Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – South Australia and the Australian State of Victoria learned the hard way that when power demand surges, you can’t turn up the solar panels.
Melbourne hospitals switch off lights as mercury rises
Grant McArthur and Aleks Devic, Herald Sun
January 19, 2018 7:36pm
PATIENTS were left in the dark after one of Melbourne’s biggest hospitals switched off its lights and non-essential equipment as temperatures soared on Friday.
The Alfred turned off the lights on wards, in corridors and cafeterias about midday in a bid to conserve power.
The dramatic move followed a Department of Health memo to hospital chiefs on Thursday night asking them to ensure back-up power supplies were effective, prompted by the increased risk of disruption in the heatwave.
“Hospitals within Alfred Health have taken the initiative to act as good corporate citizens and reduce the use of electricity that is not directly needed for patient care. This is consistent with the advice provided by Australian Energy Market Operator,” she said.
“Hospitals within Alfred Health have strong backup and emergency power supply capacity and in the event of a power outage expect clinical services to continue without interruption.”
Department of Health spokesman Tim Vainoras said no directive was issued for hospitals to switch off equipment or conserve energy, however hospitals were advised to prepare for the impact of extreme heat including preparations for possible energy disruptions.
A memo reiterating the state’s extreme weather protocols was sent to hospitals at 8pm on Thursday.
“With increased temperatures across the state, demands on Victoria’s electricity supplies are likely to increase. This may lead to electricity disruptions in some parts of Victoria,” the DHS memo states.
“It will be important to ensure your backup power is effective for the maintenance of critical services and that you have access to fuel supplies to support extended periods of power outages.”
…
JoNova provided a link to a site which at the time of her post showed Queensland feeding NSW, which was passing the power to Victoria – though this changes hour to hour (see the live feed here).
Intermittent renewables are sometimes contributing, for example at one point when I looked at the feed it showed net power coming from South Australia, as opposed to South Australia sucking power in JoNova’s screenshot. But as the Victorian hospital shutdown demonstrates, the renewable contribution simply isn’t reliable. Businesses and emergency facilities throughout the affected states were required to switch off lights and “unessential” systems, so the politicians who created this mess could avoid vote losing mass blackouts.
Greens were quick to blame coal for this terrifying brush with mass blackouts during the middle of a heatwave.
Loy Yang B failure sends prices soaring, triggers supply safeguards
JANUARY 19 2018 – 2:18PM
Cole Latimer
The Australian Energy Market Operator has kicked off emergency measures to protect power supply after Victoria’s Loy Yang B brown coal-fired power station failed on Thursday afternoon, sending electricity spot prices soaring.
As temperatures rose around southern Australia Loy Yang B’s generators failed at around 4pm, instantly taking around 528 megawatts of energy out of the state’s grid.
The outage ahead of a major heatwave on Friday came despite assurances by its owner Alinta Energy that the ageing power station had the capability to continue providing power in the heat.
“There are no issues expected ahead with the forecast hot weather,” Alinta Energy chief executive Jeff Dimery told Fairfax Media on Monday.
…
This greensplaining ignores the central issue – the shortage of reliable, dispatchable power capacity. Despite billions of dollars worth of investment in Aussie renewables, a shortfall of a few hundred megawatts was enough to trigger a multi-state emergency.
The system as it stands is not fit for purpose.
One new coal plant, or a decent size zero CO2 emission nuclear plant, maybe even one new generator at an existing plant, is all that would have been required to avert this dangerous shortfall, all it would have taken to provide a sufficient supply buffer so the failure of one decrepit old coal plant couldn’t bring the whole system to its knees.
But nobody wants to invest in new dispatchable capacity in Australia.
Renewable mandates supported by Australian Federal and State Governments have made dispatchable energy unprofitable. Worse, power companies have no grounds for hope that any investment in dispatchables will become economically viable in the foreseeable future. The deeper green Federal opposition party wants more aggressive renewable targets, 50% renewables across the board in Australia in the next decade.
The takeaway lesson for Australian politicians and people throughout the world should be that you can’t run hospitals and businesses on unreliable electricity. Next time turning off the cafeteria lights might not be enough; people will die if this renewable energy idiocy continues. Lets hope enough politicians learn this lesson quickly enough to avert a major disaster.
How many people will die or suffer unnecessarily because they will not use air conditioners because of the high price of electricity. For the first time in human history we need not suffer from extreme heat or cold because we have electricity to cool or keep us warm – at least we did have until this green obsession with climate change put energy prices out of the reach of working people and the elderly.
Sacrifices to Gaia. For the greater good. They will jump through hoops in an culture of irrational mental gym to justify the suffering and death for the greed good.
It very well may be that ignorance is a curable affliction but it is for certain that stupidity is a terminal condition. But why is the terminal condition so prevalent in the halls of governments? Could that be the explanation for why all governments die by self-destruction and usually die a miserable death after a relatively short life? R. I. P., UNCLE SIMPLE.
“Nature abhors a moron.”
H.L. Mencken
Their goal is now, and has always been population control, unreliable energy, high food and energy costs, and lack of preparedness for a cold climate are just some of the tactics. They mean business, and 90% of us have got to go.
While this sounds extreme, there are indeed some in government that think like this, and in many instances they have powerful supporters. No doubt the majority of supporters of the Green movement are genuinely concerned about the environment, however the core has been infiltrated by Gaia worshiping, human haters.
How much more will it take to get the people ( sheeple ?) to stop this nonsense ?
They voted to lose their guns, and reliable electricity. Back to being a penal colony?
“penal colony” aka sh*t hole.
I always find these types of ‘press releases’ funny. Turning off a few highly efficient lights in the middle of the day somehow is contributing to the ‘fix’. At no point can they admit the problem is not with a few lights, it’s the fact the electrical supply could fail at anytime. They are scrambling to ensure (fuel) back-up power is available and how this would that look on the 6pm news if peoples life saving procedures needed to be canceled?
I wonder what fuel they use for their back up generation? Might it be diesel by any chance?
Or a fuel cell
http://californiahydrogen.org/sites/default/files/ftco_early_mkts_fc_backup_power_fact_sheet.pdf
AFAIK, hospitals do have diesel backup power.
1) A press release, really?
2) Where exactly does the hydrogen come from O great and powerful wizard?
3) Hydrogen can’t be stored for long periods, so it can only be available for emergencies that are scheduled ahead of time.
The funny thing is that this is trivial… one company turning off some lights as a precaution for their backup capacity…. What would be more interesting is a list of the companies that were paid (by the electricity supplier) to shut down or not even start up during this period…. the grid simply does not have the capacity to cope with our needs and something has to give.
Isn’t “pull the plug” hospital jargon?
Australia is one of the worlds largest exporter of gas coal and uranium. Australia has some of the largest deposits of these energy supplies.
The energy policy has been to build a grid based on IMPORTED intermittent “renewable” windmills and solar panels.
