11/10/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/1Chkgjru1K/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Interesting….
This, bizarrely, is going to make some people very upset.
I was having a look through the latest electricity-market data and found something rather inconvenient. Australia's average wholesale electricity price in the June quarter has fallen to $74/MWh. That's the lowest June quarter average since 2020.
For comparison, the figures are below. I've deliberately used the same quarter each year because electricity prices are seasonal and I don't want someone arriving in the comments wearing a cosplay hi-vis and claiming that I've manipulated seasonality.
The more interesting bit, though, is the graph underneath it.
For years we've been told that adding renewables to the grid inevitably makes electricity more expensive. Matt Canavan makes this argument regularly. Sky News has practically built a small cottage industry around it. Every increase in electricity prices eventually gets traced back to a wind turbine somewhere.
Except we're now getting enough renewables and storage into the system that we can actually watch what they do.
Compared with the same quarter last year, renewable generation increased substantially. Wind output rose about 20%, grid-scale solar increased about 12%, and renewables supplied a record 42.1% of NEM generation during the quarter. At the same time, the average wholesale price fell 47% to $74/MWh.
But look at what happens throughout the day, because this is where batteries start becoming genuinely interesting.
Solar pours electricity into the grid during daylight hours. Increasingly, batteries charge while that electricity is abundant and cheap. Then the sun goes down, everyone gets home, demand remains high and those batteries start discharging.
That's the enormous purple blob appearing around the evening peak in the second graph.
And immediately underneath it is something else worth noticing: gas generation falling.
Gas-fired generation fell around 30% compared with the same quarter last year, reaching its lowest Q2 level since 2003. That's important because gas is relatively expensive generation and can have an outsized influence on wholesale prices when it's needed at the margin.
The Australian Energy Regulator is seeing the same thing. It says wholesale prices were substantially lower across every NEM region during Q2 despite higher electricity demand, with greater renewable generation, lower-priced battery output and dramatically fewer extreme-price events helping drive the reduction.
This doesn't mean renewables are magic. New transmission costs money. Batteries cost money. Firming costs money. There will still be periods when the wind doesn't blow, the sun isn't shining and expensive dispatchable generation is needed. Australia has some enormous engineering and infrastructure challenges ahead of it.
But that's quite different from saying renewables are why electricity is expensive.
That line has become an incredibly convenient political scapegoat because electricity bills contain dozens of moving parts. Wholesale prices rise? Renewables. Network costs rise? Renewables. Gas prices explode? Renewables. Ageing coal generation falls over unexpectedly? Somehow the solar panels have done it again.
The actual market data is becoming considerably more awkward.
Renewable generation is increasing. Battery capacity is booming. Batteries are shifting cheap daytime electricity into the evening peak. Gas generation is being displaced during those periods. Extreme wholesale-price events are becoming less frequent. And wholesale prices have fallen sharply.
Which raises the completely reasonable question: why isn't my electricity bill falling by 47%?
Because wholesale electricity is only one component of your bill. You're also paying for transmission and distribution networks, environmental schemes, metering, retail operating costs and retailer margins. Retailers also hedge electricity purchases ahead of time, meaning today's lower spot prices don't immediately flow through to household bills.
Network costs have also been rising, partly because we're spending enormous amounts replacing, expanding and maintaining the infrastructure that actually moves electricity around the country. So a falling wholesale price can be partially swallowed by rising costs elsewhere before it ever reaches your kitchen.
And then there's another factor that doesn't require an electrical-engineering degree to understand.
Your retailer likes money.
If you've been sitting on the same electricity plan for years, don't assume falling wholesale prices will inspire your provider to spontaneously ring you and offer a cheaper deal. Energy retailers have roughly the same approach to customer loyalty as insurers and telecommunications companies: thank you very much for staying, that'll be extra.
Shop around. In Victoria, use the government's Victorian Energy Compare service. Elsewhere in the NEM, use Energy Made Easy. And if your current provider is advertising a substantially cheaper plan than the one you're already on, ring them and ask why you're not on it.
It's remarkable how quickly an electricity company's deeply complicated pricing structure becomes negotiable when you mention another electricity company.
We're adding renewables. We're adding batteries. We're using less gas during important parts of the day.
And wholesale electricity prices aren't exploding.
They're currently going the other way.
