Mortlake’s (un)welcoming committee tells developer to shove it.

Nothing attracts a furious mob like a threatened wind farm. Victorians have erupted over plans to spear hundreds of these things into peaceful and prosperous rural communities across their fertile state.

The well-disciplined and concerted opposition that’s broken out has completely rattled the wind power outfit pushing the project and the institutional cronies that does the wind industry’s bidding.

These days, the mobs that gather to oppose wind power developments are well-informed, they’re angry and they’re not about to give up. And, as we reported last week, the troops that marshalled at Hawkesdale and Mortlake are Victoria’s vanguard: Victoria Erupts: Furious Mob Rejects Premier Dan Andrew’s Insane Wind Power Push

In the past, disgruntled locals have been treated with a mix of condescension and contempt by local councils. But with Victoria’s councils finally being held accountable to their constituents for the suffering caused…

If you’re reading this post in Australia, you’re doing so thanks to coal-fired power. Don’t like it? Then get off the internet.

And, while you’re at it, turn off your lights, your air-conditioner, let your smart phone run flat and, just for laughs, start tackling busy intersections without the benefit of traffic lights. Wind ‘powered’ South Australians are masters at it.

The reason that renewable energy zealots and their propagandists have been so successful, to date, is that Joe public has no idea how electricity is generated, and no idea where it really comes from.

On a frosty, dead calm morning in June every last watt and amp being generated comes from coal, gas and hydro, in that order. With that lucky old Sun yet to bob over the horizon and barely a zephyr to be had, around 85% of the electricity that finds its way Australia’s Eastern Grid is…

In a moment, we’ll all hold hands and pray to the Wind Gods.

The world was overrun by insanely costly and chaotically intermittent wind and solar, thanks to an endless stream of other people’s money.

Preaching the gospel about nature’s wonder fuels, isn’t simply about moral posturing and virtue signalling. It’s also about separating taxpayers and power consumers from their hard-earned: over the life of the Federal government’s Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target, the greatest state-sanctioned defalcation in history will cost power consumers more than $60 billion.

But the consequences of all that moralising at other people’s expense, aren’t just financial.

The result of the subsidies (which give wind and solar preferential access to the grid) and the inherently chaotic delivery of wind and solar has placed Australia’s Eastern Grid on the brink of collapse. This summer is guaranteed to result in mass blackouts and routine load shedding, every…

German vegans have mounted a boycott against wind power, incensed by the pointless and bloody slaughter of millions of birds and bats.

Irony comes in many sizes and shapes, but the idea of one group of moralising zealots taking on another group of moralising zealots, is simply delicious (so to speak).

The concept of carnivorous wind and sun worshippers going toe to toe with tofu and mung bean munching Germans throws up the opportunity for a new form of blood-sport, a bit like bear-baiting, in the Deutschland of old.

At least one electricity retailer has decided to deliver up the kind of electricity that might just satisfy the ethically fussy palates of German vegans. The cleverly named ‘Vegawatt’ promises to deliver electricity to satisfy all animal lovers, including hard-core vegos.

Although, STT is not quite sure how Vegawatt proposes separating its morally sound megawatts from the unethical stuff, enabling it…

Wind and large-scale solar are doomed, but the saviour is said to be pumped hydro; paid for, of course, with other people’s money.

Touted by ex-PM Malcom Turnbull and his hapless sidekick, Josh Frydenberg as the Nation’s mega-battery, the heavily-hyped Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme (shelved in the 1970s because it was uneconomic then) has been heralded as the saviour for the Australian wind industry.

The line goes something like this: if we use 3 MWh of wind power to pump water through 27 km of tunnels, over an elevation of 900m, later, when power consumers actually need it, Snowy Hydro could return 2 MWh to the grid.

