Look! Australia is now setting the international standard for green idiocy

From Instapundit.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Australia’s Obsession With Hopelessly Intermittent Wind & Solar Wrecking Entire Power Grid.

Australians once enjoyed affordable power, reliably delivered: the chaotic delivery of wind and solar changed all that. Australian power prices have rocketed out-of-control: its wind and solar power capital, South Australia pays the highest electricity prices, in the world.

Mass power cuts (aka load shedding and demand management) and mass blackouts are the new normal. And yet, the lunatics responsible are hell-bent on doubling down to deliver the final and fatal blow to Australia’s Eastern Grid (geographically, the largest interconnected power grid on the planet).

As Jo Nova explains, electricity generation and delivery is a finely balanced thing; and the sudden massive surges and collapses that are part and parcel of wind and solar generation are taking their toll, with much worse to come.

Ayn Rand didn’t write The Return of The Primitive as a how-to guide.


Plus this from the comments thread among many that discuss Australia including an almost hour long video of Jo Nova herself.

Here’s a map of Australia’s shale gas formations, which are comparable in size to U.S. shale reserves. It’s not a matter of there not being an alternative answer, it’s just a matter of the politicians there to stop buying into the idea that freezing is better than fracking….



Along with this, via Powerline.


16 Responses to Look! Australia is now setting the international standard for green idiocy

  1. Australia is now setting the international standard for green idiocy.
    Majoring in green idiocy.

  2. RobK

    A good paper outlining the state of the experiment. The grid is a finely tuned machine about to be flooded with many, many variables and a sea of extra instruments and control gear, along with many more heavy conductors to take the surges of RE.
    State-of-the-art of hosting capacity in modern power systems with distributed generation

    Currently, renewable energy is rapidly developing across the world in response to technical, economic and environmental developments, as well as political and social initiatives. On the other hand, excessive penetration of distributed generation (DG) systems into electrical networks may lead to various problems and operational limit violations, such as over and under voltages, excessive line losses, overloading of transformers and feeders, protection failure and high harmonic distortion levels exceeding the limits of international standards. These problems occur when the system exceeds its hosting capacity (HC) limit. The HC is a transactive approach that provides away for the distribution network to be integrated with different types of energy systems. Accordingly, HC assessment and enhancements become an essential target for both distribution system operators and DG investors. This paper provides, for the first time, a systematic and extensive overview of the HC research, developments, assessment techniques and enhancement technologies. The paper consists of four HC principal sections: historical developments, performance limits, perceptions and enhancement techniques. Besides, practical experiences of system operators, energy markets and outcomes gained from real case studies are presented and discussed. It was concluded that success in integrating more distributed generation hinges on accurate hosting capacity assessment. CrownCopyright©2018PublishedbyElsevierLtd.This is anopen access article under the CCBYlicense

    The grid will become more complex and expensive but less reliable.

  3. Former CEO type

    I don’t know what you teach, Professor, but in my day cartoons and rhetorical shouting were not rated with facts.

  4. Dr Fred. Lenin

    RobK .your last sentence , isnt that a desription of gangrene socialism ?
    The socialist fascist international is winning destroying the glorious past to create the bleak miserable east german type future .
    The left deny Hitler was a socialist ,despite the party name national socialist party , Stalin destroyed capitalism while Hitler embraced crony capitalists just like the present fascists embrace soros and co.
    See Sanders the commo is standing for president in 2020,wonder if his fellow socialists will t=reveal the reason he stood down to let clinton contest . I suspected they had something criminal on him they threatened to expose if he didnt get out of the way , arent politicians the filth of society ,the very dregs .

  5. Delta

    RobK, that’s a fascinating paper. It proposes a method of identifying the hosting capacity (HC) of a given network or node on the basis of all the adverse impacts on network performance that could result through the addition of more distributed generation (DG). And it states the obvious that the HC will be different at different network locations for different scenarios of generation, system configuration etc etc … which is true. However, I see a humorous irony here because the more DG is installed imposed, the lower will be the HC! At some point, provided the HC has been calculated correctly to include all adverse effects including system collapse (quite tricky), no more DG will be allowed. Now that would be a problem for the rent seekers at that time. And note that the HC approach does not question why we would be imposing these changes, it presents a methodology of minimising the damage by allowing as much DG as possible.

    Anyway even if this HC game eventuates, unless our existing ageing dispatchable load following synchronous generation is replaced in time, the system will collapse simply because renewable generators cannot follow the load. It will be just a matter of time before that point is reached. And then no batteries or storage will be sufficient to reverse an unstable grid collapsing in about 5 seconds in response to a major incident.

    Not a good outlook. Of course the timing would be brought forward with a change in government as it doubles down like Victoria on increasing the so called renewable energy target. At the same time we’ll also get the bleats to spend billions on building all the transmission infrastructure from nowhere to somewhere to capture and transport all this new renewable energy not that that will do any good even if it was feasible. This mess isn’t over yet by a long shot – and probably will not be fixed before we experience a couple of good system blacks, that is assuming there are still enough people left to want the lights on.

  6. This is the Green mentality that seems to have overtaken so many people in Australia nowadays. Not only do they think that by Australia effectively ending all reliable electricity that we alone will save the planet, it goes deeper than that.

    In our township there’s an idiotic movement claiming that the logging of a small copse of trees, that has always been destined to be logged, will cause untold damage to the entire world (they literally think this). Others are now saying that the proposed logging will kill off all the insects in the area and eventually the rest of the world. This is what Green lobby groups and individuals are writing in our local rag.

