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Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 12:59pm 14 Jun 2022
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Been saying it for some time now and my "conspiracy Theroy " as some called has become reality.
All over the news, we are short on power and the reason in the lack of baseload coal power. For anyone that did ANY research into the matter, was easy to see as the back of ones hand. All the unreliable green crap has lead us to the same place every other country that has tried it has ended up. In the sh*t.
I did get it partially wrong though. I thought we were about 2.5 years away from this yet. My neighbour whom works in the power industry and is in charge of distribution for a huge area told me I was wrong. I told him all my predictions and he said they were right but going to happen MUCH quicker than I was saying.
We went out to lunch last week and he told me, forget about summer shortages, we aren't through winter yet and if one power station goes down, we are really going to be in a bad way. His tone turned from discussion to basically fear and panic. He was right.
I'll bet there is a bun rush on batteries already. No doubt the commercial ones will take a hike in price and others may become harder to get as well. I bought another generator today. Just a little one but it was near new and around the corner at the right price so I thought I have enough for what I want but maybe I can sell this one for a profit when the lights start going out... or rent it.
For some years now the power company mongerels have been whining there is too much rooftop power in the system. Seems the problem is not too much but the fact it's not there when the sun goes down. The mongerels are still profiting though, most FIT's are around 5C atm and they will be selling that back for an almighty markup. As FIT is linked to the wholesale price, stands to reason that solar rebates should take a big hike too but I'll bet they find some BS to keep them low while they profit more than ever.
This whole mess is NO accident, even a pelican like me say it coming a year back and it sure as hell was known in the industry, they just wanted to squeeze out all the profit they could and will now continue to do so with gubbermint money to fix the system they have rorted till they couldn't any more.
One upside is I think it's going to kick all the environmental moronic fanaticism and ideology out the window. People are going to be far more concerned with staying warm this winter than being too warm in 2099 or whatever the professed goal is.
They are literaly building HUNDREDS of coal stations around the world yet we have let ours crumble through the greed of the power companies and their useful idiot green flag wavers brainwashing the sheeple it'a good wonderful and virtuous thing.
Plenty of other countries have gone down this same road but our bought and paid for leaders ignored what was plain to see and let us ind up in the same sh*tfight situation.
Hope all these greenwased moron's will be happy huddling in a blanket in the dark any paying the increases we are going to be hit with.
I went to stock up on some welding supplies today. I said to the guy why were they not putting the prices on the shelves like before? He said they were going up so fast they couldn't keep up. Clearly given the 2 rolls of MIG wire I bought would have bought 4 the last time I bought it few months back.
Question now is, how long are these shortfalls with the power system going to last? Seems to me it's going to have to be a couple of years at least.
Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1022
Posted: 02:27pm 14 Jun 2022
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Yes, I could see this sort of thing happening as well, need I say the grid system is also very a delicate setup, no need to go into detail about that. I did here a story about the natural gas export from here.....what a disgrace.
I was reading A few post's on an EV forum, did not like the attitude of a few stand out types, to cut a long story short the grid Is obviously not up to the task of charging a reasonable amount of EV's at knight this time of year or other times for that matter. Most of the transformers in my area are between 10Kva 16Kva and 25Kva there is the odd one around that supplies the farms that is around 60Kva or so, the smaller ones have no head room for the extra load associated with charging in the near future, REALITY CHECK. For years I have lived not far from chicken farms, and all of them were required to have backup power to keep everything running when the grid power is down, Thats a lot of big gensets that will have to run when the power gets cut. Could say more but its late and......Tomorrow will be something else. I will go cut some firewood...it will grow back Cheers Aaron Off The Grid
Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458
Posted: 10:44pm 14 Jun 2022
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The power shortages are really more about greed and the big companies trying to hold the government to ransom. When the NW shelf gas project first started in WA the price of gas being exported was something like 14 cents a litre to Japan, But in Oz we had to pay 28 cents a litre for it. So Our gas, we pay double. Now most of the gas produced in Oz goes overseas, and the companies that mine it are all Overseas corporations that pay no tax. The power companies are only there now to make a profit. It costs a gas power station around $450 to generate a Megawatt hour of power. So they don't want to run the generators for any less than that. So they just switch them off and wait. Privatising the Grid and Power generation was just as stupid as it was when the government of the day privatised Commonwealth Bank Telstra Rail lines and services ( in Tasmania, where we had to buy them back and put $250 million in to fix them to be usable again after private companies ran them into the ground) Road networks Power networks. Private ownership of monopoly businesses are never a good deal for the public, especially as we paid for the stuff in the first place. The national electricity market is a massive rort. Prices per Megawatt hour vary from $35 to $10,000. Depending on demand and time of day. So imagine if we went to buy a loaf of bread and the shop said "oh it is that time of day now where bread is $1000 a loaf, if you had come in 5 minutes earlier it would have been $2. That is my take on the stupidity of allowing private enterprise to buy and own essential services. Pete
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 12:30am 15 Jun 2022
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107% agree with every word you said Pete. A Spot on analogy of things.
