Josh Frydenberg might have been right when he said that the Coalition’s proposed National Energy Guarantee would not stop investment in wind and solar:

It probably doesn’t matter how big a wall of policy and regulatory inertia is built, the plunging costs of renewables and rise of storage solutions and smart business models means it can’t actually be stopped.

Slowed, maybe. Stopped, no.

This past week has seen several landmark developments and announcements that signal that the pace of the energy transition is gathering speed, with huge implications across the board for consumers (mostly good) and incumbent utilities (mostly not so good).

First of all is the plunging cost of solar. In the corridors of the Energy Networks Australia conference in Sydney last week, the talk was of the cost of large-scale solar falling to the low $A40s/MWh, at least in the eyes of the banks who would finance it.

If that seems a little starry-eyed to some – because it is about 50 per cent below the assumed cost and less than half the price of grid power – then the prospect of some 30GW of excess solar module production over the rest of the year would seem to confirm it.

The bombshell delivered last week by Chinese authorities – thanks to an about-face on incentives for new generation (both renewables and fossil fuel, given that country’s over-supply – should make it obvious that more price falls are on the way.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that the cost in modules will plunge by one third – from just US37c/watt to US24c/watt, and the impact will be global. That should lead to price falls in Australia for a complete solar installation of at least 10 per cent – and balance of systems costs and financing costs are also falling.

Battery storage is the second part of the equation, because intense competition – and the growing understanding of its role in the market – is causing a massive re-think about both the cost of that storage, and its value. It is now both cheaper, and more valuable, than previously thought.

We are seeing that play out in the market place – with both Mars Australia and University of Queensland signing up for “firm solar” contracts for 100 per cent of their electricity needs that offers a significant discount to their current supply from the grid.

The biggest of them all, however, was from Gupta’s GFG Alliance, and its deal to deliver its own version of “firm solar” power to five big mining and industrial energy users in South Australia, and slash their electricity bills by up to 50 per cent along the way.

Let’s just contemplate the significance of these developments.

Effectively, what this means is that corporate Australia is now doing what households and smaller businesses have been doing for the past few years – and in increasingly greater numbers – turning to solar, and now storage, to slash their bills.

Gupta’s ambition is to boost this investment five-fold in South Australia – both for his own and for third party electricity needs, and then replicate this model around the other states, with an ambition for up to 10GW of large scale solar satisfying his expanding manufacturing business and others.

Those with the most to worry about this stunning development – and the emergence of what Gupta and UQ refer to as “gen-sumers” – are the big retailers, or “gen-tailers”, particularly those over-invested in base-load coal generation. This development represents a fundamental threat to the business model of the big incumbents.

The defection of household load has already caused serious issues for the big incumbents – and increasing concern about who gets to compete in a shrinking pie, as networks begin to shake their tree and wonder if there is a place for traditional gen-tailers in the future grid.

It was interesting to note Ausgrid CEO Richard Gross raising this issue at the Energy Networks Conference last week, just as Ron Stobbe from SA Power Networks did some years ago. The only thing that separates these businesses are “ring-fencing rules”, but networks are keen to break down the barriers.

Some big gen-tailers can see what’s happening. In others, there is a complete state of denial.

I talked last weekend to the former head of new generation for one gen-tailer, and was told that this utility did not want to offer solar and storage packages to existing customers, for fear of losing “volume”. It beggars belief. Kodak anyone?

The fact that the corporate sector is now defecting to new entrants that can offer, or broker, cheaper renewable energy supplies, with “firming”, means that they no longer have to go through a major retailer.