South Australia, the second cheapest electricity in Australia … or the most expensive?

Previous post detailed electricity prices of four states in Australia, coming to the conclusion that the electricity prices of South Australia were without any doubt the highest of those four states. In the meanwhile, I came across several other sources that also claimed that South Australia has the highest electricity price for consumers in Australia.

Now imagine my surprise reading the last paragraph of the Wikipedia article on “Energy in Australia” (my emphasis):

It was claimed in 2017 that South Australia had the most expensive electricity in the world [⁵⁰] Another analysis claimed that South Australia has the second cheapest electricity in Australia.[⁵¹]

South Australia, the second cheapest electricity in Australia?!?!

In my limited dataset with only four states, South Australia had -by far- the highest average electricity price for consumers. This means that South Australia is at best the fourth cheapest in Australia (if all other not listed states were more expensive). How does this “second cheapest electricity” claim square with being at best the fourth most expensive, possibly even the most expensive?

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South Australia, at lonely heights

It is often claimed that energy sources like solar and wind are cheap or even cheaper than some conventional power sources like coal, gas or nuclear. If this is really true, than one would expect that energy prices in countries with more solar and wind go down or at least being less than in countries powered by conventional sources. That doesn’t seem to be the case, on the contrary. I already looked at energy prices of Denmark and Germany a couple years ago. I then came to the conclusion that these two countries not only had by far the highest share of solar and wind, but also by far the highest consumer prices.

What about South Australia? It also has a high share of solar and wind, how does its electricity price for consumers compare to the other states within Australia?