And on queue we get a bit of a half story from one of the regular story tellers.
The facts are that those generators, which are currently being converted to gas, five due to be done before December Covid not withstanding, are peakers. Their primary role is to be there for the very few days in summer where we need peak assist. They are also there for black start purposes should we have another interconnector failure.
They are not there to " stabilise the grid " on an ongoing basis.
Interestingly enough, we had a failure of the Heywood connector in Feb this year.
What happened ? Not much really.
The interconnector tripped and all that fossil power from Victoria was disconnected. The big batteries of SA played a crucial role in the catch, there was a bit of load shedding and then they got back to business. They did so well that the Portland aluminium smelter ( 500ish MW ) ran off the islanded SA grid for a few weeks until the interconnector was repaired .
Is SA dependent on imported fossil power ? Yes, it is . However, year on year, it requires less and less. Meanwhile, year on year , it exports more and more power to the east.
So, while some big talkers are flapping their gums pretending they know about something about the issue, in reality they don't.
" Cannot fuel them fast enough at full load ". Pffft. What a crock.
