By Jo Nova
Big Battery prices on fire in Australia last quarter
The Renewable Crash Test Dummy suffers yet another nasty price surprise. We have more batteries than last year but the average price per megawatt hour has doubled.
In June there were a few hellfire price spikes where the prices on the National Energy Market launched up to an obscene $10,000 a megawatt-hour and then levitated there for hour after hour. These spikes had a width like we rarely see. Now, with the latest AEMO Quarterly Report we know that the spikes were due to the batteries.
On the left, the price spike of June 26th. On the right, the timing of the battery discharging…
And just so everyone can see how much energy the batteries provided — note the patch marked “Battery” below in the daily load curve of June 26th. The black line across the top is “total demand”. Most of the area under that curve was provided by the evil, but reliable, fossil fuels. Batteries contributed just 0.7% of total NEM generation.
These spikes were so bad they moved the quarterly average costs
The average daily price for June 26th was 24 long hours at $1,408/MWh. It was the fourth highest price day in NEM history.
Quarter two used to be the sleepy shoulder season for grid managers, now it’s a white-knuckle ride. Below are the winning bids on the national market graphed by their fuel type. In Quarter 2 last year when batteries won bids the whole market earned, on average $245/MWh. But in Quarter 2 this year, batteries won a higher percentage of the time (because we ran out of cheaper options), and the average winning bid was $478/MWh.
If only we’d built another gas plant instead of buying big batteries and then burning money on $600 million dollar price spikes.
The gas plants saved the day (somewhat) with prices of $170/MWh — or nearly a third of the price of the Big Batteries.
Note that brown coal prices also jumped from $12/MWh last year to $59/MWh this year — showing that even after the price quadrupled, brown coal is still cheap. (Ignore the negative prices on solar and wind power, which just show how subsidized they are.) We could run the whole grid on brown and black coal if we wanted to — with a peaking gas plant or two — just like we did for decades when electricity bills were cheap.
Can you afford to set up an AI Data centre in Australia — it depends on the weather
Quarter 2 is now the most expensive quarter of the year, and very weather dependent. Things were warm and sunny in April and May and prices were only three times what they used to be twenty years ago. The real bonfire was in June when a few cold fronts were followed by chilly windless days. Look at the difference in those monthly prices!
Poor Giles Parkinson at Reneweconomy thought batteries would reduce the price spikes, not exacerbate them. The big hope, of course, is that batteries will save the forced transition, and make solar and wind power more useful. He is baffled and disappointed that market players are doing what market players do, and are trying to maximize profits. (Don’t they realize that thousands of renewable grifters depend on the illusion that batteries are cheap?)
Bad bidding behaviour: Big batteries the dominant force as daily electricity prices pushed to record highs
Reneweconomy
Australia’s growing fleet of big batteries are now entrenching themselves as the major force behind the huge price spikes that have become a regular feature of Australia’s National Electricity Market, and which were the dominant factor in soaring wholesale prices in the June quarter.
Big batteries had been expected to be a softening influence on price spikes on the grid, given their cost of fuel (charging) is significantly lower than peaking gas stations, and based on the assumption that they would bring new competition to the market.
But market power is market power, whatever the technology that is deployed. The costs of battery storage may well have fallen, but their market power has grown, and so has their asking price.
It’s perhaps proof, if any was needed, that the owners of big batteries will not behave any differently from the owners of peaking gas and pumped hydro.
And that’s largely because they are one and the same group, the same oligopolists who have dominated the grid for decades, and they are not about to break their addiction to unchecked market power.
Dear Giles, those same oligopolists gave us cheap electricity for decades until we screwed up the free market and tried to turn it into a socialist weather-control machine. That’s the point of free market competition. It makes greedy people work for the greater good.
You cheered on the oligopolists when they drove cheap coal fired plants out so they could profit from subsidized wind and solar plants in a rigged market. Reap what you sow, eh? Did you think they would be nice?
Once the government started to pick winners, subsidize losers, and allow predatory giants (and foreign interests) to have cross ownership of competing generators there is no free market and the whole country gets screwed.
REFERENCE
AEMO Quarterly Report 2, 2025.
with a background in business journalism obviously didn’t learn much.
270
Every time I read anything on RenewEconomy, I can’t believe the biased dribble.
160
Like base load generators are no longer needed with transition to renewables.
