GE: Some Australia regions to be 100% renewable in 5-10 years

General Electric, the industrial behemoth that remains the biggest provider of energy equipment in the world, predicts that some regions in Australia will soon get all their electricity from renewables – at least for a few days a year

Jerome Pécresse – the president and CEO of GE Renewable Energy – used the prediction to highlight the rapid change in renewables, and particularly its falling costs and ability to be integrated into the grid, which he said was still being underestimated.

“Within 5 to 10 years, there will be regions and areas in this country which will have 100 per cent renewable energy, at least for a few days a year,” he said at the Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday. But this proportion would grow, he added.

Pécresse said renewables were now at “grid partiy” in most parts of the world, and would continue to get cheaper and cheaper, and the ability of consumers to supply their own needs would be hugely disruptive to existing utility business models.

“We are just at the beginning. It is never going to stop,” he said, noting there was going to be continued competition from the cost of solar energy (which is also forcing more cost reductions in wind energy).

Pécresse also predicted that many customers, including communities, would go “off grid” while on-grid customers would be “aggregated” – meaning that they could be supplied by alternatives to the current utilities.

“The role of customers will fundamentally change,” he said.