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Govt politicians discovers gas shortage this blog talked about 30 months ago

19 Comments

In August 2014 I blogged – “Commonwealth Govt thinking about solving looming Sydney gas shortage with ~2,000 kms of pipeline connecting to North West Shelf”
Two days ago I blogged – “Australia fails again as NT to Qld gas pipeline stymied”
Now the ABC reports on the AEMO concerns – “Gas supply shortage will threaten nation’s power supplies, AEMO forecasts”. PM Turnbull and Energy Minister Frydenberg have been talking the issue all over TV news but I have heard no mention of keeping Hazelwood open. A most basic and feasible step to take.

19 thoughts on “Govt politicians discovers gas shortage this blog talked about 30 months ago”

  1. This will have an effect on the W.A. election. Best short term solution would be to load shed parts of the country that voted green .

  3. Could always turn that QLD LNG export terminal into an import terminal.

    I’m glad WA’s gas system isn’t connected to the East, and we don’t get to suffer from problems they create.

    But if Labor win the election here, we will have our own Green madness.

  4. Funny how NSW cancelled all the CSG exploration tenements & now the only new source of gas from Narrabri is about to get tapped into the Moomba Pipeline.

    Too little too late.

    Squeaky Hinge Oiling, Virtue Signalling politicians seem to be falling from favour globally.

    I wonder how long it will take to get control of the Bubble Bound SJW bureaucrats who clog the system.

  6. Warwick

    30 months here, of course.

    Two decades ago for those of us then involved in energy supply.

    Green bureaucrats and politicians corrupted by noble cause vanity are engineering/technical buffoons. They comfort themselves for this by imagining they can manipulate us psychologically, so both major parties have tacitly agreed between themselves to destroying existing power grids – this avoids any one group of them suffering a lone electoral car crash.

    Doesn’t solve the reliability/affordability issue, but as both major sides agree, voting makes no difference. That’s just a squabble over whose turn next.

    The Renaissance is reversed, the Disenlightment proceeds. Within a year or two, the point of “smart” meters will become quite clear, even to those who stubbornly believe medieval windmills can power modern civilisation.

    The two major civilising advances in the 20th century were the advent of widespread sewage control and affordable, reliable power. The advent of those power grids made widespread water and sewage pumping systems viable. Now we face the possibility (probability) that continual random longer-term power losses may impair the sewage systems. Not even the darkest of deep green loonies will countenance the inability to flush their domestic dumps for long.

    Diesel generators to the rescue … the energy of hydrocarbons will prevent outbreaks of cholera. Intermittent windmills won’t.

    Now we watch the non-existent technology of “grid scale batteries” being promoted by the same technological ignoramuses. The MSM will again become incoherent with delight. And the global temperature will ignore them.

  9. I hope the SA Govt gets on and installs these much blabbed about batteries. I hear too on TV news renewables trumpets saying the AEMO rules will need changing because now they favour coal fired generators ????
    Anyway – stop the yak and just install these $200Mill worth of batteries. Except for uncommon times when SA wind power is maxed – they will be charged in effect from Vic coal fired – enjoy.

  11. “Musk Bets He Can Fix Aussie Power Woes in 100 Days or It’s Free”
    I presume Musk’s “free” means free in the sense that the long suffering US tax payers who’ve already seen Musk burn through $5 billion in government hand-outs will also have to pick up the tab for this new $75 million worth of bravado. Mind that $75 million no doubt ignores the cost of power engineering to connect the magical 300 MWh battery to the power grid.
    To put it in context 300 MWh of battery energy could replace the rated power flow of the Heywood grid interconnector to Victoria for less than half an hour. Not of much use when SA’s windmill generation often goes walkabout for up to eight hours at a stretch.

  14. Our politicians if they were fair dinkum would consult those in a position to know, not spruiking rent seekers like Elon Musk or their leftist elite, cheer squad who stand to profit by having their gravy train enhanced. The $64k question they need to ask, why have no grid scale battery energy storage schemes been successfully adopted anywhere in the world? Even with never-ending compulsory renewables subsidies the life-cycle dollars simply don’t come within a bulls-roar of adding up.

  15. SA has a measured base load requirement of 2GWh.

    When the wind drops to a few % of that, 300MWh batteries will energise the lifts, water/sewage/fuel pumps, ATM’s, supermarkets etc for how long ?

  16. I’m not as sceptical of the role of batteries as some. The fundamental problem with wind and most solar is they are not demand driven, and therefore of limited use if you want to keep a stable grid.

    In particular, batteries would be valuable for solar power when all you need most of the time is predictable on demand output over 24 hours.

    As an example, Coral Bay in WA has windmills with diesel backup in one of the sunniest places in Australia. I have to think, solar panels with battery storage would be a lot cheaper and more reliable than the current setup.

    I predict if batteries prove feasible they will be the end of windmills in Australia.

  17. @Philip Bradley

    >”I’m not as sceptical of the role of batteries as some”

    Sorry, Philip, but you have to talk GWh (ie. actual numbers), not tiny niche markets (btw, I’ve been to Coral Bay, I *know* how tiny it is in population).

    If you just waffle on about these niches, and I can list dozens of remote minesites that use a combo of solar, batteries and diesel (mostly diesel), then you become part of the background noise.

    Repeat: SA has a base load requirement of 2GWh. When the wind supplies only a few % of that, 300MWh batteries will last how long ? Please answer that question.

  18. I thought I was clear that wind and batteries aren’t a good combination to produce a stable predictable supply.

    And off-grid may be a niche in the East, but is a big percentage of supply in WA with our distances. Our grid only covers about 10% of the state. Although, there is a second sort of grid in the Pilbara.

    We are already using solar+batteries to shrink the grid on it’s edges where supply is costly. Which is the way it should work as battery storage becomes viable.

  19. ianl8888

    I agree Ian batteries of whatever current technology, including the Panasonic Lithium ion version that Testla/Musk promotes, are still way too expensive to find widespread use for grid scale energy storage.  But if ideologically besotted politicans like Turnbull, Shorten, Weatherill or Andrews are prepared to legislate for still more mandated subsidies or hand-outs then I guess the sky's the limit, bring on the Teslas?  After all if it wasn't for the ever increasing RET subsidies we are forced to pay via our electricity bills there wouldn't be any of the useless windmills that currently blight our rural horizons.

    Yes batteries are useful for remote off grid applications when used in conjunction with wind in windy locations or solar PV in locations with lots of sun.  However when cold hard economics is factored in, normally you'll find that the most cost effective solutions are still hybrid systems including both batteries and back-up generators.

    Just because we marvel at what our shinny new smart phones can do doesn't mean we should be fooled into thinking it's a small step to scale this up to grid significant energy levels, it's anything but.

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