"excess solar power from households and businesses spilled uncontrolled on to the system, pushing the amount of power needed from the grid to increasingly low levels.... The only way to manage the solar was to scale back or switch off the coal- and gas-fired power stations that were supposed to be the bedrock of the electricity system."

Wow, that sounds like a great problem to have. Note the aggressive rhetoric ... 'spill', 'uncontrolled','pushing', 'bedrock', 'solar smashes utility finance'. Well-crafted FUD from ABC's Mercer, if he wrote it all.

Coal and gas being endangered sounds perfect, if you give a rat's ass about climate change. But let's do everything we can to get in the way of progress by painting the result as blackly as possible. Maybe instead of pushing that excess onto the grid, people can sell it their neighbors instead ... or 'the industry' could install more batteries to store it in.