AC, I do not think you answered my question at all however let me help you. If we have generation that cannot be used then we have the wrong generation model. Monash thought out the Latrobe Valley coal to electricity and thought it through properly. Now we have useless, diffuse energy generation that needs the reliable generation envisioned by Monash as back up. We are in a real bind over this and that is the real problem. Jackasses who just cobbled together a load of old rubbish thinly disguised as "Green". What a joke we are in Victoria. The perfect State to actually destroy our own economy, run out of proper power and with no civil rights.
We get what we deserve.

The problem AC is you can't feed all that variable power into the grid, without destabilising it causing resultant catastrophe. So unless you build a separate network from your solar panels to your usage site, you can't transfer the power to your usage.

If your usage is a motor, to drive pumps in your suggested usage, the waffling frequency of that power, without considerable expensive management & moderation of that power, it will burn out your motors.

A small amount of solar & wind power could be balanced, & the frequency controlled by a large amount of spinning mass in thermal, [in our case coal fired]generators. As the percentage of alternate generation increases, & thermal generation decreases it becomes increasingly difficult, & expensive to maintain the frequency required to be provided to the network

Hasbeen,
SA did order some synchronous condensers for frequency control, but whether they're a good investment is uncertain. Active frequency control is better than passive, and the upgrade of the big battery is likely to do far more to stabilise the state's power than any condensers.

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Joe,
Compressing milk is far from impossible - all you have to do is remove most of the water! It's commonly done - Indeed I opened a can of evaporated milk a few hours ago. Or there's the option of removing even more water to get powdered milk.

A good engineer looks at the real objective, rather than assuming the clients have the same meaning as physicists when they say "compress".

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ttbn and Mr 0,
It's not racist at all, but please stop calling it the "China virus"! It wasn't the first virus to come from China and it won't be the last.

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Armchair,
If there's the extra capacity provided by a second dam, why would you pump the water back into the main reservoir if you're not using it for arbitrage?
Pumping water from one dam to another doesn't increase the total water supply.

If you want to avoid wasting power, there are many things that could be done with it, but using batteries is probably the most convenient and best value. Pumped storage is certainly a possibility, but large scale fresh water pumped storage is not practical for the driest state on the driest continent.

Aidan,

I absolutely refuse to call it the 'China virus'. I have repeatedly told ttbn to stop it and only refer to it as the 'Wuhan virus'. (Or on second thoughts, maybe we could call it the 'Wuhan bat soup virus').

Whatever way, I have warned ttbn that if he doesn't refrain from calling it the 'China virus' I will try to arrange for Andrew Forrest to bring a couple of Chinese Communist Party heavies around to have a talk to him. As Twiggy might exclaim: "We'll show him who's running the country!"

Mr. Opinion,

Poor old Aidan and his bleating "please don't call it the China virus". Do you think he is a Chinese spy? Do you think that he thinks that we think that he has some divine right to be obeyed? (Just like the Chinese think). Do you think that he thinks at all? The virus came from China, therefore it is the China virus. The politically correct covid-19 sounds more forced and ridiculous every time some pretend-ernest newsreader squeezes it out. Why people feel the need to be PC when the Chinese ambassador makes threats against Australia is very strange.

And, on China's 'diplomacy', the Chinese Consul dragged in by Twiggy without the Health Minister's knowledge, was a cyber spy, spying on Australia, before he turned up in Melbourne. Well done, Twigs! As Alexander Downer said, Twiggy and the Chinese need to get some good political advice. Twiggy is a successful businessman, but politically ignorant; the Chinese need to learn about Australia and the fact that their Communist totalitarianism is not acceptable here.

It is only excess solar that goes to the grid your house gets what it needs first. So it would not account for any extra power being bought from the grid.
So their grumbles would be in vein as it would not make any difference what so ever.
No doubt revenue for power generators would be way down due to the current climate. That means they are looking for a handout.