New Zealand

[Barman]

I see NZ is shut down because of Covid...

A friend who is locked-up in Auckland just sent me this rant...

I forgot to tell you about a North Island wide power cut last week. It was a cold evening and suddenly the power went out for Hamilton , Wellington and some other places, Auckland had the hot water cylinders turned off.  The problem was not enough power was being generated to meet demand. The power generating companies knew about it in the afternoon said and did nothing. The reason they did nothing was South Island  hydro could generate more but the Cook Straight cable was limited to half capacity.  The wind farms didn’t work on a lovely cold still winters night and the solar panels didn’t work . Funny that.

The Huntly coal fired power station was running on one Rakine unit . They have three but it takes 6 hours to get another one going. There used to be gas turbine power generators in Auckland which could start up instantly but they were dismantled as they used nasty gas and the Greenys stopped gas exploration. The Huntly power station is surrounded by high quality coal fields. But they cant mine that because of the Greenys . So the power company imports from Indonesia low grade coal and to keep the cost down runs them at a  minimum . The amount of coal imported was kept a secret by the government as they said it was commercially sensitive. The papers found out about it through the UN.

I look forward to the future when all the cars are battery powered needing a recharge overnight. I think there wont be any traffic jams the next day.

 

PS we now have 10 Covid cases now. Ones a nurse at Auckland hospital and a school teacher and a university student. We are on the way up.

I'll have to ask his opinion on Climate Change... 

[Steve]

It's a weird country, they do things differently there.  You and I may think they're bonkers but from my visits the locals seem to think it's just fine.  You've been more recently than I.
 
That turning off hot water for homes whether you like it or not would (ironically) have my piss boiling. 
 
The real worry is the UK isn't that far from a very similar position, only two coal stations left, our local nuclear power station was shut down earlier this year (it was knackered) leaving us even more dependent on fickle winds and even fickler EU/EEA supplied power.