Beyond the Death Spiral

Model based projections for the rapid uptake of rooftop solar photovoltaics in Western Australia indicate that private capacity will be so large that the centralised network based electricity system will become disrupted in the 2020s. By 2050 private systems may produce around 85- 90% of projected electricity demands. In the interim period it may be more economically viable to avoid introducing large scale renewable energy to the network while planning for a completely renewable system by 2050 when rooftop solar approaches saturation levels.

Coal fired power – twin elephants in the room

Ever since the South Australia blackout, debate has raged about the role of coal vs renewables in meeting Australia’s future electricity generation needs. The debate was ramped up significantly by the Prime Minister’s recent call for new generation coal to underpin future baseload power. However, energy market experts believe the cost of future coal will not stack up against the alternatives, it would undermine our commitment to reduce emissions and overlooks the practical realities of private solar PV on baseload power, and the dwindling global stocks of fossil fuels.

The holy grail of trend growth

The core objective of Australia’s economic policy is growth. The world has seen unprecedented GDP growth over the last half century and Australia has been a beneficiary of this. But how realistic is it that GDP can grow year on year, apparently forever? Or is achieving a steady-state economy and improving how income is distributed a more important and achievable objective than hoping and praying GDP goes up forever. In this article the question is addressed by examining recent and projected trends in population and GDP at the global scale.

Simulating sustainability

A global population – economy – resource model explores the future impact of declining resource availability on the world economy. The model tracks the likely future consumption of renewable resources, fossil fuels and non-renewable materials and the economic impact of availability.

Exploring the death spiral

Power networks worldwide are facing challenges from their own consumer base in the form of private, grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems, and emerging growth in accompanying energy storage. This paper reports the findings from a system dynamics model of the electricity system of Western Australia, used to explore plausible scenarios resulting from the impact of private solar and storage for the period 2015-2035.