In July this year, South Australia experienced a series of high wholesale electricity price spikes in one week, which some politicians and media commentators simplistically linked to the state’s high proportion of renewable energy, particularly wind (For example, Australian Financial Review 2016; The Advertiser 2016a; The Australian 2016). This was incorrect. The mistaken attack on...

Solar households in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales will this year cease to be paid for power they export into the electricity grid. In South Australia, some households will lose 16 cents per kilowatt-hour (c/kWh) from September 31. Some Victorian households will lose 25 c/kWh, and all NSW households will stop receiving payments...

The South Australian wholesale electricity market had a volume-weighted average price of $433/MWh for the first two weeks of July. By way of comparison, the volume-weighted average wholesale price in South Australia for the last eight calendar years has been $64/MWh. Extraordinarily high prices (greater than $2,000 per MWh) occurred in July for numerous half-hourly...

14% of Australians live in apartments, predominantly in urban centres, yet few of these have PV systems, despite high levels of PV deployment on separate and semi-detached residential buildings. Increased PV deployment on apartment buildings represents a valuable market opportunity for the PV industry, which would allow apartment dwellers to obtain the financial benefits of...

This report has been prepared for GetUp! We have been asked to analyse and comment on the retail electricity markets serving household electricity consumers in the National Electricity Market (NEM). The business of providing electricity to households by electricity retailers encompasses the acquisition of electricity in bulk, the purchase of network services from distributors and...