A town in Australia has been hailed by the globalist media as an example of how the world can shift to 100% “green energy” to allegedly fight “climate change.”
Broken Hill is a small frontier mining town in New South Wales.
One of Australia’s power companies, Transgrid, claims to be “leading the transition to a clean energy future.”
The company decided that Broken Hill could showcase operating on its own microgrid.
In an effort to make the “woke” town completely self-sufficient, Transgrid even tried to shut down and decommission the town’s two emergency diesel generators.
Advocates of the plan argue that Broken Hill will serve as a blueprint the the rest of the world to comply with the “Net Zero” goals of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
However, the experiment lasted just two weeks.
According to Australia’s ABC, a windstorm brought down seven supporting transmission towers.
Although Broken Hill had held on to its backup generators, one was being serviced.
The other generator failed under the sudden demand.
“There was only one generator that was put under extreme amount of load,” Mayor Tom Kennedy said in a statement.
“Once that was put under load, that also tripped out and we were in a situation where some people in town were without power for 48 hours, others just over 24 hours.
“It was really lack of maintenance on generators that are worth probably $50 million each.”
The “green energy” fail meant that 20,000 people were left without power.
The mines, which serve as the basis of the local economy, had to be shut down too.
Even the far-left Guardian covered the story.
However, the British newspaper, one of the leading promoters of climate propaganda, conveniently avoided commenting on the implications for Net Zero.
“The outages have followed severe thunderstorms on October 17th that damaged power lines, with dodgy backup generators leaving 20,000 locals with on-and-off power,” The Guardian reported.
“Repeated brownouts, particularly throughout the evening peak, occurred when electricity supplied by multiple generators was unable to meet demand.”
The Guardian continued by trying to reassure people that, despite the long blackouts, the energy company agreed to give customers extra time to pay their bills.
“Two power companies – Origin and EnergyAustralia – have agreed to defer bills to those who have been affected by the outages that crippled the region for the better part of a week,” the outlet noted.
“Customers won’t receive free electricity, but won’t be hit with a bill for a minimum of 30 days and the companies will not chase outstanding debts.”
Nick Cater provides more of the complex background in the Australian to how this scenario arose at Broken Hill.
Cater points out that, unfortunately, the expensive backup battery hadn’t worked as it was supposed to, either.
It seems that the plan had been that Broken Hill should be self-sufficient in a situation like this.
“Three years ago, Transgrid boasted that the outback town could run on a renewable energy microgrid if the line to the outside world went down,” Cater wrote.
“It was so confident that it sought permission from the Australian Energy Regulator to decommission the two diesel generators installed in the early 1980s.
“The AER said no, a decision criticized as ‘really silly and perverse’ by Chris Bowen [Australia’s Minister for Climate Change], who held it up as an example of the antiquated energy market thinking he intended to fix.
“Bowen has yet to comment on the fortnight of rolling blackouts across the NSW far west that began when seven transmission towers collapsed on the 260km high-voltage line to Buronga.”
The energy firm behind the scheme is the Australian Gas Light Company (AGL).
The report continues:
Bowen was not there to witness the indignity of AGL’s new mega battery being recharged by diesel generators or watch the Silverton wind turbines sit idle because they weren’t connected to the grid.
He didn’t see Broken Hill residents hunting for the off switch on their rooftop solar arrays because their fluctuating output tripped the diesel generators.
To describe the Silver City’s experience as a setback for Bowen’s dream of turning Australia into a nuclear-free clean energy superpower would be an understatement.
Broken Hill was the renewable energy industry’s Potemkin Village, the recipient of $650m of green investment and the proposed location for the world’s biggest advanced compressed-air energy storage plant.
In 2018, Broken Hill City Council announced its goal to become Australia’s first carbon-free city by 2030.
Three years ago the Mayor at the time, Darriea Turley, welcomed the announcement that AGL was proceeding with plans to build a grid-scale battery, which the company claimed would be a reliable backup power source for 10,000 homes.
“This is a great opportunity for Broken Hill and renewable energies,” Turley told the ABC.
“What they will see is when there is an outage, the battery would click into operation.”
AGL had badly misled Turley and her fellow councillors.
When the storm hit at about midnight local time on Wednesday, October 16th, the battery clicked offline, not on.
The town sat in darkness for several hours until the single operating backup diesel generator could be turned on.
Alarmingly, the backup battery that failed to serve its purpose cost a staggering $41 million.
“AGL was not prepared to keep a $41m battery fully charged, primed for that just-in-case moment,” Cater notes.
“The battery was dispatching power into the national electricity market from early evening on the day of the storm.
“The battery was offline for more than eight days while it was reprogrammed to feed into the local grid and recharged with rooftop solar and diesel.
“Silverton and the Broken Hill solar plant did not resume operation until the region was reconnected to the grid last Thursday.
“Turley’s successor as Mayor, Tom Kennedy, was pictured wielding a shovel at the soil-turning photo-op for the battery in November 2022.
“He told the ABC the battery closely aligned with the council’s desire to see the Silver City at the forefront of renewable energy and energy storage.”
Following the days-long blackout, Tom Kennedy has now changed his tune.
Kennedy told Chris Kenny on Sky News:
“There’s no way that renewables at this time are capable of supplying Broken Hill…
“The reality is it’s not consistent power.
“You don’t have that baseload power, so for Broken Hill, it’s almost useless.”
The principal lesson from Broken Hill is that a stable, consistent baseload supply produced by rotating turbines is essential for stabilizing the grid’s frequency and underwriting fluctuating demand.
Converting DC power from wind and solar to synchronized AC becomes harder the more renewable energy is put into the system.
Not everyone has been as quick as Kennedy to wise up to the monstrous deception the renewable energy industry practiced.
Australia Institute Research Director Rod Campbell appeared before a Parliamentary committee on nuclear power to argue for the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels.
He argued that eliminating clean nuclear power “is what climate science demands.”
Despite scientists now closing in on near-limitless clean energy from nuclear fusion, Campbell claims nuclear power is a distraction.
Campbell’s testimony involved insisting nuclear power was too expensive while admitting he had no idea how much a renewables-only plan would cost.
“I haven’t researched that,” he said.
“Tellingly, the Australia Institute posted a video of Campbell’s testimony on YouTube, suggesting it wasn’t aware that he’d made a clown of himself,” Cater wrote.
“The anti-nuclear Left is immune to contrary facts, paying homage to ‘the science’ while disregarding the laws of physics, urging us to abandon fossil fuels by this time tomorrow while never once considering the constraints of engineering.”
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