Add that to the windpower bill: SA Battery cost $90m which is $220 per family of four

The ABC reports that finally the people of SA can find out what the emergency Tesla battery cost — $56 per person, or $220 per family, just for the purchase, not for the operation. Hands up South Australians, who would have rushed to sign up to be the Star Renewable State if they had to sign the checks themselves and their electricity bill had a item called: “The price of renewables”.

South Australia didn’t need a battery when it had coal power:

A 505-page report released by Neoen this month ahead of an initial public offering suggested the battery cost around $90 million, at the current exchange rate.

The giant 100-megawatt lithium ion battery near Jamestown in the state’s mid-north commenced operation late last year.

“It actually costs taxpayers’ money. There’s a cost of $4-5 million a year to have the battery in place.

“There are more costs than that involved.

Where does Giles Parkinson think these “revenues” come from?

However, Giles Parkinson said the battery was on track to “make revenues of about $25-26 million in its first year”

The battery makes no electricity. All it does is shift supply at the wrong time to the right time, a problem the state didn’t have til it tried to run off the wind.

The revenues are another cost to be added to taxes and electricity bills of companies and householders.

The battery saves millions of dollars in system security — another charge that I’m pretty sure wasn’t as significant before unreliable energy randomly bombed the grid:

Under the agreement, the South Australian Government has the right to access 70 per cent of the output at any one time to provide an urgent hit of power to prevent load-shedding blackouts, or to provide system-security services to the energy grid.

Before the battery’s installation, those services had come at a hefty price.

The Australian Energy Regulator found they had cost the state more than $50 million since 2015.

Are there any NEM experts out there who can confirm when charges for providing “system security” were introduced to the NEM? Noting that there are many flavours of security. There appears to be an explanation of the NEM situation published in 2001.

Grids using coal turbines (or gas or hydro) must have run for years without FCAS and other market structures.

h/t Dave B, OriginalSteve.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait... Rating: 8.6/10 (57 votes cast)