Essay by Eric Worrall
“… AEMO says … some gas and diesel generators were not interested in providing power under the price cap. It said it would take action to force them online. …” Remember, Winter has only just started in Australia.
AEMO warns of widespread load shedding in Queensland and NSW supply crunch
Giles Parkinson 13 June 2022
The Australian Energy Market Operator has warned of potential widespread load shedding in Australia’s most coal-dependent states – Queensland on Monday and NSW on Tuesday – because of the lack of supply, or more pointedly, the lack of will to offer supply under the newly imposed price cap.
The warning of potential forced outages came just hours after the market operator extended its price cap for a second trading day in a row after prices in Queensland breached the trigger point of $1.359 million over the previous seven days.
The deepening crisis came as one quarter of Queensland’s coal capacity remain sidelined because of maintenance and unexpected outages, and a number of gas and diesel generators were also not operating. In all, little more than half of the registered capacity in the state is being made available.
AEMO says the risk of load shedding was made worse because some gas and diesel generators were not interested in providing power under the price cap. It said it would take action to force them online.
…
Read more: https://reneweconomy.com.au/aemo-warns-of-load-shedding-in-queensland-supply-crunch-as-prices-capped/
The new green left wing Aussie Federal government’s response to skyrocketing prices and scarcity appears to be what I think of as the “Venezuelan Solution”, imposition of a hard price cap.
Some owners of emergency generators have refused to supply power under the price cap, so the plan is to use the threat of prosecution to force generators to operate, regardless of the financials of the situation, to ensure the grid doesn’t fail.
I can’t help thinking that the Aussie government effectively holding a prosecution gun to power providers heads, and demanding they provide energy at the price the government has set, could lead to a rise in the number of generators suffering “unscheduled maintenance outages”.
If power providers resist, and the grid fails, what is the government’s next step? Send the army in to take over power generation facilities by force?
Don’t forget all of these problems were caused by decades of government maladministration on both sides of Aussie politics, an irrational obsession with transitioning to green energy which started in the mid 1990s.
If Prime Minister Albanese and his predecessors hadn’t created such a hostile environment for dispatchable power investors by talking up the green transition, or spinelessly failing to denounce it, if some of his fellow traveller state governments hadn’t permanently banned fracking and in some cases encouraged and celebrated the demolition of coal power plants, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Lets just say I’m glad I upgraded my home backup generator a few weeks ago, before this all too predictable disaster unfolded.
Update (EW): AEMO has confirmed price caps are now in operation across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
Update 2 (EW): A realtime Aussie electricity price dashboard is available here.
Forcing companies to operate at a loss, then having the government seize them when they go under has been a socialist strategy for generations.
Either way, there won’t be any electricity. The operators won’t run the plants at a loss and the government can’t run the plants.
Oh, the government can run the plants. I’m sure the power companies that are separate entities from the plants will be willing to provide the labor at more than 2x what it would have cost to just meet their load charge for normal operation.
Well, if it isn’t broke, fix it until it is, then take it down for unscheduled maintenance
The worst time to run is when there is high demand if you are operating at a loss if the loss is caused by fuel. So the failures of renewables to meet peak demand will be exaggerated by “unscheduled failures” of coal based power.
and just like in Texas, the low information crowd will blame fuel powered generation instead of the failure of renewables, You can’t fix stupid,
There is another option and it has been in place for a long time. The generators get directed to run and agree on a price above the so-called cap.
The cap is intended to avoid rorting and collusion. It is set at a level that would normally encourage plenty of generation onto the network. The cap has failed to keep ahead of inflation.
This shows the average price achieved for the various generating sources over the past 30 days:
https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=30d&interval=1d
Diesel generators have been willing participants at an average price of $690/MWh. That is reasonable given the current diesel price. Diesel in Australia is around $2.2/litre and that will deliver around 4kWh of electrical energy so just the energy cost is $550/MWh.
It costs wind minus $47/MWh to produce – that is the subsidy paid. They may not be producing much but what they are producing is earning big money (average $285/MWh). The cap is well above the cost of generation.
Fuel is the only cost for power? So nice that labor is free, and that there is no cost for risk.
For W&S in Australia there is no fuel cost. They can operate at negative prices and stilll make money. So until the price is more negative than the subsidy paid, they benefit from sending out power.
A similar situation exist with fossil fuelled plants. Labour and capital are fixed costs at a power station in Australia. Their only significant marginal cost is fuel cost. So as long as the price achieved covers the fuel cost then they are better off sending power out.
The price cap of $300/MWh does not cover the cost of fuel for diesel plant so it makes no sense for them to send power out at that price. If they got $550/MWh then they would at least cover fuel costs. These are emergency generators that are idle most of the time. They exist for the high prices that occur for short durations. They are now being asked to do something that is akin to economic suicide. But there are already mechanisms that should be used so they are not financially disadvantaged.
Of course there are no labor or operating costs when power isn’t being generated, or when generated off peak usage hours.
Emergency generators and reserve generation capacity are also absolutely free, and incur no additional operations or maintenance costs.
Wind and solar hand off their costs to the rest of the grid when they aren’t producing. The cost to subsidize W&S are borne by the consumers and other producers. Unless the government can think of a way to “force” W & S to provide power even when the W isn’t blowing and the S isn’t shining. If they can disregard normal economics, why not physics, too?
