Horror heatwave blackout fears for Victoria

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Originally Posted by Homestar

While I agree coal is old news and we shouldn’t be building any more - with renewable capacity in Vic at such low levels, we are still looking at decades to fill the gap that would (and is) there if all the coal stations were shut down. They still make up 90% of the Eastern Seaboards power capacity - what you going to replace them with? Just in Vic alone, there is still around 4,000MW of coal stations. Turning 1,600 off has ****ed us, where would turning off more than twice that again put us?

Ideals are great, so is renewable energy and we need WAY more investment in this area, by orders of magnitude, but ideals won’t keep the lights on.

If we weren’t sitting in our hands waiting for someone else to make the decision, we could have had a nice shiny new Nuclear plant up and running by now to replace most of the coal in Vic.

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We are between a rock and a hard place. And we have NO one with the vision or fore sight to find a solution.

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Originally Posted by bob10

And we have NO one with the vision or fore sight to find a solution.

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Pretty normal situation if the govt is involved with anything.

Have a look at any governments recent track record in this country.

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Originally Posted by scarry

Pretty normal situation if the govt is involved with anything.

Have a look at any governments recent track record in this country.

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Not allowed to say that, scarry. But we can think it.

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Originally Posted by Homestar

While I agree coal is old news and we shouldn’t be building any more - with renewable capacity in Vic at such low levels, we are still looking at decades to fill the gap that would (and is) there if all the coal stations were shut down. They still make up 90% of the Eastern Seaboards power capacity - what you going to replace them with? Just in Vic alone, there is still around 4,000MW of coal stations. Turning 1,600 off has ****ed us, where would turning off more than twice that again put us?

Ideals are great, so is renewable energy and we need WAY more investment in this area, by orders of magnitude, but ideals won’t keep the lights on.

If we weren’t sitting in our hands waiting for someone else to make the decision, we could have had a nice shiny new Nuclear plant up and running by now to replace most of the coal in Vic which would have kept things ticking over while we caught up with renewables.

Now we’re stuck with coal for the foreseeable future...

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Gas. Already happening in SA and Qld. We have oodles of gas. And changing from coal to gas halves emissions. What's not to like?

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Originally Posted by Homestar

Hazelwood was already decades beyond it’s designed life. First PLE (Plant life extension) was done in 1988 - when I was a first year Apprentice there. The next PLE would have basically been a total rebuild, which was due around 2020 I believe had it continued to operate. It was actually capable of more than it’s designed 1,600MW when it was shut down, previous upgrades had increased its capacity by nearly 10% over the years (mainly better cooling of the main alternators).

I wasn’t against it being shut down, it was a rotten, bygone relic IMO but the problem was a lack of forethought about what should replace the 1,600MW hole in capacity when it was turned off - a hole we now know is still quite large...

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Thanks, it's really interesting to hear from someone who'd worked there - I had presumed that the private buyers had simply failed to invest in maintenance, as has been the case with quite a few PPPs here and overseas.

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Originally Posted by Arapiles

Thanks, it's really interesting to hear from someone who'd worked there - I had presumed that the private buyers had simply failed to invest in maintenance, as has been the case with quite a few PPPs here and overseas.

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It was a great place to work and very well designed - much better to work on than more modern plants IMO. Was a bitter sweet day when it closed but it had had its day.

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Originally Posted by scarry

Pretty normal situation if the govt is involved with anything.

Have a look at any governments recent track record in this country.

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To be fair, Australia is actually pretty well governed, even compared to other first world countries - hence why the Economist recently devoted an edition to why Australia should be a model for other countries. For example, I lived in the UK and whilst I genuinely admire the Brits and there were some brilliant things there (such as the museums and National Trust) and much that we miss, the place is otherwise a shambles ... post-code lottery for schools and medicine, the NHS itself, bizarre retail hours/rules, class and just general inefficiency ...

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Originally Posted by Arapiles

To be fair, Australia is actually pretty well governed, even compared to other first world countries - hence why the Economist recently devoted an edition to why Australia should be a model for other countries.

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Cant comment there are rules,but i can say one think,thats not quite correct.

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Originally Posted by scarry

Cant comment there are rules,but i can say one think,thats not quite correct.

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I've spent substantial chunks of my life living overseas and I genuinely believe that Australia gets a lot of things right. Perfect? No. But a lot better than many places I've been.

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Gas. Already happening in SA and Qld. We have oodles of gas. And changing from coal to gas halves emissions. What's not to like?

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I think the initial issue with gas is that we have sold all our gas to the overseas markets and have long contracts with quotas to meet. We don't have enough to meet domestic demand. I notice Japan buys our gas cheaper than we can! Therefore gas isn't cheap.

Gotta love a country that's "uniquely stupid"

Natural gas: How Australia is being screwed