For about half an hour in the middle of the day and only because...

For about half an hour in the middle of the day and only because coal companies are mandated that they have to let the renewables take priority in the grid in that period . Ie they cycle down so the renewables fill that gap but then they die in the ass and the gas and coal generators to cover the period again they can’t supply , mmmm real fair system and hardly transparent in terms of letting one measure true costs of different sources .

I love how the abc run with this stuff completely ignoring the elephant in the room , the intermittency issue . Something can not be base load power until it can supply dispatchable power to changing demand volumes 24 hours a day , handling the peak demand periods , seven days a week . Renewable needs a ton of expensive storage before this is even doable and it will be far far dearer by the time such storage is implemented .

The abc makes out in the article , it’s the responsibility of the “grid” to supply this storage and allow the transformation . This is the canny game played by these advocates, make out renewables to be ultra cheap and the problem lies in the “grid” ( or the distribution) not the renewable power itself , then you purposely don’t count all the modification costs necessary in the grid to allow renewables actually to act as a substitute for fossil fuel as base load power. It’s all misleading nonsense to obfuscate to the average punter who takes these meanderings of the abc at face value .