My general feeling is that this crisis has been deliberately engineered.

And it going to cost a bucket load of tax payer money, that will go into the pockets of consultants and Power company owners.

Another commentator gets it totally wrong. The current debacle is due to the energy trading system that governments in Australia have created. 24/7 power is essential for a functional economy and should be the basis of a trading system. Renewables thus far cannot do this, yet they are advantaged by the system. Coal fired power can deliver 24/7, yet it is made nonviable by the trading system. Were preference given to 24 hour units of electricity supply, there would be no problem getting state of the art coal fired power stations built and electricity would still be cheap and plentiful.

Free markets are a wonderful idea, but they must be set up with the right parameters. Done properly everyone is happy and government can watch on and smile. Badly designed, we all get screwed over.

Now let's all give credit where it is due.

Yes please Alan I will send my credit card details for .5kg Th232. Do you have a special offer for new customers such as an extra kg free ?

I already have some bottles of thermalized neutrons, tributyl phosphate, nitric acid, fluoride ion, acidified water and ion-exchange resin bed. These will be sehfidalked with alnivoeacband and re-datremonicapined producing 940degrees of shockwave steam and multimega GWH. We can't wait for the fusspots to draw up their plans for Thorium reactors , they've had 50 years and it's time to act.

Whatever we do now we will get blackouts next summer and for at least
the next ten years.
That was decided when Hazlewood closed.
So, Liddell is next in line.
What emergency steps can we take to stop it getting worse ?
Obviously the quickest improvement is to do some urgent maintenance at
Liddell on a no matter what it costs basis.
If AGL is not prepared to do it then the government must resume the
plant and give them $1 for it.
If necessary I would rush enabling legislation through parliament.

Any other discussion at this time is irrelevant.
It appears from newspaper reports that there is an engineering report
on what is needed at Liddell.
Why isn't the minister sitting in the site engineers office with the
maintenance foreman to find out what must be done and how long it will take.
I will bet quids he has not even been to the site.

We fired up the 10 KVA diesel gen set yesterday. The battery is getting a bit tired, so I'll get it a new one, before the wet season arrives.

It is a so called silent running unit, but I think the builders must have bee deaf. We tested running the exhaust into a 15Ft 8" diameter heavy cast iron pipe. Boy does that do the job. You can still feel a vibration in the air, but the thing is almost silent.

We are building in a bit of the carport between the house & the granny flat, as my son is living there. We will be able to power both almost silently, & to hell with the ratbag global warming politicians.

By the time we get the whole system up and running reliably we will
have to start seriously thinking about what comes next.
We have a lot of coal but we are repeating the natural gas problem.
We need to set aside enough coal for our use and start restricting export.
Worldwide the Energy Return on Energy Invested is falling. In China
it seems to have fallen so low that they are closing mines. In the US
they are also experiencing low ERoEI.
Worldwide coal is coming to its end and there is nothing else in sight
except nuclear. Fusion is probably still 50 years away.

The Greenies should have their power disconnected and let them
contemplate their navels in the dark until they realise that batteries
solar and wind are too expensive and literally not possible for all.

The type of housing we are now building is not conducive for solar or
wind for that matter.
I have 1kw of solar at midday and 400 watts at 3PM so it is not a real
alternative energy system.

We just seem to be stuck with politicians that cannot do addition
and subtraction. Since Hazlewood was closed I have had the AEMO as
my home page and I have NEVER seen NSW generate more power than we consume.
The shortfall is almost always made up by Queensland. If things get
desperate the state governments will bring in rules that their state
must be supplied first. Then it will really hit the fan !