Weather-dependent wind and sunshine-dependent solar are the prime cause of Australia’s electricity pricing and supply debacle. So much is obvious to anybody who bothers to go beyond the drivel pitched up by the MSM and the politicos responsible for the disaster.
Over the last decade, STT has laid it out in pictures, such as the one above, made possible by the boys over at Aneroid Energy – the one-stop shop when it comes to understanding where our electricity actually comes from.
In this case, the output delivered by Australian wind power outfits and every one of their wind turbines connected to the Eastern Grid (with a combined notional capacity of 9,854 MW) so far this month.
While purported energy pundits rant about “coal outages” – referring to either scheduled maintenance or unscheduled repairs to one or two units among several within a coal-fired power plant – they never talk about the sudden 5,000 to 6,000 MW collapses in wind power output that occur every few days or so. Rarely is their total output more than about 60% of nominal capacity; often it’s less than 6%. Not that you’d know it if your only source of information was the mainstream press.
Of course, solar output follows a similar trend on a daily basis, apparently linked to sunset, or so we’re told.
The resulting chaos in the power market has driven wholesale power prices into orbit and retail power prices are following close behind.
The grid manager has been reduced to issuing hysterical warnings about grid collapse and, to prevent that inevitable consequence of our ludicrous dependence on the sun and wind, cutting power users from the grid, rationing what’s left of the reliable stuff. As to which, we’ll cross to the team at Jo Nova for a rundown on recent weather-driven events.
Welcome to a weather-dependent nation — whether you can use your dishwasher depends on the wind
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
17 June 2022
For energy-nerds following the Australian experiment, today is a big day. On the up-side, three coal turbines have rebooted adding another 1200MW to the grid. On the down-side, the wind has slowed and 3000MW has disappeared. On the hope-side, another 4 coal turbines may possibly get back in gear by Sunday, and you never know, the wind might pick up. Though it doesn’t look good.
It doesn’t matter how many wind farms we build when one High Pressure cell arrives to sit on them all
This is where all 76 Australia NEM grid wind farms are which could, in theory be generating as much as 9.8GW but are turning out 10% of that now.
Ninety percent of Australians are being asked to be careful with their electricity today while we wait for the wind to start blowing again or the weather to warm up. And millions of dollars is being burned in electricity bills (assuming people have electricity) because we shut down too many brown coal plants and didn’t maintain any of the coal fleet as if our quality of life depended on it.
The AEMO has issued LOR3 (highest risk lack of reserve) announcements for SA, Victoria, and New South Wales for today. These are updated often and it is hard to keep up. LOR3’s are a kind of “Blackout watch”. Potential shortfalls of megawatts 18 hours in advance of the 6pm evening crunch time did look ominous: In Victoria the maximum forecast load that may be interrupted was 1400MW from 5pm to 1am. In South Australia it’s 273MW from 5pm to 9pm. In New South Wales the maximum “interruptible” load is a whopping 3007MW between 5pm to 2.30am. That’s potentially one third of the total demand in New South Wales. All of these may be resolved just in time, but somebody is sweating tonight sorting this out.
These notices linked above were 98212 (Vic), 98211 (SA), 98200 (NSW) – but which have been updated. Just for the tenor of what could theoretically go wrong, note the size and multiple problem times for one NSW update (copied below). I suspect the updated LOR3 notices 98223, 98225 and 98226 are still active. But curiously the Administered price period in NSW has ended. So the spot market is back in NSW?
STOP THESE THINGS 
Good description: the holy trinity (interconnections, pumped hydro and batteries).
Thank you, I have translated and reblogged ist at https://eike-klima-energie.eu/
Hi Andy, Check out the work of the Energy Realists of Australia
https://www.riteon.org.au/netzero-casualties/
And please give me an email to send the ongoing series of notes
Rafe.dotChampionatgmail.com
New question on mortgage applications: Do you want electricity with that?
When the property building standard was reduced by 50% to 50 years, there was no real corresponding drop in price.
So it is pertinent to ask if the first homeowners grant that has fluctuated from over $30K to a usual $15K, is considered in house pricing.
Before Scott Morrison was elected PM in his own right, he stated that “subsidies drive prices up”. That’s the LNP’s belief. Asking the ALP & rest what they believe, & getting a straight & honest answer, would be like winning a lottery jackpot.
What business does not consider all aspects in its pricing system?
Also, with all of the government building regulators & consumer protection organisations, why are so many small contractors & prepaying house buyers being left with nothing as so many even large national building companies, collapse?
Who exactly is the common international two party system representing?
It certainly doesn’t appear to be citizens of the countries who pay their salaries & expenses.
Since AU gave away its financial sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund that controls the Reserve Bank, is it any wonder that the man-made financial system is so ‘unpredictable’.
Much like RE that has brought the vagaries of the weather indoors.
Silly me. For a minute I forgot it’s all because of the Ukraine war & not having a single world government.
At least we don’t have to worry about Martians attacking with space tourism set to bugger up the ozone layer just when fluorocarbons seemed to be under control.
For even more confusion try watching the news/weather on different TV channels. Not only are temperatures different but cities keep moving (Toowoomba wanders a lot) & those little spermy things whizz around all excited. Don’t take the main stories too seriously as numbers & details vary unless it’s important like celebrity stuff.
Thank goodness mainstream education teaches scientific facts.
“…just when fluorocarbons seemed to be under control.”
I’m glad you put “seemed” in there!
Reblogged this on whatyareckon and commented:
Keep doing the same thing over and expecting a different result is the insanity of this climate scam!
“Ninety percent of Australians are being asked to be careful with their electricity today…”
At least we could depend on camp fires to work if we lit them!
“Wind droughts” can be fixed by taking the excess power made by the many Green Renewable Electric Energy Developments (GREED) on one side of the world, run a transmission line through the center of the Earth to the other side, then use that to power up the wind turbines sitting in that non-moving air to make wind so that other turbines start producing. Simple.
I would have thought that converting the whole of Western Australia into a solar farm to produce green hydrogen is more feasible. Twiggy Forest has plans to do that already!
In 2012 Paul Miskelly documented the wind droughts caused by high pressure systems that can sit over SE Australia for days and Tony from Oz has been blogging on all aspects of the power supply for more than a decade, showing why wind won’t work.
The thing is to look at the low points, not the ever-increasing penetration of RE. Focussing on the lows is not cherry-picking it is DUE DILIGENCE.
None of the states have done it. Requests for advice on their plans to cater for wind droughts yielded no answers. Extended correspondence with the NSW Department asking to talk to someone about wind droughts eventually resulted in a referral to an officer in AEMO.
He said the states were light on capacity for planning and tended to outsource it, I can believe that, other people who managed to talk to people in the system come away shaking their heads.
He referred to the holy trinity (interconnections, pumped hydro and batteries).