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Australia’s energy minister asked Sydney and the New South Wales (eastern part of the country) residents to turn off lights and energy-intensive appliances in the evening to prevent power blackouts due to an ongoing energy crunch, The Independent reports.

The federal energy minister, Chris Bowen, asked residents in a televised address to turn off energy-intensive devices between “6 to 8 [pm]” to mitigate risks of a spike in power during peak hours. He pointed to several offline coal-fired plants because of maintenance and unexpected issues.

Reuters notes that 65% of eastern Australia’s power is generated by coal, but more than a quarter of that capacity is offline.

Wholesale electricity prices have soared and on Monday exceeded the capped price of A$300 per megawatt-hour. Above A$300, coal power generation plants lost money and forced some operators to shutter power generation units, thus removing energy capacity off the grid and sending prices even higher. The rise of power prices began when coal prices jumped following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Bowen snapped at a journalist when asked if more coal power is the answer the energy crunch.

“The situation in recent days has posed challenges to the entire energy industry, and suspending the market would simplify operations during the significant outages across the energy supply chain,” Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) chief executive Daniel Westerman said in a statement.

“It was understandable generators had held back supply in light of the price caps along with unplanned outages and supply challenges with coal and gas, but having to direct generators to provide supply had made it impossible to maintain normal market operations,” Westerman said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Thousands of Homes in Sydney Plunged Into Darkness As Energy Shortage Plagues Australia

June 14, 2022

A stock image of an electricity tower going through a rural property in Sydney, Tuesday, October 17, 2017. (AAP Image/Brendan Esposito)

AUSTRALIA

Thousands of Homes in Sydney Plunged Into Darkness As Energy Shortage Plagues Australia

Thousands of homes on Australia’s east coast were plunged into darkness on Monday as electricity suppliers struggled to meet demand as the country teeters on the edge of an energy shortage.

On Monday night, multiple areas in Sydney’s north and along the affluent Northern Beaches were sent into darkness, after the energy market operator warned of power disruption across the states of New South Wales and Queensland.

Affected suburbs include Beacon Hill, Frenchs Forest, Narraweena, Cromer and Dee Why in New South Wales (NSW), according to Ausgrid—Australia’s largest electricity distributor on the east coast. Power was available later in the day.

Households were encouraged to use less power as leading energy provider Powerlink Queensland warned of an “unusual combination” of unexpected generator outages plus cool winter temperatures and high demand for electricity.

“Gas supplies are sufficient however very high gas prices means [the Australian Energy Market Operator] has already triggered its market generation response mechanisms,” Powerlink said in a statement on Monday.

Meanwhile, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) on Tuesday confirmed that some energy generators have “revised their market availability” in NSW and Queensland due to a new $300/MWh price cap, a result of increased wholesale electricity prices.

In the gas markets, gas prices remained capped at $40/GJ after reaching cumulative high price thresholds in Victoria and Sydney.

“As a consequence of the administered price cap in Queensland, AEMO has seen generation bids reduce,” AEMO said in a media release on Monday. “The price cap … will only remain in place if the cumulative price threshold is still exceeded.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sydney Sends In Military To Help Enforce Lockdown Amid Record Jump In COVID Cases

July 29, 2021

Sydney Sends In Military To Help Enforce Lockdown Amid Record Jump In COVID Cases

Despite being locked down for nearly a month now, Sydney has just reported a record one-day rise in local COVID cases on Thursday as public health authorities warned that the outbreak would likely worsen, inspiring them to once again turn to the Australian military for help.

According to Reuters, Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, has struggled to contain an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant with another economy-crippling lockdown. Instead, cases have continued to move higher, leading public health authorities to double down on their efforts to protect against a broader outbreak of the delta variant, believed to be far more infectious than other strains.

But that didn’t stop authorities from counting 239 locally transmitted cases in the past 24 hours, the biggest daily increase for Sydney since the pandemic began. We should note that Australia’s COVID issue has never really been all that bad: nationwide, the country of 26MM has counted fewer than 1,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, a far lower rate.

“We can only assume that things are likely to get worse before they get better given the quantity of people infectious in the community,” said New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

Berejiklian said one more person had died from COVID-19, taking the death toll from the current outbreak to 13, while the national death toll rose to 921.

