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My gut feel is that they have been watching peak demand very closely. In Vic, the departure of the manufacturing industry has lopped 2GW off the top of the demand curve. This is what has allowed Morwell and Hazelwood to close with minimal effect on prices or reliability.
Federal policy from both Labor and Liberal is seeing about 300,000 new electricity consumers in Australia every year.
These will soon pick up the slack, and the lead times for construction of major plants are too long to cater for it.
Solar makes it's money on hot summer days where the residential demand increases by more than the industrial load did. So the peak will be sharper than before. Owning a solar plant becomes fare more profitable under this scenario than it is today.
The only mitigating factor I can see is residential battery storage, which several utilities are already trialling.
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