    There’s a disease that affects rational thought permeating the Australian population, notably politicians, and it seems to be getting worse.

  7. Critical Mass

    The Green New Steal.

  8. Nighthawk the Elder

    If Australia is leading the way in economic suicide, err I mean de-carbonising its economy, then why do the green spruikers keep claiming that climate change is getting worse?

    I mean, wasn’t closing power stations like Hazelwood, Northern and all the other coal stations over the last 5 years supposed to save the planet? Wasn’t wind and solar subsidies going to give us a prosperous future? Didn’t we all profit from the prime ranga’s price on carbon? So why then hasn’t the planet been saved? Why are we not now all prosperous. Why are we not a climate paradise? Are the greenies lying to us?

    We demand answers. Royal Commission now!

  9. RobK

    Yes, the Hosting Capacity, if properly estimated, will signal when “enhancements”(read capital) are required.
    This estimate of capacity can be mapped and continually updated for maximum exploitation. As covered by the text (and from memory omly), enhancement includes measures such as automatically switched capacitors, OLTC (on load tap changing) transformers, storage, more and heavier conductors, clever line switching …and more. All this stuff is wonderful but there will be a LOT of it eventually and there’s so many more components to fail.
    For the benefit of those who have not digested the text, l include the conclusion:

    7. Conclusions .
    If not properly assessed, excessive DG penetration may lead to various problems such as overvoltage, thermal overloading, power quality problems and system protection problems. Furthermore, overvoltage can be considered the main problem for high DG penetration. In this paper, an extensive literature review of the HC concept was provided and explored HC basics and historical developments. The five most common criteria that are of interest for distribution system operators (DSOs) in calculating the HC are based on analyzing the overvoltage, thermal overloading, electrical power loss, power quality and protection problems. All of them are discussed in the manuscript. In addition, different HC enhancement techniques such as reactive power control, voltage control, active power curtailment, energy storage technologies, network reconfiguration and reinforcement and harmonics mitigation techniques are discussed. This research can be beneficial to DSOs and researchers in this field as it presents the past, present and future of HCresearch. It is expected that the HC will play a significant role in future power systems and smart grids. Using HC approach to drive network requirements could steer DG toward areas of the network where it could have the greatestpositive impact on network reliability and win-win benefits with DG owners. Finally, smarter DG integration into future electrical systems can be met if utilities have a clear forecast of their potential network HC.
    (Funding sources: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.)

    I think this paper accurately describes what we’re in for. In my view, we are experimenting up a blind alley with the hope it might all work out technologically. It might; if some wondrous break throughs occur, but I’m convinced it wont be cheap compared to what we had (ref OECD REPORT linked at an earlier post, which claims nuclear system costs are an order of magnitude lower than High penetration RE[coal is cheaper still]).

  10. Turtle

    Speaking of Ayn Rand, Glencore is getting out of coal. Atlas Shrugged all over again.

  11. Bruce of Newcastle

    News in the Oz this morning:

    Labor’s carbon cut apocalypse

    New independent modelling has found Labor’s 45 per cent emissions-­reduction target would push power prices 50 per cent higher.

    That would take retail prices up to about 50c per kWh and pretty much render all industry in the country uneconomic.

    Furthermore supermarkets and smaller food sellers are going to be in real strife hit by horrendous electricity prices and crazy refrigeration gas prices. The humble shop fridge will be a money pit and consumer prices will be forced up.

    If anyone doubts the 50% rise in electricity prices it is pretty much on the money based on the empirical relationship between electricity prices and renewable energy per capita. (link)

  12. Dan Dare

    Everything is OK though.
    In Victoria at least.
    There’s an ad running with instructions on what to do and how to keep “safe” when an “outage” occurs.
    Go to a website of the Dept of blah blah blah and blah or ring 1300 blah blah.

  13. Go to a website of the Dept of blah blah blah and blah or ring 1300 blah blah.

    Neither work on an NBN that requires electrickery.

  14. Dan the Man

    It is not only Australia but Germany as well, where I have lived before.

    Teachers, dog trainers, office workers, students, professional politicians, bus drivers, gardeners, opera singers and so on all have strong opinions about climate and green energy and make themselves be heard. No chance for engineers or scientists to present them some numbers to wake them up from their dreams.

    Government, army, engineers and the like say very clearly the grid will collapse, and the Merkel Government keeps telling the public every few months to be prepared. However, no one blames the green dreams, since that would cause a sh*tstorm.

    Parts of Berlin just had almost two days without electricity, this time not caused by green intermittent power but by some stupid construction worked who not only cut an important underground cable, but the backup cable at the same time. That should have never happened, but Murphy has been confirmed again.

    No matter what the reason wsa 30K people experienced first hand what might be the new normal in a few years in Germany. One and a half day no lights, no heating (luckily it was above zero), people stuck in elevators, no mobile phone, no landline, no radio or TV, while the authorities asked all to follow information of the emergency services on the radio if they were able to use it LOL. No public transport, no food, no drinks, hospitals partly evacuated since the 20 years old backup diesel generators did not start, schools closed.

    So the people who were affected will know now a bit better what’s coming sooner or later. Unfortunately that blackout did not happen in suburbs where most of the left-green are living – maybe otherwise some of them would start using their brains now.

  15. Turtle of WA


    Turtle stop being a moron.

    Speaking of Ayn Rand, Glencore is pretending to get out of coal. Atlas Shrugged all over again.

    The capitalists nd industrialists won’t defend the good work they do from idiotic, nihilistic lefty enemies.

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