Guest essay by Eric Worrall
South Australia’s green politicians recently demolished their last coal plant.
Record heat blackouts: Tens of thousands without power across South Australia and Victoria
By Gemma Bath
Lexie Jeuniewic
Nick Pearson
2:03am Jan 25, 2019Tens of thousands were last night sweltering through a blackout on one of the hottest days in history after power was cut across large areas of South Australia and Victoria.
There were 76 outages across Adelaide, affecting more than 28,000 customers during the hottest day in the city’s history.
In Victoria, about 5800 properties were without power on an “oppressive” night of hot and humid weather.
“Crews continue to work through the night – we understand it’s uncomfortable being without power in the heat,” SA Power Networks said on Twitter.
“If your power goes off, turn off all appliances and leave a single switch in the ON position so you know when it’s been restored. Turn appliances on gradually when power is back.”
…
Australian Energy Market Operator CEO Audrey Zibelman said an extra 400 megawatts had been added to the grid.
“We are going forward and reactivating our reserve power (of) 400MW of additional energy.”
“The system is being utilised to its maximum – what we need everyone to do is just be aware of that and over this peak period make sure that you are not wasting energy.”
…
Not much more to say really. Thanks to the renewable supply duck neck (power only arrives when it isn’t needed), even during optimum weather, renewable electricity is useless for supplying households during heatwaves.
You can have reliable electricity or you can have renewable electricity but you can’t have both.
I feel sorry for the Aussies. They shouldn’t have drunk the koolaid.
Also read that three coal power stations in Vic went down due to being old and poorly maintained. Again with govt policy is forcing companies to shut down coal plant they are not going waste money renewing equipment.
The fake “climate emergency” is causing a lot of very bad decisions to be made my creating false or distorted priorities.
yup appears we were down about 1000megawatts, as coal gen was below capacity due to lousy maintenance expended on it thanks to morons in govt stuffing our power at present.
it was also unusal for a heatwave in that it had very LOW to near no wind from the Nth
which was a blessing as it also reduced fire risk, though we still have 9,000+hectares burnt and still burning in the east of Victoria
the supposed good deal buyin power that was plenty…(lol) was a whole???? 400megs worth
it was damned hot, inside my no aircon home was 33.5 at 4pm on friday
outside she hit 42.9 and I have well watered garden vegies that burnt to crisp
today it might have got to 25 or so as a cooler change moved across the state
They want to kill people, that can be the only reason for such insanity. Nothing else other than the death of thousands will satisfy their god.
Thousands???
These guys want to reduce the population of the planet to 100 million or less. They are looking to kill billions.
I discovered in my research for a paper that I wrote in 1995 that they really want the Earth’s population decreased to 200 million. (who’s going to make all their smart phones, laptops etc?)
By reducing the world’s population to 200 million precludes the very definition of “smart”; the old rotary models should suffice!
“renewable electricity is useless for supplying households during heatwaves. ”
Heatwave, what about the coming cold in the USA? Just imagine these power cuts in a cold-wave.
Yes they want to kill people
Hey!
Refrigeration isn’t … natural
Air Conditioning isn’t … natural
Artificial Power isn’t … natural
If personkind want to get back to nature … there WILL BE collateral damage.
go live in a cave…oh, you already do. never mind. and cultivating crops is not natural, eat everything that grows in the wild only
“settled science” is political, not science – They only cite the supply side, not the demand side of CO2 (Plant food), They only talk about the affects on temperature from CO2 raise, never the affects on agriculture (Every greenhouse operator knows increased CO2 = increased crop yield.)
There are two very simple facts the Liberals will not acknowledge:
#1 This Earth can only sustain 2 billion people without burning fossil fuel – John Deere does not run on batteries… so, what to do with 5 billion dead bodies?
#2 The “deal” Trump wisely backed us out of would have taxed USA and sent this money to the #1 and #4 producers of CO2 – Chairman Mao’s China, and India…
Most importantly, the Earth can only sustain 2 billion people without burning fossil fuel, so what are they going to do with the 5 – 6 billion corpse ? John Deer doesn’t run on batteries, nor can airliners… how will those fat cats in Congress jet home every weekend without jet fuel ?
My power went out in November, in the middle of a sleet storm. That was bad. But it was fixed and everything is running properly now.
I shudder to think what will happen to the gullible people who think ‘clean, renewable, etc.’ is the way to go and switch over to it, considering that, without a way to run your furnace, you have no heat in frigid winter weather. We are having a normal, snowy, COLD!!! winter in my kingdom, and I got one of those “offers” to switch to “clean” energy from some group in WDC, at a mere 50% higher rate/KwH than my current rate. 3rd time, in fact. Yeah, well, I want my furnace to run in cold weather.
I sort of feel sorry for the Aussies, but if they had done some REAL investigation, they might not be in this pickle.
“Gullible people who think ‘clean, renewable, etc.’ is the way to go and switch over to it”
But they DON’T switch over to 100% renewable power – they may think they are, but in reality they are simply getting conventional power when wind & solar can’t provide, and the suppliers buy/sell certificates to cover the difference. If these people were genuinely receiving 100% renewable power they wouldn’t be gullible for very long…
Someone said in a comment the other day “Why doesn’t London disconnect from the UK grid, and just rely on wind/solar?” It is an excellent suggestion, but I doubt it will ever take place!
Sara, we are not all gullible DownUnder but we have great difficulty in getting the truth about these ridiculous unreliables into thick heads. We are lumbered with the results of the propaganda indoctrinated gullibles having the vote so have to have a back up generator to hand. In a rural setting it is now essential for the use of pumps to have that backup.
A thought of the morning
“It would appear that a belief in the effectiveness of “ephemeral energy” goes along with a firm belief that Murphy’s Law has yet to be pronounced
“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law
Let alone Finagle’s Law
“Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finagle%27s_law“
And the Democratic Party wants very much to bring this same sort of misery to the United States.
I wonder how many Australian Politicians and upper level Bureaucrats are practicing what they preach? If I had to I would guess that they have a system in place to keep Government offices cool in the heat. After all the important business of government rule must go on.
Do you suppose they receive an allowance for personal home diesel generators to control the climate where they live?
“I wonder how many Australian Politicians and upper level Bureaucrats are practicing what they preach? ”
Somewhere between zero and none.
I like the term; rounds up to 0
The prevalence of generators in South Australia is quite large, from my reading. It makes sense in a place where the electricity supply is unreliable. I would think the generation of carbon dioxide is many times what it would otherwise be because of all the generators that are now needed to make up for the lack of green electricity.
Motor generator sets are not designed to be in any way eco-friendly. They are designed to be rugged, reliable energy sources. Exhaust pollution is never a consideration. I use a little Onan 4KW genset and understand it perfectly.
“settled science” is political, not science – They only cite the supply side, not the demand side of CO2 (Plant food), They only talk about the affects on temperature from CO2 raise, never the affects on agriculture (Every greenhouse operator knows increased CO2 = increased crop yield.)
There are two very simple facts the Liberals will not acknowledge:
#1 This Earth can only sustain 2 billion people without burning fossil fuel – John Deere does not run on batteries… so, what to do with 5 billion dead bodies?
#2 The “deal” Trump wisely backed us out of would have taxed USA and sent this money to the #1 and #4 producers of CO2 – Chairman Mao’s China, and India…
Most importantly, the Earth can only sustain 2 billion people without burning fossil fuel, so what are they going to do with the 5 – 6 billion corpse ? John Deer doesn’t run on batteries, nor can airliners… how will those fat cats in Congress jet home every weekend without jet fuel ?
“John Deere does not run on batteries”
They are working on it:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/robot-tractors/
“Democrat” politicians. “Democratic” they are not.
3,000,000 more wind turbines should do the trick.
Plus an enormous (and non-existent) battery!
The battery exists, though its capacity was wildly overstated while it was being built. They seem to be using it primarily for current smoothing. During this blackout I suspect it probably kept the lights on for almost a whole second.
300,000,000 MORE LIKE
In Australia, All major parties have bought the Cool-aid. Any discentors to the climate doctrine face very well funded and resourced campaigns to silence or disendorse them, from their own party or foreign funded groups. Any person in any authority who does not drink the coolaide faces campaigns to kill there careers.
Australians cannot vote against the destruction of our economy, not allowed. Discussion still occurs, but there are campaigns to limit it.
Thank God for WUWT
I never thought the Aussies would capitulate so quickly and so completely. But, John Howard brought about a gun registry in a matter of months after a mass shooting at a tourist site. The more one learns about the British and their various offshoots, the more it becomes clear that we have more cultural differences than we share.
You’re right, Joe. Drinking Koolaid makes everyone less self-reliant. I have a big enough generator and a bore for water. Don’t ever rely on “them”. “They” don’t care about you. Look out for yourself. I don’t feel sorry for them. If they are stupid enough to rely on “them” they deserve what they get.
The people of South Australia have my sympathy. Also the 200,000 of Victoria that suffered in the same power shortage.
At the risk of saying I Told You So, I did predict this in August last year after studying several AEMO reports. It was quite obvious that the assumptions they were making to justify their claims that there would be enough power were unsustainable:
1. That there would be a reduction in power requirements through “improved efficiencies” even though the state’s population was rising.
2. The use of kwh, ie an average energy requirement, concealed the fact that the instantaneous power requirement would exceeded the power generation capacity when the wind power dropped.
According to JoNova’s site, it was a one-in-five-year hot day. Ie, easily within the scope of a competent government to plan for.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/01/melbourne-200000-houses-blacked-out-10-companies-curtailed-as-1-in-5-year-hot-day-hits/
If anyone died of heat stroke from the outage and consequent loss of air-conditioning, someone in authority should be charged with negligent homicide.
Receives little publicity in the Australian MSM, but it’s already started;
https://tendaily.com.au/news/australia/a190122fvz/patients-on-life-support-left-unexpectedly-without-power-20190123
I say the operators are negligent in allowing someone in their 50’s on the walk. It’s not a walk in the park, and if you are slightly unfit it will be a a hard walk. And in 30c+ heat, I am not surprised about this. The big issue for bridge climbers is that you are, literally, tied to a thin steel rail on the walk and the whole thing from start to finish takes about 2hrs.
Ooops forgot the link;
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/woman-evacuated-off-the-top-of-the-sydney-harbour-bridge-with-heat-exhaustion-20190126-p50tu6.html
Assumes that a competent government exists.
I am betting they are competent enough when it comes to their own comfort. Has anyone Down Under done any investigative reporting on the suffering (or lack of) of government officials under these conditions?
i’m sure they all have backup generators
A competent government is one that tries to control as little as possible.
