As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. The picture above speaks volumes about the real cost of wind and solar power to the people that really matter: power consumers.
Before we unpack some of the gems glittering in the power price league table above, we’ll hand over to one of the few Liberal MPs who appreciates the seriousness of Australia’s self-inflicted renewable energy calamity.
Craig Kelly was recently lambasted by members of the wind cult (including one from his very own party) for having the temerity to point out that rocketing power prices are being driven by Australia’s Large-Scale RET, and that one inevitable consequence of that policy was an increase in the number of powerless pensioners who will perish unnecessarily this winter: Australia’s Renewable Energy Disaster Puts Lives at Mortal Risk: More Powerless Pensioners Will Freeze to Death this Winter
Here’s Craig demanding an end to Australia’s renewable energy obsession.
Renewable Energy Madness: Australia now has the Highest Electricity Prices in the World
Facebook
Craig Kelly MP
5 August 2017
From the Australian Financial Review ……….
Australian residential customers are paying the highest electricity prices in the world – two to three times more than American households.
South Australian households are paying the highest prices in the world at 47.13¢ per kilowatt hour, more than Germany, Denmark and Italy which heavily tax energy, after the huge increases on 1st July this year Carbon + Energy Markets’ MarkIntell data service says.
When the eastern states’ National Electricity Market was formed in the late 1990s, Australia had the lowest retail prices in the world along with the United States and Canada, CME director Bruce Mountain said.
COMMENT: This madness must end.
Our nation cannot afford the cost of more subsidies to be added to our electricity bills to finance the more malinvestment in Chinese solar panels and wind turbines.
The Renewable Energy Target must be frozen IMMEDIATELY, and we need to commission 5000MW of baseload dispatchable power to be built as soon as possible.
We have a national emergency. This is what our party room meeting should be about on Monday afternoon.
Facebook
Craig is one of about 25 Liberal and National MPs ready to take the axe to Australia’s LRET.
If any of them were looking for the perfect example of what happens when you attempt to run on sunshine and breezes, then they should probably take a look at Australia’s wind power capital, South Australia.
Much to the fury of his erstwhile mate Elon Musk, SA’s vapid Premier, Jay Weatherill isn’t banking on Musk’s mega-battery to keep the lights on this summer; or next, for that matter.
Instead, Weatherill is shipping in 276 MW worth of open cycle turbines (ie jet engines) which could be run on gas, but which Weatherill will run on diesel, simply because it’s cheaper and, unlike gas, it’s available.
While Musk thought Weatherill was signing up to an all wind, solar and battery powered future – in which Musk would play the starring role – SA’s Premier is all about varnishing his prospects of being re-elected next March.
A public bromance and photo opportunities with Californian carpetbaggers are one thing, but a run of load shedding and blackouts during stinking hot, wind-less weather in February, is quite another. For some reason, families sweltering in 42°C heat tend to prefer at least having the option of air-conditioning their homes, as well as keeping perishables from perishing.
Alive to that fact, Weatherill is ready to throw his nominal ‘green’ credentials to the wind.
Weatherill’s 80,000 litres of diesel an hour solution to SA energy crisis
The Australian
Michael Owen
11 August 2017
Generators that the Weatherill government are buying to prevent blackouts this summer ahead of the March state election will use 80,000 litres of diesel an hour.
The fleet of generators, currently being shipped from Europe to South Australia, have been used for temporary generation around the world. But those behind the South Australian energy security project, costing taxpayers more than $300 million, yesterday could not say if the generators had ever been used as part of a permanent solution.
In a major revision to his $550m go-it-alone energy plan, Premier Jay Weatherill last week announced nine “state-of-the-art” generators providing up to 276 megawatts would be purchased to provide back-up power for the next two summers.
Rather than build a state-owned gas-fired power station, the generators would be moved to one permanent site in 2019 to become a power plant and be switched to gas.
Yesterday, executives from the Premier’s Department and privately owned electricity distribution company SA Power Networks appeared before parliament’s public works committee. The committee was told the nine hybrid turbines, to be installed at the Adelaide desalination plant in Lonsdale and the Holden site in Elizabeth, would involve “fuel costs in the vicinity of about 80,000 litres an hour for all nine turbines”.
Energy Plan Implementation executive director Sam Crafter said the protocols of when and how to turn the generators on were still being discussed by the Australian Energy Market Operator and SA Power Networks.
Mr Crafter said the objective of the generators was to prevent load shedding, rather than reducing the cost of power, over the next two summers.
“This was not part of the plan targeted at affordability; it was around security and reliability elements of the plan,” he said.
“However, having a more reliable back-up plan does help with the ability for people to have confidence and contracting, and minimising the risk elements that they put into their contracts.”
Mr Crafter said while a permanent site was yet to be chosen, it would require a gas connection.
“We weren’t able to get to a site with a gas connection and also connect to the transmission network by December 1, so that’s why we have landed on the two sites here,” he said.
Project sponsor Nick Smith said the ambitious project was a on a “tight timeline”.
“It is a tight schedule … there are a lot of things that need to be pulled together to make it happen by December 1,” he said.
Technical support manager Paul Godden said the generators were “intended for both temporary and permanent solutions”.
Liberal MP David Pisoni said it was “extraordinary that you are not able to tell this committee where this is being used permanently”. Mr Crafter said while the generators operated in 2000 sites around the world, “I do not have the specifics of how they operate in each of those sites”.
