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The sharp spike in SA electricity prices this month certainly put the wind up renewable energy critics. But the really scary thing for the fossil fuel industry is that the price spikes don't happen often enough. The media appears to have forgotten they used to occur every second day.

Iveragh Peninsula, County Kerry Roadsides are a riot of primary yellow, pinks and purples

This verdant isle is indeed a green gem, but for the visitor from eastern England the abundance of richly coloured flowers is the stand-out botanical feature of the west coast of Ireland.

Roadsides are a riot of primary yellow – bird’s foot trefoil, St John’s wort, ragwort and cat’s ear; pinks and purples – including common, bell and cross-leaved heather and whole hedges of fuchsia; whitish umbels of angelica, and big white and pink striped, flared trumpets of the roseata subspecies of large bindweed.

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Solar energy, no sodium and organic fertiliser: how one of Australia’s biggest wineries is reducing waste while saving money and energy

One of Australia’s biggest family-owned wineries wants to become the country’s first zero-waste wine producer, and has invested more than $15m to achieve this goal.

De Bortoli Wines, which has wineries at four sites in two states, has already cut the amount of waste it disposes to landfill from 300 tonnes a year to 48 tonnes as part of a long-term sustainable business plan adopted in 2004.

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Warmer weather in NSW responsible for most of the decline in volumes and prices in gas and electricity markets in last week.

Adelaide company ZEN Energy wins contract to install more than 500kWh of li-ion battery storage at three government-owned buildings in Adelaide.

An acquisition spree for regulated fossil-fuel assets that are supported by guaranteed payments
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Impact Investment Group's new $100m solar fund, headed by former Pacific Hydro chief Lane Crockett, will buy operational solar farms ranging from 1MW-30MW.

Another solar farm has been approved for development in Queensland, this time a 30MW PV plant in the state’s Western Downs region, to be built by FRV.

Google’s 2014 acquisition of artificial intelligence company DeepMind has paid dividends, by helping to save the company 40% on its data center cooling electricity bills.

How technology can save the world from climate change.

Under a cloud: South Australia's wind farms have been blamed for price spikes, but without them the volatility would be even worse. Tim Phillips Photos/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The past few weeks have seen extraordinarily high wholesale electricity prices in South Australia, averaging (as of 23 July) A$321 per megawatt hour, compared with A$80 per MWh for July 2015.

The prices have attracted an even more extraordinary deluge of news coverage – much of it asserting, with little or no evidence, that the high prices have been caused by an excessive reliance on wind generation.

This graph shows the wholesale prices in the National Electricity Market (NEM) since the beginning of July.

Looking at the graph, several things are apparent:

• until the middle of May, SA prices were in line with those in other mainland NEM states, and almost never the highest

• price spikes also happened in other states, most notably in Queensland, which doesn’t have wind power

• prices in all four NEM states began to increase gradually from the middle of May.

In SA there is no long-term relationship between wholesale prices and the share of electricity supplied by wind, as shown below (comprehensive data on wind generation only date back to 2007). If anything, wind generation tends to drive down the wholesale price.

What does dictate electricity prices?

In the NEM, just as in any complex market, prices are determined by a combination of many different factors. The factors that may have affected SA’s prices this month include:

• the level of demand for electricity

• the amount of wind generation

• gas prices (for power generation)

• the capacity of available non-wind generation

• the capacity of the interconnectors linking SA and Victorian networks

• the level of competition between generators and their resulting price-setting behaviour.

Let’s briefly consider each in turn.

Demand

Winter heating requirements mean than July in SA is almost always one of the top two months for overall electricity demand (though not for peak monthly demand, which happens during summer heatwaves). However, average daily demand so far this month is slightly lower than the same time last year, while average wholesale prices are nearly four times higher. So something else must be pushing up the price.

Wind power

July is normally a windy month in SA. But it seems likely that this month’s total wind generation, while roughly the same as last July, will be much lower than in July 2014. The average price so far this month is about A$320, compared with about A$70 in May this year (when it was windier) and A$50 in July 2014.

Wholesale gas prices

Wholesale gas prices increased rapidly during May and June. It is generally agreed that this is due to increased demand for gas for the three export LNG plants in Queensland, which are now running at two thirds of full capacity.

