Australian towns going off the grid

Australia is facing an energy crisis.

Some turned to solar panels and battery storage technology to solve their bill woes.

As prices rose to new highs last year and the ever-constant threat of blackouts hung over the east coast, many Australians looked for energy alternatives.

Some turned to solar panels and battery storage technology to solve their bill woes, gain greater control of their own power and make a real change in terms of their impact on the climate.

While they are taking steps at the individual level, others are looking to take full advantage of the push for more renewable energy and shift away from centralised power systems on a larger scale.

Read Cole Latimer’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Australian towns going off the grid.”

Japan spruiks 'highly efficient' coal-fired power plants as stop-gap measure to Australia's energy crisis

When it comes to Australia's energy crisis, there's been a lot of talk about "clean coal”.

The coal processing section of Japan's Isogo
power plant, where the coal gets crushed.

Some have suggested that high-efficiency, low-emissions (HELE) coal-fired power plants could be the answer to provide certainty across the energy grid.

Australia's Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg and Resources Minister Matt Canavan have taken separate trips to Japan to see how the technology works in practice.

Both politicians visited the Isogo power plant, south of Tokyo — which has been recognised as the world's cleanest coal-fired power station in the world, in terms of emissions intensity.

Read the ABC News story - “Japan spruiks 'highly efficient' coal-fired power plants as stop-gap measure to Australia's energy crisis.”

Managing demand can save two power stations’ worth of energy at peak time

The management of Australia’s looming energy crisis has so far focused almost exclusively on the supply side of the equation: exploiting new gas reserves, expanding the Snowy Mountains hydro scheme, and building new infrastructure.

Adelaide CBD was left in total darkness after yet another blackout.

Meanwhile, the huge potential of improving efficiency and demand management, which could save vast amounts of energy, has largely been ignored.

One promising development is the recent announcement of a trial of demand response incentives in Victoria and South Australia.

Next summer, households and businesses who sign up for the trial will be paid when they agree to be on standby to reduce their energy use during times of increased peak demand or natural disaster. They’ll be paid again if their electricity is actually reduced.

ClimateWorks Australia’s research shows that initiatives to better manage energy use could reduce peak demand on the national grid by more than 10% – or 3.8 gigawatts – the output of two Hazelwood power stations over peak times.

Read the piece on The Conversation by the Head of Research from ClimateWorks Australia at Monash University, Amandine Denis  - “Managing demand can save two power stations’ worth of energy at peak time.”

'Power failure' - Four Corners

Four Corners investigates how a nation as rich as Australia is in coal, gas, sunshine and wind, has found itself in the middle of an energy crisis.

The ABC's Four Corners takes a
look at Australia's energy crisis.

"We've had a catastrophic failure of national policy making." Industry Lobbyist.

For a decade, the politicisation of energy policy has divided the major political parties and brought down their leaders.

"We've had a series of disasters, bad political decisions to end up where we are." Energy Analyst.

The result is an uncertain energy future and soaring power bills.

Watch the Four Corners program here - “Power failure.”

State government steps in to prevent shut down at Loy Yang power plant

The state government will go to the Fair Work Commission to prevent workers at Victoria's biggest energy plant going on strike and plunging the state into an energy crisis. 

AGL Energy says it will close its Loy Yang
 A power station and mine from May 15.

"The protracted negotiations between AGL and its workforce commenced in 2015 and must be resolved," Industrial Relations Minister Natalie Hutchins said. 

"The government will ask the Fair Work Commission to terminate this protected industrial action before any closure can occur.”

For the second time since Christmas, energy producer and retailer AGL has threatened to lock out the entire workforce and shut down its Loy Yang A power plant in the Latrobe Valley over proposed union action.

Read the Melbourne Age story - “State government steps in to prevent shut down at Loy Yang power plant.”

Gas crisis? Energy crisis? The real problem is lack of long-term planning

If you’ve been watching the news in recent days, you’ll know we have an energy crisis, partly due to a gas crisis, which in turn has triggered a political crisis.

The long view: energy policy needs
to stay firmly focused on the horizon.

That’s a lot of crises to handle at once, so lots of solutions are being put forward. But what do people and businesses actually need? Do they need more gas, or cheaper prices, or more investment certainty, or all or none of the above? How do we cut through to what is really important, rather than side details?

The first thing to note is that what people really care about is their energy costs, not energy prices. This might seem like a pedantic distinction, but if homes and businesses can be helped to waste less energy, then high prices can be offset by lower usage.

The second thing to note is that energy has become very confusing. A host of short- and long-term problems have developed over decades of policy failure, meaning that there is no single solution.

Read the piece by Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT University,  Alan Pears, on The Conversation -  "Gas crisis? Energy crisis? The real problem is lack of long-term planning.”

Allan presents some actual facts to counter AFR's 'alternative facts'

Northcote’s Allan O’Neil has written in response to an Australian Financial Review Editorial and although the letter was published online it was thought to too late for publication in the AFR’s hard copy.

Alan wrote:

The Weekend AFR’s editorial on our “energy crisis” has bought hook, line and sinker some very convenient untruths. It blames the tightness of the domestic gas market solely on moratoria imposed by the Victorian, NSW and NT governments and then in the next sentence blames problems in the electricity market on “ever-larger volumes of intermittent renewables being fed into the grid with incentives provided by the same governments”.

The only material financial subsidy for new large scale renewable generation over the past decade and a half has been the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target, in place since 2000. None of the State/Territory governments mentioned has operated any scheme providing similar subsidies.

As for the tightness in the gas market, your editorial also claims that “the gas feeding the Gladstone LNG plants was developed against the prices and volumes it could fetch on international markets”. This might be true if the only gas feeding those projects was sourced from the Queensland coal seam gas (CSG) fields developed by the project proponents to back their capacity investment in the Gladstone LNG facilities. However it is widely known in the industry that those new CSG developments have been slower and higher in cost to develop than assumed, and that the LNG consortia, caught short for supply, have been sourcing significant volumes from already developed gasfields across the south-eastern states that had previously been supplying only domestic users.

The Gladstone LNG facility.

The impact of state government gas moratoria has been at most marginal, given the relative volumes of previously “domestic” gas hoovered up by the LNG consortia, and any new gas which might now have been available from fields developed in the absence of those moratoria. In Queensland, Shell and PetroChina hold a reported 9,000 PJ of already discovered but undeveloped gas not subject to any moratorium. To argue that a cheaper way to relieve pressure on gas supply would be to explore for, assess, develop, process and transport currently undiscovered gas in less prospective regions like onshore Victoria, in preference to large already discovered resources like Shell’s, seems completely fanciful.

The real “problem” in the gas market therefore seems to be the (un)readiness of domestic users to pay the same prices that the LNG consortia have been prepared to pay in order to fill their supply gap.

The real problem in the electricity market has of course been the partisan craziness, ideology, and blame-gaming that has characterised climate-change policy at Federal level for the last decade, and shows few signs of abating. Editorials like the AFR’s, based less on facts and more on “fake truths”, don’t help any of this.

Energy crisis: Wholesale power prices have doubled since the carbon tax was axed

A growing crisis in the electricity market has led to wholesale power prices more than doubling in a year - and rising to at least twice what they were under the much-maligned carbon price.

An analysis by the University of Melbourne's Climate and Energy College, produced for the Greens, found the average wholesale electricity price soared to $134 a megawatt hour in the summer just finished, compared with $65-$67 in the two summers the carbon price was in place.

Read Adam Morton’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Energy crisis: Wholesale power prices have doubled since the carbon tax was axed.”