Is rooftop solar quietly breaking the grid?
24 gigawatts. That’s roughly where Australia’s rooftop solar fleet sits now, spread across more than four million homes and small businesses, and it is bigger than any single generation category in the National Electricity Market. Bigger than coal. Bigger than gas. Bigger than wind. On a mild, sunny Sunday with low demand, rooftop systems can […]
Are we closing coal faster than we can replace it?
Eight. That’s how many coal units have left the NEM since 2022 across NSW, Victoria and South Australia, against a replacement build that AEMO’s own Integrated System Plan modelling assumed would be running years ahead of where it actually sits today. Four of those units came out of NSW alone. The question running through every […]
NSW’s coal exit and the REZ rollout: a widening gap
Four coal units gone from the NSW grid since Liddell shut in 2023, and Eraring’s exit still pencilled in for 2027 even after the NSW government paid EnergyAustralia to keep it running longer than the company originally planned. That’s the headline fact. The quieter fact, the one that matters more, is that the transmission build […]
Are big batteries being built for the wrong job?
Two hours. That’s the median storage duration AEMO’s own battery fleet data has hovered around for most of the last three years, even as the headline megawatt numbers keep climbing. Everyone quotes the capacity figure when a new battery gets announced. Almost nobody quotes the duration. That gap is the whole story. Australia now has […]
The Default Market Offer: a price cap that keeps rising
Around 10 per cent of residential customers on the east coast sit on the Default Market Offer, and most of them have no idea they’re paying what amounts to the industry’s sticker price rather than a genuine discount. That’s the bit worth sitting with before anyone gets excited or outraged about the AER’s latest determination. […]
NSW’s coal exit and the REZ rollout: a widening gap
Four coal units. That’s what NSW has taken out of the grid since Liddell shut in 2023, with Eraring’s four units now running on a negotiated extension that was never meant to be permanent. Origin Energy’s own filings describe the Eraring arrangement with the NSW government as a bridge, not a destination, and bridges have […]
Public versus private ownership of generation: who builds it better
$36 billion. That’s roughly the figure sitting against Queensland’s state-owned pumped hydro and transmission build when you add Borumba, CopperString and the associated REZ works together, all carried on the Queensland government’s own books rather than a developer’s. Compare that with Akaysha Energy’s Waratah battery, built with Blackstock and super-fund money and barely a mention […]
Who really pays for the transmission build-out
$12.7 billion. That’s the revised cost estimate AEMO’s latest Integrated System Plan attaches to the committed and anticipated transmission projects needed to keep the grid together through the 2030s, and it’s already climbed from earlier drafts. Every time that number moves, someone asks the obvious question and gets a vague answer. Who actually pays for […]
Why wholesale electricity prices swing so violently
$16,600 a megawatt-hour, then minus $57 a megawatt-hour, inside the same trading day. That’s not a glitch in AEMO’s dispatch engine. That’s South Australia on a windy, sunny afternoon followed by a still evening, and it happened more than once this year. Wholesale electricity price volatility in the NEM has become the thing everyone complains […]
AGL versus Origin: two gentailer strategies compared
Two companies, roughly comparable market capitalisation, same regulatory environment, same retail base of millions of households and businesses, and almost opposite answers to the same question. What do you do with a coal fleet you have to close? AGL and Origin Energy have landed on genuinely different strategies, and the gap between them tells you […]