SA The state of Adelaide - no power

Very much so, and delaying this will come at a cost.

I drive past this place on my way to work, amazing use of green tech to create industry where there was none. There has been so much focus on the cost (politics) of transitioning to renewables, while the huge upside in innovation and industry opportunities are being ignored.

 

You missed the point.

I love renewable power. Yes despite of my anger at how things are done.
The points are different.

I have 5Kw worth of solar on the roof(grid Tie). 600w self made off grid set up on shed.
It was an easy decision financially based on use and cost.

But please understand my point . I believe in Parallel implementation.

Their was little reward for the early adopters of the Tesla Roadster or Model S per say.


We could have had some of worlds cheapest electricity. While the government set up a trajectory for a renewable trasition.

This could have been done together side by side with government as the leader.

 

ACCC ok here you.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) recently conducted analysis of household power bills around Australia. The results were illuminating.

While many of the price hikes in the eastern states were driven by increases in network costs (poles and wires), South Australia's recent price hikes were driven by the cost of generation.

The chart below shows over the past decade, household bills have risen by almost 50 per cent. Of that increase, almost half was attributable to increases in the cost of generation.


next.
Reza told us the driving force in recent price hikes has been a tightening of supply and demand, which kicked off with the closure of the state's last operating coal power plant at Port Augusta.

"Probably the main one in South Australia has been the removal of Northern Power Station which was a 540-megawatt power station that was baseload, fairly stable, fairly low cost," he said.

"What effectively has replaced Northern Power Station has been more renewables and also more interconnection between us and Victoria."


The coal closure means power generated by a more expensive fuel source — gas — is more regularly setting the price.

"South Australia is now much more reliant on gas-fired generation … which is a higher cost of energy compared with what Northern used to be," Mr Evans said.

"The price of gas has nearly tripled in the past few years and that has meant that the fundamentals of where we get our energy from has increased substantially."

 

Can i ask you a question . Let me use a car example.
If you depended on your car.

But your car was due for service/upgrade...reason not important


Do you sell the car -Catch taxis -hitch rides from your neighbors-borrow money from neighbors before you sort your new car out?


Or you keep driving your car until you can afford the Alternative powered car you want ?

The longer you wait the cheaper the (Tesla/Alternative powered ) car becomes until it fits your means.


Renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper.


Im waiting to add battery storage to my house system. At the moment the cost of payback is 10 Years and the battery warranty is about the same. So at the moment the payback period is not viable.


So I wait in 2/3 years I will add this technology.

I could make it worse for my family and install in on principal but i would be stupid. Just like the SA government.

 

Lets take a look at NSW's energy supply shall we:

Gas-fired power plants failed during NSW heatwave, report reveals

"The NSW situation has received far less attention than that of South Australia, where the federal government has repeatedly blamed intermittent renewables for blackouts.

But the Climate Council said Aemo’s report showed it was fossil-fuel plants that failed when NSW needed them most. A councillor, Andrew Stock, said he had calculated the loss of power from fossil-fuel plants on the day at about 3000MW. The report showed the unreliability of the state’s ageing coal and gas plants, he said.

“A lot has been made politically of how unreliable renewables are, yet when it came to the crunch on the 10th of February, renewables actually performed as expected – it was the fossil fuel plant that failed dismally,”

 

Interesting - Poland is the 9th largest producer of coal in the world, and the 2nd largest consumer of coal in Europe..surely this corresponds to their very cheap electricity price in the above graph.
According to Allan Finkel; even if we did everthing possible to reduce carbon emmissions, the temp would not change at all; so why then is there such a manic push towards renewables to replace coal? It makes no sense; especily when it is obvious that it contributes dramatically to the escalating cost of our electricity..if South Australia was still using only coal; my prediction is it would have very cheap electricity.
Surely the cost of living (electricity) for our Citizens should therefore take precedence if there is no benefit (temperature decrease) from cutting emmissions?

 

The real cost of coal in Poland:

Kraków’s smog trauma - New Eastern Europe

"The air is heavy and thick, breathing becomes hard and doctors get used to longer queues in hospital corridors. Many people on the streets wear anti-smog masks and their outdoor activities become limited."

Coal in Poland Lowering Life Spans

 

massive fear mongering literary piece...that would be from coal being used as a heating fuel...43%. Most Countries moved away from coal as a heating source decades ago...electricity production is a doffering thing.
It was a good try though.

 

Maybe, how about something closer to home:

Poor air quality is the true cost of coal
"Australia's fleet of power stations is among the oldest and most inefficient in the world, with 89 per cent of our power stations classed as "subcritical" – the oldest type. Half of Australia's power stations are at least 30 years old. The oldest, Liddell in NSW, is 45-years-old. These power stations release more than a million tonnes of toxic pollution into the air each year.

A conservative estimate puts the health costs from power station emission at $2.6 billion a year. Toxic pollution travels great distances, so the pollution from Australia's power stations is breathed in by millions of Australians, particularly those in Sydney who end up with a large chunk of the Hunter Valley's pollution."

"the emissions limits imposed on Australian power stations are, for the most part, far less stringent than those in the United States, the European Union and China."