But never explained is that domestic and high commercial demand is a small segment of grid demand that continues 24/7/365 and consumers expect power to be available at every or any switch point instantly.
70
I think you mean drivel.
00
But has a track record for what should be described as sales and marketing hyperbole and puffery.
80
Ten years from now ALL of the current batteries will need replacing.
The amazing feature of the new renewable grid is that the expensive bits will wear out even as it becomes too expensive for any users. Disconnection cannot be allowed as such would bankrupt union superannuation.
The BIG bills are only just beginning!
90
Parkinson should be reminded that energy was publically owned and cheap once . One utility that should have remained in state hands.
341
Retail costs went down with removing state monopolies and privatisation through the 1990s. Prices went up when Howard opened the door for non-dispatrchable generators to connect to the grid on highly favourable terms.
My electricity cost has not gone up over the last 14 years. It is still zero.
45
RickWill,
Plainly untrue. You have told us about all the stuff you’ve installed and how Australian taxpayers helped you with the expense. It has cost you plenty.
You’re turning a blind eye to the ongoing costs too.
330
Like any investment, I did my homework and they have given a great return. I put in capital up front to lower my ongoing costs.
And I have not had an electricity bill in 14 years.
And I am not alone. The average household electricity bill in Australia has not increased since 2018. But the prices have gone ballistic. If you are fully exposed to the price increases then you are paying a lot more.
01
Retail electric prices did not go up under John Howard, as the ACCC has shown in several reports.
What John Howard did in 2002 was establish the legislation for Renewable Energy to be introduced into our grid. But legislation set the limit of renewable energy to 2% of total generation capacity, but prices remained stable until 2009, two years after the end of the Howard government.
What happened in 2009? The Rudd Labor government increased the RET to 20%, established. AEMO to drive the changing rules of the NEM to favour intermittent energy generators, and vastly increased the subsidies all consumers were forced to pay to finance this change.
Clearly, the concept of associating facts with cause and effect is not your strong suit!
20
This lunacy should end TODAY but no chance while the vile grifters hold the reins and force Aussies to pay the price and this will only get much worse.
Just think how much worse when we need to increase the toxic , unreliable W & S electricity requirements from 30 GW to 3000 GW by 2030? See Renew Economy report.
This is complete idiocy on steroids, but will the clueless voters even start to WAKE UP by 2028?
260
Never mind the “gas plants” (Gas is more valuable as a feedstock for a whole raft of “organic chemistry” processes).
A chain of NUKES is what we needed several decades ago.
NOT the (literally) timber piles of the Manhattan Project,(under the bleachers of the local stadium), nor the “slightly” unstable jobs run by the Nazi POST OFFICE, (and later “improved” by the soviets at Chernobyl)byut something akin to the “CANDU” reactors from Kanaduh. Oz is sitting on some of, of not most of, the worlds Uranium, and other ingredients / materials for building nuclear self-sufficiency.
The ONLY “science” involved in recent Oz nuclear matters has been POLITICAL “science.
180
” NOT the (literally) timber piles of the Manhattan Project,(under the bleachers of the local stadium) ”
Weren’t they graphite piles.
20
Yes they were graphite. And there was Enrico Fermi, with his slide rule, saying, “let’s remove another block and see what happens”….
And it wasn’t a local stadium, it was under the stands of the Chicago Uni’s sports stadium.
20
Correction: “Poor Giles Parkinson at Reneweconomy HOPED & PRAYED & CROSSED HIS FINGERS AND TOES batteries would reduce the price spikes (but he probably didn’t believe it would), etc, et al, et spruik, spruik, spruik, et shill, shill, shill”
201
Well said Jo
sums it up nicely
180
Basically, we’re stuffed, aren’t we?
230
At least two ways stuffed …
1. Ever increasing cost of electricity supply for our own homes.
2. Ever increasing cost of electricity supply for commercial industrial and other users resulting in many business closures and even moving offshore resulting in huge losses of economic prosperity creators, jobs, and tax revenue.
120
Exactly.
Free market capitalism pits oligopilists against one another and forces them to compete for customers which drives prices lower.
Crony capitalism allows oligopilists to secure customers by greasing the palms of politicians, which replaces price competition for customers with price competition for bribing government officials. A few million dollars of campaign contributions here, a few gold bars and stuffed envelopes there, and you find yourself with a government contract 1,000 times larger than your bribes. Sweet deal if you can afford the buy-in. Not so sweet deal for small businesses who don’t have millions in bribes/contributions to throw around.