The current situation isn't some accident or unforeseen event, even an idiot like me could see it coming years back. Little research behind the media hype into the industry's own reports and info soon showed that.
My neighbour said to me the other week they had done studies, There was a guy in his company that had tabled many warnings and reports and the companies and the gubbermint were well aware of it and it was all ignored because to fix it would mean less profit for the power companies. easier to crash the system then get more money off the gubbermint to put back into infrastructure they put off and refused to spend deliberately.
The power industry in this country makes over $3 BILLION a year PROFIT. Not turnover PROFIT. They then have the audacity to turn around and say " We are working hard to keep power prices down" I rather them at least be honest and just come out and say what we already know, " We are trying to fkyou over and milk you for every cent best we can".
These companies bid to supply power. they do all sorts of projections weeks and months out so to think they couldn't see this coming or engineered it is ridiculous. The current shortages are merely a product of the way the industry is run. They bid to supply power and like anything else, when the bid amount is too high you simply don't bid anymore.
They can supply power cheaper with unreliables because the grubbermint paid for them to build it in the first place and the sun is free so when it's not available, they simply don't supply. Up till now, hasn't been their problem. Of course the political fall out is something else and as this was a concern of the new gubbermint, couldn't let them start off badly. There is also the convenient excuse of blaming the past gubbermint. That's NOT political in any way. They are all garbage IMHO. I'm just stating fact as to the situation and the convenient excuses made with every change of Gubbermint. Blame the last one for all the problems no matter whom is actually responsible and is if whomever is in would have done any different. They are ALL as bad as each other and ALL in it only to serve the needs of Big biz that control them.
And you are exactly correct in what you say about privatisation. It's NEVER worked. Always leads to higher price's, lesser benefit and services to the public and ends up a Chitfight every single time. It IS all just a rort of the gubbermints looking after their Corporate mates. None of these problems are unforeseen, they are all planned and orchestrated simply because there is the most money in them that way.
In this case now they have the perfect excuse to charge more to the customers, hit the grubbermint to pay to repair their deliberate sabotage of the grid and will end up making more profit from it all.
Beyond a disgrace but it is just the way things work now and people are far to stupid, gullible and apathetic to know let alone say anything about it.
Of course the solar industry will be rubbing it's hands together now selling over priced batteries and watching their profits sky rocket as well.
Play's well into a lot of peoples hands these " Problems".
zeitfest Guru Joined: 31/07/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 482
Posted: 01:06am 15 Jun 2022
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Once I was browsing second-hand books and saw a sort of "year book" published just before 1900 in Victoria. I think it was called "A Golden Age" (probly wrong) ?? It had a fold-out profile of the Yallourn massive brown coal deposit, complete with details of the small town on top of it which was relocated. I forget the details but it described that the right to the coal was the right of any Victorian citizen as per commonwealth. This was before Federation so it was under the Victorian constitution. Kind of interesting.
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 12:41pm 15 Jun 2022
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The truth of the profiteering is coming out. Probably because the whole system is so corrupt they can't hide it any longer....
"Mr Koutsantonis said some companies were taking advantage of the fact the AEMO paid compensation when they directed generators to turn on.
"Because AEMO have put in price controls, they're now deliberately withdrawing their supply in order to get directed on so they can earn more money," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"Now in anyone's language, no matter your politics, that's not a market."
No sh*t Sherlock!
From the same press confrence.....
"Mr Koutsantonis said while generators and retailers were acting in the best interests of their shareholders, overall change to the system was needed."