Hey if coal is fine for you i have no interest in swaying opinion, i just dont want it in my state. Also as an asthmatic and health conscious person i really dont wont to be breathing that **** in.

 

I am very pleased to be proven wrong here!

 

You are are 100% correct that Australia's emmisions are small globally. But on per capita basis we are amongst the highest in the world, so we have a responsibility to do our fair share. Lifters and leaners right?

But if you a capitalist who understands science then you realise that the best path forward is to transition to carbon reduced economy before other countries transition and reap the rewards. It is like property. You buy in before the wave of other investors. You want to be a price maker not a price taker.

The Rudd and Gillard governments said this many times, but many people willfully didn't hear or understand that message. That makes me sad.

 

I guess the best comparison would be with emissions from vehicles....virtually every human that lives in a major city across the world is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of cars, buses, trucks and in some instances diesel trains their entire life all day and night - belching out unknown quantities of polluted air, but there is no argument or outcry.
Whilst coal fired power stations emit poor quality air similarly, it would be arguable that the various quantities of pollutants in that air would ultimately be of any detriment to a human - unless they were exposed to it from a very close distance and over a very long period of time.
The argument for eradicating coal fired power stations has never been about air quality either...it has always been about their perceived impact on the Earth's temperature - Global Warming, now called Climate Change.

 

From memory Australian emissions - if ceased completely - were estimated to decrease the worlds' temperature by approximately 1/4000th of a degree by the end of this century?
Our percentage of the world's total emissions is approximately 1%, apparently? If you multiply it out and eradicate all world emissions, the estimated decrease in the world's temperature is approximately 4/10ths of a degree...and therefore supports Alan Finkel's statement.
If I was a South Australian resident and heard that news, and knew my power bills were the highest in the world because of a futile mission by my Government to follow the ETS; I would be very unhappy with them (I am anyway - all our various State Governments and even the Federal Government are on that bandwagon).

 

Well done, you ignored everything I posted. Go away.

 

Sure, would have to agree in refrence to Australia, very different scenario in more congested global cities though.

But just as technology is making coal defunct in power generation, the electric vehicle is with transportation.

Our aging coal plants are overdue for replacement, and to replace with coal over renewable is becoming far less feasible. This is because of market demand from consumers, investors and now insurer's and banks.

Growing number of global insurance firms divesting from fossil fuels

Big four banks slash lending to coal miners

There is a rapidly growing demand from investors who no longer want to invest in such industries. This has given rise to "ESG" tilted investment:

10 Reasons ESG Investing Is Growing

According to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, over $22 trillion of assets were managed under responsible investment strategies globally in 2016, up 25% from two years before.

1. "Technology is changing what we demand and how we consume.
   Whether it’s driverless cars in autos, smart metering in utilities, renewables in oil and gas, online sales in retail, or robo-advisers in asset management, most sectors of the economy are seeing paradigm shifts in the way business is conducted. Companies with ample resources and willingness to adapt will outperform, but others are likely to put investors at risk."

Imo, governments/companies that dont adapt and embrace the changes in technology and meet the rapidly shifting market demand will underperform and will pay the consequences over the medium to long term.

 

Yet, we account for only .32 of the total population.

 

And just yesterday:

Pas-de-deux: Two big coal units trip at same time in Victoria

"Earlier Thursday morning, two of the country’s biggest coal units – 530MW blocks at the Loy Yang A (number two) and the Loy Yang B (number 1) brown coal generators – tripped at the same time, robbing the grid of 1,065MW of capacity in an instant.

There is talk that the Loy Yang B unit will be out for a month, so it is relatively serious."

the outage did cause prices to double in Victoria as traders profited from the sudden scarcity, with the same impact passed on to South Australia’s electricity market, and to a lesser extent in NSW.

"These are the 43rd and 44th trip of a major coal-fired unit in the Australian grid since the start of summer, according to The Australia’s Institute Coal and Gas Watch. Seven have occurred in March alone.

And they were the 12th and 13th suffered since Christmas by big brown coal generators, making a mockery of the federal government’s focus on coal-fired generation as a guarantor of “reliability”.

 

Some of the tripping events are questionable. If you monitor the market you can see that there are only few big players. They can manipulate the market and one of the possible strategy is to creat scarcity to push up the price. And those big but old coal generators are the easiest tool for them

 

It appears the lack of competition is heavily open to manipulation in NSW, but not the case according to gov appointed watchdog.

NSW energy market open to abuse, but no cartel action found

"Average monthly energy prices have doubled in New South Wales in the past 12 months and the electricity market is ripe for abuse, but there is no evidence of coordinated market manipulation, an the industry watchdog has found."

"Instead the rising cost of black coal and gas, coupled with the limited number of generators in NSW and plant closures in Victoria, was found to be the reason for increased prices.

NSW generation is dominated by black coal so is sensitive to rising coal prices."

In support of your point:

“There are features of the NSW market that likely provide participants with the opportunity to exercise market power and potentially abuse this market power.”

 

Point ia simple.
SA residents are paying some if the highest prices for electricity in the world.

Cant be argued.

SA is a bankrupt welfare state that depends on GST from others to survive.

Cabt be argued.

Its nice when you can Sit on the moral high horse while some one else is paying for it.