Australia’s National Electricity Market was suspended by the market operator for nine days in June 2022. For a brief period, authorities were worried there would have to be widespread blackouts to balance supply and demand. In this episode, Andrew Murdoch, Managing Director of Arche Energy, explains what went wrong in June, and he talks to show host Gene Tunny about whether it could happen again. Are renewables coming into the system too quickly? What’s happening with batteries? Will Australia be able to cope with the retirement of coal-fired power stations? And what about all the EVs that will need charging? These and other questions are tackled in a frank and fearless conversation.
You can listen to the episode via the embedded player below or via podcasting apps including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
About this episode’s guest: Andrew Murdoch
Andrew Murdoch is Managing Director of Arche Energy, a Brisbane-based consulting firm specialising in energy projects.. He is an experienced general manager, project director and engineer operating in renewable power, power generation, energy, ports and heavy infrastructure. For more on Andrew’s experience, check out the Arche Energy website.
Links relevant to the conversation
Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) report into market suspension in June 2022
NEM suspensions costs lower than expected – NB when they were directed to supply gas to the market at an uneconomic price for them at the market price cap of $300/MWh, the generators became eligible for compensation
AEMO’s Electrical Statement of Opportunity
Some large-scale Australian renewable and battery projects:
Global coal demand as high as it has ever been (IEA report)
Transcript: The Aussie electricity market malfunction of June 2022 – EP156
N.B. This is a lightly edited version of a transcript originally created using the AI application otter.ai. It may not be 100 percent accurate, but should be pretty close. If you’d like to quote from it, please check the quoted segment in the recording.
Gene Tunny
Coming up on economics explored…
Andrew Murdoch 00:01
Reflecting on the events of June, more energy would have been handy. So it was the cost of energy issue that created these extreme prices. So whether that energy came from renewables or from gas or from coal, any additional gigajoules or megawatt hours generated onto the system would have had downward pressure on prices and certainly would have helped.
Gene Tunny 00:26
Welcome to the economics explored podcast, a frank and fearless exploration of important economic issues. I’m your host gene Tunny. I’m a professional economist based in Brisbane, Australia, and I’m a former Australian Treasury official. This is episode 156 on Australia’s national electricity market, the NEM. In June 2022, the NEM was suspended by the market operator for nine days. For a brief period, authorities were worried there would have to be widespread blackouts to balance supply and demand. My guest this episode explains what went wrong in June, and we talk about whether it could happen again. My guest is Andrew Murdock, Managing Director of RK energy, a Brisbane based consulting firm specialising in energy projects. Andrew has a background in engineering, and he really knows what he’s talking about when it comes to electricity. So standby for a deep dive into Australia’s NEM. Please check out the show notes relevant links Information and for details of how you can get in touch. Please let me know what you think about what either Andrew or I have to say. I’d love to hear from you right now for my conversation with Andrew Murdock on the NEM. And we also chat briefly about electric vehicles toward the end of the conversation. Thanks to my audio engineer Josh Crotts for his assistance in producing this episode. I hope you enjoy it. Andrew Murdoch for a market energy. Thanks for coming on to the programme. Thanks, Jane.
Andrew Murdoch 01:55
Good to be here.
Gene Tunny 01:56
Yes. Great to have you on. So you got in touch after a recent episode where I was talking about EVs and I mentioned that you really love to talk to someone who’s familiar with energy with electricity. And you got in touch and yeah, it seems like you’ve got a great track record. Great experience. Could you tell us about what Arche Energy does and your experience, please?
Andrew Murdoch 02:22
Yeah, sure. So Arche Energy is an energy advisory firm. We’re a small firm based here in Brisbane, Australia. We help people develop energy projects, we help people solve strategic energy related problems. We help people with decarbonisation and developing strategies to meet their netzero goals or other other related goals. We do project management, project development, strategic engineering, owners engineering, etc, in the energy and infrastructure industry.
Gene Tunny 02:54
Right. So in terms of meeting their decarbonisation goals, are you advising them about what renewable energy options they’ve got? I mean, what sort of things would you be advising them?
Andrew Murdoch 03:06
Yeah, absolutely. So I guess a typical decarbonisation job will be a for us will be an industrial mining facility with a significant energy consumption need. And we will look at what what their energy consumptions is, what their, what their physical processes are, and look for opportunities to either make better use of the resources that they’re using, whether that’s gas, coal, heat, power, etc. And then also look at opportunities for integrating renewables and other low carbon sources of energy into their into their processes.
Gene Tunny 03:45
Right. Okay. Are there any examples of clients you can talk about or jobs you’ve done?
Andrew Murdoch 03:51
Yeah, so one particular job was a mining clients, they they developing a greenfield mine, lithium mine over in Western Australia, they guessed the way that you would power a mine 20 years ago was when you would just get a half a dozen big diesel generators, truck diesel, the site and the way you go. These days, you look at some more complicated, complicated processes. So you might integrate some solar into the into the system, you might, you might also integrate some wind into the system and certainly batteries are very valuable for mine supplies. Mine power supply systems now because it allows you to if it allows you to run your engines more efficiently, allows you to have less engines and allows you to deal with shocks to the energy system when a cloud goes over your solar farm or the wind stops blowing etc. So those technologies that are available now are we’re seeing those in most mine supply power jobs that we’re doing these days, right
Gene Tunny 04:56
but would you typically have some diesel generators, they’re just in case.
Andrew Murdoch 05:02
Yes. So system has to be robust enough to deal with a wet week or a week without rain, when the batteries can’t recharge, nighttime evening peaks, etc. So, but we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing in the studies we’re doing these days, we’re seeing renewable energy fractions going up to sort of the 60s and 70 percents, which is, which is fantastic and wouldn’t have been achievable 20 years ago on mine sites.
Gene Tunny 05:27
Wow, that’s incredible. Okay, that’s, that’s good to know. We want to want to chat about as this whole issue of integrating renewables into the system. And, look, there’s a lot of debate about this. And there are people who are very pro renewable. And I mean, I understand that we have to get there eventually we need to decarbonize. I mean, I’m not arguing against that. But one thing I’ve been concerned about is just just how not, are we doing it too quickly? I think that’s still that’s a legitimate question. What are the risks to the system? We had this situation earlier this year, when the Australian energy market operator had to intervene in the national electricity market? It because it looked like there were concerns about the reliability of supply. Could you tell us about that? What’s your take on what happened there, Andrew?