In other words, screwing the consumers over once again.
Will be interesting to see how many and how often the lights do go off before summer comes and once again they are telling us to switch off the AC right when you need it the most.
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 08:29am 25 Oct 2022
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Old post I do know but back in '01 I saw SA was going to sell the power network so decided to do some research where elsewhere in the world this had happened. Now in the best case power prices went up 120% over a 10 year period.
So I decided to research living off the grid and nothing from this country came up so i looked overseas and learnt the basic's.
got married and as SWMBO decided we should move to SA I said well your house is to be sold and we buy a farm in the hills and live off the grid.
Well just look at the price increases for power in the last 20 years since it was sold and SA has the worst case of power gouging on record.
Now what does a power bill even look like and I don't intend to ever see one again so my memory of paying power was a small charge not like people pay today.
Now back in the day when we told people we lived off the grid comments like how does cave life go and do you have enough candles etc, 20 years later a storm comes over and a phonecall to the same people doesn't seem to go down well when I ask them how are they liking their dark cave after the power there went out
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 04:34am 26 Oct 2022
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People STILL think off grid has to be cave man living. For a lot it is. There are an amount of Down and outs and " alternatives" that have probably never held a job or had any money other than social security behind them that get all pissy when anyone shows a modern, comfortable way of living off grid and maintain there is something wrong with that.
They seem to think that one must live in a tin shed or a tent and have no modern comforts in order to be off grid. It's as laughable as pathetic.
There is the other side of the coin as well. The ones that spend $50K or more on having an on grid setup installed and then claim "No power bills " when in fact the cost of the setup amortized over 10 years means they are paying a substantial quarterly bill, just they paid it all at once rather than every 3 Months.
The DIY'ers in the off grid fraternity are Minimal and so many now want to get away from the citys but haven't the first clue how to turn a breaker off let alone actually do anything hands on for themselves. They talk about getting away from " The matrix" and Gubbermint control but then piss and moan at anyone that does their own solar install over insurance and rules and regulations which exemplify the very things they said they wanted to get away From!
I'm happy on grid atm. My power bill is minimal thanks to the solar I have put up to offset my useage and I have not had to invest a lot of money to keep my bills low and not have to worry about consumption. I am benefiting from the power co instead of them screwing me over.
I am going to set a small backup system which I can expand if needed and have set up multiple generators because as yet, I don't really know which way I want to go with them. Probably both, a low voltage battery setup that I can charge from solar or a Low voltage or 240V Generator or straight 240. Preference atm is for solar / Alternator low voltage battery setup with a direct 240 feed when more power is needed.
I really think all this "renewable" power is a crock of BS! It is all TOTALLY reliant on fossil fuel for it's existance and even when there is an amount of unreliables produced, it is Still and forever will be reliant on the products of Fossil fuels so how in the hell can it be " renewable in the first place?
And of course the whole fantasy relies on increasing the other Devil of the do gooders, Mining, tenfold at least in order to get the variety of materials needed to produce the unreliable's and again, No possible way to get them even in the next 50 years without the input of the arch enemy, fossil fuels.
The whole RE Cult is nothing more than a fantasy and a system of wealth transfer. Will never get near it's purported goals.
In the mean time however, we will experience massive price hikes for energy and have highly unreliable power supply which will kill industries, cause great hardship, increase cost of living and poverty and all be for nothing other than to make the rich richer and the Middle class much poorer.
Keeping ones own lights on will be one thing but beyond that, so much will be out of our control and still decline our standard of living all under the guise of this moronic green fantasy.
Georgen Guru Joined: 13/09/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 462
Posted: 05:18am 26 Oct 2022
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Looks like nothing can stop it or slow down at least!
In Germany not used brown coal power generation was just put into standby/maintenance mode or something like that. Here in Australia they just blow it up to make sure that when somebody sensible gets to lead our country there will be nothing to just reconnect.
Not to mention that our leaders were so certain that drought will never end nothing was done to increase number of dams and prevent building new suburbs in flood areas for years.
Europe seems to peddle back some of their green madness, will our leaders get to their senses, have my doubts...George
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 11:06pm 26 Oct 2022
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This is one of my points exactly!
This has all been tried in Europe and they are running away from it fast as they can because it was a disaster and didn't work as it could not.
