"Electricity consumers will be paid for reducing their power demands under a radical change to the market that will be introduced next year.
Key points:

    'Wholesale demand response' will come into effect in October 2021, allowing large electricity users to be paid for reducing demand
    Big energy generators and retailers had wanted to delay the change, citing the COVID-19 crisis
    Some advocacy groups want to extend the scheme to households and small businesses

The historic rule change announced on Thursday will allow what's known as "wholesale demand response" — where the wholesale market can pay users for cutting electricity consumption, rather than paying electricity generators to increase supply, when the system is under strain.

The shift, which will begin in October 2021, has been adopted by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) despite opposition from big energy generators and retailers, who were using the COVID-19 crisis to pressure for delaying the rule changes.


The commission has described the change as "an important reform to the NEM (National Electricity Market)".

It argues it will reduce electricity prices for consumers and improve reliability on the network, by allowing demand response to compete with "peaking" electricity generators that typically receive very high prices for supplying additional electricity during times of heavy demand.

Under the change, large electricity users (such as big farms, factories and commercial enterprises) will be able to bid reductions in demand into the wholesale market and get paid for taking their demand out of the system."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-11/customers-paid-for-reducing-electricity-d...


So big users will be paid to not take power under contract and sell it back to the grid for stability. I guess wind and solar are really not that stable.