200
Again, why don’t the govt, MSM + so called scientists just look up the CSIRO Cape Grim data and save us WASTING up to 9 TRILLION $ for a lousy ZERO return and guaranteed BANKRUPTCY for our country.
Here the CSIRO tell us that the SH (about 1 billion pop) is already a NET SINK for co2 and the NH ( 7 billion + pop) are the NET SOURCE.
The last time I looked Australia is in the SH and just 27 + million people. When will they look up the data and wake up and start to build only safe, reliable BASELOAD power stns that will last for another 75 years?
“Seasonal variation”
“Carbon dioxide concentrations show seasonal variations (annual cycles) that vary according to global location and altitude. Several processes contribute to carbon dioxide annual cycles: for example, uptake and release of carbon dioxide by terrestrial plants and the oceans, and the transport of carbon dioxide around the globe from source regions (the Northern Hemisphere is a net source of carbon dioxide, the Southern Hemisphere a net sink)”.
180
Hi Neville, frustrating isn’t it Neville. Information that Australia is a net Carbon Sink has been around for many years now, but all politicians the MSM etc,etc never mention, discuss or publicize this most pertinent fact. One could almost believe there is a deliberate conspiracy of silence.
211
Remember when Chrissy Warren and Stu swore on Don Aitkin that the Southern Hemisphere was not a net CO2 sink? Now their “beloved” CSIRO says it is. No wonder they have gone to more friendly fora!
110
But to be clear….
“Net Zero” is not about being a net carbon sink,..it refers to the “Net” effect of ANTHROPOGENIC carbon generation and elimination…
…ignoring any natural balances.
..Just sayin ‘
50
It’s that “net effect” that this is all about.
Want to save the world from Gerbil Worming, speak to China and India.
60
No !, actually the fuss .. international political debate,…is all about anthropological “Net Zero” .
10
Remember Hazelwood power plant? AU was seemingly very proud of demolishing it.
https://www.hazelwoodrehabilitation.com.au/engie/hazelwood/demolition
Here’s the video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gXzqSspjVU
Yes, it was 50 yrs old, brown coal fed, but what replaced it? Pixie dust, fantasy, and illusion, at much higher prices.
I’ll bet AU wishes that Hazelwood was refurbished and still producing affordable power.
Reliable, affordable, dispatchable, grid scale power, comes from Coal, Nuclear, Hydro, or Gas. Ditto for the Jobs, families, and futures that depend upon such.
It doesn’t come from Wind, Solar, or Batteries.
350
You are assuming that “AU” (who ever that might mean ?), ..are rational thinkers.
Unfortunately, that is not the reality of where we are.
“AU” has managed to install a government incapable of rational or logical thinking.
150
Stupid is. as Stupid Does. Cultural suicide is not preventable if the culture cannot comprehend the requirements of their own existence.
Apparently, stupidity reigns supreme over history, fact, provable science, actual economics, genomics etc.
Oz is in a death spiral. Good luck to those that survive their politically induced decay,
160
AU Australia, sheesh why so testy?
40
I just looked at that linked video of the Hazelwood demolition. It was put up by the demolition contractors, Delta Group, but unfortunately and unsurprisingly, comments have been turned off. Such a pity, as I had a few choice words to add.
180
Incidentally, as a young man in the early 1970’s, I worked in the demolition game for a while. I worked alone and reduced entire houses down to the stumps, by hand, in 5-6 days. In those days, everything was salvaged and carefully removed, from the roof tiles to doors, windows, flooring, framing, etc. etc. All materials were transported to a salvage yard and re-sold. Much more ‘environmentally friendly’ don’t you think?
210
I remember Hazelwood very well – I did the environmental audit of it for its sale to the French. There were plenty of issues with ash waste etc – but the plant was then (1990s) working well and even producing coal briquettes for running boilers. They had even tried sun-drying the brown coal to reduce its water content to enhance the energy output. It could have run on for many more years more except the luddites came around and blew it up. I spoke to one of the demolition guys – they were very proud of their dynamiting job!
120
I think this is a big missunderstanding of the data..
Its not that the battery discharge is “CAUSING” the price spikes,…its actually the reverse.
Because there is a price spike the Batteries discharge to benefit from the high price oportunity.