I live in adelaide sth aust. It was still 44 degrees celsius at 730pm. At 1030 it was still around the 39 degree celsius mark. I.m 49 years old and have never felt heat like that before at night. It was like standing in front of a blast furnace. It’s hard to explain how ferocious the heat felt on you. Glad it only lasted one night before the cool change came in. It is however totally unacceptable that in 2019 we in a first world technically advanced country have a power blackouts for what ever reason. The greens are hell bent on dragging us back to a pre industrial age existance.
“Blast furnace”
More refugees, more people … UHI is only going to get worse
You’ve clearly never been near a blast furnace either.
I have worked outside in building industry in 40+ deg.C , it was hot and I needed loads of water. I did not die. The worst part was dumb EU work safety laws prevent us from taking out shirts off ( it’s a cancer risk !).
If you live in an air-con bubble all year round and never let your body acclimatise you will suffer if you ever meet the natural world.
If folks set the air-con at 35 on a 40 day instead of 24 , they would not have blackouts, even with crap “renewable” infrastructure.
Im a spray painter and work in a spray booth that usually runs ten degrees hotter than the outside air temo. No air conditioning there. I was specifically talking about the temp at night. If you have felt hotter conditions that is your persomal experience. I am simply talking about mine.
I’m 70 y/o and make it a point to get out every day. Here in the desert of Las Vegas, NV I am the only person walking his (big) dogs at the local dog park in the summer heat (Its OK, there is plenty of water and shade.). Its simple self preservation; when (!) the power goes out, I won’t be one of the old folks kicking off from heat exhaustion.
My old boonies hat comes in handy. That, and no shirt. I’m old; screw skin cancer!
Greg, you seem to be missing the point of AC. It is to keep one comfortable. Less than 24 when it’s hot outside, greater than 24 when it’s cold outside.
AC is one of the great accomplishments of the last century. Could it be more efficient? Sure. Should we be satisfied with less of it? Absolutely not!
I lived in inner city adelaide as a kid im 10yrs older than you, no one had aircon back then except offices and pubs. and I remember plenty of dec jan and feb days and nights that were baking hot no breezes and radiated heat from the roads made it worse again, you lay down and didnt so much sleep as passed out from the heat;-) and woke with soaked sheets and pillow.
yes this was crappy hot but it was only a couple of days of it.
reliance on aircon by the masses means lessened ability to cope with the real temps and i reckon thats a bad thing.
aircon house car and workplaces are the norm not the exception, so when the real world intrudes when those luxiries are off.
I admit I do laugh. a few hrs without power and the worlds ending?
ok the very few ill needing oxygen etc are the exception, but a small 800kv home portable genset would run a backup oxy pump
I just love your sympathy for the old & infirm living at home who may rely on their electricity to stay cool, it is exactly that kind of technology that has reduced the mortality rates of the very young, very old or very infirm.
But you are OK Jack aren’t you?
You remind me of the old advertisements for Holden (GM) air conditioning. They would advertise that you should buy an air conditioned Holden car and go for a drive in that to escape the heat. Perhaps they need to find the old tapes from the archives!
Paul r,
With all due respect, Australia is no longer a first world country.
Australia is rapidly on its way to third world status, with government caused blackouts and bush fires, unstable and resource extraction based export economics.
It is heart breaking to see a people so deceived and misled.
I agree. I hate visiting my homeland now. It just keeps on going backwards!
Thus my last sentence.
You won’t be able to compare heat from a blast furnace in the near future because one ingredient it needs is ….. Coal (Coke). The greens will find a way to ban Coking Coal mining next
A competent government would have allowed utility engineers and professionals to plan and run the power.
Assuming that politicians and parasitic greens have any ability to actually get work done is a fatal error.
People died in the heat, I bet.
Their lives are due to the foolishness of believing climate kooks and climate profiteers.
It’s time to ‘reverse engineer’ these crimes and hold politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the gross mismanagement of the energy portfolio that has led to wrongful deaths and serious harm.
“competent government” ….. is surely an oxymoron.
Anyway, the elected politicians should be “doubly” blamed because of their “political” appointees to decision-making managerial/supervisory positions of various Agencies/Departments that they lack knowledge, education and/or experience in/of.
Politicians typically focused on the easy “bird courses” in the social sciences, and skipped the “tough” courses in science and engineering. Here is a primer:
First, this is the economic solution for intermittent green energy – typically wind and solar power:
1. Build your wind or solar power system and connect it to the grid.
2. Build your back-up system consisting of 100% equivalent capacity in gas turbine generators.
3. Using high explosives, blow your wind or solar power system all to hell.
4. Run your back-up gas turbine generators 24/7.
5. To save even more money, skip steps 1 and 3.
Despite many trillions in squandered subsidies, global green energy has increased from above 1% to below 2% is recent decades. Green energy is not green and provides little useful (dispatchable) energy.
Second, understand that fossil fuels comprise fully 85% of global primary energy, unchanged in decades, and unlikely to change in future decades. Ban fossil fuels and ~everyone in the developed world is dead in a month. The remaining 15% of global primary energy is almost all hydro and nuclear.
Third, the only proved “green” solution for global energy is nuclear, but greens hate nuclear more than they hate fossil fuels.
Fourth, atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life. Look up “C3 photosynthesis” and “CO2 starvation” during ice ages.
Fifth, even if ALL the observed global warming is ascribed to increasing atmospheric CO2, this calculated MAXIMUM climate sensitivity to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric CO2 is only about 1 degree C, which is not nearly enough to produce dangerous global warming (Christy and McNider 2017, Lewis and Curry 2018). Climate computer models use much higher ASSUMED values to create false alarm.
Sixth, atmospheric CO2 trends lag global temperature trends at all measured time scales, from ~9 months in the modern data record on a ~3 year natural cycle to ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a much longer time cycle. Rational observers have noted that the future cannot cause the past. (MacRae 2008 and Humlum et al 2013)
Seventh, CO2 is NOT a major driver of global warming – any warming caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 will be minor and net-beneficial to humanity and the environment.
Eighth, Earth is colder-than-optimum for humanity and the environment. More than 50,000 Excess Winter Deaths occurred in just England and Wales last winter – an Excess Winter Death rate almost three times the per-capita average in the USA. (d’Aleo and MacRae 2015)
Ninth, the continued false warming “adjustments” of the surface temperature record, the fraudulent Mann hockey stick embraced by the IPCC and the Climategate emails all prove the criminal intent of the leaders of the global warming/climate change scam.
Tenth, the IPCC and the leaders of the global warming movement have a perfectly negative predictive track record – every one of their very-scary predictions of runaway catastrophic global warming and more extreme weather have failed to materialize. The ability to correctly predict is the best objective measure of scientific competence, and the warmist cabal have a perfectly negative predictive track record, demonstrated negative competence, and negative personal credibility. Nobody should believe them or their alarmist nonsense..
Eleventh, we published with confidence in 2002 in a written debate with the leftist Pembina Institute:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
Twelfth, we also published with confidence in the same 2002 debate:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Past decades of actual global observations adequately prove that these two statements are correct to date. Since then, many trillions of dollars and millions of lives have been wasted due to false global warming alarmism and green energy nonsense. Competent scientists and engineers have known these facts for decades.
We told you so, 17 years ago.
Regards, Allan MacRae
Excellent reply, thank you for taking the time to write this so well!
The CO2 sensitivity is an emergent property of the models but it is INDUCED by the choice of values other poorly constrained parameters and parametrisation of key variables, like cloud cover, which are not directly calculable from “basic physics”.
Hansen et al 2002 clearly states that you can produce pretty whatever sensitivity you wish by careful selection of parameter values.
Hansen et al 2002
http://apollo.eas.gatech.edu/yhw/publications/hansen_etal_2002.pdf
Best post ever! Keep it up.
They have no sympathy from me. they gave up their right to self defence and that means defence from the government that is working hard to kill them.
I’m trying mightily to understand what you are saying.
Any pointers?
Pointers, Dean? How about trying something like America’s 2nd Amendment.
I had to hand a gun in, during the 96 gun buy back hysteria nonsense. Never register your guns. That is what they do prior to a ban.
I left the country and bought new guns at the Walmart!
What else can we expect of people who measure power in kilowatt-hours and storage capacity in kilowatts? Why not use gallons or knots instead? Even better, use real engineers.
What are South Australians voting for that incompetent zealots remain running the government and making their constituents suffer. Is there a shortage of oxgen in the state?Are there no alternatives?
The government who demolished the old coal powered stations was voted out after the last brownouts.
The new government needs to build reliable power – feral activists and regulations will never let anything new except unreliable renewables.
And with that coal is now considered not “fit for purpose”, only renewables will provide reliable base load generation.
It may be that only renewables are allowed, but they will never provide reliable base generation.
The new lot don’t seem that different…
And some morons have incredible cheek. Tom Koutsantonis says what a brilliant idea it was to buy all those generators after blowing up the coal station. Right, ’cause who doesn’t want to pay $14,000 per MWhr for electricity?
Maybe your Oz politicians are not all that stupid. Maybe their intent is like that of many third-world dictators – get power by appealing to imbeciles, destroy the economy, and live like kings atop a ruined state. Over half the countries in the world fit this description.
Maybe your politicians are trying to Californicate Australia – or more likely turn it into another Venezuela. Seriously, can they all really be that stupid?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/06/claim-judge-kavanaughs-adherence-to-rule-of-law-will-impede-climate-action/#comment-2482376
Here is how modern politics works:
The far-left is winning, especially in the developing world, where over 100 countries are pseudo-Marxist dictatorships, based on their leftist phony rhetoric, but are actually just military dictatorships, run for the ruling elite and their armed thugs – see Zimbabwe and Venezuela… and North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union countries and many more..
The left gains political power by promising imbeciles lots of free stuff. Then they destroy the economy, create widespread poverty and live like kings atop a ruined state – because you can’t be kings without lots of peasants.
It is really no different in the developed world. Get elected by lazy greedy imbeciles, destroy the economy with fake green energy and other crazy policies, and live like kings on top of a ruined economy, looking down on all the peasants.
Why didn’t the Tesla battery stop power cuts?
Hi David,
I do not have details on the Tesla battery but have considered the concept of a grid-scale “Super-Battery” for about a decade. In general, it does not yet (and may never) exist in practical reality.
The key problem with grid-connected wind power is intermittency, and the resulting lack of predictable, dispatchable power that is the primary requirement for grid electricity.
I have heard and read many energy neophytes say that grid-scale storage is the solution – and they act like it actually exists! In practical terms, it does not – except for a few rare cases where pumped storage is feasible – it requires a large water reservoir at the bottom of the hydroelectric dam, as well as at the top – this is rare.
