Robert Pritchard, Energy Policy Institute of Australia (July 2022).
Power system reliability is being diminished by the increasing entry of variable renewables, requiring greater intervention in electricity markets.
Many politicians and climate activists cling to the hope that increasing renewables, accompanied by ‘firming technologies’ and additional transmission, will bring a high level of reliable, affordable and clean energy to the power system.
This hope is largely misplaced – without maintaining a high level of dispatchable generation, from coal, gas, hydropower or nuclear, our power system will increasingly be unbalanced. Put another way, the higher we go with renewables, the more unreliable our power system may become.
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