Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
In a nasty shock, the VNI West interconnector price has doubled and doubled again
The whole renewables fantasy is unraveling before our eyes.
In 2023 the Victorian NSW interconnector was supposed to cost $1.8 billion. By May this year the price-tag had doubled to $3.6 billion, and now a mere two months later, the estimate has been revised again up to $7.6 billion and that’s plus or minus 30 to 50%. So it could cost as much as $11 billion. (And who knows where this trend ends?)
Without this transmission line, many future wind and solar farms evaporate, not just ones that wanted to connect to it, but other ones further away. Even offshore wind farms are less profitable without the VNI and other mainland connectors. Intermittent generators make more profits when there are bigger mainland lines to spread their erratic surges of electricity through.
“The Jacobs review also notes that without VNI-West, other significant renewable energy generation and network projects like offshore wind off the coast of Victoria will be less effective.”
— Summary of the Independent Assessment of Plan B
This is why it’s a blockbuster problem that the costs are rising exponentially. We are only just now finding out how shockingly expensive it is to build a short 190km high voltage line through good farmland.
The farmers hate the project so much they are locking the gates to survey teams. They even published maps of all the properties who are holding out.
Meanwhile, the Victorian government is facing a make or break crisis and so, with the gentle diplomacy of a Panzer Tank, has just legislated that farmers can be fined $12,000 if the government sends someone to their property and they don’t let them in. Now farmers hate the project even more. They have heavy machinery and are threatening to use it to block any entry, even if they risk fines.
The Victorian opposition has said they will repeal this after the next election if they can.
And now there is the new two-year delay as well. This map just marks the new interconnectors the AEMO are dreaming of adding to make the fantasy forced-transition grid come to life. The VNI is in the middle.
Map: AEMO
Electricity bills are expected to rise 50% for households or even double for businesses, if the Victorian Labor government builds this monster:
VNI-West costs may blow out to $11.4bn
By Rachel Baxendale, The Australian
Electricity bills for energy intensive businesses could more than double, and households could pay 50 per cent more, amid massive cost blowouts on a project that is integral to the Albanese and Allan governments’ renewable energy rollout.
Energy experts, industry and farmers have sounded the alarm on the VNI-West interconnector after the Australian Energy Market Operator released a report indicating the proponents of the project believe it is likely to cost $7.6bn, with a range of 30 per cent lower or 50 per cent higher, meaning it could cost as much as $11.4bn.
Victorian Energy Policy Centre director Bruce Mountain said the cost revisions were “laughable”, and followed a 2023 estimate of $1.8bn.
“This could increase power bills for large customers by between 2.5 and 3.5 times, and for households, at least 50 per cent,” Professor Mountain said.
And the only benefit of all this money spent, property invaded, and the eyesore of the high voltage towers and turbines — is so we cool the world by 0.0001 degree in 2100AD (maybe), and our useless universities don’t have to admit they were wrong, and China makes a trillion dollars more profit.