SA reduces blackouts by closing Holden Factory

It’s a creative South Australian solution to an unstable, expensive grid: close large factories and have less blackouts. If they can close enough, it’s guaranteed to succeed:

Part of the soon-to-be vacated Holden factory in Adelaide is about to be transformed into a temporary power station to help stave off load-shedding blackouts this summer.

But the car industry’s closure will help the authorities manage the risk of blackouts in another way.

The exit of a once powerful manufacturing sector will see the state using less electricity, particularly during the all-important summer peak.

The information is contained in the latest Electricity Forecasting Insights published by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

From a story last year:

The closure of Holden’s Elizabeth plant is expected to result in 13,000 job losses across the company and its supply chain.

Energy use in SA is set to fall from 3,116MW to 3,035MW in summer peaks. Even so, they’ll still need more temporary generators (time to cut more jobs?):

Nevertheless, AEMO is forecasting widespread shortfalls of reserve power over the next two summers, prompting the State Government to invest in temporary generators.

The ABC and other green-fans think this next point is a bonus:

“Minimum demand in South Australia is expected to be negative by 2027-28, as rooftop PV generation is expected to exceed customer demand in some hours,” the report stated.

They don’t realize that the lack of any demand during the middle of the day makes it very hard for any baseline power generator to invest in the South Australian market. That means SA is utterly dependent on either the interconnectors to ugly brown coal in Victoria or to government owned expensive temporary generation.

Last year the Premier of SA was blowing up cheap coal fired generators, and he was travelling to the US to beg for money from Holden:

Mr Weatherill has used a meeting with GM officials in Detroit to implore the carmaker to give the state a $5 million “community fund” as an “act of goodwill”.

And this is how you make a poor state that needs GST subsidies from other states.

h/t Mark M, Pat, Andrew, Dave B.

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