From STOP THESE THINGS
Calm weather and sunset will do it every time, smashing wind and solar output and claims that we’re already headed for an all wind and sun powered future.
Believe the narrative run by the MSM on behalf of the wind and solar rent seekers and their political enablers, you’d think we’ve already reached our ‘green’ energy nirvana. But, even if there is some kind of concession made to wind and solar’s hopeless intermittency, the promise is that we’ll hit our wind and solar-powered Utopia, just as soon as we’ve added a few trillion dollars’ worth of giant Teslas to the grid.
The grand transition narrative relies upon general ignorance about the difference between averages and absolutes.
Averaging wind and solar output over annual timeframes might make them look like true energy heroes, but ignores the fact that power consumption is a here-and-now kind of thing.
Crowing about a few minutes when demand is met by wind and solar, alone, is not just cherry-picking, it is downright dishonest.
Take South Australia, Australia’s wind and solar capital. SA suffers Australia’s highest power prices and, quite naturally, Australia’s highest rate of unemployment. It is also renowned as an economic backwater, best described as an old folks home for poor people.
South Australia became the butt of international jokes on account of the numerous uncontrolled blackouts it has suffered, including the big one in September 2016 when the whole State went black: SA’s Wind Farms Guilty: 28 September ‘Black System’ Caused by Wind Power Output Collapse; parts of it for more than a week: South Australia’s September Wind Power Blackout Cost Businesses & Households $367 Million
These days, it relies heavily on coal-fired power imported from Victoria and NSW, as well as diesel-fuelled ship engines and diesel-fuelled open-cycle gas turbines – built after its run of monster blackouts – to keep the grid up and running, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.
Wind power routinely collapses in SA (just like everywhere else). Occasions like 13 January 2023 (see above), when SA’s 2,351 MW of wind power capacity hit the floor, bottoming out at a risible 44 MW (1.87% of total capacity).
These are the days that you’ll never hear about from the wind cult and the shills in the MSM that run their infantile narrative.
On the other hand, Rafe Champion is determined to make sure you know as much about their hopeless failures as their brief and monetary ‘successes’.
SA windpower fails, as usual
New Catallaxy
Rafe Champion
18 January 2023
It is time for the politicians, planners and commentator to face the fact that wind and solar power have failed in South Australia. This is the wind leader, the trail-blazing pioneer of the new age of “clean” power.
It has become the canary in the coal mine, the red flag, a warning to all who would follow the path to become a “renewable energy superpower.”
The illusion of success is achieved by selective reporting.
Practically every week new heights of wind and solar penetration are achieved and this is greeted with wild applause. The same thing is happening in Britain where they have just announced record penetration of wind power in 2022.
People have to realise that the green transition is not being dragged up to follow higher levels of penetration, it is constrained by the lowest level which is zero on windless nights. The convoy moves at the speed of the slowest vessel, the water breaches the levy at the low point, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the weasels get out of the yard through gaps in the fence even if you build the rest of the fence to the sky.
Forget about solving the problem by installing more wind and solar. And forget about storage, there is effectively none at grid-scale now and none is in sight in the foreseeable future. So-called big batteries are installed to make money out of gaming the system that has been destabilized by injecting intermittent, unreliable, weather-dependent energy. The intermittent energy system is also ruinously expensive and filthy dirty. Fossil power using modern scrubbing technology to eliminate nitrates, sulphides and particulate matter is pristine by comparison.
The conflicting stories describe “a game in two halves” as football commentators say. In the other half of the story in SA almost every day there are periods when they are importing coal power from Victoria or burning gas, and often both. They frequently have recourse to diesel generators, as they did this morning at least up to 10am Sydney time because the wind in SA is only average (CF 30%.)
In Britain and Germany domestic power prices are going through the roof, power-intensive industries are closing down and new coal mines are being opened up.
Has the world gone crazy?
No, just the energy planners, driven by terror of “the breath life”, CO2.
Think about this! Look at the situation in Britain.
Then ask yourself whether you would invite one of the architects of that power system to come and lead our Energy Market Operator? No?
Meet Daniel Westerman who replaced Audrey Zibelman to become our “energy czar” at the helm of AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator:
Mr Westerman managed the electricity network across England and Wales and has led transformation and change programs across multiple business units and geographies.
His significant commercial and regulatory experience in both the UK and the US mean he is well-positioned to lead a key institution like AEMO through this period of significant change in the energy market.
Famous last words?
More details on the British debacle
London, 17 January 2023 – After the much-lauded battery start-up Britishvolt collapsed into administration, Net Zero Watch has reiterated its warning that the Government’s policy of green interventionism and Net Zero dogmatism is a recipe for economic and political disaster.
Described as a ‘gigafactory’, the collapsed EV battery factory was meant to be a symbol of levelling-up and would show how a green “planned economy” could herald an industrial renaissance.
UK Government ministers had committed £100 million to the battery project, apparently without a sound business plan, because it aligned with official rhetoric on Net Zero.
The company blamed Britain’s “ballooning energy costs” for its predicament, and its ultimate collapse.
In recent months, BMW has announced it is moving manufacturing of the electric Mini from the UK to China, where manufacturing is powered by cheap coal. Other carmakers plan to slash the number of electric vehicles they manufacture because rising prices and the spiralling cost of electricity makes them increasingly unaffordable for drivers.
Dr Benny Peiser, Net Zero Watch’s director, said:
“This fiasco was utterly foreseeable and was indeed foreseen by us and other analysts — but not by complacent ministers and incompetent civil servants. BMW’s China exodus and Britishvolt’s collapse won’t be the last casualties of the government’s green command and control economy.”
Throwing money at projects without a sound business plan because they align with official rhetoric on Net Zero is a new pandemic, happening in Australia in the private (Sun Cable) and public sectors (hydrogen hubs) and in the US at a much grander scale under the aegis of the Legislation to Increase Inflation and Debt which has the Orwellian label Inflation Reduction (black is white and white is black.)
Meawhile coal surges in Europe and most other places
And Voices intervene to ensure that there is no more gas coming on stream in New South Wales to avert the collapse of the power supply when coal stations go out of business.
