< In most Australian states the cost of electricity has been rising dramatically and continuously, not because of the carbon tax but, ostensibly, to fund maintenance and upgrade of the national grid. >

Hold on Mike, you are leaving something out there…

… to fund maintenance, upgrade and EXPANSION of the national grid.

We need to grow the grid in order to provide the same resource for ever-more people, within the regime of very rapid population growth.

I would think that if immigration were to be slashed, it would help a great deal to stave off further increases in power costs.

Some seriously wishful thinking here. As of now home batteries for PV storage are too expensive and short lived, geothermal has not measured up and solar thermal with overnight heat storage is several times more expensive than coal and still requires winter backup. Oh yes non-hydro renewables are only about 6% of overall generation despite very generous subsidies and mandates. The result is the big coal fired power stations are not going anywhere.

Add to that the likelihood the $24 carbon price will drop to $10 or perhaps zero. I didn't notice if nuclear power had been touted as a replacement for coal baseload. That would be more centralised generation requiring a convdentional grid. When southern cities nudge 50C in future summers I suspect people will want aircon powered by the grid, particularly as the sun goes down and PV dwindles. Flat dwellers and renters may not even have PV. The author is living in a fantasy world.

Without a national grid the Snowy scheme cannot be used to help cover peek demand which is in the heat of summer or the cold of winter's early evenings. Without a grid weather vagaries have far greater effects.

All renewable energy is dearer than coal based power.

Other comments have also covered the nuclear issue but the most promising appears to be liquid fluoride thorium salt reactors capable of being mass produced and with almost no waste problems compared to uranium fuelled reactors and no meltdown risk. There is an aim to produce this nuclear based power at a cost less per coal.

I have extracted the NSW cost of coal fired generation and over the last 15 years the cost ex the power station has increased by 1.6% per annum compound. The cost is currently between 5and 6c per KWH. Before privatisation of the marketing function about 1,000 people were employed in accounting in NSW. The figure under privatisation is 6,000.

Improvements to the grid are capital items and should be charged to customers over the life of the new assets. Otherwise present users are paying for equipment to be used by a new generation of customers.

We should not understate the effect of so called 'climate policies' on the cost of electricity. Especially we should not understate how these cost will increase if policies such as carbon pricing and renewable energy incentives continue.

Firstly, if Treasury's projections for the ETS are correct, the ETS will cost Australia $1.3 trillion to 2050 ($400 billion discounted). Another way of looking at the costs is the ETS will cost Australia's economy $10 for every $1 of projected benefit. But even the $1 of projected benefits is unlikely to be realised: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/ . So the ETS is a massive and futile waste of Australia's wealth.

Secondly, a significant component of the additional grid costs are a result of the many renewable energy schemes. An Energy Supply Association of Australia 'Discussion Paper" provides just one example of the hidden costs of renewable energy that are being added to grid costs: http://www.esaa.com.au/Library/PageContentFiles/0ed86edb-b445-43f7-b1da-04dba6c4b4bf/Who_pays_for_solar_energy.pdf Homes with solar panels are being subsisised by those without by about $1000 per year on average for their use of the grid.

The national grid is a great white elephant, that virtually doubles the cost of energy to the end user.
Thorium is cheaper than coal. And can be built in small modules, that can be transported to where the power is needed.
Say industrial estates or military bases etc; thereby halving the cost of reticulated energy, and quite massively reducing/eliminating transmission line maintainence costs!
I've read that Chinese pragmatists, are currently building them at the rate of one a week?
Apart from that, we can and should convert all our biological waste into energy.
Australia has invented the two tank system which does just that, minus the smell factor!
The biogas that is created can be stored in simple bladders after scrubbing.
The scrubbed gas is then suitable to power another Aussie innovation, ceramic fuel cells.
The products include endlessly available electrical power, free hot water, carbon rich and sanitised organic fertilizer, reusable water; and, mostly water vapour as the exhaust product.
The 72% energy coefficient of the ceramic fuel cell, and the fact that it eliminates expensive to maintain transmission lines, means that this power provision, is at least SIX TIMES less expensive than coal fired reticulated power.
The ceramic cell will also work quite well on piped NG/CSG/land fill methane, where biogas is unavailable.
Once the infrastructure costs have been recovered, the energy created by this solid state system is virtually costless and endlessly sustainable; and indeed, available 24/7!
A saleable surplus can be created by adding food scraps.
Or alternatively, used to recharge residents' electric vehicles?
Rhrosty.

