> In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively. > And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.

I'll say this one thing and get out of the way. The price shock began in 2022[1] (see figure 1). The rise in energy costs aren't due to solar and wind generation, which is the cheapest there is. It's due to the transmission and variability of intermittent renewable energy, and also sensitive to export prices of gas due to our weak policy on gas reserves. Batteries are the answer to that as they can store when its cheap and dispatch to the grid when it isn't (and that includes home batteries). The Neoen battery which you mentioned, was the world's first big battery. It's been wildly profitable, which is basically driving the market to invest more in grid scale batteries and less in large scale renewables. So the federal and state governments aren't picking a winner by backing batteries, these policies are just accelerating us towards a cheaper grid using the momentum that's already there in the market. The federal government is also trying to offset the ending of the state-level bill relief for those that can't afford batteries, and reducing grid pressure/prices in the evening when everyone gets home.

[1] https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/spot-market-prices...

You can’t have distributed low power density intermittent solar and wind electricity generation at scales that matter without stupendous amounts of steel and concrete transmission infrastructure having to be built where no one lives or works, nor wants to, to connect them to places people do want to live and work.

There’s no way that can be separated from grid-scale wind and solar.

The level of self deception renewables advocates subject themselves to would be funny if I wasn’t forced to pay for it.

You also can’t have it without peaking capability. Which means being able to cover possibly all demand instantaneously, and that was always going to mean expensive gas / battery projects that sit idle a lot of the time. We tried it I warn you.

That wildly profitable Neoen battery? Where do you think the profits come from? Thin air? The end user. That’s you and me mate, we’re paying for it. Low income earners disproportionately so. Renters who can’t have solar or batteries. They can just freeze in the dark.

I’m all for profits when they’re mine. I can’t understand why anyone would worship someone else’s profits. Your profits are my costs.

I just drove half way across the country, from the south east to the middle of South Australia.

Broken wind turbines 300k, from the nearest industrial centre. Probably 600+k from the nearest capable industrial centre.

They’ll never get fixed. No one is driving a $1200 an hour crane five hours each way to spend six days set up waiting for a technician and parts from Europe who was supposed to be here two weeks ago to fix one or two turbines / broken blades. Those handful of broken turbines probably don’t even have spare parts available, every wind farm is a new model of turbine, locked in to one manufacturer indefinitely for after sales parts and service, and if they do have spare parts and service available the payback period on the repairs would be astronomical.

It’s cheaper to let them rot in place and build new ones elsewhere. You don’t get greenfields grid-scale rebates for performing maintenance on ten+ year old equipment.

I dare you to run the numbers on the quantity of steel and concrete needed globally to transition to wind and solar.

Or don’t, cos it will put you off renewables. And there’s nothing worse than having your preconceived notions of what’s right and wrong jump out of the math and throttle your brain. The concrete related CO2 emissions alone will choke the planet way beyond what we’ve merely dabbled with getting to this stage.

I used to do paid and volunteer work for The Wilderness Society and donate to Greenpeace. Then I learned applied mathematics.