We all should pay attention to what happened recently in the small city of Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia (population 20,000). In 2018 Broken Hill City Council announced its intention to become Australia’s first carbon-free city by 2030. The city received $650 MILLION of green energy grants, which it spent on massive projects including 200 Megawatts (MW)/day of wind turbine capacity, 53 MW of solar capacity, and a compressed air energy storage plant (an energy battery to store the electricity generated by the wind and solar).
Then in October 2024 a storm destroyed seven transmission towers connecting Broken Hill to Australia’s national power grid, leaving Broken Hill dependent on its wind, solar and battery plant. Broken Hill’s daily electricity usage averages about 36 MW. So…with 200 MW of wind turbine capacity, 53 MW of solar capacity, and a big storage plant, everything should have been OK. Right?
No. It turns out that capacity to produce, and actual reliable production of, electricity, are two different things. The electricity generated by the wind and solar facilities fluctuates badly, making it unusable (and actually detrimental) as the sole source. The city mayor said: (Wind and solar) are worse than useless (in a crisis like this), because it’s detrimental to having a consistent power supply,” he said. “I’d hate to see what happens in the capital cities in a similar crisis.
So, what happened? The refrigerators in the pharmacies had to be shut off to avoid damage, and the medications had to be destroyed. Food freezers were off across the city and food spoiled. Emergency trucks had to bring in food. The city’s schools closed.
In the greatest of “green” ironies, the city had to bring back online its old DIESEL-POWERED GENERATOR to help limp through the two-week crisis.
Unfortunately, Broken Hill is not Australia’s only waste of taxpayer money. In the Northern Territory town of Alice Springs, the government’s green goals drove the rapid build-out of 64 MW of solar panels, or roughly 25% of the grid. But on October 13, 2019 the grid collapsed for 9 hours because of a cloud. The cloud, and resulting blackout, were an omen about the dangers of pushing too much unreliable renewable electricity into the grid. After 2019, the Northern Territory Grid left 4 solar plants idle for years, in fear the solar plants would crash the Darwin-Katherine grid.
Why are we wasting our precious tax dollars on wind and solar subsidies??? Are Pennsylvania’s politicians not smart enough to learn from Australia’s lessons??? Is Governor Shapiro not aware that electricity is 3 times more expensive in Germany and California, where the politicians there have already wasted their citizens’ precious resources on wind and solar boondoggles???
Blackouts are powerful lessons. Let’s hope our politicians and especially our governor are smart enough to learn.
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