Significant growth in clean energy output and the impact of emergency fossil fuel price caps are continuing to drive down wholesale electricity costs on the eastern seaboard from last year’s unprecedented highs.
Figures to be released on Friday reveal wholesale prices – what retailers pay for power supply before they sell it to their customers – averaged $83 per megawatt-hour in the first three months of the year, down from $93 in the prior quarter and $216 in the September quarter.
Large-scale renewable energy and rooftop solar panels pushed wholesale power prices below $0 more often than ever for this time of the year. Credit: Joe Armao
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said the latest declines were being driven by record output from rooftop solar panels slashing grid demand to its lowest first-quarter levels in 18 years, while the build-out of more wind and solar farms was increasing supplies and squeezing expensive coal- and gas-fired power further from the mix.
Coal remained the power grid’s largest contributor, accounting for 58 per cent of generation across the quarter. However, the influx of wind and solar farms coupled with the boom in rooftop solar have continued radically reshaping the market, with renewable energy’s share of output rising 4 per cent to 37 per cent of generation.
FM_103 on April 28th, 2023 at 14:29 UTC »
That’s good news, the article did specify how many households these savings were available to?
Boatster_McBoat on April 28th, 2023 at 13:02 UTC »
Who would have predicted that producing energy that doesn't require ongoing inputs would reduce costs? It's almost like it economic sense as well as environmental sense
Imagine how well Australia would be doing if we hadn't had adversarial federal policy settings for the last decade
FullM3TaLJacK3T on April 28th, 2023 at 12:27 UTC »
It's about time that Australia get rid of its addiction to coal. I hope this spurs the country to actually build a working industry rather than digging the ground and selling it to people.