Unfortunately for Berejiklian, who has emerged as a kind of villain for the small business owners and restaurateurs who fear they’re about to be crushed by a “double dip” recession, the Australian military is probably better at twerking than fighting viruses.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Here Comes The Housing Bust “Reverse Wealth Effect,” Australia Edition

October 27, 2018

Here Comes The Housing Bust “Reverse Wealth Effect,” Australia Edition

For the past few years, homeowners just about everywhere have been able to finesse life’s problems by thinking “at least my house is going up.” This home equity accretion allowed them to buy stuff on credit, safe in the knowledge that even as they maxed out yet another credit card their net worth continued to rise. They felt smart and confident, in other words, and so continued to behave in ways that the modern world defines as normal and natural.

But now that’s ending. Home prices have stopped rising in many places and in a few canaries in the financial coal mine have begun to plunge. Here’s what “plunge” means for Australians:

House prices ‘falling by over $1,000 a week’ in Sydney and Melbourne, Deloitte says

The boom time is over and we’re now officially experiencing the “house price fall we had to have”, according to Deloitte Access Economics’s latest business outlook.

It has found what many had been predicting: prices are dipping as interest rates are rising, with our biggest cities feeling the winds of change most keenly.

“Our house prices here in Australia had streaked past anything sensible by way of valuation,” said Deloitte partner Chris Richardson.
“Now, finally gravity has caught up with that stupidity and prices are falling.

“In Sydney and Melbourne, housing prices are falling by over $1,000 a week.”

Prices had surged across the country over the past five years as historically low interest rates have driven Australians to load up on debt, while investors had also cashed in.

Not if, but by how much
Housing forecasts have gone from disagreement over whether home prices will fall to debates about how much they’ll decline.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sydney playing risky and costly metropoly games amid oil price fears (part 1)

October 7, 2018

Sydney playing risky and costly metropoly games amid oil price fears (part 1)

Sydney must be the only city in the world which closes its most modern heavy rail tunnel, 12.5 kms, designed for its ubiquitous double deckers and used by long distance commuters for an unacceptable long period of 7 months, only to be downgraded to narrow body, seat starved single deck trains, incompatible with the whole of Sydney’s rail system and touted to the public as a “metro”.

Epping_rail_tunnel_closure_Oct2018

Fig 1: Escalators to underground platforms 5&6 at Epping station in early October 2018

Epping_Chatswood_open_Feb2009

Fig 2: First train in Epping – Chatswood tunnel, was not missed by then Premier Rees

The rail tunnel was opened in Feb 2009, 10 years after it was first announced in the Action for Transport 2010 plan. It was in operation for just 9.5 years. That is the life-span of Sydney’s rail infrastructure.

Lee_Lin_Chin_SL1

Fig 3: NSW government’s promotional video

The NSW government’s propaganda machinery even had to employ a well-known TV presenter to sell their replacement bus services to frustrated passengers. Here is the bus job ahead:

Epping-train_1730_23Jul2018

Fig 4: Standing only in a 17:30 double decker to Epping via Macquarie Park in July 2018

This article continues research done 4 years ago:

4/1/2015 Sydney mismanages transition to driver-less single deck trains (part 2)

30/12/2014 Sydney plans to dismantle rail infrastructure built just 6 years ago (part 1)

Would the government even dare to think closing the Lane Cove road tunnel which runs parallel to the rail tunnel, for that period? Not much public resistance was put up against the rail tunnel closure. After 20 years of 2 consecutive governments back-flipping on various permutations of rail links in Sydney’s North-West, the electorate has obviously resigned, knowing that the opposition is just as bad as the government of the day. In a certain sense Sydney’s rail planning seems to mirror the revolving door syndrome of Federal politics on climate change and renewable energy.

PRL_closed

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Housing Bubble Pops in Sydney & Melbourne, Australia

September 4, 2018

Housing Bubble Pops in Sydney & Melbourne, Australia

And with impeccable timing, an immense flood of new construction.

