It’s not a typo – wholesale electricity prices in Queensland skyrocketed to $12,000 per megawatt hour last week and even higher on the weekend.
Heatwave conditions in the state increased air conditioner use and demand for electricity surged. As is always the case in this situation, wholesale electricity prices surged with it.
According to the Courier Mail, “Queensland no longer produces enough baseload electricity to power the state on a warm summer day”. While “warm” may have somewhat understated the situation, the state’s 1.6 million plus air conditioners certainly had and will continue to have a major impact on electricity infrastructure.
The Courier Mail’s focus was on 750MW of baseload generating capacity at Tarong power station being taken offline recently; but an electricity price and demand snapshot from the Australian Energy Market Operator of the weekend’s spike solidly supports the case for solar power.
The above graph shows by far the biggest price spikes occurred between 10am and 4pm. During these events, the many thousands of solar power systems on rooftops of homes and businesses throughout Queensland were quietly and cleanly generating electricity; exporting it to the mains grid for a tiny fraction of the price the big power generators were charging – just cents per kilowatt hour instead of dollars.
Additionally, Queensland solar households were not only slashing their own summer power bills, but through self consumption also helped take the strain off the mains grid. Without those solar panel arrays, wholesale electricity prices may have been higher for longer.
Instead of it being a case of needing filthy fossil fuel based power stations back online in the State; further adding to greenhouse gas emissions woes and other associated environmental havoc, it would seem the Queensland government just needs to do more to encourage solar power uptake.
While Queensland leads the country for solar installations, there is still plenty of QLD rooftop real estate begging to host solar panels.
The outrageous prices charged by ‘Big Energy’ in recent times haven’t been confined to Queensland. Victoria also experienced a similar event recently where wholesale electricity costs hit $12,500 per megawatt hour. The 12.5k figure isn’t a coincidence – it’s just the maximum the power generation companies are permitted to charge.
Some might say it’s a (very) small mercy.