The rest of the world is laughing at Australian stupidity.
Laughing,yes. But cautiously. America is still trying to bring wind and solar on line to the point they can say, “See. It works”. And new battery technology will be their savior. When that happens sometime in the future.
It is close. Just ask the experts.
it not close. I am an expert.
The next great battery breakthrough is only a couple of years away. (And so on, and so on…..)
The “experts” you are listening to are actually not what you wish they were.
https://youtu.be/LI_Oe-jtgdI
“IMPORTED intermittent “renewable” windmills and solar panels”
Our current problem is intermittent coal-fired generators.
Very old intermittent coal generators Nick. The government has broken the energy market, made it uneconomical to build new coal plants or maintain existing coal plants.
No. It is a lack of coal-fired generators because others were closed to ‘save the planet’ and enrich the renewable energy industry, and the ‘researchers’ and financiers who enable them.
If there were more coal-fired or nuclear or hydro or other reliable energy sources instead of the inherently unreliable renewables there would be NO problem.
Don’t make stupid comments Nick. I thought you were above that. Look at the screen shots showing the wind contribution – less than 1000MW and well below the 4300MW nameplate rating. The shortages were in Victoria and South Australia where they have been replacing coal with wind..
Most of the coal plant in Australia has over 200k running hours. That means they are past their design life. That means they are high maintenance and less reliable than newer plant. And other than the very short trip at Loy Yang B (it was off for less than an hour wasn’t it?), how many other coal units weren’t running? And of the coal plant running, how close was it to nameplate? From the data I saw, about 95%
The problem would not have occurred if Hazelwood in Victoria with it’s 1600MW was still allowed to run. But politicians forced its closure. No doubt you supported that move Nick. This is the karma.
That is a sickening disingenuous comment Nick and you know it. There is no way any investor will build a new coal power station regardless of how profitable it might be on paper unless they are given a cast iron guarantee that it will not be discriminated against by subsidies and mandates. The renewable lobby, not basic economics, has made it impossible for any company to risk shareholder funds on coal. And the greens gloat that it is pure economics. Perversity.gone mad, and bad. When electricity contracts are made on the basis of despatchable power instead of aggregate energy (power is what people want when they flick a switch) then every wind and solar generator will shut down.
Nick,
Look at the drop off in output of SA’s wind ‘generators’ yesterday ( http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2018/january/18).
1,100MW at 07:30, 600MW at 09:00 (a drop of 500MW – similar to the drop from the coal-fired generators that you are quick to disparage) then falling to 100MW at 21;00.
Why are you not complaining about intermittent wind generators that fall 1,000MW over 12 hours or so?
Look up ‘intermittent’ in the dictionary and you will likely see a graph of wind generator output.
Remove your rose coloured blinkers, mate.
Yes, Nick. We can relate.
The Soviet Union suffered one intermittent problem after another through the whole three-quarters of a century.
They were caused by monarchists, Mensheviks, wreckers, saboteurs, spies, kulaks, generals, refuseniks, rockers, hooligans, dissidents and some such svoloch.
Your current problem is refusal to acknowledge reality. Unreliable, intermittent ‘renewables’ are F’ing up what once was a reliable, low cost power grid based on coal.
In the original Jo Nova article it was explained:
TonyFromOz points out that only 3 of 49 coal units are out of action:
Australia has 16 coal fired power plants and 49 Units at those plants. Currently, just three of those Units are off line. One is Liddell Number Two, now down for more than seven Months, and I have questions whether it will ever come back on line if the plan is to close the plant down, so why would they bother fixing it back up and realistically wasting the money if they plan to close it down. Then there are two Units in Queensland down, one at Gladstone and the other at Kogan Creek.
Hanrahan says: That’s not bad from generators that don’t have a level playing field on access to markets and hence can’t afford maintenance. It was the wind generators that let everyone down.
Ok Nick if Hazelwood was still going would we be having this conversation?
“Our current problem is intermittent coal-fired generators.”
If Hazelwood was still running, there wouldn’t be an issue.
If the money wasted on irregular non-supply had been spent on upgrading the current old power stations instead, there wouldn’t be a problem
All this is slated TOTALLY onto the renewable agenda.
And I suspect that you KNOW that , and are just being your normal disingenuous self.
It seems to me this may very well be what is called, “A teachable moment.” But, then do fools ever really learn, regardless of the opportunities for doing so? Maybe not.
There was plenty of spare wind capacity – it was running at less than 10% of capacity. Why didn’t they just turn that on Nick?
So Nick, since coal and gas are not 100% reliable, we shouldn’t criticize wind and solar which are far, far less reliable?
Yes. My ipower from them intermittent is due to rationing because there are not enough of them.
The problem with these old CFGs is not with the technology. IWTs and panels,on the other hand, are by their nature, intermittent and not fit for purpose.
Eamon.
So Nick started lying to deny facts like Griff. He knows dam well that Hazelwood was closed creating this situation and suddenly it’s coals fault .. You are a LIAR.
That Australia’s wealth emanates from digging up things out of the ground or exporting what grows on its relatively barren land is why it is called the Lucky Country, surviving despite a succession of poor governments and failures to build world beating manufacturing or other value adding industries on a large scale. It is always the same story of not co-operating but small individual pockets of industry looking for niches and fragmented government across innumerable organisations, all keenly possessive and defensive of their patch, their turf. South Australia’s energy problems are a product of this culture as well as a religious conviction on ‘Green’ energy and AGW. The ‘investment’ in renewable energy would not have gained public funding had the full costs been made known. The need to re-engineer the grid and re-organise the energy markets in order to increase ‘Green’ energy supply were hidden from the public. the engineers know, but who listens to engineers? It is not as if they are demi-god scientists. When SA experienced state-wide blackouts the Feds coolly coughed up another A$500 million (?) to sort it out. This is how it will continue in Australia, a country blessed with sun and wind let down by a culture that will not support sensible joined up government and the inevitable incompetence of government.
Wait a minute: why wasn’t the new megabattery there to save the day? Wasn’t it supposed to be able to paper over the cracks for an hour?
@ Crispin …+100
Probably explains why there was no mention of the Tesla batteries coming to the rescue for 10 or 15 minutes worth of power.
Peter, It’s worth bearing in mind that South Australia is a bit unlike the other states in having reality little coal and a long running history of limping along from one bankruptcy to the next (even before federation). We do sit on what was the largest onshore gas deposit, but eastern Australia’s gas supply woes (since so much is contracted for export) is not new news. So the gullible warming meme and it’s related promises of ‘free’ energy from thin air and an excuse to levy yet more tax (this time above voter criticism since it’s all for the good of the planet) have been welcome news to SAs dysfunctional politicians.
On that note, we get the governments we deserve and South Australians have been voting for morons who can’t do sums (the labour party) since 2002, so this level of mis-managment should not come as such a surprise.
