Dear
drron I seem to have touched a raw nerve - sorry about that.
I responded to (and included) your post that referenced the UK and provided factual information from the UK energy regulator showing price falls for many years.
Apples do not equal oranges.
You had quoted rising UK power prices for the latest 12 months and I pointed out that they had fallen consistently for the previous 4 years so over the five year period they were roughly half the levels of January 2012 vs Australia at over 200%.
Do you not agree picking 1 year in isolation can be a little misleading in making a claim about renewables driving up prices? Drawing the same bow then hadn't they driven down power prices for the previous 4 years while in Australia prices went up the entire time?
Except that "renewables" provided 39% of Scotland's electricity production.You forgot that that includes Hydro and solar.Plus Nuclear supplies 33% of power produced.
leaving the semantics of the method of measuring percentages - do you agree that while the proportion and absolute amount of electricity produced by wind predominantly (between 60% and 73% of total renewable production in 2015,2016 and the first half of 2017) increased that the price of electricity fell in 4 out of 5 years?
Doesn't that defeat your claim that increasing renewables drive up prices? That was after all what 95% of that part of my response dealt with (including the graphs from the regulator showing the prices etc).
Also, many of the wind farms have entered into fixed price contracts for their output - their prices are locked in and only prospective wind farms are impacted by the change. Until they are built the output of new reduced-subsidy wind farms have ZERO impact on prices. At the moment 100% of wind and other renewable production is not affected by the changes for new projects - the existing ones operate with their existing locked in subsidies (just as the nuclear and gas plants do with their larger subsidies).
So the spike in prices over this latest year are due to something else.
I sourced my figures from a number of Scottish Govt publications, see the graph below for example (this shows TOTAL renewables as you mentioned not just wind).
Averaged across all of 2016 the figure was around 40% from wind alone. In the month of December 2016 wind provided 53% of all electricity used in Scotland. Depending on whether you look at averaging the proportion of each month's % or just adding the entire year's production by entire years demand will yield a figure a few % different.
For the month of December, wind turbines in Scotland provided 1,154,864MWh of electricity to the National Grid, the equivalent of 53 per cent of the amount used in the country.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/scotland-wind-turbines-more-electricity-country-needs-four-days-renewable-energy-power-national-grid-a7517066.html
In the first 6 months of 2017 just wind alone (not solar and not hydro) provided 57% of Scottish demand.
Plus you also skipped over my salient point-subsidies for renewables are going to be cut.Your "low"prices don't take into account the subsidies.
That subsidies are to be cut I did not dispute - so I did not mention it. Did you know that the coal plants over that period (until finally shut in 2016) also received equally as large subsidies as do the nuclear and gas plants. In fact the subsidies to the gas plants shot up once coal stopped entirely?
Energy subsidies: renewables, fossil fuels or nuclear? - Business for Scotland
Analysis for the 2013 enquiry revealed;
- An estimate of total annual fossil fuel consumer and producer support in the UK of just over £7 billion
- The nuclear hangover from power stations operating in past decades is currently requiring over £2bn a year in producer support and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has to deal with liabilities estimated to be at least £50bn
- Producer support of £3 billion targeted at renewable energy technologies
Seems the fossil fuel subsidies dwarf those of renewables BEFORE those of the renewables are to be reduced - not exactly a level playing field is it?
Also there is a little reported provision in the Finkel report that I am sure will cause something dear to your heart
RAM.That is wind and solar generators be responsible for supplying dispatchable power. Already the Industry is grumbling-
Finkel: Storage burden falls on wind and solar farms, not system : RenewEconomy
Not sure what you mean "cause something dear to my heart" but making the playing field tilted is never a good 'enhancement'.
As every report into the most recent black-outs or near black-outs have stated - unexplained outages by gas plants and coal-fired plants either caused blackouts in 2017 or if not for wind and solar taking up the load - would have caused black-outs.
In NSW it was failing coal-fired generation that nearly put the lights out in February but I have not heard any calls for the NSW coal-fired power stations to provide dispatchable power in the event they again fail.
So if they are causing a problem why are they not required to provide storage?
Perhaps you have forgotten that the Engie-owned Pelican Point gas fired power station (one of the most modern and most efficient in Australia) decided not to produce any power when the lights went off in SA. They didn't suffer an outage or some problem that prevented them from providing power they just made a commercial decision (documented if you care to read the reports) that it was more profitable to stay shut down and let their Hazelwood & Loy Yang B operations produce at max output when the price spiked. Not illegal, absolutely within the rules.
So why should they not be required to provide storage to supply instant demand when needed? Especially since they are such a large proportion of SA generation capacity in a single plant located virtually in Adelaide?
And again later in the article the deliberate misrepresentation of costs suggesting wind is cheaper. Of course every Mwh produced by fossil fuel generators requires the forfeit of a REC whilst every Mwh produced by wind or solar is granted a REC.Those peaked at $93-a difference between fossil fuel and renewables of $186 per Mwh.No wonder since Finkel though the price of RECs is going down.
You seem to be forgetting about the subsidies provided to the fossil fuel producers which would also need to be added back to their costs. The IMF puts the total subsidies to fossil fuel power producers in Australia at over $30bn per annum.
But RAM you will be in your element with corrupt Energy companies and corrupt/stupid politicians all out to protect their patch.Oh so much you will be able to investigate.Heaven.
What is all this about corrupt Energy companies? Do you know something that they are doing that you think is illegal?
I have written many times that
what they are doing is totally legal and in complete adherence to the Australian Energy Market rules and regulations. I have pointed out that the bonuses approved for senior execs at State owned companies are approved by the politicians - nothing corrupt in that or do you think that is corrupt?
Whether it is fair to the community or businesses is another matter entirely to corruption.
Also 'stupid politicians'? It is you who say that not I.
