Freezing in the Dark

Climate Cult 46 Comments

New Zealand power outages.

Earlier today Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she wants to find out if last night’s loss of power to thousands of North Island homes could have been prevented but “it was not good enough that we could not warm our homes”.

Ardern said they should know more about what happened this afternoon.

Transpower earlier today said Kiwis were close to another power crisis this morning after tens of thousands of Kiwis were plunged into darkness last night.

General manager of operations Dr Stephen Jay told the Herald he couldn’t rule out any further disruption to the network, stating “the emergency is far from over”.

“Things are running tight. Supplies have been running to the wire this morning.”

Fun fact, New Zealand currently produces 84 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. But that’s not enough for their Prime Minister. 

How cold does it actually get in New Zealand?

46 Replies to “Freezing in the Dark”

    1. I’m 67 and still no pony,not even a dog.
      Although me and my eldest sister tried to pull a fast one on the parents with a cute little Malamute we said we found.
      Kids eh.

    2. I thought Kiwis and their neighbours the Ozzies where tough, freedom loving real men and women just like us Canucks, eh, uh…never mind

    1. And with that , crop failures.
      Maybe that’s why TPTB are pushing the clot shots so hard, population reduction.
      Less people means less shooting those that are fighting for your scraps.
      Means you get to keep more bullets for the real troublemakers, namely US.

  5. How does one show their Covid passport via an app when there is no cell service and your phone is dead from the power being out.

  8. There’s not enough information to really say what happened in New Zealand. Really hot and really cold weather always strains the system which is why redundancy is built into electricity generation with flexible and reliable peak load plants. In Saskatchewan, that is most often natural gas since coal and hydro ,as baseload power, pretty much are run at full capacity. Wind and solar aren’t reliable enough for either baseload or peak power, imo, they’re just there to appease the environmentalists.

    With electric vehicles adding to demand, a lot of reliable baseload and peak power will need to be added to the supply. If it’s CO2 free, then governments better be prepared to invest heavily into hydro or nuclear not wind and solar. Otherwise insufficient power supply and blackouts will become the norm.

    Given politicians knack for getting everything wrong every time…I’d invest in an emergency gas generator for your home.

    1. ” Given politicians knack for getting everything wrong every time…”

      It’s a feature not a bug.
      Built into the cake for maximum disruption so we will beg for them to be our Over Lords to help make it right.
      And they WILL make it right, in their own way.

      1. For every 1 malicious politician there’s probably 3 or more that just don’t know diddley squat about anything other than how to get (re)elected. The biggest problem is that the advisors politicians choose are inevitably drawn from academia and other places riddled with political bias and groupthink. Voices outside of the small incestuous circle are never even acknowledged or, worse, completely censored.

        A better advisory model would be a more competitive style with greater diversity of thought and experience.

    2. LC

      RE: EV’s
      “..a lot of reliable baseload and peak power will need to be added…”

      FROM WHERE and what source…??

      : HYDRO..?? Most every major decent sized river on the Planet is Damned already – So NOPE

      : COAL – Nat Gas – Oil. GOD FORBID…!!!

      : “Renewables”. DREAMLAND Idiocy – Just not gonna happen – EVER. 1 Snowfall and the entire Country of NZ will be at a COMPLETE standstill….and w/zero wind either..

      So, will they be Smart.? Reasonable.? – and build a few NUKES..??
      HA HA HA HA….!! as if…these MORONS will double down big time….and still FREEZE in the dark.

      To the New Zealanders I say this: YOU MORONS VOTED for it..right.??
      Enjoy riding your 12 yr old nag of a horse, growing your own food, heating your home…as the Grand SOLAR MINIMUM approaches – Tell me How again.???

      1. I hope it’s nukes with a natural gas for peak/emergency power. Being dependent on the whims of nature for power production is not a rational option.

  9. History would be so much easier on everyone if the mass of mankind could only recognize when the time has arrived to purge the top 10,000 most powerful people on earth, and then had the gumption to get the job done.

  10. Narrative is extremely flexible until it runs into reality. And Jacinda Ardern needs to be removed from office because she is all about narrative.

  11. The climate on the north island of NZ is comparable to Vancouver but without the “sometimes we get 2 months straight of rain” … and there are some grapefruits grown on the north of north island.

    It seems to have been a decision to stop buying enough electricity. Why would a company do this? I can only think the price was either too high from the suppliers, or the gov’t stipulates a maximum billing price to the consumer.

    *Exactly as LC Bennett notes above at 11.15am … getting it wrong everytime.

