Everyone ‘loves’ the idea of wind and solar power, until they’re sweltering in the dark. 200,000 Victorian homes and businesses left powerless – after a sudden and dramatic wind power output collapse on 25 January – have got a taste of what wind ‘powered’ South Australians have been putting up with for years. And they don’t like it.

Above is the wind power output in Victoria (up there with SA as an Australian RE ‘hero’) on 25 January – for 200,000 Victorians aka ‘Black(out) Friday’ – courtesy of Aneroid Energy.

In this post, we covered the fact that Victorian wind power output struggled to produce 20% of its nameplate capacity, while hundreds of thousands of households and businesses struggled to survive without refrigeration, air-conditioning, or any of those other creature comforts one expects in a (notionally) first world country.

One seasoned Melburnian, Judith Sloan recounts what it’s…