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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

South Australia was famous recently [0] for having not only the most expensive electricity in Australia, but competing for the most expensive energy in the world. I would encourage the world to be cautious about copying whatever it is they are doing.

And if the South Australia Big Battery is an example of utility scale storage, store's about 1-2 hours worth of energy from a small plant. It isn't capable or expected to help power on through a night or anything, it smooths the grid when there is instability. Ie, it doesn't mitigate the main problem with renewables (intermittent generation). It mitigates secondary problems with renewables (short term grid instability). Or it mitigates whatever problems the South Australians have with their grid, I don't know. Point is, if they were relying 100% on renewables they'd have developed a culture of early bed times.

[0] https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/south-australia-has...

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If you refer to your citation (from 2017), it states that electricity prices were high because of natural gas shortages and coal generator closures, and that the payback period on storage and solar is down to 7 years (storage systems have 10 year warranties, rooftop solar and their inverters typically have 25 year warranties, so after your payback period, your power produced is free to you). Renewables drive down the cost of power [1], being the cheapest form of electrical generation.

The "South Australia Big Battery" at the Hornsdale Power Reserve, recently expanded, has saved electrical consumers $150 AUD million [2], cannibalizing frequency response revenue from thermal fossil generators (natural gas). It is not intended for long duration discharge.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/24/south... (2019: South Australia’s clean-energy shift brings lowest power prices on national grid, audit finds)

[2] https://www.cefc.com.au/media/media-release/neoen-completes-... (According to an independent review conducted by Aurecon, the initial 100 MW battery has delivered over $150 million AUD in savings to South Australian energy consumers)

> were high because of natural gas shortages and coal generator closures, and that the payback period on storage and solar is down to 7 years

That isn't as compelling as you might think. If they screwed up their energy grid by closing down gas and coal generators then (1) solar would look better than nothing and (2) would have a short payback period.

That fact could just as easily be cited in an argument as "these clowns really need more gas and coal". The lack of fossil fuels is linked to very high power prices.

> Renewables drive down the cost of power [1]

Your link doesn't actually support that. It says they drive down the cost of wholesale power. That is how it typically plays out when countries go heavy on renewables (same thing happened in Germany). Wholesale prices drop, retail prices rise because of there is too much energy when it isn't wanted.

> The "South Australia Big Battery" at the Hornsdale Power Reserve, recently expanded, has saved electrical consumers $150 AUD million

Again, proabbly evidence of a mismanaged grid. Given that it was built in SA rather than somewhere important, it seems likely Big Battery is fixing up losses from installing an unstable amount of wind and solar.

>That is how it typically plays out when countries go heavy on renewables (same thing happened in Germany). Wholesale prices drop, retail prices rise because of there is too much energy when it isn't wanted.

There is too much energy because obsolete base load plants can't keep up with a modern grid. The primary source of excess energy isn't renewables because we want to use every single renewable kWh. Excess energy is energy that isn't wanted not just because we don't need it but also because we don't like how it was created. Coal plants not only force flexible power generators to turn off prematurely, they also generate CO2. So any insistence on protecting coal plants is completely misguided considering their fatal flaws as a technology.

>it seems likely Big Battery is fixing up losses from installing an unstable amount of wind and solar.

Is this supposed to be some kind of joke? Flexible power generators cannot increase grid instability because their response time is measured in minutes or seconds. You can turn solar panel on/off immediately. You can turn on/off turbines at any time with a slight delay. The Tesla battery stores an insignificant amount of energy so it can't even do what you are talking about. It's primary purpose is frequency stabilization which was usually done with peaker plants and unconventional energy storage like flywheels.

Not to mention that it has destabilized the national Australian grid to the point where a 35C day means that you get rolling blackouts across multiple states.

Currently the only way you can be sure you have power on a hot summer day in Australia is to share a substation with a hospital designated to provide life support to patients.

When has Australia ever experienced these rolling blackouts across states due to solar? The most recent substantial blackouts (2019 in victoria) were due to extreme heat causing the power stations to be unable to meet demand, plus some stations being offline [0]. This is totally unrelated to the uptake of solar which ameliorates peak demand for aircon power. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-26/victorian-blackouts-w...

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