Anthony Cox
Reported this weekend
in the MSM,
which collectively lacks the wit to allocate blame where it
belongs, is the
fact that electricity prices are going to rise especially for high cost
equipment like air-conditioners.
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| Cartoons by Josh |
Also reported is the compulsion for solar panel owners to
move their panels to the West of the property so afternoon peak demand from the
air-cons can be met by the repositioned solar panels.
This is beyond stupid. Coal and gas power can be delivered
to doorstep in Australia for 1 - 2¢ per kilowatt hour. Check your bill and see
the average kilowatt hour fee is about 30¢.
What happened?
A range of things. So called upgrades to the network which were
neglected in NSW by a succession of ALP governments is one thing. But they are
a one off.
The primary reason is the ongoing subsidisation of
renewables and the enormous infrastructure expense to hook up the solar and
wind farms to the grid. The costs of supplying electricity are illustrated in
this government graph:
The wretched carbon price is gone but the far right columns
still exist so that 71% of the capital and ongoing costs are specifically to do
with renewables.
Renewables don’t work. They’re unreliable. Engineers
Miskelly and Quirk show that the unreliability of specifically wind power,
but the point can be extended to solar, is so great that in effect wind and
solar do not produce any useful power at all. They show the probability of wind
and solar producing their maximum power, the reliability point, is as low as 3%
and no more than 10% at any one moment.
The practical consequences of that are two fold: firstly you
cannot plan for definite electricity any time in the future; for instance if
reliable power is required in 2 weeks for 3 hours -wind and solar cannot provide
that.
Secondly the reliable sources of power, the fossils must be
kept ‘spinning’ to back up the times when wind and solar fall out of
production.
So, it doesn’t matter if the rooftop solar panels are moved
to the West: on a hot, steamy overcast day they’re going to be just as useless
as if they were under the house.
The other nonsense in this new policy is the idea that
electricity has peak periods. This graph shows the daily demand fluctuation in
Australia [from TonyfromOz]:
The base load never goes below a regular 18000 MW and peaks
in the middle of the day. Renewables cannot ever supply this power because the
power generated by renewable installations can vary from 0 to 100% in a day! How can
you plan reliable regular grid demand with such variation? You can’t.
So to air-cons. TonyfromOz
has looked at the myth of air-cons being responsible for peaks in electricity
demand. It’s a lie and easily proved to be a lie. Tony looks at electricity
demand on Xmas day and compares it with demand on a normal working day. If
electricity demand were affected by air-cons in the way this new policy claims
then when everyone is home on a hot Christmas day you would expect to see a greater
spike and demand than a normal day:
No spike. The reason is simple. Much fewer people are at
work, at shopping centres and other large non-residential locations which use
air-con all the time.
The greens and the lie of AGW has caused the investment in
renewables at great unnecessary expense to electricity users in Australia. Now
the conservative governments have to fix up the green mess and they can’t even
tell the truth about the ‘problem’ caused by the greens.
How hopeless is that.
