Plug your energy hopes into the weather and expect mixed results. No country has ever powered itself using wind power; no country ever will. Australia’s attempt to do so has ended in a fiasco. The leader of the pack, South Australia – a state which set and met its very own 50% RET – suffers the world’s highest power prices and an infamous reputation as the only Australian state to suffer a Statewide blackout, when wind turbines were deliberately shut down during a blustery spring storm.
SA has also suffered numerous mass load shedding events, the result of unpredictable wind power output collapses.
SA’s neighbouring state, Victoria is well on its way to the Dark Ages too, with a headlong rush to meet its own 50% RET.
Last summer, both South Australia and Victoria suffered mass blackouts, as temperatures soared, along with power demand to keep air conditioners running, and wind power output plummeted during a dead calm heatwave.
This time it’s NSW Liberal MP, Craig Kelly who joins the growing ranks of those who’ll get to say “we told you so” when the lights go out and hundreds of thousands are left boiling in the dark this coming summer.
Upcoming summer blackouts the result of ‘utterly useless’ renewable energy
2GB
Ben Fordham
22 August 2019
A Senior Liberal MP says the upcoming summer blackouts across homes in NSW and Victoria are the result of a lack of investment in coal and gas.
NSW and Victoria risk being without power this year during the extreme heat due to aging coal and gas generators, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator.
777,000 NSW homes could also experience blackouts once the Liddell power plant closes in 2023.
Liberal MP Craig Kelly tells Ben Fordham the blackouts can be blamed on a commitment to “completely and utterly useless” renewable energy.
“Over the last eight or so years we’ve closed down ten coal-fired power stations in this nation, and we replaced them with intermittent generation from wind and solar.
“And all of a sudden we wonder why we’re at risk of blackouts! Yet we still are struggling to get a new coal-fired power station underway.
“This problem has come about directly because we have had more than $50 billion of malinvestment in renewable energy.”
2GB
Transcript
Ben Fordham: Now we’re being warned to brace for another summer of blackouts. The Australian energy market operator has worn more than 750,000 homes in new South Wales could be thrust into darkness. Another million homes would be at risk in Victoria. They are blaming a lack of investment in reliable coal and gas, suggesting renewables won’t be enough to keep our lights and air conditioners on. And let’s go to Craig Kelly on this one, the liberal MP because he’s well briefed on everything to do with energy. Craig Kelly, good afternoon.
Craig Kelly: Yeah, good afternoon Ben. A sad day. We’ve lost Tim Fisher, a great Australian.
Ben Fordham: No doubt about it. He was a common sense politician and you’ve always been common sense on this issue and now we’re getting the warning. Get ready for summer.
Craig Kelly: Well Ben, over the last eight or so years we’ve closed down 10 coal fire power stations in this nation. And we replaced them with intermittent generation from wind and solar. And then all of a sudden we wonder why we’re at risk for blackouts. If you live in Victoria over coming summer, you should have a big stock of candles and you should make sure you’ve got some petrol in the car, some an extra cash in your pocket because ATMs don’t work when the power goes down. We are lucky to have these blackouts and that’s what we’ve been warned about. And yet then we still are struggling to get a new coal fired power station on the way.
Ben Fordham: Okay. I thought you as part of the government was going to guarantee power supply.
Craig Kelly: Well Ben, we can only do so much at the federal level. Ultimately electricity has always been a prerogative of the state governments. Now we have a state government in Victoria that is conducting an ideological experiment in closing down coal fire power stations and putting billions of dollars into renewables that are only making the problem worse. Unless we get the state governments to come on board to take off their ideological blinkers and to realise the damage that they are causing and the threats they’re putting to our nation’s prosperity, nothing will be fixed.
Ben Fordham: So your warning for summer is take these warnings seriously and if you’re worried about not accessing an ATM, then stock up on cash.
Craig Kelly: Well this is, unfortunately Ben, this is what the energy market operator is advising today, that there are serious risks of blackouts and this problem has come about directly because we have had 50, more than $50 billion of mal-investment in renewable energy. That’s simply when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine on those hot summer afternoons is completely and utterly useless. And we’re left to fall back on coal fired power stations, which we’ve closed down 10 of the last several years.
Ben Fordham: Good to speak to you, Craig. Thanks for your time.
Craig Kelly: Thanks Ben.
Ben Fordham: Craig Kelly, the Liberal MP, also adding his words of support on a day that we’ve learned that the former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fisher, has passed away. He has been offered a state funeral following news of his death, age 73.
2GB
And the reason would be …
About stopthesethings
STOP THESE THINGS 
Reblogged this on ajmarciniak.
It’s hard to believe that the argy-bargy blame game between state and federal governments over the rights and wrongs of RE is because senior MPs are illogically stupid. They MUST be acting under orders that are external to AU. Although saying they govern for all Australians, or those living in the state’s dominion over natural resources, responsible government can only happen if we control our own economic system and as we don’t, then AU isn’t a sovereign nation state.
Hurricane Dorian (after many others) shows there’s no fairness of where and who are subjected to wind turbine location.
So in AU, Tassie is out for aesthetic and wildlife reasons, places of severe weather events such as the top half of AU, plus freak storms in the rest, and wildlife killing, etc., means wind turbines are unsuitable to be put anywhere for multiple reasons: including the current ending of the last ice age, can this be argued against?
Yet politicians, the Bureau of Meteorology (international agency equivalents), universities and scientists, are ignoring the facts: Along with the 5 old nuclear power plants in Florida that continue to operate.
On land, sea and air, nuclear technology is everywhere yet AU dillydallies in a RE drain, so something is very wrong with the current logic – THERE ISN’T ANY!
Cui bono; certainly not the majority of world citizens (private political parties, private foreign finance?), here, there and everywhere else.
Time to pull up stakes and spear the Zombies on their own petard of a milling will.
Has Charasmtic Kane’s GP prescribed him a half tablet of viagra, daily in an effort to prevent him piddling on his shoes?
Charismatic Kane of the Clean Energy Council council has been getting a little excited of late, he is not normally one to mix it in the rough n’ tumble of Twitter world, but tonight he came out with this pearl of wisdom;
“Australia can embrace and leverage the opportunity & inevitability of our changing energy system. Or we can wallow in delusional nostalgia about old coal and be debilitated by fear of the future.”
Whatever the case,I feel in the best interest of Kane’s welfare he should abandon ship and leave the CEC. If the panicked statements of blackouts this Australian summer coming out of the Lovely Audrey’s office are anything to go by, the resulting public furore will be no place for the mild mannered man of renewables!
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
The Victorian Labor government is sabotaging the grid, all for the sake of a doomsday cult that cries wolf.