September 4, 2012
Australia, Letters

Letter to Clean Energy Council

Hamish Cumming, Sept. 3, 2012

On ABC radio 1602 9am today, your CEC representative spoke after me and tried to fob off my argument and say I was incorrect.

Could CEC please look at the attached three pieces of information and show me where you think I am wrong.

AEMO-5min-Aug10-4am

AEMO-5min-Aug7-1pm

You will see for a normal day at 4am and 1pm, the three main Victorian base load coal fired generators are no where near delivering full capacity of the coal they are burning.

The attached forecast demand curve for the same period shows that there is no demand beyond what could be easily supplied by the base load generators. There is no interconnect demand from other states either, or the base load generators would have been running at higher capacity. Go to the AEMO site and confirm for yourself there was no demand from anywhere during that period which could have caused a need for higher rates of electricity generation.

Yet, when you look at the Waubra wind farm, on both of the attached 5 minute generator outputs from the AEMO, you will see they show 122Mw and 167Mw going into the grid.

Waubra were being paid somewhere in the order of $15,000 per hour ($360,000 per day) when you include the REC’s green energy tariff and normal sale tariff they sell the power for. The electricity Waubra generated was not required and has already been paid for once through the cost structure of the base load power stations. Waubra generating just caused more steam to be vented as waste at the base load stations.

Please explain how you believe Waubra was actually abating GHG during these periods, as more coal was being burnt than demand could use.

Your spokesperson also claimed that two coal fired power stations have not been built purely because wind farms are operating.
Again please look at the demand requirements as publicly published by the AEMO. Show me where your imaginary demand is that the wind farms are supposedly covering. The figures show demand has not actually increased over the past few years as you claim, in fact drop in manufacturing demand has reduced overall demand in many cases, and in several states. Additional coal fired power stations have not been built because there is no requirement.

If you look closely at the figures you will see that 2000Mw may be able to be dropped off the base load grid, but this is nothing to do with wind farms at all, it is because gas fired peaking power stations such as Mortlake are coming on line.

If the CEC are going to try to say that people such as myself are wrong, and then CEC go on to make outrageous and unsubstantiated claims, then the CEC need to show actual generation and demand numbers in a real timeframe such as I have done for you now.

I await your comment, with fact and not just spin.

Regards,
Hamish.


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/09/04/letter-to-clean-energy-council/