Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova – Someone forgot to build the grid capacity to support the gas replacement policy.
Victorians transitioning from gas exacerbates growing problem of undervoltage
Marie Slako moved into her Northcote [Melbourne] home two years ago, attracted to the property for its rooftop solar and partial conversion to electricity-powered heating and appliances.
“I’d like to get off fossil fuels,” Ms Slako, who previously worked for energy distributor AusNet, said. “And also gas is really expensive. The winter price, it hurts.”
But shortly after moving in, problems started.
First, Ms Slako noticed she could only use one hotplate at a time on her induction cooktop. Then she found the microwave would not heat food at dinnertime, but would burn everything at other times.
This month, she discovered her split system would not heat the house.
…
Induction cooktops were not working. EV chargers were disconnecting, leaving cars without battery. Heaters were struggling to push out hot air.
…Undervoltage issues were occurring primarily in older areas of the network, such as inner city and older suburban Melbourne, and older urban areas of Ballarat, Geelong and Bendigo.
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-22/victoria-undervoltage-melbourne-gas-electricity/106588882
…
The problem could be about to get a whole lot worse. Australia’s fuel insecurity, caused by a multi-decade policy of shutting down local extraction and refinery capacity and relying on imported Persian Gulf supplies, is driving a surge in EV sales.
Australia’s EV sales surge in March amid growing fuel security fears, rising petrol prices
By climate reporter Nathan Morris and Fran Rimrod
Tue 7 AprElectric vehicle uptake in Australia is accelerating as anxiety about fuel shortages and rising petrol prices grows.
A month into the ongoing war with Iran, new car sales data released today show the share of EVs has doubled compared to March last year.
The sales growth is just one signal that the country’s car market is shifting, with online searches and showroom visitors surging. But as fuel supply disruptions ripple through global markets and households look to lower their costs, experts are warning that now is the time to iron out existing roadblocks to that transition.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-07/australia-ev-sales-spike-amid-fuel-fears-rising-petrol-prices/106516598
It’s not just local grid capacity which has a problem. From winter 2025;
To add to this fun, anger in rural Victorian communities is boiling over. Farmers in Victoria have finally had enough of strangers trampling their fields at will, surveying new routes for Victoria’s new renewable energy power lines, and are rising up and blocking access to their land – a resistance movement which could easily escalate into a sabotage campaign if the Victorian government goes in heavy handed instead of listening to their concerns.
Victorian farmer left feeling ‘disrespected’ by VicGrid officers for denying access to land
Thu 16 Apr
A farmer from Murrabit in Victoria’s north, believed to be one of the first landholders threatened with enforcement action by VNI West officers for blocking access to their land, says he is going to continue “locking the gates”.
The ABC was there when authorised officers from VNI West visited sheep farmer Nathan McKnight’s property, where powerlines are proposed to cut diagonally through 250 hectares of his 1,214-hectare farm.
Mr McKnight said he was left feeling “disrespected” after interactions with VNI West, where authorised officers wore body-worn cameras, cited breaches of the law and threatened enforcement action.
“It’s why we’ve got to this stage that we’re locking the gates and under no circumstances are you going to come in,” Mr McKnight told the authorised officers at the gate to his farm on Tuesday.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-16/victorian-farmer-disrespected-vicgrid-officers-land-access/106567728
Imagine buying an EV to beat the Iran fuel crisis, thinking you’ve made the smart choice, then discovering your charger doesn’t work. EV chargers are deliberately designed not to function when under voltage is detected.
As our Aussie Southern Hemisphere June to August winter kicks in, as electrified houses crank up their electric heating, and as a surge of EVs are connected to an already overstressed grid, things could be about to get very interesting in places like the People’s Green Paradise of Victoria.
It looks like they cannot learn from
Spain, California, or Germany.
To the list, add the UK and NY.
And CA, which is importing 25 – 30% of the electricity used in the state.
Interesting … back in the late 50’s there were some home neighborhood projects built in California that were all electric and advertised as the way of the future. Didn’t take long for those home owners to realize their electricity costs were quite higher than mixed gas and electric homes with no real advantage and a disadvantage when the grid hiccuped. It was a fad that passed and what was once a selling point became a detractor.
We had a house in Topanga Cyn which was built as a house of the future with electric heat (no cooling dependent upon ocean breezes). The entire ceiling was electric with electric floor registers. Of course electric stove and hot water heater. Very expensive even in the 1980s and 90s. So I had the house converted to propane heat (no piped gas there).
Definitely good savings. Now I don’t know what the costs are considering the insane rush towards so called renewable energy.
The house in La Quinta was electric with Imperial Irrigation as the provider. Lot of imported electric supply from Arizona and Four Corners coal fired plant, Hippocracy writ large for a green state!!
Those were the Gold Medallion All Electric Homes.
Oh they have, but the wrong lesson – they want to go harder and more completely reliant on wind and solar using CCP technology.
Hey why’re the lights out?
Not that Australia is third world . . . yet – I’m certain the UK is much further along that road – but this from Kathryn Porter is worth a read: Green vs Baseload: the most suitable energy for a developing country? – Watt-Logic
And this, too, from Paul Burgess: The Real Drivers of UK Electricity Costs – Intermittent Renewables Dramatically Inflate Effective Gas Prices, Impose Unaffordable Network Costs, and Undermine Claims of Renewables Superiority
And all of this is clearly predictable. There must be thousands of power engineers in Australia who knew of the coming problems and if they spoke of them were either ignored or, consistent with recent UK policy, jailed for opposing what the Government wants to do, reality be damned. Sigh!
