Hey Matt,

I think there's a few elements:

- The east coast market (The NEM) is an energy-only design which has strong implications around investment.
- Increasingly high penetration of renewables (South Australia just hit 100% wind coverage of their load, [plus some gas-fired gen for system security and exporting across an interconnector])  with a lot of land for more renewables
- Policy chaos - a federal government who doesn't believe in climate change and has changed the carbon policy multiple times in a short period of time, against the states and local governments which have all set renewable energy targets of various ambitions.

Something that I believe others in the world are looking to Australia is the idea 'minimum demand' - South Australia is approaching the point where 100% of load will be met by rooftop PV installations. This could happen as early as spring or autumn next year.

In general I'd categorise Australia behind other markets in terms of technology uptake, but ahead in terms of DER integration, high renewables and lack of desire to invest in old technologies.

Hey Bob,

The 'two-sided market' is part of a major package of works to help increase the accessibility of the market to distributed energy resources (DERs) - variable pricing signals are considered one of these key elements.

I work for a retailer which offers floating wholesale price plans to customers - so electricity prices are often higher in the morning and evening peaks, with the risk of extremely high volatility in the hot summer months, but overall the net cost is usually lower because th hedging costs and risks are removed. Add in DR and many of our customers see significantly lower electricity costs by actively managing their time of use.

I agree about the convience of 'anytime' supply, but I think there's also a growing number of educated customers out there who are willing to be flexible with their energy usage in order to save money. This is evident in the C&I market in Australia, but is starting to be seen in the residential sector. The rise of low cost IoT devices for the home will only continue to accelerate these trends in Australia.