Andrew Murdoch 06:19
Sure, we might just rewind a little bit and start with a little bit about how the market works. And the physics involved. It’s an incredibly complex system, both physically and commercially. So what we have essentially is a market that needs to match supply and demand almost instantaneously. We have very, ah, it’s not possible to store electricity as electricity. So even batteries are chemical storage, not not, not electrical storage. And so there’s a constant need to match supply and demand as accurately as we can. When demand exceeds supply frequency goes down, everything starts spinning a little bit slower. And when supply exceeds demand, the opposite happens. Everything speeds up a little bit. So there’s a constant need to match supply and demand.
Gene Tunny 07:09
Right? So I mean, what does this mean? Could this mean that it could damage some of our equipment, our appliances connected to the grid,
Andrew Murdoch 07:17
The system in Australia is very, it’s very geographically dispersed. We have power stations that are in the regions. And we have centralised demand in the major cities, capital cities, and also industrial cities like Gladstone, Newcastle, Illawarra, for example. And we need to manage the flows between the generation sources and the loads without overloading a particular network elements. So if we get too much power trying to flow through a particular part of the network, then we start to melt things. And so the market has to manage that. The national electricity market, the NEM, was established just over 20 years ago. And so, it, it has the objective of supplying power in the most economically efficient way to the consumer. Yeah, without breaching any of the technical constraints that it has to work with. So NEMO, the Australian electricity market operator operates a dispatch engine and the name dispatch engine. And that dispatch engine takes bids from each of the generators, builds a bid stack for each of them, and each of the each of the NEM zones, and the NEM zones roughly correlate to each of the states. And then that dispatching engine matches supply and demand and sets a marginal price based upon where the supply demand curve crosses,
Gene Tunny 08:45
Right. So this bid stack, your ranking the bids that come in, so see us energy or whatever, or the other generators say we will supply, what is the bid in terms of is it megawatts? Yeah, megawatts over whatever, particular period?
Andrew Murdoch 09:01
Yeah. So the unit of sale is megawatt hour, so that megawatt hour, one megawatt for an hour. But the bids are done on the bids are done every five minutes on a megawatt basis.
Gene Tunny 09:13
We will supply this much electricity at this price, correct? Gotcha.
Andrew Murdoch 09:19
And then the price is then set at the marginal, the marginal, the marginal bidders price, and everyone, everyone who gets everyone who bids below the marginal bidders price gets dispatched, and they and they they receive that price modified by their loss factor. And then anyone who bids over that price, then doesn’t get dispatched.
Gene Tunny 09:37
Okay, so it’s the marginal bidders price. So that’s the price that was offered by the bidder that they need the last bidder, the marginal bidder, to make sure that the supply of energy matches the demand. Correct? Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. And so everyone, all of the energy supplied, up to there that all gets the market price.
Andrew Murdoch 10:06
Correct. Now the bidders can bid anywhere between negative $1,000 and $15,100 per megawatt hour. So there’s quite a large range of permissible bids. Yeah, the reason for the negative bids is so that if you’re a thermal unit, a coal plant, you have a large cost associated with coming offline. And coming back online, so you will accept for short periods, you’ll accept the cost of having to stay on and receive negative prices for your power. The purpose for the extremely high prices are there to provide an economic incentive to construct peaking plants. So, peaking plant might be something like a gas turbine that only runs maybe 2% of the Year, 3% of the year. So it needs those extreme prices to be able to cover its costs for the rest of the year when it’s simply on standby. In parallel with the physical market, there’s also a contracting market, which is essentially an over the counter market where a generator and a retailer will enter into an agreement to swap exposure to the pool price. So essentially, they that’s what agreements that synthetically generates a fixed price netting out the generators exposure with the with the buyers, the buyers exposure. The larger gen-tailers also tend to vertically integrate as well to manage their risk.
Gene Tunny 11:28
So gen-tailers their generators and their retailers as well, because we’ve got this. Yeah, we’ve broken up the market in Australia, haven’t we? We’ve got we’ve split generators from distribution and from retailers. And once upon a time they were all integrated, weren’t they? We had these electricity boards. We had southeast Queensland electricity board, and yeah,
Andrew Murdoch 11:52
Yeah. So back in the 90s. Yeah, the, the industry deregulated and competition was introduced at a wholesale level. And now we have retailers competing for our, our, our, our retail contracts. And then we have the wholesalers competing to supply to the, to the retailers.
Gene Tunny 12:12
So Andrew, this is fascinating. We’ve got this complicated market, where there’s generators bidding into supply electricity at particular prices, and we’ve got these, this wide band over which they can bid and there’s a negative. There’s a possibility of negative bids. So that’s something we’re seeing more of lately, we’re seeing these negative prices. And that might strike people as very strange, why we see negative prices. So we’re going to just sort of chat about that in a minute. But also, you mentioned that it could go up to what was it $15,000 a megawatt hour. But what happened recently was that they said no bids over what was it? $300 a megawatt hour?
Andrew Murdoch 12:52
Yeah, that’s That’s correct. That’s correct. So I might I might go through what happened in early June. Yeah, fascinating. It’s a fascinating story. So so it all, it all began when Russia was demanding payment for their gas in rubles, and that shell and Orsted and others refused to comply and Russia then made significant cuts to gas supply into Europe, which then obviously had an impact on the the global LNG prices. And because most of these cases of this gas is is connected to the LNG market through the the LNG plants in Gladstone. And we’ve seen netback prices on the East Coast go up as well. So if I reflect back to sort of 2011 2012, we had a spot price of gas that was largely following the cost of supply around $5, $6, $7 dollars a gigajoule. In in March, sorry, in June, we saw prices ranging from between $15 and $43. A Giga Joule for gas, so quite a significant increase over the over the cost of supply for for gas on the East Coast. Right. So
Gene Tunny 13:59
we’re talking many multiples of cost of supply and multiples of many multiples of what it was trading at previously.
Andrew Murdoch 14:06
Correct. Yeah, right. Meanwhile, we had a very wet summer, and that wet summer had the impact of restricting coal supply. So for example, Millmerran wasn’t able to mined coal for a significant period, period of time. And global coal prices also followed energy prices upwards which coal difficult to get and expensive. So last time I checked, thermal coal was trading at around $400 a tonne, which is which is incredible. Now concurrent with that, we had a third factor which was that a large number of plant was out of service throughout, throughout the country. So we had outages that are raring Bayswater, Loyang Liddell and keloid Sea. See, I believe there’s also an outage, just one vacay at the same time as well. So that was about 30% of the call fleet was out of service in in in June. So we do have significant capacity be taken out of the market.
