Engineers warn 55% renewables will add $1400 to electricity bills in Australia

Green genius: Pay $1400 a year to not stop any storms

Finally some veteran engineers checked the Labor Party 50% renewable plan and the AEMO “65% scenarios”. Unlike others, their study that did not involve magical assumptions that the cost of renewables would dramatically fall. Instead they used “actual costs” and found the price of electricity will rise “84%” and cheap coal power will be forced out of business (just like what we also found here). The engineers include Barry Murphy, former managing director and chairman of Caltex. Robert Barr, an electrical engineer and academic at University of Wollongong. If only Kevin Rudd had asked them in 2007.

Adam Creighton, Economics Editor, The Australian

Electricity bills will soar and gas and coal-fired power stations will close if the share of wind and solar generation increases dramat­ically, engineers have warned after analysing the nation’s ­energy supply.

It found bills were likely to soar 84 per cent, or about $1400 a year, for the typical household, if wind and solar power supplied 55 per cent of the national electricity market.

A quarter of Australian rooftops have solar, and we need 40 times the current solar?

The AEMO forecast would require more than a 40-fold increase in the solar capacity and around a tripling of the number of wind turbines.

Killer duck curve coming.

Not only is this pointless but it’s 25 times more expensive than it has to be

The Abbott “Direct Action” auctions cost taxpayers about $12-14 per ton of CO2 reduction. Yet Labor-Green-and-Turnbull continuously pick the wildly inefficient and expensive pro-renewables option. So does the climate-change activist Audrey Zibelman who manages our AEMO. They all say they want to reduce CO2, yet they all chose to enrich the renewables vested interests instead.

Stupid or suspicious?

The AEMO scenario of 65 per cent renewable energy by 2040 would reduce emissions at a cost of $365 a tonne of carbon dioxide, the study estimated. Replacing coal-fired power generation with nuclear power would reduce emissions by a far greater amount at an abatement cost of $27.50 a tonne. The Gillard government’s ill-fated carbon tax envisaged a tax of $29 a tonne. [Jo notes that the Gillard Labor carbon price ended up being $5310 per ton. ]

Follow the money.

Also this week: the PM, Scott Morrison, noted that Texans were allowed to explore for gas, unlike people in NSW and Victoria, and electricity prices were a “third lower” there.

UPDATE Thanks to Pat: Report linked here from August 2018 at bottom of the 4 pages:

Electric Power Consulting: National Electricity Market (NEM) Model

Reliable and Affordable Electric Power Generation Booklet

This report is based on modelling undertaken with the EPC NEM generation mix model. Download a copy of the 4 page “Reliable and Affordable Electric Power Generation” booklet here: Booklet (LINK)

Contributing Authors:

Dr Robert Barr AM BE(Hons) ME PhD FIE(Aust) CPEng , Director Electric Power Consulting Pty Ltd

Barry Murphy BScApp, BE(Chem) CSci MBA FIChemE FTSE FAICD, Former Chairman & CEO Caltex Australia

Dr Mark Ho PhD, President Australian Nuclear Association

Martin H Thomas AM FTSE HonFIEAust HonFAIE

Barrie Hill BE MiMechE MIPENZ FIE(Aust), Managing Director SMR Nuclear Technology Pty Ltd

https://epc.com.au/index.php/nem-model/

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