Wind, Solar, and Household Electricity Prices
9 hours ago Guest Blogger 52 Comments
Mike Jonas
In a recent conversation, I was shown a chart of Australia’s wholesale electricity prices, by state, in which South Australia had by far the lowest prices of all the states. The presenter of the chart claimed that this proved how renewables drove down the cost of electricity.
But there were two small problems:
1. The chart was a real time price shart, showing just the prices at that particular point in time, and
2. The South Australian electricity price was a very large negative number. In other words, they were struggling to find anyone to use the electricity even if paid to take it.
As many have pointed out, negative electricity prices don’t mean that electricity is cheap, it just means that the generator has costs that are not being recovered. Those costs will have to be recovered at some time or they will go out of business. In other words, negative electricity prices actually drive up the overall cost.
In order to see the full picture, you have to look at … the full picture.
I started by looking at the latest report from AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) .
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/20/wind-solar-and-household-electricity-prices/