In Australia the governments (state and national) owned and operated the grid up until the 1990’s when labor decided to follow neo-liberal economic doctrine and privatise the grid. Since then prices have gone up and reliability has gone down. None of which is surprising since maintaining a stable electricity grid requires decades of infrastructure investment while corporate executives get rewarded based on short term stock price increases.
Ah, so the problem is not enough communism. Got it.
Every Western country uses price caps, as they aren’t a true market for supply.
Remember this place which had some major blackouts not so long ago
“The electric price cap on the Texas electricity market was reduced from $9,000 to $5,000 per megawatt-hour (MWh) at the start of 2022.”
This really isn’t the case. In the US most power companies are under the regulatory umbrella of state Public Utility Commissions of some kind. Those PUC’s are charged with setting prices that recompense the utilities sufficiently to provide for reliable power distribution. These are not “price caps”, per se. The prices are negotiated on a regular basis as utility costs and investments change.
Texas has the supply and demand ‘bidding’ like Australia has then
Thanks for the extra info . But of course Australia has been foolish about believing the no future for coal. And this is only a beginner
I can’t find a price cap for Ontario, Canada. The price is all over the place.
https://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html
It is often negative at night. When there is excess wind power (which must be purchased) Ontario pays New York State to take it. If you think that sounds dumb, you are correct.
no the problem is OS cos rorting n ripping us off
This is not true. Electricity prices declined throughout the 1990s. Paul Keating was the best Liberal Treasurer Australia has had.
Keating got the job in 1983. The various industry enquiries that he set up had effect by 1985. That is when electricity prices peaked before the long decline till the early 2000s.
The Howard government set up the RET scheme and Rudd may hay with it. Prices were then supercharged until Abbott changed things; albeit temporarily.
I upvoted you – utilities shouldn’t be run the same as a commodities market, people’s lives depend on stable, reliable utilities: electricity, natural gas and water.
If the government is going throw in extraneous requirements to force and subsidize wind and solar to solve imaginary issues, then it might as well run the whole thing, instead putting unreasonable requests on a commercial unregulated system, since the enviro crap is a form of regulation, an arbitrary reg with no clear cut benefit to the users.
when our power water and transport were govt /state owned prices were good tax was paid and the systems worked FOR us, now? none of them do
yes and we PAID for the lines etc well n truly over decades
since OS buyups and the shitful smart meters the costs soared. Vic spent 20bil in the early 2000s on “goldplating” the grid over and beyond capacity…just 4 yrs or so later they moan they need entire new lines for the hardly producing wind n solar inputs?
Izaak the State Govts milked their utilities for dividends that my post WW2 parents’ generation went without to build. That allowed pollies to bloat the public sector with a sting in the tail. They weren’t putting away for depreciation of said utilities and when the writing was on the wall it was best to bail and let private enterprise be the bearer of bad tidings.
Then came the unreliables mandates with no dispatchability and now that’s showing up as the fallacy of composition with the level of dumping on the grid. Very effective at driving out coal and the demand switch to gas and here we all are. Just needed Putin to bring the problem into intense focus globally but it was always going to happen anyway as the net zero storage required for 100% unreliables is a child’s fantasy.
Bravo! The government retrogressed from Socialism to Fascism so they’d have someone else to blame for the trains not running on time!
Privatize the grid indeed
No what you do as a company is take your generators offline for emergency maintenance … that is allowed 🙂
point is?
it NOT a loss even at 300$ theyre pricegouging to hell n back
Government price controls ALWAYS WORK DON’T THEY? Are they going to control the price of coal and natural gas next? When do wage controls go into effect?
Does anyone understand that fascism puts the State above the individual?
“celebrated the demolition of coal power plants”
Qld hasn’t demolished any big coal power plants. Remember, it’s the home of black coal. Vic and SA are OK.
“is to use the threat of prosecution to force generators to operate”
In fact the main generator in Qld is Stanwell, which is owned by the Government of Queensland.
Why is capacity so scarce? The answer is, nobody is investing in new dispatchable plants, most of our dispatchable electricity plants are museum relics.
Its not just Queensland, NSW is having problems – read the quote again. South Australia and Victoria might be doing OK for now, but South Australia frequently relies on the interconnector to Victoria and NSW since they demolished their coal plant, and right now, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of spare capacity.
The whole system is dancing on a knife edge, just a slight extra push, say a further drop in wind or sunlight, and it all goes over the cliff.
How do you think the situation will look, after a few more coal plants shut? You know that is the plan.
SA is doing fine at the moment
Excuse me for asking, Nick, but are you in favor of price controls? Price controls are one of the main hallmarks of socialism transitioning to communism.
No, I don’t think price controls are good. The AEMO has used caps briefly in the past, and say it is to quieten volatility. It’s also to prevent a situation where people try to put a squeeze on the market, to which it is vulnerable.
Why are we having such volatility Nick? Why are prices soaring?
Electricity prices rise because of the soaring international prices for coal and gas. And since we are blessed with huge export facilities for both, we pay the world price.
Again.. misinformation from NIck.
The price is regulated by the highest cost provider.
That means the little gas peakers that are idle a lot of the time, and need to make their income by charging a lot when needed.
If the NEM still had enough coal to cover peak demand (which they did have for decades), prices would be much lower and there would not be these huge cost fluctuations.