Ludwig – Quite right, but surely grid expansion to serve Greenfield development is really development of a local grid, rather than the National Grid. Further, my understanding is that these expansions are normally paid for by the Greenfield developers.

I agree with "Foyle"

Oh Dear,

I knew the CAGW thing was going “boom” when I saw the full page from a dozen or so environment NGO’s in The Australian.

The message is slowly getting through; it’s all over red rover. The tax is going, the RET is going, Kyoto is gone, emissions trading is gone and the renewable industry has collapsed.

Where are the NGO’s going to get their revenue from now? The answer of course is rattling donation tins in the shopping centers. All those gravy train executive appointments and tax payer funded bongo drum junkets, all gone.

Mike, think of it this way, if your science had any merit you would still have your toys.

Go figure.

Taswegian – You comment … “As of now” but what the article suggests is that over the next decade development in storage of electricity will make it cheaper and more efficient - a development enabling domestic users to go off-grid. Fantasy world or a necessary development already underway?

Government expenditure on renewables is for the development and application of new technology rather than operational subsidies such as those paid to the coal mining industry. And it is quite right to assert that “coal fired power stations are not going anywhere” – at least not yet. But like all old technology they will go, unless of course we can develop and use Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology. Unfortunately, despite investment of billions, it has not yet been possible to develop CCS which is either sufficiently efficient or affordable for power house use. If those problems can be overcome, that could be a game changer.

You make a good point about nuclear power requiring a conventional grid, but is nuclear a real option for Australia? The majority view still seems to be NIMBY.

You say that … “When southern cities nudge 50C in future summers I suspect people will want aircon”. How true! It is to avoid that horrific prospect that a change from burning fossil fuels to non-polluting energy production is inevitable and is being pursued. Does it require a “conventional grid” or development of high tech regional grids?

BIG GRIDS=BIG CASH GRANTS...to those who love govt cash flow
big dams..damm big big bigger..[im sick of big is better..too big to fail/too big to bail..

break it up

LET "INVESTERS>>SPEND THEIR OWN,CASH

this farce..[infrastructure spending..is for lines/pipes..etc,,to be put in at govt expense..its sukking at govt teats..[like santo'gas lines..to free ports/

i got a nice windfarm..if only there was a *free govt paid grid/pipeline,..into the CON-sumer cashmachine to take my power/gas to an export port/market..[paid for from the govt purse...

so i can get hugebonus

the snowjob mountainsceme..still has huge outstanding debt..use the wateronce..[lol]..when in the old days...hundreds of smaller water wheels..[or windmills..served power locally..at much smaller cost..all along the water course.

Further to my previous comment on the cost of 'climate policies' like carbon pricing and renewable energy, 'Quadrant Online' published an article this morning by me "No gain and lots of pain with the ETS". It explains why carbon pricing will not succeed.

And, right on cue, Professor Henry Ergas has an article in today's 'The Australian' titled: "Carbon folly comes at a price": http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/carbon-folly-comes-at-a-price/story-fn7078da-1226675618444

The take home message is the cost-benefit of wind power is -5:1. That is, the costs are five times the benefits. As Ergas says:

"The aggregate result is that for each $1 of benefit, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation's intervention makes Australians $5 worse off."

"No Gain and lots of pain with the ETS" by Peter lang, 8 July 2013:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/07/no-gain-and-lots-of-pain-with-the-ets

This article is junk.

"Ongoing global warming is causing an increase in severe weather events."

Rubbish:

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1253&context=usdeptcommercepub&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com.au%2Fscholar_url%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.unl.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1253%252

The lead author of The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project, the most comprehensive analysis of "extreme" weather concludes:

As it happens, the project’s initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. “In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years,” atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

As for cost of electricity being due to grid updates; that is also rubbish, the bulk of electricity increases is entirely to do with green and renewable energy which doesn't work:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13995&page=0

Aside from the fact that there is no 'global warming' to worry about anyway, a shift away from fossil fuels will require an even larger grid than we currently have. A fossil-fuel power plant can be built where it is needed, but the sun shines and the wind blows where they will, and bringing their energy to somewhere useful requires a grid; as do the backup fossil-fuel stations required to supplement them when nature decides to withhold her bounty -- at night, for instance.