Gas prices affect wholesale electricity prices mainly though their effect on the operating cost of open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) generators. These smaller, fast-start generators are ideal for meeting demand spikes, but they are relatively expensive to run. As we have already seen, wholesale prices climbed in all NEM states during May and June, and there is little doubt that higher gas prices were the main driver.

Non-wind generation

For most of its 18-year existence, the NEM has had a large excess of generation capacity relative to demand. This ensured tough competition between rival generators, which drove prices down. But now, in SA, this competition is weakening.

Early last year, Adelaide’s 478-megawatt gas-fired Pelican Point power station was taken offline, despite being one of the most efficient and lowest-emission thermal power stations in Australia. Its owner, Engie, said it was unable to trade profitably based on expected prices of gas and electricity. (In mid-July it was brought partially back online at the state government’s request, and has been operating at about one-third capacity for much of the time since then.) Then in May this year, the ageing 530MW coal-fired Northern power station was permanently shut down.

SA’s remaining thermal generating capacity consists of modern and old gas-fired plants, including several of the OCGT plants described above. Combined, their total is less than the annual summer and winter maximum demand in the state. So if periods of high demand coincide with periods of low wind generation, owners of these power stations can charge more because these days there is less competition.

Interconnector capacity

The Heywood interconnector, the main grid connection between SA and Victoria, has a maximum capacity of 460MW and at times of low wind generation it effectively functions as a direct replacement for Northern, by supplying electricity from the Latrobe Valley. It is being upgraded to 650MW and, as part of this work, it was effectively taken offline for about a week, beginning on July 5 – the period that has seen the highest prices.

Compare the period July 5-14, 2016, with July last year when demand was almost identical. The reductions in coal and interconnector supply are plainly evident, as are the increases in expensive gas generation from Torrens Island (Austrlia’s oldest operating thermal power station) and the OCGT plants.

Market competitiveness

Periods of low wind have thus left SA depending on a mixture of gas generators, many of them old and inefficient, whose already high costs have been driven still higher by the rapid rise in gas prices.

This has given the three businesses that own these power stations – AGL, Engie and Origin – increased market power. The rapid price spikes during the period July 5-15, and for several days thereafter, suggest that this market power was being exercised.

So what’s the real cause?

As we have seen, if you want a satisfactory explanation, you have to start with the very high wholesale gas prices right across the country. These have made SA’s gas-fired electricity options much more expensive, in turn raising the floor price for all of its power in times of low wind generation.

In addition to this higher floor price, the tightening of supply and lack of competition have allowed generators to drive prices to even higher levels in the form of short-lived spikes, which have raised the monthly average price still further.

The closure of Northern power station has significantly reduced competition in the SA wholesale electricity market. Additional competition, which normally comes from the transmission links with Victoria, was almost absent for an extended period during the month, because of upgrading work on the Heywood interconnector.

Competition from wind generators protects consumers from high wholesale prices for much of the time. But when the wind is not blowing, consumers are exposed to the full effects of an uncompetitive market. That is what has happened to customers in SA this month.

It is absurd to say that SA electricity prices would be lower if there were less wind generation. On the contrary, consumers would be exposed to high prices in an uncompetitive market for more of the time, and thus face higher average prices, not lower ones.

What has happened to SA electricity prices during this month is a stark demonstration of the need for a fundamental rethink of the the design of the National Electricity Market, which was designed at a time when Australia had very little gas generation and no wind. Demands to limit the growth of wind (and also solar) generation are in effect demands to renege on national emissions reduction commitments, for the sake of preserving a set of outdated and dysfunctional institutions.

Hugh Saddler is a member of the Board of the Climate Insitute

SunEdison Australia, the former Energy Matters business, to be sold to US manufacturing and logistics giant Flextronics, makers of Redflow batteries.