It is the idiotic infection of subsidised, unreliable, erratic suppliers that has diminished the capacity of coal to cover the NEM demand and pushed up peak prices to these extreme amounts.
I have sufficient solar panels and a battery according to the government for a family of four. We are a family of two and from generations that know how NOT to waste resources. We live in cold ACT and have gas heating. It is cold and bleak, overcast and very, very still air here today. Our battery recharge climbed inexorably to a whole 9% before discharging from around midday. That is because it was very, very cloudy. We put our panels and battery in, not because we wanted to (even with the government (?) paying more than half the cost – thank you, fellow taxpayers), but because we were envisioning this precise situation. The generator will be the next step.
I am also a company director and the law in Australia requires directors to act in the best interests of the company. So the poor bl**dy directors of these companies – including government owned companies – are on an absolute hiding to nothing. And the grubby government – while newly elected – is responsible for this mess because they started the process.
Our governments have spent more time lately deciding what a woman is than doing the most basic of tasks – making sure the country actually works. I wonder who will be held accountable for any deaths from cold that are becoming increasingly likely as the elderly in particular cannot afford to buy power, even if it is available.
And politicians wonder why we regard them as one of the lowest forms of life! How Nick Stokes and his ilk can try and defend their catastrophic decision making is beyond me.
I have wondered, as a woman, whether it is the advent of more women in our Parliaments because in my experience (female, maths/physics/statistics degrees) most women, with the honorable exception of engineering women and some STEM scientist women have zero idea of how things actually work in the real world. There by, idiot public servants can get idiotic ideas past the very people we elect to represent us
the gas is understandable due to the os presells and OS owners ripping it off for their own gain
coal is an entirely different matter
we can flog it os for market prices( thanks to FJB) for the rises but theres ZERO justification charging us at home the same when theres no shipping n transit extras. the same rail that takes to ports also runs to the powercos/some own the coalmines as well
if price caps stop us being ripped off then use em
Price caps might work in the very short term but they disincentivize investment so it doesn’t take long to hurt more than they help. Look to the Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, Cuba for proof.
Nixon did price controls during the 1970’s gas prices. I am all for free market capitalism…. the more of that the better but let’s not blind ourselves to the reality the that global market place is not Free but colluded into cartels and prices of stuff will go along for a while on supply and demand and then S hit’s the political fan and the economic crisis is no longer about free market or supply and demand but who has the power. Also, what is more socialistic than a grid. The reason the grid will still be here (as opposed to decentralized energy solutions) is because of it’s inherent socialism and the power it gives central planners and all the carpetbaggers who are feeding of it.
At the moment. Wind is doing ok – at the moment.
You think ~$300 / MWh is healthy? AEMO has just confirmed price caps are in operation in South Australia, as well as Victoria, NSW, Queensland.
https://www.aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/price-caps-administered-across-multiple-states
They are working very well in SA!!
Blind luck. They could fail any moment, and you know it. And the AEMO knows it, otherwise they wouldn’t have imposed a price cap in SA.
SA has access to large amounts of GAS, and have installed lots of Diesel generators.
They also import a lot of brown coal electricity from Victoria.
ah yes MOOMBA that the greentards havent managed to sabotage is keeping SA going for home and power better hope the ONLY gas turbine setup they have doesnt fail under pressure huh?
From your AEMO link:
The price cap is determined by existing rules. It was not dreamed up be the new Labor Government.
The price cap is for 1 trading day.
its WAY over the normal price so yes that should be sufficient
An irregular scenario based on luck of the weather.
At other times you get this..
That’s a convenient cherry pick. A few days ago they could not supply their own demand and relied on Victoria and Tasmania to supply the deficient and avoid load shedding. SA did hit $1500/MWh recently, because there was no wind.
It’s not a cherry pick. It’s what is happening right now (or 2 hrs ago now).
But if you want a broader picture, here is the FY 20/21 and earlier:
and it totally weather dependent
The graph below shows another regular occurrence.
Thank goodness that still have that GAS, hey.
Now they have a lot more diesel to add to the reliable supplies, at great expense.
youre aware the SA power prices are hugely higher than Vic?
same company in Vic i use for 19ckwh in SA is 30c
Both SA and Vic fire up the banks of industrial scale diesel generators when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
But they use green diesel, so that’s ok.
Part of the problem is some of the backup providers, which likely includes diesel operators, are refusing to fire up under the price cap. The government is making the utterly unreasonable demand they operate at a loss IMO. Diesel is very expensive right now.
The diesel generators averaged $690/MWh last month. Their fuel cost is currently around $550/MWh so they have done OK with $690/MWh.
Asking them to produce at $300/MWh would quickly put them out of business and they could reasonably simply stop trading. The company management would be obliged to identify the lack of liquidity and stop trading until someone came to their rescue.
Don’t forget all the other costs involved, a “profit” of $140/MWh will quickly get eaten up with overheads, labour costs, maintenance, etc etc.
Id love Vic n tassie to refuse supply to SA..and the lights go out in minutes
Nick, sometimes I think that you’re just contrarian for the hell of it … Stanwell power station cannot keep all of the lights on, on its own.
SA exists primarily on the good fortune of being on the national grid and can download dispatchable power at the cost of the rest of the country; it should be cut-off.