So I would like to announce that I have invented a SOLUTION:
It consists of millions of huge flywheels that are wound up by wind power while the wind blows, and then the power is released back into the grid by tapping power from the rotating flywheels. For longer periods when the wind does not blow, the flywheels are spun by great herds of unicorns, galloping round and round at great speed. Once we have solved the unicorn-supply challenge we are sure to have a green energy winner! [I suppose I must say “Sarc/off for the warmists out there, who tend to believe ANYTHING!]
Here is some history on the super-battery concept:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/10/even-china-cant-jump-start-the-electric-car/#comment-1385247
[excerpt]
Thank you CWP – we’ll see what works – I remain pessimistic about super-batteries.
Years ago I proposed a super-battery that may someday materialize…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/10/polar-sea-ice-changes-are-having-a-net-cooling-effect-on-the-climate/#comment-63388\
[excerpt]
Storage of electricity is much easier said than done.
One interesting idea for electricity storage is a “super battery”, consisting of many plugged-in electric cars. This could be possible in a decade or two.
Regards, Allan
BBC Greens, Grantham “Prof Marting Siegherts Airlines spewing poison in the atmosphere” Gretta – 16 – being peddled by her Mother from Katowice to Davos – Attenborough an existential threats – Nancy Pelosi “climate change is an existential threat” just before she and hundreds of democrats embark on 7 day side seeing tour of Europe. During her last term she claimed $2 million expenses for flights and $104,000 for booze and more for entertaining. I continue to complain to the BBC despite them trying to shut me down with this:
CAS-3837243
Dear Mr Wells,
I am responsible within BBC Audience Services for the complaints service provided by our contact centre. I have been reviewing the history of your complaints to the BBC.
I apologise for the formality of this email but I have decided that the BBC Trust’s Expedited Complaints Procedure should apply to your complaints from today. In order for this to happen I need to provide you with certain information according to the protocol laid down by the BBC Trust.
The BBC Executive and the Trust may use this Procedure only where a complainant has a history of persistently or repeatedly making complaints which fall into one of the following categories:
(a) are trivial, misconceived, hypothetical, repetitious or otherwise vexatious;
(b) fail to raise an issue of breach of any relevant Guidelines or Policies (eg in the case of an editorial complaint, the Editorial Guidelines; in the case of a fair trading complaint, the Fair Trading Policies and Framework);
(c) use gratuitously abusive or offensive language;
(d) are shown on investigation to have no reasonable prospect of success; or
(e) after rejection of the complaint at an earlier stage (eg Stage 1), are persistently and repeatedly appealed unsuccessfully to the next stage (eg Stage 2).
I believe that your complaints fall into category (a) in that they are repetitious and misconceived, and also categories (b) and (d). In order to apply the Expedited Complaints Procedure, I am required to follow the notification requirements laid down by the BBC Trust:
1. I am providing you with a link to the copy of the General Complaints and Appeals Procedure, which contains detail of the Expedited Complaints Procedure (in Annex2 ):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/governance/complaints_framework/general.html
2. I have decided to apply this Procedure because of the volume of your complaints and the consequent demands they make on the time of complaints advisers when most of them have not suggested breaches of BBC guidelines:
(i) In January 2016 our records show you made 13 complaints, 12 in February and a further 6 since then. Over 140 have been made in your name since 2011.
(ii) Many of the complaints are comments or views and mostly about climate change, also with some other issues, but to which we have previously provided replies and some of which were subsequently escalated;
(iii) Most have not suggested a breach of the BBC’s published standards, or a significant issue of general importance which might justify further investigation, and have not been successful on escalation.
3. I intend to apply the Procedure from today to 15 June 2018.
4. You may appeal against this decision. If you wish to do so you should contact the BBC Trust within 20 working days of receiving this reply. Details are in the Expedited Procedure to which I have provided a link above.
I should explain that if a future complaint from you falls into any of the categories (a) (b) (c) (d) or (e) the complaint will not be acknowledged and so may be rejected without notifying you or providing any reasons. If on the other hand it does not fall into these categories and suggests a possible breach of any relevant Guidelines or Policies, the complaint will be investigated in accordance with the Complaints Procedure that applies.
I’m aware that you may still have complaints to which the BBC may not yet have replied. The BBC will of course answer those and other complaints submitted before the date this Expedited Complaints Procedure was applied.
Yours sincerely,
Keith Jones,
Head of Communications and Complaints,
BBC Audience Services.
So I have started again:
Complaint Summary: Infantalism Scientific Illiteracy Child and Abuse
Full Complaint: Sir David Attenborough and Gretta. All BBC FOI Request. Please identify the calculations and data used to arrive at the assumption that 8,000ths of 1% rise in atmospheric Co2 over 200 years (1 part in 10,000) poses an existential threat to civilisation, humanity, the planet, wildlife, the universe, the sun the moon and the stars? Because the numbers don’t fit. The planet emitted 100 trillion tons of Co2 between 2000 and 2010. Lower tropospheric – where the greenhouse effect happens – temperature plateaued for 18 years and 9 months acknowledged by the IPCC as the pause or hiatus. And UAH lower tropospheric data reveals a 0.2C rise since 1980. Attenborough said at COP in Poland we have 12 years to avoid disaster but in 2017/2018 the BBC said we had 24 hours to save the planet. If 100 trillion tons of Co2 in one decade failed to kill us off how come extra 0.6 trillion tons in 12 years will? Thought I would ask because you would imagine that 100 trillion tons – if the BBC is correct – would be deadlier than a measly 0.6 trillion tons. Sir David Attenborough must know? But why would he care when he is on the record for saying “humans are a plague for the planet” Not Co2 putting Gretta at risk its Attenborough’s anti human narrative after he’s got our money. Does the BBC endorse his sentiment? I thought the BBC wanted more people to pay the license fee not less to support Attenborough’s fossil fuelled travel program making. Sorry he’s off to Netflix now. file:///K:/MyDocsI/MyDocsBackup/PDonEasterbrook/CO2_past-climate-chg-lessons.pdf file:///K:/MyDocsI/MyDocsBackup/PDonEasterbrook/CO2_past-century.pdf file:///K:/MyDocsI/MyDocsBackup/PDonEasterbrook/CO2_atmospheric-carbon-dioxide.pdf file:///K:/MyDocsI/MyDocsBackup/PDonEasterbrook/2016_Ev_Based_Climate_Sci_Chap14_Cause_of_Global_Climate_Chg_dje.pdf file:///K:/MyDocsI/MyDocsBackup/PDonEasterbrook/greenland-ice-core.pdf
Complaint Summary: Offensive innaccurate prevaricating dishonesty
Full Complaint: BBC News@10pm 220119 Lyse Doucet Mali 1.5X’ Climate Change Atmospheric Co2 increased by 1 part in 10,000 or 8,000ths of 1% over last 200 years. That is 8,000ths of 1% of 0.0283%. Planet warmed at same rate between 1910&1940 as it did between 1970&2000. 1910to1940 was at preindustrial 283ppm. China’s industrial revolution Co2 increased from 1945 which had no effect on cooling from 1940 to 1970. Planet warmed from 1970 to 2000. From 2000 to 2010 planet emitted 100 trillion tons of Co2 nearly 1 3rd of all Co2 ever emitted. Temperature plateaued from 1998 for 18 years and 9 months. UAH lower tropospheric satellite data reveals a 0.2C rise in temperature since 1980 which is cancelled out by a 0.2C margin for error therefore no statistically significant warming for 38 years. Greenhouse effect happens within the lower troposphere. Laurentide glaciation 11,000 yrs ago LIA 1300to1900. Holocene 9,000 yrs ago average temp 6C warmer than today. Roman Minoan MWP minimum 2.5C warmer than today Co2 283ppm. Mali 65% desert/semi desert. Cultivated Sudanese, Semi Desert Sahelian Saharan Desert Zone. FOI Request. Identify source of 1.5 X’s what temperature, specific data needed. Identify specific detailed relationship between an 8,000ths of 1% of 283ppm rise in atmospheric Co2 and its purported effect on Mali, identify specific changes. UAH temperature data for Ethiopia inconsistent with speculation about Mali. But is consistent with a rise of 0.2C since 1980 cancelled by 0.2C margin for error. By time I receive a fallacious reply I will have downloaded specific UAH temperature data for Mali. http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSVkSCN_hLQ https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=you+tube+dr+patrick+michaels&view=detail&mid=F9F991226890A8BEA6EEF9F991226890A8BEA6EE&FORM=VIRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYKggC5VOzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg_2fJImqac
Complaint Summary: Offensive innacurate prevaricating dishonesty
Full Complaint: News@1 240119 17.28. Roger Harrabin Barents Sea being swallowed by Atlantic, less sea ice in 12,000 years. Barents Sea will disappear within 1 decade. Atmospheric Co2 increased by 1 part in 10,000 or 8,000ths of 1% over last 200 years. That is 8,000ths of 1% of 0.0283%. Planet warmed at same rate between 1910&1940 as it did between 1970&2000. 1910to1940 was at preindustrial 283ppm. China’s industrial revolution Co2 increased from 1945 which had no effect on cooling from 1940 to 1970. Planet warmed from 1970 to 2000. From 2000 to 2010 planet emitted 100 trillion tons of Co2 nearly 1 3rd of all Co2 ever emitted. Temperature plateaued from 1998 for 18 years and 9 months. UAH lower tropospheric satellite data reveals a 0.2C rise in temperature since 1980 which is cancelled out by a 0.2C margin for error therefore no statistically significant warming for 38 years. The greenhouse effect happens within the lower troposphere not at ground zero. 50 million years ago both poles and the whole planet was ice free. Laurentide glaciation 11,000 yrs ago LIA 1300to1900. Holocene 9,000 yrs ago average temp 6C warmer than today. Roman Minoa MWP minimum 2.5C warmer than today Co2 283ppm. USS Skate ice free North Pole 1958 during global cooling https://www.ihatethemedia.com/photo-north-pole-submarine FOI request. Identify specific relationship between an 8,000ths of 1% rise in atmospheric Co2 and its effect on the Barents sea. Identify how 0.2C of lower tropospheric warming – at worst – has affected the behaviour of the Barents sea and the Atlantic ocean. Provide full detailed calculations/equations. UAH AMSU data here: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSVkSCN_hLQ https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=you+tube+dr+patrick+michaels&view=detail&mid=F9F991226890A8BEA6EEF9F991226890A8BEA6EE&FORM=VIRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYKggC5VOzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg_2fJImqac
———-
Hello Allan,
I appreciate the many great posts you’ve made regarding this article and many others at WUWT.
Please allow me add the following with regard to home electrical energy storage and how it can result potentially in the waste of an extraordinary amount of electrical energy, with environmental consequences. Please note that the concept of using electrical vehicle batteries for storage of electricity that can be returned to the grid is fundamentally no different than standalone home storage batteries because both have storage voltages much higher than the normal residential voltages (e.g., 120/240 VAC in the US).