Sad in this case it’s hospitals in Victoria who have to take one for the team. Meanwhile, I wonder if the useless gobshites in North Terrace (Adelaide) even turned their aircons down while deciding which school or hospital to close next. The energy debacle is another good argument for ditching pointless state politics down under.
Here’s the contribution from Musk’s battery set alongside the use of the Heywood interconnector at 5 minute resolution for 15-21 January.
It would have taken over 20GWh of storage to supply the (essentially coal fired) power that was provided by the Heywood interconnector from midday on the 16th onward. The battery holds just 129MWh, or about 1/160th. Several other things are easy to spot on the chart: the 600MW import limit, reduced on the 19th/20th to just 250MW. The battery has not been used at above 30MW throughout this period, despite having a nominal 100MW power capability (though it has demonstrated 100MW discharge/80MW charge in the past).
The net value of sales less purchases by the battery was over A$700,000 because of the period of A$14,000 prices. The battery is going to need these types of events regularly to pay for itself: the previous fortnight earned just A$60,000, which is a paltry return on a supposedly A$100m asset.
It all makes sense. Sell the coal and gas and minerals to China and buy solar panels and wind turbines from them. Then get them to make a huge extension cord from China to Australia for backup power. Maybe build some coal plants in Indonesia or somewhere closer so that cord could be shorter.
Australia would then have more than enough electricity to provide tourist resorts and other services – though probably not enough to support a robust bitcoin mining industry.
You missed the plan to build solar in N Australia and export power to Indonesia
https://www.businessnews.com.au/article/MacTiernan-backs-solar-exports-to-Indonesia
Except Indonesia is not interested in importing intermittent, unreliable energy. This “plan” is just a PR fantasy.
Griff falls for the old fake PR new release yet again.
You always claim you check your facts Griff so here is the original release
https://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/McGowan/2017/08/Exporting-Pilbara-sunlight-to-the-world.aspx
Note the words “Pre-Feasibility” so it’s not even a feasibility study in your or my speak it’s someone politicians thought bubble but you just tried to claim it as a fact.
IIRC parts of the ocean North of Australia are rather deep. So running a power cable, even to Timor, is going to be a rather challenging engineering and construction project.
Reportedly the temp handn’t reached this level (42C) in Melbourne for TWO YEARS and the Heat Wave lasted TWO days. How could that not be an EMERGENCY???!!
I love media hype. “The worst heat wave ever! (since 2016)
The real irony here is that the same ‘experts’ who are pushing the renewable scam are claiming to do so because of The Warming, so this heat wave should have been entirely predictable and not an emergency.
Of course, who could have ever imagine the hottest temperatures in two years for two days in a row!!! That is so much worse than we thought possible.
It’s called summer. Not unusual for this time of year. It’s actually been quite moderate except for a couple of days. Wait till we have a real “heat wave”. And Loy Yang only had one of four units out. I am keeping my aircon on. Hopefully it will trigger the blackout!
I’m gettin’ thin on top and what these AGW dipsticks do won’t affect me much but I worry for my grand children. In the early 70’s in Feb we had a drop of rain that flooded the downstairs bar at the corner of Spencer& Elizabeth, so a “dry” wait for the train. Next time it happens it’ll be GLOBAL WARMING. But the Pub’s gone- progress y’know so what the heck.
The future for Australia is diesel, ever more diesel. Blow up coal power stations that ran on Australian coal, and replace them with imported diesel.
Can’t use gas, it’s being locked up. Our politicians don’t like drilling for new supply. Australia has huge reserves, but there is talk of building import terminals.
Renewable are just not reliable.
The LNG import terminals makes sense, sorta. The biggest export terminals are in the north west [some gas fields are near East Timor] and Gladstone in the north east. Australian coastal shipping is incredibly costly so it would be cheaper to buy in Singapore using international shipping.
But, in Gippsland, not far from Melbourne, there is a proven on shore gas field. The water mixed with the gas is suitable for agriculture so the locals would welcome a well on their property but the labor government in it’s wisdom will not allow extraction.
It would be unwise to bet against the crazy Victorian and SA governments being reelected. The conservatives are too timid to nail their colours to the mast and say “Enough already!!!!”.
“Hanrahan January 19, 2018 at 10:41 pm
It would be unwise to bet against the crazy Victorian and SA governments being reelected. The conservatives are too timid to nail their colours to the mast and say “Enough already!!!!”.”
Agreed. So the crazy will continue and spread to other states.
The sad thing is that it will probably require a major blackout with all sorts of tragic and generally in-your-face consequences to snap the public out of their Green coma and seriously revolt against this.
EH they may point to the NOAA and NASA combo and say ‘at least we are doing our bit to save the planet for our grandchildren.’
Only humour will snap the masses out of this malaise.
A few days without air conditioning and running water in a hot concrete urban environment makes most people temporarily forget about the future and when they do again they may be more likely to be thinking about how to ensure their grandchildren do not have to endure that. Who would want that future for their grandchildren?
But I agree that humor can sure help. Every time I hear yet another story screaming about this impending crisis I can’t help but think about Monty Python’s Dead Parrot skit. The CAGW Parrot is dead. It was always stuffed. But the parrot sales team adamantly insists that it is alive, and claim that 97% of them agree.
‘Who would want that future for their grandchildren?’
Its a moot point, the propaganda coming out of the ABC has been extremely effective.
In this regard I’m still hoping Donald tweets CO2 does not cause global warming. The Trots in the newsroom would go ballistic.
The argument of the greenies was;
‘Sure, even if the laws of physics deign to comply with our religious beliefs, anything the West does will make a difference of less than 0.000001C. But we can not ask Africa and India and China to stay dirt poor if we are unwilling to do some virtue signalling ourselves.’
I am sure India and China have taken notice and drawn their conclusions.
Like the blackouts which have not happened in states like Germany with 35% renewable electricity?
(which export more than they import)
It really is interesting how Griff hangs on to his disproven lies.
Your list of German blackouts is eagerly awaited…
The Germans have the rest of Europe to fall back on when they have shortfalls. If they continue to replace reliable generation with unreliable, they will eventually face blackouts. This schedule will be accelerated if the rest of their neighbors follow suit. This is basic electrical engineering, far simpler than the physics that the CAGW crowd keeps chanting about, so even people like Griff should be able to understand it. But of course, they are not interested in understanding – they have a CAUSE to support.
http://www.dw.com/en/blackout-could-it-happen-in-germany/a-981943
The German grid is not an independent grid. That’s the lie you keep trying to pass off as new.
Griff,
Germany is able to import Polish coal powered electricity.
And you are still a clownish troll.
Why is Germany opening up new coal mines.
Why has Angela Merkel abandoned the Paris Accord targets.
Why does Germany import nuclear power.
