Experts react to the Finkel Review on the future for Australia's electricity generation

Many of you will have been glued to the internet (or television) over the past few hours, first watching the Comey session before the Senate Committee in the USA, then the elections in Britain. While you were being entertained, an important report was released here in Australia. It's known as the Finkel Review, because the panel preparing it was headed by Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel.

The report is called the Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market. It has important implications for how Australia manages the transition away from fossil fuels (particularly coal) into the new energy economy.

Some people are being pragmatic about it, others are concerned that it will mean that Australia will not move quickly enough, and that we won't meet our international obligations.

Below is an article about the report, just published at The Conversation.

Luddite Eric Worrall huffs and puffs and wants to bring back smog @wattsupwiththat

This is interesting. Probably without knowing it, Eric Worrall at WUWT is arguing for a national strategy for the shift to renewable energy. He was writing about an anti-renewables article in The Australian. In part, the article was about how, in the absence of a national electricity strategy, more people will leave the grid. However, the article was clearly propaganda against the shift to renewables, as is the norm for The Australian and it's war against humanity.

That article in The Australian was a Murdoch slant on the preliminary report released last month by the Energy Expert Panel, chaired by the Chief Scientist, Dr. Alan Finkel: Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market (saved here).

Denier Weirdness: Electricity is a subject too tough for Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is obsessed with Australia's electricity system but he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's posted several articles on the blackout in South Australia and all of them are woefully wrong. (None on the blackouts in Victoria, NSW and the ACT.) With his latest (archived here) he shows that he doesn't understand the wholesale pricing system for Australian electricity (few do), and confuses it with electricity generation. His headline is totally misleading. He wrote: "Australian electrical system operator orders wind farms to cut back production in wake of blackout"

No it didn't.

Whatever you do, don't let deniers near a power grid

You'd think that with all the engineers who hang around denier blogs there'd be one or two who knew something about designing a power grid sourced from renewable energy. Not so. They are hopeless. There's an article at WUWT today where some chap has had a shot (archived here). He's made a real mess of it. No planning. No decent distribution system. Not even a national grid let alone a smart grid. He started with just wind and natural gas and only added PV some time later as an afterthought. Given the low cost of wind (and solar), he went way over budget. Probably gave the contracts to shonky mates. It was a woeful design and his planning was next to useless. It wasn't long before patched his flawed design by resurrecting an outdated filthy coal plant.

That's what can happen when you hand the reins to incompetents.

Thank goodness we're not relying on WUWT's engineers is all I can say. You can read his dismal attempt here if you want to.

Around the climate blogs: addiction to global mean temperature; and the electricity cost of California's drought

HotWhopper exists to replace deniers' disinformation with science, which means that it's easy to forget there is real work going on out in the world. A couple of items from the Blog Roll are worth reading when you want a break from the conspiracy-theorising nuttery that goes on in the deniosphere.

Addiction to global mean temperature: Isaac Held

First of all, Isaac Held has written about the addiction to global mean temperature and the dangers in considering it in isolation. Isaac Held is a modeler with the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Research Laboratory at Princeton University, although the views expressed are his own, not any official position. He talks about what can happen if you use simple globally averaged box models, without taking account of spatial structure of the response to forcing. His articles are for the advanced climate hawk, usually. But I dare say that most HotWhopper readers wouldn't find this latest article of his difficult.

The energy cost of the Californian drought: Peter Gleick

Moving away from the theoretical to the practical, Peter Gleick has written about the impact of the Californian drought on the cost of its electricity supply. Peter Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute in Oakland. He reports that California has had to replace cheap hydro electricity with more expensive power from natural gas. (Can you take out drought insurance against higher electricity prices?) Drought has been a big problem for electricity supply in Brazil, too.

HotCopper Whopper for Monday

Tilting at (15th Century) Windmills?

This little gem came to my attention and made me laugh.  Did you know we've been using windmills to generate electricity since the fifteenth century and they've been destroying our health? (Click to enlarge.)

Source: HotCopper.com

Ben isn't too sure whether inhaling thick carcinogenic smoke is harmful or not, but it's a dead cert that a 15th century windmill is health-destroying!