Hasn't quite got to the stage of unreliability here, but electricity costs four or five times as much as gas.
You are then Lucky.
gas used to be the cheap energy source here and like coal, we have or at least had, many lifetimes supply. now gas is more expensive than electricity and in many parts bottled gas is cheaper than natural gas. Work that out!
I'm not sure what happened to all our gas, if we sold it all to china for .1C litre or if the gas fields that were supposed to last forever ran out of they haven't bothered setting up more wells. Only few years back there was a big push for that fracking crap. Despite the problems all around the world they said it wouldn't happen here because they were going to do it differently. The only Difference a bit of research showed was more in the name they gave it rather than any procedural differences.
You don't have to be a geologist to see that smashing the earths crust into little pieces can't be a good thing. Practice proved that and thankfully it was banned.
Give that one to the greens or whomever had the Common sense to kill if before it killed off everything we have.
Thing I don't understand is, can our politicians not do basic arithmetic? If so, why have they not looked at the cost vs returns figures for wind and solar over the world, and realised that this is going nowhere except to financial ruin?
I believe the thing you don't understand is they are not there to serve the interests of the people as they say ( lie) but rather the interests of their business that give them election funds and support in exchange for policy's favorable to their bottom line.
They can add up and calculate real well..... where the most donations are going to come from, who'd going to pay them the most when they get out of politics, how their buddies in big biz are going to make the most money that if they don't get kickbacks they or their families have financial interest.
It's all about the elite lining their own pockets and it's got so blatant now people just accept it which is the real start of the downfall of society.
I used to say that one of the things Australia did best was take every failed policy and ideal from around the world and improve in it. To make it a bigger failure and waste of money etc. I now realise that's not true, lots of countries seem to do that better than anything else.
Right now there is this greenwashed mental ality that Oz HAS to lead and show the world the way forward with Renewables. Where the fk did this come from and why? Our chief gubbermint greenwash scientist already said if Oz cut all emissions it wouldn't make a bit of difference to the world Climate so anyone with a modicum of intelligence would ask why we want to sacrifice our national economy and way of living for an ideal?
Of course the answer is because there is a buck in it for Gubbermint and their big biz puppet masters.
If it were about the environment, it' wouldn't be about building new solar and wind farms, first thing you'd do is stick solar on all the existing free space right where the power was needed.... on home rooftops. But No, they are limiting that more and more at the same time they are telling us they need more PV farms taking up land hundred's of KM from where the power is needed.
Seems Illogical till you re think and realism that allowing people to have their own PV COSTS them revenue and takes away control where building solar farms to appease the hopeful that need a crutch to believe in allows them to keep the people dependent on them and therefor not only gives them revenue but what they really want, CONTROL.
I now have a wind turbine visible from my workshop window. Fortunately far enough away to not be a nuisance, but to me this is ominously like spotting the tanks of the 7th Panzer Division on the horizon. Stand by to be invaded. Resistance is futile.
I have been reading up on the effects of wind turbines. The health and environmental effects are shocking. Passed off by the power co's of course as all fallacy and people whinging but the instruments they measure sub sonic sound are not lying or have opinions.
Like Cigarettes the health effects which are already known and understood untill too many people get sick and the evidence becomes over whealming.
In the mean time, Like the Cigarette companies, they will cash in for all they can and Fk peoples health and the environment.
Probably got a good 20 years of profiteering before it all comes out and compensation has to be paid and by that time the current board members and CEO's will be long since retired with MultiMillion golden handshakes and it will be someone else's problem to deal with.
This is the way Politics and Big biz work now and why worrying about ' The environment" is a complete and utter fools game.