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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-09 Daily Xml
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Question Time

DESALINATION PLANT, RENEWABLE ENERGY

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): My question is for the Premier. Given the Premier's claim that the desalination plant will be powered by 100 per cent green energy, can he explain what happens on those days when either there is no wind or there is a strong, hot wind and the wind turbines are turned off?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON (Elder—Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Energy) (14:25): This is possibly the dumbest question I have ever heard in this place. Can I say it would help before you ask a question about electricity to have some basic understanding of the commodity and the way the national electricity—

An honourable member: Arrogance.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: It is not arrogant. I simply have to point out to you that this is a completely stupid question. The marketing of electricity is one of the most complex and abstract notions one could ever imagine. That is because—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: I will tell you one thing: the Premier would never ask a question like this.

Mr Pengilly: He won't answer it either.

The SPEAKER: Order, the member for Finniss!

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: It is a noisier opposition, but then again it should be—there are so many of them on the front bench now. My sympathies go out to Liz Penfold and Mr Gunn because they are the only two apparently not on the front bench. The new opposition slogan is 'Never mind the quality, feel the width.'

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Electricity is invisible and you cannot store it. It has to be made as it is used. For that reason—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: It is all very simple, isn't it? For that reason, while you are paying a retailer who is paying a generator for any electricity you use, the electricity you use may not actually have been made by that generator. That is the nature of the electricity market. How it works is this: those retailers do purchase green energy; they purchase a certain amount of green energy; they are not allowed to sell more green energy than they purchase.

The fact is that, if we are purchasing 10 megawatts of green energy for a desal plant, it must be generated. Obviously, it cannot be generated from wind when the wind is not blowing, but in the overall—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: The overall effect of that contract is that, for the energy use of the desal plant, there must be that much green energy generated to be purchased. So, it might well be that those particular electrons that are coming from a wind farm 300 kilometres away—you know, what you do not do is take the electrons, put them in a battery, put them in the back of a truck, drive them up to the desal plant and plug them in. That is just so stupid. What it does mean—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: What it does mean—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: What it does mean—and it is so pathetic that they are proud of their ignorance, so pathetic that they are proud of being ignorant. If I can make it this simple: it means that you buy a desal plant; for example, that desal plant uses 10 megawatts of electricity while it is running; you contract to make sure that your additional demand will be supplied by 10 megawatts of green energy generated. It means that, in the overall contribution of that desal plant to your carbon footprint, it is emissions free in the generation of electricity. That means that, whenever it is running, it is making no contribution to the carbon footprint because the people supplying that electricity must be purchasing that much green energy. The fact is that no-one in the universe can identify the electron that runs, for example, into this microphone at any given time—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Let me explain it. If we did not have this contract, we would be buying an additional 10 megawatts of generated carbon-rich black electricity. With this contract it means that will not be added to our demand. What will be added to our demand is 10 megawatts of green energy. I would have thought that that was a good outcome. I would have thought that, before you ask a question, you would try to understand the basic mechanics of electricity and you understand the basic operation of the electricity market.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: It is simple: if you want to operate a piece of electrical equipment you use electricity. If you want to write a contract for that electricity you can choose green energy. You can pay a premium. It means that your net addition to demand will be met by a net generation of green electricity. That is how the rules work.

The fact is that, even if you have a wind farm sitting on top of the desal plant, depending on fluctuations in demand, you still cannot guarantee that those electrons will flow where you want them to. I do not begin to understand. It might have been your friend Faraday who first noticed that, if you move a magnet past a coil, you create an electrical current and it pushes the electrons from one end to the other, but it does that at the speed of light and they have to be used as they are, so to speak, agitated. With that, I have thoroughly exhausted my knowledge. Any further questions on how electricity works will be answered by my friend Trish White who is, indeed, a rocket scientist.

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