The land that is the Renewable Crash Test Dummy is holding its breath
This time last year, the Australian energy market turned into a kind of Hunger Games spectacle with daily feeding-fest at dinner time where prices were so burning hot that unhedged smaller retailers begged their own customers to leave them and then the whole market was suspended. The bonfire was so big we’re still paying for it, and retail electricity prices are set to rise another 25% in a few weeks.
So it’s no surprise that as the cold weather arrives downunder, everyone involved in energy is “on edge”. Suddenly Australian corporate leaders are telling it like it is — the Alinta Gas chief says there is just no way we can build enough renewables in time — he can’t even “see a way” of building enough renewables to compensate for the coal units that are being closed.
The man who used to run the Snowy Hydro Scheme agrees (and then some) — saying we need to build a “Snowy” every year, and we are being lied to (his words) and it will take not 8 years, but 80 years to get there. The head of EnergyAustralia says shutting down the Liddell coal plant means the system is “exposed”. These are people at the top (or formerly) of our biggest energy companies.
A year ago the new government won with a pledge to bring electricity prices down. Instead prices just keep rising and are set to remain high “for years”. To appreciate just how like the Starship Enterprise the nation is, going where no nation has gone before, we have a roughly 30GW grid, and in the next eight years 8GW of coal power is scheduled to be lost. But in reality the AEMO estimates that 14GW of coal power capacity will flee the rigged Australian market by 2030.
The cost of the rushed transition-we-don’t-have-to-have is estimated to be $120 billion which is $4,500 for every man, women and child or about $20,000 for a family of four, who could have gone to the Bahamas instead. As it is for $20k, they will get expensive unreliable electricity, lose jobs to China, and reduce world temperatures by 0.00 degrees C.
These are quite devastating quotes:
Power bill misery has years to run
Colin Packham and Nick Evans, The Australian
Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery, head of the country’s fourth largest energy retailer, said he could not see a way of building enough renewable energy sources to compensate for the loss of coal, which still generates about two-thirds of Australia’s electricity.
“We’ve had one battery reach a final investment decision in the last quarter – one battery,” Mr Dimery said.
“Snowy 2.0 is delayed, VNI West [interconnector] is coming in 2031, three years after Yallourn comes out. The whole transition is not lining up. We are so far off track.
The transition may not happen this century…
Paul Broad, who ran Snowy Hydro until resigning shortly after Labor won office last year, said the challenge of the huge pumped hydro expansion under construction could not be overstated, adding that was just a tiny fraction of new green-energy supplies needed.
“We need a Snowy every year, but it’s extremely difficult,” Mr Broad said. “We are being lied to that this is achievable; the transition will take 80 years.”
Power grid precarious as winter looms, warns EnergyAustralia
Colin Packham, The Australian
Australia’s electricity network is precariously balanced going into a peak demand period, the head of one of the country’s biggest energy companies has warned.
Mark Collette, head of EnergyAustralia, said recent fossil fuel closures, including the shutting of AGL Energy’s Liddell coal-fired power plant, had left the national electricity system exposed… If there were outages or supply shocks – we notice them”.
The Australian Energy Regulator last month approved bill increases of about 25 per cent for households and businesses across the east coast from July 1, which it said was predominantly driven by the increased cost of generating electricity in winter 2022.
Meanwhile the resolutely green AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) forecasts an improved winter outlook but says “risks remain”. Translated, they’re saying that things are slightly better than the bottom of the barrel and if nothing else breaks, we might get through the winter without the same trainwreck we had last year. Maybe.
But ponder that since last winter 400,000 immigrants have moved to Australia. It’s not clear the generation has even kept up with that.
We’ve added a lot of wind and solar power since last winter, but it didn’t improve the graph at all. It’s not dispatchable generation.