Energy market watcher Paul McArdle of specialist firm Global-Roam found the aggregate unavailability of the remaining 44 coal-fired power station units in the NEM hit 24 per cent last year.

Back in the day, unavailability in the coal fired fleet averaged around 15%.

Some of the current poor performance is down to age, but mostly because of the wear and tear on the boilers and steam systems from operating units, designed and engineered to run steady state, on an on-off basis to accomodate intermittent renewables.

However, ridiculous Bowen and his Arts/Law chums at AEMO have a much bigger problem ahead as the coal units are withdrawn. AEMO’s own NEM Generation report gives a helpful graphic which should assist, but apparently doesn’t.

The graphic graphically illustrates the renewable investment dilemma. Because of the intermittency of renewable generation, a massive overbuild is required to provide sufficient power for when the wind blows out at night.

The problem comes when the wind is blowing briskly on a sunny day – and the overbuilt fleet is trying to send out about 4x demand.

At the moment, there is sufficient space in the market to prioritise renewables over coal and gas when However, along the road to Green Nirvana there will soon come a time when:

a) coal will have to shut in completely (reducing availability and increasing the use of gas for firming); and

b) renewables will also be curtailed. Somehow. Undetermined.

This time is very close. Consequently Robber Baron investors are shying away from building out Bowen’s windmills and Solar farms – because of uncertainty over windfall profits. Essentially sitting on the sidelines awaiting a golden shower from a desperate government.

A renewable Death Spiral.
Top Men.

Bushie, I am with you about not wanting to be led to an ‘ideological Stalingrad’ re Trump. I am torn, because he was definitely done a great wrong, and he’s an admirable fighter who has more than anyone demonstrated The Way of the Swamp and shown how and what to fight. But everything is so fractured in the US that from what I can see only a new broom can lead the Republicans to a swift and extremely decisive victory, for people are desperate for change, and that broom can only be DeSantis.

Hairy disagrees. As do many here. But where are Trump’s extra votes going to come from?

I note too that the axes are already out for DeSantis, with ideological opponents in the alphabet soup mix already slamming Florida as a place of fascist rule due to DeSantis’ recent legislation to redress some of the worst of the swamp’s influence in schools, hospitals and corporations re transgenderism in particular, but also on abortion.

Unless Trump backs him, DeSantis too will have a harder job winning. If Trump splits the vote, the US is over. It’s a mess.

job interviews in cafes
the worst

Had one of those once, decided to sink my chances and parted with the notion I’d use free time to goof off and work on my own projects.

Had another one where I was shocked old mate even bothered to call me in, he literally just bragged about how awesome he was. If I wanted to watch someone do that, I’d already have a Chaturbate account.

Then again a solicitor I know in his first job after admission had his boss try to pay him with cocaine, he went off and told him he was an idiot, how can he pay rent with coke, etc.

except for employee counselling in cafes
saw a guy pull that one once at a table 40 cm away from mine
started OK
work smarter not harder
code for just work 16 hours a day
ended badly when the subject started to loudly call him out on the bullshit

I have seen an aggressive overweight freemartin loudly counsel an underling, she was a commissioned NSW Ambulance Officer, he was a plebeian NSW Ambulance paramedic.

It would have been less awkward if there was a lewd act with a creamed bun involved.

It’s almost impossible to observe anything in the real world that doesn’t prove germ theory is lunacy.

Okay.

Go and get Zika or Ebola and prove what idiots we are.

The overbuild in renewables.
The VNI West transmission proposal bypasses any major population centres.
Bendigo needs a power upgrade. A 220kva line and existing easement is already in place. It would make sense to route the national grid line through that path and pick up Bendigo along the way to NSW.
That option was rejected over the ‘out of the blue’ western link. Bendigo would still need a transmission upgrade at extra cost.
Only a body like AEMO could dream up money wasting ineffective infrastructure on a national scale.
Excepting the fantastical NBN nation building scheme.

i agree with him that the subs are too expensive

Interesting, ain’t it, that the defence review exalts the coming submarine fleet while simultaneously advancing the case for robot mines and undersea unmanned subs.

So we’re going into hock for capital ships whose advocates concede they’ll be targets and, by implication, likely victims of the next undersea tech wave.

