Electricity price falls show the market and consumers are embracing renewable energy technologies, Shortland MP Pat Conroy says.
Prices fell significantly in 2020, declining by 23 per cent to 58 per cent when compared to 2019 averages, the Australian Energy Regulator said in a report released on Friday.
"The annual average price in all regions was below $70 per megawatt hour for the first time since 2015," the report said.
"While short-term factors have led to a rise in wholesale prices from May 2021, the longer-term outlook is for prices to remain relatively subdued. The outlook for 2022 and 2023 is for prices to remain lower than in recent years."
The report said more than 3700 megawatts of large-scale solar and wind generation capacity entered the national electricity market [NEM] in 2020, mostly in NSW and Victoria.
"There was also record investment in rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV), with almost 2500 megawatts of new capacity installed."
This amounted to record levels of wind and solar generation last year, boosting these renewable sources to more than 19 per cent of total electricity generation.
"Wind output exceeded gas generation for the first time. While wind and solar generation has increased, fossil fuel generation continues to produce over 70 per cent of electricity in the NEM, but this is declining," the report said.
Mr Conroy, the federal shadow minister assisting for climate change, said "households and businesses across the country are jumping on the low power prices offered by wind and solar".
"We need a government that steps up and acknowledges what is happening, not just here in Australia but right around the world.
"The energy mix is changing and, if we don't act now, energy workers will be left behind and we will lose the massive job opportunities from the new industries.
"The Morrison government is deeply divided on climate and energy policy and has just re-elected Barnaby Joyce as deputy prime minister, a man stuck in the past."
The report said Australia's energy system was "continually adapting as we transition away from a centralised system of large coal and gas generation".
It was headed towards a mixture of "smaller scale, widely dispersed wind and solar generators and battery storage".
Customers would in coming years "increasingly store surplus energy from solar PV systems in batteries and draw on it when needed".
"In this way, they will reduce their peak demand for electricity from the grid. But small scale batteries are not yet economic and uptake has been low."
The report noted that AGL planned to "progressively retire its Liddell power station over the next two years".
The regulator forecast that energy supply shortfalls would rise in NSW between Liddell closing in 2023 and Snowy 2.0 producing power from early 2025. But this shortfall was "expected to remain below the reliability standard of 0.002 per cent ".
