Australia Facing a Brick Wall of Blackouts by Jerry Ellis and Sir Rod Carnegie 19 February 2019 The Chairman of the Saltbush Club, Mr Jerry Ellis, today warned that Australia needs more reliable baseload power. “With the population and the economy growing, but with electricity availability and reliability in decline, we are racing headlong into a brick wall of blackouts.
“Recession and disruption will probably follow, bringing to mind those memorable 1990 words of Paul Keating: ‘This is the recession we had to have’. Except in this case the recession will be self-inflicted. “Much of my working life was in the steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s. It operated 24x7, with large numbers of electric motors requiring a continuous supply of low-cost electrical power. Un-planned interruptions were rare, but when they occurred they were very costly. “Now we face the prospect of planned and unplanned loss of power due to the rundown
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