“We are at the very beginning in energy storage in general,” says Phil Hermann, chief energy engineer at Panasonic Eco Solutions. ...
“Elon Musk is out there saying you can do things now that the rest of us are hearing and going, ‘really?’ We wish we could but it’s not really possible yet.”
Old quote, and rubbish analysis from Tim Blair.
Of course everyone who gave a TU to the OP realises the above quote is not from today, last week, last month or last year, don't they? It's at least two years old. And battery storage tech is changing radically every six months right now, at the same exponential rate that RAM and CPU tech was developing 20 years ago.
And the purpose of the battery has been explained numerous times - load balancing the state's renewable energy generation and allowing emergency back-up power. It's not meant to be a 1930s coal station. And as an added bonus, inserted into the bidding process at the right time, it may lower prices. Gas generation is the longer term back up, and has more oomph. SA has gas, not coal, and will be using gas and trying to stop multinationals exporting most of it and selling it cheap overseas and charging Australians a premium for their own resource.
There's a lot to be critical about with regard to SA and national energy policies and practice, but Tim Blair is not even close. Just spinning media releases from the coal industry through their "Australian Power Project" fake advocacy website.