That is all to obvious and evident for our "leaders" to ignore. To keep pushing this is not incompetent or stupidity, it's out and out corruption.
Playing devils advocate, even if one did believe in this, any moron would say "well that didn't work for them, we won't make the same mistakes and we'll try a different approach".
Put they don't. they want to go down the self same road of failure because the real agenda here, as always, is MONEY!.
Politicians don't serve the people, they serve the big business interests that " Donate " to put them in power and then give them cushy jobs when they are out of politics. Don't matter how disgraced they are in office, what scandal or filthy behavior they are caught out in, they leave politics and start a job paying megabucks with a private company a week after they clear their political office.
While they are in office they are there to serve the desire of the corporates and further their agendas not the interests of the people.
And that is all this green crap is about.
How many billions over budget is that snowy BS now and what? , 7 years behind schedule is it? Someone's making fortunes out of it and all the money is being laundered under the guise of a completely bastardized noble cause that in nothing more than an excuse.
It's real easy to see which of these green fantasys has already been done and what has failed ( all of it far as I have seen) so the same mistakes can be avoided but they deliberately ignore history because the Chararade of the desire result is not the goal at all. It's simply making money and there is more money in failure than success as they will get a 2nd bite of the Cherry to fix the fluckups as well.
Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9305
Posted: 01:06am 27 Oct 2022
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We need to be careful with these kinds of threads, as Gizmo does not like them and I as an admin have to follow the rules as laid out by him(even though I agree with what is being said), so it is PROBABLY best not to talk about these things on this forum - Gizmo does not like it. I'm all for this kind of discussion, but it is Gizmo's forum, with Gizmo's rules, so I have to respect those rules as an admin.
But having issued my admin "Gentle warning" above to satisfy my responsibilities, I will add a couple of my own thoughts that give me a little hope.
Here in NZ, we just had our local-body elections for all the mayors and councils for all the major cities. EVERY SINGLE CITY with the exception of Wellington, voted out their mayors and replaced them with more conservative or independent candidates. That is almost unheard of in NZ political history, that so many mayors would be voted out in a single election. It's very common here, for the current mayor to be re-elected in most cities as they usually win at least a few terms, unless there is REAL unhappiness with a certain mayor in a certain city. But for ALL of NZ's mayors(with one exception) to be voted out in the same election, is unheard of.
In my city, the new incoming mayor won the election with a 100% majority and he has not been mayor before. I am not kidding. New incoming mayor got 20,000 votes, old green/left-leaning mayor got 10,000 votes. For a small city by international standards, that was a complete landslide rejection of the existing mayor, who had only been in there for one term but whose attitude and policies have....irritated a lot of people here, shall we say.
I see this happening in a lot of places now, including overseas, where "The establishment" politicians are being replaced with new-blood candidates at an extraordinary rate and at extraordinary vote numbers. None of the losses are small losses, and none of the wins are small wins.
So, I still think there is hope, but I agree that big-business has got WAY too much hold on all governments currently, and that has to change - and I think it will if you can get new blood into office that actually CARE about their country and its people, rather then the old fossils(politically speaking) who only care about their bank-balance and power. The voters have begun to wake up in huge numbers all over the world to the corruption, and that has to be a good thing.
As a final note to just how insane the world has become over the whole green thing, is this meme I found the other day:
Just how absurd is that?(rhetorical).....
Right! That's my 2c, and I will leave it there.Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 04:59am 28 Oct 2022
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I don't wish to break any rules but I think this is a not a political thing any more than the weather. I'll call it a business concern as to how these "companies" are manipulating much of the worlds population through different means to increase their profits through false information and deceptive practices which is exactly what they are.
I am aware that the powers that be here are of a green persuasion but I also think that as as intelligent people, they, like myself, would want REAL care and protections for the planet, not a lot of garbage that in reality does the complete opposite.
I don't think any rational person would be against doing the right thing and against polloution etc BUT, all the current green agenda's in reality do more harm than good on that front and as such should be called out along with those responsible for what is harming the planet.
I think it's pretty clear to anyone with a brain capeable of critical thinking ( a dying breed to be sure!) that many of these profitable green ideals are pushed up hill and down dale BUT, real, simple and effective methods of saving resources, polloution and energy are ignored and never mentioned.