The Australian
The four economic powerhouses that rely upon the same type of diesel powered jet engines that are about to power South Australia (whenever wind power output collapses on a total and totally unpredictable basis) are: Indonesia, Algeria, Greece and Egypt. In an upcoming post will take a closer look at SA’s diesel generation fleet.
But for now, it’s sufficient to notice that burning 80,000 litres of diesel every hour to generate a potential 276 MW (the turbines in question are de-rated by 25% when temperatures hit 40°C) is hardly consistent with Jay Weatherill’s mantra about cutting CO2 emissions in the electricity generation sector in order to save SA and, presumably, the rest of the Planet.
On a MWh-for-MWh basis the CO2 emissions from High Efficiency Low Emissions coal-fired plant, of the kind being proposed by big energy users, are a minuscule fraction of what will spew forth from Weatherill’s diesel generators.
Each and every one of the millions of litres of diesel consumed by Weatherill’s diesel generators will punch out 2.7Kg of CO2. That’s right: a diesel generator emits 2.7Kg of CO2 gas for every litre of diesel consumed.
So, for every hour that Weatherill’s re-election team is in operation, SA will be chewing up 80,000 litres of diesel, pumping out an extra 216 tonnes of the dreaded CO2 gas, along with a host of real environmental nasties, as this article – ‘Estimation of carbon footprints from diesel generator emissions’ – points out:
[D]iesel engines release many hazardous air contaminants and greenhouse gases (GHG) including particulate matter (diesel soot and aerosols), carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen. Particulate matters are largely elemental and organic carbon soot, coated by gaseous organic substances such as formaldehyde and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are highly toxic. In 2001, the mortality due to diesel soot exposure was at least 14,400 people out of 82 million people living in Germany.
No wonder Elon Musk has fallen out of love with Jay and SA.
We started out with a graphic depicting retail power prices around the world, with South Australia thumping all-comers, including equally wind power obsessed, Denmark.
However, that’s not the comparison that piqued STT’s interest.
STT has been pushing nuclear power as the only sensible power generation option, if CO2 emissions really are the threat they’re purported to be.
As at April 2017 there were 449 nuclear reactors operating in 30 countries around the world, 15 countries are currently building another 60 reactors and their combined output accounts for over 11% of global electricity production – compared with total global output from wind which, to the nearest decimal point, is zero. And all without so much as a hiccup.
And yet, notwithstanding the hysteria surrounding CO2 and the depth of Australia’s power supply and pricing calamity, nuclear power barely rates a mention. Alan Finkel spent less than half a page dismissing nuclear power as an option in his 210 page door-stop report – instead eagerly pushing his 42% RET, based on a doubling of wind and solar and counting existing hydro).
One of the hackneyed arguments put forward by wind and sun worshippers against nuclear power is its cost.
In France the average retail power price is $246.30 per MWh (24.63 cents per KWh) which compares rather favourably with the average retail power price in South Australia $471.30 per MWh (47.13 cents per KWh) – a snicker under double the price paid by French power consumers.
The French have 58 nuclear reactors, which provide them with roughly 75% of their power.
South Australia is one of the world’s largest uranium miners, with two of Australia’s three operating uranium mines: Olympic Dam and Beverley North/Four Mile, exporting their output to the French, among others.
SA also holds uranium reserves that will last the world for a millennia or more.
While there might be other arguments against a nuclear powered future for Australia, the cost of the power produced clearly isn’t one of them. Ask the French.
STOP THESE THINGS 
Could have invested in geothermal ahead of wind and solar.
Without a doubt, there is only one way to go: it’s MODERN nuclear energy. And NO! It’s not using outdated light water solid fuel uranium reactors, it’s using molten salt thorium reactors. None of the drawbacks and problems with the present light water reactors. None of the waste problems. None of the highly expensive building problems associated with light water reactors operating any many times atmospheric pressure, requiring ‘Plans A, B, C, D,’ etc. to keep them under control against a meltdown in the event of a disaster. Molten salt reactors work at normal atmospheric pressures.
There’s lots of carefully collected information on this subject here: http://www.galileomovement.com.au/media/ShouldYouReallyBeAlarmed.pdf. Start at page four of this interactive PDF about the climate. Learn about it easily and progressively. See just how far the development has progressed in a number of countries. See just who is likely to be first with commercial factory-produced units – and no later than 2018. Apart from producing cheap and reliable electricity, there are a number of other benefits. This summarises the situation: http://www.galileomovement.com.au/media/JustHowStupid.pdf.
It’s time that this information should get out to our population, and to our politicians. There is a nucleus (pun intended) of these who have the message already. It’s time for the others to be informed, although unfortunately many are blinded by ignorance and ideology rather than logic.
Yes, and yet just today Josh Frydenberg and the coalition have blamed our electricity and economic disaster on everything but their own absurd LRET policy. Into the bargain they are asking AEMO what to do, which is now run by a woman who has wrecked the New York electricity grid and orchestrated prices 50-60% above the rest of the USA all because of her fetish for renewable energy, wow what a woman and now she’s ours and Josh can’t wait for her to tell him what to do. Of course, add in another wonderful American, Andrew Vesey, boss of AGL, and his acolytes who has the best idea yet ie let’s just build wind turbines and solar farms plus back-up plant we can crank up and charge up to $14,000 per Megawatt hour and scrounge every last cent from consumers before Australia goes totally belly up – yep, not only does Jay Weatherill love this idea, so does the federal coalition government – same sex marriage anybody?