Gene Tunny 15:01
So one thing that’s brought up and I don’t know, I should be careful not to necessarily attribute this to Matt Canavan because I’ve had Matt on the show before Matt, someone I chat with from time to time about these issues. And I’m hoping to get him on the programme again. But it may have been Matt that said that, look, they’re just not investing in this old coal fired power generation, because there’s a push to decarbonize. There’s all of this excitement about renewables, and they’re not doing the maintenance, so they’re not refurbishing the old coal fired power generation capacity. Is that do you know if that’s true, or do you have any views on that?
Andrew Murdoch 15:39
I do have a view. And I guess I take the view that we’re currently using a lot of coal in the country. And it’s great to decarbonize, and it’s great to reduce our reliance on coal, but it’s not going to happen immediately. Yeah. And my personal view is that there was a lot of decarbonisation to be gained simply by making coal plant more efficient, and more reliable. So I’m talking about things like, for example, reducing our reliance on Victorian lignite and transforming it that to higher quality Queensland black coal will have a significant impact on carbon emissions, just by the higher quality of the fuel being burned. The other thing we can do that is, in my view, an easy win is to transfer from 1960s 1970s subcritical technology to 2020 Ultra supercritical technology, or even better integrated combined cycle gas turbine technology.
Gene Tunny 16:38
What’s the difference? Is there an easy way to explain what the difference between those two different types of the whatever it is, it depends on its level of criticality or something
Andrew Murdoch 16:49
Subcritical versus super critical. So, So essentially, if you imagine a little paper wind turbine that you’ve made that in primary school, for example, and you blow on it, and it spins, now the harder you blow on it, the faster it will spin and the more energy that it takes. Yes. So essentially, what we’re trying to do in terms of making a steam turbine more efficient is to increase the pressure at the, at the steam turbine inlet. So essentially, the more energy we can put into the steam before it gets into the turbine, the more efficient the turbine will be. Now, the difference between subcritical and supercritical, interesting little point of physics is that subcritical boilers, the pressure is relatively low, and we we heat up and boil water, similar, similar to the way that the kettle works at home. We bought boiled water to make steam, a supercritical plant. So supercritical plants, there’s not a distinct boiling phase, we simply just heat it up, and it gets thinner and thinner. And that steam because it’s such high pressure has the properties of both a gas and a liquid at the same time. So okay, that’s so much. It’s not so much irrelevant to the physics of efficiency. It just has to do with how we designed the boiler and the steam processes.
Gene Tunny 18:09
Okay. So it’s good to know that, that this technology that came out of the 19th century or possibly even before it can be improved and yeah, okay. That’s good.
Andrew Murdoch 18:21
And then the other dimension to, to decarbonisation of coal generation is, is is carbon capture utilisation and, and storage. And my personal view, and I know, people have some very strong views on this, but my personal view is that there’s more to be gained in carbon capture and storage. Okay. Okay, good. Good. Yeah. So back to June. And I guess the next factor that we have to consider was that June was unusually cold. So we had the ninth of June, the low at Archerfield, was 7.9 degrees against the June mean of 11.8 degrees. So it’s not super cold, but just a little bit colder than usual. And that what that led for us all to do was at home turn on your air conditioners. And in Queensland, on the ninth of June, we reached a new record maximum demand for Q2, for quarter two of just over 8000 megawatts, which is 8.2%, higher than the ninth of June of 2021.
Gene Tunny 19:18
And was this the day that they were warning that they might have to restrict supply? They might have to be blackouts in some areas,
Andrew Murdoch 19:26
correct? Yeah. So that was when we got the loss of reserve notices from right. So and So. Yeah. So I guess moving to that. Obviously, as that demand supply balance started to started to move into, the into the zone of scarcity. The prices went up and hit the market cap of $15,100 per megawatt hour on a number of occasions. As I said, you know that that very high market cap isn’t for our current market design and necessary factor to encourage investment in peaking Last. However, there’s a, there’s a safeguard, there’s a bit of a safety valve on the on the on the system so that we’re not exposed to $15,000 a megawatt hour for too long. And that’s the cumulative price cap. So the cumulative price cap is just under $1.4 million. And that’s taken as the sum of the price in each of the five minute periods over the seven days preceding. So essentially what that does is it gives you a maximum exposure that, that, that that for, for energy buyers, and on the rationale that okay, you’ve had $15,000 for a little while, you’ve paid your operating costs for many years to come. That’s enough.
Gene Tunny 20:41
Yeah. So do we know? I mean, I don’t expect you to denote that I’ll be here. But do we know which was the plan? Or the bidder the marginal bidder? Do we know who was the marginal bidder and what they were bidding into? To meet the supply? Yeah, well, that showed to meet the demand to provide the supply.
Andrew Murdoch 20:59
So yeah, that’s publicly available information and can be achieved, can be obtained through an email. Now it changes for every five minute period. Yeah. Maybe a different person to tomorrow. So there is a lot of data to get through to to identify that. And yeah.
Gene Tunny 21:17
So sometimes, so sometimes it’ll be renewables will let in the during the day, and sometimes it’s coal, and sometimes it’s gas. Do we know?
Andrew Murdoch 21:23
Yeah, so typical, a typical day. So back when when energy prices were normal. Yeah, the marginal the marginal operator during the middle of the day would be either coal or renewables, depending upon depending upon how sunny it is or how windy it is. So on a, on a sunny, moderate day, in April or September, you might find that that solar is is is the marginal bidder, and they may be solar has a negative short run marginal cost, because every month for every megawatt hour of renewable energy that you produce, you also produce a large scale renewable energy generation certificate, which you can then sell for $30, $40, $50 a megawatt hour to to your retailer so that your retailer can meet their renewable energy target obligations. Or you might sell it to a customer who would like 100% Green Power, okay, so so they have a negative a negative short run marginal costs and can afford to operate with a negative spot price.
Gene Tunny 22:28
So they can bid into the NEM at a negative price so that they can sell that power, and then they get this certificate, which meant, so this is a subsidy from the government. Is this right?
Andrew Murdoch 22:41
It’s a subsidy from the energy consumer. So yeah, okay. So so our retailers are obligated to, to surrender a certain number of renewable energy certificates based upon our consumption. Yeah. And we obviously pay for that through, our through our electricity bills.
Gene Tunny 22:56
Gotcha. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Yep. Yep.
