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.