Posted: June 29, 2017 | Author: Jamie Spry | Filed under: Australia, Climatism, Energy Poverty, Failed Green Schemes, Government Grants/Funding, Govt Climate Agenda, Green Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: Climate Scam, Energy, Energy Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Global Warming Scam, green energy scam, Green Policies, Jay Weatherill, Josh Frydenberg, PGS, Plastics Granulating Services, Renewable energy, RET, SA Blackout, Solar panels, unreliables, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power |
The recycled plastic was to be turned into granules and then into new products. (ABC.net.au)
SOUTH Australia will this weekend overtake Denmark with the highest electricity prices in the world.
The South Australian Labor government’s mad rush into renewable unreliable energy, particularly wind power … has helped generate a surge in South Australian electricity prices.
South Australian businesses face wholesale electricity prices of between $87 and $90 per megawatt hour, compared with $37-$41 in Victoria and $43-$48 in New South Wales.
In South Australia, wholesale prices are regularly spiking to the market-allowed maximum of $14,000 per megawatt hour. In July 2016, South Australia’s wholesale price spiked above $13,000 per megawatt hour 32 times! Reliance on weather-dependent wind and solar power is responsible for these absurd prices.
SA already gets more than 40 per cent of its power from intermittent renewable sources, mostly wind.
That is a nation-leading level, which energy experts say has contributed to higher prices and statewide blackouts by undermining baseload power like the “blown-up” Port Augusta coal plant.
ARTIFICIAL MARKET DISTORTION (“RET”)
WIND and SOLAR projects are primarily funded through subsidies — Renewable Energy Certificates.
The Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target is currently 23.5% green power by 2020.
SA is already easily ahead of the national target, and likely to be for some time.
The subsidy is imposed by the Federal Government, but paid for by power retailers. This forced cost of green power eventually paid for by power users.
Because wind farms make money from these subsidies, they can afford to underbid coal and gas into the wholesale electricity market.
To be financially viable, wind and solar generally require prices for their power that are higher than what other existing power generators receive.
For a while, they helped stimulate competition and put downward pressure on prices in a not-particularly-competitive (aka artificially distorted) market.
Things have started changing rapidly in the past year. This abundance of cheap wind (in a market sense) has helped contribute to the closure of a coal-fired power station and the partial mothballing of a gas plant.
The state now survives on wind, solar, gas, diesel (and perhaps even an offshore Turkish “power ship” if the SA grid destabilises further, especially with the closure of neighbouring Victoria’s “Hazlewood” coal-fired power station which supplied 25% of SA’s baseload power via a giant extension cord).
UNRELIABLE ENERGY = WORLD RECORD POWER BILLS
THE PROBLEM is, the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. The high peaks in South Australia’s energy usage don’t always match up with a large chunk of its increasingly intermittent supply.
If the demand for electricity is low – on a public holiday, say – while the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, the price of electricity in South Australia will be low. Conventional generators will make losses, while the market losses of the renewable generators will be (artificially) covered by their sale of Generation Certificates.
If the demand for electricity is high – a heat wave on a working day, say – and it is a still, overcast day, the price of electricity in South Australia will soar, because it will be mostly produced by high-cost, back-up, peaking generators.
The high price of electricity in South Australia is eating away at our economic competitiveness. The probability that we will become, sometime in the distant future, a “low carbon electricity powerhouse” looks extremely low.
Greg Sheridan puts it brilliantly about windfarm-obsessed South Australia:
South Australia, truly the Athens of the south. SA shows that, like Greece, economic misfortune will not drive it to good policy. A state with chronic unemployment, disinvestment and deindustrialisation is determined to have the most expensive and unreliable source of power in Australia, if not the Western world, providing maximum disincentive to any investment other than a socialist enterprise backed by the Australian taxpayer. This is what you get from modern centre-left governments — identity politics, green gestures, economic failure.
THE FALLOUT
NO BUSINESS, big or small, has been spared SA’s skyrocketing power prices.
But, perhaps the most symbolic case of a South Australian business shutting its doors due to soaring electricity costs is that of the very green, ethical, eco-friendly, planet saving recycling business “Plastics Granulating Services (PGS)”, based in Kilburn in Adelaide’s inner-north.
