By Jo Nova
Going Green with Diesel
Back in February, South Australia was the Renewables Wonderland basking in the thrill of driving two diesel plants out of business. The remarkable transition had claimed two new fossil fuel scalps. But the farce of last week’s near blackout in Sydney must have scared the management in South Australia. Suddenly this week, the government announced it wants to change the rules and force those mothballed diesel plants back into action.
The Frankenstein economy fails (again)
The government created a monster — an artificial market that favoured random energy and drove dependable power out of business. So, not surprisingly, now they have to do emergency market surgery and spend even more money, to force Engie to reopen these uneconomic plants.
The fact that essential plants are “uneconomic” only shows what a Quasimodo market this is. If the rules favored the cheap reliable electricity (that customers want) instead of hobgoblin-electrons that change the future weather (maybe), no one would have to order Engie to restart the plants. They wouldn’t have gone out of business. Instead, a bunch of unreliable wind farms and fields of glass would never have been created. No one could afford to build them with their backup or their batteries or their 1,000 miles of wires.
Excuses, excuses
It’s not that the South Australian government has only just realized summer has arrived (unexpectedly in December), apparently it’s because the interconnector they’re building to NSW is 12 months behind schedule. Which might make sense, except it was not scheduled to finish until mid 2026 in any case:
Mr Koutsantonis has warned the forecast for the reliability of power supply in SA this summer – which shows a predicted shortfall of 200 megawatts — has been underestimated because the AEMO has not accounted for the delay in a new interconnector with New South Wales.
It [EnergyConnect] was due to be completed by July 2026 but is currently about 12 months behind schedule.
Somehow we’re supposed to believe the blackout risk is higher this summer because a high voltage line that dead-ends 900 km away should have reached a couple of hundred kilometers closer. Like that would help…
In the next breath the Energy Minister admitted that this is really about what happened in Sydney last week:
Mr Koutsantonis argued energy operators needed greater powers to bring back thermal generators “to address reliability risks arising during the peak demand periods expected from December 2024”.
Speaking on 5AA radio on Monday, Mr Koutsantonis said: “given what happened in New South Wales last week, when they had one 40 degree day and they were nearly short on power, and told people to turn their air conditioners off and not turn dishwashers on, if we rely on an interconnector to New South Wales and it’s hot across the entire national electricity market, we’re in trouble”.
The South Australian Energy Minister has just realized that even when the $2 billion dollar interconnector is finished, they don’t want to rely on our most populated state’s electricity grid, because it’s a debacle.
Is this the moment when the fantasy of saviour interconnectors came undone?
South Australia has walked the plank right out to 70% renewable energy, a feat only possible because of they are just 6% of a larger stable system. So far the baseload power in other states could keep the lights on in South Australia, and interstate homes and factories could soak up their excess solar and wind power. But every state can’t play the same game at the same time.
South Australia was the Show Pony for renewable energy, but it was an illusion based on reliable energy hidden in other states.
Now finally the Energy Minister of South Australia gets it:
“Every state should have sufficient capacity to look after itself first and not rely on other jurisdictions,” he said.
These two diesels plants are not large, but in South Australia every little bit of dependable energy matters. Engie, the French electricity giant owns the 75 megawatt (MW) Port Lincoln plant and the 63MW Snuggery plant that were closed in July this year.
Apparently they were mothballed after the Federal government got puritanical about their “capacity investment scheme” they ruled out fossil fuel generators. (Reneweconomy) But we didn’t need “capacity investment schemes” before we had renewable subsidies, and if we had a free market in “capacity” the diesel generators could still have saved the day. At this point, we’re up to second and third order screwiness in this market. There are bandaids on the bandaids and no end in sight.
h/t OldOzzie, Neville, David Cooyal in Oz