On Monday 27th March, Following a nearly 5 fold tax increase on brown coal by Labor, the Hazelwood station starts its shutdown process and by the 31st roughly 1000 employees, contractors and suppliers will be out of work, and Victoria will lose 25% of its generation capacity (roughly equivalent to SA's entire average consumption).

To put this in perspective, if the power spike Last month occurred today (even with SA's new batteries) the odds are that SA would have had a near complete black out and VIC and NSW would have had partial blackouts.

And the drastic drop in reliability is not the worst of it as power prices are set to increase by up to 10%, and major industries will begin to close. With the intermittent nature of renewables making it difficult to match generation to load, and difficult to operate a base load plant, it looks as though Labor is sleep walking us back to the stone age. By the time the electorate wakes up and realises that the labor greens promises were fantasies, it will take years to fix the mess.

SM,

Like an old car - Hazelwood ( -built in the 1960s)
is beyond its use by date.
It is dangerous. Ask the people in Morwell.

The miracle is more that its been able to pump out cheap
and dirty baseload power for a decade longer than anyone
expected.

http://www.abc.net.au/2017-03-24/hazelwood-latrobe-valley-not-the-first-or-the-last-to-close/8380760

cont'd ...

Apologies for mistyping. Here's the link again:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-24/hazelwood-latrobe-valley-not-the-first-or-the-last-to-close/8380760

Foxy,

I spent a some of time in Morwell, and few days at Hazelwood whilst doing a thesis on maintenance management, and the ABC has once again got the wrong end of the stick.

The boilers and turbines while old are perfectly maintainable. The plant itself has an excellent safety record, and I believe that "safety" issue relates to the mine fire of last year, and the $400m price tag combined with Labor tripling coal royalties for the plant and mine upgrades, combined with Labor tripling coal royalties, have made the continued production uneconomic.

What Gregg Borschmann forgets is that as renewables require hefty subsidies, they will never be as cheap as the brown coal generators, and that when the wind isn't blowing at night, Victorians may well be reading by candle light.

Dear Shadow Minister,

These foreign companies have been getting away with stitching up Victorians for too long. The tax rise per gigajoule of energy will rise from 7.6 cents to 22.8 cents bringing the state into line with NSW, WA and QLD which all charge around 23 cents.

Many other states have been benefiting from cheap coal sourced power from Victoria. Should we be expected to subsidise them at the expense of our own budget?

SR,

You do realise that lower taxes are not a subsidy? Or that black coal in NSW or QSL generates nearly 3x the amount of power per GJ, due to the wetness of the brown coal? Tripling the tax is rightly called gouging.

Secondly, if you were consistent, you would also oppose the very heavy subsidies on renewables that customers have to pay for.

The net result Victorians will suffer higher electricity prices, 1000 odd people will be unemployed, the Vic state gov will now get $0 from Hazelwood in tax, and the next hot day with no wind will now lead to a blackout in SA and Victoria.