Genius!

It’s all about swaying the independent voters (which like it or not Trump’s not able to do) and I’m not happy with being led to some ideological Stalingrad because “Trump”.

He might sway some independents but it’s the women who hate him. Women like my mum who couldn’t describe a single bad policy that Trump implemented him but just knows that he’s awful. OTOH she’ll complain about all of Biden’s policies but still thinks he’s great.

What a catastrophe the 19th Amendment was.

In which Megyn Kelly nukes Keith Olbermann into small gobbets of smoking flesh.

(The context is Tucker’s future prospects.)

Dot says: April 27, 2023 at 10:19 am

If I squat in the JFK Memorial in Runnymede, UK (which is sovereign US soil), do I get a claim to US citizenship?

When we were a nation of laws that may have worked.

Lizzie

Hairy disagrees. As do many here. But where are Trump’s extra votes going to come from?

Adopting the DemonRat system of early voting and vote “harvesting”. Just starting to do that would probably make the Swamp declare it illegal (at least for Republicans).

No one is listening: Spooked landlords fuelling rental crisis

An avalanche of mum and dad property owners will sell if the Greens’ extreme policies succeed while the Albanese government is distracted building low-income ghettos.

1 HOUR AGO By ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN

Oz Sub Article – if anyone can post – Thanks

Rent crisis – Why the price hikes have only started

A new report from the PropTrack warns city-based rents will keep rising at ‘a rapid pace’ in the months ahead.

By JAMES KIRBY

areffsays:
April 27, 2023 at 10:37 am
i agree with him that the subs are too expensive

Genius!

If we ever get the three from the US, they will have a useful role as motherships to the unmanned versions.

Any local build will be sub (ho, ho)-contracting to US builders for low technology modules (galleys, accommodation modules).

Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.”
“My mother? Let me tell you about my mother!” [kapow]

Replicants don’t like Mothers’ Day:

WTF? Corporate America is canceling Mother’s Day (24 Apr, via Instapundit)

Did you know that Mother’s Day is controversial? I didn’t. Pretty sure nobody did. After all, everybody has a mother.

Corporate America, though, has for some reason decided that Mother’s Day is a “sensitive” time, a “challenging” time, or a “difficult” time, so they are inviting customers to opt out of emails related to the triggering day.
…
When I first saw this Twitter threat I thought it must be a joke, but no, it is real. Mother’s Day is apparently an oppressive thing to some people–enough that corporate America doesn’t find it “difficult” or “challenging” to be “sensitive” to your trauma and let you ignore the fact that you were born of a woman.
…
What’s particularly fascinating is that this is clearly coordinated somehow. Nothing like this arises organically. So: who? I have no idea, except that it is likely some alphabet-person movement.

Mothers are now haram. I suppose for a tranny who thinks she’s a man you might dislike the idea that the woman who gave birth to you wasn’t your father. Bring on the dinosaur asteroid, we’re doomed.

he was wrong to target Trump supporter Ray Epps a dozen times as a possible FBI plant

I’m naturally skeptical about many things, and I acknowledge that some right-of-centre media outlets can be as hyperbolic as their opposites (Bongino’s aggregation site is like this), but some of the questions raised regarding the presence and actions of certain individuals (including ‘Ray Epps’ but most of whom seem to remain unidentified, at least publicly), both preceding and during the events of the 6th of Jan. around the Capitol, require answers. Why was the individual identified as Ray Epps filmed removing fencing around the Capitol lawn prior to the arrival of the crowd from Trump’s speech?

Why haven’t we heard anything about the pipe bomb (bombs? Two?) that diverted security attention? Average citizens from all over the U.S. have been tracked down, and in some cases, imprisoned without charge, but the massive security apparatus is unable to discover anything at all about the (apparently crudely constructed) pipe bombs?

Questions unanswered do not automatically prove a grand conspiracy, but they do suggest either an unwillingness or inability to facilitate accountability that is very troubling.

And This Idiot Leads America?

Biden cheat sheet shows he had advance knowledge of journalist’s question

A cheat sheet held by President Biden during a Wednesday press conference revealed that the 80-year-old commander in chief had advance knowledge of a question from a journalist.