Andrew Murdoch 23:00
Then on a more moderate day, the coal plant will be the marginal, the marginal, bidder. Yeah. And they typically have a short run marginal cost in the order of anywhere between $15 and $30 per megawatt hour when the price is normal. Yeah, maybe not today. So then in the evening, you might see some of the gas plant come on. And again, sort of back to normal energy prices, they might have a short run marginal cost somewhere in the order of 80 to $100 a megawatt hour.
Gene Tunny 23:28
So we’ve got, we’ve got solar potentially bidding in negative, you’ve got coal coming in sort of at a you’re at a positive level, and then gas at a higher rate they’d be bidding in during the evening. Yep?
Andrew Murdoch 23:43
Correct. Yeah. So you’ve sort of got those natural price bands that fit around short run marginal costs. Now, then you can sort of add to that and elements of profit maximisation. So. So to actually obtain those high prices, you might not be all of your volume at your short run marginal cost, you might reserve some of that to try and encourage the price up a little bit higher. So yeah, so, essentially, yeah, your goal is profit maximisation. And if you’re, if you’re a gas plant, and you’ve got so many territories of gas to burn every evening, you’re going to try and bid them into the network at at at a at a price where essentially you, you’re going to use up all your gas for the maximum amount of revenue that you can possibly obtain in that evening.
Gene Tunny 24:33
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So they’re being strategic about when they bid into the market to maximise their profits and Okay, so if we go back to June so there was you talked about this cumulative price cap and did that kick in in June did it Yeah, correct.
Andrew Murdoch 24:49
So, yeah the cumulative price cap kicked in. And, and what what that did was forced amo to, to cap the spot price to $300 a megawatt hour. So, so we ended up going from a market operating as it normally would to a strict $300 cap. So which which sounds okay, however, the price of gas was $40 a megawatt hour, I beg your pardon, the price of gas was $40 a giga joule. Yeah, now, the short run marginal cost of a gas turbine is approximately 10 times its gas price. Okay, so, so essentially a megawatt hour of for gas turbine to produce a megawatt hour of electricity, it will it will consume, it will consume 10 Giga joules of gas. So, so 40 times 10 is obviously $400. So, if you’re a rational operator of gas turbines, you’re not going to be dispatching at a cost of $400 to to only receive $300 in revenue. So, so the gas turbine operators, rationally withdrew capacity, which was, which was not in itself sounds like a selfish thing to do, they needed to do that to allow a new AEMO to issue a lack of reserve notice, which then allowed AEMO to force the gas turbines back online. So, without that lack of reserve notice, they wouldn’t have been able to, to order the gas turbines back online, which is, which is what they do.
Gene Tunny 26:18
So they essentially they intervened in the market, they said you, you’ve got to supply this, we will direct you to supply this into the market. Correct. So the market and this is why people at the time were saying the market is essentially failed. And I mean, is that a fair thing to say that, look, the national electricity market, as it was originally designed, is no longer fit for purpose. I mean, if if you’ve got a situation where the the operator has to intervene and essentially take over and go into command and control, central planning style, is that, does that mean that whole system has failed? And we need to start it again?
Andrew Murdoch 26:55
Look I think I think, I think it’s a bit harsh to say that the market has failed, the market has operated extremely well for for over 20 years. And, and has has done an excellent job of balancing supply demand and, and facilitating private investment into the, into the market. And, and I guess modernising beyond state controlled power systems. It’s not perfect, though. And we have this situation, this extreme situation of four unusual events that happened that that was not foreseen. What was the scene was that these types of events will happen. And therefore we give, we have the cumulative price cap to act there is a safety valve to to allow a AEMO to intervene and suspend the market when when it’s appropriate. So yeah, so after a week, of, of regulated $300 A megawatt hour cap, then at most suspended the market and then set the price based upon previous bidding behaviour. But yeah, and that was essentially, essentially just to give time for people to go and have a few deep breaths and, and, and Reset, reset themselves and reset, how they were going to bid. In same way that, you know, in the share market, for example, a company might say, Okay, we need to have a market, we need to suspend trading of our shares, because we’re dealing with this issue, or we’re dealing with that issue. And every system has crisises, from time to time, and it is appropriate to suspend markets from time to time.
Gene Tunny 28:36
Yeah, I think that’s a that’s a fair point. Now, it looks like there was a close run thing, we didn’t end up having blackouts, which was good. I think they had some big industrial users reduce their demand quite substantially, didn’t they? But yeah, we did avoid blackouts of residential areas. I mean, I was concerned and I thought, what a terrible night because it was very cold at the time. Like, what if you couldn’t run your heater? That would be awful. So do you think could this happen again? I mean, how concerned should we be about this? Or do you think that the people running in the people in AEMO the people in the other agencies are overseen energy policy? Do they have this under control? How concerned should we be Andrew?
Andrew Murdoch 29:23
Well, I think look, I think it’s important to note that we didn’t have load shedding Yeah, and and you know, aside from some, some negotiated reduction of industrial load, AEMO were able to keep the lights on and the market participants were able to keep the lights on so. So that in itself is is a tribute to the to the people involved that hey, we we can as a as an industry collaboratively, do our job during, during these extreme extreme periods. Now, I guess, could the factors happen again, could the, could we find ourselves into in a situation where AEMO has to has to suspend them again? Well, the answer is yes. Because if you look at the four, the four factors, could we have very high gas prices? Again? Well, well, yes, they haven’t gone down, prices are still still expensive and Nord streams would drop to drop two to two, no deliveries into Europe. And the headlines coming out of Europe are more and more exciting. From day to day, and particularly as we move into the European into the European winter and into our, our summer, which is our our peak peak demand, very concerning. I feel that we’re globally under invested in gas exploration. We have very long lead times for project development from exploration all the way through to production is many, many years. There’s a reluctance by governments, policymakers, insurances, insurers and banks to support hydrocarbon projects. And so yes, I think gas, high gas prices will happen again.
Gene Tunny 30:55
Where would that be that exploration? Is Australia, one of the prime places you’d be exploring for for gas?
Andrew Murdoch 31:02
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So so as I think, you know, we’ve seen We’ve seen Moratorium on on gas exploration in Victoria and New South Wales, which is reduced supply into, into into the Australian East Coast grid. There’s certainly a lot more gas in Queensland that that can be developed over, over time. So, so yeah, there’s there’s there’s, there’s a lot there that we have, we can we can contribute there. Yeah. Likewise, with coal. I don’t see. I don’t see global coal prices restoring to levels that we’ve seen in the past. I don’t think they’re going to take $400 a tonne forever. But like gas, you know, there’s reluctance in an even greater reluctance to develop and approve coal projects. Notwithstanding that, globally, we’ve consumed as much coal in the last 12 months as we’ve ever consumed. And that’s a reflection of increasing energy demand from developing economies, who are building coal fired power stations.
