Today the South Australian government destroyed the smoke stack of the Playford B Plant, one more part of what’s left of the cheapest base-load electricity generators in the state.

For about $8 million a year over three years, they could have kept some coal power going and wouldn’t have needed to spend $400 million on emergency diesel generators they don’t want to use, and over $100 million on a battery that can supply 4% of the state for one hour. They also would’ve paid less than $120 million for two days of electricity last week.

On the upside, they can feel good and pretend to be “world leaders”. Virtue signalling is expensive, eh?

….

The plant employed 185 people, the coal mine 200. Other businesses in the town, who knows? People are leaving.

SA, a star in the race away from being a competitive, powerhouse rich state. Creating wealth and jobs in China.

Last South Australian coal-fired power station demolition nears completion

The Australian, Luke Griffiths:

The concrete and brick structure at the 240MW Playford B power station, named after long-serving South Australian premier Sir Thomas Playford and mothballed in 2012, leaves only the 200-metre high stack at the nearby Northern power station standing in Port Augusta, 280km north of Adelaide.

That is expected to be demolished in April or May as part of a decommissioning process undertaken by Flinders Power, an offshoot of former power station operator Alinta Energy.

Before announcing the closure of Northern in mid-2015, Alinta unsuccessfully sought $25 million in subsidies over three years from the South Australian Labor government to keep it operating until this year, to ensure an effective transition occurred, after a rapid rise in renewable energy made it unviable.

However, the Weatherill government, which is ideologically opposed to coal, rejected the offer.

It’s wrecking the town too:

Locals in Port Augusta this week expressed frustration…

Deirdre McKerlie, who works at KD’s Hair Flair, told The Australian that not having a transition plan was “just stupid”. She said Port Augusta hit “rock bottom”, with many businesses unviable and residents moving away.

Premier Jay Weatherill said “Port Augusta is a symbol of South Australia’s transition from old to new…”

Exactly our point.

The boilers were blown up in November.

The rest will be demolished in April or May. SA, living standards thereafter.

SA had two coal power plants: Playford B, built in 1963, 240MW and newer Northern Power Station (1985) and 520MW.

Comment from RB555  2018/01/22 at 12:22 pm

This ETSA PR film from 1954 may be of interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMKPz-kVgcc
Shows the opening of Playford A power station, the first of three powered by Lee Creek coal.
Tom Playford himself appears briefly in the film.
A brief history of the complex is here.

South Australia blows up cheap electricity, jobs, wealth, in ideological anti-coal quest « JoNova

“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences” – Robert Louis Stevenson

•••

UPDATE

Jo Nova on the “secret” air conditioners that one power company (Ausnet) is blaming for Melbourne’s blackout…

Melbourne: 42,000 homes in dark, no fans left at Kmart. Power outages due to “secret” air conditioners?

Melbourne Skyline at night…Image: Alfred Glickman

The temperature reached 38C in Melbourne (100F) on Sunday — something it has probably done most summers since 10,000BC.

CitiPower, Powercor and the United Energy spokeswoman Emma Tyner said that as of 9.25pm, about 41,190 homes were without power across those three networks. – Sydney Morning Herald

Now why would that be? Ms Tyner puts a lack of supply in the nicest possible way:

“The extreme heat has significantly increased electricity use and this has resulted in localised power outages,” Ms Tyner said.

It’s not that governments didn’t plan energy policy — it’s the users who wanted too much (i.e your fault.) Though Victorians used to use more power than this.  On Sunday, peak electricity demand was 9,124MW, about 13% less than the all time peak of 10,496MW in 2009. (In case you are wondering, Hazelwood (now closed) produced 1600MW or about 25% of Victorian baseload power.)

Mr Armstrong from Ausnet Services (another power company) blamed unreported air conditioners:

“There are a lot fuses blowing in the hot weather and a significant power pull with people having put in air-conditioners they didn’t tell us about,” Mr Armstrong said. — The Age

Who knew you needed to tell your power company when you put in an air conditioner?

Gone are the days when people could willy-nilly run down to Retrovision and just buy an air con.

Ms Tyner and Mr Armstrong may have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. Perhaps they will get quiet reeducation tomorrow on how to phrase the cause of blackouts. (Aren’t they due to old coal turbines breaking?)  

Next, expect people to start saying how normal it is to have blackouts on hot days. “It’s just a part of life.”

If only the same people would say that about hot days.

You know things are serious when Kmart runs out of fans.

A Kmart in Northcote on Sunday was completely sold out of all cooling devices, from fans to air-conditioning units, its duty manager said.

So no willy-nilly fan buying either.

Tonight some people have fans, but no electricity. Others have electricity but no fans.

Others have electricity and fans, but no money. Luckily electricity “only” reached a peak of $3,125 per MWh briefly in Victoria. (Only a few million extra).

Pollies play blackout roulette

Robert Gottleibsen, a week ago:

Welcome to Australia’s deadly game of Melbourne and Sydney blackout roulette. The stakes involve hundreds of millions of dollars of refrigerated food and the operations of thousands of factories and offices who don’t have emergency power contingencies in place.

…Victoria took longer than NSW to wake up but it too has been working hard to reduce the risk of blackouts. For the most part, both states are borrowing ideas from third world countries by getting industry and consumers to cut back on power usage when days are hot. In addition, those organisations with back up power (like phone companies) are being asked to use it so as to cut demand and, if possible, put power back into the grid. Accordingly, highly polluting diesel becomes the saviour.

Could someone teach editors what “record-breaking” means?

Last night the minimum was 22.8C in Melbourne. Tonight was forecast to be 28C. If the Bureau are right, it won’t be close to breaking the record.

–The Sydney Morning Herald

Close to record-breaking heat

While it is not quite a record, Melbourne has come close to the hottest-ever January overnight temperature of 30.6 degrees.

Melbourne has reached that record twice since records began, once in 1902 and again in 2010.

The good news is that the other 1.5 million homes still have electricity. Though the United Energy Outage Map keeps going out itself.

The Ausnet Outage Map has a popup note: due to the large number of outages power may not get restored til Monday morning.

Melbourne: 42,000 homes in dark, no fans left at Kmart. Power outages due to “secret” air conditioners? « JoNova

•••

UPDATE

THE amount of homes affected by the latest Victorian blackouts varies wildly from news org to news org. The original Herald Sun article which this post is based reported “MORE than 437,000 homes across Victoria are without power.” The article has been updated and overwritten.

Via sister paper Daily Telegraph:

HERE are a few other agencies reporting housing numbers affected:

• Melbourne weather: Power cuts in Victoria as heatwave hits | Daily Mail Online
• Tens of thousands of Victorian homes affected by widespread power outages | 3AW
• Thousands still without power after blackout cripples Victoria | 9 NEWS

•••

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• IT’S OFFICIAL : South Australia Has The World’s Highest Power Prices! | Climatism
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Back In The Real World…

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