If the delusion that we’re destined to run on nothing but wind and solar were a disease, it would have been declared a pandemic, long ago. The symptoms are readily observed – a trenchant and unshakeable belief that wind and solar can completely replace, coal, gas and nuclear power – they’re contagious and almost impossible to treat.
Western Australia caught the disease long ago. WA suffers the same obsession with heavily subsidised solar power that has gripped the Eastern States since 2001, and is starting to pay the price. Not least because the chaotic delivery of solar power is threatening to destroy its once wholly reliable electricity grid.
When the sun drops over the horizon and disappears for 10-12 hours or so, those claiming to depend on solar power can expect none at all.
Then there’s the sudden drops and rapid surges in voltage and frequency that follow the passage of clouds over those millions of shiny panels.
All that would be chaotic enough, but WA’s Labor government appears hell-bent on full-blown economic suicide.
Having already destabilised the grid with its heavily subsidised solar rollout, the McGowan government is determined to destroy it completely, by shutting down WA’s remaining coal-fired power plants, doing away with the cheapest and most reliable source of power they have.
Mark Chatfield, former CEO of Queensland’s CS Energy, recently called out the inherent lunacy of killing off WA’s coal-fired plants, warning that a complete system failure is inevitable, as Paul Garvey reports below.
Energy expert warns WA grid ‘headed for disaster’ without coal
The Australian
Paul Garvey
19 February 2023
A former director of Western Australia’s state-owned energy retailer says the state’s key energy grid is headed for disaster under the McGowan government’s plan to shutter its coal plants by the end of the decade.
Mark Chatfield, a former chief executive of Queensland utility CS Energy who was appointed to the board of WA retailer Synergy by the previous Barnett government, told The Australian that blackouts were inevitable under the ambitions outlined by the state government last year.
“The path we are on, of the simple retirement of coal and its replacement by wind and solar, is destined to fail,” he said.
Premier Mark McGowan and Energy Minister Bill Johnston last year announced the two remaining state-owned coal-fired power plants would close by 2030, with $3.8bn set aside to help Synergy prepare for the change.
WA has one of the highest rates of household solar installations in the world, and their combined daytime output has hurt the economics of coal-fired plants providing baseload power.
Energy experts including Mr Chatfield and the chair of renewables advocacy group Sustainable Energy Now, Fraser Maywood, told The Australian they could not see how WA’s energy grid could be ready to cope with the scheduled coal plant closures.
A forecast released last year by the Australian Energy Market Operator projected gas demand in WA’s southwest would grow by more than 140 per cent by 2032, noting that the scheduled coal plant retirements would only be partially replaced by renewables.
Detailed modelling of the outlook for the WA grid, which Mr Chatfield said had taken him six months to compile, showed that delivering enough renewables and batteries to keep the grid stable after the coal plant closures would cost tens of billions of dollars and be impossible to bring in by 2030.
Increasing the use of gas could help shore up the grid, but he said there was not currently enough spare capacity on the pipeline that connects WA’s southwest to the gas fields in the north to deliver what was needed.
“You have to expand the pipeline at the minimum, you have to buy more gas, and you have to add some more gas turbines if you’re going to replace the coal,” he said.
WA is installing its first large-scale battery, a $150m unit that will be capable of supplying 100 megawatts of power for four hours, but Mr Chatfield said the state would need another 30 of those to keep a renewables-driven grid stable.
On top of that, he said pumped hydro – earmarked to bolster the state grid – is ill-suited to WA’s flat topography and would be difficult to deliver by 2030.
Mr Maywood said the current $3.8bn plan was “undercooked”.
“We are concerned about the stability of the grid. It’s not looking good. We have been lucky this year – we haven’t had the very hot weather that really stretches the grid,” he said.
Mr Maywood said he feared grid instability in the wake of the 2030 coal shutdowns could hurt the cause of renewable energy. “You don’t need to do it all at once, but you need to have a vision, and you need a plan, and then you need your funding, and then you need to get all these projects rolled out as a coherent set,” he said.
“We’re not seeing that. What we’re seeing is hand-to-mouth. We are just stumbling from one potential crisis to the next.”
Opposition energy spokesman Steve Thomas said the government’s transition plan “absolutely cannot work” and industries that relied on the grid were increasingly worried about how they would fare beyond 2030.