South Australia’s sky-high electricity prices have forced an Adelaide plastics recycling business to shut its doors, costing 35 workers their jobs, its managing director says.
Plastics Granulating Services (PGS), based in Kilburn in Adelaide’s inner-north, said it had seen its monthly power bills increase from $80,000 to $180,000 over the past 18 months.
Managing director Stephen Scherer said the high cost of power had crippled his business of 38 years and plans for expansion, and had led to his company being placed in liquidation.
“It’s where the cash went out of the business, and without the cash, we couldn’t service what we needed to service,” he said.
“We process about 10,000 tonnes of plastic waste [and] that’s now currently turned off, so South Australia won’t be recycling 10,000 tonnes [of plastic],” he said.
“To scope 10,000 tonnes for you, 10,000 tonnes is 15 per cent of the Australian market [of low-grade recycled plastic] … so Australia has lost 15 per cent of its supply.
SA plastics recycling business closes due to $100k hike in power bills – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
38 YEARS of hard work over. 35 workers out of a job and 10,000 tonnes of plastic that will now not be recycled, thanks to SA’s mad obsession with windmills, solar panels and their associated economy-wrecking policies.
It is astonishing that a Government should deliberately create such an expensive and unreliable power supply – destroying the cheap and reliable one it had – without even being able to explain just how much difference any of this would make to the world’s temperatures.
This is ideology gone mad. How often must it be said that what South Australian Governments have done to their power system at such vast expense MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO GLOBAL WARMING ANYWAY.
The brutal closure of PGS – yet more evidence of virtue-signalling global warming climate change policies causing far more damage, right now, than any slight warming could ever do by 2100.
•••
SA Fuel Poverty Related :
- THE $Trillion Windmill Industry Is The Greatest Scam Of Our Age | Climatism
- The Renewable Energy Target: useless, expensive, mad | Herald Sun
- How green power has killed South Australia | Herald Sun
- Liberals would let Federal Government set SA’s renewable energy target | Adelaide Now
- South Australia power prices to rise to highest in the world on Saturday, energy expert warns – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
- JUST 1 IN 6.6 MILLION CHANCE TO STOP WARMING | Herald Sun
Climatism SA Hot Links :
- Turkish ‘Power Ship’ Proposed To Keep The Lights On In South Australia! | Climatism
- Wind Power Chaos Promises to Deliver Mass Summer Blackouts Across Australia | Climatism
- ‘Unreliable’ Power Australia – Steven Marshall Should Have Listened And Blown Up A Wind Farm | Climatism
- South Australia Blackout Report : Green Energy Failure | Climatism
- When The Wind Don’t Blow, The Lights Don’t Glow! | Climatism
- Doomed to the Dark Ages: No Solution for South Australia’s Wind Power Blackouts | Climatism
- ‘Unreliable’ Power Australia – Green Hypocrites Exposed By South Australia Storm | Climatism
- Blackout Blues: Wind Power Obsession Makes South Australia an International Joke | Climatism
- Adding More Solar And Wind Power ‘Doubles’ CO2 Emissions | Climatism
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Posted: June 27, 2017 | Author: Jamie Spry | Filed under: Australia, Climatism, Energy Poverty, Fact Check, Failed Green Schemes, Fossil Fuels, Government Grants/Funding, Govt Climate Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, Socialism, Solar, Taxpayer waste, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: Climate Change Policy, Fuel Poverty, Green Energy Failure, Jay Weatherill, Josh Frydenberg, Kapowership, RET, SA Blackout, Socialism, South Australia, Turkey, unreliables, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power |
Ghana, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Zambia, Mozambique.
What do all these countries have in common? They are all third world, mostly war-torn countries who have relied on ship-mounted power plants to overcome chronic electricity shortages.
A Powership as displayed in the Karpowership Brochure
The “power ship” barge is owned by Istanbul-based firm, Karpowership and comprises 11 towering steel stacks or chimneys that resembles a sort of floating Battersea power station.
“Kapowership’s” next port of call? South Australia!
