Aidan: "If we want cheaper power, stopping the generation companies from manipulating the market is the most effective solution."

Australia has an abundance of natural gas. It's a cleaner transition fuel. We should be using it to our national advantage.

Unfortunately, successive dumb Australian governments (apart from the WA Government) never put in place a domestic gas reservation policy. This has meant that practically all of our gas is now exploited by a cartel that exports it to Asia while creating an artificial shortage at home. We have allowed the LNG export cartel to attach our energy prices to the Asian gas price, basically giving away what should have been Australia's natural comparative advantage.

Australia needs to sort out its messed-up gas market as a national priority.

Ah, yes the night wind, Aidan, always there when needed!

On reactors, "technically, there is no age limit.": http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-power-plant-aging-reactor-replacement-/

If you don't know MSR's ARE imminent, you're asleep. Also, stymieing regulation around all nuclear is being demolished in the US to keep competitive with China and Russia. The US is to build four reactors in India, which mustn't know about all the cheap grid-storage options it will have at its disposal well before their reactors they are built?

Cheap grid-scale storage? Why is Germany building coal-power when multiple storage solutions supposedly exist? Yes, it will close those down as Russian gas fills the breach, but how will that help emissions?

Shorten's fairies will wreck the joint. Pity our grand-kids.

..typo....SMR's, of course, not only MSR versions such as Terrestrial Energy's. I think, Aidan, you confuse the perpetual imminence of fusion with small scale fission, which has been around for decades in nuclear shipping.

As you appear to have slept through SMR progress, here's a starting point to get up to speed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_designs

Bozec, we have plenty of gas, but both the NSW & Vic governments have refused to allow the exploration or new harvesting of gas in their states. SA may have also banned harvesting of their gas.

They like to blame the export of gas for our local price & shortage, when it is actually their own damned policies.

Luciferase,
When the wind's not blowing it would come from storage (in hydro, battery, chemical and thermal forms). But there's usually some wind blowing.

Even where the life of nuclear power plants can be extended, that doesn't mean it's economic to do so.

I hope you're right about SMRs really being imminent this time. But even if they become available this year, it's likely to take several more years to get the costs as low as promised.

Economic conditions in India, which has a very high population, are very different to those in Australia.

Germany is not building coal power any more, and it plans to phase it out completely over the next twenty years.

_________________________

Hasbeen,
Reports of harvesting of gas being banned in SA are greatly exaggerated. Some restrictions were imposed to protect farmland and water after shonky operators interstate proved they couldn't be trusted. But there's still plenty of gas development in SA.

Down the rabbit-hole again, with Aidan in Wonderland :-)