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Co-located PV/BESS or Wind/BESS is the best grid solution anyway. The REZs with transmission infrastructure (subsidized by government) will also add to the return.

The good thing is that even with over a decade of conservative government trying to kill it, renewables are now commercially the only choice for Australia and we will benefit from the rapid advances in storage as well.

Grid level plants are starting to also incorporate synthetic condensers and other FCAS services to make our grid more resilient and reliable, even as our clapped out coal plants move closer to shut down.

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What makes large scale solar no longer profitable? Distribution costs have outpaced the efficiency gains of the large scale installation?
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Yeah, it's tricky because basically all solar arrays (rooftop and utility) all come online at more-or-less the same time so there's a huge influx of supply which drives the price down.

You can get a sense of it if you look at the daily breakdown:

https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/nem/?range=1d&...

You can see the demand peaks around 12pm and 6pm.

The price goes negative around 2pm most days, in which case, as a solar only operator you're losing money to generate power, so quite often there's curtailment.

And then at 6pm, the sun is down so solar-only operators can't capitalise on the opportunity.

So unfortunately it's just a very limited opportunity to make a profit on your investment each day. More demand during the peak generation time would help!

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> It kind of sucks for the investors that adopted green tech

In the US, these people are known as speculators riding on government subsidy or grant, often shadily awarded - and anyone who couldn’t see consumer panel and consumer power-storage tech hooting its inflection point simply didn’t have a good grasp on the technology.

All important factors for investors.

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