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In one sad and sorry respect, South Australia resembles Germany: both went into wind power with a vengeance; and the householders and businesses of both are watching their economic prosperity wither under the combined effect of crippling (and escalating) power prices and increasingly unreliable power supplies:
In both SA and Germany the terms ‘chaos’ and ‘crisis’ are used to describe the aftermath of energy policies ‘designed’ on desktops by dimwits, who haven’t got the faintest clue about how power generation works (or much else, for that matter).
The Genesis of the wind power debacle was pretty well captured by Leo Smith in our recent post – Why Weather Dependent, Intermittent & Unreliable Wind Power is as ‘Useful as a Chocolate Teapot’ – and summed up as follows:
There is, above all, one salient feature that emerges across the board. Sanity and rationalism have been cast aside, and the whole arena is now a political and ideological battleground whose main protagonists understand little or nothing about the industry they seek to bend to suit their ideological (and possibly commercial) needs.
In short the world is full of people who have an opinion about power generation, who understand nothing about how it actually works or even what actually works. …
Rational scientific analysis shows conclusively that renewable energy cannot ever deliver on the very basis that it has been sold to the public. It’s not cheap, it’s anything but free, it’s not environmentally desirable, it offers no energy security, and it cannot exist in isolation from other technologies that are either even more costly than it itself is or have grave risks associated with them.
What we find when we analyse the intermittency problem, is that intermittent non-dispatchable power actually carries very little value at all. What society requires, is dispatchable power – power that can be on tap when it’s required, and turned off when it’s not, and it requires in addition a large component of cheap baseload power, that never needs to be turned off. What it does not require is wilful power that’s here today and gone tomorrow.
Just like SA’s 17 wind farms’ ‘efforts’ during November ….
And it’s the erratic delivery of ludicrously expensive wind power ($110 per MWh versus $40 per MWh for the reliable stuff) – and the insane cost of paying operators of highly inefficient Open Cycle Gas Turbines that their owners refuse to fire up until the spot price rockets to over $2,000 per MWh, when the wind drops – that has journos using ‘chaos’ to describe SA’s power market and ‘crisis’ to describe the economic aftermath meted out on struggling business, like Nyrstar’s Port Pirie Smelter.
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Here’s another effort to explain the politically inexplicable from the Australian Financial Review.
Wind farms trigger SA power crisis
Australian Financial Review
Ben Potter, Simon Evans & Angela Macdonald-Smith
14 December 2015
The South Australian government is considering intervening in the National Electricity Market after its commitment to renewable energy has generated sharp spikes in power prices that threaten its economic development strategy.
South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis called a crisis meeting of energy users and suppliers today to deal with sharp rises and falls in wholesale electricity prices that threaten the redevelopment of a Port Pirie lead and zinc smelter to make metals for solar panels and mobile phones, even with a $291 million government subsidy.
The volatility in wholesale prices – caused mostly by the state’s reliance on wind power and the ability of coal and gas power stations to charge high prices when the wind drops – is creating havoc for industry in the state, which is one of the country’s most economically depressed.
“The state government recognises we must do more to address issues in the market as we transition to a low-carbon economy,” said Mr Koutsantonis, who also serves as Energy Minister.
Increased use of wind power is one way to meet the ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets embraced at the Paris climate talks.
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill attended the talks – with a government-funded camera crew – and promised to make Adelaide the world’s first “carbon neutral” city by 2050.
The Paris agreement is likely to require the federal government to increase its emission reduction targets to between 45 and 65 per cent by 2030 compared with 2005, which is a far a bigger cut than its current pledge of 26 to 28 per cent, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimated.
Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad called for “rational argument” about what to do with coal-fired power stations, pointing to the absence of any realistic alternative for base-load power, and said more efficient coal power should be encouraged.
Grid instability
“What are they going to replace them with, what is it going to cost the community and who is going to pay?” he said.
Grid instability in South Australia and other countries with lots of wind power – such as Britain and Germany – shows the problems of the renewable energy sources.
Today’s meeting will include energy suppliers, the market operator and consumers. The meeting will canvas “potential responses by the market or government through regulatory processes and other interventions”.
That opens the possibility that the government may double down on its $291 million subsidy to Nyrstar, the Dutch metals-refining company redeveloping the ageing and polluting Port Pirie smelter.
Nyrstar is one of the worst-affected energy users.
It is in the market for electricity from mid-2016, the scheduled recommissioning date for the upgraded multimetals refining plant, and is attending the meeting in Adelaide.
Nyrstar faces prices of $87 to $90 per megawatt-hour for electricity delivered from 2016 to 2018, compared with less than $50/MWh when it confirmed the project in a ceremony with Mr Weatherill in May. Victorian industry pays $37-to-$41/MWh for the same contracts.
“Any increase in energy costs, in particular electricity costs, or a disruption in the supply of energy for Nyrstar’s operations, may significantly increase production costs or adversely affect production,” Bertus de Villiers, vice-president for metals refining at Port Pirie, told The Australian Financial Review in an email.
“We are currently in discussions with key stakeholders to identify opportunities to minimise the impact of any increase in electricity costs on the Port Pirie operations.”
Rising electricity prices
South Australia has endured several episodes of sharply rising electricity prices, and prices for ancillary or grid-stabilising services, since July, with prices soaring above $2000/MWh and at times hitting the $13,800/MWh market limit. The total cost of Nyrstar’s Port Pirie smelter redevelopment has already blown out by 10 per cent to $563 million, with the company warning six weeks ago there would be an added $49million in costs. Nyrstar blamed the extra $49 million on adverse foreign exchange rate movements and what it called additional services requirements.
The South Australian government’s $291 million in third-party funding sits beside funds from forward sales agreements for the metals being produced from the smelter, and Nyrstar’s own financial contribution.
The final documents allowing Nyrstar to start accessing the $291 million in government funds were signed on November 27. The smelter, about 225 kilometres north of Adelaide, is in the electorate of Geoff Brock, an independent MP who was the kingmaker last year who helped install Mr Weatherill as premier after a cliffhanger election.
Mr Brock, who became regional development minister in Mr Weatherill’s cabinet, gave the Premier his support about a week after the state election after Mr Weatherill made a quick dash to Port Pirie by road to persuade Mr Brock over a pizza at a local restaurant that he was the better bet as leader.
Mr Weatherill’s grip on power expanded when former state Liberal leader Martin Hamilton-Smith switched sides in May 2014 and joined Mr Weatherill’s cabinet as defence industries minister.
A spokesman for AGL Energy, which has several wind farms and a gas-fired generator in South Australia, said: ”As the state’s largest retailer, AGL is working closely with the SA government to discuss possible solutions to ensure flexibility in the market and security of supply for our customers.”
Australian Financial Review
STOP THESE THINGS 
These wind “Monsters” can’t generate enough power to even make them-selves, let alone “Mine” and “Transport” the raw materials to produce the “Concrete”and”Steel”to make them.And what is even worse, the “Pollies” then think that all they need to do is “Build” more of these “Bird Mincer” and that will solve the problem. The fact that they don’t work anywhere near as efficiently as coal or gas or hydro, just doesn’t seem to enter their heads.
The gullibility of our leaders about this energy idiocy is enough to make you weep.