More doubts about Kurri Kurri gas-turbine generator:
Different storage:
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What a confused article. They jump from gas use is declining and will play a lesser part in future (suggests prices will go down so the gas plant will have better financials) to the price of gas is increasing so the plant will have worse financials. No explanation given.
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Looks positive. 
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Harnessing the power of rust for economically viable multi-day energy storage.
Making better use of renewables should push prices down.
Countering the propaganda could have a similar effect.
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Another development with potential to reduce prices:
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More cost reduction potential:
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Is reality it may cost more to be carbon neutral and hence electricity will cost more? There are as noted in previous posts many promising technologies with potential to solve the future challenges of generation and energy storage. Australia remains dependent on base load generation. It needs to be replaced by investments in short and long term storage capable capacity.
Is there guidance on a plan to meet future energy needs?
The AEMO suggests that of five different pathways forward one is a least cost option. Will this result in lowering the costs of energy relative to today? Future energy may or may not be less expensive. The AEMO has not committed to saying.
Many of us agree with the position that carbon reduction will cost the community more. It is an up front cost, and one government is not committed to deliver. The AEMO suggested pathway is at odds with current policy.
The full report:
An Australian development that could optimise self-consumption of consumer-produced power:
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Another form of home battery storage. There’s a whole topic to follow here. Including a previous reference to hydrogen as a source.
Will it bring the cost of being connected to the grid down, or is it better suited to an off grid solution as an alternative battery?
I believe that Electricity is an essential service just like water is and should be run by Government like it used to be, that way you keep the costs down. In Qld when it was run by the Govt you paid a reasonable cost with a SMALL daily fee (supply charge) then you paid for the amount of electricity you used (per kWh).
Now you pay $1.13 per day supply Charge and the amount of electricity used (22.9c per kWh), some bills I am paying $10 - $20 more for supply charge than the amount of Electricity I use over that 80 - 92 day period.
When it was run by Govt part of your bill went back into the network to pay for maintenance and upgrades on the network not for other companies to make profits or to provide expensive and inefficient Green power.
So called Green Energy has to be paid for somehow seeing how it costs a lot more and when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining it is not producing energy, and it has a HUGE carbon footprint because of all the carbon intensive materials concrete and steel that has to be used supply cables which have to be buried, then you have the disposal problems of the old solar panels, turbines, blades, environmental damage, wildlife it kills etc. Watch this “Nice to be green”
Clean Coal technology and Gas Power stations are the cheapest Base load power solution and provides 24/7 Power when the wind is not blowing and the Sun is not shining. We are paying for Green feel good Power which does not provide 24/7 Base load power when it is needed.
And when everybody has to have an electric vehicle and the electricity grid gets overloaded and has to be massively upgraded and rebuilt, then the people will find out what the real cost of Green energy is, not to mention the environmental problems of battery pack disposal, etc.
I think the prices need to discourage frivolous use of fuel, especially now that we have the greenhouse gas issues.
I am a net generator of electricity. As I have made a $10,000+ capital investment to help the planet, I would like to think my electricity bills would be near zero for some years.
The electricity companies seem to be adjusting their price structures to ensure I never qualify for a credit.
I will be most annoyed if, in the future, I actually have to pay to supply electricity to the grid.
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Your first comments are well taken, but it seems the bulk of your point fits better in this older (and longish) topic and it has indeed attracted its own discussion points, noting there are also other topics where it might be relevant.
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Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuel power. Burning fuel to turn a turbine to turn a generator to make electricity is hardly efficient, most of the heat goes up the chimney. Then there are the unseen but very real costs of the particulates that are produced.
If coal was a sensible fuel for the future why are the old coal-fired power stations not being replaced? The answer is simple, nobody including the owners of current stations or of coal mines thinks it will make a profit. No large lending institutions will fund a new coal power station.
Yes indeed.
It is a pity there is no such thing as clean coal technology that is cost effective. The coal industry got substantial subsidies and collected their own funds to build CC&S plants. The fund was turned into a general purpose (advertising fund) years ago and they have given up on CC&S.
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Good synopsis of the issue but they have not given up yet (still more tax payer money to get their hands on I say) just not what they told us would be the case over a decade ago. A lot of money spent propping up fossil fuels and still emitting much more than what is stored plus very expensive to store what they manage to store.
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The “they” I was talking about was the Minerals Council who is the big speaker for the coal industry, they have been very quiet on the subject in the last few years. There may be other players who still fancy they can get something out of it. And while 4 gigabucks of public money may have been spent in fairness we must say it was not all on trying to attache CC&S to coal burning and that the coal industry did put in some too.
I thought the ABC was not up to standard as they said:
New data shows that almost $4 billion of taxpayer money has been spent on the technology and after decades it is still not operating at industry scale.
When referring to a report from 2017.
Yet still no commercial scale sequestering operation in place 2021. 4 Billion up to 2017 and probably more spent since and as Angus Taylor MP wants to make FF part of the renewables funding even more so possibly into the future. Some of the comments are from last year with nothing much changing since then. So a quote that that much had been spent of public money was not incorrect, to say more without some calculations may have been difficult to support.
Take away the subsidies that are given to Solar and wind it is not so cheap.
Go to Australian Energy Market (ANEROID) and you can see when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing they (green Power) is producing very little if not 0% energy.
Especially at night when people are using the most power, and people are recharging their electric vehicles.
And do you know how much carbon is produced to make concrete and steel, and a wind farm requires a hell of a lot of concrete and steel, and they do not recycle the blades of the wind turbines they bury them in landfill, environmental issues will pop up in the coming decades.
It’s often worth reconsidering the OP for a topic.
What was behind this increase was covered in an ACCC report which highlighted deregulation and privatisation. There was also a small cost attributable to new green energy.
Debating the current cost of electricity as too high, and historical price decisions relates the success or failures by Governments to plan and manage the industry. The choice of energy sources does not seem all that relevant, other than being too slow to evolve.
Whether the current Government and industry strategies will deliver lower cost electricity to residential consumers? It’s not about the lowest cost. It’s about meeting GHG reduction targets. It’s not evident that
are able to reduce Australia’s GHG emissions using current technology, or do so at low cost.
Not necessarily?
The majority of our personal transport vehicles are parked for significant periods of the day. This includes the car spot at work, the commuter railway station, supermarket or home. As green energy supply increases, so will car parking spots with charging outlets. Admittedly for pure BEV’s this outcome would destroy the service station business. Battery powered vehicles can add significant distributed energy storage capacity and load flexibility to the grid.
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So give me figures that show this. You will of course include subsidies for fossil fuels too for comparison.
Once again if you think that the greenhouse gas emissions from construction of wind farms is more than they save you will have figures to show me. And the GHG cost of building new coal fired generators to show their net emissions for comparison too.
