Clean energy has long way to go before it’s sustainable

I AM astounded that South Australia spent $119m, over a two day hot spell, buying power from the grid of Victoria, whom in turn spent over $267m buying power from NSW who bought it from Qld, which suggests that taking out of mothballs the Swanbank E gas fired power station, adding 385MW of power into the system was a damn good idea. This apparently is only the excess and does not include the normal usage.

The figures represent $45 per head in Victoria and $70 a head in SA. This does not include the extensive use of diesel generation both by public utilities and private business and still there were black-outs. This was not a heatwave, it was a hot spell.

Part of South Australia’s solution is to provide 50,000 “free” installations of solar panels to “rented” housing commission properties, which is admirable, but reported to include batteries for energy storage, which, despite claims to the contrary, have not had their “Eureka” moment and their life span offers no saving in cost in the long term. Based on your average 3KW panels install, that would amount to $175m dollars without the debatable cost of energy storage batteries, maintenance of systems and most certainly disposal of the lithium based battery technology.

I am a proponent of solar and have my own 6KW system (inverters for domestic use are limited to 5KW minus a safety margin for some reason) and it is a great adjunct to buying power now I can run the air conditioning and pool pump without worrying about astronomical costs, but seriously, with some states paying up to $87/MWh (the dearest in the world) as opposed to a peak price of $40/MWh only two years ago, when is enough, enough?

I think we all acknowledge that clean is better but when is common sense going to intervene? Our wages are almost dormant but these utility costs are not only of themselves but are reflected in the price of everything, we honestly don’t believe for a minute that business can afford to absorb these costs so they must be passed on to the consumer.

The system is a mess, and as evidenced by the “band aid” solutions, we are digging ourselves further into a hole. After all, was it not the CEO of Adani (Adani himself) that said recently, “Australian coal is far cleaner than Indian coal” and “every Indian child deserves a light bulb to do their homework”. How long before we will be singing from that song sheet?

Even Donald Trump recognises that America needs to spend over a trillion dollars to fix its ailing infrastructure and we obviously need to spend 20% of that to fix ours.

Yet we are determined to “lead the world” in ad hoc solutions for basic utility infrastructure, money that could well be diverted into fundamental tasks (roads, bridges, public transport etc), leaving the clean burning coal technology well alone until we can afford to fix it in a measured and affordable way, so we do not end up, cap in hand, looking for something to power our useless bulbs.