Ah, so you are taking the anti capitalist stance. Interesting to see that pop up here. Australia sells its fossil fuels on the global market rather than priori

Ah, so you are taking the anti capitalist stance. Interesting to see that pop up here. Australia sells its fossil fuels on the global market rather than prioritizing its local market. So when disruptions (like the various wars around) drive up prices, Australia sells the gas at a higher rate. This, in turn, drives up prices locally. Combined with aging and failing coal infrastructure, which isn't producing as much or as reliably, you have a marginal rate that can get quite high. Meanwhile, Australia has retail electricity providers and not a single government owned utility. Those retailers must make a profit, and they've invested heavy capex into smart metering. So they charge customers as much as customers will tolerate. You might be right, it might be time to nationalize some of that fossil fuel usage, and remove the profit motive from energy retailing. That could drive down costs for end users. But I don't think solar is really a major input here beyond replacing baseload. Expensive marginal priced peaker plants are one of the key drivers of high energy costs. When the sun sets, those plants have to come online. Better battery storage would smooth that demand significantly, as in parts of Australia solar production is already producing negative energy prices.