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The scale of the problem
As of 2019 Australia has an installed capacity of around 48,000MW of power generation. That is 48 million kilowatts.
Over eighty percent, or some 40 million kilowatts plus of that generation comes from fossil fuels, mainly black and brown coal plus some gas. Despite the closure of Hazlewood power station Victoria still relies on 4,750MW or 4,750,000 kW of brown coal generation from Loy Yang A and B and Yallourn W power stations to keep the lights on.
If 4 million households each installed 10kW of solar and the sun shone all the time this would allow retirement of that fossil fuelled generation but as things currently are the grid system would collapse. This would occur because there are currently insufficient ways of balancing totally renewable inputs to match demand. There are ways of doing this effectively by installation of batteries and pumped storage hydro, as proposed in Snowy 2, but this will take time and dollars. None of this of course fully addresses what we do when the sun doesn’t shine.
A much better battery option would be large scale vanadium technology batteries, safer than lithium and more suitable for large capacity installations.
I am not trying to be pessimistic here, merely stating the scale of the problem given the urgency of the situation. I did my bit 6 years ago by installing 2.5kW of solar when it cost me $5,500 to do so. I didn’t do it for altruistic reasons though. I did it because I could see where power prices were going and I could get 44c / kWh for any surplus, hence in 6 years I have paid less than $500 in total over that period for electricity in an all electric household for 2 people, so $ incentives work.
I still believe we missed the boat 20years ago when climate change was recognised as a significant problem for the future by not going nuclear. As an example France has been supplying 70% of its needs from nuclear for decades now.
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