528 megawatts….that’s it…..you would think they would have more backup than that
That amount of electricity is huge for a 3rd world banana republic. So it is NOT insignificant if you consider that your socialist Leftist politicians *want* your state of SA or Victoria to become near-3rd world countries.
Imagine how your children will view that amount of absurdly huge amount of electricity in 2050 after the Greens destroy fossil fuel energy production.
And even then, Victorian coal was operating at over 85% capacity
When have wind or solar ever done that when needed in the early evening.
Fair go, wind has hit over 50% On12 occasions this month already.
It has also hit 0% on 11 occasions.
A “Yeah but” moment for the Believers … Just think of all the evil CO2 molecules that were not released into our air by this episode in near blackout at a hospital.
Avogadro’s number is YU-GEE. How many kilograms of coal went unburned? All those CO2 demon molecules are still safely sequestered in their reduced form in the coal pile at LYB.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“THE takeaway lesson for Australian politicians and people throughout the world should be that you can’t run hospitals and businesses on unreliable electricity. Next time turning off the cafeteria lights might not be enough; people will die if this renewable energy idiocy continues. Lets hope enough politicians learn this lesson quickly enough to avert a major disaster.”
“Thursday night asking them to ensure back-up power supplies were effective”.
Spare battery in the basement or dedicated windmill on the roof perchance?
Wouldn’t be a hydrocarbon powered generator surely?
These ideologues are ******* mad.
The Left doesn’t like Haiti or African countries being singled-out as shit-hole countries. They want that moniker to be applied across the current Western industrialized world.
This is oh so reminiscent of Ann Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’. Continually blame the very industry players that are bailing you out. The only way to stop this is either wait till total collapse, or for the guys doing the saving to decide to stop saving the day.
Agreed, but “Atlas Shrugged” isn’t well known in Australia.
The first I ever heard about it was when a street beggar in London lent me a copy. I lent him a copy of “The Road” in return – he said he didn’t like Science Fiction, so I lent him an unusual science fiction book.
You are mistaken. Chavez or Maduro would know how to stop it. They would imprison the operators of the coal-powered generator for hoarding electricity, nationalize the power plant and send in party faithful to put it back in operation.
You forgot the part where the party faithful do a Cuffy Meigs and strip the place.
Meanwhile here in NH colonies:
Texas shatters record for winter electricity use, without swamping the grid
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/weather/2018/01/17/texas-brutal-cold-leads-record-electricity-use-rolling-blackouts-avoided
Thanks to fossil fuels…………
So a coal plant fails and the writer blames renewables? Makes no sense.
“So a coal plant
failsgoes off-line and the writer blames renewables? Makes no sense.The reality is base-loads do go offline unexpectedly sometimes. But wind and solar are intermittent by definition, and going off-line frequently.
The solution is adequate base-load back up. That is known as dispatchable power. Today, that is usually in the form of natural gas-fired closed-cycle generators. They could also be fuel oil/diesel generator dispatchable power. The point is, every reliable grid must have dispatchable power and a reserve base-load.in order to be reliable.
Wind and solar do not and will never make that grade. And Elon-boy’s batteries only provide a few minutes of reserve power to bring dispatchable power online when the wind turbines shutdown or a transmission line goes down.
Baseload? That concept is so yesterday. /s
In the good ole days, operators had as part of their charter to have spinning reserve [available almost immediately] equal to the largest gen set on line, in case it tripped. That was called an orderly market. This mess we have now has no order, no charter.
yes, baseload is a dead concept
Reality is a dead issue for Griff and his fellow AGW worshipers.
“baseload is a dead concept”
This has to be one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever seen uttered in my life, and I’ve been around for a while. I guess you really can’t fix stupid.
Griff making those stupid statements is just proof he has no understanding of how a grid or even electricity generation works. Fortunately, the system operator have people running it a lot cleverer than climate scientists, and they have a model that works.
For Oz, normally they have a number of coal station units running at part load. That means that if something falls off, the partially loaded units can ramp up very quickly. During this event, all the available coal units were running near flat out so they had no reserve. The gas units were running, but they were all sucking on the same straw, so there was no gas available to run any more. That is the problem the politicians have created with their energy plan. Gas can only provide backup if there is enough capacity in the gas pipeline, the plant operators have an appropriate usage contract and there are wells that can supply it. Oz has none of those.
“Griff January 20, 2018 at 2:39 am”
Lets hope you are not in a hospital requiring treatment to save your life when “baseload” dies. I am extremely happy to be a heart attack survivor for one reason, that being my local hospital is supplied with RELIABLE, online, baseload COAL fired power.
Let’s look at Eastern Australian weekday electricity usage
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/tonyfromoz/eastern-australia-power-consumption-summer.gif
See that 18,000WH, that is what absolutely must be available ALL THE TIME
During the day it climbs to 30,000WH
That amount of DISPATCHABLE electricity MUST be available when needed.
It is no use having 18,000WH of RELIABLE electricity, then 12,000MW of “maybe if its fine and windy”
You HAVE to be able to GUARANTEE that 30,000MW. and wind and solar CANNOT GUARANTEE.
At the moment , Sunday early afternoon, the Eastern region is using 24,200 MW, ..
….. of that, just under 400 MW is from “wind and other”
That really is an ABSOLUETELY PATHETIC amount considering there is well over 4000 MW installed wind
50+ year old plants sometimes have issues.
That is why a NEW coal fired power stations MUST be built in each eastern state as a matter of national importance.
The RELIABLE load is too close to the knife-edge because of the idiotic rules of the RET put in place because of the anti-science, anti-carbon agenda.
If Liddell does close in 2020 or whenever.. that’s it.. LIGHTS OUT !!
Don’t worry Andy, they add a couple of those Great Tesla Battery “generators” and everything will be OK./sarc
Thats correct Andy. There is currently around 4,300MW of Wind, 6,500MW Solar and 25,000 Coal. Name plate only of course. Delivery is a different story, but don’t tell the Greens. If all goes to plan combined solar and wind will equal coal,within the next two years, so we should see a change in climate any day soon.
Coal plants went off line in the past, but there was sufficient reserve capacity to handle it.
Thanks the the renewables nonsense, reserve capacity is a thing of the past.
Griff is truly ignorant when he keeps ignoring the obvious:
“This greensplaining ignores the central issue – the shortage of reliable, dispatchable power capacity. Despite billions of dollars worth of investment in Aussie renewables, a shortfall of a few hundred megawatts was enough to trigger a multi-state emergency.”
Noticed that you didn’t address this central point at all.
You have actual scientists and Engineers expose your foolish comments, yet you persist in your stupid propaganda anyway.
You can’t buck markets and you can’t change basic elements of human nature. As soon as you start messing with the base pieces if Mazlovs triangle – the human needs of food, water, shelter, warmth etc etc., any support for this absurd green ideology just evaporates. Which is why these ridiculous notions of running a modern world on windmills and solar panels will never work.