Victoria has no gas upside and NSW will soon rival SA for the greatest destruction of power generation assets.
Let’s not forget AGL under threat of activist investors and generally the woke banks refusing finance for new fossil fuel generators.
You and your mates should live by your religious beliefs and shut off your grid based electricity.
“Stanwell power station cannot keep all of the lights on, on its own.”
Stanwell the company has both the Stanwell station and Tarong, and generates about 40% of Qld electricity. But then there is also CS, owned by the Qld Govt.
and SA is still trying to get a massive direct to NSW interconnector set up
sadly;-))) investors keep dropping out
funny that
“Vic and SA are OK.”
Rubbish !
Vic relies on BROWN COAL and Snowy Hydro
SA relies on GAS
They are both part of the NEM.
SA has destroyed its coal and regularly has to import electricity from brown coal Victoria or run on gas and diesel.
Vic destroyed Hazelwood and never replaced it with anything reliable.
Those two pieces of idiocy have made a huge contribution to the current problems.
The other cause is the moronic anti-commonsense refusal to build new coal fired power stations.
Someone will be along soon to tell us that the Vic Labor government didn’t shut down Hazelwood, the foreign owners did.
All the Vic Labor government did was increase the royalty tax on Hazelwood’s mined coal by 300%.
No connection there at all.
(do I really need to do /sarc?)
“SA relies on GAS”
SA uses virtually no diesel, and is down to 37% gas (year to June 2021). The rest is renewables. From the 2021 SA electricity report:
Nice deflection, Nick.
Dispatchable means when it is needed so putting up the gross generation figures proves nothing regarding the value of renewables. Lots of power when it’s not needed is as useful as t1ts on a bull.
AEMO should be telling the renewable ‘generators’ to produce the power they (and you) tell us is the way of the future. What’s good for the goose ………
When there is lots of wind SA has to shut everything else down, and even pay someone to take the power or apy the wind turbines owners to throttle down.
Must be fun maintaining the grid frequency !
No wonder those GAS and DIESEL providers push up prices when its their turn to provide.. Gotta make up for the time they cannot operate.
But they RELY on its use when they have to.
Stop the petty and deliberate distortions Nick.
Should add Western Australia is getting out of coal completely
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/wa-coal-fired-power-plants-to-shut-by-2029/ar-AAYqXhy
But that is for the right reasons the coal is more expensive than gas which will provide baseload to allow more renewables to be used. Currently a lot of renewable energy is dumped.
That is just commercial sense without the dramas of the Eastern States network.
awful lot of SA homes are gas water heating n cooking or it would be far worse. they forced new homes to gas HWS over electric many yrs ago
As I said you won’t get to prosecute … any smart operator knows they can simply declare emergency repairs on the equipment. Same result and you get to flick the bird to the regulator.
I said nothing about prosecution, that was Eric’s invention. But there needs to be trust between AEMO and generators. Generators need to be trusted.
For the company if you trust the regulator you are a fool .. easy to see you used to work for a civil servant position 🙂
Most regulators are full of bureaucrats simply trying to build there own little castle … the TV show YES MINISTER usually sums it up.
Perhaps read what most make of AEMO
https://reneweconomy.com.au/complex-web-of-issues-aemo-chief-warns-social-licence-crucial-to-100-pct-renewables/
“For the company if you trust the regulator you are a fool”
The AEMO is not the regulator. That would be the AER. The AEMO is the operator, which allocates slots and makes sure you get your money. You need to trust that they’ll do that, and they need to trust that you’ll deliver.
AEMO does a lot more than that … it issues DIRECTIONS ..stop playing the sophist
Interventions safety-net built into the market to provide security and reliability and directions are mandatory and generators are compelled to comply.
They are policemen they don’t make the rules but they certainly enforce them.
It’s already on record that many companies don’t trust AEMO and want it changed.
That’s the problem, Nick. The renewables cannot be trusted to deliver. They can only give what the wind or sun allow with no control.
The period for delivery slots is 30 minutes.
5min actually since 1st October last year … 5MS rule change
Not like they didn’t do a PR exercise and push this junk if you actually knew the system
Perhaps read and bring yourself up todate
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/five-minute-settlement-starts-tomorrow/
Perhaps also get across the change the incoming government has made
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/new-minister-new-policies-to-steer-energy-market-transition/
Thanks, I hadn’t caught up with than change.
oh yeah
i fully trust them to price gouge
SA blew up Pt A in indecent haste
Vic has shut one and let the others suffer lack of maintenance as they plan to close em down
greentards pushing for no financing has a lot to do with that too
Expect rationing, the population have been nicely ‘softened-up’ by the recent oppressive Covid restrictions.
I would also expect a ban on home generators too.
Very possible – California is planning to ban home generators.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/11/california-climate-activists-just-banned-backup-generators-and-fire-pumps/
the fuel price alone is doing that!
“The new green left wing Aussie Federal government’s response to skyrocketing prices and scarcity appears to be what I think of as the “Venezuelan Solution”, imposition of a hard price cap.”
The price cap was imposed by the AEMO, not the Federal Government, and is far from unprecedented. The Federal Government can’t just tell AEMO what to do. It is a separate company
” The company is 60% owned by the Commonwealth Government, as well as the state governments of the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria. The other 40% is owned by industry members, which includes a range of companies from the gas and power sector. AEMO employs approximately 1,000 people and is administered in Melbourne, Victoria. “
Are you seriously expecting WUWT readers to believe the entities which own the company have no influence over its operation, even on a policy level?
