30% generated by renewable energy sources, page-17

Actually , coal fired power plants originally were built on the massive over capacity theory in order to manage the peaks .

What they found was that in order to manage peak load , coal fired power stations had to be built ' oversize '. This resulted in them being idled outside the peaks as you can't switch coal fired stations on and off quickly.

Remember night rate hot water services ?

For a while there , it looked like we were going to run out of capacity and new coal fired power stations would have to be built . More efficient than the old ones but oversize nevertheless.

Thanks to price rises and technology ( and the GFC ) power consumption has dropped in Australia since about 2009 . This means no new stations so therefore we have advoided those increased costs .

Sure renewables are expensive , as is any new technology , but you would have to agree that the prices have fallen substantially and will eventually match coal .

So , just like any other technology , we are moving to a better energy supply that will be the right size. Remember , most coal stations are now very old . A lot of them are reaching the end of their useful life . It makes sense if we can adapt to newer technology now in so that as the stations need to be replaced , we can simply use the more modern version .