“How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?” read a question from Los Angeles Times reporter Courtney Subramanian.

The revelation came during a joint press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that discussed growing nuclear threats from North Korea — as the nations celebrate the 70th anniversary of their alliance.

Another cheat sheet showed the names of other Biden administration officials to relay the order remarks would be delivered at the press conference.

It’s not the first time Biden’s crib notes have been outed by speedy photojournalists — which fuel Republicans’ speculation about his mental acuity. His physician reported the president was in good health in February, but refused to field questions from reporters about his cognitive strength.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS WANT TO MAKE THEIR RELIGION OFFICIAL

By now it is hardly original to point out that environmentalism has become a religion, with the climatistas being a full-fledged cult. Time magazine, which somehow sill exists, thinks we should make Earth Day an official religious holiday:

The Case For Making Earth Day a Religious Holiday

[O]n this 53rd Earth Day we thought it useful to pose what a real Earth Day should represent and how it could form a central time for a new approach to worship. . .

In short, we must make nature central to our belief system with Earth Day or any number of earth-focused ceremonial days serving as regular reminders of what we owe our home planet.

Now I am actually all for this. Hear me out: if we start making Earth Day and the theology of this article officially recognized religious holidays, we can go to federal court to invalidate environmentalism as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. We can’t be mixing up church and state you know.

With the projected migrant influx in the next 2 years, as well as general inflation, interest rates, stagflation (yay)

The government will implement their favourite thing, price controls on rentals to stick it to the landlords.

This will be supported by the general public because they are stupid…

It will lead to shortages in rental availability…

A Puppet President and a simpering Yes-Girl looking for another term. I hope the Republicans can making something of this in their advertising. They shouldn’t be nice.

I kan see that this kreepy pair make a very large target fo Repub advertising, but I can’t see how the advertising wins votes to defeat the tribalism and the cheating.
If Democrat voters were willing to vote in a vegetable to ‘get Trump’, what the hell would they NOT do?

As Instapundit says, the cabal that made Biden pResident must answer for his failed presidency.

This leaves the Epps entanglement very wide because there were other agencies he could’ve assisted.

True. And the questions don’t just revolve around Epps.
Someone from the U.S. Center for Security Studies (I may have mangled that name) wrote an intriguing analysis a year or so ago, about numerous individuals observed in footage of the day, and how they appeared to co-ordinate some of the crowd behaviour. Initially my thought was that these may have been simply a better-organised militia, but I’ve not read of their identification, which I would imagine would be a big publicity boost to, and confirmation of, the ‘insurrection’ narrative.

It’s the pipe bomb thing that stands out to me, though. Again, publicly identifying and prosecuting an individual or (civilian) group for the pipe bombs would substantially support the dominant narrative. The absence of even a scapegoat for the bombs is incredibly odd.

Bolt’s article. Just wow.

He’s already on the fire-if-controversial list, ever since Mordy learned how to mindread.
Newscorpse management have been watching him like vultures for a long time methinks.

This is magnificent. And of course, the NYT editor and fellow inky wretches had the questioner ejected:

https://twitter.com/simonateba/status/1651190850230054914

cohenite

The thing to remember about CF is that it is the AVERAGE over a year expressed as a % of the nameplate or installed capacity. That is you never know when you are going to get power from the useless things. You might get a 2 months of near 100% and then practically nothing for the next 2 months. it varies from minute to minute and is completely unpredictable. Renewables are the stupidiest things in the history of stupid things.

My point stands. Run-down coal is multiples the capacity factors even in that state than brand new solar and wind.

Revere mothers, real women,
Kathleen Folbigg?
… not tranies aping womanhood.
Dylan Mulvaney prettier than 99% of TERFS?

I’ve had the houseguest pleasure of a real woman’s company these past few days, prior to her return to Tasmania. How to know the XX chromosomes were all present and collect? Well, rather than hop straight into my shower stall she insisted on cleaning it to the point of AV Jennings display home pristine magnificence.

Then she did the kitchen. It’s now so clean now you could eat in it.

Women, they’re lovely.

This is magnificent.

Areff – Mr Ateba has been a real thorn in the side of the black lesbian diversity-pick press weenie. He is fairly protected from being ejected by being an actual black African journalist. Good on him!

