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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-07 Daily Xml
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Hydrogen Power Station

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:41): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Will the $600 million experimental hydrogen power station reduce South Australian household electricity bills and, if so, by how much?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:41): First and foremost, we have always said this is about trying to get an improvement for industrial users. It's commercial and industrial customers we are targeting.

I note today that two generators in South Australia have announced their closure, claiming that renewable energy is crowding them out of the market. We have seen dramatic falls in wholesale power prices across the NEM, but a lot more dramatically here in South Australia. The reason those power prices are dropping in terms of wholesale measures rather than the retail prices, which will come out in the DMO, is because there is less and less gas-fired generation being dispatched and more and more renewable energy being dispatched.

One of the great arguments we have always had with our opponents is that renewable energy is cheaper, it is cleaner and it is the way of the future. What we are attempting to do, like we did with our Hornsdale battery, is show that with our overabundance of renewable energy during low-demand periods like the middle of the day, we need to store that energy. Storage has always been the key to our renewable resources.

What we did in the fifties and sixties was pump water uphill, the Snowy Mountains scheme, and dam rivers in Tasmania to try to store that energy. Now, what we are doing is building batteries to store that energy at times of oversupply. Of course, the other option is to manufacture a fuel source.

If you used energy from a gas-fired turbine from gas fields, that fuel source would be expensive. But if you have an oversupply of renewable energy, rather than just earthing that energy and turning it off or not producing that energy, you produce hydrogen and store it, and then at times of peak demand you are able to use that energy that you created cheaply through renewable energy in a gas-fired turbine designed to lower wholesale power prices in the spot market. Those flow through to everyone.

We had this game at the last election, which the Premier well and truly put an end to. The previous government promised to reduce power prices by $303 and got nowhere near it—nowhere near it.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I would ask Dan how that went, but he's not here.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is already on three warnings.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: These games that politicians play—

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —where they get up and they say, 'Vote for me and I will reduce power prices by X'—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Members opposite proved it is a lie. It is a lie.

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Hartley!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: What we are doing is changing the market. We are embarking on a transition.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Hartley! Member for Morialta!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They can howl at the moon all they like.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Climate change is real. The release of carbon into the atmosphere by man-made, by human endeavour is causing the heating of the planet. We need to decarbonise our electricity manufacture and we are doing that by embarking on new technologies. Members opposite can watch or get on board.

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