Gene Tunny 32:09
Okay, we’ll take a short break here for a word from our sponsor.
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Gene Tunny 32:43
Now back to the show. Right, so what about this concern about renewables? Is there a big challenge integrating them into the grid? Does that make the grid more unreliable? If we don’t have the backup the storage capacity, and it looks like we don’t at the moment, we’ve got coal fired power stations, they’re going to be progressively shutting down over the next couple of decades? How confident are you arecan manage that transition? And if you know, what are the what are the things we need to do to make sure it goes well, and we don’t end up with with loadshedding with blackouts from time to time.
Andrew Murdoch 33:32
Yeah, so renewables are complex. And the obvious thing to say on renewables is that, you know, solar doesn’t work when the sun’s not shining, and wind doesn’t work when the winds not blowing the challenge for us. I guess the the key challenges is number one, accessing the resource number two, matching supply and demand, making sure that we’ve got the transmission infrastructure in place to connect the generation to the to the to the load centre, noting that the generation is going to come from your is coming from different places to where it has come from in the past. And then, you know, dealing with storage, so I guess, to, to develop a system where we have the equivalent of baseload power from renewables, you first got to generate the power. Yeah, then you’ve got to store it, then you’ve got to dispatch it. So you’ve got three elements, where we where we would once have had one so so it is it is quite, quite complex. I guess in terms of accessing the resource and there’s a there’s a lot of really good work being done. If you look at the the growth statistics in solar and wind over the last five years has been fantastic. In terms of the, the the number of megawatts that has been added to the grid. It’s still it’s still not easy to develop these projects. You’ve got landholder interest to deal with. You’ve got the interests of traditional owners, you’ve got community interests and expectations. Some people love wind farms, some people don’t. And we each have a different, different view on that. And competing, competing land use is is another another issue. So moving moving through that, I guess, you know, land land acquisition and development approval environmental approvals is complicated for, for renewables projects are land intensive projects. And so and so therefore, therefore complicated from a renewals perspective in matching supply and demand. We have very limited opportunities for baseload renewable says obviously, hydro, but between snowy and Tassie hydro, pretty much tapped all of the hydro resources that we have in the country, there’s a little bit of biomass, particularly integrated with sugar mills, I think we can make better value out of waste to energy projects. So that is using the energy in waste to generate, to generate power. And we’re going to need to to develop massive, massive amounts of storage to cover an average 24 hour load cycle. So yeah, so pumped hydro, large battery projects, and we’re working on on on a very large pumped hydro project, and two very large battery projects that will contribute to, to contribute to solving some of these problems. Yeah.
Gene Tunny 36:18
Do you have any thoughts on what this bet the future with batteries will look like? Well, well, we all have to have something like the Tesla Powerwall. At home, will there be larger batteries? on street corners? I mean, houses going to? How’s it going to play out? What are your thoughts on where the technology is out at the moment? where it’s going? Yeah, are we actually going to have the, the the improvements, the technological improvements that we need? I mean, I remember reading might have been in Bill Gates his book on on the climate change challenge. And I think you were saying we need some, you know, multiple improvement in the efficiency of batteries. I don’t know if it was 20x was some big number in that we need to improve batteries by
Andrew Murdoch 37:03
Yes, I think I think we’re going to see a mix of projects. And we’re working on some very large projects, gigawatt scale battery projects. And, and these batteries are a two hour duration. So they’ll they’re really they’re these projects are really designed to harvest solar energy generated during the middle of the day, store it and then put it back onto the grid in the evening. And essentially dealing with that dealing with that peak load, I think you’ll see, you’ll see a lot of batteries at at a at an industry level as well, we’ll see projects on the fringe of grid utilise batteries a little bit more. So for example, a mine that is in an Outback community that might be supplied by a long skinny transmission line that doesn’t quite have the capacity to serve the mind. So the mind will put a battery in trickle charge the battery during the day and then use that battery to use that battery to cover the peak demands that the mine might have, they might also integrate their own solar in there as well to to self generate a little bit so so so we are seeing a lot of batteries within industry there for for energy management also helps with things like peak demand tariffs and other related energy costs. We’ll also see batteries at a household level participators as virtual power plants, so essentially what happens there is that you’ll you’ll go and have a battery that that you’ll instal in your house and your retail supply agreement will allow your retailer to control your battery and that will allow your retailer to use your battery capacity to trade a little bit of energy. They’ll they’ll harvest the harvest the solar from your roof and then dispatch, dispatch it to your house and then whatever’s whatever the Enders and overs are they can then trade onto the grid. So I think I think we’ll see them at all all levels are at wholesale level that at large industrial level and also at at the household level.
Gene Tunny 38:59
Right. Can we talk about that gigawatt battery? That sounds fascinating. And it gigawatts obviously, a huge amount of energy. So what would that actually power? Do you know? I mean, that I mean, I guess you you could estimate it based on household electricity use, but are we took like what sort of sized town are we talking about?
Andrew Murdoch 39:22
So to put it into context, the the Peak Peak Demand in in Queensland is somewhere between eight and 10,000 gigawatt hours. So let me start that again. So to put it into context, the peak demand in Queensland is somewhere between eight and 10 gigawatts during during high high demand. So essentially, it could contribute roughly 10% of the peak demand to the state.
Gene Tunny 39:51
Right. So that’s now this is going to be in precise because industrial use is a big part of demand but 10% of Queensland. So we’ve got about 5 million people. So that’s about that’s 500,000. People. So we’re talking. Yeah, I mean, that’s a that’s a city. Right. That’s a reasonable sized city. I mean, yeah. I mean, we don’t have any main gold coasts, for example. 500,000 people. Right. So that’s a big battery, then. That’s impressive. Yeah, it is a big battery. Yes. Okay. And so that’s the sort of thing we’d be, we’d be looking at, we’re looking at large batteries to back up the grid. And so without naming names, it looks like the people who are sort of involved in this, the the companies involved in this are looking at options like this.
