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I'm happy this is happening but if it requires $50M in tax payers dollars it's not exactly viable now is it?

by sintaxi 9y ago

__Duncan__ 9y ago
Are roads and public schools not viable?
CodeWriter23 9y ago
You haven't checked into the cost of a typical freeway bridge lately, have you?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cmyr 9y ago
By various estimates the replacement cost of the US grid is about 2-5 _trillion_ (taxpayer's) dollars[1]. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-cost-2017-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-...
epistasis 9y ago
For most utility buys, $50M is tiny. Plus, how can you say "not viable" without comparing the cost to the value that it provides? For truly non-viable, see the recent coal boondoggles in the US. For example, this $7.5 BILLON waste: https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/regulators-suggest-7-5-billion-coal-gasifier-facility-give-up-burn-natural-gas/ https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/regulators-suggest-... Or the wave of coal bankruptcies in the US: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-08/bankrupt-coal-companies-are-compensating-executives-and-costing-taxpayers https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-08/bankrupt-...
nl 9y ago
As a South Australian, I'm (very!!) happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices. The extra tax is more than made up for in savings. On this particular topic, the South Australian government's interests and mine are precisely aligned: We are both getting screwed over by power generators exploiting the intermittent nature of renewables to make bigger profits. Did you know they deliberately keep gas peaking generators off when it would be profitable to run them, because they can force the price to spike even higher and exploit the minimum billing periods? I'm all for market driven solutions, but technology driven price disruption is a well known reason for market failure, and that seems to be what is going on here.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices That's optimistic. I guarantee you will be paying more for electricity generation because of this battery. There's no way the incumbents would allow this thing to be connected to the grid if there wasn't a dollar (quite a few dollars) in it for them. Giving money and power to politicians is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys. Regards, former SA resident.
  - prawn 9y ago
    Who shouldn't get the money and power? The incumbent power generators or the politicians?
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      Well, both. The Libertarian in me thinks we should deregulate the energy market, and that means starting with removing subsidies to fossil fuels and renewables. My left-leaning political sense thinks we ought nationalise the energy industry as it's too important to leave to the whims of the market, and work out a cost factor to apply to the waste products of energy generation. My right-leaning political sense says nationalising energy assets would be a disaster and that we need stable base-load energy, because the alternative is untenable.
  - nl 9y ago
    There's no way the incumbents would allow this thing to be connected to the grid if there wasn't a dollar (quite a few dollars) in it for them. There are no major non-renewable incumbents left in SA. The renewables love this because it lets them load shift. That's good for them but good for me too. AGL has a small gas fired station but screwed up during the outage by not firing up one generator. That lost them any friends they have, especially since they blamed high gas prices, which the Federal Government saw as a criticism of them. The interstate incumbents hated it enough to get the Federal Government to look at stopping it[1]. But then the Victorian Hazelwood coal fired plant closure was announced, and the coal industry lost a lot of credibility with the federal government. Basically the incumbents are suffering and are rapidly losing political power. [1] http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2017/03/14/south-australia-to-unveil-new-energy-strategy.html http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2017/03/14/south-...

I'm happy this is happening but if it requires $50M in tax payers dollars it's not exactly viable now is it?

__Duncan__ 9y ago

Are roads and public schools not viable?

CodeWriter23 9y ago

You haven't checked into the cost of a typical freeway bridge lately, have you?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cmyr 9y ago

By various estimates the replacement cost of the US grid is about 2-5 _trillion_ (taxpayer's) dollars[1]. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-cost-2017-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-...

epistasis 9y ago

For most utility buys, $50M is tiny. Plus, how can you say "not viable" without comparing the cost to the value that it provides? For truly non-viable, see the recent coal boondoggles in the US. For example, this $7.5 BILLON waste: https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/regulators-suggest-7-5-billion-coal-gasifier-facility-give-up-burn-natural-gas/ https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/regulators-suggest-... Or the wave of coal bankruptcies in the US: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-08/bankrupt-coal-companies-are-compensating-executives-and-costing-taxpayers https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-08/bankrupt-...

nl 9y ago

As a South Australian, I'm (very!!) happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices. The extra tax is more than made up for in savings. On this particular topic, the South Australian government's interests and mine are precisely aligned: We are both getting screwed over by power generators exploiting the intermittent nature of renewables to make bigger profits. Did you know they deliberately keep gas peaking generators off when it would be profitable to run them, because they can force the price to spike even higher and exploit the minimum billing periods? I'm all for market driven solutions, but technology driven price disruption is a well known reason for market failure, and that seems to be what is going on here.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices That's optimistic. I guarantee you will be paying more for electricity generation because of this battery. There's no way the incumbents would allow this thing to be connected to the grid if there wasn't a dollar (quite a few dollars) in it for them. Giving money and power to politicians is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys. Regards, former SA resident.
- prawn 9y ago
  Who shouldn't get the money and power? The incumbent power generators or the politicians?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    Well, both. The Libertarian in me thinks we should deregulate the energy market, and that means starting with removing subsidies to fossil fuels and renewables. My left-leaning political sense thinks we ought nationalise the energy industry as it's too important to leave to the whims of the market, and work out a cost factor to apply to the waste products of energy generation. My right-leaning political sense says nationalising energy assets would be a disaster and that we need stable base-load energy, because the alternative is untenable.
- nl 9y ago
  There's no way the incumbents would allow this thing to be connected to the grid if there wasn't a dollar (quite a few dollars) in it for them. There are no major non-renewable incumbents left in SA. The renewables love this because it lets them load shift. That's good for them but good for me too. AGL has a small gas fired station but screwed up during the outage by not firing up one generator. That lost them any friends they have, especially since they blamed high gas prices, which the Federal Government saw as a criticism of them. The interstate incumbents hated it enough to get the Federal Government to look at stopping it[1]. But then the Victorian Hazelwood coal fired plant closure was announced, and the coal industry lost a lot of credibility with the federal government. Basically the incumbents are suffering and are rapidly losing political power. [1] http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2017/03/14/south-australia-to-unveil-new-energy-strategy.html http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2017/03/14/south-...