A 250 MW ship-based power station is under consideration as a solution to the crisis for the Australian state, which has seen an over-investment of ‘unreliable’ energy – wind and solar. While cheap, reliable, baseload fossil fuel power stations were retired (blown up)…
Playford coal-fired power station in Port Augusta — put out of business by Labor’s green policies — had its towers brought down by explosives.
A third world energy solution for a virtual, third world SA government.
What does this say about the Jay Weatherill Socialist/Green/Labor SA government and its insane global warming policies?!
Opposition politicians are critical of the move, saying that using such ships, typically sent to war ravaged regions, shows the government’s poor decision making on power policy, linking it to the increase in residential electricity bills.
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said “Had (the government) invested just A$8m a year in keeping the Northern Power Station open South Australians would have been shielded from these shocking electricity price rises.”
If it weren’t so serious for the livelihoods of South Australian’s and their flailing economy, it would be hilarious.
•••
More via PEI…
* I genuinely thought this article was a parody on the SA energy debacle when I first read about it via our friend’s over at Tallbloke’s Talkshop!
You literally can’t make this stuff up…
06/19/2017
By Diarmaid Williams
International Digital Editor
A large-scale temporary power solution is being considered, as South Australia struggles to ensure its energy security.
A 250 MW ship-based power station is under consideration as a solution to the crisis for the Australian state, which has seen a lot of investment in renewable power over recent years, while old fossil stations were retired.
The Turkish ship could be operational by the end of the year for less than the $360m budgeted for a new state-owned gas-fired power plant of the same capacity.
The ship-based plant would plug into the high-voltage grid near the 479 MW Pelican Point power station, which returns to full capacity on July 1.
A second option would be for a 125 MW Powership at Outer Harbor and another of the same size anchored off Port Augusta, plugging into the grid near the site of the defunct Northern power station.
The Powership fleet can operate on natural gas, liquid natural gas or heavy fuel oil and it is likely the ship would be leased until a permanent plant was built.
The Istanbul-based firm, Karpowership, has installed the barge or ship-mounted power plants in Ghana, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Zambia, and Mozambique.
A national electricity market operator report released this week reveals a government-backed battery, temporary generators and every power station in the state must be up and running in tandem to prevent blackouts in the state this summer.
Adelaide Now online reports that opposition politicians are critical of the move, saying that using such ships, typically sent to war ravaged regions, shows the government’s poor decision making on power policy, linking it to the increase in residential electricity bills.
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said “Had (the government) invested just A$8m a year in keeping the Northern Power Station open South Australians would have been shielded from these shocking electricity price rises.”
•••
MORE On SA’s Insane Global Warming Policy-Caused Energy Crisis :
- Wind Power Chaos Promises to Deliver Mass Summer Blackouts Across Australia | Climatism
- ‘Unreliable’ Power Australia – Steven Marshall Should Have Listened And Blown Up A Wind Farm | Climatism
- South Australia Blackout Report : Green Energy Failure | Climatism
- When The Wind Don’t Blow, The Lights Don’t Glow! | Climatism
- Doomed to the Dark Ages: No Solution for South Australia’s Wind Power Blackouts | Climatism
- ‘Unreliable’ Power Australia – Green Hypocrites Exposed By South Australia Storm | Climatism
- Blackout Blues: Wind Power Obsession Makes South Australia an International Joke | Climatism
- Adding More Solar And Wind Power ‘Doubles’ CO2 Emissions | Climatism
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Posted: June 26, 2017 | Author: Jamie Spry | Filed under: Alarmism Debunked, Climate science, Climatism, Empirical Evidence, Fact Check, Sceptics, Science | Tags: Climate alarmism, Climate Change, Debate, Fact Check, Global Warming, Katharine Hayhoe, Sceptical Science, sceptics, science |
Paul Homewood of NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT recently posted a blog listing ten reasons countering climate “scientist” Katharine Hayhoe’s assertion that some of us don’t believe in global warming because we don’t care!
I don’t know a single person who doesn’t “care” about the planet or their environment. So, it would appear Katharine is using more of that divisive and marginalising language favoured by the totalitarian Left, in preference to facts and reason, in a deliberate effort to force you into a narrow set of beliefs that align with the alarmist orthodoxy.