Bigger departments and more income. The transmission and distribution networks are monopolies although some are privately owned. The have a guaranteed return on investment. More investment means more income. Power engineers are bound to be pragmatists.
How many people question the stupidity of doing something they get paid well to do. You want a new transmission line – we can give you a new transmission line for this much.
The farmers are the ones questioning the stupidity because many would have done sums on powering their water pumps and households with solar panels. Some are even powering their milking machines. But they know an electric tractor is not going to be of much utility.
Very few have thought the whole thing through or even looked at the overall trends. I can bet you that not a single academic promoting “renewables” run their house off-grid. They have no idea what is actually required.
I was talking with a mechanical engineer recently, he had over 30 years experience in heavy industry/mineral processing and due to a recent change in circumstances, he now found himself working in the windmill installation industry.
He had swallowed the dogma, hook line and sinker, and even though he knew that the wind doesn’t always blow, he was adamant that the electricity grid could be 100% powered from solar and wind, (with a little top up from batteries if necessary). He also believed that this would be cheaper than any other option.
I’m thinking that the salary must be good to have that level of faith. No amount of discussion or evaluation of ANY real world scenarios would sway him.
The force runs deep in some, maybe to the point of scouring out anything that was once reasonable. Based on this example, you truly can be bought.
You are one of the few who has an idea of the true cost. Did you ask him if he operating his house off-grid and how much his unit cost is taking into account all the capital outlay plus opportunity.
He was firmly on grid. Paying through the nose like most of the locals, (in Oz).
When I explained the cost of my system, (off grid), he was astounded that the battery storage was so large, he had no idea that I could justify 5-8 days of storage, (which in normal operation rarely get below 5% draw down), I’m not sure that he could picture a week of dense clouds or heaven forbid, no wind. Historical data had no interest to him.
When I explained that an industry, like a smelter, could not be run on batteries due to the demand, eg 1500Vdc at 300kA, he was sure that I was wrong, either the demand was wrong or batteries could do it for a fair price. I ran him through the numbers that I can get the batteries, (trade pricing), and even then my small house has just under $20k for 50kWh. A retail shop would need at least 5 times that if they were to ensure constant A/C for product storage, display lighting, etc, etc. No business could justify that kind of outlay and especially not retail in Oz.
With regard to the capital outlay for the windmills he installs, he admits that the government help a little with the costs, (he didn’t even know about red tape and the gold pass that windmills get), and especially the mandated purchase of the power. I bet that if he really thought about it, he’d realise that a free market, (open to coal, nuclear,etc), would exclude windmills in a heartbeat due to their intermittent nature. But while the cash is still flowing, he’ll sing the theme song loud and clear, the real world be damned.
In my Chemical Engineering program we had to consider all costs when doing a project analysis. Mechanical Engineering concentrate on certain aspects of projects.
The under voltage issue could be local to the house rather than in the street.
If you notice a low voltage in your supply when the demand is high, (eg oven on), then get an electrician to check your wiring. The fault COULD be the wiring internal to the house or even the terminations in the cabling. Faulty connections and undersized cabling, (common in older installations), can lead to hot spots and potentially fires.
Then again, it could be the whole street. If the problem is common to your neighbours, then it could be signs of bigger problems, (as the article implies).
It would have been nice if, (through the article), they had asked the neighbours if they see the same issues. If not…. then this could just be poor internal wiring that needs to be addressed, and fast.
All of the above I think – household wiring, local capacity, area capacity and generation capacity issues are all contributing to the chaos.
As more solar panels, batteries and electrification occur, the distributors lose touch with the system. They have no idea how much load is actually connected. My neighbour has a 2025 vintage solar/battery system and his export is limited by the grid operator. This is now common to reduce the solar generation into the grid. His new electric heat pump is rated at 10kW. His battery 30kWh. Most days he is self-sufficient. I have also converted to heat pumps with 7kW peak on space cooling/heating. My on-grid battery is only 5kWh. I know there are others in this area that have got off gas after installing solar/battery and lots with just solar panels.
So now there is a warmish day and the aircons are running – mostly off solar. Then afternoon storm clouds roll in and solar drops off. Those without battery start pulling immediately off the grid. Within 2 hours my battery is flat and I start pulling off the grid. Six hours after the clouds appear, my neighbour’s battery is flat and everyone has started their ovens and induction cooktops for the evening meal. Bang – the local breaker trips.
Those exact circumstances took out 30,000 homes in Melbourne in February. In our particular case the area transformer also blew a phase fuse so a third of the homes were without power for 16 hours.
I’d be really concerned about the 2/3 of the consumers that did not have a blackout.
What was there voltage, (phase to neutral), when that happened. I’m taking a fairly reasonable guess that the neutral, (as measured to a true ground), was pulled toward the voltages between the two phases, lowering the voltage phase to neutral BUT raising the neutral voltage well above local ground.
I wonder how many people, out of the 2/3 who were still connected, even noticed the reduced voltage, unless they smoked out an AC motor or wondered why their toaster was taking longer in the rush to get a hot breakfast before scurrying off to work.
Ideal system, three equal loads across three phases.
This is for a lost Neutral, but the concept is similar, (just imagine the neutral being taken to the left instead of the right), and observe the reduced length, (voltage), of the two phases IF the L1 load was not pulling to the right.
