Still living in the dark on baseload power – TheAge.com.au

Still living in the dark on baseload power

Paddy Manning – October 31, 2009 – TheAge.com.au

WE ARE often told we need more ‘‘baseload’’ power.

But baseload power generated in a distant coalfield, delivered by a dumb grid, suits almost nobody these days, bar the incumbent operators.

What’s occurred in the past decade or so is a rapid growth in peak loads—especially on summer afternoons, when everyone gets home and turns on their air-conditioners, causing a huge spike in demand.

Total electricity use, as against peak demand, has increased much more slowly and even fallen in some cases.

Forget for a moment whether those air-conditioners are necessary; we don’t need to build more baseload power stations just because peak loads are expanding.

A presentation this month by AGL’s Paul Simshauser, chairman of the Loy Yang brown coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley, showed the national electricity market (NEM) had too much base and intermediate-load power (by about 4000 megawatts, enough to power more than 1.5 million homes) and not enough peak-load power (we are short about 1700 megawatts)…

via Still living in the dark on baseload power. – theage.com.au