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.