To put it into perspective:

WA state population 2.5m
WA state budget tot $26bn

Present generation costs +/- $40/MW

Plan as presented:

Spend 8% of budget for 13 years
Result: Cost of power generated in 2030 = $130/MW

Can you see why no one is jumping for joy.

Roses 1

France's power costs were amortized as are Germany's, but the massive basic cost of renewables is what makes the difference. Do you think France's power producing infrastructure is just being run down with nothing built into prices for its renewal? How is Flamanville 3 (that Greens want shut down before it starts generating) being paid for?

France is heading towards higher renewables in the mix, why, because of politics of fear and painted dreams, nothing to do with economic reality. And what is the point of renewables co-existing with nuclear on the main grid? Some supposed "energy security" furphy promulgated by anti-nukes doesn't cut it. Being only half pregnant with nuclear reactors seems pointless. Stupidly, reactors now have to be closed for Flamanville 3 to come online and keep nuclear energy capped to make way for renewables, while electricity is one of France's main exports!

Future generations will ask, "What were you thinking?" about madcap dreams that leave them dangling.

PS What of the methane issue, gas turbines, and GHG's under your scenarios? Isn't the whole point to mitigate AGW? If the nett effect is the same as coal-burning, what's the point? Also, I'm not sure from your link who's supposed to pay for behind the meter batteries and their renewal. The overall cost of your scenarios should include these if they are necessary to making scenarios work, IMO.

Shadow
You are making more attempts to fudge figures and tell untruths.
1/ Expenditure on new power stations is by private investors; it does not impact on state expenditure and will be paid off from electricity revenue not by taxpayers.
2/ You state a figure of $40/MWh for wholesale electricity which is entirely misleading as it represents the lowest spot price.
Spot prices are not the full cost of wholesale electricity. Once the costs of hedging, PPA's and standby power are taken into account, the wholesale cost of power in WA was over $100 per MWh in 2014-15. Go to page 190 of: http://www.aemc.gov.au/getattachment/02490709-1a3d-445d-89cd-4d405b246860/2015-Residential-Electricity-Price-Trends-report.aspx and you will see that "In 2014/15, wholesale
electricity costs comprised 40 per cent of the total cost of supply", which was 25.2 cents. Figure G2 on p188 shows wholesale plus retail costs to be $135/ MWh.

Our study compares the cost of new coal/ gas and new renewables. WA's existing plant is already paid off, is aging and all will have reached the end of its economic life by 2030.

Luciferase
The argument re nuclear could go on for weeks and it is not my intention to spend any more time on that here. I have shown you that new nuclear is far more costly than new RE in Australia. That fact alone means it is not in the race here, even if the externalized safety, waste disposal and insurance underwriting issues are ignored.

And methane?

Roses1, I am illequipped to argue much detail in the actual generating
system economics but I do not have a grip on what period of overcast
your design is capable of handling.
Just two or three weeks back we had a long period of very widespread
bad weather. Victoria, NSW and Southern Queensland was covered by the
one front which was moving east in a North South line roughly and
seemed to be 500 to 600 km wide.
There were very high winds at times but here in Sydney the wind did
not seem anything special. It lasted I think about four days.
I suspect that the Eastern Electricity Market would have had to buy
in a lot of power from Sth Australia and Nth Queensland in your model.
For how many days like that are you catering ?

There might be a market for a mega volt Transcontinental Electricity Grid.

Roses,

Now you are fudging, I quoted generation costs not residential costs. Spot prices on spinning plant can go down to $0 or less if there is a surplus.

Secondly investors are not going to invest in a market where the existing product is supplied at a fraction of what they can produce it for. The only way is if they are guaranteed a price, which is higher than their cost and your quoted figures. The huge increase in power costs is passed directly to taxpayers, which increases the cost of living and puts industries out of business.

Finally, WRT the nuclear industry, France has just commissioned some new reactors which produce power at a fraction of renewables. The government covers the insurance, and reprocesses the waste enabling much of the uranium to be recycled and reducing the waste for disposal by 99%.

As for the Tsunami of 2014, the 25000 odd people who died and vast tracts of land that were made unsuitable for agriculture dwarfs the 1 person that died at the plant and the area temporarily evacuated.