South Australia, cited by Brian Paxton as an exemplar of renewable energy and batteries, is in fact a textbook example of the ruinous folly of wind and solar for grid electricity, and demonstrates that batteries are useless for storing it (“Get Off the Ox Wagon”, April 18). When powered mainly by coal, Australia saw its electricity prices dropping steadily. Then, in about 2005, they started putting renewable electricity onto the grid. Prices rose rapidly, as they do all around the world when renewables are added. South Australia went further. It adopted the same lunatic plan the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Integrated Resources Plan 2018 wants to foist upon us: a mixture of renewables and gas, a sure recipe for disaster. In fact, the disaster was even bigger than could have been predicted. Electricity prices soared, reaching at one point in July 2016 the astonishing figure of R140/kWh, which is more than 150 times Eskom’s average selling price. There were a...
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