so in other words, heavily subsidize another technology (introducing cost shifts onto non-adopters, typically poorer people) to try and solve operational problems directly caused by oversubsidizing rooftop solar (another regressive cost-shift and extremely inefficient cost allocation relative to tx-connected solar) by bringing down wholesale prices (already a minority of the utility bill).
Fixed costs, the majority of the utility bill, continue to increase. But hey, LMPs (something residential tarriffs are not as exposed to) are lower!!! LMFAO
Wholesale power is ~37% of the customer bills.
The other costs are the "poles and wires" distribution network and the HV transmission network.
The government is also building out the transmission network to various renewable energy zones, which has the added benefit of making the transmission network more resilient.
With large coal plants, the network was only one interconnector failure from blacking out a state (as happened to South Australia).
Now there is a much better network of interconnected transmission across the entire east and south coast of Australia, covering something like 80% of the population.
The government just bailed out an aluminium smelter that was going to close because of the increased cost of power because it was relying on an old coal plant. Now that will be replaced with renewables.
So we get the benefit of the continued operation of the smelter, as well as the build out of replacement generation for the old coal plants at EOL that will be closed by 2030.
I think you could use more citations.
The South Australia blackout was not caused by coal or renewables or lack of interconnectors. If there had been zero interconnects (the local grid was self-sufficient) it wouldn't have happened! The primary cause of the extended blackout was simply a lack of readiness/contingency planning/compliance particularly at several large windfarms. See wiki article.
Coal is generally cheaper for baseload power like an aluminum smelter, even though solar is cheaper during the day. Firming with wind/battery is not yet competitive but is getting very close and is at the point where building new coal power plants is not viable. Refer to gencost report. However, replacing such a large load with brand new renewable capacity is almost certainly more expensive than simply continuing to burn coal, particularly when factoring in the grid upgrades required to make such a transition.
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in other words there's no winning because circular arguments about how things "really" work, plus insisting on and worst-possible-case-outcomes-as-inevitabilities.
right ...