It could be worse

Just a quick little rant before I get some sleep. One of the political dramas happening recently in Australia is our energy crisis. For some time we've been experiencing wide spread brownouts and blackouts, but it seems like South Australia has gotten the worst of it. Late last year they experienced a state wide blackout which cut power to nearly a million customers. Although I don't live in SA apparently they are still having regular power outages and some business owners are not happy:

A Henley Beach cafe owner was among 90,000 customers who had their power shut off last night due to insufficient generation capacity — the latest in a string of recent blackouts that have Adelaide business owners fed up and looking for change.

'It's 2017 — surely we're past power outages'

South Australian businesses fed up by power outages while paying 'highest prices'

So surely our liberal government would respond seriously and hastily to this crisis right? Nope, it's already a non-issue in the media, and very recently one of our largest coal powered plants was shut down, which will inevitably result in another large rise in energy prices after many large jumps in recent years. This is a big hit to our energy market considering the vast majority of our energy is still generated from coal plants, and we have no viable backup solutions such as nuclear energy plants, and we export the majority of our natural gas at prices so cheap other nations make more profit on it than we do.

The closure of one of Australia’s biggest power plants may spark a new bout of electricity price volatility, potentially worsening the country’s energy crisis.

The final two units of the 1,600-megawatt coal-fired Hazelwood plant in the state of Victoria will be shut Wednesday by owners Engie SA and Mitsui & Co. After operating for 50 years, the closure of the plant, which Engie estimates provides a quarter of the state’s and about 5 percent of the nation’s power supply, has led to a surge in prices.

Power Price Spike Hits Australia as Coal Plant Shuts Down

Yet it still seems like there's no real initiative by the government to solve the issue, we seem to be perfectly content with having a 3rd world status power grid. Meanwhile Trump is holding conferences to detail his realistic plans for improving and expanding the U.S. energy infrastructure even though I would argue the U.S. power grid is already quite robust, at least compared to Australia. So not only is Trump doing what he was elected to do, he's doing far more than most politicians ever could... it's easy to complain when you cannot see what you have. For a man who supposedly does nothing useful he sure seems to get a lot done.

Stanley Black & Decker Announce Opening of New U.S. Plant After Trump White House Win

Breaking: Ford Cancels Plans for $1.6B Plant In Mexico; Expanding In Michigan

Trump Reaches Deal to Keep Carrier Factory, Jobs in Indiana: Report

INTEL Corp. - 7 BILLION DOLLAR Mega Investment In Arizona

General Motors to announce $1 billion in U.S. investment

Trump is winning...again...SoftBank will invest $50 billion in the US, aiming to create 50,000 jobs

And that's not even getting into all the new laws he has managed to pass which already fulfil a great deal of the promises he made, but I'm far too tired to continue looking up more links so you may proceed screaming "he dindu nuffin I tell ya!".

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Wow, power outage is sthg I know only from a short circuit from the fuse in the house...

That's incredible sad. Australia?
Ts, ts, ts sad. There goes another bit of my worldview. I thought they were 1st world? 2nd? ...

Didnt Australia a while back sign on to the carbon tax agreement ? Or something like that ? The reason for the coal fired energy plants to shut down ?

a reply to: Peeple

Well things aren't always what they are portrayed to be, that's why 1st hand experience is important. But to be fair we haven't had a blackout where I live for quite some time now, it's actually been a lot better than usual as of the last few months so they may have done something to improve the grid in my area. Also keep in mind I live in a rural area and blackouts tend to be far less common in city areas.

And as I said it seems to be a lot worse in SA than my state and it doesn't seem to be getting much better. We really need some sort of comprehensive plan to completely overhaul and modernize our energy grid, but we have to choose between unclean options and nuclear energy, and you've got a virtually zero chance of convincing people nuclear energy is safe after they saw what happened in Japan. In a nutshell our leaders have no idea how to actually get stuff done and as a result we all suffer.

originally posted by: Gothmog
Didnt Australia a while back sign on to the carbon tax agreement ? Or something like that ? The reason for the coal fired energy plants to shut down ?

We did have a carbon tax for a while but it was repealed a few years back if I'm not mistaken. However it didn't really seem to make much difference, the damage was already done, the market had already adjusted to place the extra cost onto the consumer and once people are paying a higher bill companies wont simply lower their fees because they are paying less taxes. I haven't really looked into this issue in a few years so my memory of the facts are very fuzzy and the issue is fairly complicated. But needless to say, the cost of energy, and the overall general cost of living is continuously rising here because our leaders screw us over at every turn.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Wow, power outage is sthg I know only from a short circuit from the fuse in the house...

