Hmmm. Is coal that reliable ? Or cheap ? It appears not .
" Victoria's brown coal-fired power stations had 16 major failures over the summer putting the reliability of the east coast’s electricity network at risk, "
" The failures at Loy Yang A, Loy Yang B and Yallourn reached a peak between January 15 and 21 when there was an average of one generator failure a day, the Australia Institute report says. "
"This caused the price to spike close to the market price cap, and increased market turnover by approximately $168 million."
On this day, the wholesale price of electricity rose to $13,000 per megawatt hour.
"This was the closest Victoria came to load shedding – the deliberate shutdown of parts of the electricity network – in some time. They failed when they were needed the most," Mr McConnell said. "
disallowed/business/the-economy/vic...-nem-reliability-at-risk-20180409-p4z8l9.html