Pollies play blackout roulette as big cities swelter

Our two biggest cities are toying with costly blackouts and politicians from both sides of the fence are to blame.

 

Welcome to Australia’s deadly game of Melbourne and Sydney blackout roulette. The stakes involve hundreds of millions of dollars of refrigerated food and the operations of thousands of factories and offices who don’t have emergency power contingencies in place.

The blackout roulette game has been engineered by Victorian State Premier Daniel Andrews and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her predecessor Mike Baird whose governments vandalised the power system by “plonking” wind and solar farms in various areas without providing back up for high demand days when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

To make sure the game had real drama and tension, they both shut down big coal fired power stations and allowed the cheap power surges that comes from wind and power to hit the economics of running coal stations which, in turn, contributed to plant maintenance being cut back so that on high demand days they are very vulnerable to break downs.

According to weather bureau forecasts, the first two spins of the wheel will be on Thursday and Friday of this week when Melbourne temperatures are set to reach 39 degrees. During the first spin, Sydney was forecast to be below 30 which is good news for Melbourne but on the second spin (Friday), Sydney is forecast to be 31 degrees so there is greater danger. And then for the third spin of the wheel next Monday Sydney is scheduled to reach 35 degrees, but the danger is reduced as Melbourne is forecast to fall back into the 20s.

When the game was last played early in February 2017 Sydney went very close to blackouts but was saved by Victoria’s Hazelwood plant (now closed) and the fact that Melbourne had cool weather. To her credit, Gladys Berejiklian learned from that experience and the experience of Adelaide which last year discovered the hard way that renewable power generation needs back up.

Victoria took longer than NSW to wake up but it too has been working hard to reduce the risk of blackouts. For the most part, both states are borrowing ideas from third world countries by getting industry and consumers to cut back on power usage when days are hot. In addition, those organisations with back up power (like phone companies) are being asked to use it so as to cut demand and, if possible, put power back into the grid. Accordingly, highly polluting diesel becomes the saviour.

Victoria believes that on hot days the wind almost always blows so “she’ll be right mate.” But just in case, Andrews has rushed into action diesel generators and, according to energy minister Josh Frydenberg, Victoria will be using 80,000 litres of diesel an hour in a desperate attempt to keep the lights on.

How these two large global cities that once had power systems that were the envy of the world were placed in this incredible situation by appalling government covering both major parties is beyond comprehension. I emphasise that renewables are to be encouraged but they must have backups in place for times when they don’t generate. Josh Frydenberg is trying to lock in back-up installations via COAG. Australia needs him to be successful. If it requires blackouts in Sydney or Melbourne help activist politicians understand, then perhaps its worth it

These backups can be via batteries but this is very expensive on current technology; hydro including pumped hydro works well but is not cheap. What China and most other places have found is that gas fired stations are the way to go.

But for well publicised reasons NSW has not developed Narabri and as I pointed out yesterday, Victoria is sitting on vast reserves of gas that do not require fracking but their development has been banned by the Victorian government partly because the water produced may affect farms. The early tests showed this was simply wrong and that the water produced is perfect for agriculture. The Victorian government has refused further tests.

A $42 million committee set up to look at Victoria’s on shore gas reserves was not allowed to examine this vast resource and so reported that there was little prospect of large onshore conventional gas being found. But even that may now be wrong. A week after the report came out, Beach reported a substantial conventional gas reserve discovery in South Australia in the Otway Basin right on the Victorian border.

Assuming they pass the water test, Victoria’s onshore gas reserves are large enough to service both NSW and Victoria which will lead to lower gas and power prices once Victoria has a government prepared to develop them. We have the gas, so now it’s time to use it to back up renewables. The problem is that back-up plants are expensive and show up the real cost of renewables. That’s politically incorrect.

Politically its much safer to play blackout roulette and hope your numbers come up.