Trump has pledged to invest big in infrastructure. An analysis shows the electric grid will need hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade just to keep things as they are.
Jeffrey Sommerfeld, Queensland University of Technology
South Australia is investing $550 million in a plan to improve the reliability of its electricity. But the side-effect is that the National Electricity Market will now be even harder to run.
Electricity retailers need to make their prices and offers more transparent and easier for customers to understand, or risk having to submit to price regulation to drive down bills.
Here’s the real problem behind Australia’s electricity woes: the rules that govern decisions about what infrastructure to build, and when, are inflexible and outdated.
Privatisation and competition were supposed to make electricity cheaper. Instead, Australia’s quasi-federal energy system has made it easier to pass the buck when things go wrong.
South Australia’s government was angry about the blackouts enforced by electricity regulators. But with much of the state’s gas power offline, the regulators had little choice.
As Australia’s energy debate heats up, some politicians are calling for cleaner and more efficient coal power stations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
These mini lightning bolts have been known for millennia. Understanding static electricity at the atomic level opens the door for new technologies – as well as ways to cut down on the tiny zaps.
Lightning strikes are powerful – but we haven’t had solid estimates of their energy until now. Researchers turned to the hollow stone tubes they create by vaporizing sand for more precise calculations.
Joe Wyndham, University of Technology Sydney and Jay Rutovitz, University of Technology Sydney
Now that our rooftop solar industry has matured, we need to reconsider the purpose of feed-in tariffs and align them with our goals for the electricity system in the future.