I've been thinking about the 'threat' of the whole Tesla thing....

I've been thinking about the 'threat' of the whole Tesla thing. The hydro will take 3-4 years to build and I was thinking, well, could someone, Govt or private spend a few hundred mil (on Tesla batteries or similar), build it in 6 months and make large hydro less cost effective. It certainly does seem like a threat at face value. However, I've just looked over some of the figures. Bear in mind that these figures are very loose and for indication only. Coupled with this is the AUD/USD exchange rate and worse, the media keep confusing the issue by interchangeably using power and energy units i.e. mixing their use of MW and MWh

Tesla is offering $250/kWh (approximately $330 AUD) of storage on utility scale systems

(this compares with the GNX solar 1 capex cost of $0.81/kWh. Comparing generation with storage so not really apples with apples but just for indication)

I've seen many values bandied around for the hydro project but $300m seems to be the ballpark. The capacity will be $1,500 MWh, which is around $200k/MWh, or $200/kWh. This compares with the approx $330 of the Tesla system. Again, this figure is not truly correct because, the $200 figure is full capex, whilst the Tesla figure is for supply of batteries only, not including shipping, installation, commissioning, or even the building/building works for where the batteries are going to be housed/sited.

In my opinion, this just goes to show that, in current dollars, pumped hydro is a much more cost effective (with appropriate topography) solution than batteries. Of course, this could change entirely with exchange rates or if Tesla halves the cost, like they did with the powerwall etc. It all depends on whether sufficient 'band-aid' solutions can be implemented in the interim