Thursday, July 14, 2016
South Australian "green" energy faltering
When they shut down their last coal-fired electricity generator, S.A. crowed about how their electricity was now wholly "green". That was a typical Greenie lie from the beginning. They rely on importing electricity from Victoria when the wind isn't blowing. And that electricity is generated by burning "dirty" LaTrobe brown coal, the most polluting form of coal.
They thought they could get away with that but now they are hitting problems. The interconnector from Victoria can only supply so much power and that is often not enough. So they jack up the prices of their electricity when the wind is not blowing. They equalize supply and demand by penalizing and hence restricting demand from big users -- businesses.
That's such an attack on business that they have begun to backtrack. They are now asking for more output from a big private generator, powered by -- guess -- a "fossil" fuel -- natural gas. The Green is now pretty brown at the edges and it will get browner as the folly of "sustainable" power makes itself felt. Blackouts are waiting in the wings
A private power station in Adelaide has been asked to boost its output because some of South Australia's biggest businesses have been struggling to cope with a huge jump in their electricity prices at times of peak demand.
The owner of Pelican Point Power Station in Adelaide's north-west, Engie, has been asked by the SA Government to provide an extra 239 megawatts of supply.
The Government said a planned outage of the Heywood power interconnector with Victoria, higher gas prices and severe cold weather were to blame for price volatility in the local energy market.
Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said there was little the Government could do reduce price fluctuations because of past privatisation of the state's electricity assets.
But Opposition frontbencher Rob Lucas blamed the SA Government's reliance on renewable energy for the surge in electricity prices at times of peak demand.
"The massive rush into wind energy and alternative energy in South Australia, without ensuring the continuation of base load power, is the major problem that we've got here in South Australia," he said.
SOURCE
Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).
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2 comments:
I was in California when Enron was faking their Brown Outs.
Your town's lights go out, the bar closes, you drive across the bridge to the town with lights and drink in their bars.
Usually less than a mile or 2 away.
NPR : Fall of Enron
Throughout the late 1990s, Enron was almost universally considered one of the country's most innovative companies -- a new-economy maverick that forsook musty, old industries with their cumbersome hard assets in favor of the freewheeling world of e-commerce. The company continued to build power plants and operate gas lines, but it became better known for its unique trading businesses. Besides buying and selling gas and electricity futures, it created whole new markets for such oddball "commodities" as broadcast time for advertisers, weather futures, and Internet bandwidth.
On Dec. 2, 2001, Enron declared bankruptcy. Thousands of people were thrown out of work, and thousands of investors -- including most of the company's employees -- lost billions of dollars as Enron's shares shrank to penny-stock levels.
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/enron/
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