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Before you all get too excited about solar power, a few sobering thoughts concerning NSW (for example) - from the publicly available annual reports of the network operators:
1. NSW annual electricity consumption for 2914 : 91,000 GWh
2. Net solar power into the grid: 850 MWh which is less than 0.001% of the demand;
3. Net wind power into the grid : 1,600 GWh which is about 1.5%.
And bear in mind both wind and solar are only produced because of a political interference (the subsidies) to distort what should have been a free market; without the subsidy neither are viable economically.
Wind power at least is capable of producing something significant but to scale it up 60x implies plastering most of the countrysude with windmills. Not really sure how acceptable that's going to be.
As for solar... It simply doesn't scale to anything useful unless you're prepared to cover most of the countryside with solar cells. Not really viable, actually.
The conclusion from an independent consultancy reviewing the governments solar program concluded it was no more than a "feel good" measure to pacify the greenies with no practical benefit of any significance to the electrical network. And it has also left a political legacy of domestic users having installed these things with the expectation of continuing to be subsidised to generate an insignificant amount power at artificlally inflated prices, attempting to bring these users back to reality is going to be unpalatable for any government.
The problem with both is what happens when the wind isn't blowing, or the sun isn't shining - we still need base load power stations running with the full capacity to power the load at no notice. Unfortunately you can't just start/stop power stations with a flick of a switch. They take hours to start, and once running they stay running for months regardless of the load.
And before you armchair experts try to throw the theory at me, spare your fingers, the reality unfortunately shows a rather different picture.
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