Of course the operators will say they are helping to reduce the demand spike, but as pointed out, their effect on supply is minimal…( but the financial benefit is huge !)
170
That’s how I see it too.
50
Chad,
They aren’t causing the *demand* spikes, but they surely are causing the *price* spikes. We all know the weird auction that the NEM uses, where all suppliers are paid the price offered by the last bidder necessary to satisfy the demand. In those price spikes, the last offer was from the big batteries, and that price was paid to the coal, gas, wind providers too. If there had been no offer from the batteries, there might have been blackouts, but no price spike.
130
Are they ?
The biggest price spike on those charts is at 9:00pm , long after the batteries have finished supplying any power.
And you are also forgetting those $14,000 price spikes we had before any batteries were available.
Some might conclude it was those huge price spikes back in the 2016,s that initiated the battery owners to take advantage of the arbitrage oportunity !
40
Chad,
We don’t disagree as much as it seems. My quibble was that when things got tight, the battery people bid a very high price, hence the spike. If they’d offered a lower price, the spike would have been smaller. Trivial, but true.
“Cause” is a rather vague term which can always be taken back to Adam and Eve or whatever.
IMO, the real problem is the market operator which apparently blindly accepts these absurd prices, as if there were no price too big to pay to avoid a blackout. It’s insane, but it’s because their rules have come from politicians.
60
But Robert , how do we be certain it was the “battery people” that bid the high price ?
It certainly does not appear to be them during that 9:00 pm price peak !
20
I think the obvious cause of the price spike is twofold. The shortfall in supply and the bizarre NEM auction system.
When demand is high and supply low then the prices will be higher than normal. It’s universal with any product sold. With the current mix of generators there are some who are only called on sporadically and so they have to bid to cover their idle operating costs as well.
The NEM bidding system compounds the high prices even more. Madness.
If generator “A” bids at $60MWh, why should they get paid $100MWh or $1,000MWh or more? The consumer is the ultimate loser as usual.
The solution is of course to build electricity generators that are capable to supply baseload power and “on demand” and to also have more of these generators in reserve.
This was the norm back when Australia had an electricity grid that was one of the best in the world. About 20 or so years ago me thinks.
90
I have always wondered about that – in SA the wind turbines etc depend on that to make a profit as they bid zero for whatever they can supply at the time – the bidding system should be revised to what ever is bid is what you get paid. Then you would see a lot of the grifters fall out very very quickly.
70
I think the obvious cause of the price spike is twofold. The shortfall in supply and the bizarre NEM auction system.
When demand is high and supply low then the prices will be higher than normal. It’s universal with any product sold.
The NEM bidding system compounds the high prices even more. Madness.
If generator “A” bids at $60MWh, why should they get paid $100MWh or $1,000MWh or more? The consumer is the ultimate loser as usual.
The solution is of course to build electricity generators that are capable to supply baseload power and “on demand” and to also have more of these generators in reserve.
You know, back when Australia had an electricity grid that was one of the best in the world. About 20 or so years ago me thinks.
50
I am still convinced that Big Batteries are a form of arbitrage for the electricity supply companies. The reasoning for their construction was that they would smooth over the transition between unreliables conking out and gas being peaked. They were supposed to be charged up when wind/solar are in excess, but probably they charge up when coal is at its cheapest. Then the power is released from the batteries when the spot price is at its highest.
110
Always good, ”in theory”. What happens in the real world is that batteries make money where the retail costs are highest.
Two issues destroy that theory. Firstly, the amount of battery storage needed to produce energy when solar and wind are not producing enough energy is enormous, far greater than the storage infrastructure currently in place or planned.
Secondly, there are the other ten or so “markets” that are available for battery energy: the FCAS markets. These markets respond to instability in the grid, and so have been growing as more renewables are added. The value of these markets is now so great that most large batteries devote about 70% of their capacity to FCAS:
https://www.cefc.com.au/media/zvzl1tql/cefc_investmentinsights_neoen.pdf
Decades ago, when synchronous energy was king on the NEM, FCAS costs were around $5 million a quarter. These days, $30 million per quarter is the more common value:
https://www.steelaustralia.com.au/understanding-the-decline-in-fcas-prices-and-process-optimizer-in-australia/
00
There is a new AEMC rule that will come into effect in 2027 that allows households to feed in the battery trough. But I expect the market dynamics will be observed to change by then.