I was surprised that it did not have phase loss detection. This area is now outer suburban but it would have been rural when designed. It may have a 5-leg transformer so the shift from earth potential is not so great.
I was in a block of units in Perth a while back and one phase dropped out, no phase fail in operation, (excepting at the three phase boards), all single phase appliances were on, (unless you were on the phase that was dropped).
And the voltage was awful. It bounced around depending on who was pulling the most current, never above 230Vac but never constant either. Thankfully most devices are now powered by a SMPS so are somewhat immune to this problem. Pity anyone with a large single phase AC motor, the current drain could have gone up to balance the power demand, maybe enough to trip circuits. I guess with the deskilling in Oz, there is less and less people with a motor of any merit now, gone are the days of lathes and machinery shops in the shed.
ELCC measures coincidence, not causation, and not resilience to new extremes.
ELCC is mathematically consistent—but it is structurally non‑predictive in the presence of climate non‑stationarity.
· Multi‑day low‑wind / low‑solar events (“Dunkelflaute”) appear outside the historical stress‑hour window used for accreditation
Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE) is the underlying reliability metric ELCC preserves.
· LOLE is: The expected number of time units (typically days per year) in which demand exceeds available supply
The North American standard of “1 day in 10 years” is not a guarantee—it is a long‑run statistical average. [link.springer.com]
Modern resource‑adequacy literature increasingly emphasizes energy adequacy and chronological modeling—because a capacity‑only metric cannot capture depletion and persistence effects. [nlr.gov]
In systems with high shares of weather‑dependent generation, LOLE remains mathematically satisfied even when new failure modes emerge, because:
As a result, a system can meet a 0.1 LOLE target on paper while being exposed to single‑event outages that exceed historical experience.
This gap is now explicitly acknowledged in resource adequacy reform discussions, which note that traditional LOLE‑based standards were designed for fuel‑secure thermal fleets, not energy‑limited, weather‑correlated systems. [link.springer.com]
LOLE tells you how often you expect to fail, not whether you can survive the failure that actually occurs.
Key point:
The unit of counting is the day, not the duration within the day.
So:
This is not a mistake or oversimplification — it is explicitly documented and repeatedly clarified by IEEE, NERC, MISO, SPP, NYSRC, etc.. [cdn.misoenergy.org], [spp.org]
That’s why the industry warning exists:
“1 day in 10 years LOLE ≠ 24 hours in 10 years” [cdn.misoenergy.org]
its entire suburbs and towns ..and the internet past ballarat is as dodgy as the grid nbn or not its CRAP
Any internal wiring issues should have been taken care of before the house was sold. If not, should have been fully disclosed.
All part of the plan. Electricity 101 could see this coming, why didn’t the government? This is just another unintended consequence that will be ignored but not by the people affected.
It was never supposed to work.
You’re assuming it was unintended.
It was unintended (unknown?) by the useful idiots, not the people behind the scheme. Like I said “all part of the plan”.
Depends on which level you consider the useful idiots, and which are in on the plan.
Australia as a whole and constituent states are being run to a greater or lesser extent like California, and Victoria most of all.
The Labor (statist-socialist) state government since 2014, like a previous Labor government 1982 – 1992, has sent the state bankrupt and will eventually need to be bailed out by the Commonwealth.
‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result’ (Misattributed to Einstein).
It’s actually the definition of evil,
while pretending to expect different results to make it look like incompetence or insanity.
I think it is arrogance, they think everyone else might have gotten it wrong but they are the special people who will make the right decisions, because they are so clever and wise.
Victoria may have green energy delusions but they arent bankrupt
The Victorian government reported an operating cash surplus of $2.6 billion in 2023–24 and forecasts a $1.9 billion surplus for 2026–27.
Operating surplus isnt the same as cash flow but it means that spending on operations isnt done from borrowing, which is the case in USA
Only because the Commonwealth Government underwrites state government debt.
There is no Federal guarantee at all as each state and territory has its own credit rating and debt arrangements.
Federal Borrowing is AAA rating and is clearly higher than the around AA+ from Victoria- NT is lowest at AA-
Thats a false claims
I’m always amazed that a state government with so much debt can post a cash surplus. Surely any excess is NOT a surplus but is actually committed to paying down debt.
The only true time to be reporting a cash surplus should be when there is no debt to be repaid.
Not a true cash surplus as I said , as they are spending and borrowing big for capital infrastructure , which is non operational spending
Idealogues who have chosen to rely on the dodgy energy produced by unreliable sources such as wind & solar have only themselves to blame for their lack of due diligence about what they were signing up for.
I mean, it’s not as if there was no information anywhere about the shortcomings of utility-scale “renewable energy” everywhere it has been attempted all around the world.
You’d have to have been living under a rock to not be aware of this situation.
(or maybe, as happens with ideology, it blocks out reality, reason, logic & rational thinking)
“Breaking the Grid”
Complete nonsense. This has nothing to do with power generation. It is about local transmission in areas of increased demand. Basically, transformers stepping down to mains voltage are becoming overloaded. The complaint is directed at Citipower, a distributor authority. It just means that if you wanrt to use more electricity, fine, but the equipment may need updating. As the article says:
“Undervoltage issues were occurring primarily in older areas of the network, such as inner city and older suburban Melbourne, and older urban areas of Ballarat, Geelong and Bendigo.”
and (not quoted here)
“So many homes on Ms Slako’s street had transitioned from gas to electricity that the infrastructure could not push through enough electricity to homes to run appliances reliably during peak times.”