    If the gov’t said, the maximum price of apples was $1.20 / lb while your costs were $1.40 / lb … how many pounds of apples would you bring to market? Or would you wait until Sept or Oct for the first frost in order to sell split and stacked apple wood for your heating needs?

    I’ve always thought New Zealand looks like a dream country to live in, perhaps like the Vancouver area, or certain parts of Oregon/Washington … yet their gov’t has never failed to drop the ball on the big issues, and their NZ women folk are never contenders in the Miss Universe contest. They do well in the sheep dog contests though.

    No doubt their renewable electricity efforts are mandated, have they heard of nuclear power? ah yes, now I remember how they were after the leftist French gov’t bombed the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor back in the 80’s.

    1. Unfortunately all the most beautiful, nice temperature places end up with the same problems: big cities promoting big government, high crime, large homeless population, sky rocketing cost of living, regulations on top of regulations and in a new 21st century twist – a growing surveillance state.

      There’s a sweet spot where location and temperature aren’t as ideal but all the other problems I mentioned are minimized. I think it’s easier to visit or live (not-to-near) big cities and resort locations than it is to actually live there.

      1. You forgot sky-high levels of immigration. Auckland looks a lot like Vancouver or Toronto demographically. The number of foreign-born has doubled in the last decade.

    2. So TRUE MARC in my town..!!

      From Prince Rupert all the way down to Baja Kalifornica….nothing but Trough Feeding Marxists. Yencouver (both of them), Seattle, Portland, SFX, LAX….identical Leftist Idiocy on CONSTANT DAILY Display.

      1. As an aside,

        I was recently down in the Pincher Creek area….It had been years since I’ve travelled in that direction. I was absolutely FLOORED at the vast number of Turbines now literally littering the landscape. 5-600 Turbines at least all within a 60 sq mile area…with only 40% running at all.

        Thanx Rachel you useless Commie PLUT

    1. From (GreenMatters mag)
      New Zealand currently produces 84 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

      Prime Minister Ardern’s new pledge only furthers her Labour Party’s previous goal of phasing out non-renewable energy by 2035. The country currently produces 84 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, according to the government. However, this only accounts for 40 percent of the energy actually used in New Zealand. The country still imports coal and oil from other countries.

      Hmmmmmmmmmmmm?? Notice is says the info came from the government. Figures.

      1. They’re including hydroelectric in their 84%. Without that and oil and gas it’s down to 5.5% wind and solar.
        Lies, damned lies and statistics. Not approximately right (with omissions), but most certainly precisely wrong.

        1. Hydroelectric is always counted as renewable. Thing is, there’s no more available. Globally pretty much all of the hydroelectric capacity that could be developed has been, except for a very few locations impossible for political purposes like Lower Churchill in Canada. So having developed all available hydro, NZ has choices: build more solar/wind knowing that that necessarily entails building and importing more gas; or do without and live with the consequences.

          Nuclear is not possible for them, because NZ has been violently antinuclear ever since the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985. Australia has the same problem.

          1. Let’s qualify hydroelectric more, compared to wind and solar.
            The former proven effective and reliable well before CAGW junk science, the latter never close and will never be.
            When they say 84% renewable, they want you to believe that’s solar panels and wind turbines. Liars by omission.
            It is an effective and useful renewable electricity source that’s been used for hundreds of years.
            So are windmills and greenhouses. It is irrelevant to the junk science of CAGW and its socialist solutions.

  14. So it’s not the energy ministers fault, it’s the fault of “commercial decisions” which resulted in the load shedding….

    I assume that the next step in the energy ministers plan is to remove all “commercial decisions” by nationalizing the power producers.

    “Genesis Energy confirmed it decided to not turn on an extra boiler at the Huntly power station – because it did not expect it would be needed.”

    the key word there “boiler” which takes a long time to spool up, and start generating, and during the spool up time, it’s not making any money, just a cost to get it running.

    I wonder how many peaker plants they have, compared to boilers?

  15. “it was not good enough that we could not warm our homes”.

    It will not be good enough until we are all serfs and they have unlimited power and suppress all dissent.

  16. Someone should inform the people of New whatever, and the rest of the world, that the only renewable resource is wood. OH, and food, if they are intelligent enough to figure out how to grow it.

  17. The collision between ignorant starry-eyed ideological politicians and reality.

    Kind of like when the Soviet Union thought they could turn fields of weeds into fields of wheat just by pretending it was so, because environment trumps genetics. Lysenkoism.

    Yep. New Zealand is practicing a form of Lysenko energy policy.

