PLEA Network

12 July 2016, Renew Economy, ACT could make windfall gains from bold 100% renewables target Who is the smartest energy minister in the country? At the moment, you would have to say it was the ACT’s Simon Corbell, the mastermind behind the territory’s bold 100 per cent renewable energy target, and who is poised to deliver massive savings to consumers in the nation’s capital. Indeed, if current wholesale electricity prices continue as they are across Australia, the ACT will not just have zero emissions electricity by 2020, it may also be getting most of it for free. This extraordinary situation arises out of the nature of the contracts that the ACT government has written with the project developers who have won its unique reverse auction tenders. The ACT has locked in fixed prices at between $77/MWh and $92/MWh for a total of 400MW of wind energy capacity so far. If the wholesale price is below those contracts, the ACT government pays the difference. If it is above, the ACT electricity utility ActewAGL receives the excess. In the past two months, wholesale prices across Australia have gone through the roof, mostly because of soaring gas prices (at record levels in most states), and supply constraints. Some of these rises have already been passed on to consumers. The first of the ACT commissioned wind farms, the 19MW Coonooer Bridge project in Victoria, opened earlier this year and gets a guaranteed $81.50/MWh from the ACT. But prices in Victoria have regularly jumped above $100/MWh in the past two months. Read More here