Can you explain the bit about storage.......or in a simpler term, base load power ? To my (limited) knowledge, except during winter when the snowy dams are full and we can generate some hydro, which isn't renewable energy, I don't know of anywhere in Australia that is AT PRESENT storing renewable energy ?
Pumped hydro is old technology that is use now within Australia to balance baseload power plants and solar and wind (connected to the grid). At the moment only a small fraction of Australia's power is generated by solar and wind. The majority of current power is from Coal, but we have an aging infrastructure and we are unlikely going build new coal power stations because of the carbon footprint of burning coal. Most if not all new generation will be from renewable energy.
Moving forward we will need to use several technologies to make it all work. Apparently it is not a big issue until you start to get about 50% renewables. Only South Australia is getting to around that mark. Most other states are not approaching this level at this time. The price problems and outages you may have had are not from renewable energy but from bad management and forward planning and policy development ( see my posts previous to this).
So given that renewables are going to be used. We need to fix the network and install storage to make it all work, when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, we still can get power at reasonable cost. Just as we use pumped hydro previously to stabilise Coal baseload power stations, we need to do the same with renewable energy, only we need more of it. This pumped hydro is attached to the grid/network, so its connected to both coal power stations and solar and wind at the same time.
The network/grid needs to be improved so more interconnects are put between states and distributed new power generation. This is a problem that needs fixing to enable reliability. Our governments need to invest in policy/development as it has failed to meet uptime commitments, and will help reduce costs. Recent research has found many sites around Australia that could be used as pumped storage locations. Its best to keep this storage distributed across the grid/network.
Coal will be phased out over the next 30 years, over this time will be using existing of the shelf technology like pumped storage, solar, wind, battery, hydro, gas, and coal, and probably other and new technology ( not in any order).
We have international commitments to reduce CO2, This is for our kids and grand kids to have a future.
From Wikipedia:
The most important use for pumped storage has traditionally been to balance baseload powerplants, but may also be used to abate the fluctuating output of intermittent energy sources. Pumped storage provides a load at times of high electricity output and low electricity demand, enabling additional system peak capacity. In certain jurisdictions, electricity prices may be close to zero or occasionally negative on occasions that there is more electrical generation available than there is load available to absorb it; although at present this is rarely due to wind or solar power alone, increased wind and solar generation will increase the likelihood of such occurrences. It is particularly likely that pumped storage will become especially important as a balance for very large scale photovoltaic generation.[12] Increased long distance transmission capacity combined with significant amounts of energy storage will be a crucial part of regulating any large-scale deployment of intermittent renewable power sources