Andrew Murdoch 40:43
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, investors look for opportunities to solve a problem. And yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s how capitalism works, of course, is that you, you know, you add value to the community, by by solving a problem, and then you get paid for it. So yeah, we have some some very smart clients who, who, who can identify these types of opportunities, and then deploy their capital to solve
Gene Tunny 41:06
them. Okay, because they know they can store the energy in the battery and then sell it into the grid when it’s needed. Correct. Okay. Uh, one thing I forgot to ask was about, if you’ve still got time, I know a token. Yeah, that’s right. Do we need something like a capacity mechanism in the national electricity market to to keep this coal fired power and gas fired power online? Because one of the complaints I hear is that with the way the markets been set up, and these, these certificates that mean that renewables can get beat in at negative prices, This undermines the viability of the coal fired and the gas fired generation, but we actually need them from time to time to be able to provide that was it peaking to do the peaking to provide that, that that energy when we really need it?
Andrew Murdoch 42:02
Yeah, well, I guess, yeah, we don’t specifically need coal or specifically need gas. To provide that firming capacity. We need dispatchable power. And traditionally, we’ve gotten that from from coal sources, and yeah, from gas sources. So so it’s not so much that we we need, we need coal, or we need batteries, are we need gas, or we need pumped hydro, we need something. Yeah, that will provide that, that, that, that peaking capacity, then if you overlay a climate change lens on it progressively over time, we need the carbon intensity of that capacity to reduce. Yeah. So back to your question about, do we need a capacity mechanism? It’s hard to see a market restructure being able to address the combination of geopolitical meteorological and physical issues that were were present in early, early June, those four factors still would have been the irrespective of what the what the the, the, the, what the market structure was, I think there are some tweaks we can make to the, to the system, for example, that market cap of $15,000 a megawatt hour, perhaps that should integrate down once it’s hit the cap a few times as you integrated down over time. So the cumulative price cap is not, is never, is never is never exceeded. And I think if you took a control systems engineering view to to how that price cap operates, you could put a feedback system in there that has integrated control down to a to an equivalent of that, of that price cap, which is averages out at about $800 a megawatt hour. So which is good money, if you’re if you’re
Gene Tunny 43:49
I think I understand what you’re saying. So you’re, you’re saying that maybe don’t let it get up as far as 15,000 or maybe once but then start scaling that, like just start reducing that so that they’re still getting the high prices when the market really needs energy, but they don’t get such high enough prices, that it ends up exceeding their cumulative cap, which means that I am asked to intervene and yeah, okay, great. Yeah. Okay.
Andrew Murdoch 44:18
Now, we also have another, a few other, let’s call them quasi capacity mechanisms that are in the system already. And that, as I said that that $1,500.15 $1,000 A megawatt hour is a significant incentive to make sure that you’re well invested in in pacity. And those that weren’t lost a lot of money. So the the other the other thing we have is we do have the contract market on the side. So if you’re an energy retailer, you can go and contract with with the power station to to provide you to provide you with with coverage and essentially they’re providing a physical slot. So every time that the pool price goes up, they will generate on your behalf and you’ll swap that exposure. So so that’s, you know, that’s a A non let’s call it a voluntary capacity market that already exists. And email also has the reliability and emergency reserve trader. And that’s a short term mechanism that whenever a emo feels that the based upon it’s more than just feeling it’s based on some some very sophisticated modelling that the the probability of unserved power exceeds point oh 2%, then they’re able to go and contract with generators to, to provide emergency power during a particular period. And that led to some some temporary generators being being installed in various different locations around the country over the over the past few years.
Gene Tunny 45:42
Temporary generators are they diesel generators? Oh, they
Andrew Murdoch 45:46
could be diesel could be gas. So yeah, so you can you can go to GE and order some trailer mounted 30 megawatt trailer mounted gas turbines. And there’s there’s fleets of these owned by hire companies that that go around the world? And, and, and plug holes in power systems here and there. So
Gene Tunny 46:05
very good. Okay. Yeah. So we were chatting about the capacity mechanism. And I think you’re saying that it’s not going to solve all the problems that that could that could arise, which would, which would cause which would cause issues? So I mean, what, what do we need to do? Do you have any thoughts on what needs to happen with the NEM.
Andrew Murdoch 46:28
So I guess, reflecting on the events of June, more energy would have been handy. So it was a cost of energy issue that that created these extreme prices. So whether that energy came from renewables or from gas or from coal, any additional gigajoules or megawatt hours generated onto the system would have had downward pressure on prices, and certainly would have helped. So there’s a couple of tweaks you can do to the you can do to the to the to the rules to perhaps prevent the accumulated price stress on ever been ever been breached? And that’s just, that’s just a function of mathematics.
Gene Tunny 47:07
That was what we were talking about before. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Andrew Murdoch 47:10
looking forwards. We’ve got 8.3 gigawatts of coal plant sheduled to be taken out of the market between now and 2029. It’s like 2022. Now. So that’s a lot of a lot of firming capacity needs to be developed in that timeframe. If I look at the various different committed projects that are that are in the system, at present, I only get that only adds to 1.32 gigawatts of dispatchable generation required to cover that 8.3 gigawatts of retiring capacity. So so there is a bit of a deficit there in terms of project firming projects that are available. Now more projects will be be committed between now and then. And those projects I mentioned before, aren’t included in that 1.3 gigawatts. But yeah, these these projects we’re working on are in the development phase development phase for projects is, is very long takes many years. There’s a there’s a lot of hoops to jump through. Some of them necessary, some of them not so necessary. So it’s a bit like the argument in house prices and housing demand is, you know, is extreme high house pricing being caused by the the complexity and speed of approvals, or are there other factors that played personally my my view in power is that we could, we could certainly work a lot faster in terms of bringing these projects onto the onto the grid. If the approvals process wasn’t so bureaucratic and slow. Now, I think it should still be thorough. We certainly, we certainly want to have a thorough EIS process and a thorough technical review of of the contribution that these plants have on the grid. But I think there’s a lot we can do to make it a lot more efficient and perhaps remove duplication. And yeah, and and yeah, I guess add a little bit of I want to say common sense, but that’s not quite the right word for it, but
Gene Tunny 49:23
we do maybe a sense of urgency among some of these regulatory agencies. So you mentioned the EIS environmental impact statement. And I guess, yeah, trying to respond to the environmental issues that that’s obviously a major part of the whole process. Trying to satisfy the environmental regulator that you’re not going to damage the environment. You’ve got a plan, like if there’s a particular there’s foreigner that’s threatened, you’ve got a plan to manage that. So yeah, yes,
Andrew Murdoch 49:53
essentially. Yeah. And I guess, you know, to be fair to this is not just one one agency that the could improve. We see it across all all, all agencies. The the, I guess is there’s a desire for perfection, that that whether whether it’s whether it’s a technical approval or or a planning approval or a or traffic or whatnot, every, each of the departments come wanting to see a level of perfection in every every area, and sometimes it’s just not practical.
