This has certainly played out. The prices on Good Friday were extraordinary for a national holiday. There was not much wind where I was in Snowy Mountains, but plenty of sun.
The costs of the losses to community- industry, workers - of the SA outage last September, were $300M per one estimate. That was avoidable to some degree, though I have not done the numbers in whether Port Lincoln and the incremental output available from Whyalla steel works should have been able to keep the Eyre Penisnula alive with the towers down on the main line to Adelaide, down the other side of the Gulf.
The ongoing high prices represent a headwind to our economy, and it has been said that Australia has to choose between high wages and high energy costs. The main beneficiaries are the providers of renewable equipment and promoters who can point to projects needing less subsidy. Ie it is just like a carbon tax or ETS.
