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Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Frank Newman: Power blackout - Government solution: more regulation


How comic to see the shrill finger-pointing by Labour's front bench.

"It's them, them...the exploitative power company monopolies...they are the villains...not us".

And of course, they assured us that only they can put the problem right.

How predictable. The socialists answer to every problem is more regulation, even when regulation is the problem! Ironic though that now they want the power companies to burn coal - last week they didn't!

Let's get to the nub of the issue. There was no wind to turn the wind turbines, and there was gunk in a hydro inlet and had to be shut down while someone got in there and cleaned it out. These things happen, and wind turbines don't work unless there is some wind, which may come as a surprise to those who say we should have more of it.

Windless days and gunk stuck in inlets just go to show that if we want a reliable power supply network then we have to burn coal.

That will sit uncomfortably with the anti-coal folk, but they do have a choice to opt out. They could cut back their own power consumption on these chilly days by switching off their hot water cylinder, turning off the heat pump, or unplugging their EV. There is a climate emergency after all and those of conviction must be prepared to accept sacrifices.

See stuff article here >>>

Frank Newman, a political commentator and investment analyst, is a former local body councillor.

3 comments:

Ray S said...


The free market model does not work in the electricity sector.

The outage last night was a direct result of the "market". It was better financially for distributors to drop blocks of load and take a small hit from loss of revenue than take a massive hit from increased cost of units over and above their forward bought allocation of units.
Who pays either way ? the poor old cash cow consumers.

As for generation, all thermal stations, including Huntly, should run at full capacity continually as a base load station with hydro as spinning reserve. Spinning reserve Hydro can come on line in minutes with no warm up required. What happened with the cables ? lack of forward short term planning. If the generation capacity is available in the south, all cables should be on line.
Very poor performance all round.

Kellz said...

Will the power outage be more a sign to get prep for a long term shutdown - should we as people be prepared in terms of food, medical and use time-banking methods, if cash cannot be used ?

Doug Longmire said...

How will the grid cope with 1,000,000 EV's all plugged in ?
To say nothing of how long the queues will be.
Dreamers...