Gold plated grid

Gold plating the grid

The following grids are considered to be main-grids:

National Electricity Market (NEM) grid (Eastern states)
the Mt Isa grid (Queensland)
the Alice Springs grid (Northern Territory)
the Darwin-Katherine grid (Northern Territory)
the South Western Interconnected System (Perth, Western Australia)
the North Western Interconnected System (Pilbara, Western Australia)
the Mount Keith Leinster grid (Western Australia)
the Gove grid (Northern Territory)
the Telfer grid (Western Australia)
the Newman grid (Western Australia).

Ref

  

Regulated asset base of NEM transmission companies

Regulated asset base of NEM transmission companies

 

Building new poles and wires

Between 2010 and 2015 the spending on new poles and wires is $20 million per day. Ref

  

Regulated asset base (2011$million) per MW of peak demand and per MWh of energy delivered

  
It is well established that each 2kW air-con units adds $7,000 in costs, mostly in the form of network upgrades. The explosion in air-con demand was mostly responsible for the bullish consumption forecasts for the electricity grid, which in turn was used to justify the huge investment in network upgrades. Now we have too much transmission and the electricity companies are having to charge more to make up for the lost custom. This in turn causes people to use less electricity, which causes increased charges, and so on. This is called the death spiral.

It has been calculated that those who don’t have air-con are paying a subsidy of $330 a year to those that do. 

Yet the power companies insist on blaming subsidies for clean energy.

  
   
   
   
   
Page under construction