By extension, these ten points lay out fundamental reasoning as to why increasingly, more and more climate truth-seekers are forming a sceptical view of the hayhoe-hysterical “climate change” debate.
And, they happen to make an excellent resource for your next friendly climate debate!
1) We don’t trust climate scientists.
The Climategate emails revealed just how untrustworthy the climate establishment has become.
We know that literally billions in grants are being shovelled their way, and that these grants would quickly dry up if they dropped their alarmism.
2) We don’t like being misled.
You, Katharine, have form in this respect, as you know.
It was you who claimed, in a magazine article in 2011, that increasing winter temperatures in Texas were a sign of climate change.
You came to this conclusion by starting your analysis in 1965, right at the start of a cold period.
You, of course, must have known that warming since then was just part of a cycle, and that temperatures have actually changed little since the 1920s.
Texas Winter Mean Temperatures
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/whats-katharine-hiding/
3) It was hotter in the 1930s
We are aware that temperatures across the US were considerable higher in the 1930s than in recent years.
Is it surprising that people are not in the least concerned about current climate?
4) It was warmer in the Middle Ages
Despite various attempts to disappear the MWP, evidence worldwide indicates that the climate was just as warm then as now, and that previous warm periods, such as the Roman and Minoan, were warmer still.
There is nothing unprecedented about current climate, so why should we be concerned?
5) The 19thC was the coldest period since the ice age
Ice cores show that the Little Ice Age was an exceptionally cold time. Why should we be surprised or concerned that there has been a small amount of warming since?
6) Cold kills
There can be no question at all that our current climate is beneficial compared with the cold of the Little Ice Age.
Or maybe you would prefer to return to that age of famine, cold, storms, floods and drought?
7) Extreme weather is not increasing
Despite climate scientists attempts to blame every bit of bad weather on climate change, there is no evidence that extreme weather is getting worse.
Droughts in the US, that were severe and widespread in the 1930s and 50s, have become much less of a problem since.
The US has now gone 11 years without a major hurricane, the longest such period on record.
The USGS can find no evidence that flooding has got worse.
And tornado activity has also diminished significantly since the cold years of the 1970s.
8) We don’t trust your data
Global temperature data has continually been adjusted to show more warming.
Yet the satellite data continues to diverge from surface data, and still shows temperatures have not increased since 1998.
9) Apocalypse never comes
For many years, we have been fed scare stories of apocalypse round the corner. These, of course, never materialise.
If climate scientists were to treat us with a bit of respect, honestly admitted that they have little idea of what is to come, and stopped trying to intimidate us with silly scares, you might find that we returned that respect.
10) Redistribution of wealth
Your attempts to treat us like children and trust the nice scientists ignore the issue.
Regardless of the science, the whole issue of climate change has been hijacked by politicians, the UN and a veritable army of vested interests.
People are not stupid, and know that developed countries have committed to transferring $100bn a year to developing ones, as part of the Paris Agreement.
Christina Figueres herself admitted that the goal of environmentalists is to destroy capitalism.
Full article: Ten Reasons Why We Don’t Believe You, Katharine | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
•••
Related :
- 15 Questions Why Climate Change Is A Complete Hoax | Climatism
- 7 REASONS Why Activist Orgs Like NatGeo (Sadly) Cannot Be Trusted On Anything “Climate Change” | Climatism
- 22 Very Inconvenient Climate Truths On Global Warming | Climatism
- Twelve Reasons Why The Paris Climate Talks Are A Total Waste | Climatism
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Posted: June 24, 2017 | Author: Jamie Spry | Filed under: Climatism, Fact Check, Failed Green Schemes, Government Grants/Funding, Govt Climate Agenda, Green Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, Taxpayer waste, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: AGL, Blackouts, climate, Climate Change Hoax, Fuel Poverty, Infigen, Jay Weatherill, Josh Frydenberg, Malcolm Turnbull, Renewable energy, RET, SA Blackouts, unreliables, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power |
AUSTRALIA is in the midst of an electricity disaster thanks to its global warming madness.
In South Australia, the wind farms have failed causing statewide blackouts.