Cassie, I’m always amused by the number of clapped out diesel 4wds up here adorned with The Greens, or Sea Shepherd or whatever stickers.

Key in, burp, burp, fart, and off they go in a cloud of black fumes.

Bruce of Newcastlesays:
April 27, 2023 at 12:15 pm
Initially my thought was that these may have been simply a better-organised militia, but I’ve not read of their identification

Antifa, Muddy. They were caught putting on MAGA hats.

The fascist militia of the DemonRat Party, now that the KKK stinks too much even for them.

Cassie
Dare you to pose as a bereaved bicycle crash widow and tie a few dozen “loud” ribbons on that fence…. go on, I dare you

Cassie: get some NIMBY stickers run off, and apply liberally.

Plus some HYPOCRITE ones for greenies who drive diesels.

BTW, was speaking to a Labor well-connected inner-city type yesterday, who reckons that the Voice will get in with a 60% vote.

For those who like to Tweet check out:
Henrietta Cook who is Health Editor for The Age. Tweeted about article in Age about research that says Vax does not cause heart issues. No surprise to see comments telling her research funded by big pharma.

CH 7 which had news clip about same research above.

A Current Affair last night on Vax no 5 with a Sydney pharmacist doing good business.

Each attracting plenty of negative comments.

Reading a lot of commentism about how “America doesn’t want another exhausting birl with Trump”… America is tired of the toxicity of Candidates Debates, America is falling out of love with the Don, the Reps need to cede this territory and drop this argument or lose votes, De Santis can’t motivate the Ind votes in inner urban Mid West upper middle income yada yada yada…
No, all Trump needs is to win in 2024, and be seen to win.
And all he needs to do that is to do what he did in 2016 and 2020 – rally big, dream big, talk big, punch big. Keep the heat on the vote counters, on the esky caravans, on changes to electoral laws by crooked state governors, n the yawning gulf where “down-ballot” votes shpuld be, on the tally room lockouts, on the ballot drop mules, focus the gaze of the righteous on the midnight spikes and dodgy counting machines.
THE ONLY modification I would advise the Magnificent Bastard to adopt if I were face to face in an elevator would be to combine his rally itinerary with early voting drives. Get the MAGA brigade to knock on doors, distribute ballots, help the olds with getting to the post office. And fold that grass-roots contact into his rally speeches.
Again, Trump must win, and he must be seen to win.

What is a Democrat?

By Donald N. Finley

I am a Democrat, and I think you, as an average American, are an idiot.

You let me get away with everything. I can tell you I’m going to do something unethical, criminal, unconstitutional, or unprecedent6ed, and you seldom try to stop me, or call me out on it.

Haven’t you seen the video proof?

I also rewrite history by simple repetition. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” That’s what I do.

I lie big, loud, often and repeatedly to accuse you of any variety of unspeakable things, most of which I’m doing myself. If you challenge me, I’ll ruin you. I’ll make up a lie, then release the puppets. Maybe I’ll make a call to your employer, or your local prosecutor’s office. Either way, you’ll be too busy to bother me again. Just ask Michael Flynn how it works.

Whenever I screw up, I just blame someone else, distribute the talking points, and let the puppets do the work.

I also take credit for great historical moments by claiming the follow-on accomplishments as my own, and I milk the good will your ignorance provides me. Your ignorance is why I get credit for standing up for you, and protecting you from those who truly care, because I really don’t. I opposed those great moments, and like Joe Biden, I’ve been wrong on everything that mattered.

Proof positive of two things — I’m good at what I do, and you’re stupid to keep letting me do it.

I also have my minions, which you know as teachers, or professors.

They spent half of every waking day during your formative years indoctrinating you, making sure you would grow up learning and believing my lies. They stripped you of most of your critical thinking skills. They helped you pick your identity, and ensured you would pigeonhole yourself into an oppressed group, and thereby develop a hatred for your country and a deep resentment toward other groups. I’ve planted the seeds for decades now for you to feel victimized by unrealized entitlements, and have a clear vector to those you find at fault. By design, my minions haven’t taught you to succeed in life; they’ve taught you to hate, then sent you into real life short of tools and skills, but well-primed with a burning fuse.

