Power issues

FORGIVE my mixed metaphors, but when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine, “Houston, we’ve got a problem”.

A big one too, it seems, by the way SA Premier Jay Weatherill tore strips off the Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, at a recent press conference.

To keep his, “all good power is green and all coal is mean”, voters on side Weatherill has shut down old coal fired power stations to make the state reach its renewable energy targets, with greater reliance on wind and solar.

Last month’s debacle of absent storm-tossed power supply, proved the black demon coal is still needed for base-load power to avoid black-outs.

He does have a back-up plan though, by installing Tesla supplied battery storage for the electricity generated by wind turbines. Like an old-west patent medicine salesman, the Tesla founder has galloped in to rescue South Australia’s bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Then, if all else fails, Weatherill plans to bring in 100MW of back-up diesel generators into SA next summer.

It gets more comical with each news report. Now Bill Leak has gone, Warren Brown and Paul Zanetti could do reams of cartoons over all this.

Malcolm Turnbull has a snake-oil trick of his own to generate “enough power for half-a-million homes”. His scheme pumps water up the hill in the Snowy and then down the hill to make turbine electricity (but not for seven or eight years). That costs money but you pump it up at night when power is cheaper, it seems.

To old bushies like me it is all getting too much.

Many older readers can recall when, prior to the 1970s out west, we had no mains power. We relied on a Southern Cross diesel engine powering a 240volt DC generator to produce homestead lighting and power.

Many a time we would drive home at night and my father or I had to pump enough diesel up into the fuel storage tank to start the engine.

Back to the future, that’s what it’s all about for Weatherill.

Don’t laugh too loud. Our Premier and the ALP Government are also shooting for a 50% renewables target to reduce emissions and all that.

I guess the Indians will get all our coal just as the Japanese will get all our gas but that’s another subject.

Meanwhile, perhaps we should all buy a little Honda generator so we are not left in the dark. — PETER KNOBEL, Toowoomba