Hilarious. The battery was never designed for the sort of situation they had. What was? Gas turbines. How'd they handle it?
"Former Chief Minister Adam Giles spent $75m on the new Owen Springs power station some 25 km south of Alice Springs. This is said to be blowing out to $100m with exact costs unknown and shrouded in secrecy. He bought 10 Jenbacher gas-burning generators. That was in 2016
.....
The expensive Jenbachers, all the way from Austria, are currently last in line to be fired up although the contract entered by Mr Giles, and taken over by the Gunner Government, had “a date for commercial operation of 2017”. The new engines are now under a 30% output restriction and running in a “block load mode” meaning they are only able to run at a set output and will not respond to load changes.
Previously the engines had been touted as being capable of short-term performance variations, of fast adaption to demand changes. This is proving to not be the case."
And jopo, and others, only see problems with the solar and battery. Sorry but that is just dimwitted blinkered stupidity. On a small islanded system, as Alice Springs has, using solar, you of course need lots of local, fast responding back up power. The gas turbine plant intended to provide that doesn't, and didn't, deliver. The old power station that could do it has not been maintained.
Problem of their own making. As
@acorn has already pointed out.
