Publication

CSIRO report confirms renewables still are the cheapest power sources in Australia

CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency and innovation catalyst, released the GenCost report on the cost to generate electricity from new renewable power plants in Australia. According to the publication, solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind continue to be the cheapest sources of new electricity generation capacity in Australia, even when the integration costs of renewables are included. The report states that battery costs fell the most in 2020-21 compared to any other generation or storage technology and are projected to continue to fall. It adds that pumped hydro is also important and is more competitive when longer durations of storage are required. The new approach is a model of the electricity system that optimises the amount of storage needed, and also includes additional transmission expenditure. It should be noted that previous reports added arbitrary amounts of storage costs and did not include transmission or other costs.

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