Well, the “new green left wing Aussie Federal government” owns only a fraction of 60%. And the generators who are being capped own a significant fraction, and no doubt have seats on the board. I can’t see the company jumping to respond to a phone call from the new green Federal minister. If this were a new policy, it would certainly have to go to the board.
But it isn’t a new policy.
Ah, so your claim is now that the companies which stand to make a big loss under the price cap voted to impose the price cap on themselves?
They own part of the AEMO. And the price cap is an AEMO action.
But it’s a temporary action to damp down volatility, which is really in everyone’s interests.
Given they are talking about coercing operators to come online the price cap is about more than a little volatility, its a response to a supply shortfall.
“its a response to a supply shortfall”
No, the supply shortfall is a response to the price cap. Which in turn is a response to wildly oscillating prices.
The supply shortfall is a response to the price cap. Which in turn is a response to wildly oscillating prices. Which in turn is a response to a supply shortfall.
The electricity prices are responding to the international prices for gas and coal. Which affects what the local generators pay, since we export these commodities on a large scale.
If we had built a new Hazelwood, and increased capacity in the Hunter and Qld, the prices would be cheap and stable.
theyre making massive profits for the same cost to supply as they were before the lies re ukie war etc
F the EU as Nuland stated on 2014
When there is no wind in SA, that is the equivalent of taking Loy Yang A out of commission.
Of course the lack of wind and solar is responsible to the huge costs.
if SA is getting the wind we are in Vic at the moment the wind will be shut down shortly
No, the supply shortfall is a response to building idiotic unreliable supplies, rather than boosting the coal fired fleet.
What you are seeing is the inability of unreliable generators to provide power on a consistent 5 minute or even 30 minute basis. You are ignoring the fact that price volatility happens because of generating volatility. Price volatility DOESN’T cause generating volatility, that makes no sense at all.
shortfall of COAL generators
That’s pretty simplistic logic. Many times caps actually result in extra volatility.
Already explained twice here the game that is then played is the operators keep the generation offline for maintenance … I half expect that is what AGL is doing.
In lots of ways this becomes a game and who will blink first
Now where have I heard that before?
Oh yes, I remember – Income Tax
““its a response to a supply shortfall””
If we hadn’t gone down the “unreliables” idiocy, but had built new coal fired power instead, there would be no supply shortfall.
True but then we would be bad people according to greentards.
So effectively ‘owned’ by the governments at 60% holding, like most of their quangos, or they wouldn’t be in a position to threaten prosecution. AEMO is part of the problem.
They haven’t threatened prosecution. Eric made that up. They have sufficient leverage as controllers of the market.
“… it would take action to force them online …”
So where does it say “prosecution”?
The AEMO controls the market. The generators are participants. The AEMO has ample leverage without invoking prosecution (which they probably couldn’t do anyway).
So they’ll just ask them pretty please, and go away if they say no? Don’t be absurd Nick.
Absurd is all Nick has. Been that way for a long time.
And its all so petty and meaningless… like he is struggling desperately for some sort of self-relevance.
Very sad. 😉
What do you think the word force means?
Excessive use of Ken Dodd’s Tickling Stick perhaps?
Once they are forced online, they are due for extra compensation….so they wait to be told.
AEMO is a parasite, and we wouldn’t need it if energy supply contracts were negotiate for long term 24/7 for a year or more.
Ultimately, you are very correct. As long as unreliable generators without backup are given priority in the system, then all other systems that fill in the blank areas will never be able to compete at the same price.
Look at it this way. You order a widget and the shipping company says it will be delivered by such and such a date. Well, on that date, they call you and say, “Sorry we not only can’t deliver today, but we will never be able to deliver the product.” But you need it today so you look around and find some place that can deliver today. Do you think you’ll pay the same price or one he1l of a lot more?
Thank you Eric – another worthwhile article. The good people of Australia have not suffered enough, and keep electing imbeciles who are ruining your electricity grid and your country.
“Politics is the one field where uneducated, incompetent, utterly stupid people can rise to positions of power and wealth and do great harm.” – Me, Financial Post, 11June2022
This short paper was published today by the Frontier Center for Public Policy:
NO EVIDENCE OF CLIMATE CRISIS
https://fcpp.org/2022/06/13/no-evidence-of-climate-crisis/
Commentary, Climate, Allan MacRae, 13June2022
Why don’t they just turn up the wind turbines and solar panels?
When the peak demand of 29GW hit the network last evening, the 8.5GW of wind was only producing 0.4GW and the 17GW of solar panels were producing nothing. If they just turned these up to full power then they could almost meet the 29GW demand. This is the question that the Minister for Energy should be asking. Like – why not man! Just turn those f…rs up and we can forget about coal and gas.
ROFL 🙂
Yeah why can’t they just ORDER the wind to keep blowing and the sun to keep shining?
What’s the point of them winning elections if they can’t stop the seas from rising like Obama did?
They also should’ve used the 1GWh of battery power- all 2 minutes of it! Given the great success of wind
& solar last evening, they’ll make mobile wind & solar units for emergency crews to use after the next typhoon hits! 😮
https://www.energy-storage.news/australia-surpassed-1gwh-of-annual-battery-storage-deployments-during-2021/
Obama was correct. He was elected and the seas didn’t rise.
