Labor has allowed Mark Butler’s upgrading of the 2015 ALP national conference agreement beyond a goal of a 50 per cent RET by 2030 to stand, and stand proud. However, The impracticality, huge cost and unsustainability of the target have been largely ignored, until last September, with the South Australian blackouts and, more dramatically, since Wednesday last week when Labor started to feel real pressure.

This week it wilted, and it appears that the 50% renewables target has become an "aspiration"

West Australian Labor leader Mark McGowan who until recently had been spruiking the 50% state RET target, capitulated and said there would “be no renewable energy target at a state level under any government I lead”, in an echo of former prime minister Julia ­Gillard’s pre-election carbon tax promise.

It would appear that Labor's principles are all very flexible.

I can't wait for the closure of Hazelwood, and Victoria's power costs to climb and its network to go from surplus generation to a potential deficit.

With the high correlation of wind in Vic and SA, when the wind stops blowing and SA needs a lazy 500MW of power, and Vic is now short. Does Vic shed its own customers or SA?

Oh the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Who will labor blame then?

SM, do you know when Liddel closes ?

Dear Shadow Minister,

You wrote;

"I can't wait for the closure of Hazelwood"

Is your hatred of the Greens and Labour that ingrained that you are salivating at the thought of the calamity you seem sure will happen to the public and businesses of Victoria?

No need to answer that one mate.

Venial seems to pretty well cover it.

Right wing political elitism at its finest.

Don't worry the closure of Hazlewood will cause blackouts in NSW as well.
No one, especially the politicians realise how dodgy the whole
situation has become.
The fastest solution is to refurbish those stations that have been
closed as a matter of urgency.
The banks will not put up the money.
The government should divert money from diesel powered submarines,
education, NDIS, Gonski and whatever can be sliced off.
There is nothing more important than the power supply, because if
we do not have that we literally will not have anything else including food.

Actually an early crash of the system may be the best option.
It needs to driven home to the population generally that there is a
real problem that is urgent.
If it gradually gets worse or just meanders along people will get used to it.
The economy will slowly decline and food will keep coming.
That could continue for some time until something disastrous happens
then it will a big rush.
No better to crash now while rationing can keep the show limping until it is fixed.

SR,

It may well be a venial sin to gloat when the Labor / Green alliances in SA and Vic have to face their angry electorates in 2018 with their credibilities shredded, but it is an unforgivable sin for Labor/greens to deliberately lie to their electorates and inflict harm on them on purely idealogical grounds.

I and others have on OLO been pointing out the network stability problems that a high proportion of renewables citing expert sources incl the CSIRO and the AEMO and a variety of sources all available to every state government. However, these all appeared to be inconvenient truths to the labor/green pinheads (especially in SA and Vic) who have, against the advice of nearly every expert, proceeded to try and screw up every network whilst promising everyone that they can replace existing generation with renewables with little to no power price increases, and no stability problems.

With the failures in SA, has Labor learnt from its cock ups? Not a chance. Yesterday I heard Nick Champion blaming everything from privatization, the AEMO, to the federal government. (In spite of the SA state government holding overall responsibility for the SA network and having been advised for many years on just this issue by the AEMO.)

Now that is Left whinge political stupidity at its finest.

Nothing so precious as hole in the ground, whether it contains coal, haematite, magnetite, CSG...whatever. The simple fact remains that Australia/Australians "could" have had a better infrastructure, supported by the mining and resources boom. If only the politically myopic in the Labor, Liberal/National duopoly had seen further than the next election and their cushy jobs post politics. Not one among them then, or now, to see further than 3 - 4 years ahead.

Only ourselves to blame at the end of the day.

There is no doubt about this sm bloke. If it was twenty years of liberal inaction labor would still get the blame. Wasn,t it Abbott that took out the carbon tax and Abbott that shut down everything that was connected to alt, power supply.
THis pack of dingoes there now would not know which way to scratch an itch.
TUrnbull is supposed to be an elite business man. JUst take a look at what he is doing to the NBN.
I spend a lot of time in developing countries, and I tell you au,s broadband is a fake compared to some of the poorest nations on earth. Secretly Turnbull can see that.
NBN in poorer countries has been a priority because even the populous being poor robots are moving in big time. Without NBN at elite level they would never come out of being poor.
AUstralia is headed for the biggest communications trap of all time.
It all started with an election run and won on a fraud by a fraud.

Shadow, politicians say what the electors want to here and after all, who can blame them because when you have the likes of former ministers and prime ministers, after having created huge messes, , rewarded with life long pensions.

It's more about securing ones future now,and less about running the country.

Just thought I would re-post this letter written several years ago.

I would like to paint a picture. It has been an extraordinary hot day and the slightly cooler evening is coming, but no promise of anything but the mildest sea breeze. It is still 40 degrees, with the sun setting in the west, and air conditioners humming. With an intense high system over eastern Australia there is no wind, but the promise of a further extremely hot day tomorrow.
Back in the 2010's the so called ‘Environmentalists’ had finally got their way and many base load coal generators in Australia had been closed. Australia was relying on renewable energy, and the Environmentalists were ecstatic.
Hundreds died that night, the elderly in their homes, hospital emergency departments collapsed as they could not call on reliable base load electricity. Backup Tesla/Redflow household batteries were exhausted, and no power was available for emergency power. The electrical distribution system collapsed, and stayed collapsed. 

The above scenario just couldn’t happen, could it?

Graeme of Malvern, why are you reposting stuff that has been refuted the first time?

Of course that scenario couldn't happen: hospitals have their own backup generators. "Reliable baseload" isn't what's needed: we should be able to rely on electricity when the demand's highest, not just when it's lowest. However if we can't, any competently managed electricity network would resort to load shedding to avoid collapse. And even a collapse can normally be reversed relatively easily, as SA's statewide blackout last year demonstrated (power to most areas was restored in the night; the exceptions being where the transmission lines were unusable due to wind damage).

BTW those hot calm condition are ideal for solar thermal power, so it's not hard for renewables to satisfy demand in that sort of scenario.

Aidan,

How much power would the solar thermal provide at the peak period of 5-8pm?

There is a lot of vacant land in the desert areas. Send it to the seaboard as dc power and convert it to ac power. Minimal loss by transmission.
Coal is dead and filthy.

Doog,

And what do they do at night? Candles?

SM, the solar thermal seems to work OK but it seems that the cost of
their output is the problem.
There does not seem to be a realisation that you have to build two
generation systems. One has for political reasons has to be able to
carry the whole load and produce no CO2 and the other has to be able
to carry the whole load on a still day at 5pm peak in winter or summer.

Those are the two operational extremes. It must be a very expensive
system. Some suggest storage to avoid going to those extremes.
However, storage of any sort seems to be expensive with hydro probably
the best especially if you want weeks of storage as the cost to build
would not be linear with capacity.

Pity some in authority did not think about these problems beforehand.
Now they have to patch it up. Anyone know when Liddel closes ?