As electricity demands rise, predictions have been made to the future of the electricity.  ABC News reports that there are some industry players that are warning consumers to be prepared for blackouts and power shortages.

BBY market analyst Mike Harrowell told ABC News that  the outlook is bleak.  ”We are likely to be running into a shortage of capacity sometime within the next five years,” he said TruEnergy’s Richard McIndoe sees a similar outlook. ”I think there’s going to be real challenges during the peak times,” he said. ”We are not seeing a great deal of investment … whether it’s a base load supply or peak supply now because of this uncertainty.”

However, although there are many people who believe there will be a problem as demand rises some believe that the industry will be able to cope as it has been for the last 10 years by planning ahead and investing.  ”There has been more than 10,000 megawatts of new generation in the market, which is between 20 and 25 per cent of the total existing capacity so that’s a pretty high replacement rate,”  said Carl McCamish, of Origin Energy to ABC News.

“You’d say that that’s quite a lot of investment for a market of our size over that period of time and right up even through today you’ve got a lot of investment going on in wind and the solar and you are seeing investment in the PICA plants.

“It’s not a question of power shortages. Power shortages only happen if you’ve got not enough capacity in the system. In the PICA plants, the smaller plants that can ramp up and down quickly at times of peak demand – they’re the ones, as I say, that we’ve been investing in and the market is projecting to invest in as well. They will cover the issue of the lights going off.”