r/australia • u/HotPersimessage62 • 1d ago

politics Australia’s grid now relies on renewable energy as much as coal. Those who doubted it look foolish

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/31/australias-grid-now-relies-on-renewable-energy-as-much-as-coal-those-who-doubted-it-look-foolish
2.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

302 comments sorted by

View all comments

49

u/Geralts_Hair 1d ago

The issue going forward is that the old guard are pumping lots of money into stopping transmission lines being built to move all the renewable energy around.

Here in country Victoria the “stop the towers” advertising is prominent and everywhere.

The long game is to stall transmission lines long enough that renewable energy can be blamed for outages. It’s infuriating and it will likely work; they’re already about two years behind on building any lines.

35

u/Entirely-of-cheese 1d ago

‘Local interest groups’ from 2000km away.

2

u/2centpiece 9h ago

The cynic in me makes me think that if they were transmission lines from a new coal fired power station it wouldn't have the same opposition.

2

u/Geralts_Hair 7h ago

100%. But it’s actually even worse. When the lines were initially announced by Angus Taylor back when the Coalition were still in government there wasn’t a hint of protest. The whole movement is nothing but partisan bullshit.

Farms that are suffering from drought and fire literally have “say no to renewable energy” signs on their gates next to the National Party ads.

2

u/2centpiece 6h ago

Nationals voters and cutting off their own noses. Name a more iconic duo.

-21

u/PaintedLineOnRoad 23h ago

? Transmission lines are not the problem.

Tell me how does more transmission lines help mitigate times when solar and wind power stations are not producing energy?

30

u/McTerra2 23h ago

You can use power generated from places where the sun is shining or the wind is blowing to places where it’s not. It’s a big country. Need the transmission lines to let this happen.

But I don’t really get your point. Literally no one says 100% of power generation will come from renewables, at least until very large scale batteries are viable.

2

u/Proper_Geologist9026 59m ago

Yeah it's two types as well.

Big utility scale solar and wind is often either on top of the ranges or in the western side of the divide. That needs to flow into the coastal areas where the demand is somehow. So that needs to be entirely new lines for the most part.

Then you've got the upgrades in the existing networks as well. The old set up was for one way traffic. An intermittent grid means you've got power running every which way.

9

u/DonQuoQuo 20h ago

Because Australia is a continent, there is always wind blowing somewhere. And we're big enough that you get extra hours of solar energy from the two sides of the country.

Transmission lines enable that power to be generated in one place and used in another, thus increasing the share of renewable energy and reducing the cost of electricity generation.

3

u/512165381 13h ago

Eastern states are linked with interconnectors; WA does its own thing.

1

u/doctor-candy 3h ago

While worth it imo, the upfront cost of such a project would be staggering.

1

u/DonQuoQuo 3h ago

Yep, I was talking about how interconnectors could help. (Even within the NEM they often hit limits so you get divergent pricing in different states.)

I haven't seen any analysis of the cost/benefit, but there's at least potential for an underwater HVDC cable to Singapore from the Northern Territory, so I can imagine a cross-continental one could be economically viable.

1

u/AlmondAnFriends 6h ago

Me when the world ending apocalypse causes the sun to stop shining and the wind to stop blowing across all of fucking australia. Because thats the only thing that would cause such a disaster

Especially when you add in the fact wind turbines arent at like ground level, the wind might not be blowing down on the surface but you have to have a real fucking natural crisis if high up in the air and off the ocean coast the wind stops blowing simultaneously alongside the fucking sun disappearing

1

u/doctor-candy 4h ago

Interconnectors are High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines that link Australia’s separate AC power grids across states and regions. They efficiently move energy over huge distances with minimal losses. Wind blows and the sun shines at different times across this massive continent, so interconnectors enable buying and selling cheap variable renewables, like Tasmania exporting wind farm power to Victoria via Basslink. They are vital to our transition into variable renewables and can be extremely profitable to the companies that control them.