving jackets off Newcastle on the weekend?
Talk about pollution! Aerial photos resembled the mythical Great Pacific Garbage Patch Gyre – now you have your own Newcastle Numpty Tasman Sea Plastic Pile Of Prats (NNTSPPOP), hypocrites oblivious to their own carbon footprint (paddleprint?) or did their failed prophet, Peter Garrett, plant a tree or three to appease Gaia and her forest nymphs?
Here’s hoping the lights stay on just a little bit longer: am flying over in 3 weeks to spend the Silly Season with my brother & sister & their kids just up the coast from Nobby’s, and sadly, 97% of them are believers…
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Greg,
If you missed this, it might be worth studying: –
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/24/chris-martz-asks-climate-fundamentalists-ten-fundamental-questions/
Go careful as some of these folk might have rather brittle ideas, but you could start with number 1: –
You claim that the Earth is overheating. That it’s “too hot.” So, what is the correct global mean surface temperature (GMST) for life on Earth and why?
Have a good break, and remember that they’re still related to you!
Auto
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Just as consumers can choose an electricity retailer who provides “green” electricity like Red Energy, why can’t the Thinking Community choose their electricity from coal, gas, nuclear (if we had it) etc.?
Let the market decide what source of electricity they want.
(Posted from Chandanbari, Nepal 28.11049°N, 85.34007°E, elevation 3270m.)
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That’s the Fascist market we live under… It is described as a free market and part of Capitalism, but you can only choose amongst the choices that Govt dictate will be available. Private capital own the means of production, but the State tells them what they can do with it.
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Again this is the first time in Human history that we’ve seen this incredible increase in Human population and yet we’ve only recently been able to free up an extra 20.4% of our planet back to Nature.
In 1950 our population was just 2.5 billion and in just 74 years we’ve added another 5.6 billion to 8.1 billion in 2024.
Just more proof that our Green FFs have delivered Humans and the planet free gifts of much higher living standards and freed up 20.4% of our planet for more wilderness areas.
An incredible win, win and a modern miracle. So why do Labor, Greens, Teals etc want to destroy our wilderness areas and remove the wonderful Green FF plant food?
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The Australian grid?
The Sydney centric EASTERN Australia grid
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The highest temperature recorded in Australia is 50.7 degrees C on 2 January 1960 at Oodnadatta. I lived there for several years in the late seventies and travelled around in non air conditioned LandRovers. It was hot but we survived. Also there was minimal bushfire risk, because there was minimal fuel load!
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I hitch-hiked from Townsville to Darwin with a girlfriend in 1976, then back to Sydney the next week… Had many adventures along the way. My first time in Aussie so I knew no different, it was just hot all the time.
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And that was after nearly 30 years of reported global cooling.
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And how was the weather?
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The highest recorded in Australia (by official recordings) was 51.7 on 3 Jan 1909 at Bourke. But the BOM has decided to delete it.
https://joannenova.com.au/2020/07/hottest-day-recorded-and-deleted-in-australia-was-51-7-in-bourke-in-1909/
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Never forget we are destroying our electricity grids and our wilderness areas because the planet is supposed to be more dangerous today and if we could just reduce our co2 levels to 350 ppm everything would be wonderful again. See Dr Hansen’s silly BS and nonsense.
But I just looked again at global death rates from fires and burns from 1980 to 2021 and death rates are much lower today and even in poorer countries and Africa.
Of course co2 levels were just 339 ppm in 1980 and about 423 ppm today, so SFA correlation for the comfort of Dr Hansen and other stupid lefty loonies.
Australia is much lower than all the other wealthy countries’ trends, although we have much higher temperatures than most of the other wealthy countries.
Here’s the link from OWI Data for our left wing donkeys.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-death-rates?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~AUS~African+Region+%28WHO%29
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The UN SEC General and the Biden loony + Dems etc tell us we are facing an existential threat from CC and we must stop using FFs ASAP.
So we must use only safe energy like their toxic W & S disasters. SARC
So how safe were Humans 100 years ago or 60 years ago, when our populations were much smaller? Less than 2 billion in 1920 and just 3 billion in 1960.