Gene Tunny 50:29
Yeah. Okay, I’ll, I’ll put something to you. And I’d be interested in your reaction. I’m looking at what’s happening with energy in Australia at the moment. And I see, we need all of this firming capacity, or we need to be able to back up the grid because we’re bringing in all these renewables. We’re coal fired power, leaving the system. And I mean, I look at this, and I’m very worried about whether we’re actually going to have sufficient power in five or 10 years time, I’m really worried about the reliability of the system. And partly, that’s because I’m concerned that we’ve promoted renewables into the system at a very high rate, but faster than the system can can handle it and not in conjunction with the storage. And we’ve done that for Well, we, I mean, I think, you know, the people are doing it for reasons that, you know, I think they, they think they’re doing the right thing, because it’s for the environment, it’s to tackle climate change. But I’m worried about what that means reliability of power in five or 10 years. And what that will mean for prices, How worried should I be? Am I just am I overly concerned? Am I too concerned? Or is that there might be an irrational, am I being biassed myself in analysing this issue? yet? So
Andrew Murdoch 51:51
I think we can’t oversimplify, or we shouldn’t be oversimplifying the debate. We are talking about complex physics and complex economics. And whether it’s in the media or in politics, there’s these oversimplifications of the answer is x. And depending upon what your political view or your commercial view is your put whatever noun you’re after the answer is to to suit your needs. I try and take a balanced view. Now, in terms of, Should we be worried at a technical level? So I’ll get back to those numbers. Again, there’s 8.3 gigawatts being retired from the fleet between now and 2029. So we’ve been through an incident where, essentially, yeah, it was more of an energy related issue than a capacity related issue, but capacity wasn’t far behind. So we, we have kind of almost just enough right now. Okay. So when we retire 8.3 gigawatts, and we increase peak demand, because peak demand continues to grow, you’re on. And we want to we want to continue to to industrialise and we want to continue to grow the population and grow the economy. And there’s a strong correlation between energy consumption and GDP. So that, you know that that margin is probably going to go negative. And so we should, yeah, we should certainly be prioritising firming capacity. And as I said, previously, whether that firming capacity comes from batteries from gas turbines, from pumped hydro is somewhat somewhat irrelevant. There’s probably still a role for coal to play, but it gets a little bit harder for for, for coal plant to, to provide, provide firming, in terms of, you know, should we be worried about capacity in the future? That’s, the answer is yes. And or just scroll down here to have a look, I was reading over the weekend, the HMOs. Electrical statement of opportunities, which essentially is a forecast of off demand that they use to inform the market. So they’re forecasting that the reliability standard will be breached. If there’s no further investment, that the reliability standards will be breached in New South Wales in 2025, and then Victoria in 2027, and Queensland and South Australia shortly thereafter. How web are if the FA Mo’s recommendations in the integrated system plan, which is a Mo’s map of the projects that they feel should be progressed, then that situation improves a little bit we don’t see the reliability standard being breached in in Victoria until 2027 28. And then, New South wails 2029 2030 But again linked to coal plant retirements,
Gene Tunny 55:05
I have to look at this integrated system plan, what are they? What are they saying in that are they saying, you know, these are these are the investments that are needed in what capacity and in storage and distribution. So,
Andrew Murdoch 55:17
so it deals, the integrated system plan deals with the transmission network more so, than the generation network, they do look at where they believe the, the more, the better renewable energy zones are on the grid and, and that informs a lot of the infrastructure. So that allows them to forecast where the energy is going to be coming from in future years. So it’s essentially feed into the regulated process. So once I emo identify a project that then allows the network service providers, so the power links the trans grids, to start the regulatory investment process, which then allows them to invest in these in these upgrades. But yeah, the timeframe between amo raising a project in the in the ISP and then a network service provider to actually construct and commission a plant is many 510 years in the making. So So these these are big infrastructure projects that take a long time to develop and construct
Gene Tunny 56:21
good one, I’ll check that out. I’ll check out this ISP and put a link in the show notes. One thing that one thing that’s occurred to me is that I mean, one, one possible way to avoid this, this deficit that you’ve you’ve described is, well, we just don’t retire these coal fired power stations, we keep some of them open or longer than is intended or was initial longer than amo thinks that other companies themselves think they will be currently be kept open for. But what that might mean is that’s where that capacity mechanism could could be useful, possibly, but then that means that we’d be paying then just to have the generation available if it’s needed. And that’s why there are accusations that our capacity mechanism would be coal keeper. Have you heard that? Yeah. So
Andrew Murdoch 57:06
I’ve certainly heard the call keeper fever slogan. Yeah, look, it’s it’s interesting. I’d have to think about that a little bit more as to what would a capacity credit encourage a coal plant to stay open more so than the current market structure? I guess the economics of ongoing operation of coal plants on one hand, you’ve got back to a world where energy prices are, quote, unquote, normal. On one hand, you’ve got a very low cost of operation, then you’ve got four, seven production. So you’re you’re it’s true baseload and the volumes are higher. On the other hand, you’ve got ongoing refurbishment costs. So I think callide spent $130 million or so on the refurbishment of one of the B units recently. Yeah, that’s a lot of money. And so you know that that’s an that will keep that that plant operating for another five years for argument’s sake. So it’s always it’s always that economics of, you know, when you’re between major overhaul cycles, and you keep going until the until you hit the next major maintenance. And then and then you make a decision. Do I spend $100 million? Upgrading? Yeah. refurbishing, economy or economy economizer tubes or whatnot? Or do you or do you at that stage retire the plant?
Gene Tunny 58:29
Okay. Okay. Look, I better I only ask one more question, because I’m so long, because this is fascinating. And I really liked the point you made about how, look, let’s not look at this, simplistically, it’s too easy just to come up with some simple diagnosis of what’s going on. And as economists we like to do that, because we like to cut through the complexity. We like to have a simple, elegant model of what’s going on. But I understand Yep, you’ve got to think about the physics and all of this as well as the economics that makes perfect sense. My final question is about EVs. Are we ready for EVs in the network? Will we be able to provide the power? Will we be able to provide the necessary charging infrastructure? And one thing I should I’m interested if you’ve got any thoughts on it is how can EVs help us have a smarter grid? Because I’ve seen that in I think it’s in California? Is there a company that lets people who have EVs they can have that use them as a bit of a mini as battery? And then they can they can even start selling power to other people? I don’t know if you’ve seen that sort of thing. So if you could just talk about EVs?
