By being backward oriented and not investing adequately into and operating wind and solar energy, we not only miss out on having and using sufficient renewable energy – no, we also miss out on an important opportunity for learning from operating them. Vital data cannot be collected from what does not exist in Australia. Other countries who are operating wind and solar at large scale are able to learn from collected data (including cost details) so that their future planning is now much better than it would otherwise be. The critical mix between wind and solar is important. How else can we know this, but from operational data ? “So why not use foreign data?” you say ? We need data for Australian conditions with local geographical and many other specifics. We need to learn from operating wind and solar here in Australia and cannot simply transplant data from other countries where different conditions/parameters exist. We miss out on opportunities we could have, had we invested sufficiently into solar and wind power. This ill-minded negligence is bad for our future as a nation and its negative consequences will be a burden for future generations.