You never get a straight story whenever solar, wind or any other renewable is in the mix. The One Nation Senator Malcolm Thingy has put the CSRIO on notice to give him the facts on renewables but that explanation will have more holes than a colander.
Molten salt, solar is all pie in the sky! Next year it will be cheaper than coal but our electricity continue to rise every year.
I just hope I am here to see the reckoning of all the promises to be taken from the Public Service and politicians pensions. They promised cheap power and gave themselves BIG pensions. Lets start a campaign to reverse all these pensions in line with increased costs we suffer.

Bazz,
I think the settings were to protect the damaged powerlines from further damage.

"As far as the famous batteries are concerned, surely they are there
to enable a black restart."
What a ludicrous conclusion! We managed a black restart without batteries last time. And we're trying to ensure there won't ever be a next time. Indeed that's one of the reasons for the batteries: to provide another layer of redundancy.

Another purpose of the batteries is to provide more power at the times when it's most needed, strengthening security of supply and reducing peak electricity prices.

And as I said further up the thread: providing the entire state's power is not what the batteries are designed to do, and there are no circumstances at all under which they would do this.

Scott Morrison waxed lyrical over the weekend, about tax cuts for business. But giving it to tax avoiding, profit repatriating foreign firms/foreign shareholders does little for us or investment?

Better a sane energy policy, and given that was so? The world's lowest costing energy!

Moreover, waiting for someone else to do it for us, a recipe for waiting for someone else to do it to us! Wakey wakey.

As long as these (asleep at the wheel) ideologues grip grimly to the reins of power, very little will change except the economically essential discretionary spending ability of the masses.

We have a 2 trillion and growing super fund! Invested anywhere else but here?

We will be chained like dumb dogs ro coal, negative gearing and other serve the privileged policies, which do very little to actually grow the economy? Unless decision makers are changed!

1% over a projected decade is hardly earth shaking or the product of thoughtful rationalists.

We could do so much better, starting with the rollout of the quite massive infrastructure deficit!

Fund it by making self terminating thirty year, tax free, government guaranteed bonds the mechanism for funding all of it! With aggrieved private enterprise able to tender to their heart's delight for any of it.

Always provided a transparent tendering process subject to agreed and signed off on, strict time and budget limits, linked to punitive penalties for exceeding either! That's public private infrastructure roll outs!

And with all that in place embark on new molten salt, walk away safe, thorium power stations, rapid rail links and new space age desalination, to get this country up and racing full steam ahead!

Every western style economy rests solely on just two support pillars, energy and capital!

And we need to be a lot smarter with both, lest we make them a veritable gift to (foundation white anting) price gouging, foreign players, with anybody else's national interest/economic sovereignty in mind.

National security alone demands no less from our so called leaders.
Alan B.

The way I see the battery is permanently connected. If there is a lul in supply the battery gets called upon. When there is an overload the battery obsorbing the supply. The battery is never depleted or overloaded.
Another word may be capacitor. If you can gues so can I.

"The battery is never depleted..."

Thank goodness for that! Just wondering tho' how often there has been a shortfall, compared with how often there has been a surplus, of renewable electrical energy?

If you can make up stuff, so will I. Here's an example of a battery that could solve a problem here or there; http://www.gen4energy.com

Whatever it does, the SA gov't will hide the true cost of its madcap quest through all manner of subsidies (the RET being but one) and creative accounting.

With the RET and everything already done and in the pipeline to nobble thermal producers, the competition that was to lower cost to consumers cannot evolve. Now, whether govt or private enterprise delivers power, the real cost to South Australians will be similar

A one way interconnector to Victoria or anyone that wants to buy it at the time. The alternative is to dump.
, which costs no one.