But it is one thing for scenarios to be made and another for plans to be enacted. That is the game-changing situation in Australia – freed of the yoke of Coalition energy dogma and policy bollards – state governments and private companies and investors are now getting on with the job.
The pledges by Queensland and AGL were preceded in the same week by the announcement from the Victoria state Labor government of Australia’s first big energy storage target, and a first-in-the-world contract to use “advanced inverters” from a big battery to supply system strength.
That battery contract is actually quite significant, because it forges a path to run a grid without any need for coal generation to provide grid services, and rapidly advances the complex task of switching from a grid dependent on spinning machines to one relying on inverter based technologies.
Not even the biggest industrial users want coal any more: Not the Tomago smelter, not the Boyne Island smelter, and not the Sun Metals refinery. They want it gone within a decade. The energy world really has changed.
Read the full article published in Renew Economy 2nd October 2022