Lately, most of the gas plants haven't been running at full capacity and the main diesel generators – three of them operated by the federal government-owned Snowy Hydro – have had a price gouging party.
Most of the units at AGL’s Torrens Island gas station were running, but dialled down. (I believe intentionally, in order to shape market forces.) One of the two big units at Pelican Point was offline. So, miraculously, diesel generators could control the bidding during periods of shortfall.
The irony is that while the federal government was complaining about renewables in SA, it was the federal government-owned Snowy Hydro that was at the heart of a bidding strategy where three diesel generators were used repeatedly to push the price up to $14,200/MWh in the first five-minute period of the each 30-minute pricing period. This meant a price of at least $2,500/MWh for the 30 minute period.
South Australian consumers have been getting screwed by a lack of competition, not a lack of fossil fuel generation. There's more than enough capacity. But there's a whiff of collusion happening in the market, and it isn't being investigated. In other countries, executives would end up in jail for playing around with the energy security of an entire country or state. Here, we just go, "Meh" and shrug our shoulders.
