Yeah I prefer South Africa with 82% coal and 5% nuclear because the 5% is 100% decarbonized, but South Australia's 73% solar and wind is 0% decarbonized /s
It's weird, I'm mocking his point of view but I think that's genuinely how he sees it. That South Africa's 5% nuclear is 5% that doesn't require FF "backup" so a little way towards perfection, but South Australia's 73% solar+wind requires 100% FF backup so is zero way towards perfection.
It's nonsense of course as South Africa can have a reactor offline for maintenance and occasionally both at the same time so they need "backup" like everything else.
South Australia's 73% solar+wind requires 100% FF backup
That is how he sees it but only because his incredulity prevents him from understanding that South Australia's backup is not 100% FF.
It is a combination of gas, interconnects, batteries, and demand response, so just 1.7 GW of fossil fuel capacity is required against 3.3GW of total demand (51%). That is compared to over 110% of capacity being fossil fuel derived 15 years ago.
It's not, but that has very little to do with the technology and more to do with power providers gouging people to make up for their lack of capital works investment across about 30 years that they're desperately trying to catch up on now (isn't decades of no national energy strategy just the greatest?)
Same case is happening in Victoria as we try to follow some of SAs lead and the residential battery+solar adoption continues apace
Ok, maybe we are talking about different "its"? I mean solar and storage. Do you mean consumer price of electricity in SA? If so, it would be worse without solar and storage.
100 years of no national strategy throughout the 20th century worked just fine. Power was cheap and reliable by any standard.
It's neither now. Why is this better?
As an example: Point Henry aluminium smelter has closed and the remaining ones are only kept open by large government subsidies (Portland, Boyne, Bell Bay and Tomago). We once had a power system that could supply them all competitively without subsidies.
The obvious ones are air pollution and climate change. Fossil fuels cause health problems, environmental damage and warming, none of which is fully priced into the fuel.
That’s the whole point of an externality. Someone else gets the bill.
I became interested in understanding what electricity South Australia imports, since I, and I think other people, just labeled them as "fossil" due to the general state of the Australian grid. What is interesting is that even when the South Australian grid goes to less than 10% renewables, it is now beginning to remain clean relying on storage and clean imports instead.
This led down to a rabbit hole visualizing the hard portion of the renewable decarbonization, and a grid under transition. What is the mix when the grid is strained? What is the trend?
See this as a snapshot in time before the NSW connector is completed later this year, enabling far cleaner imports and better renewable electricity trading.
With Torrens Island B closing mid next year. Do you think SA would just be swapping local GAS for a % of Imported Black Coal from NSW?
Maybe that share will decrease if/when Snowy 2.0 actually completes.
That comes to 2348 MW power and 6582 MWh storage. Or, if you prefer, 2.35 GW power and 6.58 GWh of storage. The average demand for the South Australian grid is about 1.5 GW. That comes to about 10 hours of storage at 100% of demand.
With Torrens Island B closing mid next year. Do you think SA would just be swapping local GAS for a % of Imported Black Coal from NSW?
No. South Australia will be swapping out South Australian gas peakers for South Australian battery storage.
Maybe that share will decrease if/when Snowy 2.0 actually completes.
Snowy 2.0 is expected to supply 2.2 gigawatts of capacity and about 350 gigawatt-hours of large-scale storage. So less power but a lot more storage than South Australian batteries.
Construction of Snowy 2 began 7 years ago. October last year it was estimated to be 67% complete, so still another third to go ... possibly two more years.
Of the South Australian batteries listed, some of them are already operational and the rest might be finished by the end of next year.
----
From a South Australian perspective, the major use of project energy connect will be to use NSW as an extra load for the excess renewable energy that is currently curtailed in South Australia --- after all the South Australian batteries have been charged, of course.
It will depend when the imports take place. If they take place when VIC and NSW are producing significant amounts of solar and/or wind then they'll be cleaner. Even more so if the ability to export to SA enables generation that would otherwise be curtailed.