Biggest spike in electricity prices in South Australia in last week of June caused by failure of gas generation unit, regulator says.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 28 July 1916

The ragwort is out on the sandhills, masses of handsome flowers above dense, dark green leaves, except where a colony of black and orange cinnabar caterpillars is defoliating the strong plants. Brighter even than the ragwort is the yellow-wort, each flower facing the sun above its stem-pierced leaves. Acres are plentifully sprinkled with yellow-worts, pink centauries, marsh helleborines with nodding mauve or purple white-lipped flowers, and grass of Parnassus with elegant white flowers delicately veined with grey. On the level stretches are considerable areas of solid pink, paler but more dainty than that of the centaury, for the small, short-stalked flowers of the bog pimpernel grow so close together as to hide their creeping leaves.

Over this floral wilderness a few terns still call harshly, for belated pairs, their earlier efforts having failed, yet hope to hatch their two or three mottled eggs. When, one day this week, we left the sandhills, we found scores of adult birds resting on the sands, and others offering small shining fish to the young they had tempted towards the sea; over the water beyond were many more beating up and down, hovering and diving. Suddenly, from the dunes behind, came a wild, angry clamour, and an Arctic skua, big and brown beside the dainty terns, came skimming towards the beach. Two or three irate terns followed it, and the resting birds on the shore got up in a flurried cloud. Heedless of this noisy multitude and their mobbing cries it singled out one with food in its coral bill and, twisting and dodging from side to side, chased it until the quarry was dropped. Had we been near enough we might have seen the skua stoop try catch the dropped fish before it reached the water, for that is the constant habit of this fierce aerial highway robber.

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A fish familiar to Mediterranean fishermen can now be caught around Britain, from the south-west to the Hebrides

A favourite haunt of a newcomer to British shores, the grey triggerfish Balistes capriscus, is the seaside pier. For the holiday angler it could be quite a shock landing such an unfamiliar fish, and it will need caution. Triggerfish have small mouths but eight sharp teeth and strong jaws, useful for crushing the shells of mussels and other prey.

The increase in sea temperatures of around 1C in the last 30 years, caused by climate change, has attracted this and other newcomers more familiar to fishermen in Mediterranean countries. Unlike the octopus, which still seems confined to the southern half of Britain and Ireland, the grey triggerfish is moving north quite fast.

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Charity begins local consultation on plan to introduce 10 Eurasian lynxes back into wild in north of England and southern Scotland

Lynx could soon be reintroduced to the north of England and southern Scotland as the charity campaigning for the return of the wild mammal, which was last seen across Britain around 700AD, launches its final stage of a consultation.

The project to introduce 10 Eurasian lynxes back into the wild, which has also considered sites in Aberdeenshire, will this week begin discussions with farmers and tourist operators around Kielder Forest in Northumberland.

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Tigers at a wildlife park in Beijing have killed one woman and injured another after the pair left their vehicle, Chinese media reports say.

One of the largest and oldest black churches in the US warns that black people are disproportionally harmed by global warming and fossil fuel pollution

African American religious leaders have added their weight to calls for action on climate change, with one of the largest and oldest black churches in the US warning that black people are disproportionally harmed by global warming and fossil fuel pollution.

The African Methodist Episcopal church has passed its first resolution in its 200-year history devoted to climate change, calling for a swift transition to renewable energy.

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The managing director and chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, Matt Zema, died suddenly on Saturday, the organisation said in a statement.

Buy organic cotton and you’ll help transform lives, communities, the environment, the world…

The textiles industry is revolting. It causes 10% of the planet’s carbon footprint, while the dyeing and treatment of textiles is responsible for 17% of all industrial water pollution. Cotton uses 3% of global water, and the damage from cotton farming is $83bn. This eco cost is partially offset by longevity: a bath sheet should be in service for 10 years. I’m serious. So I was distressed to hear that 4,000 Wimbledon towels had been nicked as souvenirs by players. I make an appeal to Djokovic, Williams, Murray et al: please keep them towels in service.

Every time you make a purchasing decision, you’re also making a production decision, so when you come to replace towels and bed linen, go for organic. Currently, just 1% of the world’s cotton is organic. Let’s get that higher. Growing organic cotton is a far more responsible use of farmable land and fresh water, than conventional. The Textile Exchange surveyed 82,000 hectares of land in 2014 and found reduced global-warming potential, lower soil erosion, less water use and less energy demand from organic, as opposed to conventional, cotton growers.

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