Government Attempts: Court Hoops and Electricity Companies

government attempts: We have a rare chance to make our electricity system fair again, but we need to act fast Nicky Ison Read more The report comes as the government attempts to pass what is left of its big stick legislation which, after jumping through some federal court hoops, would give the energy minister of the day the potential to earmark electricity companies for divesture if they were found to be misusing their market power for price gouging, according to The Guardian. The Grattan Institute researchers reviewed the last 10 years of Australia's power issues, and the potential for future problems, as ageing coal-fired power stations come off line, and found problems with transporting power was the overwhelming source of Australia's power reliability problems to date. But government underwriting of new power-generation investment a key Coalition energy policy could hinder, not help the bid to bolster network reliability, the researchers warned, by scaring away genuine potential investors . Instead researchers from the Grattan Institute recommended a better management of the distribution of Australia's existing supply of power while encouraging Australians to invest in their own backup supplies, as the technology to store renewable energy such as solar becomes cheaper, among potential solutions to the nation's future power problems. But it also warned that would not always be the case, if policymakers did not find a sustainable and sensible solution to maintaining supply that did not rely on false narratives such as renewable energy sources were to blame for blackouts. The overwhelming source of outages is problems in transporting power; it has nothing to do with whether the power was generated from renewables or coal, or some other technology, the Grattan researchers concluded. The report reviewed the mass blackout across South Australia in 2016, after which the researchers found reporting on power blackouts increased by up to 10 times despite the actual number of power outages remaining stable. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.