Batteries sized to supply an appreciable part of a residential home’s typical average demand (in the US, about 867 kWh per month averaged over a year; see https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 ), will become one of mankind’s biggest wasters of electrical energy.
The reasons for this are:
1) If charged from a home PV solar system, there is an electrical conversion inefficiency associated with changing the total solar output voltage (typically, about 17 vdc peak per solar panel, and 600 vdc max allowable per series-connected group of panels, determined at maximum cold conditions) to the input voltage required for the storage battery. If the battery was being trickle-charged, we might hope to achieve 95% conversion efficiency in the DC-DC converter, but since it will be charged at relatively high currents during peak daylight hours there will be higher ohmic losses and we can more realistically expect conversion efficiencies in the 90-92% range . . . let’s use 91% efficiency here.
2) If charged from the grid, say during the night with supposedly cheaper, off-peak electricity prices, there will still be an AC-DC inverter loss from charging the storage battery (DC) using grid AC. The best AC-DC inverters have about 97% conversion efficiency, so let’s just use that.
3) But wait . . . getting the storage battery charged is only half the story . . . one will want to use the electrical energy stored in the battery. So, on the output side we will need a high-power DC-AC converter, with a typical conversion efficiency of around 95%.
4) But the battery itself is not 100% efficient in outputting the energy that is fed into it for storage: chemical process inefficiencies and internal ohmic (self-heating) losses mean that only 80-90% of the input energy can be recovered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery ). So, let’s be very optimistic and say that we lose only 10% of the stored energy here (i.e., 90% storage efficiency) by using only the best battery type.
5) Still not done. These relatively large, high power batteries need thermal management sensing and control systems, as well as safety systems (e.g., to lock out cells that might fail in an electrically-shorted manner), to perform reliably across the range of operational temperatures they may experience. This will involve parasitic losses of around 1% for low- and high-temperature extreme environments, so let’s assign an average 99% efficiency for this.
6) And finally, we need to account for the fact that lithium-ion batteries, like all other chemical-based electrical energy storage batteries, have self-discharge (aka “leakage”) rates. The previously-referenced Wikipedia article gives a value for this factor of 2% per month for lithium ion batteries.
So, using the above efficiencies, we can estimate the total losses that home storage battery use might involve on a monthly basis:
For a storage battery based on charging from a home PV system: 0.91*0.95*0.90*0.99*0.98 = 0.755
For a storage battery based on charging from the grid: 0.97*0.95*0.90*0.99*0.98 = 0.805
Thus, somewhere between 20 and 25% of the total energy input into the home battery storage system will be lost each month. If the US average home’s 867 kWh per month all passed through the storage battery, that will represent dumping the heat equivalent of 5.7 to 7.1 kW into the environment each and every day (equivalent to leaving 60 to 70 100-watt light bulbs on continuously!). Even if the home battery storage system only provided 10% of the monthly electricity usage, we’re still talking about dumping 600 to 700 watts of waste heat into the environment each and every day for each and every house using such a system.
So now let’s talk about global warming!
Thank you Gordon Dressler – a worthwhile post.
Conversion losses are unknown to politicians. We recently wasted billions on two DC transmission lines here in Alberta.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/19/doe-secretary-rick-perry-resiliency-pricing-rule-for-coal-fired-and-nuclear-power-plants/#comment-2185775
Here in Alberta the cost of generating natural gas-fired or coal-fired power is about 2-4 cents/KWh.
Then this cost ~QUADRUPLES due to the way our idiot politicians have mismanaged the costs of Transmission, Distribution and Administration. Costs also increase due to the addition of unreliable, non-dispatchable wind power.
Alberta recently added a new $2 billion DC transmission line that actually has higher (AC-DC-AC Conversion + Line) losses than the old AC system, because the AC-DC-AC conversion losses are about 5%, much higher than the line losses of the old AC lines (which obviously require no AC-DC-AC conversion).
They had to take power off the old AC lines and put it on the new DC line – otherwise the new DC line would have run at less than 10% of capacity.
The math IS that simple, but clearly too much for our Alberta politicians.
Warren Buffet owns the new DC line and gets a guaranteed utility rate-of-return from this nonsense.
Preliminary Scoping and Engineering was apparently done by Phoebe Buffet.
Renewable logic on a global scale: Why not use Earth as a giant storage battery. From 10s of thousands of miles from Earth you can see that the North pole is ‘up’ and the South Pole is ‘down’. If we put in a huge pipe or pipes (granted this would be costly), we could pump water from the South Pole to the North Pole in times of excess wind and P.V. Solar energy, and let gravity power huge generators with water from the North Pole to refill the voids at the South Pole in times of power needs. Alternative to pipes, we could build a huge damn with gates, around the world at the equator, and pump or release water from each hemisphere as power needs shift.
Hope I don’t need to put certain disclaimer on this… 🙂
Plus an enormous (and non-existent) battery!
Allan – on ‘pumped storage’ being the only way (albeit with HUGE losses) to store grid-scale electricity. It also doesn’t work during a DROUGHT, ‘cos there isn’t enough flow in the river(s) supplying the lower dam to be there to be pumped! South Africa found this out a couple of years ago, when the Sterkfontein system in the Drakensberg mountains couldn’t work. The river Tugela, which supplies the lower dam, was down to a trickle, and couldn’t be used for storage, because what there was was needed for agriculture. I think “Power or food” may very well be a choice for future governments…
Thank you Russ Wood for your comment re the drought that shut down the Sterkfontein pumped-storage system in South Africa. Alberta is a large province, 662,000 sq. km in area, larger than many countries, and we have exactly ZERO sites suitable for pumped storage – we have no sites suitable for hydro dams with a large reservoir at the bottom.
Tesla battery stop power cuts?
==========
Because electricity is not a fuel. It is a transmission method. So while you can store oil, coal, gas, hydro, nuclear; it is very difficult to store electricity.
Typically you need to convert electricity into something else before you can store it.
“Maybe your politicians are trying to Californicate Australia – or more likely turn it into another Venezuela. Seriously, can they all really be that stupid?”
If a politician’s only focus is stealing money and power from the peons, then we shouldn’t expect them to focus on infrastructure. They are too busy with other, personal things to worry about electricity.
The real problem is there are too many clueless voters who put these incompetent politicians in Office.
The Leftwing Media creates many of these clueless people by creating false realities that cause the voters to vote against their own interests, thinking they are doing just the opposite, because they have been duped by the Leftwing Media.
Attacking the Leftwing Media Propaganda Machine and exposing it for what it is, might go a long way towards waking clueless people up to reality.
Trump is leading the way in this effort.
Crank up those green Diesel Generators.
Why didn’t Elon’s battery save them??????
nankerpledge – “Elon’s battery” (or any conceivable current battery) is really only capable of short term smoothing: to maintain voltage and frequency when everyone switches on their electric kettles at half time, or a plough wind carves through a big wind farm. Time shifting because of lack of capacity (storing today’s wind farm output for use tomorrow when the wind doesn’t blow) would take more than the world’s annual output of cells.
As an engineer I think wind energy is fine for some purposes such as driving irrigation pumps where variable output is OK, but for grid-scale power generation is a huge mistake as well as being an eyesore.
… and a birdsore
John Hardy – good comment.
Elon’s battery is like the maiden’s complaint – it’s too small!
Nicely written John. I’m an engineer myself and funnily enough the only other engineers I know that think renewables are the answer are those that work for renewable companies.
How inconvenient is that?
I have no sympathy for those without power that voted for the clowns that bought into the cagw myth and foisted unreliable energy generation upon them. I do have sympathy for those that neither voted for those responsible nor asked for a grid reliant on renewables.
Sorry but I reserve my sympathy for those who believed in this crap,those who didn’t made preparations!
What about the ones that cannot afford “to make preperations”?
If humans suffer it doesn’t count.
Grow a blow-hole.
Al Gore already has.
Al Gore isn’t human, he’s an enlightened anthrophobe who has risen above it all.
BS usually floats to the top.
Enlightened anthrophobes all have well-developed blow-holes for that reason.
Actually, WXcycles, bureaucracies (including all government agencies) are like septic tanks; the really big chunks float to the top.
It’s the scum that floats the top.
And I’ve met many of them, Crispin, in my long and varied career. The customers (of any stripe) don’t matter to them, only looking good to higher-level scum. Woe be it upon any worker that fails to make their “superior” look good in the eyes of the top-level scum.
Most inhabitants of South Australia including those in Adelaide live on the edge of a large desert and the resulting high temperatures in summer eventually boil their brains and affect their judgement in many matters. A large number of German migrants at an early stage of the State’s development also contributed a tendency to arrogance, self-righteousness and blinkered vision. A zealous proclivity for unreliable ‘renewables’ is the latest evidence for this.
On the plus side South Australia, unlike the rest of what eventually became the Australia with Federation in 1901, was not settled with – and let’s use the correct technical word here – Convict Scum.
So while South Australians may have evolved to eat nothing by Frog Cakes and show occasional bouts of well meaning gullibility, you rarely get the irrational ‘My Great Great Great Grand Cousin was sent here Against His Will(tm)’ chip on the shoulder defect that makes them cheat, lie, and steal in a deranged attempt to make up for the past injustice of having family members who once cheated, lied and stole.
South Australians are the best Australians… except for Sarah Sea Patrol, but, ummm… bell curves.
Honest.
Not the one who cause the biggest banking computer “glitch” in 2012…and then ran away dumping the problem on his teammate, me.
To all the aussies my condolences. But growing up in Westchester County NY in the mid 50s we had no a/c and made it through the day and night. Going to bed with the house at 95 was a given. You can do it. We didn’t have a/c, but we did have lights. This is a preview of the warmists future.
Ditto in Nigeria (3yrs in Geological Survey of N) and in Benin, Togo, Tanzania. Hey even Winnipeg in July from late 1930s to early 60s where we could usually count on hitting 100°+F.
Yep. Grew up in Atlanta in the 1950s. No AC. Temps in the 90s, humidity something like 80%.
I remember visiting relatives in New Orleans during that time, though, and it was even worse there. Very high humidity. Air was so thick and heavy it felt like you could swim in it. You had thd choice between opening a window and being eaten by mosquitoes, or closing the window and suffering heat stroke.
My father worked in an office for a time in Washington, DC, before AC. For those who do not know, that city was built in a swamp. Work came to a halt from two to four in the afternoon. It was just too difficult to work with paper when sweat was streaming down your arms and hands.
The industrialized world will be in for a shock if those conditions come back, especially since most office building windows can no longer be opened.
If they were opened it would let in the mosquitoes. But the open windows might force the top-level scum to ooze out!
Used to see people sleep on the roof & out on balconies in many hot places around the world. String hammocks, rope beds & straw mats were common in some of those places as well.