But… in between that “panels will never work” moment-epiphany and today… is a lot of public misery due to their gullible buy-in of the Left’s climate lies and propaganda.
You’re right Joel, just look at Nick and AL in this thread. Instead of learning from it, they’re just trying to blame the old coal plant, so we can get in with the conversion to unreliables. Maybe we should give a little thought to how this might play out in a few years when that plant is even older, or mothballed.
You can get people to put up with a lot of misery if you convince them that you are doing it for their own good.
Just look at places like Cuba and Venezuela.
This is what happens when politicians think they are engineers.
This is what happens when politicians think.
No, This is what happens when voters elect Leftists to political majorities.
The Left is mentally deranged and unfit to lead. They live in a world of lies. Their lies fail when put in public policy in the real world.
The Left’s rightful place is to always remain the back-bench opposition. So as Aussies are now finding out (and soon the Canadians), putting the Left in charge leads to disaster.
The problem around the world is finding parties that are not of the left. I blame some of the people who keep voting for these left-wing mutations of former right-wing parties such the the Conservatives in the UK thinking they are still what they claim.
Does memorizing, recalling and repeating various dogma quality as ‘thinking.’
The problem is that a majority of have bought into the lie that they are entitled to free stuff paid for by taxes on rich people. They have bought into the lie that the only reason why they can’t have all the free stuff they want is because rich people are just too good at hiding their ill-gotten wealth from the virtuous tax man.
“No, This is what happens when voters elect Leftists to political majorities.”
Oh please. Texas is a solid red state, with a Republican governor, House and Senate.
This is what happens when politicians.
This is what happens?
Is this not the green future many desire? That is until the respirator, heater, air conditioner, refrigerator, battery charger that they, or a family member, need desperately to work without fail…. fails…
But, blame the proven, but neglected back up system right?
Please WUWT do not pander to the Greenies by adopting their premises and language.
Temperatures did not SOAR…there was no HEATWAVE….down here us natives think of it as SUMMER.
If there is an issue, it is with Greenie interference with normal infrastructure.
Quite agree, Charles GN. It seems that what was once just summer is now catastrophe waiting to happen. I’m totally sick of the irresponsible misrepresentation by the media. Even the BOM is in on the act, with a special little section to update the “catastrophic weather” or supposed “heatwave” that they reckon is happening. They’re not even good enough to be called “useful idiots” anymore, because I personally think they know full well it’s all a fabrication.
Actually there was a heatwave it happened as soon as the AC was shut off to save the grid.
Actually there was a heatwave it happened as soon as the AC was shut off to save the grid.
Our feeble politicians pat themselves on the back and tell us their latest energy guarantee policy is working and thus we avoid blackouts. The truth however is much more grim. Less power is being used because it is unaffordable. Ten years ago I was irrigating and power cost 5.9c/kWh. It is now costing between 20 and 24 c/kWh. The Kurri aluminium smelter has shut down and many manufacturers have either closed or moved production to China. Where are the figures for lost jobs and lost productivity because of dear electricity? These brain dead politicians make electricity too dear to use and then claim they have more than enough. Stupidity of the highest order and still they draw wages and ask to be re-elected.
Notice how Australian summer is now called a heatwave, like it is something unusual.
“This just in over the AP wire: …. Australia, caught in an unusual spat of unexpected summer is scrambling for enough power to keep the a/c on….”
Notice how any day over 35 C is being called extreme. Politicised garbage.
Man, what bad luck.
But how could this possibly happen!!!??? SA has a GIANT battery now LOL.
Solar in daytime goes to daytime demand. No juice left to charge the battery. Wait, maybe they could charge it at night when electrical demand is low. Government officials are looking into this…
They could build a coal-fired plant to run the special high-intensity lights that could power the solar panels to charge the batteries that could keep the lights on until…. oh wait..
You mean as in Spain where they did exactly that but with diesel generators, so they could get their hands on the fat subsidies?
A decent size gas power plant in South Australia would solve their problems. (they have ample gas out in Cooper Basin)
They are just a small population, after all.
The whole state less than half Melbourne’s population.
Yup. Tgat giant battery that can power South Australia for a whole three minutes 🙂
“James of the West January 19, 2018 at 9:39 pm”
No. THe biggest battery in the world. Victoria are planning even bigger.
You know the Greens are ignorant when they talk about “528 megawatts of energy”. They just don’t understand that power is not energy – hence they think wind turbines, solar panels, batteries etc are wonderful.
isn’t S.A running off Musk’s batteries by now?
I think the 100 days to install are up so there should have been no issue.
The main problem with coal in a country like Australia is that it tends to cut out during a heat wave because the cooling systems can’t handle the required cooling load using surface water. Pretty obvious reason to invest in something other than coal in Australia.
Where did you read that garbage? Coal reliably ran Australia all through the thirties, when temperatures were just a high as today.
Snort!! Really benben, how do you think the country managed to run on coal-fired electricity generation through all the previous heat waves? That is, almost totally and entirely on coal-fired electricity generation, allowing for the minuscule contribution of hydro when viewed nation-wide. Really, it’s as if the CAGW enthusiasts and evangelists have forgotten that we humans have managed to exist without the marvels of inefficient, unreliable, intermittent, baseload-incapable so-called renewables over the preceding decades. Grow up, son, and get your head out of where you’ve stowed it.
“the cooling systems can’t handle the required cooling load using surface water”
Which is the reason power plants in hot and/or dry countries (like Australia and the Loy-yang plant that tripped) use cooling towers instead:
oh tty.. Look at all that EVIL CO2 !!!!!
Benben will have nightmares. !
Actually- Hazelwood had a very large cooling pond. The warm water was stocked with tropical fish species. Now the conservationists are worrying about their demise as the waters cool!
Make it up as you go along Benben. fantasy is your thing !!
Coal provides 85% of Australia’s electricity, and coal power stations work in places far warmer than the ancient Loy Yang power stations.
Strange. Really, really strange.
benben demonstrates that climate propaganda dulls the mind.
“benben January 19, 2018 at 11:38 pm”
Ahhh…like Griff, you don’t live in Australia. Well done! Sure it has been hot last few days, putting together flat-pack furniture in a 40c, even with air con, it hard yakka. But it’s not unusual fo summer, in Australia. If you like to melt, come try it.
Is that a traditional summer activity in Oz, Patrick?
‘Throw another IKEA shelf on the Barbie!’
“Griff January 20, 2018 at 6:20 am”
Unless you and benben have experienced an Australia summer, which, surprise surprise, is HOT, neither of the two of you have any idea what you are talking about. A request to you Griff; Stop talking about Australian weather based on your armchair science.
