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Very true.
From the Tasmanian perspective we've been there before.
First was back in 1914. Private enterprise had built a couple of tiny hydro plants (1.5 MW between them) to run mines and the locally very significant Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company was building the more substantial Lake Margaret scheme at 4.8 MW and designed for expansion. Launceston City Council had Duck Reach, that was the only public involvement in the industry at that time, and the then Hydro-Electric Power and Metallurgical Company had run out of money trying to build the Great Lake scheme plus the zinc works in Hobart plus a carbide factory.
And so despite all manner of warnings from the Australian Government, Tasmania took the plunge and jumped in head first in 1914 by setting up the Hydro as Australia's first state owned electricity utility. Nobody at that time likely understood what the state had just embarked upon but it all worked out in the end. That gave the privately owned HEPMCo enough $ to finish building their factories whilst the state took over the power supply.
A steep learning curve ensued. Just two years later Tasmania, with it's small population, no real experience and limited resources had Waddamana power station working and was running one of the longest transmission systems anywhere in the world (we think it was actually the longest but it's hard to confirm that). Just 12 months later the power station had doubled in size, another 2 years and it had doubled again as had the grid with the Launceston system now part of what was fast becoming a state-wide grid.
That was the first effort - either get this electricity caper up and running or be left behind. Thank heavens it worked. It scared the absolute **** out of Victoria from an economic perspective, their response being to set up the SECV.
For the record in due course Lake Margaret was indeed expanded and has since been acquired by the Hydro. Launceston's scheme was also sold to Hydro but ultimately replaced by the much larger Trevallyn station in 1955.
Then came the Great Depression which gave rise to the second effort which became universally known as hydro-industrialisation. Build dams and power stations which creates work, sell the power to industry to create more work, build more power stations and establish more industries. Rinse and repeat. That worked fine until Victoria built Hazelwood and started luring industry with cheap power, interest rates went up which isn't favourable to capital-intensive hydro power, the Australian economy started a long term move away from manufacturing and of course the environmental debates although the wheels were already falling off by that time.
And now there's the third major opportunity. Vic and SA are stuffed so far as energy is concerned and NSW is fast heading the same way. Qld has volume but it's not cheap. WA is better placed but it's less of a direct competitor due to both distance and not being linked to the other states either electrically or with gas.
Meanwhile down here we've got identified tidal, wind and of course hydro plus at least some chance of doing something with geothermal - the resource is there and unlike SA it's not in the middle of nowhere.
So it's the same problem as always. If we can do it cheap enough then there's a huge potential gain economically but the key is "cheap".
That's nothing new by the way. It was recognised at least as far back as the late 1920's that there were two options when it came to energy. Do it cheap or don't do it at all. The state removed the Hydro from direct political control and put business people and engineers in charge for that exact reason - it was recognised that politics was a barrier to efficiency and that getting costs down was an imperative. It was reported in those terms though the media at the time - it was very clearly understood that we had to compete internationally.
I've mentioned some very old stuff and there's a reason for that. None of the major issues are new.
Victoria and SA had competing private firms supplying electricity a century ago just as they do now. Yes, there was a crisis back then with failure to invest in new generating plant to use locally available resources. Nothing new there at all.
Political interference in the industry was a problem too, hence why the Tas government removed itself from that back in 1930. Again there's nothing new.
The need to manage demand to drive costs down is also not new. Launceston City Council was doing that back in the 1890's so over 120 years ago. The methods may well have been primative but the concept was well understood and applied to the extent technology allowed.
The need to be competitive is also nothing new indeed it has never been any different.
So technology has changed as have attitudes toward the environment but the fundamental economics of the power industry is much the same now as it was more than a century ago. Noting new at all really in that sense.
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