Mosquitos are a complication in some places, since a decrease in core body temperature is conducive to sleep mean covering up against bites gets tricky. By the way, in cool enough situations Cornell University determined the best strategy was to sleep with 1 foot uncovered to allow body temperature compensation.
I grew up in rural Scotland without electricity or mains gas, so heating was by open fires and a Rayburn cooker/range. I now live in rural France and we get a mid thirties heat wave most summers, not sleeping due to heat is a minor problem compared to keeping warm 24/7 for several weeks.
I use the one-foot strategy because my wife needs heavy bed covers.
It’s coal wot dunnit!
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/breakfast-bbqs-advised-for-australia-day-with-heatwave-set-to-peak-above-40-20190125-p50tq4.html
A politician blasts grid operators for the situation that politicians created.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/blackout-ahead-for-130-000-homes-as-power-system-falters-20190125-p50tn7.html
Just read some of the comments. Australians are convinced coal created this summer heat.
So they should demand that Australia quit selling coal to China. Then they will get to experience both the heat and poverty.
To Patrick, no we are not believers in Australia. The exact same sociopathic vermin that infests all countries in this enlightened age also infests Australia…and so what you will read in the media does not represent reality.
I know many people from many walks of life and very few are believers, and the ones that are cannot argue their point of view past, “97% of all scientists…don’t you think we should give the planet the benefit of the doubt? Blah fucking NPC blah”
We are under siege by the bureaucrats and socialists and almost completely without representation in either the media or the Parliament.
When someone finally comes along and says, we will build ample power stations to have cheap and reliable power for our citizens and industries…they will get about 70% of the vote. They don’t do this because they are cowards and the insane bureaucracy tell them otherwise…Mikael Palins crazy film “Brazil” about a dystopian nightmare of a future where the bureaucrats run everything is beginning to look like a work of non-fictitious prediction.
I do understand comments, especially at the SMH, are heavily moderated and what I see is pro-alarmist posts are approved almost instantly. You will see many posties who clearly are paid (Such as “Concerned Voter” IMO) to post and you can see that their posts are cut and pastes because they contain the exact spelling mistakes in previous posts such as spelling CO2 as C02.
BP just ran a commercial on Fox News Channel showing a windmill slowing to a stop, and then the announcer says, “in the off chance the wind ever stops blowing here (a picture of a kite falling to the ground is shown), the lights can keep on shining thanks to our natural gas.”
Sounds like South Austrailia needs some of that BP natural gas.
In SA with their worlds biggest battery, they use diesel backup.
Germany in the next 7 days may experience something similar, but with extreme cold unless some serious importing of electricity from France happens.
The power grid in the NE US is going to be severely strained in the next 7 days by cold. You can bet the coal fired plants in the Eastern US will be cranked to Full Power… and you won’t hear a peep out the useful idiots any Democrat Socialist governors of any of those eastern US states about how coal is saving their political arses.
But in few more years, after more coal fired plants in the US shutter, and a few more nuclear plants go into mothballs… The spot market electricity suppliers with their modern CCGT and fracked Marcellus natural gas will be killin’ it on the profit side as desperate electricity companies and their regulators will have to push massive rate increases to their customers. All by design from the Left.
“The power grid in the NE US is going to be severely strained in the next 7 days by cold. You can bet the coal fired plants in the Eastern US will be cranked to Full Power… and you won’t hear a peep out the useful idiots any Democrat Socialist governors of any of those eastern US states about how coal is saving their political arses.”
It will be interesting to see how the windmills and solar farms fare in the extreme weather that is going to hit the central and northeast U.S. Rep. Ocasion wants the U.S. totally dependent for our electricity on windmills and solar farms in her new Green plan. The next few weeks ought to give us a real-world example of how that would work out. Pay attention, Rep. Ocasio.
New (as of January 3, 2019) US Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a naive, pompous, witless, 29-year old former bartender that has offered up her died-in-the-wool-socialist Green New Deal (GND) plan to extract both money and liberties from US citizens under the meme of “fighting climate change.”
And please don’t ask me how I really feel about her.
Uhhh, sorry, that should have been “dyed-in-the-wool-socialist” . . . although my misspelling does have some appeal.
heat
kitchen
leave.
Love renewables or leave? No! Vote.u
It’s been warmer before and folks didn’t have electricity. No problem. Humans adapt
Is that a good enough excuse to stop them having electricity now in order to prevent it getting warmer? And if it was warmer before and we adapted why are we so desperate to stop it getting warmer now?
I think your brain has slipped a cog this morning, Steven. You just undermined the entire green rationale for fighting climate change!
Yes it has. However we are told by the BoM it’s been the hottest since records began. Some of those records began as late as 1959, at an airport.
yeah..amazing how the lost so many priors isnt it?
or have them but seem to manage to forget or gloss over the 30s especially
But what were the mortality rates when “everyone coped” with the heat before and why would you want to if you do not have to?
There was a report recently that a temperature record was broken by 0.1c. I can’t recall where, the record was set in 1939 though and it was xx.1c, and was broken recently by 0.1c, to xx.2c. I asked what device recorded that xx.1c temp in 1939? Where? By whom?
Crickets chirping…
But in 2019 it’s a record xx.2c!!!
Turn off your AC forever Mosher and none in the car either.
AC has two benefits, it controls temperature and more importantly humidity. The air is first dehumidified and then cooled or heated.
“Steven Mosher January 26, 2019 at 2:01 am
It’s been warmer before and folks didn’t have electricity. No problem. Humans adapt”
And if they don’t they die, eh Mosher? Or are you going to argue with Darwin.
There you have the “compassion” of the left. A guy that has been pushing the global warming meme for decades. Then it gets hot somewhere and he argues against the need for A/C for ANYBODY! That is, anyone but himself and his computer of course.
So let’s drain the Hetch Hetchey that SF depends on for its great water and power.
And then let’s see how long SF lasts.
And let’s make certain no gas or coal power or especially nuke power taints the Bay Area’s delicate self declared virtue.
Humans adapted by inventing electricity and air conditioning, which not only makes heat waves more comfortable, it makes them more dangerous. No one is claiming that unreliable power generation will kill the species off, it’s the hysterical alarmists that somehow think higher temperatures are an existential threat. But it’s perfectly reasonable to point out that power outages can and do kill people, and that this particular power outage could have been avoidable simply by retaining more reliable base load electricity generation. Why wasn’t it? Because virtue-signaling politicians are demonizing coal over an insignificant forcing from Australian power plants.
People also used to die in droves during heat waves. Then again, you guys want there to be fewer humans.
Mosher was hoping for this kind of response, that’s why he does these drive-bys.
The truth bothers you so much?
People survived without modern medicine, so obviously we can get rid of all the medical advances of the last 200 years.
It’s been warmer before and folks didn’t have electricity. No problem. Humans adapt
OK. Then what’s the supposed problem w/CO2? Creating too much food that supports overpopulation?
Yes, Mr. Mosher. Humans adapted by inventing electric power grids and air conditioning. We might even imagine back to when we came up with innovations like animal skins and fire for when it gets cold. Now, please go back to your Wandering in the Weeds.
My only solace in this CAGW farce is that humans won’t sit around and suffer for long. Hugely expensive and unreliable energy sources will fall by the wayside.
+100
We adopted by making things more comfortable and affordable.
Climatocracy hates that.
Think harder
renewables
high consumer costs
politicians
heat.
Send your mother there.
Clipper ships from Melbourne to Launceston carrying foodstuffs?
Once again, steve demonstrates how much the left loves humanity.
“Without fossil fuel large areas of inland and northern Australia will become uninhabitable.” Away from the Coral Sea coast, habitation by Europeans is already scant and has always been so.
CO2 cultists cause a catastrophe, then blame the victims!
And the other cultists whine about the truth being told.
Most coal powered plants require urgent updating.
The war on coal regulations and other government environmental laws make the cost of upgrades prohibitive – if a license to upgrade is ever granted.
There is enough cheap accessible coal in the Victorian state of Australia to last 500 years even given population and demand increase.
The SA govn’t, as I am sure you know, increased royalties on coal that simply made it uneconomical to update/maintain coal plants, so owners simply blew them up. The French company Engie owns 75% of Hazzelwood in Victoria which is going to be shutdown. Decision made in Paris.
It’s time to bring back dependable coal power plants. They operate 24/7 providing the electricity you need to live the lifestyles you are accustomed too. They are not dependent upon the sun or clouds, or on if the wind will blow or not!
Technology is changing. Coal power plants can operate even cleaner than natural gas power plants. With a few technology upgrades coal power plant can greatly improve their profitability.
Coal power plants can become a benefit to the local community by creating new full time jobs. Coal exhaust is no longer considered to be a waste.
Waste Is Not Waste If It Has A Purpose, and Sidel has given a purpose to combusted coal exhaust.
According to reports, at least 3 coal burners were out of action due to “tube leaks”. No further description was given.
Why is it that every time we talk about coal, Sid shows up to pump his latest investment scheme?
Can’t post the graph only, so here is the link. Look at the electricity price hockey-stick since the Golubles Warming hysteria started… basically siphoning huge amount of money out of middle-class working people. That money is not stay in the local economy. The destruction of the West by redistributing wealth is under way.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/why-your-grocery-prices-are-going-up-but-youre-not-getting-any-more-in-your-trolley/news-story/f728d7b58e90244e7c62e8bd79bb2ea0
Here:
Wow. I feel really bad for the Aussies that have to pay those electricity prices. But then, you elected the fools that gave you those electricity prices while you ship most of your coal and LNG to China.
We practically pay China to take LNG from Australia. Recently politicians started worrying about on-shore reserves FOR Australia. Well, it is a federal election year, a few months away. Energy costs and supply reliability will be the number one vote winner. My view is we will have a hung parliament where minority power (Pun intended) will go to The Greens and Labor party (ALP) will form Govn’t. If that happens Australia, power wise, will be doomed. The ALP have stated a target of 50% renewables country wide. They have to be careful because Australia, at this time, is simply a housing economy, with so much debt people think it won’t end. After changes in banking and loans house prices have been falling like a stone.
“We practically pay China to take LNG from Australia.”
Hardly. Export markets pay enough that suppliers sell to them in preference to local users. It is just normal market functioning. No-one forces gas suppliers to sell for export. They just make more money doing that.
Last time I read info about LNG exports it is sold to China at about AU$4 p/tonne. I say that’s giving it away in my book.
we pay around 90c a litre for LPG
tell me how in hell does the pittance per litres of the sale price to china come close to that?
remember the huge push to get cars buses and trucks etc to LPG cos it was cheap?
then they hiked the prices by triple!
then they still pushed it and offerend a 1k subsidy to convert
so the conversion cost rose from 1500 to 2,500 overnight.
if youve even been at a bus stop or behind a LPG gas vehicle the stench is enough to make you ill. Im staying with petrol./diesel if i could afford the repairs on one.
