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If that were true, then power bills would have been decreasing in real terms as the amount of renewable energy fed into the grid increases. However over the last decade or 2 the cost of electricity to the consumer has been going up in real terms across Australia.
There is a total cost of the renewables, not just the installation of separate solar and wind plants. There is also a limit on what percentage of the grid can be renewable unless there is a massive amount of storage included, because if intermittency issues. This is another cost that has to be added for a stable grid.

We currently build everything with cheap FF, cheap in term of net energy, which most people assume means cheaper in dollar cost with scale. Just adding solar and wind to the grid will lead to instability and intermittency.
Can you make just the glass for solar panels from intermittent solar or wind energy?? Answer, NO, nor for that matter any other component!! We need a stable grid to do this that currently relies on stable FF output. Once we add enough storage to overcome intermittency issues, OR make the grid large enough to overcome any intermittency issues (transcontinental) the dollar cost and energy cost goes through the roof.
Solar and wind are only getting cheaper because they rely on fossil fuels to mine, transport, manufacture, and build, plus the grid being built to accommodate all the renewables is also being built with fossil fuels. The renewables have a lifespan of about 25 years, so will need replacing at a shorter time interval than coal or natural gas plants that tend to have 50 year (or longer) lives.

I'm a huge believer in the need to go to renewables as we will simply run out of oil, coal and gas eventually (excluding any global warming issues), I'm just not assuming it will be cheap, as the real numbers clearly show it will not be.
Our civilization runs on cheap net energy. We have relied on cheap, easy to extract fossil fuels for a couple of centuries, with accelerating use of these over the last 100 years.
Economic type thinking where everything is based on dollar cost, does not match with the reality of everything being energy based. I've been studying all this for decades, so could easily write a book to explain all the nuances of our current system. Impossible to go through all the assumptions quickly, apart from getting people to look at every aspect of anything to realise how dependent it is on cheap FF energy.
Our markets crashed in 2008 because of energy (FF) getting rapidly more expensive, yet most claim it was bad loans. My own analysis of energy kept me out of the stockmarket at the time. Economists do not understand why in the 10 years since the GFC, economies have not returned to previous growth, yet an energy analysis of the economy easily explains the constraints of expensive energy on growth.

Assumptions of renewable energy getting cheaper because of economies of scale etc, fail to realise the upfront energy cost in the build out. Lower quality ores require increased energy inputs to get the same quantity of raw materials out. Using renewables exclusively requires a massive increase in raw materials, simply because the energy return on energy invested is much lower in renewables than in the FF we have been using.
Think of the resources needed to build a 1Gw coal plant or gas plant with an 80% capacity factor, (produces roughly 7 million Mewawatt hours of electricity/yr) compared to the equivalent build of just solar. Solar assuming 6hr/d, would be a 3.2Gw solar plant, plus there would need to be some type of storage to allow for the intermittency. Both capital and energy cost of the solar build are much higher than for the coal or gas plant, plus if you put the solar in the bast places, there are increased grid capacity build costs.