In Sydney, breeding ground for one of the world’s biggest housing bubbles, prices of single-family houses dropped 7.3% in August, compared to a year earlier. Prices of “units” — condos in US lingo — fell 2.2% year-over-year. Price declines were the sharpest at the high end, with prices down 8.1% in the most expensive quarter of home sales. Prices of all types of homes combined fell 5.6%, according to CoreLogic’s Daily Home Value Index. The index is down 5.8% from its peak last September:

Melbourne, where the inflection point has been lagging a few months behind Sydney’s, is in the process of catching up. Over the three month-period, June-August, prices fell 2.0%, making Melbourne the weakest housing market among the capital cities. By segment, house prices fell 2.7% from a year ago while condo prices still inched up 1.5%. At the most expensive quarter of sales, prices fell 5.2% from a year ago. For all types of dwellings combined, prices declined 1.7% year-over-year, to the lowest level since early June 2017, according to CoreLogic. Prices are down 3.6% from their peak at the end of November 2017:

Corelogic tracks the largest five of Australia’s eight capital cities in a separate index. Due to the size of their housing markets, Sydney and Melbourne weigh the most. In the remaining three of the five capital cities in the index, prices were mixed in August:

In Brisbane, home prices inched up 0.9% year-over-year.
In Adelaide, home prices ticked up 1.0%.
In Perth, home prices fell 2.0%, with houses down 1.5% and condos down 4.4%. Prices have been skidding since late 2014, when Western Australia mining boom turned into a mining bust.

The aggregate five capital cities index fell 3.1% in August year-over-year. The index has declined month-to-month for 11 months in a row and is down 3.5% from its peak in October 2017:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

So Bloody Predictable: Sydney Ground Zero in Interest-Only Mortgage Implosion

August 26, 2018

So Bloody Predictable: Sydney Ground Zero in Interest-Only Mortgage Implosion

Australia’s housing boom is over. A recession is not far away.

It’s “all so bloody predictable” says Australia Macro Business as Western Sydney Ground Zero in Interest-Only Mortgage Bust.

Selling agents are starting to reveal the truth behind recent listings in Sydney’s west with Belle Property Strathfield’s Jimmy Kang saying up to 50 per cent of his clients were asking him to sell their homes in Sydney’s western suburbs because they can no longer afford their new principal-and-interest mortgages.

…A couple asked him to sell a two-bedroom weatherboard home in Veron Street in Wentworthville, 27 kilometres west of Sydney, for $950,000 when it was only worth about between $820,000 and $830,000. They bought the home for $790,000, two years ago.

“I asked them where they got that number from and they said that was the number they need to pay back the $200,000 they borrowed from family to buy the home as well as repay their interest-only loan,” he said.

“A lot of them initially paid $2000 to $2500 a month on their interest-only loans, and now they have to pay $4000.”

Auctions in Western Sydney’s mortgage belt have collapsed. This is exactly what happened in the 2003 Sydney bust. Western Sydney is basically a low income ghetto that occasionally catches the house price bug then is astonished when its paltry income can’t support the prices.

This is going to melt down worse than 2003. Back then it was bailed out by the mining boom, rising rents and wages. As well, other city house prices took off and supported consumption. Today Western Sydney is the epicentre of the mass immigration wages crush and falling rents, and it’s increasingly national.

Correction Just Started

Home prices are Just Starting to Decline.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Housing Bubble Pops: Update on Australia

August 4, 2018

A Housing Bubble Pops: Update on Australia

It is rare that a housing market makes such a beautifully defined U-turn, after a long hard surge.

In Sydney, Australia’s largest housing market and one of the world’s biggest housing bubbles, prices of homes of all types fell 5.4% in July compared to a year ago, and 5.5% from the peak in September. Prices of single-family houses dropped 7.0%, and prices of condos (“units”) fell 1.6%, according to CoreLogic’s Daily Home Value Index:

The most expensive quarter of the market got hit the hardest, with prices down 8.0% in July compared to a year ago. Across the so-called “most affordable quarter of the market” – “least unaffordable” would be more appropriate – prices fell by 1.8%.

And supply in Sydney is starting to come out of the woodwork: Total number of homes listed for sale, based on a rolling 28-day count, jumped 22% from a year ago to 26,103 listings, according to CoreLogic, the most since July 2012.

In the chart below, the number of homes listed for sale in 2018 is denoted with the black line. It’s below only the blue line (2012), but creeping up on it. Note the seasonality, with listings getting pulled during the Christmas holiday period (chart via CoreLogic):

And so goes the rental market, where “conditions eased further in July,” CoreLogic noted in its report: In Sydney rents fell 0.4% year-over-year. While that might not sound like much of an annual decline, it is “the largest decline on record” in CoreLogic’s data going back over a decade.

