[toomuchtodo]

As your renewables approach “free” (sub 2 cents/kWh), the marginal cost is storage, and is still competitive against fossil and nuclear (per page 122 of NextEra’s most recent investor deck). Near firm is industry parlance for battery backed.

Tangentially, the Australian gov is pulling forward 10 years their coal generator retirements (2037->2027) due to how quickly new utility scale renewables are going live.

https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/06/lcoe-small.jpg?mrf-s...

[matt_attack]

Australia does have some geographic and climate advantages when it comes to solar installations. Most of the interior is basically desert. It also helps that it has one of the lowest population densities of any continent.

It's also important to note that plans to phase things out do not indicate success. See California right now.

[toomuchtodo]

California solar plateaus at 10-12GW during the day, a bit less than total coal generation capacity in Australia (per ElectricityMap.org). California needs more solar, wind, and batteries, full stop (and CAISO is working on it if you review their interconnect queue). At least they decided to hold on to Diablo Canyon. You refer to Australia’s desert; 75% of California’s natural gas generation could be replaced with solar sited over existing irrigation canals, and there is a large Nevada desert to the east of the state.

Large AC needs after the sun goes down will need to be served by time shifting chillers, batteries, wind, hydro, and the last nuclear plant standing in the state.

[entropicgravity]

And the last piece is HVDC lines to connect regional grids and average out supply and demand geographically.