Foyle … You make a very good point re: the Snowy – though it might be argued that its entire output could be fed to (and swallowed-up by) Sydney without a national grid. Another renewable, geothermal, is in the same category and may require long distance transmission to major consumption centres.

You say that … “All renewable energy is dearer than coal based power”. I think that id debatable, particularly given the rapidity with which the price of coal based power has increased every year over the last 5 years and continues to increase. Wind-power is cheaper and PVC may soon be and in the case of domestic displays already is.
Cost of energy to the end-user is what is relevant, not generating cost ex power station.

My understanding is that Liquid fluoride thorium salt (LFTR) reactors do produce radioactive waste which is problematic as is the risk of beryllium poisoning. I think that LFTR’s were trialed about 50 years ago but never deployed because of these problems. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Agnostic of Mittagong. A couple of things. Thorium reactors consume most of their fuel! That's why they are cheaper than coal. [We have enough thorium to power the world for six hundred years.] What is left as waste, is far less toxic than that created in conventional oxide reactors.
Moreover, that same waste is eminently suitable as very long life space batteries.

Astronomically expensive Geo-sequestration, is not the only way coal fired power stations might sequester carbon.
In fact some are now trialling companion Algae farming as a means of doing just that.
Algae store (sequester) up to 2.5 times their bodyweight in carbon.
And under optimised closed cycle conditions, quite literally double that absorption/oil production capacity, every 24 hours.
Some algae are up to 60 oil.
Oil that's virtual child's play to extract, (sun dry and crush) and earn an endlessly sustainable profit from.
I've seen economies of scale estimates, that would allow this ready to use as is, oil, able to be profitably retailed for just 45 cents a litre.
The Chinese are now harvesting thousands of tons of a naturally occurring green variety annually.
They report, it makes good omega three oil and protein rich animal fodder and or, organic manure.
One blue/green type produces ready to use diesel, another ready to use as extracted, jet fuel.
Thinking within a fixed circle of limited ideas, limits the questions, and by implication, the answers and available choices.
Rhrosty.

Batteries are not the only way to store solar energy.
In fact, solar power can be used to create hydrogen, which can then be used in (a) fuel cell)s) to create on demand energy, 24/7!
Some of the latest most advanced and efficient solar technology, simply creates reusable hydrogen rather than storable electricity.
This may well enable complete long term self sufficiency, given the modern fuel cell works nearly as well on methane as hydrogen.
And it's virtual child's play to convert our own biological waste into bladder stored backup methane.
This hydrogen/backup methane, after powering our homes, can also power our motor vehicles, which could be fuel cell powered electric.
The 72% energy coefficient of the ceramic fuel cell, would make this option the cheapest in the world to run.
Power to weight ratios of electric engines, vastly outperform conventional engines, which can use up to 85% of their available power, just to spin the fly wheel, and drag tons of iron around!
Just as computers and cell phones have become small and vastly more portable, the same miniaturisation may well also apply to fuel cells, which may turn up in lawn mowers, whipper snippers and so on.
And wouldn't a super silent leaf blower, be a boon for the Sunday morning neighbourhood?
The fact that we are talking about methane/hydrogen gas, means that refuelling, with compressed gas, can be accomplished in just minutes, rather than as a much less convenient, overnight battery recharge.
Rhrosty.

The price of electricity changes every five minutes. it's a matter of supply and demand. Now that qld NSW vic Tas ans SA are all connected and all generators are in the same pool, the only difference is privatisation of retail electricity.

Mike continues to trot-out the phoney argument that the need for bigger & better electricity infrastructure is the primary driver of the more than 100% increase in electricity prices over the past 5 years.
Mike ignores other key drivers such as the rapacious dividend demands of state governments (more than $1 billion annually in NSW) for providing what is an essential service (since when is providing an essential service intended to be a profit opportunity?) & the doubling in the size of electricity generation organisations, including the arrival of bloated management hierarchies?