And I will add, this w/e was predicted by all authorities in Australia (BoM) to be a record breaker, hottest evah etc. Penrith, west of Sydney, is always hotter in summer and colder in winter than Sydney (Sydney is near the sea). Penrith reached 47.3c a few weeks back, almost breaking the 1939 record (When there was no weather station until 1995) of 47.8. Yesterday (Saturday) was predicted to be hotter than 47.3c and while it was hot it was not that hot. Today (Sunday) was predicted to be hotter than that breaking all records. It was not. And what do we hear in the MSN about a normal Australian summer? Crickets chirping!
My first experience of 40c+ heat in Australia was Jan 1st 2006. I had been in Aus just under 6 months. I lived in a suburb called Ashfield. Reached 47c, with humidity at about 25%. Sure it was hot, but was actually quite nice.
There is no link between CO2 concentration and temperature.
All sources of reliable power require cooling water in order to operate.
Not hydropower. Water, yes, but not cooling water.
No Mark they don’t all need water – another failure 101. You get dry cooling towers in both fossil plants that operate in desert areas and in Ormat plants. The aren’t as efficient as conventional plant, especially in hot weather, but they work.
Natural gas turbines don’t use cooling water. You can get more energy out of them by using the exhaust to power a secondary steam turbine, but the primary unit does not need water. It makes a fair amount though.
Where is Australian coal being exported to?
Please, do not raise this point again. The answer (China) makes us look even more stupid.
At this stage let us remember, that for years in public the Greens said energy was ‘to cheap’ and ‘to available’. Now although they may not do this anymore, do you think that position has actually change?
‘ too cheap’ etc
You can certainly avoid blackouts due to overload with a Tesla battery: as the said battery has already proved, twice…
A battery responds massively faster than any other means of compensating for lost power or a surge in demand.
You can certainly avoid blackouts in a heatwave by installing more solar power: solar works best when demand from aircon is at it highest.
Coal is no solution here.
As long as the outage doesn’t last more than 3 minutes.
It stops it tripping and should last long enough for something else to be brought online…
Well it might help to give you time to start up gas turbines. As I understood it South Australia more or less surreptitiously bought five modular gas turbines together with the battery and discreetly installed them in existing power plants.
Griff, as has been demonstrated, there was nothing else to be brought on line, thanks to years of devotion to renewables.
Even when the Loy Yang unit went down, Victorian coal was operating at 85% of capacity
This is something wind and solar just cannot do,
And sometime our hottest days are when there is a cloud layer, oops , solar down.
and the power requirement spike is when people come home in the late afternoon and early evening
Solar is ABSOLUTELY USELESS when its cloudy or in the early evening
Solar is NO SOLUTION…. EVER..
I read here daily, but respond rarely. Griff and Stokes used to be amusing in their ignorance. Now they are boring and predictable–are they really worth it??
So you won’t be catching me on tour?
I’ll have to send you the DVDs…
“Predictable” is an understatement at least in Griff’s case. “Robotic” might be a better word.
Moronic would be the more appropriate adjective.
Both Griff and Nick started out trying to argue facts, now both have just resorted to outright lying.
The fact is the whole situation was totally predicted when Hazelwood was closed that any problem with any power station in peak summer demand was going to mean power outages. Anyone who denies that as a fact is lying pure and simple.
” both have just resorted to outright lying”
I made one 7-word comment on this thread. And it was obviously correct.
And Griff is his normal straightforward self.
If you have enough reliable generation you don’t need batteries. As proven by the fact that power systems has managed quite well without Tesla batteries for a century. Ever heard of “rotational inertia” Griffie? It is something rather like a built-in battery that all reliable power plants, including hydropower have, but not wind, solar or batteries. It could easily enough be built into wind power plants as well, but it would hurt their profits, so it isn’t done.
“You can certainly avoid blackouts in a heatwave by installing more solar power”
That is yet another of your manic FANTASIES. ! ie its a load of utter BS !!!
“Griff January 20, 2018 at 2:38 am”
You have no idea what you are talking about, I mean, really, you have no clue.
No, the battery did not prevent a blackout. It made an almost irrelevant contribution on each occasion. Grid inertia that kicked in entirely automatically as a consequence of basic physics provided much more energy, and did so long before the battery was triggered to act. The battery did manage to switch on rapidly once a trigger low frequency was hit, but it only supplied 7MW for a couple of minutes on the first occasion, and about 16MW the next time around. It was other spinning reserve and hydro power that provided the real backup and blackout prevention.
Here is the performance of the Musk battery before and during the first trip that Griff claims prevented a blackout:
The contribution is that insignificant green bump under the price spike that the trip caused, The battery had stopped supplying the grid before the price spike was over (i.e. while other generators were still ramping up to replace the loss of several hundred MW). It did not even start its paltry contribution for 20 seconds after the Loy Yang unit tripped.
The term “renewable” should never be used in connection with energy. There are two types of energy; reliable and unreliable. Coal, oil and nuclear are obviously in the reliable category. Hydro-electricity straddles the divide. Electricity markets placing excessive reliance upon hydro, for example Ghana and Tasmania have been caught short, but in fairness to hydro its shortfalls are accurately predictable, usually in time for alternative arrangements. Windmills and solar panels have no place in any serious grid as their wild unreliability compromises the whole grid, imposing unprofitability upon the reliable energy contributors without delivering any compensating benefit. Unreliables are forcibly incorporated by authoritarian governments into the energy mix to the immense detriment of consumers, especially consumers who are also producers of useful products such as aluminium, rail transportation, public health, illumination, temperature control and manufactured goods. The beneficiaries of such anti-market imposition are the cynical officially approved fraudsters. Excessive retail electricity prices are demonstrably proportionate to the degree of govt-sponsored infiltration by unreliables.
We should all clearly understand what is really meant by “pumped hydro”. Where the energy source is reliable, pumped hydro can be usefully employed, at the cost of around 30% in losses, to shift the timing of the delivery of some of the power which has been reliably generated. This works very well by pumping water around 100 metres upward from S Queensland’s Wivenhoe Dam to the adjacent Splitters Creek Dam. The concept quickly loses economic sense as the distance between the lower dam and the higher dam increases.
Most important of all is that whereas pumped hydro can be effective in boosting the utility of reliable energy, pumped hydro makes no sense whatever when its purpose is to conceal the dramatic shortcomings of unreliable energy sources. Readers of the wonderful WATTSUP, please spread this important message far and wide. Prime Minister Turnbull is threatening Australians with the energy equivalent of the Maginot Line.
Best word is dispatchable.
ie can be available on demand.
Wind and solar ARE NOT
Dispatchable is not a well known word.
Reliable is well known.
If I was advising the coal, natural gas or nuke industry, the advice would be to start groups that woukd demand reliable power, to fund documentaries on how stupid so-called “renewables” really are.
How “green” insiders and politicians have a lucrative relationship that costs regular people money.
Find comedians and writers to mock the faux greens.
And lawsuits against green orgs fir RICO,
damages, defamation, etc. The public square has been hijacked by green con artists and hustlers pretending to have science on their side. They have never had the science on their side. It is long since time for the industries and people targeted by those extremists to push back vigorously.