  18. You have to run baseloads inefficiently in order to allow unreliables on the grid. The more unreliable, the greater the inefficiency. New Zealand is currently competing with Canada for worst governance award.

  19. 80% renewable my arse.

    When the idiot twin of Trudeau seized power by making pacts with everyone except who the majority voted for the first thing she did with no consultation with anyone except her idiot green coalition king makers was to ban all oil and gas drilling.

    Back then there was a an old coal powered generation plant called Huntley, it was mothballed had been for years you could drive past fences falling down trees growing in the roofs must have been on the list for demolition. Huntley was built to run on cheap local coal but coal had gone the way that the idiots would like oil and gas to go. Ironically its demise had been aided by cheap plentiful natural gas from the Cook Straits and Taranaki areas providing a cheap reliable score for small generators on the North Islands west coast. The North Island is where the population is and not where the hydro is with a small exception.

    So in the last 5 years the inevitable has happened. Apart from losing the third largest contributor to the GDP we now import huge amounts of brown coal from Indonesia/Aus which comes by boat and is landed at the quay side in Auckland from there it is loaded onto diesel trucks and taken to Huntley 60miles away where Huntley now operates 24hrs a day 7 days a week.

    Do you think anyone calls the saint out on this …..nah. Ya think any one asks what’s happened to all those little gas powered generators. Oh no perish the thought.

    She ain’t as popular as you think except with the media and the self appointed elites (but I’ve just repeated myself) and of course the grievance mongering anarchists.

    1. Hydroelectric is counted as renewable. Problem for NZ is they have no remaining undeveloped capacity for new hydro. So they wither import more gas or do without and suffer the consequences.

    2. Thanks for the info. I had no idea how New Zealand powered it’s homes and industries. Nice to hear from someone with first-hand knowledge. Sounds similar to Canada (no flattery intended). We ship oil by rail, if you can imagination that.

  20. Too ensure more regular ,more prolonged blackouts,the NZ government will renationalize the State Hydro..
    Forward.
    Of course none of those “commercial decisions” blamed for this shortage ,had anything to do with government regulation..
    Heavens No.
    Once the South Island was muttering about Separation,for much the same reasons Alberta and Saskatchewan are today.
    For the South has all the Water and the North has the political clout.
    The Ministry of Silly Walks,I mean whatever Idiotic Ministry currently “administers control” over power suppliers,will take every action to make matters worse.
    This is progress.

    1. Nationalization creates shortages. Nazi Germany nationalized everything starting in the early 1930s, and the result was shortages of everything by the summer of 1939. WW2 was launched by Germany as a way of relieving the shortages caused by Autarky by looting all of Germany’s neighbors.

      1. Germany wasn’t short of anything in 1939. Their standard of living rose every year of Nazi rule until 1942.

  21. “How cold does it actually get in New Zealand?”

    Not very. Temperatures below -6C are rare in towns and cities. A normal “sharp frost” would be -3C or -4C. Coldest parts are the inland areas of each island. Being a small country surrounded by open ocean, NZ does not get the same pattern of prolonged high pressure and severe cold seen in e.g. Europe and North America. Instead it gets “southerly blasts” of cold air from the general direction of Antarctica, bringing snow or sleet (and typically wind). These typically last 1-3 days, but can last up to a week.

    A friend in Arrowtown (South Island, near Queenstown) reported 3 consecutive nights a few years ago of -12C. Old timers in the district talk of -25C in I think the 1970s. Nothing like that seen in recent decades. The climate of the Queenstown district is described as semi-continental.

    Clear, sunny weather nearly always follows a “southerly blast”. Sun is out now, a belllbird is singing happily this morning in the garden.

  22. Here in Wellington last week it was 3 degrees. That doesn’t sound too bad to Canadians, but our housing is much shabbier and damper on average, and double-paned glass is a luxury. I lived in Ontario for my first 30 years but feel far colder in winter than I ever did growing up!

    1. “Much Shabbier and damper” . Bloody ell that’s an understatement, most kiwis live in what the rest of the world calls garden sheds!

      Insulation is a thing of feverish dreams. A kiwi home builders idea of insulation is is a fine gauze of rock wool so thick its translucent, lovingly laid in the roof space under the tin roof (as long as its accessible) and for shear extra luxury its stapled to the underfloor of said wooden shed, which is of course earthquake proofed by sitting the entire thing on piles leaving a minimum air gap of 3 ft just enough to allow those antarctic southerly enough space to whistle through.
      Double glazing eh! Yeah Nah

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