In Victoria, electricity prices have shot up by around 20 per cent from January, and doubled in a year, thanks to the closure of the “dirty” coal-fired Hazelwood plant.
Business is panicking with jobs decimated, business confidence shattered, investment stifled.
With the closure of Victoria’s Hazelwood plant in April, Victorians are going to get a taste of what their South Australian neighbours have been living with for years: routine load shedding and mass blackouts.
If electricity consumers were not already being squeezed by the closure of Victoria’s coal burning Hazelwood power station, an extraordinary lack of wind in the past few months has certainly compounded the problem.
- Wind generation is down 40pc on this time last year and 30pc on the December quarter of 2016
- The wind stopped blowing at the same time the Hazelwood plant closed down, exacerbating price hikes
PHOTO: Infigen Energy’s production is down 40 pc on a year ago due to the lack of wind. (Supplied: Infigen Energy)]
•••
Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt with more:
Here is a terrible example of the madness of building an electricity system on the assumption that the wind would always blow.
If electricity consumers were not already being squeezed by the closure of Victoria’s coal burning Hazelwood power station, an extraordinary lack of wind in the past few months has certainly compounded the problem.
The large wind-focussed generator, Infigen Energy has been forced to downgrade its full-year profit forecast due to what it says has been the least windy period it has endured put its current capacity together in 2012.
“Production for the 4th quarter is expected to be … approximately 40 per cent below the previous corresponding period and 30 per cent below the historical 4th quarter average,” it told investors in a statement to the ASX.
Principal at energy consultants ITK, David Leitch says … “Prices are currently around $90 per kilowatt hour (kwh) when they would be typically be around $75kwh…”
And, remember, all this pain is for zero gain to the climate, as the Chief Scientist admitted in Senate committee hearings (MUST SEE):
(Click link/Image to Play)
•••
UPDATE
The Wind Gods punish Infigen … again and again…!
Shock, Horror! Wind Power Output Depends on Wind: Infigen Blames ‘Lack of Wind’ for Losses
July 3, 2017 by stopthesethings
Australia’s publicly funded, green-left megaphone, the ABC has a hard time dealing with tough things like facts and consequences. So it must’ve been a rude shock to find out that the fortunes of wind power outfits depend upon … ahem … the weather.
Lack of wind a big blow for Infigen
ABC News
Stephen Letts
23 June 2017
If electricity consumers were not already being squeezed by the closure of Victoria’s coal burning Hazelwood power station, an extraordinary lack of wind in the past few months has certainly compounded the problem.
The large wind-focussed generator, Infigen Energy has been forced to downgrade its full-year profit forecast due to what it says has been the least windy period it has endured put its current capacity together in 2012.
“Production for the 4th quarter is expected to be … approximately 40 per cent below the previous corresponding period and 30 per cent below the historical 4th quarter average,” it told investors in a statement to the ASX.
“The current quarter is expected to include two of the lowest production months for Infigen’s current Australian operating assets.”
Infigen’s 4th quarter started on April 1, a few days after Hazelwood closed.
Principal at energy consultants ITK, David Leitch says he is not surprised given the recent weather pattern on the east coast.
“Unfortunately, it has played a part in the recent spike in wholesale power prices,” Mr Leitch said.
“Prices are currently around $90 per megawatt hour (MWh) when they would be typically be around $75MWh,” Mr Leitch observed.
Full article…
•••
Related :
- Wind Power Chaos Promises to Deliver Mass Summer Blackouts Across Australia | Climatism
- South Australia Blackout Report : Green Energy Failure | Climatism
- When The Wind Don’t Blow, The Lights Don’t Glow! | Climatism
- Doomed to the Dark Ages: No Solution for South Australia’s Wind Power Blackouts | Climatism
- ‘Unreliable’ Power Australia – Green Hypocrites Exposed By South Australia Storm | Climatism
- Blackout Blues: Wind Power Obsession Makes South Australia an International Joke | Climatism
- Adding More Solar And Wind Power ‘Doubles’ CO2 Emissions | Climatism
- China Counts the Staggering Cost of its Wind Power Experiment | Climatism
- Germany’s €Trillion Euro Disaster: Wind Power ‘Transition’ Destroys its Industrial Heartland | Climatism
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