I have many times lamented the waste I have seen at garbage transfer stations where New, 100% working product was dumped simply because it was " old " model but was being sold yesterday and dumped today. Something simple as banning disgusting waste like that would have a real impact, cost nothing and require zero effort but because is against the profit motives of big biz is allowed to go on at a massive scale.
It's very typical of the hypocrisy of the current green movement and the supposed goals.
All that would be needed to stop massive amounts of resources being wasted and energy squandered would be a rule to say that these products have to be sold not wasted. Would cost nothing, create no problems and just be a very easy and simple way to achieve the supposed goals. The only explanation as to why it is not done is of course because it does not suit the profit agenda's of Big biz which shows how corroupt the whole green scam is.
This is only one thing I have seen myself but I'll bet there are hundreds of similar, no cost, no effort, very effective things that could be done to curb similarly unnecessary waste which is all this is.
I am surprised to hear of the chage of mayors in NZ. TBH I thought the country was as green washed as they come. perhaps as you say there is hope and it will spread. Here I can't turn on the box without the chief talking head going on about CC, net zero and other catch words which is exactly why the only time I watch the Box is when staying and looking after my father whom watches it all and complains about it endlessly! :0)
I actualy had the though of a Mobile charger about 3-4 years ago. I was going to use a small truck powered by veg oil to keep the greentards happy while saving a fortune on fuel. I was thinking something like a 50 KW generator on the back which would be practical charge and weight wise and give a decent charge in a reasonable time. I thought this may be something I could do that would be too much effort in retirement.
Very shortly into researching the idea I found these setups already existed in Europe and were in fact common. Many use batteries as the power source rather than generators and are operated by the motoring groups such as NRMA, RACQ etc.
I think there will be a big demand for a service like this. Lets face it, women have a thing about refueling a vehicle now and run out of fuel all the time. Took me years to train my Mrs out of doing it. Well, actually, only a couple of times of " I'm not coming to get you, walk to a servo yourself " to get the message across. She will still on occasion run the thing to vapor but seems the " distance to empty calculator on her car is surprisingly accurate and she makes it.
I doubt ingrained behaviors will change with electrics, in fact I fully believe they will get worse. Plugging in with a heavy electric cable will be even less appealing and I will also bet unless there is drive off prevention with the cable being plugged in there will be a lot of cables being torn out and dragged down the road. I would imagine there would be a fundamental safety feature however but also one that will add to " Charging Reluctance" .
Perhaps the greatest use of a mobile charging service will be on highways where people will run out of power after loading the vehicles up and maybe towing which decimates range on EVs and will catch a lot of people out. I can't see charging stations in the more remote areas being built for a very long time if ever so something Mobile will be the answer.
Given what it would be worth for a Charging service to come to a vehicle even 30 min away, I think a lot of people won't be thinking their EV's are so cheap to operate.
I wonder how long it will be before private services of this nature will become Viable and whether moreso in the Citys or country areas?
Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1022
Posted: 11:09am 04 Nov 2022
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I have always been told to never rely on one source for everything in case something stuffs up, Doesn't matter what it is, early offgridders found the same, must have more than one source of power generation, solar hydro wind geny etc. Its not that different now, just solar provides more power than it used to, but I still use the geny on occasions when there is not enough solar power to charge the batteries to happily last over night, no big deal most of us know this. Now the 2030 (Ridiculous) and beyond everything will be almost entirely reliant on the power grid, EV's transport etc, grid tied houses with batteries also under the control of the grid, and it will make the grid more of a target for disruption or worse, failure over a wide area for days or weeks. I have no objection to EV's, I quite like them, (for around the yard), (Don't like the way it is being pushed as a solution to everything) totally relying on the grid charge points and when the grid goes down so will the transport, and batteries that are made elsewhere may not (will not) be available or replaceable WHEN the SHTF.
The local farms rely heavily on power, Not going to ask them about there power bills, would be some swearing involved. I won't be throwing away any of my old ICE's, I can still run them to generate power, run machinery or vehicles, these ICE's have been around for many years and will still be viable for many more in future. Many years ago a Friend had a batch of home brew, old man put it in the fuel tank of an old (Robin) water pump engine, it run well on that lot, smelt good too. The way things are going it would be worth the effort to add some redundancy where possible to keep things going. Cheers Aaron Off The Grid
Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me.
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