Hardly. Export markets pay enough that suppliers sell to them in preference to local users.
==≠==
Nope. Local markets are captive markets. They almost always pay the highest price. The surplus gets dumped offshore at fire sale prices due to international competition.
Hardly Mr Stokes. We started giving away the gas to China many years ago. They can’t now get out of the deal without a massive over-reaction from China. The war in the Pacific started over the US curtailing oil to Japan. Does anyone else see the similarities? Bring some more gum drops Harry!
According to this article
https://www.lngworldnews.com/australian-lng-export-value-to-hit-a50-bln-in-fy18-19/
it’s A$50bn for just under 80 million tonnes, or about A$625/tonne. 1 tonne LNG is about 14.4MWh, so that’s about A$43/MWh.
China is nowhere near virtuous enough to use wind and solar yet.
One day they too will get a Halo and become special.
‘Gullibles Warming’ …. sorry, thick finger typing 🙁
We need to shift our energy consumption to when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. It’s a small price to pay for climate salvation.
And what do you do when the sun isn’t shining or the wind not blowing, pray tell?
Inverter to run a fan from the home battery bank & a battery charger for when power back on to recharge the batteries.
Batteries are impractical due to cost, performance and cycle life.
Consider an RV out camping. They rarely use batteries and inverters. Almost always it is a small gasoline genset.
I used inverters & series of 6 volt rechargeable batteries for years in a hot tropical country for years. We regularly experienced grid power outages for 12, or more hours daily.
The trick was to prioritize using own power & not open fridge unnecessarily. I am aware this is not a way to power air conditioning & modern living appliance loads.
As for energy efficiency: true there is “waste”, but for independent (self-interest) back-up my set-up worked OK – except when local power was off for 2 days. Strategy was involved: I always assumed the worst & drew from batteries as infrequently as rational to run what I felt needed (subjective decisions).
I have a hard time believing that almost every modern city dweller in a developed country (ex: Australia) could not afford a small inverter/charger , wires, terminals, amperage rated deep cycle 6 V batteries (2), a small electrical fan & low watt bulbs. Of course a purchasing plan for assembling a back-up (could even be no inverter from 12 volt batteries, but just a charger & deep cycle batteries to run 12 volt light bulbs & 12 volt clip on fans) might strap them for a month,or 2, on funds for their cell phone plan or food calories.
Many could afford it, but why should they have to?
“gringojay January 26, 2019 at 9:50 am”
We can afford the items you mention however, to have them installed would have to be done by an licensed installer, if you want to maintain your building and contents insurance in case of fire. Also, if you don’t own the property you would need to seek approval for an installation. If you live in a block of apartments, you would need all kinds of other insurances, permission from the owner, the body corporation and the strata manager. Of course, that is if you follow the rules.
An inverter/charger combo need not be wired into housing circuit just to run pedestal (table) fan & a might light; it’s not big (fans don’t require many watts). The 2 deep cycle 6 volt batteries aren’t going to spontaneously explode placed someplace logical that doesn’t require a long run of + & – “cables” (limit amperage drop) connecting the inverter/charger; current going out from inverter to fan can snake around by regular (flexible, 2 strand) electric wire.
The whole array is movable (keep batteries off the floor surface by setting on something, like wood) & can be carried inside in 3-4 trips by any adult. It does not involve modification to existing electrical installation.
As for “why should they have to?”. I like to think nobody in a developed country would need to have back-up power — but apparently some of those in Australia “could” have. In the case of households with geriatric/infirm members it might actually be desirable to have at least a few hours of basic back-up power to help transitioning to new plan of copeing.
And a big generator because you can’t run batteries for long.
Yeah, manufacturers will love that. Know what happens when a steel plant loses power?
And only a few thousands of people will die during the night when a heat wave hits and the air is calm, and during winter blizzards when turbines can’t operate and there is little sun.
You need power most when conditions are bad, and renewables fail under bad conditions.
When the big power outage happened in SA, the aluminium smelter lost a pot.
It was ball-bouncing sarcasm, jtom.
I’ll wait for some fact checking…..tens of thousands is only a neighborhood in Chicago.
Just saying….
The key fact is right there in the linked report:
““We had enough electricity in South Australia to meet our needs. It was close but we had enough,” Mr Van Holst Pellekaan said.”
The outages were due to transmission failures, mainly transgormers. These would have been the same whether using coal or renewables.
While you are correct, coal is being blamed for the outages.
Patrick MJD said:
“While you are correct, cola is being blamed for the outages”
Well, the “green” electricity grid is being blamed by Mr Worrall.
Whatever a “green” grid is suppose to be, and as if we never had such failures in the past on extremely hot days.
I mean, what are we talking about?
Green transformers?
Green power lines?
Green coal power plants?
Aren’t they the bits that failed? Do we demand 100% backup for coal plants? Isn’t requirement a claimed problem with wind and solar?
Anyway, the government flogged off all the assets, so the power companies do whatever they think will make them the most money. That’s how the free market is suppose to work isn’t it?
And almost all the power generated was due to fossil fuels. In the deepest part of the heat wave solar was nil as was wind.
How many transformers failed due to brown out, caused by inadequate supply?
What caused perfectly good transformers that had been working for years to suddenly decide to fail all at the same time?
Nick, you have no idea of what your are spouting off about.
After a career in power systems, I tell you that a system that has to operate at the margin is a disaster.
All of you arm-chair electric power “experts” can just stuff it! Anybody that listens to you and your dancing politicians deserve what you get. Its just too bad that the rest of us have to suffer for your ideology.
And there must be contingency plans for “transgormers” failure.
Yes – Johannesburg had a transformer failure 18 months ago, and tried to switch to the backup – but couldn’t as a result of the cables to it having been stolen. And this particular transformer was specifically for the mains water supply pumps to JHB. So – for 48 hours, once the water towers ran dry, a large part of Johannesburg was without water.
The lesson that keeps on giving, to the politicians who are not learning. Anybody from Australia tell me: I pay, on a monthly average, anywhere from $0.09 to $0.12 US per kW/hour for my electricity. How much do you pay? If I may politely ask, as I await the ladies’ final at the Australian Open early Saturday morning. Just to see. If you can, please convert from AUS$ too.
My rate is 28.52c/kWh (~US0.20c) PLUS a supply charge of 83.39c/Day (~US0.60c).
That rate is for New South Wales.
From my bill paid just 12 days ago it states my average domestic daily usage is 6.03kWh, at an average daily cost of $1.84 AUD or:
$1.84/6.03 = $0.30 kWh AUD
Converted to current USD at current rate of $1 AUD = $0.71807 USD
0.30*0.71807 = 21.9 cents USD per kWh
That’s in North Queensland where electricity is comparatively ‘cheap’. What it costs per kWh in SA or Victoria over the last billing cycle others can add.
I was a close observer of the recent power grid debacle in Victoria and the minor problems experienced in SA. The power losses in SA were due to transformers in the city overheating and failing. It was not due to a failure in the power grid system itself. But if you were lucky enough to watch the power grid in operation in SA using the NEM and AEMO sites you found yourself drawn to watching little lines go up and down. It was fascinating to see how close SA came to a shutdown. Towards the 7 to 9 pm mark, the wind was down to less than 3 % contribution and total solar was at zero. You could see that all other forms of power contributions were at max as the chart lines were horizontal and did not come off horizontal until 9 pm. SA had all its diesel generators up and running, all its OCGT’s and all its CCGT’s as well as gas steam generators. Not much coming from the interconnector. And the price prediction for this event was $14,500/mwh. And for six hours the price on the AEMO site was $14,500/mwh.
I live in a southern suburb of Adelaide and I estimate that our household electricity bill will have an additional $150 added to it for this event.
It is from an event like this that you find out how much you can trust renewables. In this case, not at all. They are a total waste of money. When you need them the most they are incapable of making a difference.
https://opennem.org.au/#/regions/sa
https://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/
https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-dashboard
And New York want to be 100 % renewable by 2050. Ha!
New York doesn’t want to be, Gov Andy does. When he’s not busy chasing accidentally-born babies with a meat cleaver or banning plastic bags or giving away our earnings to illegals, he’s out there stumping for 100% renewables.
Sorry, the great state of Hawaii was “first-est, with the most-est” in terms of bureaucratic fools . . . in 2015 Hawaii established a goal of 100 percent renewable electricity sources by 2045. (ref: http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/29269793/gov-ige-signs-bill-setting-100-percent-renewable-energy-goal-for-state/ )
“Towards the 7 to 9 pm mark, the wind was down to less than 3 % contribution and total solar was at zero.” Don’t let it ever happen again. Move!
‘Era of Constant Electricity at Home is Ending… ‘Families have to get used to only using power when it was available’ Steve Holliday, CEO of the UK National Grid in 2011 and now President Elect of the Energy Institute.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/03/06/were-all-north-koreans-now-era-of-constant-electricity-at-home-is-ending-says-uk-power-chief-families-would-have-to-get-used-to-only-using-power-when-it-was-available/
Australia 30-40 years ago generated coal-fired electricity at very low cost, among the lowest in the world. It had attracted industries like alumina refining and aluminium smelting, with all their knock-on support industries. We were on top of the world. High employment, high personal income, industries doing well, new industries coming here.
Then came the guys from Government, “We’re here to help you.”
Today, our electricity is costly, coal is vilified by many, especially the ignorant and brainwashed, industries are leaving, personal income is stagnant. It is such a dreadful outcome that no fictional script writer could have done so well to create so much harm in such a short time.
Even young children now gang up to protest the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland, wanted for coal to prevent poor people in India from dying in large numbers. Such is the power of advertising.
I have asked our domestic supplier to send me electricity at coal costs of old, while they prattle on about the alleged benefits of renewable energy. They are a new generation. How could they know that renewables had been analysed decades ago and found to suffer from terminal weaknesses? Does not matter, when green ideology controls the mind.
It is so, so frustrating to see the purposeful wrecking of this once-great country because of dodgy science promoted by dodgy non-scientists.
I do not know the solution. I fear it is like a population deciding it has to have a war to get back to past standards of living. There are still many older, wiser folk who brought the good times before and can bring them again, but they are treated as lepers by the newcomers, you know, those youngsters who have never felt the thrill of living in and creating good times. There are few good times in the greyness of the gulag we are now in.
Geoff.
“…Australia 30-40 years ago generated coal-fired electricity at very low cost…. attracted industries like alumina refining and aluminium smelting, with all their knock-on support industries. We were on top of the world…..” And an easy target for the Climate carpetbaggers to prove how easy it is to destroy Capitalism by destroying industry.