Over those same decades, I built the infrastructure to disincentivize hard work, and create dependence on government and social welfare programs. I love to create dependence. I enable it, nurture it, and keep supporting it until it’s an addiction.

In addition to the addicts I’ve created, some of my best work has been with women.

Once proud housewives, mothers, and teachers, look at what I have them doing today. They march in the streets chanting obscenities and declaring their right to kill their babies. As teachers, they groom young children into alternative lifestyles by teaching gender is not a fact, but rather a choice. They distort American history, turn the founders into little more than greedy slaveholders, and cast America as systemically evil, built as such by white, racist, intolerant men.

Women believe I’m all in for them.

After all, I’ve supported abortion for decades, and they’ve been a reliable voting bloc.

It doesn’t matter that only .5% of the population is transgender, official U.S. policy is to allow biological men to compete against biological women. Are women looking out for other women? They must be focused on something else… just as they should be. I plan to destroy all of women’s competitive sports, and I’ll do so with the help of women.

Caught on yet? I don’t care about governing. I don’t care about fixing, improving, building, growing, developing, or any other word related to progress, other than the word ‘progressive’.

I care about power, control, personal comfort, and money. And none of those in any way includes you.

Year Zero.

673 university professors sign letter opposing courses on America’s founding, Constitution (26 Apr)

The first piece of legislation, House Bill 96, would require students to take a 3 credit-hour course covering America’s founding and history. Required reading for the course would include the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation

Three whole hours on the Constitution, DoI and Lincoln’s proclamation? How awful!

Never complain about boomers ever again!

Employers reveal why Gen Z is the hardest generation to work with (26 Apr)

Despite many of them having only just entered the workforce, Generation Z — those born in 1997 onwards — is already getting a bad rap at the office. According to a recent survey of 1,300 managers, three out of four agree that Gen Z is harder to work with than other generations — so much so that 65% of employers said they have to fire them more often. One in eight have let go of a Gen Zer less than one week after their start date, the study found. The results ring true with managers across the US and in various industries, who report that young hires have been difficult to deal with

Entitlement R us.

Meanwhile up north:

Northern Territory Children’s Commissioner Colleen Gwynne was told seven months before she was charged in a police investigation that her contract would not be renewed because the government wanted to appoint an Aboriginal commissioner, her lawyers say.

Ms Fyles has refused to comment on the specific issues raised in the letter.

The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up.

Decades of consolidation has left the Pentagon vulnerable to mishaps—including when the sole maker of a crucial type of gunpowder went offline

INDEN, La.—Nearly two years ago, an errant spark inside a mill caused an explosion so big it destroyed all the building’s equipment and blew a corrugated fiberglass wall 100 feet.

It also shut down the sole domestic source of an explosive the Department of Defense relies on to produce bullets, mortar shells, artillery rounds and Tomahawk missiles.

In each case, a small amount of black powder is used to detonate a more powerful explosive packed in the same bullet or missile. A 155mm shell for a howitzer, for example, will use half an ounce of black powder, lodged next to 26 pounds of a more powerful explosive.

Sales volume is limited and that means profits can be too thin to support more than a single production facility.

This type of vulnerability is so common, the Pentagon describes it as the “single source” problem. Only one foundry in the U.S. makes the titanium castings used in howitzers, and only one company makes the rocket motor used in the Javelin antitank weapon widely used in Ukraine.

Overall, the defense industrial base shrank to 55,000 vendors in 2021, down from 69,000 in 2016.

Despite consolidation, the networks of companies remain large. The average American aerospace company relies on hundreds of first-tier subcontractors, according to Defense Department statistics, and thousands in the second and third tiers below that.

Black powder is made essentially the same way it was 200 years ago. Some of that rusticity, using huge 6-ton metal and wooden wheels and grinders and sifters, is by design. The parts minimize the sparks that caused the accident in 2021 in the mill, where the fine powder is compressed into cakes and crushed into various sizes, and shut down the plant.

Late last year, the Defense Department identified 27 critical chemicals that have no U.S. production and are sourced from places, including Russia and China, considered adversaries of the U.S. The Pentagon expects to spend more than $207 million to bring production of materials back to the U.S. as soon as possible.