The rate of battery uptake will be observable in the duck curve probably this spring or at least the rooftop component. So household batteries will reduce the opportunity for the grid batteries to feed in the arbitrage trough the same way as rooftop solar has taking away the lunchtime market for grid wind and solar. Household batteries open the door slightly for more lunchtime grid wind and solar.
Overall I expect the Electricity market in Australia to continue to shrink in volume – grid scale generation was down to 21.7GW in Q2. It is impossible to run industry on wind, solar and batteries. Heavy industry in Australia enjoyed a synergistic relationship with commercial and domestic electricity consumers. The latter basically paid the capital and industry paid most of the fuel cost. The domestic and commercial sectors enjoyed the benefit of the jobs industry created. Now households are effectively abandoning the grid. The average household cost for electricity is falling despite rapidly increasing retail price. Rooftops produced 12.8% of the total demand in the NEM over the past year.
I expect Tomago will collapse this summer. NSW electricity supply is sailing close to the wind. An extended power outage will cause a freeze up at Tomago and it will not be economic to recover. The Boyne smelter in Queensland now has zero book value. Its future is also doubtful. Any serious incident there would see its demise as well.
100
Are you suggesting that private houshold battery output will have access to whoesale electricity prices ?
Whilst i understand there already are some retailers that claim something of that sort, (certainly higher FIT s than commonly available, but far from the mega prices available to grid scale services.),…..I doubt the general public will ever be able to access the wholesale pricing unfettered by regulation and limits…the “big players” would never let that happen.
40
Yes, households can already access the wholesale market through Amber Electric. I am hoping to save enough for a battery system that will allow me to change to them as my retailer. Going from $1500 yearly bill to (probably) earning that instead, is what is referred to as a “no-brainer”.
That the government has created the conditions where this makes sense is a sad indictment.
40
The mechanism is not clear and I doubt it will be down to household level. So there will be grouping of battery output and batteries owners enticed financially to participate.
Household battery capacity will quickly surpass grid scale batteries so the government is keen to get access to that capacity to reduce peak demand.
30
Victoria is doing its bit to help shrink the volume of the electricity market. From the AEMO report:
Given the shameless nature of our politicians, they are likely to spin the decrease of demand for gas as a positive sign for the renewables transition.
150
It’s becoming more obvious by the day why the big push to get coal shut down and by whom, the nature of coal firing is that it’s better to keep them online when power is cheap because of risk of damage, that means there can be excess power at times, but gas, pumped hydro and battery can be flicked on and off at a moments notice and they sit and wait for the price to rise when demand is high.
Arbitrage is the name of the game.
80
Yes, electricity supply has become a Business opportunity for the generators, rather than a Service to the community.
100
What defies understanding is why the cost of battery or solar power suddenly jumps when it is used. Both are what could reasonably be called passive generators. That is, they have no moving parts and the energy produced by them requires no extra active input or activity. It is simply a matter of throwing a switch from “off” to “on.”
I smell the odour of price gouging.
50
Does it ?
Again i think you are incorrectly interpreting the data..
Look at the charts at the top of the page for June 26. ..
Sure the price spike at 7:45 coincides with the battery discharge, but it also coinsides with a demand peak… so is the battery causing the price spike ,? Or is it the demand that causes the price to spike and the battery simply benefits from that price ?
..Also ,Solar ?… From those charts it is apparent that as solar supply comes online at 08:00, the price (and demand) begins to reduce through the day until another demand and price peak in the evening after solar shuts down and batteries again can benefit from the situation ( not cause it).
That is simply a demand driven price response, not a supply technology effect.
20
Because battery and solar are at serious risk of becoming obsolete more quickly than your average non-passive generators.
The old business adage comes to mind “make hay while the sun shines” meaning to make good use of an opportunity while it lasts.
In the nearish future it is clear there will be a huge lefty make-work program to dispose of panels and batteries.
Somebody has to take responsibility for this rubbish – the new-age oligopolists will be on the hook and must make provisions NOW for that liability.
Of course, the sharpies will bail early the the dopey ones will be left when the music stops. Grifter101.
60
Rick, put simply, the batteries are there because the price is high.