The age of stupid is upon Australia.
+100
Poor fellow, my country.
What can one expect from a dill, who can not even tell the difference between “power” and “energy”. Mr Cole Latimer writes: “528 megawatts of energy” . Megawatt (or watt, kilowatt) is unit of power. Energy is measured in megawatthours (or kilowatthours as in domestic usage).
Eric Worrall, please explain this comment: “Renewable mandates supported by Australian Federal and State Governments have made dispatchable energy unprofitable.”
How do mandates for one type of plant have any impact on dispatchable generation? Seems like there is a variable missing in the equation.
“SkepticalWarmist January 20, 2018 at 6:01 am”
Simply put, it means RET’s penialises fossil fuel energy investment/supply, so there is none. It’s all “renewable”, which, not only do we have the example of South Australian faliure, we now have the example of medical services affected in Victoria to demonstrate it’s not the “solution”. Check out what AGL is doing.
Australia is leading the race to the bottom! There will be only two industries left in Australia, politics and aged care.
Patrick MJD
Thank you. I’d be pleased if someone can you point me to some sources which lay out the case about RET’s in more detail. If you don’t know then please say. I need to put the case to “true believers” so I don’t take anyone’s word on it. I’m an American struggling to figure out the interactions of policy and technology in this country much less in others.
Can you be more specific about “what AGL is doing”? If they want to replace a coal plant in the future with a gas one I don’t see the problem.
“SkepticalWarmist January 20, 2018 at 8:36 am Patrick MJD
Thank you. I’d be pleased if someone can you point me to some sources which lay out the case about RET’s in more detail.”
The Australian Federal Govn’t.
Fossil fuel power plants are most cost effective when they are being run all the time at near full power.
Addition of renewables forces the fossil fuel plants to constantly ramp up and down the amount of power being generated.
The costs of a power plant are for the most part fixed, the amount paid for fuel is one of the smallest expenses. When they have to ramp down their power output, they are selling less power, but their costs do not change by anywhere near the same amount.
Finally these plants were not designed to be load following units. Forcing to operate in this mode result is lots of extra wear and tear on the plants.
“The costs of a power plant are for the most part fixed, the amount paid for fuel is one of the smallest expenses. ”
Fuel costs are the largest cost factor for fossil plants, something like 75%.
“Finally these plants were not designed to be load following units.”
All steam plants, even nukes, are designed to load follow. The only time you would see SSGT load following is when all steam plants are running at full load.
MarkW
Where do you get these ideas? How do you think the grid worked before there was any wind or solar?
And Hydroelectric is not renewable. Just ask a politician.
Are These Coal Plants “tripping off” because of over heating?
It seems like several news reports I’ve read are written in a way that suggest that the coal plants are overheating. Poster benben seems to think similarly. The second quote below indicates that a) the answer is yes and b) the media suffers from lousy standards of clarity in it’s reporting.
For example:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/coal-unit-trips-in-heatwave-as-tesla-big-battery-cashes-in-85623/
Is that largely related to the high electricity demands during a heatwave or because the plants are thermally stressed? (Sort of like a overheated car on a hot day).
A certain irony in this context of the idea of a “reliability obligation”!
————————————-
http://reneweconomy.com.au/nsw-coal-fleet-feels-heat-state-risk-system-black-96770/
Refers to a report by the Energy Security Taskforce.
And maybe they struggle in normal hot weather too!
A reasonable working theory is:
1) The issue with “extreme heat” and coal plants has been known for decades.
I1) A failure of all the recent Assie administrations to deal with the conditions of the climate that we have now and have had for some decades if not the entire history of the Australian electrical grid.
2) That politicians and campaigners can point fingers at coal plants and warming is a bonus in a game of denial and diversion.
Key Unanswered Questions
1) A missing piece of data are the recent trends in summer electricity demands. Do the recent peak demands come as any surprise?
2) Is this a case of undersized cooling towers or heat exchangers? If so, one assumes this has been a know issue for decades. What have been the recommendations of the Energy Security Taskforce or other watchdog agencies about this issue?
Of course. The efficiency of any heat engine will decline with rising temperature. Carnots law:
µ = 1 – Tc/Th
where Tc is the temperature of the cold reservoir of the system and Th the temperature of the hot reservoir.
Transmission loss and just about every other type of loss in the system will also increase. All this should be, and in former less politically correct times was, taken into account when calculating the needed operating reserve.
Skeptical Warmist
Yes, as the ambient (outside) air and water temperature go up, thermal power plant (fossil AND nuclear – were any nuclear plants running down south) efficiencies go down. They require the high pressure steam to be condensed in the condensers below the turbines. Warmer cooling water means less efficient overall plant efficiency. But that’s been known since the early 1800’s. And has been overcome since the early 1800’s by simply not generating as much power: You run a 400 MegWatt power plant at 380 MegWatt for a few hours each day. But you DON’T need to to shutdown the 400 MegWatt power plant entirely!
Unless.
To a state bureaucrat in a state political bureaucrat agency, the “laws” become absolute. “If water temperature exceeds 42 deg C, the plant will shutdown to prevent possible harm to the buried eggs of the Florence Nightingale butterfly located within 100 km of the salt water crocodile easternmost habitat.” Now, the mere fact that a power plant can continue operating just fine with cooling water exit temperatures of 43-44-45 degrees doesn’t mean anything. The Laws of Physics and Thermodynamics are irrelevant. Any power plant who outlet water might exceed 42 degrees C must shutdown until the Florence Nightingale butterly’s eggs are hatched. (Gas turbine power plants in California cannot operate if their air filters could trap the moths nearby either.)
The press release above is not clear: The press release cautioning 800 Meg capacity loss might also refer to some “future CAGW” catastrophe where gloobal average temperatures have risen by 10 or 15 degrees C. And where the Hudson River is overflowing NY city streets – in other words, only in Jim Hansen’s imagination.
I strongly question the “motives, methods, and opportunity” for this self-called Australia Institute “Energy Security Taskforce” in its propaganda “research” for their self-promoting “renewables energy” battery program. See, if the “Energy Security Taskforce” cannot find a problem with the existing thermal plants (fossil-fuel power generators), then it cannot force the state to support the extremely expensive battery program.
“that there should be a reliability obligation for coal and gas plants.”
There should be a reliability obligation for WIND and SOLAR.
They MUST operate at over 60% of nameplate when required to.
As one of the electricity peaks is in the early evening.. how is solar going to manage to meet their “reliability obligation”
The Australia Institute is an ULTRA far-left lobby group. Nothing more.
Previously I made reference to two different reports. The second was from the Energy Security Taskforce. a state government report from the state of New South Wales (NSW).
