Power issues

GRID shock (The Chronicle, July 14, 2017) is a very strong headline.

I point out that this was dealt with on Wednesday night in a presentation by the Ergon network manager.

In his presentation it was pointed out that our electricity grid is more a base load than a peak load design.

The point was raised that the current grid already struggles to handle peak demand, and to avoid the expenses of upgrading the grid, power companies are trying to encourage methods to reduce the peak demand.

I would like to just point out here that power generation, solar, coal or gas is mostly in rural areas, away from the major consumption zones, so it doesn't matter how it is generated the peak load transmission will struggle.

This is South Australia’s problem, because they import all their non-solar generated power from NSW and Victoria.

So maybe the solution is to build power stations within the major population areas. So I would suggest to Senator Canavan that at the next election (or earlier) he proposes a coal or gas fired power station in Sydney’s northern suburbs, probably near the beaches, eastern suburbs, one in inner Sydney and probably two to the west. That should help Sydney for a couple of years.

How to power this generation, well it is reputed that Sydney sits on a huge coal basin. After all, Mr Canavan is recommending that the state government ignore the process of law in regards the Acland mine, so any legal action would be insignificant.

Don't like the thought of a big dirty grey hole, okay so let us frack the seam.

If it is good enough to financially threaten the states with regard to fracking, then why not Sydney? NSW already has laws in place to make it illegal to demonstrate. A shining example to the rest of the state.

Finance? Well if the country can subsidise Adani to the tune of a billion dollars plus, there should be no problems with subsidising energy extraction from locations at the point of maximum requirement. — PETER BURLING, Goombungee