South Australia is proving to the world that relying largely on wind and solar energy with battery back-up is incredibly cheap, with electricity prices tumbling by 30 per cent in a year and sometimes going negative
edit maybe the state is South Australia, or at least that is what the comments said but idk
The biggest impact on SA power prices right now is the wild price fluctuations, because the power price ceiling is $23,000 and the floor is -$1000 it means that it only takes a few hours at the ceiling to completely blow average prices up
And sadly we won’t be able to write this article at the end of the summer quarter because SA had a major heatwave that lasted a week:
yep batteries are definitely all the rage, especially with solar farms getting fuck all out of their stuff these last few years as the daytime price keeps going negative
The first Tailem Bend solar farm was the second big solar project in South Australia, after the 220 MW Bungala solar farms near Port Augusta. Those facilities are also heavily curtailed, and Bungala’s joint owners Potentia Energy are considering a big battery at that site too.
The biggest impact on SA power prices right now is the wild price fluctuations, because the power price ceiling is $23,000 and the floor is -$1000 it means that it only takes a few hours at the ceiling to completely blow average prices up
And sadly we won’t be able to write this article at the end of the summer quarter because SA had a major heatwave that lasted a week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dKOp6d6dvo
Which meant a boatload of air conditioners on 24x7 which meant a ton of power draw on the grid so it maxed out for ages
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=30d&interval=1d&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed
So yeah a painful one coming up
Basically free power most of the time and very expensive sometimes seems like a slam dunk for deploying battery storage to be honest
Haven’t you read the studies about how batteries kill whales though?
Natural gas is far safer for nature and I arrived at this position entirely organically.
yep batteries are definitely all the rage, especially with solar farms getting fuck all out of their stuff these last few years as the daytime price keeps going negative
https://reneweconomy.com.au/construction-starts-on-new-south-australian-big-battery-choosing-a-merchant-route-to-market/
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/capacity/nem/?range=all&interval=1M&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed
At first i thought “kinda weird to talk about summer like it’s happening right now”, and then i realised… it is. Hemispheres be fucky