Correct. The moment Obama was elected, the seas stopped their rise and so did my income.
Are the Australian people without any say in this rush to deprive them of energy? They’ve already had a recent taste of “renewable power” so it can’t be due to lack of history about the downsides.
Nope, Aussies voted for this of their own free will. Not all of us, but enough to make it happen.
The election was less than a month ago. Thank goodness Aussies voted out the other mob who for the last nine years have been asleep at the wheel or it would have been even worse. Lock’em up I say.
“Lock’em up I say.”
Sure right after we lock up all the greentards … we could obviously start with the little fry like you.
Seriously who says or believes that sort of trash other than a complete dropkick.
“little fry” lol,
baramundi much?
Abbott wanted to get rid of the RET and build coal.
That would have been by far the best plan.. Far Left blocked it.
Morrison offered to fund 4 gas and 1 coal. (Only 1 being built)
This is all down to LEFTIST state governments.
Stop your ignorance Loy. !
More than 30% of the Australian public are in on the scam – me included. Very few understand that it is scam though. Or let’s say a Ponzi scheme.
Canberrans, the seat of power in Australia, have just enjoyed a 1.25% reduction in electricity bills because their retail supplier is 100% “renewable”. Only a very few people understand that the electricity is not coming from wind and solar generators most of the time. But they have contracted enough W&S generation so on average over a year, they contracted plants generate as much as they use. My understanding is that New York is aiming to go this way – building W&S in other states and then claiming the output as “renewable”. If Canberra is a net generator of W&S at the present time, they will be enjoying windfall gains.
So all those benefitting from the miracle of “renewables” in Canberra, read all government policy advisers, will be saying that as soon as the rest of Australia goes 100% “renewable” the sooner the whole mess will be fixed.
They have no idea that they are at the pointy end of an intricate Ponzi scheme intended to part poor people from their money and hand it over to less poor.
Even the head of social security organisations are believers in “renewable” energy.
Yes. It’s like a label on a bottle of orange juice. “Contains 100% orange juice.” There was this tiny amount went in that was 100% OJ. The remainder was as diluted as crap.
How Did Watts Up With That Miss This?
Huge victory for scientific truth, and empirical proof for scientific fraud…
The revised Second Law of Thermodynamics, where ‘back radiation’ (the foundation upon which ‘climate change’ stands) is present in the Earth’s Energy Budget…
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/what-is-earth-s-energy-budget-five-questions-with-a-guy-who-knows
But missing is the ‘back radiation’ on the left side of the graph for the incoming radiation (77.1 Wm2) that’s directly absorbed by the atmosphere. Opps!
NASA’s earlier graph of the ‘Earth’s Energy Budget’ affirms the Second Law of Thermodynamics by omitting ‘back radiation’…
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/62319main_ICS_Energy.pdf
Send emails to NASA informing the publicly funded agency that the big lie of ‘back radiation’ is out of the closet…
https://www.nasa.gov/about/contact/index.html
Add to the mess major industrial companies are being closed down to prop up the electricity grid and being paid compensation for the downtime and loss of business revenue.
More economic vandalism.
“Some owners of emergency generators have refused to supply power under the price cap, so the plan is to use the threat of prosecution to force generators to operate, regardless of the financials of the situation, to ensure the grid doesn’t fail.
I can’t help thinking that the Aussie government effectively holding a prosecution gun to power providers heads, and demanding they provide energy at the price the government has set, could lead to a rise in the number of generators suffering “unscheduled maintenance outages”.
This is how socialism becomes communism. Socialism is bad. Throw in force and you get Communism which is worse.
Izaak Walton just explained the problem is we don’t have enough communism…
Most leftists seem to believe that government is the solution to every problem.
essential services should be in the nations control NOT some os profiteers
profits go back and are seen and controlled to be so to renew repair etc for ALL the people IN the nation
ie commonwealth bank WAS for the common-wealth interest and profits went back INto the community, not making one corporation or person or rich shareholders obscene profits
I’m sure I heard Matt Kean say something like we need to bring FF generation back online ‘for now’. – as if it was entirely reasonable to have FF generation sitting around waiting for those ‘rare’ times when it’s needed to keep the lights on, then turned off again until the next time it gets still and dark.
It sounds like he’s all onboard with paying for two generation systems.
Ah but the price cap sends the message they want the FF backup, but don’t want to have to pay for it.
It was on a knife edge yesterday evening, when the sun had set and there was no wind. That’s what happens when you have a cold frosty still night. Fossil fuel generators provided 86% of he load and the current government wants the coal fired power stations to reduce by 43% by 2030. The Labour/Greens won the election, based on ideology with not a practical engineering thought.
I briefly listened to a popular Aussie TV anchor gushing immediately after the election, talking about the green energy transition. “I mean, all we need to do is put some solar panels in the desert, right? Doesn’t seem that difficult”.
The AEMO are the problem here. Run by a bunch of green accountants, in effort to prove that Australia can run entirely on renewables. Switching off Coal fired power stations, in the middle of the day, for the purpose of maximising renewable energy sales. Any wonder that the coal fired power stations have lost interest.
we also have multiple generations of utterly spoilt people who refuse to lower the indoor temps . put on some clothes and use a hot water bottle, use one TV not 3 or more per home etc etc
The correlation between the government-forced adoption of so-called renewables and the retail price of electricity is ‘bleedin’ obvious.
