Death Spiral in Electricity Networks

According to media reports, the Grattan Institute have advised of a possible ‘death spiral’ for the electricity network in one of their current reports. I am not sure where the words ‘death spiral’ have come from, but they are certainly not in the report.

The newspaper reports are suggesting that solar and battery technologies are going to push more households off the grid, and this will push prices up for everyone. But there are problems with this analysis. The first is the proportion of people living in multiple-dwelling units is increasing, and these people are generally unable to gain access to solar and battery technologies. The reports have suggested that the poor who cannot afford these technologies will be the most affected, whereas it will more likely to be people in these multiple dwelling units who have few energy options.

Finally, the proportion of residential load is significant, but so is the proportion of industrial, commercial and retail load, and the sizes of these loads are such that they generally are not as susceptible to reductions due to solar and storage technology.

This is not to say that changes in technologies are not creating issues for the network, it is just that this analysis has some holes.