Andrew Bolt:Big energy pledge takes common sense off the grid

The new Australian Energy Market Operator boss has made us a big promise on renewable energy — but he’s taking a big and expensive gamble with our power supply.

Coal-fired stations can’t instantly switch on and off to match what wind farms suddenly produce, or don’t.

Here is news from the people running our electricity system that should scare you, although it was meant to excite global warming believers.

In just four years, Australian Energy Market Operator plans to have grids that can run on “100 per cent instantaneous penetration of renewable energy”.

Yes! All your electricity from wind, solar and hydro by 2025!

New AEMO boss Daniel Westerman says this will mark “uncharted territory” for a country that’s already finding it “harder … to manage the stability of the power system as the penetration of solar and wind, even at today’s levels, pushes the system to its limits”.

Or put it this way: he’s taking a big and expensive gamble with your power supply.

Westerman says we can “make that real” because “on October 11 last year, we saw for the first time, ever, that renewable energy from South Australia … was able to supply the equivalent of all of the state’s energy needs, at noon for an hour”.

Gosh, for a whole hour! And what happened every other hour since then?

Australian Energy Market Operator boss Daniel Westerman. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicki Connolly

The AEMO’s own website says for the past three months, wind and solar gave us just 13 per cent of our electricity, and coal and gas – dreaded fossil fuels – supplied 75 per cent to keep the lights on when the sun didn’t shine and the wind didn’t blow.

In fact, one day last month we got just 6 per cent of our electricity from wind and solar. Thank God coal generators got us through.

But how long can we count on that under Westerman’s plan? Coal-fired stations – which supply two-thirds of our electricity – can’t instantly switch on and off to match what wind farms suddenly produce, or don’t.

So even more will go out of business, and faster, because they just can’t earn enough money under those conditions.

To replace them, we’re promised more back-up from gas plants, batteries and a massively expensive Snowy 2.0 scheme that uses renewable energy to pump water uphill, to be released for hydro power when it’s suddenly needed. We’re also promised expensive new transmission lines to hook it all up.

Are you keeping score of the cost?

All this expense to make, as the former chief scientist admitted, no essential difference to the world’s temperature – which was last month almost exactly what it was 15 years ago.