For once, I'd love it if our ever changing State Government would just spend its limited budget on tried and tested solutions rather than pissing money up the wall on things that may or may not work.
Batteries are well proven technology now. Here's the Tesla one in California: https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/01/a-look-at-the-new-b.... Batteries are very much the tried and tested solution now. This is just a bigger set.
Our wind-farms are nothing special. We get much less power from them than most places in Europe. Even the eviro-nuts (/sarcasm) in Texas get up to 23% of their power from wind (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rise-of-wind-...). SA gets around 33%.
Pretty much all of SA's problems are because of geography. We don't have many people (~1.5M, almost all of whom are in Adelaide) and we are a long, long way from anywhere else. That makes taking part in the national market difficult.
Things that were first done/discovered in SA: - military tank - sunscreen - hills hoist - early version of wifi (controversially)
References: http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/07/23/4051703.htm http://insidesouthaustralia.com.au/5-amazing-south-australia...
Pumped hydro is probably the best known and longest used. It's reliable and low risk. It's only practical if geography includes two adjacent large bodies of water with significant altitude differential. This isn't exactly rare but it's unusual, so pumped hydro isn't often a solution.
Other than p.h.? Thermal (molten salt)? flywheels? These are rare and early in development. Each has its own reliability issues.
If grid-scale storage is needed, it seems like Li batteries are the best understood, lowest technical risk option for now.
I think the infamy was unearned, and mainly due to people not understanding that it was never intended to run all the time, but is insurance for a time of crisis (which we will certainly have again at some point).
So, not a good example.
[1] https://www.sawater.com.au/community-and-environment/our-wat...