Federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg must feel a little friendless when he gets together with his state counterparts at the regular COAG energy meetings and looks around the room.

Two new rules flagged by the Australian Energy Market Commission overnight herald the start of fundamental changes to the way Australia’s energy markets operate, and a belated switch away from the centralised fossil-fuel network to a smarter, cleaner, cheaper and more reliable grid of the future.

Junior telecommunications company amaysim has agreed to pay $120 million for online energy retailer Click Energy in a move designed to challenge the dominance of the big utilities in both the telco space and the energy sector.

There have probably been lots of times in the past when renewables have completely dominated South Australia, but they don’t spring to mind. The addition of 150 MW of Hornsdale together with the AEMO formally recording the estimated rooftop PV output means that on Sunday we saw that for a couple of hours renewables were about 15/16 of South Australian generation and something like 70% of the total over the day.