Why won't politicians stop lying about 'reliable renewables'?

The Heywood interconnector has a capacity limit. If demand from SA exceeds this limit (eg, last September when SA wind farms shut down to protect their equipment), the interconnector shuts down for the same reasons.

Not enough back up, so SA blacked out.

Recently, in hot weather with no wind, SA operators avoided trying to import too much power from Victoria. The Heywood interconnector ran at its capacity limit – no more. Lessons learned. But this exposed the local SA inadequacy of back-up power because, for various reasons, fossil fuel power plants were unavailable.

So, this time, no SA-wide black out, but about 90,000 homes (and how many businesses?) lost power. Stuff-ups abounded.

SA's claims of reliable low emissions from wind power ride the shrinking wings of Victorian brown coal.

Now what?

The community increasingly doubts the reliability of grid electricity supply. Solar panel demand, and demand for home batteries, and portable generators, are taking off. What happens to the grid if electricity customers get a taste for going partly or wholly 'off grid'?

Could the soaring renewables albatross produce a stranded, flightless, grid dodo – and higher power costs?

Would we want this? Poorer voters facing higher energy costs and less job competitiveness may say 'no'.

I think most Australians would offer two pieces of policy advice to the power problem blame-shifters:

• To politicians, please 'fess up to the grid reliability and cost damage you all have done.
• And please get together – all of you – and fix the reliability problems ASAP before somebody dies.

The first requires humility and 'mea culpa' (an 'electricity sorry day'?).