Target $18.72, page-9228

The stupidity of these rent seeking 'renewable energy' advocates is highlighted this morning in 'The Australian' by Judith Sloan who discusses the failures of the National Electricity Market:

"...The progress of the NEM these past two decades has been both ill-conceived and badly executed. It was one thing to allow a small portion of RE on to the grid; it’s another thing altogether to have RE as the main source of generation. It’s hard not to laugh when we are told, for example, that South Australia was powered entirely by RE for seven hours on one particular day. What about the other 17 hours? What about the other days? And beware the claim that a new RE installation will power 50,000 homes. That’s if they want power some of the time.

In the meantime, RE has contributed to the destruction of the business cases of reliable coal-fired plants without providing the alternative of reliable, affordable electricity. By and large, RE investment has only happened because of the massive subsidies – billions of dollars. The combination of priority dispatch, renewable energy certificates and other government interventions, particularly from state governments, has made RE one of the most highly subsidised industry in Australian history – and that’s saying something.

The economics of storage that is needed to offset the intermittency of RE is not promising. Think Snowy 2.0, but also the non-existence of long-duration, affordable batteries – which in part explains the immediate need for the continuation of coal-fired power stations. Here’s my bet: the coal-fired Eraring plant will continue into the next decade propped up by the NSW government. Loy Yang A in Victoria will keep chugging along as well, courtesy of the Victorian taxpayers.
Origin Energy's Eraring power station in NSW. RE has contributed to the destruction of the business cases of reliable coal-fired plants without providing the alternative of reliable, affordable electricity. Picture: Supplied
Origin Energy's Eraring power station in NSW. RE has contributed to the destruction of the business cases of reliable coal-fired plants without providing the alternative of reliable, affordable electricity. Picture: Supplied

The reality is that coal is still the cheapest form of 24/7 generation at a system level. A more realistic working of the CostGen report confirms this. Of course, coal-fired plants break down often these days – there’s hardly been strong incentives for the owners to spend on maintenance. Even so, with realistically priced coal – the impact of the war in Ukraine can now be discounted – coal is still king. The grid would not work but for coal..."