Behold SA and be scared, very scared

The subsidies are paid to the wind farm and the solar PV suppliers of energy but these costs are passed out to all consumers of electricity. The average subsidy for the year was $72 per MWh for wind and $40 for solar PV. So spread over all consumers this becomes $21.5 per MWh from wind and $2.6 per MWh from solar PV. This is the equivalent of a $24 carbon tax on CO₂.

There are three problems that can be seen developing in South Australia as shown in Table 2:

• The coal fired baseload power stations have low utilisation with a capacity factor of 39%. The high capital cost of a coal fired power station should have a capacity factor of about 80% so that it can supply low cost baseload power. But this is not the case in South Australia as the intermittency of wind power has all but eliminated steady baseload power.
• A consequence of the intermittent wind power has been the use of interconnectors to draw power from Victoria. This is also intermittent demand that can be as much as the interconnectors can deliver and stresses the Victorian power supply system.
• Worse still is that on occasions there is so much wind power in South Australia that the surplus is exported to Victoria where it adds supply variations to a system with much larger demand of some 6000 MW with 300 MW from wind farms. These events mostly occur in the early morning between midnight and sunrise and can be as much as 200 MW which is a substantial disruption at a time of best baseload generation.

Conclusion

Finally the intermittent wind power in South Australia is correlated with wind power variations in Victoria. So if the government of Victoria has a renewable energy target similar to South Australia then that may lead to the destruction of baseload operations in Victoria.

The conclusion from this analysis is that renewable energy policies have not been well thought out and if continued without some thoughtful modifications may have severe economic consequences.

But we should not expect much from our politicians as their methods are best described by H L Mencken as - The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

However capping the RET scheme now but allowing all approved wind farms to proceed might stop the various state governments from encouraging and adding wind farms to meet their 50% renewables aspirations.