Planned For Failure: Shutdown Coal-Fired Power Plants & Get Ready For Blackouts

Power grids are finally balanced affairs that were never designed for the haphazard occasional delivery of wind and solar. Maintaining voltage and frequency within critical defined tolerances is a cinch with conventional generators, like nuclear, gas and coal-fired plants, which deliver the goods, around-the-clock and irrespective of the weather. Around 20 years ago, deranged zealots … Continue reading Planned For Failure: Shutdown Coal-Fired Power Plants & Get Ready For Blackouts

Damned By Their Silence: What Happened to the Grid Engineers Who Fought For Reliable Power?

Engineers built reliable and affordable power supplies; ideologues obsessed with intermittent wind and solar are rapidly dismantling them. Why engineers allowed that to happen is something of a mystery. Sure, renewable energy rent-seekers have exploited opportunities created around ‘saving the planet’ by purportedly ridding it of man-made carbon dioxide gas by using wind turbines and … Continue reading Damned By Their Silence: What Happened to the Grid Engineers Who Fought For Reliable Power?

Renewables Reckoning: Closing Australia’s Coal-Fired Power Plants Guarantees Grid Collapse

Thanks to an obsessional reliance on wind and solar, Australia’s power grid has all the structural integrity of a house of cards. Based on the delusion that weather-dependent wind and weather and sunshine-dependent solar can actually replace coal-fired power, Australia’s energy policy is deliberately designed to wipe out coal-fired power plants, once and for all. … Continue reading Renewables Reckoning: Closing Australia’s Coal-Fired Power Plants Guarantees Grid Collapse

Renewables Cult Accuse Weather of Conspiring Against Grand Wind & Solar ‘Transition’

Ideologues are quick to find a conspiracy, whenever their pet belief ultimately fails. So it is with the renewables cult - accusing mother nature of dishing up “dark doldrums”, or “dunkelflaute” (as the Germans call it) - with seemingly increasing regularity. Cloudy, calm weather is seen as a curse, and the lengthy absence of suitably … Continue reading Renewables Cult Accuse Weather of Conspiring Against Grand Wind & Solar ‘Transition’

Put Up or Shut Up: Time For Promoters To Prove Wind & Solar Really Are ‘Cheap & Reliable’

There’s really only one problem with the claim that wind and solar are cheap and reliable, and that would be the evidence. Every country or state that’s committed to wind and solar in any serious way is facing serious power price punishment. Ask a Californian, German, or South Australian and they’ll soon fill you in. … Continue reading Put Up or Shut Up: Time For Promoters To Prove Wind & Solar Really Are ‘Cheap & Reliable’

Solar Totally Eclipsed: Sunny Queensland Powered By Ever-Reliable Coal-Fired Plants

  Despite the hype, the true contribution of solar power to Australia’s grid remains trivial and especially so from sunset to sunup. Oh, almost forgot, cloudy and inclement weather makes a pretty fair dent in solar output, too. Queensland is renowned as the Sunshine State. But, even there, the massive increase in subsidised solar panels … Continue reading Solar Totally Eclipsed: Sunny Queensland Powered By Ever-Reliable Coal-Fired Plants

Parasitic Power: Intermittent Wind & Solar Take More From Power Grid Than They Ever Add

Applying scarce resources so that the benefits always outweigh the costs is rational, but subsidised wind and solar will never fit that bill. Putting aside the minerals and the energy required to convert those minerals that is embodied in solar panels and wind turbines, it’s the fact that - no matter how much wind and … Continue reading Parasitic Power: Intermittent Wind & Solar Take More From Power Grid Than They Ever Add

Sunset Industry: Solar Power Obsession Threatens to Destroy Western Australia’s Power Grid

When power demand is driven by the rhythm of human activity and its supply by the angle of the sun in the sky, expect mixed results. Of course, 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 … Continue reading Sunset Industry: Solar Power Obsession Threatens to Destroy Western Australia’s Power Grid