3 ms·

The "Victorian Big Battery" cost about 100 million to build and provides 450MWh, so at those prices the 120GWh they calculate for 5 hours would cost about 25 bi

The "Victorian Big Battery" cost about 100 million to build and provides 450MWh, so at those prices the 120GWh they calculate for 5 hours would cost about 25 billion. Not outrageous in the scale of nation building projects.

cinntaile 4y ago
They won't use batteries for grid scale storage, that's a bit too expensive. They'll probably use hydro, some sort of heated mass or compressed air. Or gas, it's much better than coal at least.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I think in this model it is actually batteries. They pair pretty economically with solar to smooth output on the daily cycle. They also include existing Hydro in their model, plus 'other' which is what mostly covers the storage on longer scales. But there's easy answers for the rest too. It's just not modelled in this very simple model because most of the heavy lifting is always going to be solar and wind and that's probably the point they're trying to make.
- plantain 4y ago
  I think Australia will use mostly batteries, but we are building more hydro. I think hydro is miscast as being green though, when in reality it causes enormous ecological destruction. Hydro is also intermittent - it requires the right amount of rainfall, currently hydro in Australia is not able to reach full generation because it will flood downstream as it's been a wet year. Hydro is not that cheap (depending on the metric you need) - see an example[1] comparing Australian hydro to the aforementioned Victorian Big Battery. [1] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-storage/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-stora...
inglor_cz 4y ago
For 25 billion, you could have two Olkiluoto-like nuclear blocks that actually produce energy and not just store it. For several decades. (Olkiluoto is considered notoriously over budget.)
- caf 4y ago
  That wouldn't solve the problem though, because the NEM is a very long thin grid.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Prices have roughly halved since then, and will likely halve again when a winner of the not-lithium battery competition emerges (which is looking very much like sodium ion as it's entering mass production). Everyone is expecting another halving after that but before 2035 even with no single clear winning outcome. After that prices become dominated by steps that don't typically get cheaper, so prices much below $30 (or a bit over 10% of the Big Battery) are unclear.

cinntaile 4y ago

They won't use batteries for grid scale storage, that's a bit too expensive. They'll probably use hydro, some sort of heated mass or compressed air. Or gas, it's much better than coal at least.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I think in this model it is actually batteries. They pair pretty economically with solar to smooth output on the daily cycle. They also include existing Hydro in their model, plus 'other' which is what mostly covers the storage on longer scales. But there's easy answers for the rest too. It's just not modelled in this very simple model because most of the heavy lifting is always going to be solar and wind and that's probably the point they're trying to make.
plantain 4y ago
I think Australia will use mostly batteries, but we are building more hydro. I think hydro is miscast as being green though, when in reality it causes enormous ecological destruction. Hydro is also intermittent - it requires the right amount of rainfall, currently hydro in Australia is not able to reach full generation because it will flood downstream as it's been a wet year. Hydro is not that cheap (depending on the metric you need) - see an example[1] comparing Australian hydro to the aforementioned Victorian Big Battery. [1] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-storage/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-stora...

inglor_cz 4y ago

For 25 billion, you could have two Olkiluoto-like nuclear blocks that actually produce energy and not just store it. For several decades. (Olkiluoto is considered notoriously over budget.)

caf 4y ago
That wouldn't solve the problem though, because the NEM is a very long thin grid.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Prices have roughly halved since then, and will likely halve again when a winner of the not-lithium battery competition emerges (which is looking very much like sodium ion as it's entering mass production). Everyone is expecting another halving after that but before 2035 even with no single clear winning outcome. After that prices become dominated by steps that don't typically get cheaper, so prices much below $30 (or a bit over 10% of the Big Battery) are unclear.