Lets do a bit of data analysis on Bicks favourite data. I had a quick look and eyeball suggested that although Bicks always goes on about high power prices in SA, and despite me knowing that that is far from renewables fault, higher prices in SA relative to the other states were present previously. So I calculated it out. Renewables started to grow in about 2006, so I averaged the years prior. It confirms that SA still had high prices back in the past. I looked at the differential as a percentage of the South Australian price, then averaged those to compare SA to other comparable states - QLD, NSW and VIC. The SA price pre renewables was more than 20% higher in SA than in the other states.
Then, to compare, I looked at when the SA prices really kicked up and averaged post that period. The SA price kicked up a lot after 2013. So I averaged the period from 2013 to 2018 and did the same for the other states. Again I converted the difference into a percentage of the SA price. I then averaged those averages for the relevant states. What do you know, the price difference for SA has actually decreased under renewables. PS I also did the average from 2006 to 2018... it doesnt change the results much.
The thing you have to look out for is that although the absolute differences are much larger now, and were much smaller previously, this can be tricky when you compare on an apples with apples basis via percentages.
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