I fully understand your concerns. Many people I know, frustrated by this generation, believe that we can’t vote our way out of this. The people of Australia though voted to put on shackles when they demanded that their means to defend themselves from tyranny be removed from them by the very same people who delight in torturing them.
In fact, over time I’m not sure that our overlords are even human. More like some otherworld’s alchemical anthroparian or homunculi who are indwelt by demonic spirits who want to cast off modernity, prosperity and human flourishing and drag us into their ongoing darkness of hate, bitterness and Hell that is their worldview.
This insanity, and the reasonable man’s attempt to understand it is often behind the formation of supernatual religion.
Geoff,
“Then came the guys from Government, “We’re here to help you.””
The halcyon days you speak of was when electricity was all supplied by SECV (government). Similar in other states. What made the change was privatisation. All of our big generators (including Hazlewood) were built by SECV.
Nick,
Legislation created by the government forced the private power producers to close Pt. Augusta and Hazelwood. Forcing renewables onto the grid created the unstable power grid we find ourselves living under today. Your comment is laughable.
Well, firstly, private operators did not build coal generators in Vic or SA. They operated former government stations and closed them when they became unprofitable. That was a business decision, as was their decision not to build new ones.
Nick,
You are being disingenuous in your suggestion that government had nothing to do with the situation in SA or Vic. Both states energy policies were the product of labor legislation. Legislation meant to eliminate coal power generation and promote renewable power generation. You cannot argue this point.
It was a business decision only in the manner that it was forced on business. And the citizens of SA paid for it on Thursday. New coal power generators were not built because they had no preference on the grid. All preference goes to renewables. You know this.
You are wrong Nick. Govn’t policy on coal generation prevents any new plants being built, ever! Hazzlewood closure was decided in Paris because the French company cannot operate in Australia.
but Nick the govts flogged them off cheaply to milk a cash cow, remember?
the cattle being us who had paid many times over for the infrastructure and kept the govt coffers going.
that weird 80s mindset probably keating and howard? flogging off power water and essentials to OS is what started the slide to poverty and business leaving in droves
look at the insane road costs now toll roads paying os very well for the same services we used to fund ourselves from rego and gen revenues, the reg rises the fuel excise sucks bigtime and we still have to sell our souls to megacorps to get a road built?
Hick,
Observationally correct, but for the wrong reasons.
In the 1970-80 decades, mining law in Victoria was so anti-mining that serious miners would not touch Victoria with a barge pole. Hazelwood etc needed coal mines alongside. So they were developed as larger mines/power stations by government.
You have to modify your criticism of private enterprise with the knowledge that it works best when encumbered least. Much of the mess we have today is because more and more perversions by governments are being placed on private enterprise. They restrict it. The RET is a good example. Subsidies to renewables is another.
Having tasted the sweet fruit of success of private enterprise a long time ago, I remain enthusiastic about its ability to better us all if only governments everywhere would get out of the bloody way and let the horses run without lead in their saddles.
Geoff-
Alas, I feel that the US is less than 20 years behind you. The battle is lost, despite brave words from people on blogs like WUWT. You won’t find a word about Australia’s electrical power supply problems in the US MSM.
Trump is an temporary respite on the national level, but the cities are falling all over themselves to follow the UN dictates. I fear for our children and grandchildren – it is the grayness of the gulag that awaits them. I am glad that I will not live to see it. I don’t know the solution either, but perhaps leaving something written about “the thrill of living in and creating good times.” So that our grandchildren will, perhaps, see that there is an alternative to the grayness.
Spare a thought for Australian industry.
On average we pay more per kW.h than households; sometimes much more.
We recently released a tender for over 1-million kW.h of electricity for 2019.
How many responses do you think we got?
We advised the Liberal party (conservatives in Australia) and guess what their level of interest was?
Yes you’re correct on both guesses.
Power generators and distributors are donors to political parties.
Industry insiders have told us “why sell power cheap to business when we’re making a killing off households”.
No new electricity intensive business will set-up in Australia again.
That’s Australia ‘powering forward’; the Liberal party boasts in their flashy ads . . .
Labor (the left) are worse and about to get into power Federally.
Australia is going to get a whole lot less attractive for manufacturing investment.
What industry?
If anyone dies from the heat because they couldn’t run their air conditioners, their families need to sue the politicians for hundreds of millions.
amazing generating prices .
http://files.ozblogistan.com.au/sites/4/2019/01/25154124/Ecosts.jpg
So how is it people want to vote for the nu-enagee policies of the left?
I remember when the then newly elected Premier, Jeff Kennett, called Victoria “an economic basket-case” in the early 1990s (due to socialist debt growth and moribund industrial policies of Labor). Which was right before he used this as the rationale to selling of the State electricity generators.
And now they’re right back there again, with a freshly elected Daniel Andrews govt, high debt and generators that are already privatized and their efficiency and competitiveness systematically eliminated.
And they’re not done destroying it yet.
Some sporting event is on TV, be it cricket, football, rugby, tennis or some other suck junk on Free To Air TV to the massses.
You can’t increase a battery’s output past it’s “standard rating” to respond to disruptions in the magnetosphere that can only be overcome by increased power output.
France learned this in 2005.
This is why the govt wants to control your thermostat remotely. They can set it to a comfortable 30 degrees Celsius for every house to avoid the brownouts.
I assume you attached an invisible sarc tag to that stevek? 30C is too hot for quite a lot of people, especially those of north European origin and especially if there is high humidity.
I do think that governments are responsible for the security of the people. They are guilty of traitorous behaviour if they take any actions that destroy that security. These include undermining the power supply that contributes so much to health and well- being as well as military protection against those who would invade us. To blow up the only coal-fired generators in SA is sabotage, no less, and those who caused it to happen should be punished as traitors for treason affecting the security and well-being of the people. Here in Victoria we are heading down the same path. No, I did not vote for the lefty id1ots who are undermining everything that Australians have represented in the past.
Come on Aussies, wake up to the trait0rs in our midst!
The South Australia blackout was caused by a transformer failure, not a shortage of power availability.
However, the Vics suffered the results of an enlightened government who closed down their coal-fired power stations.
Our Green overlords feel we should be prepared for these outages as saving the planet is more important than running air conditioners
That little fact is conveniently missed out of reports in the MSM, as I am sure you are aware.
I think this shows clear evidence of a power shortage:
http://nemlog.com.au/nem/region/sa1/20190124/20190125/
No operating margin, and prices at the $14,500 limit.
Presumably companies selling emergency generators for domestic use will now see a big increase in sales, to people wealthy enough to afford them and before they are made illegal.
I mentioned before in another thread, recently I have seen small domestic petrol powered generators advertised on TV here in Australia. Someone has seen the future. Every major city in Australia will become another Lagos.
The opportunity to go off grid will only be a temporary option. The left wingers/Greens, have that covered. They will simply make fuel illegal, or so expensive the option will only be available to the political elite or wealthy.
The complete control of everything is their ongoing ambition. The CAGW/Climate Change scare tactic, has proven better than they could have ever wished for. The world’s entire teaching profession has adopted the mantra, fossil fuels are bad green energy is good. All of our children are now brainwashed into progressing that falsehood.
The problem we now have is politicised education. Real education along with the previously noble pursuit of knowledge, has been replaced by green propaganda often aided by narrow focus religious ideology.
We are returning back to the days when those who know the truth are thrown in jail, because their wisdom, is considered dangerous to the elite. The political elite particularly those on the left, now demand their view is the only view. Anyone opposing them gets shouted down, no platformed, alienated, vilified and worse.
Even nations floating of energy wealth are being destroyed by the left wing zealots. Politicians are using environmentalism as their weapon/instrument of control. The objective is, to destroy energy availability and thus destroy wealth/ capitalism.
Think Venezuela, Zimbabwe, South Africa. Soon to be followed by….fill in your own blanks.
In Lagos, users still have to pay a connection fee to the energy provider even though they don’t actually supply any energy. But yes, the greens are determined to return us to the stone age. Then we can burn rocks!
on the pi$$ant house blocks in suburbia finding space to put a genset in?
then the noise and the regs on times it could be run, ie poolpump noise annoyance regs already and a genny make far more racket
petrol at 1.32 a litre is cheap now compared to the 1.47 recently charged
diesels economical but smellier and those generators cost a lot more
gotta admit im looking for an old Lister etc stationary engine so i can run my bore(only water for fire risk if power goes) and my home rainwater supply pump. kero petrol oil whatevers handy can be used.
Touche.
Individuals are not stupid; they protect themselves and their families when they see the propaganda failing.
Dear Australia,
The “greens” are really anti-human, and they will use any scam possible to secure their agenda.
While I don’t wish suffering on anyone, I suspect that until people comprehend the foolishness being foisted on them—and its cost—through their own experiences this same thing will be repeated. Look at the heatwave as a blessing.
Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Australia is the number 1 exporter of COAL. We don’t want to burn it because of, well you know, climate change, but we have no problem letting the rest of the world burn it. Has the world gone mad? Don’t answer that, obviously it has.
Australia set a record for coal exports in 2018. Let that sink in.
Australia also set a record for the largest single shipment of coal which, IIRC, was in 2016 or 2017.
I heard the AEMO spokesperson on radio yesterday.
“unprecedented heat wave” was one of her comments.
I live in Melbourne (State of Victoria) and this heat wave was one day as far as I am concerned and given that Melbourne uses 90%+ of the power on any given day this was a monumental stuff up. I mean one hot day.
This was all predicted and there poli speak is just unadulterated “carp”.
We Australians are determined to save the world on our own if we have to, even if it kills us.
400 Mw of reserve power? There is no reserve powere. They have the hide to ask industrial users to shut down to boost supply to the grid and call that a ‘reserve’. It’s all in 5he language. Orwellian?
Whenever an electric utility uses “load shedding” in its resource plan, you know you are in trouble. And whenever the politicians tell you there is no problem because the electric utility’s system didn’t collapse because of its load shedding, you are in deeper, uncorrectable trouble.
Dave
As a friend observed
“The best part of this insanity is that when there is a power shortage we shut down our biggest, and very often, exporting manufacturing plants. Just shows the priorities here with the main aim to pull the daggy wool over the eyes of citizens for as long as possible. “
We Australians are determined to save the world on our own if we have to, even if it k1lls us.
“Nearly a billion dollars for electricity for just one day — $500 per family”
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/01/nearly-a-billion-dollars-for-electricity-for-just-one-day-500-per-family/
“Three days and you could buy a HELE plant with the money wasted.”
You better believe it-
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/articles/2019/01/my-first-look-at-the-highs-and-lows-in-victoria-and-south-australia-on-thursday-24th-january-2019/
That’s what happens when you have to pay 9 diesel generators to consume potentially 80,000 litres of diesel an hour, major industrial users of electricity to tell their workers to knock off and power users to pay for the lost production, gas peaking plants to spot bid for every ounce of gas available plus all those millions of Tesla 2170 cells to exhaust themselves at Hornsdale not to mention all hands on deck with heat loading and overtime at the coal stations to add more sticky tape and string.