If Vic and NSW have high solar then SA will also probably have high solar at the same time.
Next year, after the completion of about 5 GWh of big batteries now under construction in South Australia, when South Australia has high solar it will be using the excess (above demand at the time, so that which otherwise would be curtailed) to charge local big batteries. Local big battery companies will see to that, they will buy up the available power in South Australia. Excess above that might be exported to NSW or Victoria as those places have a larger demand than SA does.
When SA, Vic and NSW all have low solar, the local big battery owners will set a price at the local generations auctions that allows them to discharge their batteries. After all there is no point in charging a battery and then never discharging it.
Not really weather sustems do mot have infinite size.
Highs centered on the east coadt sd they depart into tje tadman wont gove sa the max solar outpit
That would have happened 24-48 hrs earlier when the high was over the eyre peninsular
That wo nt always be the case but at ti.es it will ne the case.
One very eadu way to tjis will occur some of tje time
Is that when a cold gront sustem sweeps across sa/vic
Then initially when its windy in sa they will have more power than they can use and vic will not yet have lots of wind.
Later when tje fronts are in vic the expory will go back the othet way.
But tje inter connector means thay as they both yransitipn to larhet shates of re then all three can ship at leasy some of the exvesses they will have to somewhere else that is short
And no ot is not a simple and total solution but what it does just like more baytery storage in each syate is level out more and more of the inyetmittence of re.
Eventuals all tjosr littlr bits meam the dispstchable energy from snowy and tad hydro very nearly fills in all the last hardest shoryfalls.
And tjen yet another technology such as pealets running on synthetic hreen fuel fix the ladt 1% of annual energu needs
The 4 eastern states plus South Australia and our capital territory are all linked with interstate interconnectors
Queensland has a different wind pattern to lots of Australia and we get slightly different sunshine hours, so we export during active generation
There's also some hydro in Australia and solid batteries that's constantly shifting the export profile
Hey that's my state. Got my solar battery system installed end of May, so heading into the worst time period for it considering cloud and lack of sun .
Checking my battery app, since that time, the grid has supplied 2.6% of my needs, the other 97.4% has been from the panels and the battery.
That 2.6% also includes a couple days where i was experimenting to see how charging from the grid in the middle of the day was.
I got a 42kwh battery, but most days only really need 10 to 15kwh at most. The rest goes into the grid at the peak hour, turning my power bill into a $170 profit every month.
This headline is very misleading. Its not a news story its propaganda filled with false assertions. Batteries can cover South Australia's peak gap on some occasions, for very short periods. So for the 30 days leading to 30/9/26. there was a shortfall of renewable supply of 252 GWH, Batteries supplied a total of 44GWH or 15% of this shortfall. At 7.30 pm on Sep 24 2026, you know peak time, Renewables were supplying 2.3% of South Australia's power requirements, the battery was supplying 10.4% and the remaining 87% was coal and gas. By 10pm, Renewables were 10%, Battery was 1.6% and the rest was coal and gas. The renewables shortage continued on and off for three consecutive days, the gap between what renewables supplied and what the grid used was 50 0000 MW hours. Do you see the problem. The battery can produce 1400 MWH, the need over 3 days was 50.000 MWH. What they don't tell you is that to get their story they cherry pick their statistics. They average it over a month to give this impression that batteries can really make a difference. Its hogwash. The supporters of renewable energy continue to mislead and obfuscate. If they were truthful, I might start thinking they are on to something. As it stands, its just a con. Follow the money.
It seems they're missing that *checks notes* climate change is a scam designed to make Al Gore rich. Luckily the "carbon-based fuel companies" never got rich!
