Oh dear, if ever there was an admission of government failure I
thought that getting industries to shut down because it is hot was
about the ultimate.
I was wrong; Victoria is installing 105 diesel generator sets in Morwell.
Each set appears to be one megawatt. This we are told is compensate
for closing the Hazlewood station of 1600 megawatts.

Now I have been saying for sometime that politicians cannot do arithmetic.
Further I thought the whole exercise was to cut back on CO2 !
Together with the large number of ex Tasmanian diesel generators that
are now installed in Sth Australia it seems that we are now reliant
on dodgy imported supplies of diesel fuel !

They have gone stark raving mad !

It has been said they could not get batteries installed in time.
Another example of arithmetic blindness.
A study of the UK power system, that also has nuclear backup, found
that the UK would need 13,800 batteries the size of Sth Australias.
The cost would be 850 billion pounds.
So scale to Australia and it would come up at about 6,000 batteries
for a cost of about $800 billion !
So it is time for everyone to stop fantasising about batteries.
Just remember that anything politicians say on this matter is wrong.

Bazz,

All is not lost with solar power.

I have a very efficient solar powered set up in my car, there is a spare battery in the boot (in case the main one fails/goes flat) that is charged by an onboard solar panel, said battery powers a 12V fan that keeps the inside temperature down when the car is out in the sun.

Why have a spare battery?
Well, with an auto car and no provision to hand crank and no possibility of clutch starting, a spare battery is the only way to get out of trouble when miles from help and in a phone dead spot.

Well even electric cars have a 12 volt battery.
The design regulations require it to run parking lights if the traction battery is flat.

Well, as I never go far I am never likely to be out of reach of help.
I have a HF radio in my car but that of course would be useless if
the battery was flat. So I guess a small solar panel would be useful
if I was in the never never, I could charge the battery and use the
radio to summon help.
What would you do if you had a gear box failure and no phone service ?

Bazz,

"What would you do if you had a gear-box failure and no phone service ?"

Walk, carrying an empty Gerry can; people are more likely to stop if you appear to be out of petrol!

that they are prepared to use diesel power in an attempt to avoid the political fallout of their insane and inane policies shows how little they really care about CO2 emissions.

Is Mise I had a couple of solar chargers I installed to keep my tractor battery charged. It seemed like a good idea when the nearest real 240V power was some distance from the equipment shed. The first one did a satisfactory job for 3 years before dying. The replacement lasted only 2.

I gave up on pretend power, & ran a 240V line down there. The 240V 4A trickle charger I bought in 2002 to do the job is still labouring away tirelessly on the tractor battery.

When we moved off the yacht, into a house my 4 year old daughter wanted to know if the house would have real "tricity" like other houses, or just the Mickey Mouse stuff we had on the boat.

Out of the mouth of babes. That kid already had more sense than all the Greens & lefty politicians combined.