In the news

A scorching hot summer could see demand for electricity spike to a once-in-a-decade high, we're being warned, increasing the risk of blackouts, and forced power outages across the country.

In its Summer Readiness report, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has confirmed it's using the costly contingency measures at its disposal; seeking contracts for additional supply (particularly in South Australia and Victoria).

It's also preparing to pay big energy users — like smelters and refineries — to cut their usage to ease the pressure on the grid.

By 2030 Australia will already have enough battery storage from home systems and electric cars to meet the demands of the renewable energy transition. That’s the assessment of Amber Electric co-founder and co-chief executive Dan Adams and, notably, it excludes the development of any large-scale commercial battery farms.

A surge in public interest in a community battery grants project has left the government’s renewable energy agency “overwhelmed” by its popularity.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency says it has seen “unprecedented” demand from communities for its Community Batteries Funding Program, which aims to lower energy bills, cut emissions and reduce pressure on the electricity grid through community battery projects.

The agency received 140 eligible applications with a total grant request of $1.3 billion.

In the middle of last year, when Australia's wholesale power market went into meltdown and prices soared, Mark Purcell had something of an epiphany.

Where almost everybody else saw risk, he saw opportunity.

"It was an ideal time to have a battery because I could reserve some of my battery for my household use … and then I could export the other half of my battery for these really high prices," Mr Purcell said.

Meeting Queensland’s long-duration energy storage task for its renewable energy zones with batteries would cost $18 billion more than doing it with pumped hydro, the head of the northern state’s energy and public works department says.

The chairman of the federal government’s $15 billion “green bank” said 27 companies are investigating making batteries in Australia, a challenge to the orthodoxy that taking on the global battery giants would be a stretch for a high-cost nation.

The stuttering energy transition is forcing big industrial companies like Boral to temporarily shut down cement production to avoid peak electricity prices, putting at risk the nation’s build-out of housing and infrastructure stock.

Boral CEO Vik Bansal said he was “extremely nervous” government plans to build housing, hospitals and even infrastructure for the Brisbane Olympic Games were vulnerable to an energy market that was at times incentivising the nation’s biggest cement maker to down tools.

Australian Energy Market Operator chief Daniel Westerman says emergency rooftop solar switch-off mechanisms must be set up across the national electricity market, to better control “more than seven Eraring power stations” worth of consumer installed PV.

In a speech on Monday, Westerman said Australian households and businesses have collectively installed around 3.5 million solar systems, representing about 20GW of potential generation capacity.

It is, as Jason Froud knows all too well, a little-known but fundamentally important aspect of the power system. When you flick a switch, the electricity that illuminates the light in the room is new.Brand new.

"Traditionally, you've had the electricity system that has generated the electricity at the moment that it's used," Mr Froud said.

Daytime power prices are plunging into negative territory – meaning generators have to pay to produce – as renewable energy increasingly cannibalises the market, according to experts. As the share of green energy in Australia's biggest electricity system momentarily reached a record high of 70 per cent this week, energy software company Gridcog said "price cannibalisation" was becoming an increasingly common phenomenon.

Wholesale power prices in the national electricity market across the eastern states dropped to as low as -$64 per megawatt hour last Saturday, when soaring output from millions of rooftop solar panels flooded into the system.

An Australian summer usually means sun, sand and sea. But, in recent years, it's also come to mean heated debates about electricity and the looming possibility of blackouts. That's certainly the case in the wake of the market operator's latest 10-year forecast, which has foreshadowed possible challenges as early as the next summer holiday season.

The outlook is double-edged, and flags both increased risks (in terms of reliability) and increased opportunities (for generators) over the decade.

Deep in the pages of Origin Energy's latest annual report is a number that seems surprisingly good.

In a table spelling out where the company generates its electricity is a line item showing the giant Eraring coal-fired plant pumped out energy worth more than $2 billion in the 12 months to June 30.

It was a result that was more than 20 per cent higher than the year before, itself a whopping 65 per cent higher than in 2020-21.

Australia’s power grid was built to transport power from coal-fired power stations or the Snowy Hydro scheme to large cities and industrial precincts. The large transmission lines were designed with generation supply and demand, the shortest routes, and cost in mind.

But this ageing grid isn’t designed to cope with a green future where power flows into the grid from solar farms and windfarms on land and out at sea. To cope, Australia’s energy market operator is proposing over 10,000 kilometres of new transmission lines, linking major renewable precincts with the cities.

The Western Australian government and state-owned energy retailer Synergy have hatched a plan to provide free daytime electricity for hardship customers, much of which will come from excess solar sent to the grid from the state’s rooftops.

Western Australia’s Labor-led Cook government announced the Community Energy program on Monday, which it hopes will help households “doing it tough” save up to $500 per year in energy savings.

An old Minnesota coal power plant and a giant new solar farm will be the testing ground for a 10MW/1,000MWh iron-air battery demonstration, after state regulators approved the plan.

Xcel Energy will host the battery, made by Form Energy, near its 710 megawatt (MW) Sherco Solar project after receiving US$20 million ($30 million) for two systems from the Andrew Forrest-backed Breakthrough Energy Catalyst fund.

Akaysha Energy, the battery storage developer owned by the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock, says it has landed a “first of its kind” revenue swap and risk hedging deal for the 300MWh Ulinda Park battery it is planning to build in Queensland.

The deal has been struck with the Bermuda-based Re2, a leading climate risk transfer platform, and involves a 10-year revenue swap arrangement that hedges the market risk for the 155MW, 300MWh Ulinda Park Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) near Hopeland.

Australia’s $6.5 billion government-owned green bank is having to return to its roots as a bankroller of solar and wind energy, as supply-chain issues, rising prices and higher interest rates leave projects struggling for finance.

The new Broken Hill battery is another exciting step for AGL, with the battery playing a crucial role in supporting renewable energy supply and ensuring communities in western New South Wales have access to reliable energy.

The Mornington Peninsula battery will not rely on government support or commercial contracts to underpin revenue. It will instead rely on energy arbitrage – charging up and storing energy when it is cheap and discharging it back into the grid when prices are high – and on supplying frequency and grid control services for its revenues.