August 2024
Early winter freeze, wind drought challenge climate targets
The Albanese government’s 2030 target for a 43 per cent reduction in national carbon emissions got off to a bad start in 2023 and hopes for a fall in the year to June have been jeopardised by coal’s surge.
- Ben Potter
June 2024
How an energy ‘boot camp’ rescued this mega wind farm
Rye Park was running into trouble. Its backer – and key customer – needed its power but owner Tilt couldn’t get it to the grid. Enter AEMO.
- Ben Potter
April 2024
Coal power surge raises pressure to extend Eraring
A surge in coal generation in NSW in the March quarter has put pressure on Origin and the state government to postpone closing Australia’s largest power station.
- Ben Potter
February 2024
Energy distribution companies need radical reform: report
The Energy Security Board says the firms need to be held accountable for making rooftop solar work as a key part of the energy transition.
- Ben Potter
January 2024
Power grid alert as north-south divide opens up
A gap has emerged between Queensland and NSW – where grid demand is rising and prices are high – and Victoria and South Australia, where demand and prices are low.
- Ben Potter
Why household power bills may ‘fall a little’ in 2024
After two years of rises of 20 per cent or more, household power bills will benefit from plunging wholesale electricity costs in 2024.
- Updated
- Ben Potter
December 2023
Four key takeaways from the new energy market roadmap
Coal is dead, the consumer is king, rising costs are squeezing new transmission and utility-scale generation projects, and gas will play an indispensable but small role.
- Ben Potter
Heat ‘blob’ to test green-era energy grid
Heatwave conditions along parts of the east coast are the opening volley of a summer that will test the energy market’s resilience for the first time in four years.
- Jacob Greber
November 2023
Solar upstart has an answer to AEMO’s big problem
Teho co-founders David and Jonathan Green reckon they can solve a big grid problem – there are not enough virtual power plants to help balance supply and demand.
- Ben Potter
October 2023
Alinta Energy taps MA Moelis to shop billing platform
Alinta is understood to have fielded inbound interest, before kicking off a wider search.
- Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport
Bowen vows ‘entire government apparatus’ readying to avoid blackouts
The Australian Energy Market Operator said it had sought expressions of interest to provide extra supply in Victoria and South Australia to avoid power outages this summer.
- Mark Ludlow and Ben Potter
- Explainer
- Electricity
‘Demand response’ is the missing link in the solar boom. Here’s how it works
Efforts to integrate rapidly expanding solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and demand ‘loads’ into the grid lag far behind their take-up.
- Ben Potter
August 2023
Operator banking on batteries and pumped hydro to prevent blackouts
AEMO’s latest report underscores how important ‘deep storage’ projects are to keeping the lights on.
- Mark Ludlow
Plan to ‘supercharge’ the energy transition
The review aims to broaden the scope of the market operator’s Integrated System Plan from major transmission projects to give a clearer view of the rapidly unfolding energy transition.
- Ben Potter
July 2023
Power prices rise 31pc despite wind and solar glut
The latest quarterly update from the Australian Energy Market Operator found wholesale electricity prices increased 31 per cent in the March quarter, but were well down on last year’s record highs.
- Mark Ludlow
- Exclusive
- Electricity
The renewables boom is happening at only half the pace needed
There are concerns the shift to clean energy is faltering as critical transmission and generation projects battle community opposition, cost blowouts and delays.
- Updated
- Ben Potter
June 2023
Drought? Bushfires? Blackouts? July will tell on El Niño
“We’re leading into this event with record high ocean temperatures and that is largely taking a bit of a step into the unknown”, the Bureau of Meteorology says.
- Ben Potter
Why Australia is stuck in the slow lane on the path to net zero
The government has set the goal of a low-emissions economy by 2050, but now comes the hard part of actually getting there.
- Mark Ludlow
- Opinion
- Electricity
Energy transition is trapped in ‘approval quicksand’
The clean energy transmission approvals process has been so dismal that fresh thinking is needed.
- Updated
- Ben Potter
April 2023
Solar glut drives energy grid demand to 18-year low
A record amount of solar generation in the March quarter combined with a milder summer resulted in the lowest demand in the National Electricity Market since 2005.
- Mark Ludlow