A handful of critical materials used by the U.S. are only produced inside war-torn Ukraine, said Anthony Di Stasio, a senior Pentagon official in charge of prioritizing and investing in defense production.

Stimulating the marketplace to bring production to the U.S. is doable, he said. “I’d be really surprised if we couldn’t get this done within the next three years,” Mr. Di Stasio said, of the overall effort.

Format fail, only the last para/sentence is mine.

The explosive properties of black powder, a simple mixture of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate, were first discovered in 9th-century China, and it was widely used for centuries.

In the 20th century, smokeless gunpowder, made with different materials, became the preferred propellant—the explosive pushing a projectile out of a gun or cannon barrel—because it was more powerful, produced less smoke and left less residue. It was also somewhat safer to produce.

Three whole hours on the Constitution, DoI and Lincoln’s proclamation? How awful!

BoN,

In the US university system a “3 credit-hour course” is in fact a semester long course of 3 hours classwork per week and is worth 3 credits towards a degree.

Reporter Who Secretly Gave Biden Question in Advance Gets Relentlessly Trolled

As RedState reported, Joe Biden got caught red-handed again with a “cheat sheet” while giving a press conference on Wednesday. This time was a bit different than past occurrences, though.

What made this time more concerning was that he had the actual question the reporter was set to ask him as well.

In all my time following politics, I’ve never seen anything like this.

Regardless, who is this reporter?

Several of her past posts on Twitter have been re-upped, and the comments are brutal.

Cernovich
@Cernovich

What’s the process for getting your question pre-approved by the Biden regime? Who do you send it to for approval?

Do you find it debasing to submit yourself to this process, and then fail to disclose this coordination to viewers and readers?

Tassie team in the AFL – forget it – 23 player only in the AFL and in the VFL/VFA their combined state team in mid to bottom end of the ladder.
Bad idea – if the state has not got the players do not do it.

Hey OO:

students can turn in work until right before grades are due…

They can do that now in years 11/12 under the SA/NT system. Don’t know about the rest of the country.

T

dover0beach says: April 27, 2023 at 12:46 pm

[ DeSantis’ ] resume seems to have Deep State fingerprints on it, certainly early on.

Is the road to Damascus not open to all?

His paleodeepstatitude only means he’s not permitted to tell you why he changed course.

Boomers condemning the generation raised by their children as lacking in virtue is probably not the win they think it is.

Maybe. Being disappointed in grandchildren is hardly a “win”.

Unless you have lots of hands-on activity with the little ones it’s very hard to influence them. You only have to hope that firstly, your own children have acquired your parenting skills and secondly, the other grandparents are on board too. The wheels can fall off so easily.

My reading of Florida’s measures over the last three years defy what you say.

As did my observations while living there during that period. In comparison to other states Florida had minimal restrictions during the covid era and most involved retirement homes and medical facilities.

We’re not shutting down, we’re gonna go forward, we’re gonna continue to protect the most vulnerable….particularly when you have a virus that disproportionately impacts one segment of society, to suppress a lot of working-age people at this point I don’t think would likely be very effective. – DeSantis, June 2020

In Quality Journalism news:

Lip readers reveal words exchanged between Meghan and Harry at LA basketball game before cameras caught the moment she swerved Duke’s advances

“No. It’s over, Harold.
I’m in love with the Samoan pool man.”

Bruce O’Nuke:

The Federal Government has announced it will refine its aged care pledge to have a mandatory nurse in residential nursing homes at all times.

I think it is reasonable to say this is turning out to be a not so small catastrophe.

I worked with a bloke in a small country town who declared he and his wife were doing their nursing degrees together. They intended to open an Aged Care home and employ only Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing.
They would do the admin and if drugs were required that ENs couldn’t give out, they would be on call.
To say I was appalled was an understatement.

Public Hospitals are where you go to die [the caring staff will help you every step of the way].

Never been sick in the other capitals, but if you’re in Brizzy, head to St Andrews in Spring Hill.
Yeah, you’ve gotta pay, but they’ll send you the bill.

Missile assembly will be sub-contracted out to a friendly firm willing to setup shop in a location where Labor needs to keep the State onside.

South Australia for the win … and win does not mean completing anything by next election(s).