KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON – IT’S ALL IMPORTANT FOR CHRISTMAS
Just a few weeks ago, the Premier of NSW was asking the people of NSW to be thoughtful about their power usage as they arrived home from work and school on a couple of quite hot afternoons. Perhaps leave the washing until later in the night. Turn off pool filters until the evening delivered a natural cooling of the air. Don’t run air-conditioners on super low settings.
Some 30-50 years ago, right across Australia, State Governments invested heavily into coal-fired power stations. Collectively, these many sites would generate enough electricity for the needs of society and industry. In the past 25-30 years no similar investment has been made – either by Governments or by private industry. You could blame everyone, or no-one, for this, but whatever your preference on blame, the reality is that if we wanted new coal-fired power stations to be picking up the slack of the retiring old coal-fired power stations then that investment should have happened many years ago.
So we now find ourselves in a time when we need to be able to bring new power sources online quickly, and at a price that is not going to break the budgets of families and businesses. The quickest and cheapest form of new power sources is solar and wind but as well, know the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.
As at today and tomorrow and for the next few years our other sources of electricity supply will continue to be our ageing coal-fired power stations and gas-fired power stations. Going forward this will be further supported by pumped hydro (ie: pumped gravity), battery storage, some interesting new concepts in compressed air and several other methods of having reliable and dispatchable power.
In the meantime, as we slowly build a collection of these back-up supplies, while our coal-fired stations struggle to keep churning out the power that we have so long relied on simply because they are getting older and a bit more prone to break-downs, there will be times when the Government of the day will ask us to be a bit more thoughtful about our power usage.
There are some “alternatives” being pedalled by some. For example, some would have you believe that there is no more land available for wind and solar farms so that would have to stop. Others would have you believe that the possibility of offshore wind farms have to be shut down before it begins. Combined, the result is that we can’t use our land or our waters to generate new electricity supplies. Those same people are telling us that we “can” build nuclear reactors on our land – possibly in about 20 years times.
And while people will have their own views on all of these “alternatives” to electricity supply (or non-supply) the unquestionable result will be that we would all have to face 20 years of not just caution and care in our power use, but periods of absolute power blackouts. Long dark days of no power supply because the pedallers of the “alternatives” said “no” to so many real options and only said “yes” to an option that is so far away in the future that candle sales will boom.
Christmas lights bring so much joy and happiness. They have become an essential fabric of the celebration of this time of year. None of us could imagine a decade or more without them – so let’s keep the lights on with practical, real solutions.