Australia has a wide variety of methods for generating its power needs. These include Coal (both black and brown), Wind and solar power, gas, hydro and some other smaller more experimental resources such as methane. The current debate and push towards increasing Australia’s energy production percentage to renewable energy sources of solar and wind is unfortunately currently not a viable option as they are not reliable enough to meet our energy needs.
Wind and solar generation requires significant government assistance to put power into the electricity grid and even then, wind and solar power is not reliable. Renewable energy generators must have fossil fuels as a backup when inevitably the wind stops blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, have their benefits, and they are great sources of intermittent power and very useful for remote regions where connection to the power grid, due to distance, is not possible. However, these renewable energy sources of electric power generation are not reliable and cannot be considered as an alternative generation method to power generation such as coal. If the sun is not shining or if the wind is not blowing, then, there is no power. There needs to be a mixture of power generation sources if frequent blackouts are to be avoided.
At this time, and probably into the distant future, renewable energy sources are not able to supply baseload power generation. This meaning that they cannot supply a states continuous energy needs. Electric power generation needs to come from a variety of sources, like coal, nuclear, hydro and natural gas.
The advantage of coal, gas, nuclear and hydro over solar and wind power generation is simply this. They can be turned on.
The 40,000 kilometers of transmission lines in Australia, it is the longest alternating current (AC) system in the world.
The live feed below provides a live feed of how energy is generated in Australia right now.