To John Daysh
Thank you for your last comment. It explains quite well why the failure to produce a plan is producing a new electricity grid that is a dog's breakfast and hence why it's so expensive. As you say, a scenario is not a plan nor is a framework a plan and it is sheet stupidity to make investment decisions based upon a range of scenarios - a vague framework - that lack an overarching coherent plan.

No, it doesn't, Bernie.

//[Your last comment] explains quite well why the failure to produce a plan is producing a new electricity grid that is a dog's breakfast and hence why it's so expensive//

I have said the opposite, repeatedly. I have explained that there is a plan, that it is publicly available, and that it is deliberately structured around scenarios because that is how large, complex systems are planned under uncertainty. Recasting that as me "explaining the failure to produce a plan" is simply untrue.

What you keep doing is redefining "plan" to mean a single, fixed, centrally specified blueprint with a locked budget, and then declaring everything else to be "no plan". That's not an argument about evidence, it's an argument about semantics - and one that ignores how electricity systems, defence capability, water infrastructure and transport networks are actually planned in the real world.

You're free to argue that Australia should have adopted a fully centralised, command-and-build approach instead of a market-based one. That's a political position. But asserting that scenario-based system planning is "sheet stupidity" or evidence of absence of planning is not honest engagement with what I've said or with how these systems are governed.

If you want to criticise the outcomes, criticise them. But stop attributing positions to me that I haven't taken in order to do it.

So we've reached the point where two different kinds of "plans" have been defined and discussed, one that's represented by the AEMO ISP and the other that simple folk like me imagined was a normal plan, like the document that enables construction of something, like a shed or a home or a factory for making, say, lithium batteries.

It seems that the second kind was chosen for our new electricity supply by, well, somebody (anon). My questions are: How was the choice made? Did that process include consideration of whether it would work, something like a feasibility study I'm guessing? Were any working examples picked out for study? Has an ISP -style plan been successfully implemented in Australia? Was there any evidence from prior Australian planning practice that encouraged those decisions? Is the process that led to adopting the ISP available, in the public domain. And did the planners, or whatever they like to be called, consider that a fleet of clean electricity generators running on nuclear power could be connected, cheaply, to an existing transmission system and hence to existing customers. They might have seen the nuclear ban as an obstacle but then they might have seen the transmission cost savings as a favorable benefit to influence public opinion. Of course we know that none of the above came into any planning discussion. A decision had been made long before any other decisions (or whatever it is these strange planners make) were even thought about

Finally (?), First: Energy planning -- the big picture: I've already asked about the origins of Australia's ISP and the existence of evidence that might guide me, or others, on whether it will or can work. Nothing so far, but still worth stressing. Why not look at the countries considered most successful so far in their transitions. Which are they? How did they go about their planning? Might give us some clues. But to my mind the evidence is that no such question was ever asked and the plan we do have in Australia, the ISP, is the product of some kind of strange bureaucracy with no evidential basis.
Second, progress of the transition in Australia has made plain that the current plan should have been rejected on two simple predictable cost grounds. No.1, the cost of firming an intermittent solar/wind system is huge. No.2, Transmission costs for such a system, which prides itself on its "distributed energy" description, are extra huge, which must have been obvious to any engineer involved. The system was meant to replace a national network spanning thousands of kilometres, of mainly gigawatt-scale coal fired power stations. Each of those could in principle be replaced by nuclear energy. New transmission costs = zero. That's big savings, surely attractive to someone in authority, who could kick off an effort for Australia to remove its totally irrational ban on nuclear power. What actually happened? Total silence. It takes a long time to change cultures.

A few points, TomBie.

First, the ISP didn’t emerge from a vacuum. It builds on decades of NEM planning, regulator-set reliability standards and published cost inputs like GenCost. It’s consulted on, revised and stress-tested publicly. You can disagree with its conclusions, but calling it “a strange bureaucracy with no evidential basis” ignores how it was developed.

Second, firming and transmission costs were not a surprise discovered halfway through the transition. They are explicitly modelled. You can argue they are too high relative to alternatives, but they weren’t invisible to planners.

Third, the idea that replacing coal with nuclear means “new transmission cost = zero” isn’t realistic. Not all coal sites are suitable for nuclear; licensing, cooling, seismic, financing and timelines matter; and grid reinforcement would still be required. The nuclear ban is a legislative decision, not something planners quietly forgot about.

The disagreement here isn’t whether planning exists. It’s whether Australia should have pursued a centrally directed nuclear pathway instead of a market-based renewables pathway. That’s a legitimate policy debate. But it’s not evidence that planning lacked coherence or evidence.