Aussies going all in on Big Green?

 Viv Forbes:

No country on Earth relies entirely on wind and solar energy, but Australian politicians aim to achieve this miracle.

They are leaders in the Stampede of the Green Lemmings.

Solar energy has a huge problem.  Even on sunny days, almost nothing is generated to meet the demand peaks around breakfast time and dinner time — the solar energy union only works a six-hour day, goes on strike with little warning, and takes quite a few sickies.

So, for at least 18 hours of every day, electricity must come from somewhere else.  Then, around noon, the millions of solar panels pour out far more electricity than is needed, causing electrical and financial chaos in the electrical grid.

Naturally, our green "engineers" see wind power as filling the solar energy gaps.  But wind power has a union, too, and they take lots of sickies when there is no wind over large areas of the continent.  And they down tool in storms, gales, or cyclones in case their whirling toys are damaged.

So the green planners claim that batteries can solve these intermittent problems of the green energy twins.

They will need humongous batteries.

Batteries are just a crutch for a crippled generation system.  And with fierce lithium battery fires reported regularly, who wants a humongous fire-prone battery over the back fence or in the basement?

A battery is not a generator of electricity.  Every battery (including Snowy 2) is a net consumer of electricity.  Batteries are very expensive, most lose capacity as they age, and every conversion between DC storage and AC transmission triggers energy losses.  To collect, back up, and redistribute green electricity will require a continent-spanning spider web of transmission lines with all the costs and energy losses that network entails.

Still nights and calm cloudy days are what really expose the problems of wind-solar-batteries.

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Fossil fuels and nuclear power are much more reliable and not as scary as Big Green claims. Also, "climate change" is one of the more overrated phenomena in history.  Those who have been predicting doom and gloom from climate change have been serially wrong for decades.  If you believed the climate change crowd the poles would be ice-free now and coastal cities would be underwater.  It is not even close.