Power grid struggles to cope as weather warms up

Bathers at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Wednesday. Asphalt melting, airconditioning-on-full-bore weather this was not.Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Here’s a question for the team appointed by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to review the national electricity market: Why are we warned the power could go off whenever we have a couple of warm days? Not scorchers, just weather that people expect for the start of summer.

Wednesday’s maximums for the major capitals, forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology 24 hours out, were 34C for Sydney and just under 30C for Brisbane and Melbourne. Asphalt melting, airconditioning-on-full-bore weather this is not. Yet we are told that in NSW the grid is close to not coping and we are urged to power down. Premier Chris Minns pushed the panic button, urging everybody to turn off dishwashers and pool pumps in the peak evening hours. Anybody who ran their airconditioner at a Premier-unapproved level could face “through-the-roof prices”.

Mr Minns feeling the need to warn householders against using basic appliances demonstrates just how fragile authorities believe the grid has become. This was not in a 40C-plus meltdown but when the BOM reported the Sydney Harbour-side temperature was just under 27C and the city’s warmer west was 33C. That the grid was regarded as being at risk under what were far from extreme conditions was due less to the weather than to the condition of the interstate electricity supply. And whose fault is that? Certainly not consumers. Definitely ministers and their minders who think climate change is a free-pass phrase for failing to provide a regular power supply in routine weather. Concerning as it is for householders, the uncertainty is also very bad for business, productivity and the wider economy.

Wednesday was also terrible timing for Mr Bowen, who will deliver a climate change statement in parliament on Thursday. He is expected to be upbeat, announcing renewable power generating lower household electricity costs within 10 years and describing any idea of relying on coal-fired power as “magical thinking”. But such assumptions are in line with smoke-and-mirror statements about why NSW and Queensland are short of power today, and doubtless will be for summers to come.

That generators are offline for maintenance in NSW is not an explanation, it is an excuse in a nation with vast reserves of fossil fuels that can generate reliable power. That we don’t use enough of them any more is down to green activists in government, Mr Bowen notable among them, who rate ideology higher than electricity and are not all that interested in the concerns of ordinary Australians. While Mr Bowen argues that supply problems are caused by old and unreliable coal-fired generators, they are still essential until green capacity can replace them – which will take a lot of time. Wind farms and new transmission towers in particular are often unpopular, to understate it, in the rural communities they are imposed on. And when it comes to the cost for consumers, until his energy utopia arrives, Mr Bowen points to taxpayer-funded subsidies for power bills.

At best Mr Bowen’s timing is out by a decade and there is no avoiding the need for continuing coal-fired generation and opening new gas-fired plants. There is a plan to include gas in South Australia’s power mix to keep the lights on and aircon operating. Mr Bowen’s new review, led by Griffith University energy economist Tim Nelson, is charged with advising how “to meet increasing demand for electricity, and to support a smooth transition to reliable renewables”. Consumers should hope the inquiry works because Mr Bowen is struggling. There is a clue why in his title: Climate Change and Energy Minister. He seems to rate rhetoric on the former far higher than fixing the latter.