All because technical illiterates, morons or deliberate liars are Hell bent on disproving a fundamental axiom of engineering, that you can’t build a reliable system from unreliable componentry. They are in complete denial about that now and the only way to redress such idiocy and level the playing field is to legislate that no supplier of electrons to the communal grid can tender anymore electrons than they can reasonably guarantee (ie short of unforeseen mechanical breakdown) 24/7 all year round.
Of course that exposes what is virtually the greatest form of State sponsored dumping for the scam it really is as large scale wind and solar farms would have to invest in storage to up their average tender or partner with thermal and pay them their just insurance premia or some combination of the two. As for the mums and dads with rooftop solar if they can’t guarantee theirs then keep them for themselves or else invest in battery storage but of course then there’d be none to export. That’s what so many wind and solar spruikers are constantly in denial about. The level playing field.
How crazy is this? Given that too many politicians and other rent seekers embrace the warmist propaganda, and accept ( falsely) that the world will end in 12 years time, instead of ensuring reliable energy to run air-conditioning facilities that WORK 24/7, they cut back on reliable energy and replace it with expensive, totally unreliable energy that would cause deaths in hospitals and old age homes. How stupid and mad is that?
Blackouts in South Australia were caused by transformers and substations tripping, not a lack of generation [1] (per original linked news report):
The later “collapse” in Victoria was caused by the breakdown of three coal-fired power stations [2].
Australia’s electricity grid continues to be one of the most fossil fuel intense in the world [3].
Sources:
[1] https://www.9news.com.au/national/2019/01/24/05/54/weather-heatwave-south-australia-victoria-thursday
[2] https://www.9news.com.au/national/2019/01/25/05/50/victoria-sizzles-as-it-waits-for-an-afternoon-reprieve-as-heat-scorches-most-of-the-country
[3]
Well hang on -Victoria seems to have suffered from failures at COAL plants
https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/energy-minister-lily-dambrosio-asks-victorians-to-do-our-bit-to-keep-the-lights-on-amid-heatwave/news-story/e0d83b72c1fa2e45b5c5cc25580068c9
“A fifth of Victoria’s typical power supply was offline during Friday’s heatwave after unit failures at coal-fired power stations.
The technical dramas at the ageing generators meant the energy market operator was forced to briefly cut power to tens of thousands of homes in order to prevent widespread blackouts.
As the network was pushed to its limit, Victoria was importing the maximum amount of power from NSW, South Australia and Tasmania, while energy-intensive businesses including the Alcoa smelter powered down.”
I note also it was importing from SA!
and this SA outage was due to substation failure:
https://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/almost-30000-without-power-in-sa/news-story/c102771913811d9f2b1deb7102dba8c0
I would note also that the duck curve is not going to be a problem given the increasing take up of home battery systems in Australia
Govn’t policy prevents energy operators from conducting any serious maintenance on plants that are, in reality, at the end of their lives. No new coal will ever be installed totally and 100% due to Govn’t energy policy. The Govn’y no realising their policy sux, is now trying to force energy generators like ALG to keep coal plants running.
This will only end in more and more outages and higher and higher costs. Apparently, AU$500 added to energy costs as a result of the outages.
The government is not preventing them from doing maintenance. However the government is telling them that they cannot sign long term power contracts with the utilities. As a result on some days they make money on other days they don’t Yet their labor and maintenance costs are fixed. So when they do sell power they have to sell at a higher price to make up for the days they lost money.
California tried this in 2000 with the additional regulations that a freeze on price the utilities could charge customers. No one was worried about the price freeze because the new system would lower prices. It didn’t. Power prices increased dramatically and despite frequent meetings with governor he did nothing until the utilities field for bankrupt. Then the state started buying power and quickly realized the new market wasn’t working. Which was what everyone was telling them for 6 months. So the state started signing long term power contracts.
Within a couple months power cost were almost down to pre crisis levels. And then a year later it was learned that Enron (a texas company) was manipulating the natural gas and electricity market to make money. Enron later went bankrupt and the Chairman, CEO, cheif finical officer, and Chief accounting officer were convicted of accounting fraud.
Since then california has not seen extriemly high power costs and has drastically increase irenewable generation. Power cost are only increasing a about the rate of inflation.
Australia would probably see a significant improvement in power prices if the day to day market was changed to yearly contracts. This would give the power producers and utilities time to adapt and funds to adapt to the increase in renewables. However doesn’t want to go back to how things were done 20 years ago. Also while no evidence of fraud has been found the market behavior does indicate it might be happening:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australian-energy-markets-echoes-enron-crisis-california-57123/
Reneweconomy is not a reliable source of information. If there is no Govn’t policy that makes maintaining coal plants unattractive to the company then they would have performed the maintenance.
The reason SA was able to import to Vic was a sudden drop in temperatures overnight. No one needed their air conditioners on Friday in SA. SA’s heat wave was on Thursday when it hit 47 in Adelaide and Vic’s was the following day. It was hot as hell here Thursday in Adelaide. Like walking into a blast furnace when you opened the door.
If only Hazelwood were up and running instead of expensive wind and solar. But legislative decisions by government officials have made it hard to maintain and run coal plants. When priority is given/mandated to renewables, no operator wants to spend money on coal. Get politicians to change the policies and then there will be enough cheap reliable coal power to run the system. In the mean time we get to pay $14,500/mwh on the hottest days of the year.
You neglect to say that a quarter of Victoria’s generation was decommissioned not that long ago and many people warned this would happen.
Griff likes to comment on the Australian energy “crisis” (Yeah, we don’t have a climate crisis) using Google hits, mostly the Guardian though.
Perhaps we should look at facts, rather than newspaper reports.
In South Australia, the wind died overnight on the 24th, from producing 1,325MW to a low of just 98MW just after sundown, forcing the use of emergency diesel generators on top of OCGT (these were imported after the big SA blackout). Regional prices remained at or close to the cap of A$14,500/MWh for 5 hours. Imports to SA were constrained by non-availability form Victoria, and indeed for a hour or so, the diesel generators were effectively providing some support to Victoria. Peak demand met was just over 3.3GW and maintained again for several hours. Whatever the niceties of the claims about shutting down or tripping of transformers in the distribution system, essentially it appears as though supply was limited and demand curtailed.
In Victoria, prices were also clamped close to the cap for the same 5 hours, and wind output was also below par, although the drop was not as dramatic as in SA. Peak demand met was about 9.5GW, somewhat below the 10.2GW peak met on the 25th, strongly suggesting that demand was curtailed. It is not true that Victoria was importing the maximum amount of power: imports from SA were simply not available at anywhere close to the Heywood link capacity on the 24th.
Meanwhile, in largely coal fired Queensland and NSW there were no shortages.
Data source: opennem.org.au
Get this Griff. There are FOUR THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED and SIXTEEN 2170 lithium batter cells in Tesla’s cutting edge battery technology Model 3 car to drive it very well for a reasonable distance before it needs charging again but not too often with a supercharger as that compromises their longevity. That’s nice but as a BMW exec noted the industry can build a complete ICE car for the price of said reasonable battery pack and as for that coming down with current lithium battery development ‘never, never, never’ in his words.
We’re supposed to be replacing all the millions of current ICE cars with BEVs like Mr Musks and yet people like you are telling the world that at the same time as fossil fuel use is going to zero useage those very same cutting edge lego bricks will also be used like the biggest collection of them in the world now at Hornsdale in South Australia to smooth both the solar duck curve to moonlight and this roller coaster-
https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2019/january
https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2018/december
What on earth are you smoking Griff?
Here let me elucidate the nature of those 2170 lego bricks and how they all fit together in the Tesla M3 and that Hornsdale facility for you to really get your head around Griff-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uKpn3zflBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUqQZC2dcE
For every Gigafactory they’ll need a Gigadisposal too remember.
Once again, griff is proud of himself for bringing up a subject that was covered and explained in the article itself.
Only, as usual, griff didn’t understand the explanation. Or chose not to.
The Green overlords have big plans for Griff in one of their Gigadisposal factories pulling apart all those spent 2170 lego bricks from their Teslas and Big Batteries for the next Great Leap Forward-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWjG3REOF-M
If Griff earns enough sustainability points he might get to take some half spent ones home to electrify his pushbike.
Griff, I was looking for you to see if you had posted a comment. And of course here you are spouting utter bulsh*t again. Let’s cut to the quick :
1 :For 5 hours onn Thursday 24th from 3:30pm – 8:30pm the 30 minute settlement price was above $13,000 / MWh. And it was mostly above $14,000/ MWh in Victoria and in SA, it was above 12000 / MWh.
From 3:30pm – 5pm of the 24th it stuck at the price limit $14,500 / MWh.
Now that is a huge amount of cash for electrons !!
https://www.aemo.com.au/………
And just who was receiving that Motza of cash for power yesterday ?
Why it was the South Australian government because of the government owned Diesel generators ! Why ? Because your wonderful wind & solar had flopped completely. A few more days like yesterday and there will be no SA budget deficit !
Retail bills for this essential service are going to go up despite any government promises to reduce consumer prices for power
When one looks at the inter connector flows during the peak demand (pricing) period, we knew also the bleeding obvious :
1) Victorian and South Australian demand is highly correlated during extreme heat events
2) Without Hazelwood, Victoria can no longer act as an effective crutch for South Australia
3: Without the Port Augusta coal fired plant since 2016, South Australia cannot provide a stable reliable and cheap electricity supply to South Australians.
http://nemweb.com.au/Report…
The dopey Greenist Labor government that arranged all this for us South Australian thoroughly deserved the spanking it got last March.
And as Labor is still dominated by this Greenist idiocy, Labor needs a good kick in the bum in May national elections. Whatever happened to labor looking after the interests of the working people of Australia ?
And finally we now know that Center Alliance ( your own party ) is actually a Greenist Alliance with no input from it’s mere members at all. It’s all decided by a cabal of three or four folk at the top which includes you Griff…
So rest assured voters in South Australia will be looking out to give your mob a good kick up the arse in may as well.
We will all feel this in our electricity bills. We will be gouged and gouged again & again until the renewable power madness is stopped.
Their public officials should be given the Mussolini light post treatment but without the guns they gave up years ago it will never happen.
And no, it was not “the hottest day in the city’s history”. Luckily, someone at 2GB radio station in Sydney took the time to check temperature records in Adelaide for the past century and found that in early 1930ties, Adelaide had at least one day warmer by 1°C. This is the usual “hottest ever” BS from Bureau of Meteorology.
“History is an over-rated varia