‘Bloodbath’ unbecoming of Bendigo region
Bendigo is in my blood. When gold ran out in the mountains, my grandparents moved to Bendigo, where my father was born and raised.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
I grew up in Melbourne but spent so many childhood Easters visiting your magical Easter fair.
It came as a jolt when I learned in my adult years that the Bendigo region is a hotbed for duck shooters.
That blokey gun culture dulled my interest in Bendigo tourism. My forebears were so gentle and caring of animals.
Duck season opened with an absolute bloodbath of dead and injured birds on the weekend.
So three cheers for the newly formed Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting!
You need tourists like me to stay at your B&Bs, eat at your cafes and buy your gifts.
Mary Reilly, Wattle Park
Look beyond our shores for inspiration
With so much attention on shortages of power production capacity, why hasn't tidal and wave power production been given a mention?
South Australia has got a large coastline, as does the rest of Australia and it does not rely on the sun on cloudy days or no wind for wind turbines.
Let’s face it, if the tides stop, lack of electricity will be the least of our worries.
Why don't the politicians check out Spain, Portugal and Scotland to see how it works?
Daryl De Araugo, Eaglehawk
Labor government’s plan does not add up
The Andrews' Labor government embarrassed itself again on Tuesday with its idiotic "battery to save us all" announcement, but not a single question about the real world impact of his idiotic battery scheme from local media.
“Electricity bill Dan” says he is going to give 20 to 25 million of our dollars to companies which “want to partner with network businesses” to develop 100MW of electricity storage.
But what does he mean?
Electricity storage is measured in hours, or minutes, of electricity stored at a certain demand – 100MW of "batteries" means nothing.
But given South Australia's Twitter frenzy with a US subsidy-miner, we can guess our $25 million or so is to part-pay for an hour of supply drawn at 100MW.
Sadly for Dan, Victoria’s demand at 2.06pm the day of the announcement was 7,271MW.
So Dan’s battery might supply 1.3 per cent of afternoon demand for an hour, or put another way, 45 seconds of total demand before the batteries are exhausted.
Just wow.
The price quoted for a 100MWh system by Telsa’s battery division head, Lyndon Rive, is $66 million for 400 white industrial boxes placed on an area about the size of a soccer pitch.
As a result of this installation price Dan’s battery power will cost $660,000 a Mwh, or $660 a kWh – the current price of coal fired electricity in Victoria is 26.15 cents per kWh.
But it gets worse. At the time of the announcement, intermittent sources like wind etc were supplying 124MW of the state's 7271MW demand – that’s 1.4 per cent of the power being used in homes and businesses etc.
Despite that, Dan's Labor tell us it intends to supply 40 per cent of the state's demand using intermittent sources by 2025 – just eight years away!
To generate sufficient electricity to supply 40 per cent of 7378MW to Victoria on a day like Tuesday, Victoria will need to install wind-subsidy farms with an 84,314MW faceplate capacity – that’s more than 83 times as many windmills as are currently installed, or about 28,104 bird choppers!