Well I’m all right Jack, in West Australia. Except they are proposing to phase out the coal fired power stations over the next 5 years. I attempted to find the up to date power generation sources in WA but it proved extremely difficult. The best I could do was 2017 Coal 49%, Gas 41%, Wind 8.5%, Other 1.5%. Are they trying to hide this information from the public?
Maybe the solution is for the government to provide the fuel at a set maximum price. That way the government can get the best price and ensure there is no profiteering.
I think the government should build a few new efficient coal fired plants. Provide everyone with electricity at the cheapest price in the world for a given period (10-15 years?)
This would boost the economy no end and give a decided advantage over other manufactures. Then start manufacturing modern missiles and other high tech weapons ( and low tech for that matter) Arm ourselves to the teeth and tell everyone that doesn’t like it to f off.
Wishy washy doesn’t cut it. Never has. Just look at Ukraine. If you are going to help push back Vlad the invader, (and if ever there was something needed it’s that) you have to go all the way. (There is a large communist Asian country to our north watching closely)
Cheap reliable power is number one on the list. No modern Australian government seems to have realized this fact yet. At the moment we are blindfolded and walking towards a cliff.
all good but for the Vlad bit
usa nato and the potstirring is what started the bunfight
and chinas very very clearly just warmed ussa warhawls and everyone else to butt out of taiwan or theyll make whats happening in ukie land look like a picnic
can they?
do we really want to find out?
No, the end of the cold war and Vlad’s embarrassment is what started the bunfight.
Well at least the West Australian Premier is being honest and telling it like it is-
Synergy coal power stations including Muja to close as WA Government prioritises renewable energy (msn.com)
Although the renewables will largely be funded by gas and iron ore royalties and we know what the latter requires to make steel in China.
It requires a special kind of political incompetence to create a situation of blackouts, in a country as big as the USA but with just 26 million people living there.
That country, Australia, has so much indigenous energy under its control, it has supplied the worlds largest energy user for decades and will continue to supply China for many decades yet.
Australia is not only blessed with virtually limitless energy reserves. It is also blessed with complete self sufficiency in every other mineral and food requirement the nation could ever need.
Despite this embarrassment of natural riches, including sunlight and fertile lands greater in area than the whole of Western Europe, the politicians have failed the people.
They have managed to elect successive Australian governments that have worked tirelessly to destroy their secure energy supplies. They continue to invest tax money in pointless so called ‘Green energy’ initiatives even as the expansion of those policies bring chaos and possibly worse..
Does anyone with even basic knowledge of physics, seriously imagine putting grid scale batteries on a system is sensible? That same backup security can safely and reliably be provided by simply firing up fossil fuel generators already standing idle. There is no hope for the Australian future if these lunacies at the centre of government continue.
The collective political inadequacy not only in Australia but across the West in general, is destined to create mass poverty. The end game will be mass insurrection as people without food and without energy to survive react in the only way left to them.
we allowed resources AND land and water to be bought BY OS interests
and boy will we pay for that even more now
It’s failed already – “demand management”blackouts happening in Sydney as we speak…
Australia Facing Risk of Blackouts | Watch (msn.com)
Yep as per below some companies are taking matters into there own hands and forcing the issue. It will filter out of the next days that companies declared an emergency and withdrew generation.
There’s something about fossil fuel workers in Australia – and elsewhere – that’s reminiscent of Jews in wartime Germany. First they’re getting exterminated, then that gets paused since the Reich needs their labour (as too many soldiers are being lost in Russia). So reluctantly they put the Jewish prisoners to work in factories for a while – although most will still be eventually wiped out.
Your observations apply to every competent hardworking person in Australia.
The best investment in Australia this winter is a very warm sweater.
woolen socks and hot water bottles and a GAS LPG stove setup
I have a loooong hot water bottle, perhaps 75 cm/30″ long, with a ‘furry’ cover.
I have it half full, and even on the coldest night it feels warm; my body heat warms it – without using power to heat water for it.
OK – South London, not Arctic Canada – but it is comforting [especially after my wife’s death, a few years ago!].
Auto
There is a new article in the Melbourne Age with a bit more background:
“Power generators are exploiting the chaotic energy market by withdrawing power supply from the electricity grid and waiting until strict rules to prevent blackouts kick in, forcing the energy market operator to direct them to fire their plants back up and triggering profitable compensation payments.
There’s no law stopping power companies from withdrawing their electricity generation from the market, and in the past two days, they have reduced the volume available by 2 gigawatts in Victoria, 3 gigawatts in NSW and 1.5 gigawatts in Queensland.
The withdrawals were prompted by the Australian Energy Market Operator’s decision to put a cap on spiralling prices that electricity generators are charging for wholesale power, which crimped the profit margin of some generators, which are battling coal prices that are soaring because of sanctions on Russian exports.
But the electricity market is tightly regulated and the Australian Energy Market Operator has powers, designed to prevent blackouts, which enable it to force generators to fire up units and start supplying electricity to the grid. Whenever it does this, companies are awarded compensation.