Well people lived in very dangerous periods in the 1920s and 1960 and today deaths from extreme weather events have dropped by 98%, although our population today is over 6 billion more than 1920 and over 5 billion more than 1960.
Here’s the link to OWI Data for our lefty loonies to think about. These are global death rates per 100,000 people.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates?country=Drought~Extreme+weather~Flood~Wildfire~Extreme+temperature
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BTW just for the record co2 levels in 1920 were about 303 ppm and about 315 ppm in 1960 and 423 ppm today.
Think about it.
https://www.sealevel.info/co2.html
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And Sleepy Joe had a roaring log fire in the White House when he had his ‘fireside’ chat with Donald Trump just recently. Hypocrite.
BTW, I love a log fire in Winter.
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Over many years South Africa was an energy basket case, but it appears they are turning things around with a solar addition.
https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/801251/the-best-news-in-five-years-for-eskom-customers/
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They’ve got one of those solar ‘power towers’ with all the mirrors.
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“This decline reflects enhanced operational efficiency, enabling more planned maintenance activities and increased generation capacity.”
So they got the nuclear power station at Cape Town back online, got the rocks out of the coal train deliveries and tackled some of the “systemic issues like vandalism, theft, and illegal connections. ” The articles from the Eskom head when he resigned were an eye-opener for anyone not familiar with how African politicians operate.
“However, we cannot ignore the significant role that private solar uptake has played in alleviating demand on the grid,” They’ll soon be back in load-shedding if they rely on that! I can see Australia right there within a decade, the Govt will say “sorry not enough power, buy your own solar roof if you want electricity and work your life around it.”
The Black Govt inherited a world-class energy system from the Whites in the 90s, its still not up to that level.
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An interesting feature many African systems have is fully prepaid meters for households – no accounts. All scratchcards and codes.
Means a ‘utility bill’ is not that useful for identification points (phones being largely prepaid, some corporates have accounts).
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A little more on that.
‘One area where customers will run into issues, however, is if they have been using electricity illegally, either through meter bypassing or purchasing units from so-called ‘ghost vendors’.
‘With KRN1-based tokens no longer being accepted, all so-called lost or stolen “ghost” vending machines have effectively become useless and will need to either be replaced or undergo a legitimate conversion.’ (Business Tech)
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This comment has been cribbed from a Breitbart item about the fraudulent use of US Government funds to promote alternative Green Energy. It mirrors our Labor Governments current push for Green Nitrogen et al!
“If there was any real need or demand (or reason) for “alternative energy”, you couldn’t keep it off the market if you tried. Reality tells a different story: Even with mandates and subsidies, people don’t want it. Everything about alternative energy is a scam. A lie. A fraud. And those forcing it on the people are criminals. Period.”
It’s long but very informative
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/11/25/exclusive-crescent-dunes-biden-doj-moved-election-night-cover-up-alleged-solar-energy-scandal/
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Good article.
I would say that fraud at some level, major or minor, is involved in EVERY “green” energy project, in every country.
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I do wonder about people’s concept of hot. The next 11-days where I live are forecast to be 36, 35, 36, 37, 35, 30, 33, 34, 36, 34 and 34. For me this is typical spring 🙂
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Petitions anyone? Don’t you do things like us in UK (M Huh, does it help / make any difference)
Excitement is about all so far in UK https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=700143 OVER 2 na HALF MILLION Signatures so far: Yippee – The Highlands of Scotland …. why? compared with most other Scotland, …. but just look at England !
Australia, it’s your turn !
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Yup – folks are noticing – and perhaps understanding – that Votes have Consequences.
Auto
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Typical of Labor governments, it will be regional areas that suffer like Wagga Wagga this morning so the scores of dumb city voters can have power at their expense / loss.
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And South Australia is champing at the bit to get an interconnector going to the NSW grid, just so that they can sell overcapacity wind and solar power when it is generated, and import cheap coal power to prop up their own grid when it is not. The Danish method, in other words.
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[…] Not even summer, with one warm week, and the Australian grid is on the verge of blackoutsJo Nova BlogJo Nova26 November 2024 […]
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