NSW Energy Security Taskforce releases Final Report 19 Dec 2017
http://www.chiefscientist.nsw.gov.au/latest-news/nsw-energy-security-taskforce-releases-final-report
Australia has six states—New South Wales (NSW), Queensland (QLD), South Australia (SA), Tasmania (TAS), Victoria (VIC) and Western Australia (WA)—and two major mainland territories—the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory (NT). In most respects these two territories function as states.
Skeptical Warmist,
That report is a frightening mishmash of double talk.
So coal plants will be saddled with reliability demands that wind and solar will never have placed on them. And could never comply with.
Even as the Australian climate madness destroys the ability of finance, construction and operation of coal plants.
Another milestone in Australia’s age of madness.
hunter writes:
[blockquote]Skeptical Warmist,
That report is a frightening mishmash of double talk.[/blockquote]
It might be. But I don’t trust naked, unsupported opinions, especially ones full of emotionally laden verbiage, even from people on “my side”. It helps me not at all with the general public.
We already have the technology to build green hospitals and all alarmists should pledge to use them. Make them single story building so you don’t need elevators. Make the rooms large with multiple bed wards for efficiency and painted white with lots of windows for pure natural light and plenty of fresh air.
That also sounds like LEED certified buildings that the Clintons touted for years despite double the cost for government and nonprofit organizations adopting them. Sticker shock for utility bills is the unreported outcome since glass walls have low R values.
It is pretty clear that there is no learning going on. The response will be more wind turbines , solar panels, batteries and smart grid load shedding. Reliable electricity will be a thing of the past and it will not be rebuilt.
There is no political will for that.
I was going to ask how the folks down under could be so gullible as to fall for all of this non scientific nonsense and government socialistic control in the name of supposed environmentalism, then I looked around here, in the US, and saw the same thing. Here it is in the bigger cities where the problems are and I suspect it is the same in Australia. Evidently we have more rural, small town folks, for now, who are more comfortable not having government bureaucrats, or at least less of them, to look after us. Even Mao Tse Tung understood the problems of ignorance in the big cities and periodically had purges to chase people out of the cities, or in his case shoot them. Dependence is a powerful force for holding back progress and stirring up discontent.
Like all country’s vote for lemons and you get unpalatable drinks! Wake up aussies and remember you survival desires!
Aussies are asleep at the wheel all the while some dumb soap opera, cricket and tennis are on TV.
Primitive countries like Australia tend to have unreliable grids and limited redundancy while exporting the resources that could solve their problems with the right investment and planning. See Venezuela as another example. Ever heard of combined cycle natural gas plants and the gas pipelines to supply them?
Melbourne , rainy today, so that will ease things a bit
But looking at forecasts, next Friday/Saturday could be a real crunch day for the electrical system.
I wonder, how many politicians and high-level bureaucrats are receiving treatment in hospitals that are leaving people in the dark to demonstrate that they are “good corporate citizens”?
Errr…that would be none.
Any Green dictatorship would be wise to ban air conditioners and their energy problems would be solved.
Its hot in Australia?? Who new. And they have heatwaves !
Would that be like 1960 2 January – Oodnadatta, South Australia hit 50.7 °C (123.3 °F) degrees, the highest temperature ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere and Oceania or 1923–1924 – During a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924, the Western Australian town of Marble averaged 100 °F (38 °C).
An extraordinary heatwave occurred between October 1895 to January 1896 that impacted nearly the entire continent but especially the interior. PerilAUS records 435 deaths, 89 per cent of them within New South Wales.
Deaths also occurred in South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland. Bourke, in NSW, lost 1.6 per cent of its population to the heat. Temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius in the shade were already being recorded in October, mid-spring.
During the disastrous 1939 Black Friday bushfires, 71 people died in Victoria. But at least 420 people died in the heatwaves which preceded the fires, largely in New South Wales.
Don’t worry about the past temperatures. Those inconvenient tidbits of history will be dealt with when the BOM finishes “adjusting” the historical records.
Love it!
Poster It doesn’t add up… January 21, 2018 at 3:27 am showed a graph
Please anyone have a link to it’s source??
SW,
Do you ask equally probing questions of warmist claims?
Husband has serious heart failure issue and needs air-con, specialist Dr’s recommended we invest in air-con, without it he slips into congestive heart failure, where you lungs start to fill with fluid.
We run our air-con day and night in our home to keep him out of hospital, solar panels in the day-time power our air-con, I am only too aware that we are using base load power at night, and the power bill reflects that.
I fear that if our electricity goes down in a heatwave I will have no choice but to take him to the local hospital, even better if I could get him to the Heart hospital about 45 mins drive away where his consultant specialist works, he will be admitted.
Here in Australia we have a taxpayer funded universal health system, but that doesn’t mean I am unaware of how much it costs to admit him to the hospital about $3500.00, and then $1500.00 a day to keep him there, these figures given to me by hospital worker.
And then what, take him home to another heatwave a few days later, air-con goes off again, and round and round the circle we go again, back to the hospital.
Has no one in the govt thought about the numbers of people in nursing homes that are going to die for lack of air-con’s at are they all going to present at the hospital at the same time, all costing the health system multiple thousands of $$$$.
Just a few days ago I was at the local hospital, for unrelated issue, on the same day we had a heat wave, in the 40’sC, and the ER room had a number of older people presenting with heat stroke, dehydration, the ER staff were later in the day very busy with these people struggling to survive.
[We understand your struggles. .mod]
I am so sorry for the struggle you all are facing.
That the climate extremists, with no regard or compassion, are content to see this sort of suffering inflicted in the name of saving the world is so predictable.
A practical solution might be to ask the medical authorities for assistance with a back up generator of sufficient kws to run the AC and other basic appliances.
It would seem a very wise way to save money.
Don, do you have a link for that data?
Why So Little Australian Gas?
Across Australia in 2015-16 gas powered plant supplied only 7 per cent of output.
Any Aussies know why this is. Not much of this type of natural resource? Ban on fracking?
————————————————
https://www.aer.gov.au/publications/state-of-the-energy-market-reports/state-of-the-energy-market-may-2017
STATE OF THE ENERGY MARKET MAY 2017
Australian Energy Regulator
(See breakdown of supply in Figure 1.9, page 31)
NEM = National Energy Market (see page 22)
SC why do post this political BS?
“Gas is often described as a transition fuel towards a lower carbon economy….”
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool to help reduce the environmental impact of doing something (i.e. making electricity).
If you want a reliable grid and low ghg emission (and other environmental impacts), there is only one choice, nuclear.
LCA like all models need to be validated against a actual performance. Nuclear out performs the models and has 99% availability.
Wind and solar are epic fail.
SW,
Australia, like other climate committed countries, is limiting access to natural resources.
In Victoria, our hopeless Labor government has banned fracking because it is worried it will lose crucial inner city electorates to the Greens.
And so much of our Liberal (conservative) party is just pathetic when it comes to taking up arms against the Green Blob due to a combination of sheer lack of talent, appeasement cowardice and, of course, venality.