Aiden, I am attacking the idea that with wind solar and batteries that
in a country the size of Australia, let alone the size of our grid we
can afford to build a system that will provide the 99.99% reliability
with 100% of supply.
As you said, gas turbine plants etc can fill in but that is not the plan.
Read what they, the proponents are saying.
No fossil fuel generation, wind, solar and hydro only.
No co2 emmissions at all.
In a very few years they will demand that.
My daughters-in-law are absolutely convinced of that.
Strange one is a teacher, the other was a teacher but is a member
of the greens, hmmm.

Re the co2 figures, the human generation for world was one extra
molecule in 12,000 and Australia was one in 80,000 molecules.
Typed that from memory, will check.
There have been papers about this and the ones I quoted earlier
from Turku and Kobe unis plus the Svenmark work explained it all.

Aiden, here is part of one source I had, still looking for the rest.
However just show me where this is wrong.
The one in 80,000 molecules I remember was Prof Plimer's figure.

TOTAL HUMAN-EMITTED CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE
 
Total Atmospheric CO2: 400 Parts Per Million
Total Human-Caused CO2: 3% of Total CO2
Total Human-caused CO2:12 Parts Per Million
 
AUSTRALIAN HUMAN-EMITTED CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE
 
CO2: Around 0.15% of 12 Parts Per Million
CO2: Around 1/100th of One Molecule Per Million
CO2: Around 1 Molecule Per 100 Million
Australian human-emitted CO2 is around 1 molecule in 100 Million molecules of atmosphere.
This is literally unmeasurable and cannot possibly have any effect on global climate.

Bazz, you are mindlessly attacking the idea rather than considering the timescale of it. I have already told you how it can – and will – be achieved. Claims of impossibility are just another excuse for inaction!

Silly demands for no CO2 emissions at all are sure to be swept aside by demands to cut our net CO2 emissions by more than 100%.

The atmosphere's CO2 level is no longer just 400ppm. It's now reached 420ppm, which is 50% higher than the preindustrial level of 280ppm. Yes, 50% not 3%. And emissions from human activity are more than enough to account for the change.

Aiden said; 50% higher than the preindustrial level of 280ppm. Yes, 50% not 3%.

And that doesn't strike you as improbable ?
Another suggestion is that the co2 increase since the 18th century was
caused by the warming after the mini ice age releasing co2 from the ocean.
This increased co2 has been suggested to explain NASA's finding that
the earth has been greening significantly.
The current cooling fits in with the current low sunspot count.
This will I suspect be short term cooling but coincides with Svenmark
and the Turku & Kobe findings. The real cool time according to some
should be around 200 to 300 years time as that is the Medieval warm
period cycle.
Well we won't settle that here but it is enough that there are a lot
more factors than what has generally been accepted.

What do others have to say about this statement by an IPCC chairman ?

Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official 
Ottmar Edenhofer Chairman of the UN IPCC Working Group III

"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate
policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the
environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or
the ozone hole," said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.'s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation
of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?"We redistribute de facto
the world's wealth by climate policy," said Edenhofer.For those who
want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn't really
mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also
said that "the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an
economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources
will be negotiated."

Aiden, you mentioned a number of ways that the grid can be kept going
during weather events, Here is another way of having battery backup
on a very large scale.

http://tinyurl.com/y8s53kvy

Mind you I would not be happy to find out my battery had been through
several charge discharge cycles during the night as the life of the
batteries is set by the number of those cycles.
Also a still night might leave my battery too low to be useful.