Electricity prices in eastern Australia fell sharply in the final three months of last year as record-breaking contributions from renewable energy and large-scale batteries reduced the need to call on fossil fuels to plug supply gaps.
Figures from the energy market operator, to be released on Thursday, confirm renewables and batteries powered more than 50 per cent of the grid in the December quarter for the first time in history, crunching coal to its lowest-ever seasonal share of the mix, and gas to its lowest since 2000.
Wholesale power prices – what retailers pay generators for electricity before selling it to customers – tumbled to $50 megawatt-hour, a 44 per cent decline from the same time a year earlier.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who remains under pressure over rising power bills adding to cost-of-living strains, said the new figures showed Labor’s policies were working.
“The drop in wholesale price is good news – and we are working to ensure as much of that flows through retail prices,” he said.
Violette Mouchaileh, the Australian Energy Market Operator’s head of policy, said the lower average prices across the quarter were the result of years of sustained investment in clean energy and storage projects. It proved that adding more wind, solar and battery capacity into the grid reduced the need to burn higher-cost coal and gas for electricity, putting “downward pressure” on prices, she said.
And the right-wing politicians are still campaigning against ‘expensive’ renewables.
Lying morons.
Son just informed me that his battery made him $250 on one (extreme heat) day. For comparison, average householder would normally pay $10 day for electric power. Just Love these statistics. Battery backup and panels work!
What the hell do they mean they are working to make sure the fall in wholesale prices, “flows through” to the retail sector. Until essential utilities are prised from the grasp of corporations, climate justice will stay on the back burner
Oz is hardly a fantastically utopian empire, but, corporations have much Less control and anti-trust laws exist and are applied. Agree that returning essential utilities to public (means State) control is desirable.
There are a lot of “hybrid” gummint/private mechanisms to [theoretically] constrain costs to the public, like Public Utilities Commissions and public insurance regulation agencies in the individual states of the US.