BTW, there is something fishy about this story. The ABC had to ruefully add a proviso:
“Editor’s note (23/04/2026): This story has been amended to reflect that both Marie Slako and Tom Langstaff previously worked at AusNet. ”
Ausnet is a rival organisation to Citipower.
Nick, the continuing problems in electricity delivery caused by the grafting of intermittent sources onto established utility grids are legion.
Where are you coming from in always trying to find ways to deny the realities of established grids being put out of whack whenever they are compromised by the addition of intermittent, unreliable sources of generation such as wind & solar?
Mr,
It is nothing to do with power sources. It is a street level problem in older areas. It isn’t even really caused by customers switching from gas (now very expensive) to electricity. The usual problem is more customers. I live in an oldish part of Melbourne. Our formerly low rise area now has some multistory apartment towers. A few years ago we did have a (planned) blackout, over two days (someone bungled) while they upgraded the substation and other infrastructure. All is well. Maybe some places that didn’t happen.
So you’ve abandoned Moyhu for inner city Melbourne?
(I went the other direction – abandoned inner-city Melbourne for the remote wilds of the Vic ranges, a decision I never regretted)
And Moyhu celebrated with a small party including some real fancy fireworks.
Moyhu worries about bushfires.
The agenda is, (1) electrify everything (2) at the same time move electricity generation to wind and solar.
The problem is the electrification will increase demand, while the move to wind and solar will make supply intermittent and unreliable. Faced with examples of the difficulties the agenda leads to, both at local distribution level and at regional generation level, the advocates will claim that these are nothing but a few little local difficulties.
In the UK, as a for instance, you will find people claiming that building huge transmission capacity from the north coast of Scotland to the Midlands and South East is upgrading the grid, not part of the cost of moving to wind. Despite the fact that without the move to wind no-one in his right mind would consider building such capacity between those two places.
Similarly all local failures down to increased demand will be put down to an inadequate local network, the implication being that it was in need of investment and upgrading anyway.
There is some point at which you have to recognize this is a religious program. Wind and solar and EVs and heat pumps are righteous, and that’s all there is to it. Refusal to analyze or consider or plan for the consequences. In other contexts its called denial.
NESO (UK Grid Operator) say cost of supplying those transmission lines are expected to be £7bn by 2027 with a total cost by 2050 of £3 trillion to £7 trillion
”used to work for” is pretty thin, Ausnet is not a Zaibatsu, where everyone sings the company anthem repeatedly until their voice breaks.
And I provided articles showing Victoria’s electricity network is suffering multiple problems, and is likely unready for an electrification surge.
Eric,
You provided a link to another Eric Worrall article. It was nonsense too. The other link was to some farmers haggling over terms. I live in Victoria. The network is fine.
It is strange that the sole complainant quoted, and the person who commented (the two people pictured in the ABC article) both worked for Ausnet.
AusNet had to restore power to 30,000 houses in February due to distribution overloads on a warmish day a few hours after storm clouds rolled in. It took them 16 hours to get to the fuse fault in our outer Melbourne suburb because they had to work through the night on more serious issues. All related to local distribution overload.
It is a systemic issue that will cost a heap to solve and guarantees further increase in retail costs.
Our local fuel station delivers energy at a BEV equivalent rate of 20MW. That is enough to serve a small neighbourhood. Now you place all those vehicles in local houses with their charger and you have to find another 20MW (The fuel station is unprofitable and closes). An induction cooktop can take up to 5kW. A heat pump for space cooling or heating can take 10kW.
All good when running off solar panels and household battery, which is the only way it remains affordable. But come that cloudy day mid winter with solar doing nothing and battery already flat. The BEV on charge; the heating turned on; the induction cooktop and oven cranking doing the evening meal; the toddlers in the bath. That is when the Victorian grid crashes. This year or next.
There is some prospect of One Nation being stuck with this mess if Victorian grid gets through this winter.
“All related to local distribution overload.”
Yes. Local infrastructure that now has many more customers. Ausnet, or someone, has to spend money upgrading. They should, their revenue is way up. But they are slow to spend.
Nick,
Please tell me which local areas are operating above historical peaks at any one time. If you have the schedule for which areas are allowed to peak and when it would be appreciated.
In the interim, you should consider that the weather systems that influence high demand may also influence more than one locality. It is for this reason that examples of overload and brownout will not be limited to one locality. However you may notice that by design or be accident, if one locality, (out of several), is tripped off, then the others will have head room to continue to operate.
If that is your solution to the overload issues, then shall we hope that your area is always the first to trip?
Ian,
I’ll quote again the Citipower diagnosis:
“So many homes on Ms Slako’s street had transitioned from gas to electricity that the infrastructure could not push through enough electricity to homes to run appliances reliably during peak times.”
…
“[The power network] was sort of designed to handle customers’ consumption for a given time when it was originally built,”
Citipower has applied to the AER to upgrade (so they can pass on the cost to customers). But, says ABC:
“The AER has previously declined a similar proposal, arguing CitiPower had overstated the impacts of undervoltage.”
I’m still hoping that your locality trips. Is that a bad thing?
Unlikely. As I noted, the substation was upgraded a few years ago, and also the 230V transmission. If you want to supply more people, or the same people with more, that is what you have to do. That is how you stay in business.
Nope – no more customers. The area has been settled for 35 years and there are no longer any vacant blocks and there has been no blocks carved up for compacted dwellings.
