Thanks to our bozo lefty sate government who have funded at taxpayer
expense windmills or wind farms that generate 40% of our electricity
but only on a windy day and only if the wind is not too strong.
Figure that out.
So not only do we have intermittent unreliable renewable energy
stuffing up the base-load grid, but we also have the most expensive
electricity in the world.
The cost to SA is that that the poor (that's me) cannot afford electricity.
No air-conditioning in summer you just suffer heatstroke.
No electric reverse cycle heating in winter you just freeze.
So poor people go to bed early and throw on a few doonas and blankets
and sleep in their trakkies with their beanies on.
That bolded portion is hilarious! Thus proving that Aussies speak a very different kind of English!
I have a friend in Australia who was very cold last winter. No insulation or heating in his house, and the temperatures were going down below freezing. I told him how Canadians dress for winter, which includes Ugg boots. He brightened and said maybe he could find an Ugg store and buy a pair. Turns out the store was right across the street, but he didn’t think it was a good investment, when it would be soon warm again. Although he did buy some socks!
As for Canada, I live in a semi-desert. It still freezes, but never gets really cold, below -10 C. The last few weeks it has been hovering around 0C or 32F. But snowing a LOT! The piles get 6 or 7 feet high on our driveway, melt back when the temperature goes up to 6C then more snow, piles of snow again. I moved here to get away from prairie cold, like -40C/F. Same temperature on either scale.
We live in a forest, despite the fact that it doesn’t rain much. All of BC is forest. This summer, we had 4 months without rain. Temperatures were in the high 30’s and low 40’s. (Not nearly as high as 50, for sure!). Anyway, everything was tinder dry, here and in Washington state. The new protocol is to let forest and wildfires burn, unless they are near homes, infrastructure or other buildings. The problem with that, is that it only takes one big wind to fan the flames, and BOOM! Thousands of homes burned, people evacuated, and millions of dollars in timber burnt. Last summer in July, the smoke rolled in. I woke up in the night with an asthma attack, being allergic to smoke. The smoke stayed for 2 months. I had to wear a mask to go outside I was on prednisone the whole time, and wasn’t able to garden much. I had been putting mulch under my perennials, and it was 3 months before I was able to get out and finish the last 10 foot section.
Very frustrating! And sadly, it will probably continue to happen with increasing frequency, both here and in Alberta. Oh, and those huge fires in Washington State that they don’t have the resources to put out, apparently, which gave off smoke up our valley the whole time.
I must admit, we have hydro power, our winter bills are incredibly low, and no carbon tax, because Hydro power is renewable, and our rivers never run dry. So, the A/C runs continuously, and no one cares. We have natural gas for forced air heating in winter. Not quite as cheap as electricity, but not much more. Heating and A/C is definitely a BC advantage!
I did hear something about a town in Manitoba, right in the middle of Canada running out of water, and in Alberta, we used to get watering restrictions all summer. Well, we have them here too, but no one really cares. With a lake that is 90 miles long, up to 5 miles across and incredibly deep, we are not likely to run out of water here any time soon!
