A Creaking Grid Jams Up Australia's Switch to Green Energy
- Grid constraints are hampering new clean energy projects
- Policy vacuum has seen renewables investment growth slow
This article is for subscribers only.
Australia’s financing of cleaner power is slowing because the country’s aging grid isn’t being upgraded quick enough to accept new, intermittent generation and transport it efficiently to demand centers.
That’s curbing the profitability of existing projects and making future ones more expensive. For instance, the addition of more renewable generation near the Broken Hill Solar Plant in remote New South Wales has increased the facility’s marginal loss factor -- a measure of the difference between the amount of electricity generated and the amount lost in transmission -- by more than a fifth in the year started July from a year earlier.