Antinuclear

Politicians are now responding, with Liberal Senator Chris Back calling for a ban on new wind farms until after a review by the Productivity Commission. Meanwhile Senator Nick Xenophon’s party are backing a Senate inquiry.

Yet everyone has missed the main cause of a doubling in SA power price rises – a doubling in gas prices.

What makes it all especially worrying is the blame attributed to renewable energy appears to have originated from a public relations campaign initiated by the lobby group for the big power generators………

wholesale market data suggests renewable energy has actually been depressing power prices, not increasing them. In the months before and after the Northern Coal Power Station was taken off-line, South Australia’s wind farms, without exception, bid their entire available output into the market for a price less than a single dollar. Meanwhile rooftop solar doesn’t even bid into the market, with its output just reducing the demand for generators that do bid into the wholesale market.

This is not to suggest renewable energy imposes no costs. It is certainly true that wind and solar require a subsidy, but its cost is distributed equally across all electricity consumption around the nation via the federal RenewableEnergy Target scheme. It isn’t allocated to states depending on how many wind farms or solar panels they have installed.

The idea that renewables are to blame for the doubling in South Australian wholesale prices is an idea the Australian Energy Council, which represents big power companies, have been pushing since late last year. This campaign has sought to paint South Australia as an “accidental experiment” in the dangers of too much renewable energy.

If you scratch the surface they actually acknowledge renewable energy is depressing wholesale power prices. But they claim it pushes prices so low that, rather strangely, it is apparently increasing prices……..

It was only with the addition of wind and solar to the existing mix of coal plus the interconnector that gas could be driven down to less than a third of the electricity market. This acted to substantially shield SA from power price rises, not induce them.

So it is LNG plants, not wind and solar, that are responsible for South Australia’s “absurd” electricity prices. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/27/south-australias-absurd-electricity-prices-renewables-are-not-to-blame