Our local transformer went out because there is much greater load now connected to the grid that sometimes hits the grid. If the weather causes the conditions for all the batteries to be flat and for all those new heat pumps to hit the system at the evening peak when all the new induction cooktops are working; the BEV is charging and the kids taking a bath so the hotwater heat pump kicks in then the load one day can be 10X what it was the previous day.
Replacing a distribution transformer and the cabling to cater for weather events that happen a few times a year is going to be very expensive. There is already talk of the connection fee being doubled in Victoria.
Most days, I draw no power from the grid. There are a lot of households in the same situation. To get off gas, I installed a hotwater heat pump that pulls 0.8kW when running. I have a space heater/cooler heat pump than can pull up to 7kW. I have a new induction cooktop that can pull 5kW. So in the last year or so I have added 13kW that can hit the system at once in addition to the loads that were there before disconnecting from gas. My average demand is negative.
The only way this conversion was economic for me was because I have excess solar – most of the time. I would need to spend a LOT more money to go fully off-grid.
Come back to me when you disconnect from the grid and tell me what it actually costs. Disconnecting from the grid really means disconnecting from coal fired power. Australia is already running on a song and a prayer because the grid relies on clapped out coal fired generators, which are the only ESSENTIAL generators. Prices in South Australia tripled when they lost the Victorian interconnector.
I
No it doesnt .
A 10kW heat pump is the OUTPUT.
As it maximised the heat ouput from the air . To generate a high heat output its likely to draw at the most 1/3 of that or 3.5kW. Melbourne being a large urban heat island wont get so cold in the mornings.
To reduce the startup power draw leave the heat pump running all night on its lowest temperature ( 16-17C) plus use the Eco button which will lower the thermostat another 2 C to around 14-15C house inside temperature.
Use the timer to reset at say 6am to 18C. All this can be done at nightime off peak cheaper power rates – if you have a smart meter recording readings every 30 min to send to the lines company by 4G SMS
No – the 10kW is the installed electrical capacity of the compressor, ambient air fans and internal circulating fans. The heating or cooling capacity is about 40kW. In my case with the 7kW, it heats at 27kW and cooling a bit less.
Thats crazy numbers You would need 3 phase supply for 10kW load.
My two are 5.5kW and 3.3kW respectively OUTPUT
Thats the normal number on the unit . OUTPUT
Whats the Model and its rating for 27kW otput
Heat pumps are rated at +10C outdoor temperature. Their COP drops to zero at their low limit. Your claim of 1/3 is not likely occurring in real life. Heat pumps have poor performance when needed most. I am not familiar with heating conditions in AU. In Canada they work best when heat is barely needed.
We were talking about Melbourne. Clearly Canada is a different situation. so the 10kW for the street would be the output ( heating) , cooling a bit less
It’s both Nick.
Regardless, the cost of upgrading the network so it can support all these new electric loads is never counted as a cost of de-carbonization.
““Undervoltage issues were occurring primarily in older areas of the network, such as inner city and older suburban Melbourne, and older urban areas of Ballarat, Geelong and Bendigo.””
Ah so they have to rebuild the whole grid in those areas, because the grid can’t deliver.
Isn’t that what the whole topic is about !!
The grid is generally the transmission networks. The suburbs and towns would be on the distribution network. Related but not the same. The latter is lower voltage and typically has less redundancy, with few parallel circuits down at 11kV level.
Clueless retard. Or propagandist. Either choice is bad. That’s you
I know nothing about Australian power generation and use. But the problem alleged in the article seems to be a real thing coming towards the UK.
Last year EVs were about 5% of cars in use in the UK. The source for this was ChatGPT. They are quite a large percentage of sales, something like 25% or so, which must include PHEVs, but because modern cars last a long time the installed base remains mainly ICE.
I don’t believe the local grid will support a situation when EVs are 50% or more of the base. Still less if the Government were successful in its goal of installing (literally) millions of heat pumps. Which it probably will not manage due to consumer resistance. Even if the country could generate enough power at plant level, it could not deliver the increase to households.
I don’t either believe it will support that situation at a national level either. There just is not enough generating capacity. And this is before the great move away from gas to wind and solar.
You can see it in the numbers very readily if you just write down what this might look like in about 2030 or soon after. Imagine one of these cold, clear, calm, dark winter evenings in January. A blocking high, so minimal wind for ten days or so. No solar, because that’s how it is in winter in the UK. An installed base of 45GW solar and 90GW wind, so 135GW total.
There will be 60GW+ peak demand, up from around 45GW at the moment. And that might well be an under-estimate depending on how the EVs and heat pumps actually work out at scale. The wind will supply about 10GW, and will stay at this level for days, with occasional periods of a few hours below 5GW. Solar is nothing, that’s just how winter is in the UK. Nuclear? Depends if they have to close the existing ones, but say 10GW to be generous. Interconnect to Europe will deliver something. Say its 10GW (which is also generous). Gas? The plants are reaching end of life, and the aim was anyway to close them all. There are little bits of biomass and hydro, but the hydro will all have gone and the biomass is trivial.
However you figure it there is going to be about 30GW to get from somewhere, and its going to have to be available for at least a week. You can verify the realism of these generation numbers from gridwatch, they are not an exaggeration of how the weather works in the UK.
I cannot see any alternative but blackouts. But if you can see any way, just say where you think the supply is going to come from. I understand that with smart meters (assuming they get them installed in enough quantities, which is also generous) you can turn off the heat pumps and the EV chargers. But I can’t see how even that saves the situation nationally, and it will be politically impossible, not to mention the health consequences.
