Looking at the interface between government, heavy industry and energy policy
The end to another year means we have another chance to see how my ridiculous 2030 Forecast for Renewables In Australia is tracking. I forgot to do this for a couple of years, mostly because the battery data doesn t come out until March or so by which time I ve lost the drive to write blog [ ]
When talking about the rollout of distributed energy sources it s really important to consider different technologies from the perspective of different parties. There are some big trends in the energy market now; solar is booming *still* in Australia, stationary batteries are coming and EV charging is starting have an impact, and one s view on each [ ]
I wrote this on Medium way back in 2016. Added here for completeness. 5 years on and my advice remains the same! Get solar as soon as possible. The main thing that s changed since then is that I no longer think there is a correct amount of solar. It s so cheap now that the right [ ]
I wrote this originally in December 2017 on Medium. Just in case that disappears, I ve copied it over to this blog Even though Australia is demonstrably extremely bad at public debate, we are having a public debate right now about the future of our electricity grid. It’s a tough one, because few of the participants [ ]
There s a persistent theme, particularly since the Texas power system dramas during the big cold, that nuclear power is some sort of magic bullet for power grids, and avoids the complexities of a majority solar and wind grid. I am frequently told that if we used nuclear in Australia we could avoid all these costly [ ]
The first full year of data has come in and it s time to see how crazy my compound interest forecast for Australian renewables is. Firstly, as I sit down to write this I see that I wrote the post too early and shorted the solar data! I take my data from here and the Year [ ]
I ve been working on EV charging since 2014, and in that time have heard some deeply weird opinions on EV charging and the various ways it will destroy the grid. There are three main classes of EV Charging weirdness; energy problems, capacity problems and technical problems. I ll start with the technical because there s only one [ ]
Batteries are coming to a grid near you, if they re not there already. Little ones in households and big ones like in Hornsdale, South Australia are being deployed in support of the clean energy revolution. But what are they doing there? What can batteries do? For starters, they re not really batteries , more accurately they re a [ ]
There s been a lot of talk in Australia this week about inertia , how much we need of it in bits of the electricity grid and where we can get more. This discussion has been kicked off by this little report from AEMO, on levels of inertia required in South Australia. I m interested in this because [ ]
What better time than at the start of a decade to nail one s colours to the mast and make some bold predictions. What follows is my forecast for renewable energy uptake in Australia for the next ten years, and what I think that means for the electricity sector as a whole. This isn t going to [ ]