<blockquote data-quote="brty" data-source="post: 1021295" data-attributes="member: 15091">If that were true, then power bills would have been decreasing in real terms as the amount of renewable energy fed into the grid increases. However over the last decade or 2 the cost of electricity to the consumer has been going up in real terms across Australia.There is a total cost of the renewables, not just the installation of separate solar and wind plants. There is also a limit on what percentage of the grid can be renewable unless there is a massive amount of storage included, because if intermittency issues. This is another cost that has to be added for a stable grid.We currently build everything with cheap FF, cheap in term of net energy, which most people assume means cheaper in dollar cost with scale. Just adding solar and wind to the grid will lead to instability and intermittency.&nbsp;Can you make just the glass for solar panels from intermittent solar or wind energy?? Answer, NO, nor for that matter any other component!! We need a stable grid to do this that currently relies on stable FF output. Once we add enough storage to overcome intermittency issues, OR make the grid large enough to overcome any intermittency issues (transcontinental) the dollar cost and energy cost goes through the roof.Solar and wind are only getting cheaper because they rely on fossil fuels to mine, transport, manufacture, and build, plus the grid being built to accommodate all the renewables is also being built with fossil fuels. The renewables have a lifespan of about 25 years, so will need replacing at a shorter time interval than coal or natural gas plants that tend to have 50 year (or longer) lives.I&#039;m a huge believer in the need to go to renewables as we will simply run out of oil, coal and gas eventually (excluding any global warming issues),&nbsp; I&#039;m just not assuming it will be cheap, as the real numbers clearly show it will not be.Our civilization runs on cheap net energy. We have relied on cheap, easy to extract fossil fuels for a couple of centuries, with accelerating use of these over the last 100 years. Economic type thinking where everything is based on dollar cost, does not match with the reality of everything being energy based. I&#039;ve been studying all this for decades, so could easily write a book to explain all the nuances of our current system. Impossible to go through all the assumptions quickly, apart from getting people to look at every aspect of anything to realise how dependent it is on cheap FF energy.Our markets crashed in 2008 because of energy (FF) getting rapidly more expensive, yet most claim it was bad loans. My own analysis of energy kept me out of the stockmarket at the time. Economists do not understand why in the 10 years since the GFC, economies have not returned to previous growth, yet an energy analysis of the economy easily explains the constraints of expensive energy on growth.Assumptions of renewable energy getting cheaper because of economies of scale etc, fail to realise the upfront energy cost in the build out. Lower quality ores require increased energy inputs to get the same quantity of raw materials out. Using renewables exclusively requires a massive increase in raw materials, simply because the energy return on energy invested is much lower in renewables than in the FF we have been using.Think of the resources needed to build a 1Gw coal plant or gas plant with an 80% capacity factor, (produces roughly 7 million Mewawatt hours of electricity/yr) compared to the equivalent build of just solar. Solar assuming 6hr/d, would be a 3.2Gw solar plant, plus there would need to be some type of storage to allow for the intermittency. Both capital and energy cost of the solar build are much higher than for the coal or gas plant, plus if you put the solar in the bast places, there are increased grid capacity build costs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="brty, post: 1021295, member: 15091"] If that were true, then power bills would have been decreasing in real terms as the amount of renewable energy fed into the grid increases. However over the last decade or 2 the cost of electricity to the consumer has been going up in real terms across Australia. There is a total cost of the renewables, not just the installation of separate solar and wind plants. There is also a limit on what percentage of the grid can be renewable unless there is a massive amount of storage included, because if intermittency issues. This is another cost that has to be added for a stable grid. We currently build everything with cheap FF, cheap in term of net energy, which most people assume means cheaper in dollar cost with scale. Just adding solar and wind to the grid will lead to instability and intermittency. Can you make just the glass for solar panels from intermittent solar or wind energy?? Answer, NO, nor for that matter any other component!! We need a stable grid to do this that currently relies on stable FF output. Once we add enough storage to overcome intermittency issues, OR make the grid large enough to overcome any intermittency issues (transcontinental) the dollar cost and energy cost goes through the roof. Solar and wind are only getting cheaper because they rely on fossil fuels to mine, transport, manufacture, and build, plus the grid being built to accommodate all the renewables is also being built with fossil fuels. The renewables have a lifespan of about 25 years, so will need replacing at a shorter time interval than coal or natural gas plants that tend to have 50 year (or longer) lives. I'm a huge believer in the need to go to renewables as we will simply run out of oil, coal and gas eventually (excluding any global warming issues), I'm just not assuming it will be cheap, as the real numbers clearly show it will not be. Our civilization runs on cheap net energy. We have relied on cheap, easy to extract fossil fuels for a couple of centuries, with accelerating use of these over the last 100 years. Economic type thinking where everything is based on dollar cost, does not match with the reality of everything being energy based. I've been studying all this for decades, so could easily write a book to explain all the nuances of our current system. Impossible to go through all the assumptions quickly, apart from getting people to look at every aspect of anything to realise how dependent it is on cheap FF energy. Our markets crashed in 2008 because of energy (FF) getting rapidly more expensive, yet most claim it was bad loans. My own analysis of energy kept me out of the stockmarket at the time. Economists do not understand why in the 10 years since the GFC, economies have not returned to previous growth, yet an energy analysis of the economy easily explains the constraints of expensive energy on growth. Assumptions of renewable energy getting cheaper because of economies of scale etc, fail to realise the upfront energy cost in the build out. Lower quality ores require increased energy inputs to get the same quantity of raw materials out. Using renewables exclusively requires a massive increase in raw materials, simply because the energy return on energy invested is much lower in renewables than in the FF we have been using. Think of the resources needed to build a 1Gw coal plant or gas plant with an 80% capacity factor, (produces roughly 7 million Mewawatt hours of electricity/yr) compared to the equivalent build of just solar. Solar assuming 6hr/d, would be a 3.2Gw solar plant, plus there would need to be some type of storage to allow for the intermittency. Both capital and energy cost of the solar build are much higher than for the coal or gas plant, plus if you put the solar in the bast places, there are increased grid capacity build costs. [/QUOTE]

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