50
Well, on the other hand, those are just the startup and operating costs. The system is still in its first operating phase of its lifecycle. Still to come are the maintenance, replacement, liability, and recovery/retirement costs, most of which must be paid even if the system was shut off tomorrow.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
90
Then there’s insurance, the cost of putting out fires etc.
80
Don’t forget insurance – both for the asset and liability … got to be high
40
Think how much more effective all this battery capacity would have been if distributed across the grid at LV level, allowing existing rooftop solar to be stored and used locally and short term grid bottlenecks to be accommodated without expensive substation, poles and wires upgrades. Brown coal is still the cheapest and most effective for baseload power, but batteries can help with consumer level grid bottlenecks.
21
I think you’ve fallen into a common trap by only mentioning households and omitting commercial and industrial users and their requirements.
30
Industrial estates are an even greater opportunity for local area batteries. Many operate daylight hours only and some have extensive rooftop solar. Where I live, I look down on a literal sea of industry and commercial with their whole roofs covered in panels. I am suggesting batteries at substation level are more effective and beneficial than at grid level, minimising losses and reducing need for distribution upgrades. Ideally the battery chemistry should not be Lithium Ion. Lithium Iron Phosphate is a considerably less volatile and has a longer service life.
40
That assumes there would be a sufficient excess of both solar panel capacity and battery storage, to both satisfy the owners requirements, and provide significant reserve for export .
How many home owners are actually prepared to overspecify their panel and battery capacity foor the benefit of others ?
10
Our energy cartel has morphed into a huge cartel operation, subsidised by our own taxes. Big government now works hand in glove with the cartel to feed them billions of dollars so they can further game the system by creating energy lotto with the highly intermittent RE, with massive price spikes every time the wind stops. And, if you crunch the numbers on battery emissions, they are on par with gas, so this entire exercise makes no logical sense from any perspective, other than it’s an obvious scam designed to bleed every last drop of blood from Australian taxpayers.
90
Jo, a minor quibble.
You show a graph headed “Energy Production by source during 26 June 2025”.
It includes “Batteries” shown in bright purple.
The header is wrong and misleading. Batteries are not a source of “Production”. They cannot operate without one or more of the other, real sources of production. They subtract from it. It follows that part of the expense attributed to batteries depends on the cost of the other producers at its source.
Also, the header does not clearly describe if “Energy” is all energy or just the electricity component, which is far smaller.
Cheers Geoff S
70
I think you’ve blamed the wrong person. Jo has named the source as Anero.id.
60
Yes it would be better if they left the production word out of it and just used power sources.
I get a similar feeling when I look at fuel mix on the AEMO site. They dont seem to want to acknowledge the fuel mix coming across the interconnects.
20
We shouldn’t forget why we are wasting trillions of $ on unreliable, toxic W & S and batteries and of course we are destroying the eastern Aussie environment as well.
Again here’s the link to OWI Data for OECD, NON OECD and the World co2 emissions in billions of Ts per annum up to 2023.
The wealthy countries or OECD are now emitting slightly less annual co2 emissions since 1988, but the NON OECD are now emitting 15.42 billion Ts more per year in 2023.
The upward trajectory of the NON OECD countries’ co2 emissions are very steep on the graph and I don’t see any change before 2060 at least.
The graphs are active using your mouse and can be checked for every year.
So why are we wasting TRILLIONs of $ for a zero return and at enormous risk to our national security and prosperity?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=OWID_WRL~OECD+%28GCP%29~Non-OECD+%28GCP%29
80
Aha – the answer is Socialism… force the Corporations to the iron will of the Government………idiots the lot of em….
60
ALP National Constitution
50
History forgotten, that soon after World War 2.0 General Sir John Monash, and engineer, returned from Europe and convinced firstly the Government of Victoria that building German design brown coal (lignite) power stations and a transmission grid would not only provide communities with reliable and cheap electricity supply but would also attract industrial businesses and others to invest in the State of Victoria, as it happened until the decision to sell State electricity assets and subsidise transition to unreliable energy sources wind turbines and solar panel installations.
The privatisation started early 1990s in New South Wales by the Carr Labor Government and sale of the first tranche of assets, power stations, was carried out by Keneally Labor. Other State Governments followed the lead.
The fleet of coal (brown and then black) fired power stations interconnected increased and serviced VIC, TAS, SA, NSW and QLD (and ACT).
Federal Labor 2007-2013 decided to legislate a Renewable Energy Target of 32% of total supply, from 2022 Albanese Labor increased RET to 82% and want more.
