I'm no electrician and may have got this all wrong, but I...

I'm no electrician and may have got this all wrong, but I thought it interesting to try a rough comparison of the battery used by Telstra in the 2015 Coleraine theft with a Redflow battery.

There were 15 batteries stolen valued at $7500, so $500 each. They are Yuasa 190Ah, 12V - so around 2 to 2.5kw.

I found specs for Yuasa FXH190-121FR batteries, which I presume are the same as they weigh 67kg (as did the stolen ones). It's interesting that they say the batteries have a Design Life of 12 years at 20 degrees C and a Eurobat Classification (whatever that is) of 12+ years. They specify an operating range of -15C to 45C. They require a float charge as there is a 3% capacity loss per month @ 20C and there was a graph that indicated that without floating top up they would lose around 50% of capacity over a 6 month period @ 40C.

So 4 or 5 Yuasa batteries provide around 10kw at a cost of $500 each, which is $2.5 to $3k. Compared with say $10K? wholesale for a Redflow. Then you've got to throw in the reduced capacity loss and reduced chance of theft of a Redflow. Redflow has a warranty of 10 years but may last a lot longer (but no proven history to justify longer life claims as yet). The Redflow has better environmental credentials being recyclable and using less toxic chemicals. Redflow may offer a better battery management system to be able to check on the batteries remotely.

Its clearly not a straightforward decision for the telco's but anything Redflow can do to lower its selling price, would make the decision easier for them.