Never mind squandering 1/4 to 1/3 of the electricity originally generated; never mind that with the inclusion of the $85 per MWh REC the cost of the wind power involved exceeds $110 per MWh; never mind that the owners of Snowy 2.0…

Australia’s grab bag of renewable energy policies are like a marriage made in hell. Destroying its once reliable grid and sending power prices through the roof, Federal and State Renewable Energy Targets are designed to destroy conventional generators. And, so far, they’ve done an admirable job.

Australia now faces a summer of widespread blackouts and mass load shedding, as the RE disease that struck South Australian breaks its border to infect Victoria and New South Wales. There are already serious reserve capacity shortfalls, which become evident whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

Couple sudden and unpredictable 1,000-2,000 MW wind power output collapses with spikes in demand, and you have a grid manager’s nightmare.

So, this summer when you’re scratching around for candles and finding a cold beer turns into a quest for the elusive, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

STT’s engineering contacts in NSW reckon…

Ignoring neighbouring South Australia’s wind & solar debacle, Victoria’s delusional Labor Premier Daniel Andrews is determined to repeat it.

Despite some recent propaganda efforts suggesting that South Australians are currently enjoying 1970s power prices, Australia’s renewable energy capital still pays the world’s highest power prices – thanks to its ludicrous 50% Renewable Energy Target.

SA’s 50% RET was the product of an unhinged state Labor government; its Federal counterpart wants to bring the South Australian ‘experience’ to every other state in the Commonwealth, with a 50% RET to be enforced nationwide.

Keen to replicate the SA disaster, Andrews and his equally unhinged Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio have launched a ludicrous plan to add 1,000 MW of heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar to the Victorian grid.

Having killed off 1,600 MW of reliable and affordable baseload power, once happily produced by its Hazelwood plant, Andrews and D’Ambrosio now…

Don Jelbart: launches million dollar claim against his tormentors.

Tormented by wind turbine noise for years, a group of Victorian farmers have launched Supreme Court action seeking $millions in damages.

The community surrounding the Bald Hills wind farm, built by a Japanese developer, Mitsui and Co, have been tortured by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound since May 2015, when its 52, 2 MW Senvion MM92 turbines spun into action.

Neighbours started complaining to the developer about noise, straightaway.

But, as is their wont, the developer and its goons simply rejected the mounting complaints and carried on regardless. As we explain below, that callousness will soon come back to bite them.

Locals, however, were not perturbed.

Instead, they lawyered up. Engaging the feisty and tenacious Dominica Tannock.

Starting in April 2016, Dominica went after the South Gippsland Shire Council which, under the Victorian Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008…

Renewable energy zealots talk about the ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future being ‘inevitable’. Except that the only thing inevitable about running on sunshine and breezes, is grid chaos and rocketing power prices. Ask a South Australian.

It is also what that crazy German Corporal with the funny moustache called a “big lie”: so helpful to the tyrant because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted and more readily fall victim to a colossal untruth, than the small lie.

The idea that a country can run itself entirely on wind and solar power is, of course, patent nonsense.

But, there are plenty profiting from that ideologically driven fiction, who have worked out that if you ramp up the claims to the height of ridiculousness, there are plenty of idiots ready to believe you.

California has done just that.

California cannot run on…

When it comes to wind and solar, no country went harder or faster than Germany. As they say though, act in haste, repent at your leisure.

A grid on the brink of collapse and rocketing power prices is all that Germans have to show for their obsession about powering themselves with daily sunshine and occasional breezes.

Once again, nature’s wonder fuels have left German power consumers in the lurch. And, once again, its ‘dirty’ old coal-fired power plants prevented a return to the Dark Ages.

How Coal Saved Germany’s Summer
The Global Warming Policy Forum
Andreas Mihm
31 August 2018

Where does the electricity come from when the last coal-fired power plant is shut down?

How safe is the electricity flow after leaving nuclear and coal power? The government relies on imports, the energy industry considers this very risky.

In mid-August, the Federal Environment Agency rejoiced that electricity generation from…