AUIDIO: Australia falling behind in the electricity energy revolution
AUDIO: The price of power ABC Radio Background Briefng 27 Apr 14 With Australian electricity prices amongst the highest in the world, more and more households are going solar. The big power companies say the Renewable Energy Target is undermining their businesses and they want it wound back. The federal government agrees, so who is to blame for the high price of power? Jess Hill investigates……….Mr Abbott’s claim that the renewable energy target is expensive is not supported by the data. The Australian Energy Markets Commission says the renewable energy target adds four per cent to the average electricity bill. For an average household, that’s about a dollar a week.
‘For all of the attention that carbon price has got, from the increasing attention the renewable energy target’s got, the main reason that electricity has been getting dearer is the overinvestment in poles and wires, and the fundamental inefficiency in the way that the national electricity market’s working,’ says Richard Denniss, executive director of the Australia Institute.
Federal Treasury estimates that 51 per cent of an average household bill is spent on network costs. Most of that is going towards paying off the $45 billion network companies have spent on updating our poles and wires over the last five years………Solar rooftops are wreaking havoc on the traditional power industry, says Mr Denniss, because they produce the most amount of energy at the time of day when the power industry makes the most money.
‘Solar panels have got this great trick, they make lots of electricity when the sun is shining; that’s when we like to turn our air conditioners on,’ he says. ‘When everybody turns their electricity on at four o’clock on a hot Thursday afternoon, we have enormous demand for electricity for these short periods of peak demand. And that’s when solar panels are at their best.’
‘Solar panels are actually pumping quite a large amount of energy in during these periods of peak demand, and that’s pushing down the peak price. Now that’s great for everybody, except the so-called baseload power stations. Because the baseload power stations used to be able to sell their electricity for a much higher price at four o’clock on that hot Thursday afternoon. From the coal-fired power station point of view, you couldn’t have a worse competitor, because solar is at its best when the market is at its most profitable.’
What that means is that the big coal-fired power plants are earning less for the energy they produce. That’s because Australia has more electricity than it can use………The chair of the Climate Change Authority is Bernie Fraser, a former Reserve Bank governor. He says that just by holding another review, the government has ensured that the 41,000 gigawatt-target won’t be met. ‘Investment is actually being cut back and delayed, and I think because of that, I think it’s apparent now that the 41,000 gigawatts for large renewable energy power plants, is not going to happen. It’s going to be a lesser figure and I think that’s what the opponents, the critics of renewable energy want to see.’
‘Policymakers need to look beyond short-term economic considerations in the interests of some of the big companies to longer-term community interests. And that’s what governments are supposed to do, but unfortunately it’s not happening at the present time,’ he says.
So it’s a bit… well, it’s more than a bit, it’s very disappointing that we’re falling behind, and we are falling behind what many other countries are doing.’ http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2014-04-27/5406022
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