Andrew Murdoch 59:38
Sure, certainly certainly. Great. I just want to go back to the Nikah the the complex physics and complex economics. I just want to make one other point. There’s also an ecological impact as well as your Yeah, is it every choice we make, it has an impact on cost. It has an impact on reliability, but it also has an impact on carbon emissions. So truth is balancing the three and three issues are all common. looks. So back to EVs. Yeah. So, so So yeah, fascinating stuff. And, and obviously, you’ve had a couple of guests over the last couple of weeks who have had some some interesting things to say on EVs. But yes, so there are there are companies who are planning on using the battery capacity in your Eevee, as part of that virtual power plant mechanism that I was talking about, yeah, with a battery on the wall, that you can also extend that by plugging in your Eevee and allowing them to use that charge. So maybe you’ll come home from from from work, you’ll drive into your garage and about this time of evening, that’s, it’s 6pm, here and in. So you might come home and plug in in the evening, and you might still have 80% of your battery charges there. So the the your retailer might use that to cover peak demand during the evening, rather than drawing from the grid. And then later in the night, when peak demand goes off, and power prices get a little bit cheaper, maybe the wind starts blowing a little bit, then your your retailer will then fully charge your car. So the next morning, you get up and unplug and away you go to work, and you don’t even know that it’s happened. So So yeah, so these kinds of things can be can be done, I noticed, I was reading on LinkedIn, I think this morning, the the Tesla’s in in California, over the last couple of days have been setting you people will go home and the Tesla comes up on the on the Tesla display. You know, the California grid is about to experience peak demand, you might like to charge your car later in the later in the evening. And the Tesla system has an ability for you to time to essentially tell it when you want to leave and it will optimise the charging process a to maximise battery life and also to minimise power costs and impact on the grid. But I guess in terms of physical impacts, look, if we all go home in the evening and plug in our EVs in the evening, then that’s going to contribute to peak demand. And that’s not going to be particularly helpful when it comes to reliability of supply. Yeah. But if we time the charging of the car to be a little bit later in the evening to in the morning, three in the morning, and as I say the Tesla’s can do it. And I’m sure the other EVs can do it as well, with smart charging, then, then the impact on the grid will be will be minimal, because we’re making better use of matching, we’re using the cars to to maximise supply and demand.
Gene Tunny 1:02:31
Right, based on so how does it work? So the you mentioned Tesla, so they’re looking at what the the power prices are, they’re getting a signal from the market. And they’re saying, Oh, look, you might you might want to charge later. Because there’s a lot of demand for power at the moment. And prices are high.
Andrew Murdoch 1:02:53
Yeah, so in the case of the California one it was it was more around reliability. So okay, as I understand it, California is going through a situation that was similar to what we went through June, where they’re, they’re issuing lack of reserve notices, or whatever the California for the lack of reserve notices. And so it’s more so more related around around system system reliability, rather than rather than price. Okay, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t also respond to price if it’s integrated with the with your retailers.
Gene Tunny 1:03:23
Okay. That’s, that’s cool. And just finally, so yeah, so I guess you answered the question. You’re saying that, if we do it intelligently, if there’s some if there’s some way with a possibly buy it, that, I guess it would be via it that these things are charging at the right time? During the night? They’re not all charging when we get home? That they’re delayed, then yeah, it’s possible we we should be able to handle it in your view.
Andrew Murdoch 1:03:54
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that’s not to say that won’t have any impact that will have an impact, because there’s more energy that the power grid needs to provide. So if it is all coming from from renewables, and that’s more solar farms and more wind farms, because we still have to produce more megawatt hours of energy and transmit them. Yeah, so it all contributes to load growth. And there will be there will be EVs that do have to be charged during the peak because I’ve just come home or maybe I’ve driven home from a couple 100 kilometres away. Yeah, 2% left in my battery. And in an hour’s time, I’ve got to pick the kids up from school. So I’ve got a charge now. So there will be a contribute contribution, but it won’t be won’t be everyone most of the time for most of your daily cycling will be able to charge during during periods. When when it’s not peak demand. And do
Gene Tunny 1:04:39
You think this will be done automatically? Will there be the computer the in on the in the car or and it connects to the grid and then this will all be managed and coordinated across all of the EVS out there and yeah,
Andrew Murdoch 1:04:51
Yeah, so So Rena did a study. And they found that when people were just left to their own devices, people would come home and plug in Yeah, 30% of all charging happens during peak periods. Yes. Because that’s when you come home. If they, if they then get gave a 10 cent per kilowatt hour incentive, this dropped 10%. So people started thinking about it, I want to save some money or save some money on my power bill. So I’m not going to I’m going to programme car did not start charging into after peak period. And then if they handed over control of the charging to the retailer, then that peak demand use dropped to 6%. Yeah, so Gotcha. So automation is definitely the way and who wants to come home and think about oh, what time should I charge the car? Yeah, I can just plug it in and have have the AI work it out for me. And as long as I don’t know, if I don’t have to think about it, it’s easy.
Gene Tunny 1:05:44
Yeah. Extraordinary. Okay. We’ve, I think we’ve probably come to time because yeah, we’ve had a great chat, Andrew. And, yeah, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation and learned an incredible amount. So it’s been incredibly valuable for me. Any final words before we wrap up? Oh, no. Look,
Andrew Murdoch 1:06:04
thank you for the opportunity to talk. As I say it’s a complex system. We’re balanced. We’re balancing our contribution to climate change. We’re balancing economic development. We’re balancing physics, we’re balancing reliability, and we’re balancing affordability. So it is it is, it can’t be over simplified.
Gene Tunny 1:06:20
So I think that’s a really good way to to put it. Andrew Murdock, Managing Director of RK energy. Thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed that conversation. Thanks,
Andrew Murdoch 1:06:29
Joan. I appreciate the opportunity.
Gene Tunny 1:06:31
Okay, that’s the end of this episode of economics explored. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, please tell your family and friends and leave a comment or give us a rating on your podcast app. If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, you can feel free to send them to contact at economics explored.com And we’ll aim to address them in a future episode. Thanks for listening. Until next week, goodbye
Credits
Thanks to Josh Crotts for mixing the episode and to the show’s sponsor, Gene’s consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au.
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