Dean Jaensch: More to South Australia’s recent statewide blackout than meets the eye
ISSUES around electricity supply and costs have been on the agenda for decades. After the whole state got blacked out they have been elevated to prime importance.
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ISSUES around electricity supply and costs have been on the agenda for decades. After the whole state got blacked out they have been elevated to prime importance.
Premier Jay Weatherill had no doubt about the blackout. It was the storms. Nothing else to see here. Relax and we will fix it.
But as the reports and analyses come out it is obvious that there is much more to see here. One component, which the State Government and the Greens reject outright, is the mix of intermittent electricity production by wind and solar with stable base-load production by coal and gas.
A second component is the need for another inter-connector from Victoria or NSW.
This was promised by the Rann Labor government in 2002. After 14 years of Labor in power, where is it? It has become a mantra for Labor to blame the Liberal government’s privatisation of ETSA, but after 14 years that argument has become stale.
A related issue is who will pay for the new $2.5 billion interconnector?
Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis, who is also the Treasurer, admitted that he was unsure whether the multi-million costs would be borne by governments or consumers. That has to be a joke: ultimately it will be the taxpayers who will have to find the cash.
Or will private investment build it? Whichever, the result will be an increase in electricity prices. And, as SA already has the highest prices in the nation, this proposal is unlikely to win electoral support.
South Australia’s exclusive focus on renewable sources, which are heavily subsidised by us, the taxpayers, has meant that the coal-fired base-load generators have become unprofitable.
In fact, that is what the Greens and their supporters want to happen.
This makes it supremely ironic that SA has to depend on energy from one of the dirtiest brown coal power stations in the world, Hazelwood in Victoria. What happens if the rumours are right, and it closes next year?
The summit of energy ministers in Canberra last week made two important decisions.
First, to spend billions of dollars to upgrade the national electricity network. A grand aim, but where is the money coming from?
The second decision was to emphatically reject any slow-downs to the seemingly inexorable movement to more and more intermittent wind and solar generation. The people should be brought into this debate.
To accomplish this, there needs to be every effort to provide the greatest amount of information to the people. Transparency is essential.
But why has the Weatherill Government refused to allow the public to read a submission to it from Alinta Energy relating to the potential closure of the Port Augusta power station?
It has even rejected a call from the Ombudsman based on the public interest. The government’s argument is based on the standard commercially confidential mantra.
But seeing that the power station is now closed, and being demolished, there seems to be little basis to reject the peoples’ right to know.
This decision does not augur well for the open and honest debate which Australia needs to have.