And then, you still have the local grid. Even if you could generate it at the plant, how do you get it to the houses? There are no signs anywhere in the UK that I have seen of the scale of local construction that would be needed. On the contrary, server farms are being refused connections because of lack of capacity.
I cannot see any way this doesn’t lead to blackouts, nationwide. You raise demand and move supply to unreliable and intermittent generation technology, you don’t have and can’t afford any storage, you let the current reliable gas generation fail for lack of replacement – and even if you started trying now to buy and build more gas, lead times are too long for purchases to avert the crash.
Its not possible. But if you can see a way to do it, put up the numbers of where it would all come from. It would be a great relief to those living in the UK, or with friends and family there.
michel,
“But the problem alleged in the article seems to be a real thing coming towards the UK.”
I’m sure they are there now. They will happen, at a local level, whenever you try to deliver a greatly increased amount of electricity without spending on infrastructure to deliver it. And of course it is good business to spend, because there will be much extra revenue, which will pay for it. No need to increase prices.
The same is true for generation. If demand increases, then revenue will increase, if you can meet it. So it pays to install more equipment.
“Other peoples’ money” to the rescue again, Nick?
That has a habit of running out too, you know.
It is a law as old as time that if you want people to be supplied with electricity, money will have to be spent on equipment to convey it. If you want to supply more electricity, money may have to be spent upgrading equipment. It is a cost of doing business.
hit the wrong button so had to edit.
Just how do you get “much extra revenue” without raising prices? Population growth?
If you can’t see that grid enhancement is being required due to the warmists need to kill the production of CO2, then you are blind.
“Just how do you get “much extra revenue” without raising prices?”
You sell more electricity.
But yes, here it is mainly population growth. More people being supplied with the same network.
How can revenue increase if it is free energy?
Having to replace perfectly good long life infrastructure that was built up over the past half century in a short time won’t come at a high cost?
On the distribution network with buried cabling and pad transformers, it isn’t an easy job to uprate the power supply. Very expensive and disruptive.
So what are you going to do? Ration the electricity?
We have overhead cables.
Nick, you leave out the reason WHY demand has spiked. Electric heating of water and housing, electric charging of EV’s, intermittent residential solar, etc. all have changed the demand requirements of the grid. WHY has this occurred? The rush to eliminate fossil fuel powered power.
Transitions need to be carefully planned down to the last detail. Renewable insertion to the power structure has not been adequately planned down to the last detail, neither has the effects of increased demand for electricity. WHY? The rush to make as much money as possible from renewables and by selling new infrastructure such as EVs, heat pumps, electric water heaters, etc.
It is the price to be paid for breaking up the provision of electricity into smaller and smaller pieces that are essentially random in their effects. Electric power at one time was an integrated and well planned and implemented SYSTEM. That is no longer the case. In the U.S., when a developer platted a new development, it was provided to public service providers such as water, gas, electric, street and highway, and telephone. They could PLAN the needed changes. No longer. With the rush to electrify everything to satisfy the transition away from fossil fuels planning has gone out the window.
We now have markets for the provision of electric power. Planning how it will access and be distributed is no longer considered in a systemic project. If I want to put a wind or solar farm in some remote location, I do so with no regard as to the effects on the grid. In fact, the grid is obligated to provide the transmission lines that allow me to connect. What a joke. House solar is a random steel ball thrown into a functioning system of meshed gears. What could possibily go wrong?
This is all so warmists can value signal their morality about how they are saving the world. Enuff said.
Fortunately replacing all of the local distribution transformers and lines costs less than zero so it can be done for free, like free energy, nobody will have to pay for it!
All the previously adequate long life equipment can be melted for scrap using solar energy. /s
Australia has spent hundreds of billions on transition of the electricity grid. The result is that grid scale wind, solar, batteries and new transmission lines produced 3.1% of the total primary energy needs of the country. A LOOOOONG way to go and many trillions required. All spent without improving productivity or any other tangible benefit.
Electricity cost 84c/kWh at the diesel powered charging stations before the diesel shortage. For comparison, that makes $3/lite (say USD7/gallon) for a diesel powered sedan very economical compared to a BEV.
I fully support household solar panels, batteries and electrical conversion because it accelerates the decline of the grid while lowering household energy cost. With stupid people running the show, it will require complete collapse before the futility dawns.
One Nation is now polling at 27%, which means 27% of the Australian voting population now realise they are being lied to by the various levels of government and all the other UN stooges infesting academia and government sponsored agencies.
I seriously looked at solar because I don’t trust the government to be competent to maintain grid stability, but with my property there is so safe or remotely affordable path to supplying my needs with solar / battery.
You should look at a battery. As far as I am aware, the new Solar Sharer scheme will apply in every State – effective from 1 July. A battery charged from free electricity has a payback inside three years. Nothing can be done quickly to reduce grid costs.
Free is just government hyperbole
The generators have to pay to send it out. It comes at a high cost to get free electricity but the price to households from 11am to 2pm is nothing.
Generall the power bill has two components.
Lines/delivery charges and the actual kWhr used.
Most people cant use the 3 hours because of the timing
I can switch to offpeak after 11am-5pm and 9pm-7am but only for hot water and say dishwasher
we arent going to cook everything before 5pm
In the American South, where air conditioning is a necessity, you might as well get a one with a reversing valve, which makes it a “heat pump.” A heat pump can cool your home in summer, just like an air conditioner, but it can also heat your home in winter — as long as outdoor temperatures don’t drop too far.
