ABC: Let’s pretend base load power doesn’t exist, call it a dinosaur. Who’s in denial? By Joanne Nova.

The new phrase that must be neutered is “base load”. It’s like krypton for renewables!

Nick Kilvert at the ABC helpfully provides a no-hard-questions mouthpiece and tells us Base load power is the dinosaur in the energy debate.

To serve the Australian taxpayer he quotes a Professor Vassallo, Chair of Sustainable Energy Development (USyd), and CSIRO Energy Director Dr Glenn Platt. Just in case they weren’t green and biased enough he also interviewed Professor Blakers, director of the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems. Finally he turns to Dr Mark Diesendorf, who is apparently just some guy at UNSW with a team of modelers. (Kilvert doesn’t give us his title, but a two second search suggests he works at the “Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets“. Perhaps it was an oversight, or maybe Kilvert was feeling guilty that every single person he quoted has a career in sustainable energy). Glenn Platt — by the way, is not just “Energy Director” but is described at The Conversation as leading the Energy Transformed Flagship research centre at CSIRO. So that’s four green academics, no one from the coal industry, no skeptics, no other engineers, and no one involved in managing a grid.

So here’s Dr Platt, struggling with the basics of electricity grids: “The idea of there being an average or ‘base’ electricity load, doesn’t make sense. Let alone having this sort of big, slow-changing power station to meet that load.”

And here’s today’s energy production across the national grid, where everyone can see that the minimum demand was 18,000MW … That 18,000MW are all the fridges at Coles, the freezers at Woolies, the air conditioning units in every skyscraper or tall building with windows that don’t open. It’s hospitals, night shift workers, smelters, street lights, home heaters or air con, and water heaters. …

The ABC is happy to make sure Australians know the limitations of coal in fine, if imaginary detail: “Technology has moved on from base load, and now you want flexible power.”

Spell it out for us, Prof Blakers, why do we “want” flexible power — is that so we can cope with the artificial “flexible” supply, forced onto the system by mini-Gods who think they can change the weather with solar panels and windmills?