We’ve been asked a lot of times what power prices will be doing in the near future.
Do we know? All we know is what is happening to the drivers of power prices. These include:
– Coal fired power becomes increasingly uncompetitive a solar and wind are cheaper and, with more battery storage coming online, the argument of ‘baseload power’ does not hold anymore.
– As a consequence, owners of coal fired power stations like AGL, Origin etc. are shutting down their stations much earlier than forecasted.
– Gas will play a role for a decade or so as dispatchable energy, but at present the price of gas is too high for any generator to use it other than in emergencies. In 10 years time battery storage will better gas at all times.
We think it is unreasonable to think that power in general will become cheaper. What we know is that owners of solar power systems will be more and more curtailed in how much they are allowed to export to the grid based on the time of day (no export between 11am and 3pm, for example). Some states are actually thinking of imposing a ‘solar tax’ for the ABILITY to export to the grid.
Solar systems owners will have to prepare themselves for less revenue and higher total energy costs. One way of doing this is going grid-independent with solar and battery storage.