4 March 2021
The increasingly important electricity market contribution of demand-side resources like rooftop solar and battery storage, as well as the need for more “flexible” and responsive grid, have been flagged as key considerations in proposed changes to the standards and settings for a reliable power supply.
The Australian Energy Market Commission on Thursday published a Consultation Paper ahead of its 2022 review of the reliability standard and settings guidelines – the formula used to ensure an acceptable level of reliability in the national electricity market at the lowest possible cost.
The paper is seeking stakeholder views on a range of proposed changes to the current reliability settings guidelines, including key market signals that would put new generators and technologies on a more equal footing with market incumbents – namely coal and gas plants.
April 13, 2021
You are here: Home / Australia / No Contest: Never Reliable Wind & Solar Can’t Compete with Ever Reliable Coal-Fired Power
No Contest: Never Reliable Wind & Solar Can’t Compete with Ever Reliable Coal-Fired Power
Then, along came coal-fired power, and they were history.
Renewables acolytes have been massaging the numbers for years, in an attempt to show that wind and solar power are the cheapest of all.
The standard bag of tricks includes ignoring the capital cost of having every single (unreliable) megawatt of wind or solar constantly backed up by another (reliable) megawatt of coal, gas, nuclear or hydro; refusing to acknowledge the cost to power consumers of mandated targets, tax breaks and/or massive direct subsidies that exclusively benefit wind and solar; ignoring the additional transmission costs of bringing intermittent and diffuse sources of energy from remote locations (where they’re produced) to the cities where the power is consumed; and dis