Guest Post: Thoughts on New Zealands Power Supply

A guest post on Kiwiblog by Sparticus Abundare:

Prompted by the 73 Oil shock, France built 62 Nuclear power stations from the mid 70s to the mid 90s. Now their CO2 emissions are half that of their neighbours and if it wasn’t for the distractions of all that cheese and wine they would be smoking it in an energy starved world.

In the 50s 60s and 70s NZ built out a fantastic Hydroelectric power grid that’s done our country proud, It enables us to boast about our 85% renewables grid, and until recently provided us with cheap power for things like Aluminium smelters and Paper mills, Stuff that’s not Cows or Sheep or trees

Today the building out of the electricity grid is at least partially in the hands of the “private sector” Their brief is to ensure power generation sufficiency. The cheapest power is now wind and solar, there incentives are to maximise returns, not to build serious durable reliable power stations.

Renewables are cheap and can be built out like lego, but they are intermittent. They don’t work when the wind doesn’t wind or the sun doesn’t sun and they need replacing every 20-30 years.

To extend Chris Popoffs metaphor, wind and solar are the Narcissistic father of power supply. On a sunny windy day they spark up, flooding the grid with power, crashing the price, saying “Hey look at me, I’m bloody good, surplus power everywhere, aren’t you lucky I’m around”. Then on a still cold night they are nowhere to be seen, and all the old faithful’s, Coal, Hydro, Geothermal run breathlessly to fill the hole left by the absent narcissistic father who’s not around when he’s needed most.

All those that have swallowed the Kool aide and actually believe the renewables propaganda, are now paying the price, just look at the electricity prices in the UK, Germany and California. Once you get to about 30% wind and solar the grid becomes unstable, and everything goes third world.

I say let’s trash sufficiency and aim for abundance; we can even do it under the guise of saving the planet. Let’s do away with crappy little bicycle lanes, Carbon markets, Farmer burp taxes, and put tax money into electricity abundance instead. Cheap and abundant energy is a strategy that would make NZ prosper.

Imagine the manufacturing jobs that would be possible here, were power prices down around the lowest in the world.

We have Hydro Stations consented and ready to go, Gas, somewhat crippled by our past dear leader, but hopefully still has legs, and Geothermal has the potential to double or triple its contribution. The power all three provide is baseload, they would stabilise our grid and make it cheaper in the long term.

Then there is renaissance nuclear power, exploding everywhere. Theres 60 plants under construction worldwide with a further 110 planned. The 60 under construction will produce ten times New Zealand’s current generating capacity.

It’s fascinating to look at the build out of Nuclear, by country. Theres 2 being built in the UK, 1 in France, China 31, India 7, Egypt, Turkey & Russia 4 each, Bangladesh & Korea 2 each, Argentina, Slovakia and Iran one a piece. This is how the west fades, not from Invasion or revolution but from outdated dogma and sclerotic bureaucracies unable to get out of their own way.

It makes sense to hang back a little and see what system is best, there’s a lot out there, but planning for and installing base infrastructure for Nuclear now, could be resource well spent

France has let its nuclear fleet degrade, captured by the anti-nuclear zeitgeist of the late 20th century. It was only running at 50% capacity when Russia cut the gas supply to Europe. Let’s not be captured by the de growth zealots, lets not believe that things would be better if we just consumed less. Let’s be like Bob the Builder, “Can we build it, YES WE CAN”.