In the deep South, it works well. In the upper South, where I live (NC), it works well most of the year. But most years we get a pretty brutal cold snap, perhaps a couple of weeks long, which the heat pumps cannot handle. That forces the HVAC system to use auxiliary resistive heating elements, which is horrifically expensive.
So it is not unusual for all-electric homes to have a February power bill that is 3x as high as an average month.
It doesn’t help that in 2021 NC enacted a radical “Green New Deal Lite” bill, HB-951 (officially entitled, “Energy Solutions for North Carolina”), to make electricity more expensive (officially to reduce carbon emissions), to enrich Duke Power and the wind & solar industries at the expense of the rest of us (officially “to achieve a seventy percent (70%) reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted in the State from electric generating facilities owned or operated by electric public utilities from 2005 levels by the year 2030 and carbon neutrality by the year 2050.”)
It is almost as bad as the similar laws in “blue” states. It orders utilities (mainly Duke Power) to decommission perfectly good, clean, efficient, economical, scrubber-equipped, coal power plants, and instead build lots of expensive, unreliable wind turbines and “solar farms” — and empowers them to raise electricity prices drastically, to pay for it.
It had strong bipartisan support. Duke Power (which profits from the deal) lobbied the Republicans, the climate and “renewables” industries (which profit from the deal) lobbied the Democrats, large majorities of both parties voted for it, and the Democratic governor signed it into law. (And now many of those same politicians are dishonestly blaming “data centers” for our skyrocketing electricity prices.)
There’s not really much difference between how most Democrat politicians vote and how most Republican politicians vote. If Democrats wanted to immediately bulldoze the Smithsonian, Republicans would probably vote to phase in the demolition over five years, and use competitive bidding to do it 20% cheaper.
I’m reminded of the definition of bipartisanship:
“We have two parties here. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. I’m a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.”
– variously attributed to M. Stanton Evans, Sen. Alan Simpson, or Sen. Everett Dirksen
It’s more than just a reversing valve, the whole system has to be redesigned.
In addition to this cost, there is the issue of a heat pump will be running more hours per year than an A/C unit would have, so it will wear out faster, or have to be built more robust to begin with, both of which cost money.
And to top it all off, you still need to buy a heater that is strong enough to heat your entire house during the coldest likely periods for your area.
Yes, that’s all true, and in total it adds something like a 15-20% cost premium for a heat pump, compared to a plain A/C with a “gas pack.” But it saves the cost of running gas lines to the neighborhood.
But the cost of the resistive heater is negligible compared to the cost of running the resistive heater. That’s what really drains the piggy bank.
Now you are contradicting yourself.
In your first post you comment about the need for gas heat as a backup, now you are saying that not needing to run gas lines is a savings.
By the way, the cost of running gas lines to a neighborhood is not that high when divided by the number of homes.
Houses with gas heat go for a premium.
The problem is significant for a number of reasons. Not only are the distribution systems being overloaded at peak times, but they can’t handle the fluctuating import export loading. There is no stability in the voltage and waveforms – overloaded transformers distort the sinewave, so do domestic solar inverters exporting. The voltage and waveform variations will trash people’s domestic appliances.
It can be fixed but at very high cost – retrofitting heavy underground cabling in suburbia and on-line tap changing street transformers plus distribution reactor/ capacitor banks. Stopping domestic power export would be a good and cheap option, though probably politically unacceptable.
Are people prepared to have their electricity price go up to do this? I think not.
If McKnight doesn’t want powerlines on his property then he needs to check his family tree for Aboriginal ancestry, and\or check to see if his land is spiritually significant in Aboriginal culture – though that could be dangerous if he’s pure White.
If he can show VNI West are harassing a Black man (race in Australia is not based on the hue of your skin), or seeking to build on Aboriginal land, they’ll almost certainly reroute no matter what it takes, or costs.
Not a problem; it’s the plan. Cut back, use less, travel less, eat less. It’s called nudging. See, we need to respect Planetary Boundaries, you know, save the planet. Make yer adjustments.
I posted this in another thread, but there were no comments. Since it’s relevant to this thread, I’ll repost it.
“Roof top solar is very popular in Australia because the country is mostly sunny, but the percentage of the roof areas that are covered with PV panels is quite small, usually ranging from about 1/10th of the area to a maximum of 1/4th.
Imagine the benefits, when building a new house, if the design included a sloping flat roof, which was entirely covered with solar roof tiles with a 30 year warranty.
An Australia company, Tractile, is already providing solar tiles with impressive qualities, such as a 30 year warranty, a resistance to hail stones as large as 65mm, and a 5-7 year payback period for domestic consumption, excluding any benefits from feedback to the grid.
For those who have an electric car to charge, the payback period is only 3-4 years, again excluding feedback to the grid. In other words, such a system should provide at least 26 years of zero electricity bills, and zero fuel costs for the BEV.
Of course the BEV naysayers will argue that the huge purchase price of a BEV will negate the zero fuels costs. However, this would only be true for those who buy an expensive, long range BEV, and who frequently travel long distances and frequently re-charge their BEV away from home.
For those who live in the suburbs of a city in Australia and rarely travel long distances in their car, a short-range electric car will suit their needs. The price of such a BEV is currently almost the same as an equivalent sized ICE vehicle.
