Mass rollout of so-called ‘renewables’ is a disaster on nearly every front. They’re a massive drain of taxpayer’s money, they’re destroying rural communities, wrecking wilderness ecologies, sending household bills through the roof and driving valuable industries offshore. For all that pain, they barely work. And certainly not at critical times, like hot days or at night.
But wait! Like the proverbial steak knives, there’s more!
Now, we learn that solar farms are – surprise, surprise – a bushfire hazard.
Victoria’s energy safety regulator has ordered five solar farms to be switched off due to concerns over bushfire risks caused by uncontrolled vegetation.
Operators of the five solar farms owned by subsidiaries of Chinese-owned Sungrow Power Australia have been ordered to cease generating electricity from sites at Raywood and Goornong, near Bendigo; Stawell and Ledcourt in western Victoria and Moolort, west of Castlemaine, after a blitz by Energy Safe Victoria in February.
A spokesperson said the inspections coincided with a fire breaking out at the Raywood solar farm, 28km north of Bendigo, which started in electrical equipment and spread to vegetation on the site.
Inspection revealed that the fire started in an inverter. It sent clouds of toxic black smoke drifting over the nearby town of Raywood. The toxic fumes also endangered fire crews.
This is far from the only incident. An inverter sited in a shipping container caught fire at Mannum, near Adelaide, in 2024. The ‘big batteries’ needed to try and mitigate the intermittency of ‘renewables’ are also prone to erupting into fires that are near impossible to extinguish.
Oh, but we’re far from done with the unacceptable risks spilling out of the rush for ‘renewables’. With so many panels, inverters and other ‘smart technology’ being manufactured in China, Australia is being exposed to a gigantic risk from Trojan horse attacks. In China, after all, there is no meaningful distinction between ‘private companies’ and the Chinese Communist Party. By law, all Chinese companies are required to allow the establishment of units to ‘carry out the activities of the CCP’.
Does anyone seriously think the CCP wouldn’t use the West’s foolish scrabble for Chinese-made tech to their advantage?
Australia’s fast-growing solar energy grid is being dominated by Chinese firms with links to the Chinese Communist Party, raising fears of the potential for Beijing to sabotage, surveil or disrupt solar energy supplies.
Or worse, given solar’s inherent grid instability, to take down entire grids. Chinese cyber-espionage is widely suspected to be behind massive electricity and communications blackouts in India in recent years. Beijing denies the accusation, but then, they deny engineering Covid, too. Who really believes them? (Well, aside from the mainstream media.)
The country’s solar grid is increasingly reliant on ‘smart inverters’ to convert energy from rooftop solar panels into usable electricity for homes and businesses. But new research shows Chinese companies dominate 58 per cent of the Australian inverter market, making the devices, which are internet-connected and can be remotely controlled, potentially vulnerable to any Chinese attempt to target the solar electricity grid.
Under China’s national intelligence laws, the companies supplying these solar inverters could be ordered by Beijing to sabotage, surveil or disrupt power supplies to Australian homes, companies or government.
One of the largest suppliers is Sungrow.
Sungrow’s major shareholder, Professor Cao Renxian, is also president of the state-run China Voltaic Industry Association, which is required to “adhere to the (CCP) party’s line, principle and policies”.
Astonishingly, at least two Australian states are mandating the use of these ‘smart inverters’.
Which may turn out to be the most idiotic strategic decision since Australia sold pig iron to Japan through the 1930s.