That's incredible sad. Australia?
Ts, ts, ts sad. There goes another bit of my worldview. I thought they were 1st world? 2nd? ...

Well to be fair, everything East of Ayres Rock was third world till Western Australia gave those states development money because of generosity.
Most of the eastern states are now developing economies and no longer third world economies as they have been since forever
West Australians look at the eastern states as most in the US look at Mexico and Mexicans.
We even have economic refugees to take care of
Don't believe the media and advertising

The original crocodile Dundee walkabout creek scene was shot in melbourne, when it was still very third world, not that long ago

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

If people actually took the time to learn the causes of the Fukushima disaster, and how it was ultimately lack of foresight in the design that became the point of critical failure, they wouldn't be so blindly terrified of nuclear plants

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Solar? In the desert parts? Australia has lots of sun and smart people (as I learned here amongst other sources) so why not invest in developing solar2.0 technology?

I mean you just buy some top-of-the-edge arrays, put a few up near to the most urgent area and keep a few in spare for taking apart and experimental purposes, boom next thing you know you're number 1 in solar exports globally.

A growing market...

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Solar? In the desert parts? Australia has lots of sun and smart people (as I learned here amongst other sources) so why not invest in developing solar2.0 technology?

Yes we already have quite extensive solar programs and other clean energy sources spliced into the main grid, which is one of the reasons put forward for the constant poor performance of our grid; clean energy sources simply aren't enough to sustain a large modern civilization, especially not in peak usage times and disappearing coal plants. That is why something more is needed, it's why we still have to use coal plants to generate the majority of our energy, it's still the most effective way for us to generate large amounts of power. Obviously I believe nuclear is the answer when done properly, especially if we're talking about things like liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Almost every state in the U.S. contains a nuclear reactor but we cannot even agree on building one.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Or you work on your storage and general efficiency.

I mean "go back to what already has been proven to be stupid" shouldn't be our goal...

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

1) black and decker did not make a factory here because of trump... that's just blantant propaganda..

2) ford wasn't a trump thing either if I remember correctly.. if he wasn't involved, again propaganda..

3) with carrier he was involved.. but there was a caviate.. like maybe it was only abou 100 jobs.. will double check in edit..

Yea I'm pretty sure Trump wasn't involved with any of those except maybe carrier..

Trump hasn't made any move to raise taxes on imports as he promised.. nor lowered taxes to provide the "trump related reason to stay in America.."

Which means your list is garbage.. and had little or nothing to do with trump and so obviously he doesn't get credit for them..

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Trump in Australia? I think you got the wrong door?

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Did I claim Trump had a direct hand in all those deals? I knew someone would mention the exact point you just made so I took care to avoid insinuating Trump was directly responsible for all those deals, I even shortened one link title to remove a suggestion Trump was behind the deal. However just because he didn't have a direct hand in all those decisions doesn't mean his pro-business policies didn't have any influence on their decisions and the timing of their decisions. Many of those deals actually happened after he was elected but before he even got in office.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

I thought that the "carbon tax" was brought back. Of course I cant say for sure as I am an American. I just try and keep up with the news.
Thanks

There're lining you up for nuclear. I don't care what people think now against it, just wait till you have more and more outages and they will say the only way is nuclear then the majority WILL say "hurry up and get them on line so we can have our power back".
Job done.

a reply to: crayzeed

Truly, if Australia adopts the fuel recycling standards used by most European countries, nuclear would be a brilliant choice to replace decommissioned coal fired plants.

I've never understood why the US so adamantly refuses to implement similar standards for spent fuel recycling. There are sooo many old fuel rods in dry cask storage awaiting the opening of a disposal facility. They could reduce that waste volume by more than half just with the first reclamation cycle alone.

originally posted by: crayzeed
There're lining you up for nuclear. I don't care what people think now against it, just wait till you have more and more outages and they will say the only way is nuclear then the majority WILL say "hurry up and get them on line so we can have our power back".
Job done.

Well I actually wish this were true but some how I doubt they are that smart, and even in that situation I highly doubt people would beg for a nuclear solution, they've been brainwashed with fear-mongering nonsense.