…
These withdrawals represent more than 10 per cent of the east coast energy grid’s total generation capacity of 55 gigawatts and come on top of an energy crunch created by a series of breakdowns and maintenance outages that have forced about one-quarter of the east coast’s coal-fired power stations out of action.”
The change will stop nothing you can’t force a company to act illegally so they just need an engineer to report there is a safety issue and that unit must be shutdown. It’s a game and the problem is the whole set of rules. The companies are simply making a point because some are being disadvantaged and the regulator isn’t listening. If you are a worker you would go on strike but the companies can’t do that so they are doing clever work practice.
The regulator can’t win unless it wants to make itself responsible for the safety decisions of every company …. expect it to get worse ROFL 🙂
On the bright side popcorn sales will be up in the Eastern States all be it made on gas stoves.
I think you’ve missed the point. The article is saying that they are staging to get compensation. The whole point is to get them to force you to supply power.
You mean so they don’t make a loss.
Why didn’t you just say that. !
Nick , being disingenuous and deceitful as always. !
The article was written by a green Communist moron. It is not unbiased journalism. It shows the level of your critical thinking skills.
Like the man says solar and wind fail daily and the climate changers don’t bat an eyelid-
Wind and solar energy ‘fails every single day’: Keith Pitt (msn.com)
But suddenly it’s the full backflip and spare no expense grasping for dispatchables-
UK close to deal with EDF to keep coal-fired power station open (msn.com)
There’s no way they can prop up their beloved unreliables with lithium given competing EV demand to boot so their net zero mantra has doomed them to failure. Putin has just brought their downfall forward and made it more obvious.
when the powercos slap a 13k per megawatt charge on what was well under 300$ I think price caps are justified
our coals onshore and some of the powercos own the mines AND the generators
as to frakking not on our prime farmlands thanks!
we have plenty offshore accessible.
big issue is> 95% of the gas n oil cos are OS owned and selling it all back OS and not even paying aussies a cent of TAX
about time we got our own nations product /resources owned BY aus companies and taxes paid to the public revenue
Whoa up there neddy because it’s like this. Gas in the ground is no good to anyone. It needs lots of risk capital and knowhow to turn it into useable fuel for anyone. That’s where when initial drilling prospects looked promising they required some hedging long term contracts to get extraction and delivery underway.
Now that’s when a lot of Australian power generators and commercial consumers were found wanting as they faced FF phaseout pressure from the local doomsters politically. Not so Asia including Japan Korea and China who signed up to those long term contracts while the locals were happy with cheap spot pricing. Now you want to tear those contracts up and grab the gas back on the cheap when we can have all the gas we want at prevailing world prices.
How would you feel chum if the Gummint needed to compulsorily acquire your home for a new highway and instead of paying current market price you only get what you paid for it 10 years ago? Get the picture?
big issue is> 95% of the gas n oil cos are OS owned and selling it all back OS and not even paying aussies a cent of TAX
about time we got our own nations product /resources owned BY aus companies and taxes paid to the public revenue
Let’s deal with that too shall we? FF extraction and delivery is very front end capital intensive so depreciation brooks large for a long time. Now I didn’t hear too many Ozzies crying in their beers at the prices FF companies were getting during Covid but only now. Those companies buy lots of local goods and services and the pay income tax and compulsory super on behalf of all their employees along with various tiers of Gummint rates and charges including royalties.
If you or me or our super funds or even Australia’s Future Fund want to invest in those companies for their returns we’re all welcome to. In other words put your hard earned where your mouth is and stop sticking your hand out for a free lunch only when it suits you. You could have bought in when they couldn’t give the stuff away during Covid now couldn’t you champ?
What is “OS”?
Kick ’em in the butt and blame them for hurting your foot. I remember when President Jimmy Carter ordered the equal distribution of gasoline by state, then would not allow the companies to make enough money to ship the gasoline to where he dictated. Gasoline and Diesel was stranded in ports in cities that had shortages! You can’t fix stupid, as Dave would say.
Bolty nails the seeming feeling idiocracy and now they have to do-
‘Proof of the total idiocy of our political class’: Andrew Bolt (msn.com)
They’ll be on the nose like Biden and the Dems by Xmas with that.
It’s a win win for the political class, there is always someone to present to solve the problem they caused. Only this time they may have burned too many bridges.
Governments should not be in charge of anything, they have a small role to play regulating things. No entity should be self regulating. If the government is in charge who is left to regulate them? No one but themselves, that is a bad bad deal. If government does a shitty job they throw more of our money at it, if that doesn’t work they blame someone else and come down on them. It is a bad bad thing. If a private or corporate generator does a shitty job they go out of business or the management is fired. That is a good thing. Private or corporate generators have no business regulating themselves, no one does. It goes double for governments.
It’s that moment in Laurence of Arabia near the end – adapted by me and hopefully with a happy conclusion – “The LEFT set up a council to administer the city, but the GAS AND DIESEL COMPANIES cut off access to the public utilities , leaving the LEFT to debate how to maintain the occupation. Despite GAS AND DIESEL COMPANIES efforts, the LEFT bicker constantly, and soon abandon most of the city to the GAS AND DIESEL COMPANIES “
Reminds me of the ineptness of the French vs. US made Australia subs drama, which is the anti nuke ineptness concentrated.
France can obviously build nuke attack subs, but tried to make oceanic class diesel subs, which isn’t a product on the shelf in France. Just to please the inept Australia client.