It's a mad, mad world.

It doesn't matter how many wind farms or solar farms there are, if there is no sun or wind to power them, there is no electricity. Batteries are BS - and that’s before they catch fire.

The author hopes the rest of us will learn from Ottawa's mistakes. As sure as God made little green apples, Australia will not, as long as our dimwitted political duopoly remains.

Absolutely money wasting stupidity of the first water! All to avoid the glaringly obvious solution, namely reliable dependable peak load nuclear power! And as MSR thorium currently under development in Canada.

There is enough thorium in the dirt and the earth's crust to last us longer than the life of the universe, meaning we can never run out of the stuff!

Just 8 grams of thorium, enough to power my house and car for 100 years! And in the dirt in my quarter acre house block! And costs to mine and refine those 8 grams, just 1 dollar a year! And that fact if implemented as the peoples' power, would put all the energy barons out of business.

And means they will fight tooth and nail to prevent the rollout and introduction of our own, owned and operated, MSR thorium power plants! The only way we can guarantee power prices lower than 3 cents PKWH.
Alan B.

The problem with energy storage via electrochemical batteries is that they are too expensive and can't cover long duration needs. Elon Musk says his home Powerwalls cost 21c per kWh operating expense which is $210 per MWh. Commercial batteries might get that down to $150. In practice big lithium batteries max out at 4 hours storage and also tend to overheat as we saw at Geelong. There is no way that heavy electricity users such as smelters and sewage farms can run on a renewable + batteries grid after a calm overcast week. See what happens after some more coal shutdowns.

Then there's the capital cost. Just 1% of annual electricity use or 3.65 average days would require over 2,000 GWh for Australia. Snowy 2 will supply 350 GWh if they ever finish it. At say $700 per kWh or $700m per GWh that 2,000 GWh would cost $1.4 trillion. It's not going to happen. Most electricity has to be generated in realtime as a mixture of baseload and peaking. MWh scale batteries can help with frequency control and local backup.

God help us if we ever have to depend on wind generated electricity around South East Queensland.

I have been in heaven these last 6 weeks. It has been ideal conditions for flying my remote controlled aircraft, calm & mostly cloudy. There have been only 2 days when the wind was a bit strong for flying, & suitable for wind power.

Today is similar, a couple of little thermals went through about midday giving about 30 minutes to turn my neighbors windmill. He depends on it to supply bore water up the 500 meters to his house for stock & garden water. On windy days it averages about 1300 gallons about 5,500 liters a day to a tank beside his shed.

He was complaining that todays little puff was just long enough for a few minutes of water dribbling into the tank, after filling the underground pipe, before the wind stopped. He has had to buy a petrol fire pump, still a big heavy thing to get down the river bank to supply his kids horses, & his wifes salvaged horses with water.

It would be a trillion trillion dollars worth of battery to supply SE Qld with power for that long.

WTF?

Who are the real scare mongers here?

In Ottawa, for example, in June this year "thousands of residents and businesses spent several hours in the dark and without air conditioning as the temperature hit 35 C ... at 6P.M."

I would assume that even in high latitudes in summer there would not be much solar feed in at 6.P.M. - it does after all say "in the dark".

CTV News Ottawa, who supplied this information go on to say that it was the increased demand that " caused hydro systems to overload."

The latest blackouts in Ottawa just a few days ago were caused by storms bringing down power lines.

I don't know about other countries but from what I see here, half of the power usage is for frivolous reasons !
With the internet/telephone this goes up to 85% if not more.