Governments will not admit what the transition costs add up to or how much longer transition will take given that right now in 2025 building is a long way behind planned schedules and transmission lines construction are as well. Offshore wind installations have failed to proceed as investors have decided not to participate because of the high costs involved and risks.
Transition should never have started, or when it did begin cap the wind turbines and solar panels at no more than 30% of total electricity supply, and with power station generators capable of supplying 100% when needed. And subject to a cost-benefit analysis for public inspection.
As many know the Dutton Plan for nuclear involves replacing already shut down coal fired power stations with nuclear technology, using the existing locations and existing transmission lines and water supplies.
Nuclear is emissions free but reliable 24/7/365 generator supply.
80
WW I.
20
50
Has anyone detected any “official” news about the US EPA’s move to reverse the Endangerment Finding?
50
Did you listen to Minister Bowen speaking to Parliament recently and claiming electricity prices are not increasing, and quotedwholesale price cherry picking the best days and ignoring the fluctuations, and that we pay the cumulative amount retail
90
Yes, I didn’t watch it but read the report claiming he misled parliament which is a serious offence.
90
Who funds RenewEconomy?
Taxpayers?
Subsidy harvesters?
80
“Who funds RenewEconomy?”
Good question.
40
Giles Parkinson is independent, makes a little money from advertising.
14
Big Oil! Isnt everyone funded by them?
30
In the future someone will write a book “the rise and fall of the western empire.” And, people will read that book and ask: “why didn’t anyone try to stop the fall when it was so obvious they were being pushed to oblivion.”
And the answer to that question is here. Everyone knows that we are being pushed toward policies that are utterly destructive to the west, but the system is so corrupt now, that it is impossible to stop them destroying the west.
70
Not everything can be saved in a timely and tidy manner. More often than not some destruction is part of the process.
Wars, commercial aviation safety and Bowens grid plans.
There used to be a saying in a dangerous sport I did as a 20 something. Dont ignore the safety rules, they are written in other peoples blood.
100
If we’re talking money, here is a proposal to use fusion tokamaks not only to generate electricity but simultaneously to do alchemy and transmute other elements into gold:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13461
The standard fusion proposal is to burn a deuterium-tritium plasma mix inside the torus. Deuterium can be separated from seawater, and tritium can be made by letting neutrons from the torus hit a lithium blanket around it. If you include a particular (and common) isotope of mercury in the blanket, this is changed to gold. The resulting isotope of gold is radioactive, but its half-life is short and there is no detectable excess radioactivity after 15 years; and in any case gold is usually stored in vaults.
A working fusion torus could create about 3 tons of gold per year. At present electricity prices, that doubles its revenue. Or, if you are sceptical about fusion prospects for generating electricity, just run it to make gold!
30
All very predictable. The solid, reliable energy suppliers have been treated very badly, doubling cost with Green certificates under the RET scheme. Turning the windmills into windfalls. Making huge profits on illegal forced public investment in useless unpredictable, unreliable energy sources.
So the traditional and cheaper energy suppliers, now the suppliers of last resort, have reacted. Everyone knows wind is random, sun is predictably inadequate, so it’s only a matter of time before a disaster. The politicians cannot afford the grid to turn off so they will pay whatever it costs to save votes. This just ends up as extortion.
And the wind opportunists who sign contract to supply power when required can blow their whole year’s profits underwriting fossil fuel suppliers and battery extortionists. Just ask Ross Garnaut who presumes still to advise the Labor government while he tried simultaneously to profiteer from his advice. And nearly lost the lot.
The fantasy of solar and wind is being exposed, nothing more. And the badly treated gas and coal suppliers can sit and wait and make fortunes for minimum cost. Plus if the government forces these essential suppliers to close, blackouts are as certain as night follows day and votes will be lost and the MPs will be out of a job. It’s an economic hell of their own creation, legally punishing the cheapest and most reliable energy suppliers.
As for battery suppliers, they opportunistically buy and sell too but they do not create power. The same will be true of expensive paid pumped storage energy like Snowy II as opposed to zero cost hydroelectricity. So instead of lowering electricity prices, pumped storage will dramatically increase power costs in times of crisis. But then Malcolm Turnbull could not care less. $2Bn or $20Bn, it was never his money so why should be care? As long as he gets a statue.
60