I’ll repeat that, in case anyone glossed over it. The cheapest BEV in Australia is now almost as cheap as the cheapest ICE vehicle. According to my internet search, here are the results:
BYD Atto 1 Essential (BEV)
Estimated Drive-Away price ranges from $25,200 to $27,023 depending on the dealer.
Kia Picanto (ICE)
Estimated drive away price for a new Kia Picanto in Australia typically ranges from approximately $21,697 to $26,023.
Interestingly, whilst the average price of the BYD Atto 1 is slightly higher than the Kia Picanto, its size (length, height and width) and boot space are also slightly larger, and of course, because of its all-electric architecture, the Atto 1 provides several modern technological and structural advantages over the Kia Picanto. These advantages would more than justify any slight increase in the purchase price of the Atto 1 Essential.
What I would recommend to the Australian government is that it should stop all construction of new solar farms, which are ugly, take up valuable land, and often require additional, long transmission lines, and instead encourage the expansion of roof top solar to cover the whole area of all new roofs with solar tiles, so that the owners of the homes will not only have free electricity and free fuel for their BEV for at least 26 years, but also an income from feed-in tarrifs which would be more than sufficient to pay for the house insurance costs, water bills, general house maintenance costs, and BEV maintenance costs.
What could be better!
For those interested in the options, features, and benefits of the new solar tiles in Australia, the following site is interesting.”
https://tractile.com.au/features/
Never trust a car maker whos brand name is Beyond Your Dreams
Depreciation is almost free fall compared to a hybrid or ICE
People need cars for other things…. apart from a glorified shopping trolly
“Shilling” for a commercial solar company.. I assume you get paid. !
He falls into a bizarre category of a manual spammer. The commercial promotion is cause for deletion, but I’ll let the two comments stand for now.
Mr. Rotter: Thanks for that, this fellow is too predictable, he exposes himself so thoroughly that you can let his promos stay up, nobody buys this.
I’m not a spammer. I have no investments in any fossil fuel companies, renewable energy companies or motor vehicle companies.
I consider myself relatively unbiased and I’m interested in facts which are supported by evidence.
If I disagree with any evidence provided on any particular issue, I don’t attack the messenger. I provide the contrary evidence. If I don’t have the contrary evidence, then I cannot disagree.
When I posted the information about the cheapest BEV and ICE vehicles, and the Australian solar tiles, I did consider that it might seem that I’m promoting the products. However, that was the best information I could find on the internet. Any contrary, evidence based information, is welcome.
My current vehicle, a Kia Cerato, has a 7 year warranty which expired last year, so I’ll soon be looking to buy a new car, maybe in 2027. Something similar to a BYD Atto 1 will suit my needs. The batteries and drive unit have a warranty period of 8 years or 160,000km. That means I could drive an average of 54km every day for 8 years before the warrany expired.
I expect there will be even better options available in 2027.
Good for you.
But, a car is just a tool that’s & used for personal transportation needs & wants.
So in a free market society, we all get to determine what tool suits us best in this regard.
Or as the “influencers” are wont to say –
“you do you, and I’ll do me . . . “
“Good for you.
But, a car is just a tool that’s used for personal transportation needs & wants.”
Of course it is. If you are sensible, whatever you buy should be chosen because its qualities, price and durability suits your needs and wants.
If you’re very wealthy, then price may not be an issue and your wants might be focussed more on boosting your ego and vanity.
I assume you’re against gov’t regulations requiring the production of EVs?
There are no regulations in Australia requiring the production of EVs. We no longer manufacture any vehicles.
Amazing how many people are taken in by fact free advertisements.
Usually it’s because they want to be taken in.
Can you be more specific and mention the relevant facts which are missing in my references to the BYD Atto 1 Essential, Kia Picanto, and Tractile solar tiles.
All my views are based upon the available evidence and my understanding of the reliability of that evidence. I’m always open to contrary views if they are supported by reliable evidence.
An energy infrastructure micromanaged by politicians for politicians and activist groups instead of by engineers for consumers. What could possibly go wrong?
Most of the world is now going to electrify everthing.
IEA Says World Has Entered The “Age Of Electricity”
Electric chairs for CoP conferences.
What a great idea!!!
It really is interesting how denizens of the political left always assume that the existence of government mandates proves that everybody agrees with them and that their desires to control what others do are inevitable.
IEA also says
“Lack of grid capacity is emerging as a critical bottleneck in many regions driving higher levels of congestion and slowing deployment of new electricity generation, storage and demand. Grid connection queues have reached record levels worldwide”
“Over 2500GW of projects are stalled in grid queues worldwide. Meeting electricity demand to 2030 will require annual grid investment to increase approximately 50% by 2030 from today’s total of USD 400bn.”
“There is a mismatch between the time required to plan and build new grids compared to generation projects or data centres. Planning and completing new grid infrastructure can take 5 – 15 years whereas new builds on the supply and demand side are faster at 1-5 years for wind and solar , 1-3 years for data centres and 1-2 years for EV charging infrastructure.”
“At the same time prices for key grid components have nearly doubled over the past 5 years”
IEA ‘Electricity 2026’ (Feb 2026)
Another wrong IEA prediction? They also predicted that the use of coal would reduce. When they were found to be wrong, they tried again with the same prediction next year. And were still wrong.
I live there and YES farmers are ANGRY nats support them libs nowhere and labor forcing access blocking ability to take it to law as well . we dont have town gas so bottled LPG is costly . lucky wood grows on trees for the majority of us to go collect n use
It’s hard to feel sorry for people who have brought so much misery upon themselves.