If, by some miracle, diesel generators somehow keep the show on the road, it will be trumpeted as a triumph of renewables.

Spot on Joe, but now we have the story that Tans Grid says we cannot
afford to have 24/7 electricity supply.
Well that is true if you dump 200,000 extra people a year onto the grid.
I hear our benighted NSW Labour opposition leader this morning raving
on about putting in batteries. First catch your $800 billion !

To fix the problem we have to first wipe out all the pollies, starting with the greens.

Then stop thinking about these stupid politically correct crappy things called renewables.

Solar, wave, batteries are all lies, spread by the greens. A good punch in the face and breaking their hands will shut them up and stop them long enough to throw them out.

If we had some more snowy schemes we might get somewhere.

Apart from the time and cost factor, nuclear is still the stand alone winner. Oh and I don't believe the old coal burning power plants would cost as much as they let on.

It's another lie so they can keep fleecing the piggy bank with grants and hand outs for all this BS research into renewables. The people are too stupid to challenge these renewable projects because they are as informed as a coconut.

An interesting article in today's Australian by someone from Snowy Hydro.
The proposed scheme for the Snowy will have a capacity of 350000 Mw/hrs.
This is equivalent to about 3500 batteries the size of Sth Aus's battery !
They will pay for it from profit and pay 8% return when completed.
Now that seems like the way to go.
It seems that all the fun poked at the PM about it was totally misdirected.
It does mean that Labour does not understand these things and should keep quiet.

You could also read about the effectiveness of battery back up:

https://theconversation.com/a-month-in-teslas-sa-battery-is-surpassing-expectations-89770?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2011%202018%20-%2092027806&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2011%202018%20-%2092027806+CID_89945028a0ff14c0f1dc94fb14ab7cac&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=A%20month%20in%20Teslas%20SA%20battery%20is%20surpassing%20expectations
you may just be surprised.

Bazz you must have missed the bit where re-evaluation of the costs of the project are suggesting a minimum cost of 4 billion, & Judith Curry has suggested about 10 billion, once the required additional transmission & other gear is added.

All this will produce not a single watt of extra power, let alone megawatts. All it will do is provide the availability of emergency generation capacity. That of course will only be available after the power +15% has been expended pumping the water up there in the first place.

As renewable power only supplies a few percent of our power usage, it will have to be coal, diesel or gas generated power that does the pumping. Thus the project increases the use of probably coal fired power by the 15% that will be lost/wasted in the exercise.

This being the case, building a much cheaper coal fired power plant, without all the hidden extras such as transmission lines would be a much better, more reliable & cheaper option, offering lower emissions as well.

As with anything Turnbull, [think NBN, or subs] the costs do have a habit of escalating, while the promoted benefit fails to materialise.