He said “a sensible government would be hoping for the best but planning for the worst. This government is just hoping for the best with its fingers crossed,” he said.
The Australian
Sun’s up, wind’s blowing – so we’re all good .. for a while.
About stopthesethings
STOP THESE THINGS 
All these people pushing these ideas know absolutely nothing about the power industry and are too full of themselves to do any research and get any sort of practical ideas. It takes 2 sections of land of solar panels to replace a 600 megawatt boiler turbine unit, and around 200 wind turbines for the same. they all have these pie in the sky ideas that have no practical knowledge or experience.
“…Opposition energy spokesman Steve Thomas said the government’s transition plan “absolutely cannot work” and industries that relied on the grid were increasingly worried about how they would fare beyond 2030…”
Yes, true enough, but then remind me what was the opposition’s grand energy plan at the last state election? For the Libs to harp about dysfunctional state energy policy in WA is like the the pot accusing the kettle of being black, given the ridiculous unicorn fart dependance they were offering the electorate as their main election promise.
And who are those industries lobbying for and why aren’t they spending some of their advertising and lobbying budget making public demands for reliable, affordable energy delivery; instead of masturabting all day about how ‘green’ their products are in the hope of convincing a bunch of latte sippers to buy more of their crap based on market leading carbon footprints.
By now I’m inclined to accept that the lunatics have total control of the asylum and righting the course now is a lost cause. The only solution is to leave all the muppets to it and let them lie in the idiotic bed once they’ve made it and repeat ad nauseum ‘I fricken told you so but you morons wouldn’t listen’.
In the meantime though, one has to figure out which country is the most sensible place to emigrate the family to.
What a shite state of affairs. So many gullible morons; if this isn’t the best advertisment for condoms I don’t know what would be.
Reblogged this on whatyareckon and commented:
The climate scammers should be jailed!
Jailed along with the county government commissioners.
Never start a vast project with half vast plans.
Renewables of wind and solar only generate occasional electricity, but manufacture nothing for society.
Virtually everything in our society is made from fossil fuels.
Today, through human ingenuity, we have more than 6,000 products currently benefiting society and fuels for the 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.
If “The path we are on, of the simple retirement of coal and its replacement by wind and solar, is destined to fail” which we all agree is true, maybe we could get through to the camouflage green cult by being equally as absurd. Seriously demand a mandate to convert all cars and trucks to use sails so they run on and only use Direct Wind Power (DWP). They will be powered then on clean pure wind. They will move cars on the freeway just as efficiently as the now 850 foot tall propellers in the sky provides (or will occasionally provide such as those at West Camp Wind and Chevelon Butte Wind in Arizona) their generated electric that only occasionally move energy along the grid highway of wires. Direct Wind Power offers absolute zero environmental harm and has absolutely no energy loss. Present these clowns and hustlers the powerpoint presentation in committee showing how traffic flow is not the priority here, it is cleanliness. While we are at it we can then mandate that all drivers, in order to have a license, while they sit in traffic because there is no wind they are required to get out of their cars and pick up all trash on the sides of the roads. Of course the facts speak louder than all the hot air that doesn’t budge any of these vehicles when Direct Wind Power is used. This system of course would express exactly how the fake clean energy pushers are going nowhere fast as these wind and solar movie props they install can only entertain and give those in the cult a feeling of worth and the hustlers behind the curtain a good laugh over an imported beer summit that the rest of us are of course not equitably invited to, beer of which oddly is imported using diesel powered ships.
Like in Kris Kristofferson’s song. “it’s all a bloody circus and the clowns are in control.”
There is no plan B, as Kerry Schott famously said from the Chair of the (now defunct) Energy Security Board.
However, as the Energy Realists pointed out years ago, wind and solar can DISPLACE coal, to a point that we have reached, but they can’t REPLACE it.
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/renewables/21-7-intermittent-solar-and-wind-power-can-displace-coal-but-cannot-replace-it
The Energy Security Board was supposed to suggest market reforms to expedite the energy transition but they contemplated a continuing role for gas and coal so they were sent to the naughty corner.
The responsible bodies in the various states are now stuck with the problem and soon they will have to find a way to keep the coal fires burning. This will be interesting to watch.
Sure enough, the leader of the Opposition party in NSW has flagged the possibility of buying the biggest generator in the state to keep it going after the scheduled closure date.