Yep, nice Elon wants to help. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-11/tesla-storage-proposal-for-sa-should-not-be-ignored/8344730

A nice little foot in the door offer to a desperate SA, at cost or Gov't subsidized, and the stupidity of renewables plus storage becomes entrenched, however large its real cost over time.

I reckon Elon wouldn't even mind a small loss leader to get first the tranche of storage accepted then rely on the momentum he creates from that to make the big money later. The enormous cost to South Australians of going renewables plus storage (with any of the storage options currently known) will dawn like the temperature on frogs being gradually brought to the boil.

If it is subsidized, I hope it is not by the rest of us contributing to SA's extravagant experiment through federal money. Reserving gas for the same at non-world parity pricing is effectively a subsidy by the rest of us too, and, renewables plus gas would have little impact on emissions and CAGW even if the whole world was doing it.

Also we have "http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-10/energy-retailers-making-millions-off-solar-feed-in-rates/8342254"

Millions? All I can see in it for retailers is a little reduction in daytime coal consumption while their overheads remain. I don't want to see retailers having to further subsidize households going solar by having to charge the rest of us more to buy excess solar output at a mandated price higher than its value. It's just more subsidy.

I've no problem with pricing emissions to tilt the playing field against coal, as long as ALL options are allowed, without subsidies, including the energy source that dare not speak its name. Greens/SH-Y are all a-gush at Elon's offer and would lead us up a humongously expensive, time-wasting dead-end.

I don't see how storing electricity is a substitute for having a reliable supply. How long do the batteries last? What is the replacement cost? Do they leak when not been drawn on? How much input is needed to keep them topped up? A lot of wind and sun is still needed with the the ridiculous 40% reliance on renewables.

The whole thing sounds like just another monstrous con-trick.

ttbn,
"I don't see how storing electricity is a substitute for having a reliable supply. "
It isn't.
It's a means of producing a reliable supply.

Apologies for my very clumsily expressed OP, which I did on the way out the door. The gist is there however.

As more reports come in I'm now unsure whether the storage supposed to be just for load management to make power failure more gradual than sudden, or the final solution.

Elon could sell refrigerators to Eskimos, so I hope Malcolm keeps a level head on how he spends federal money. A toe in the door is a start for Elon and establishes a beach-head for Greens' madcap plans.

Luciferase, I repeat:
IT'S A MEANS OF PRODUCING A RELIABLE SUPPLY.

If what we were after was merely away to prevent a sudden failure from becoming catastrophic, we'd go with flywheel storage, not batteries.

Luciferase,

A bit off topic, but:

"Eskimo tribes, closer to Siberians than American Eskimos in their appearance, their customs and their distinctive, liquidly sibilant native language. And, yes, they all have refrigerators. In the winter, food gets freezer burn if left out in the elements. Eskimos need refrigerators to keep their food warm."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/26/AR2005042601144.html

Our posts must have crossed Aidan. Thank you for confirming that the madness has officially begun. After ten years down this path they'll be asking "what the hell were we thinking?"

Is Mise, thank you for that kind elucidation. Refrigeration to keep food warm, eh? :-)

Luciferase, it's the sanity that's begun, and the madness of burning huge amounts of coal has finally begun to end.

Whatever is done, there's going to be a cost. But renewables do not have the same cost structure as fossil fuels, and nor are renewables the main reason why electricity costs are so high. Indeed renewables have got substantially cheaper over the last decade, and the cost is still falling rapidly.

I was quite interested to see how you lot would spin this. So if it proves to be a good deal once all the costings come in at what point would you give it a tick? Or is your bent against renewables that ingrained that any concessions are impossible?

I say SR has won the prize with that statement.
It has something to do with sticks and mud. You have Abbott worshippers at any cost, and cannot see otherwise. And you have coal that cannot be substituted at any cost.
It's a mentality thing.

"So if it proves to be a good deal once all the costings come in at what point would you give it a tick?"

The renewablistas' case has distilled to a belief in generation and storage becoming so cheap that the thumpingly humongous scale of it required (inclusive of transport energy needs and the need to reproduce itself) will be offset, to the point of viability. To ensure that viability, all other energy sources here must be nobbled and other countries cannot break ranks for economic advantage by remaining with coal or going nuclear.

Final costing must include all manner of subsidization, directly and indirectly by governments here and overseas, such as huge manufacturing and tax incentives and cash grants, excessive FiT's, RET mechanisms and solar purchase rebates. True costing should include all the facts.

We will now have, no doubt, new incentives extended to Elon having snowed our politicians.

Meanwhile we will need and maintain fossil-fuelled power infrastructure for the inevitability of the whole enormous edifice coming a gutser. It will never, ever, be 100% dispatchable.

At what point would I give it a tick? When I'm too senile to think.

$330m for a storage system that does not generate a single kW.

This is where the true cost of renewable energy starts to become apparent.

A drop in the bucket is a private mans ambition.
100 m coming from green energy, Electricity storage that does not generate a single kWh. It is not supposed to. Just maybe it will save energy dumping.
You need to look further ahead.
The amount of wasted power only pushes up costs. Deck head.

Doog,

There is no power wasted in SA yet. Twot.

Luciferase,

Just to continue the OT a bit further; we in Australia, don't know what cold is really like.
A friend of mine was in Canada and saw some workmen in full winter gear standing by a manhole in the street, as it was a summer day she asked why. She was surprised to be told that the men were about to go down into the permafrost.

She later stayed in houses that had a cupboard over a hole that went down to the permafrost, the coldness of the food was regulated by the depth to which it was lowered by a windlass.

SM is talking absolute rubbishy again. SA.does not dump power. Absolute frogs warble.
SA has to dump power every time the sun shines or the.wind blows. The missing link is storage. Or cut supplying with Victoria. This shat was not heard of until they interconnected all eastern states.

In order to make the great SA experiment work Vic/NSW/Qld have to soak up SA excess generation whenever it presents, the rest of us must pay for storage through https://arena.gov.au/media/arena-and-cefc-support-solutions-for-certainty-of-energy-supply-including-flexible-capacity-and-large-scale-energy-storage/, an "emergency" gas fired turbine must be built with public money and run on gas where royalties are diverted from the state to farmers, on top of every other subsidy from the RET, FiT, solar rebates, research grants, quarantined gas prices, and much more.

The ideologues are dragging us down their dead-end path, which will become eventually become apparent. The result will be very little change to emissions through the whole cycle from manufacture to generation and storage, decommissioning/replacement/recycling.

It is sheer madness. Greens have stonkered the chance of ever dealing with AGW. I thank them so much for this and all their other contributions to Australian life.

God help us.

Ooops, that was Vic/NSW/Tas, not Qld

Doog,

Any pinhead that can read can see that presently, the only power that is dispatched is gas or diesel fired plants, that simply don't generate, and all solar/wind is used or very occasionally exported.

So the batteries will be buy gas generated power at points of low demand and then selling at high demand, competing against the gas generators that it bought its power from originally. Its business case hinging on the few times where there is a shortage of capacity?

It sounds high tech and cool, but as a commercial concept it is a dumb as mud, and the schmucks that will pay for it will be the SA power consumers.