Melbourne lags a few months behind Sydney but is now catching up. Home prices in Melbourne fell 0.5% in July year-over-year, according to CoreLogic, and are down 3.0% from their peak at the end of November 2017: House prices fell 1.4% from a year ago while condos are still up 2.3%. The index is now back where it had been at the end of June, 2017:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

City Officials Struggle To Fend Off “Unstoppable Juggernaut” Of Chinese Homebuyers

June 9, 2018

City Officials Struggle To Fend Off “Unstoppable Juggernaut” Of Chinese Homebuyers

As we’ve pointed out time and time again, foreign – mainly Chinese – buyers seeking to park their ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the Communist Party have – in addition to global capitals like New York City and London – favored a handful of cities in the Pacific Northwest, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Many of these cities – for example, Vancouver – have seen property values rise to levels that are unaffordable for local buyers.

While the influx of capital helped fuel an economic recovery in the aftermath of the crisis, home values soon reached crisis levels that demanded action by local officials. Some places have tried to use taxes to deter foreign buyers. In some instances, the taxes worked – at least temporarily.

But with the flow of buyers refusing to slow despite efforts by the Chinese government to stop money moving offshore, many of these cities are getting desperate. And after years of occasional headlines, it appears the crisis has finally become dire enough for the mainstream press to start paying attention.

To wit, government officials in Canada and Australia who spoke with the Wall Street Journal for a story about how Chinese homebuyers expressed concern that widespread foreign ownership has created bubbles in local real-estate markets. Even as Australia and New Zealand and some Canadian cities have raised taxes on foreign buyers, many are worried that home values will continue to climb, foiling policy makers best efforts to control them. Since it passed an 8% foreign buyers tax last summer, Sydney says foreign buying hasn’t let up.

Jon Ellis, chief executive of Investorist, an online portal for cross-border property transactions, said Chinese property buyers are an “unstoppable juggernaut”. In some markets with large Mandarin-speaking populations, locals can spot real-estate ads in Mandarin at bus stations and benches in the surrounding area.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Freak storm rips though Sydney with tornadoes, flooding, hail, 200kph winds (PHOTO, VIDEO)

December 16, 2015

Freak storm rips though Sydney with tornadoes, flooding, hail, 200kph winds (PHOTO, VIDEO)

A destructive storm has hit Sydney, Australia, bringing tornadoes, flooding, golf-sized hail stones, and up to 213 kilometer per hour winds, which caused serious damage, triggered evacuations, and trapped people indoors.

A Sydney suburb was labeled a disaster zone after a tornado ripped through its southern beaches with golf-sized hail stones and rattling winds that caused tremendous damage to the neighborhood.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Students pepper-sprayed by police at Christopher Pyne protest in Sydney CBD

February 13, 2015

Students pepper-sprayed by police at Christopher Pyne protest in Sydney CBD

A group of university students protesting at a speech by Education Minister Christopher Pyne have been pepper-sprayed by police in Sydney.

Some demonstrators were pepper-sprayed when about 40 of them tried to enter the Sydney Masonic Centre on Friday morning.

Police sprayed a number of the protesters who managed to get into the foyer of the building and were then escorted out.

After watching the video what is your opinion about the incident?

Mr Pyne was inside the centre delivering the inaugural Hedley Beare Memorial Lecture to educator groups on the future of teacher education in Australia.

The address was the Government’s response to the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group report which was released earlier on Friday.

The group of protesters outside the building were demonstrating against university deregulation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sydney storm sparks fires and blackouts, as flooding reported in Southern Highlands – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

December 3, 2014

Sydney storm sparks fires and blackouts, as flooding reported in Southern Highlands – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

A storm has caused delays and brought down trees and powerlines across the Sydney metropolitan area, while lightning sparked a fire at an inner city substation.

Heavy rain, flooding and power outages were also reported across much of New South Wales after the afternoon’s wild weather.

PHOTO: Firefighters work to contain a fire at an electrical substation at Pyrmont. (Twitter: Fire and Rescue NSW)

On Wednesday night, NSW Fire and Rescue said it had 80 crews out responding to reports of damage in Sydney’s metro area.

The storm front moved from the south west to the north east before heading out to sea.

A lightning strike near Richmond disrupted train services on the Western line.

Another lightning strike started a fire in an electrical substation at Pyrmont in inner Sydney.

Twenty-five units were evacuated as a result.

Fire and Rescue said the situation was in hand but the apartments had been evacuated as a precaution.

More than 13,000 homes were without power across the state on Wednesday.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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