[Flick Lives]

The rise of power prices began when coal prices jumped following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

—

Australia is, or was, a net exporter of coal. of course with enough government intervention, I’m sure they can destroy any energy self-sufficiency.

[Tell It Right]

In all seriousness, part of Australia's problem is home solar has been very much adopted in Australia. Thus, the coal plant energy production was scaled back. Coal plants have problems running at partial capacity.

Natural gas plants, however, are somewhat scalable. You can turn them up or down as needed, but even that assumes you handle the change in pressure in the gas lines (the problem Texas had when their natural gas lines "froze"). It's analogous to having a propane tank for long-term storage and never filling it up. If it's pressured to max capacity the contents will liquify (in propane and natural gas jargon it's called "freezing"). So the solution is to never fill your tank more than, say 70%. Gas lines have the same problem if you all of a sudden increase the pressure in them (like Texas was doing when their green power was failing them and they tried to compensate with more natural gas -- they did it too much at once).