My chart shows the damage caused to electricity wholesale prices by a few days of normal summer peak heat – which luckily were mainly on weekends and holidays.
I notice that Sydney gas prices right now at 9.5 are way over December at 7.4 and I trust the PM is speaking to gas company bosses. Vic gas market maybe never got the Turnbull phone call. I also notice that Vic coal generation is running at max ~4,400 to 4,600MW 24/7 these days. Machinery eventually breaks down. I see there were 50,000 homes blacked out across Vic yesterday and Vic Labor pollies are trying to say supply was not the problem. It seems obvious that with supply strained near the limit this would require more fiddle-faddling and jiggery pokery by grid authorities than if they had Hazelwood on line say and could have been ~1,500MW more relaxed about meeting the demand. They were assisted too by wind in SA picking up at peak demand time in Adelaide. AEMO electricity and NemWatch for a generation snapshot. Link to 5 charts of electricity price histories.
Monthly Archives: January 2018
Can readers & Kiwis report in on New Zealand heatwave
I see this headline – Warnings as NZ bakes in 40C weather – I am worried if Kiwis are going to be safe over there. You can check NZ Towns & Cities link. First to find a 40 degrees wins a bottle of cleanskin ALDI dry red or white.
Added on 29th. From NZ Herald www.
Are tourists so stupid in Australia?
Could be a need for Geology 101 in schools.
Beachy Head cliff visitors ‘shocked’ by rock fall photos
Australian thermal coal price at 5 year high
You heard it first here. Prices from IndexMundi.
And yes I know the US$ is weak.
AEMO has a Grand Plan to further destroy our electricity grid
Shades of Baldrick. In a nutshell they propose arm waving swaths of renewable energy zones REZ’s. In Vic and NSW I counted 11 new hydro generation sites – do these require dams? Mad.
Even turning to geothermal – which has seen hundreds millions wasted $’s.
Imagine the NIMBY’s that will be stirred up by these dam proposals – stacks of wind farms near Sydney. Large map.
Mass sackings would help and appoint some Australian electrical engineers.
The Integrated System Plan Consultation pdf has some other interesting charts to be checked later.
ABC report Braidwood drought but it is one dry year
Braidwood farmers struggle with drought as dams dry up – Checking drought areas at these BoM maps you can make a map for various periods out to 4 years and there is very little drought around NSW over 1, 2, 3 or 4 years. The 9 months map shows Braidwood is either near or inside a drought area to the east and north. BoM data from 1888 shows 13 years have been dryer than 2017 and the years 2010 to 2016 have been very consistent with near average rain. Large chart.
Media as usual show no understanding of resources industry
I see the resources industry is as usual under attack by the MSM and left biased think tanks which has been going on for decades. This article claims royalties are not a tax and resource companies should not group tax + royalties when showing what they pay Govts. Some say royalties are just a cost input, like Coca Cola buying sugar. Well when you think calmly the two things are very different. If you were a business requiring sugar you might be able to buy from this or that supplier around the world and haggle the best price – or even set up your own sugar plantations to supply your own sugar – or you might seek to use a sugar substitute – or even seek to use less sugar – or manufacture a sugar free drink – you have choice.
Not with minerals – you pay the royalty to a State Govt that can hike the rate at will. But there is a worse misunderstanding. The State Govt never “gave our minerals” to the mining company. The State (with rare exceptions) does not know exactly where the minable orebodies are. Some resources company had to conduct expensive and risky mineral exploration for probably the best part of a decade – with no guarantee of discovering a payable orebody – all the while badgered by green and red tape from multiple idiot Govt Depts – green lawfare from NGO’s often supported by taxpayer money – with long suffering shareholders periodically dipping into their savings to raise exploration funds. Thats the reality of mineral exploration and out of that process many companies go broke, a few mineable orebodies are found, then Govt holds out their hand for a royalty on production and now people who are anti the resources industry say the royalty is not similar to a tax. Spare me.
BTW I am not in favour of companies who do business in Australia yet set up entities outside Australia with the aim to reduce tax here.
Qld Tourism Industry Council wants less rain in BoM forecasts
Queensland Tourism Industry Council asks Bureau of Meteorology for ‘sunnier disposition’ – I know the feeling – rain is mentioned almost every day in Canberra forecasts but rain is seldom seen. But there might be a spit somewhere in the district. Readers might have examples and I will pony up data from Canberra. I kept the 7 days of Canberra forecasts offline on the 5th and checking against the Airport 3 forecasts were OK while 4 failed.
Evidence that cloud seeding does work after all
Cloud seeding to enhance rainfall has had a chequered career in Australia. Starting here with all the surplus aircraft and crews after WWII many missions were flown over various catchments. I get an impression there was a turf war between the BoM and CSIRO and the statistics of rainfall make cloud seeding results often hard to assess and there is always some NIMBY whining that it was too wet or too dry. I mentioned CS in a blog 2 years ago see links and maps there. I have been aware that Snowy Hydro has carried out CS trials against Greens opposition and checked their www pages. Seems the CS trials are still going so I grabbed the 2016 report. Nothing about actual rain results so I checked the NSW rain anomalies for max term of 4 years. Presto the best anomaly in NSW is where do you think?
Maybe we should be getting on with extending CS into other alpine areas where we can value add the Murray River and other Vic & NSW dam catchments. BTW the previous 4 year period ending Dec 2013 had a good result too.
Record daily wholesale electricity price for Victoria in Adelaide-Melbourne heat
The AEMO daily price for 18Jan18 for South Australia was $1,074 per MWhr which was the highest since $1,492.16 on 8Feb17 no surprise there. But Victoria yesterday recorded a stunning $905.22 which is 4.6 times the previous highest of $195.67 on 10Feb17. You can toggle between SA & Vic at this AEMO page and also choose between 30min and 5min price views. Then the NEM Dispatch Overview.
This record Vic price clearly reflects reduced generation post the closure of Hazelwood.
A couple of charts from the GridPublicKnowledge www pages for SA and Vic gives an idea what was happening yesterday with our stressed power grid. NemWatch gives a snapshot of generation sources.
and Vic
I also kept the SA screen for the 17th. Similar heat is forecast for Adelaide and Melbourne today but a late cool change is due which should be earliest in SA. I understand this heat is moving into NSW and Penrith has 40 forecast for today through to Monday. Will try and follow the effect of this on the NEM.