South Australia Heralds The Death Of Base-Load Generation Tuesday marks the three-month anniversary of the closure of the last coal-fired “base-load generator” in the South Australia electricity market, and despite the best efforts of many in the Coalition and the Murdoch media, there is nothing to suggest that other states will not follow suit, in time. The fossil fuel industry predicted – and possibly hoped for – “armageddon” from the closure of the last coal plant. But all it got was a big jump in wholesale electricity prices, caused not by renewable energy, as federal and local energy ministers have made clear, but by the soaring cost of gas and constraints on the interconnecter. If anything, the events of the last few weeks have reinforced the point that the electricity market is in the early stages of an unstoppable transition. Coal-fired plants will soon be a thing of the past, and the role of gas-fired generators may all diminish as battery storage and other renewables take more central roles. The fact that AGL and SAPN are now tapping into the power systems of households and businesses to address the high cost of peaking power and network upgrades is going to help change the way people think about electricity – and pave the way for more renewable energy across the country, according to the Clean Energy Council. See http://ift.tt/2aOYuOp
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