Aiden, mainly because you are not deserving of respect.
We had coal and cheap electricity. Then we get the con job of solar and then wind power. Cheaper you said, prices doubled, getting cheaper you said, prices doubled again!
That says it all, if renewables were any good they would need no subsidies and prices would reduce but prices just increase and increase.
Another thing never reported. Gas was always pegged to the electricity price and if electricity prices increased, gas always followed. So now we have the worse possible result.
I bet the Chinese and Indians are laughing their bottoms off at our rank stupidity. Go to Asia, I was in Vietnam for some months and saw no solar panels or wind turbines. That's because they are building more coal fired power stations as their population needs cheap power not paying off sleazy Green companies and even sleazier scientists!

“Disrespect” is it? Nobody is going to respect someone who insists on making claims that are clearly untrue. Over the 30 or so years of climate change hysteria, everything claimed by the hysterics has been debunked - most assuredly so by the climate itself. Carl Jung would have diagnosed the culprits for this nonsense as 'hysterics who try to make themselves interesting by whipping up hysteria among others’, to gain a following and, something he probably would not have imagined at the time, to make motza of money out of it.

Aidan has done his dash with me with this unfathomable comment: “And because of that you support policies that would make our electricity supply more expensive rather than more reliable.”

You are unhinged, Aidan. The policies that you favour are the expensive ones. You must be the only person in the entire world who hasn't noticed that unreliable sources have increased power prices. Does the missus pay all the bills and not show them to you?

There is something very wrong with you, mate, and I've run out of patience with you. Rave on all you like. Someone might still think you are worth arguing with, but it's not me.

JBowyer and ttbn,
So let me get this straight: you saw a correlation between renewable energy and higher prices, and rather than surmising that it might be the cause and investigating further to try and determine if it was (as an intelligent person would) you concluded that it must be the cause and anyone who says otherwise is clearly not worthy of respect?

If you are willing to switch your brains back on for a few minutes, you'll find that renewables (and the way they're funded) were responsible for a small part of the price rise. Other factors responsible for the higher prices include (but are not limited to:
• Unsustainably low starting prices (the policy of sweating old assets rather than building new ones is often sensible, but it can't go on for ever).
• Rising fuel prices (gas prices have quadrupled since 2010, matching international prices as our LNG export industry developed; leading not following electricity prices)
• Rising network costs, largely due to poor regulation
• Insufficient competition for the NEM to always work efficiently (thus generators profiteering at the expense of consumers)

Any objective analysis would show the last of those factors is responsible for the high wholesale prices last week. But you're too pig headed to ever hold anything other than renewables responsible!

So what can we do about it? More generation is the obvious answer. And Lomborg's prediction has now turned out to be correct - prices for renewables have fallen so much that solar plus batteries is now cheaper than coal. I know you won't take my word for it, so check it out for yourself: there's a CSIRO report at http://www.csiro.au/~/media/News-releases/2018/Annual-update-finds-renewables-are-cheapest-new-build-power/GenCost2018.pdf

As for why they need subsidies: with subsidies there's more incentive to add more solar panels, wind turbines and batteries than without subsidies. And the sooner they're added, the sooner prices will come down. I know it's counterintuitive, but if you look at what's really driving wholesale prices, it makes sense.