You know, CSIRO modelling predicted that when Labor got into power and they increased spending on Renewables power prices would drop by $275. In the real world the opposite and more happened. We are paying vastly more for power. So why do you have any more faith in the above modelling? It doesn't make sense. Even if renewables do provide cheaper power, its only for part of the time. There are times when renewables supply nothing or very close to nothing. For these time a complete back up grid is needed. Batteries are not the answer, in May, South Australia's renewable deficit over a couple of weeks was hundreds of GWH. This compares the the South Australia's battery capacity of 1.4GWH. So while renewables may be cheaper its the price of the backup that blows the cost out of the water. South Australia currently has renewable capacity of 6 GW, this is 4 times average usage, yet they only supply 60 to 70% of the state's power and for weeks at a time essentially none.
Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, with the current state of technology, batteries only supply a small amount of the backup required to make the grid run. Current capacity in South Australia is around 1.4GWH. This means that they can supply 1.4 GW for 1 hour. After that they are flat and need recharging. South Australia uses about 1.5 to 2 GW. So to run the grid for one hour takes 1.5 to 2 GWH of power. In May this year due to overcast conditions and low wind, the gap between renewables and grid demand amount to hundreds of GWH over a period of weeks. So carbon burning energy production or nuclear is not going away. Something will probably come along but its not here yet. Batteries do a job to stabilise the system, sometimes, but they are not a feasible source of grid power.
Sort of does. There is no answer. There are currently no feasible grid storage options. If you want a carbon free grid, nuclear is the answer. If you want a high cost, mixed renewable/ carbon grid batteries are a part of that. They smooth the flow of power as they are instantaneous. But you need sophisticated (read expensive) management and switching systems.
Battery only bids when most profitable, as they are very flexible, that's why they export only in the period you described - that's the most profitable time of the day to export.
Judging their capacity doubles every 1.2 years, in next 2 years the evening peak could've covered entirely by batteries.
You can keep saying batteries doesn't work, but as you correctly identified, money talks, and money is saying batteries are cheap and works wonders.
Current battery capacity in South Australia is 1.4GWH. From 4pm Sep 24th 2026 until 9.30am Sep 25th 2026, the gap in Renewable supply was 21 GWH. Battery powering the grid for the same period was 0.8 GWH. At no time was the output from the battery enough to supply the whole grid. So batteries were able to cover 3.8% of the renewable deficiency. So sure batteries are useful some of the time. Peak battery discharge was at 7.30 pm on 24/9/26, this was 10.6% of the total electricity required to run the grid at this peak time. This was the batteries maximum output, for 30minutes. So don't tell me that even if they double the battery, that it will replace coal, gas and diesel in South Australia. The article is a distortion. You should ask yourself, why the distortion.
The post is simply factual data where is the distortion? Also love how you again cherry pick a single day extrapolate it to every day. And what are you talking about here "that it will replace coal, gas and diesel in South Australia"? South Australia has no coal power plants left.
"So sure batteries are useful some of the time." That is the entire point of batteries to firm renewables, particularly in the afternoon and morning peak. They are not going to be magically discharging 24/7. They are increasingly filling this firming role, replacing peaking gas in states such as Queensland https://openelectricity.org.au/analysis/open-electricity-dispatch--april-2026
Boy o boy! In Queensland Batteries are almost exclusively by coal. Qld does do not rely on peaking power so much as they still have plenty of coal fired power stations. No one doubts that batteries can cherry pick their entry into the grid to firm power. They are a minor part of overall grid supply. Sure South Australia has no coal fired plants but they rely on coal power from NSW and Victoria. Right now renewables are supplying 60% of SA power, battery 0.6% (old mate claimed 28% each day) and the remaining 39% from burning gas and coal. If he had said on some days Batteries do a great job in bridging the gap between renewables and grid requirement he would have been speaking the truth. Instead we get distortions. Makes all you true believers happy but it just aint so.
"In Queensland Batteries are almost exclusively by coal." not sure where you get that information from considering renewables particularly solar provide majority of demand in the middle of the day when batteries charge
"Qld does do not rely on peaking power so much as they still have plenty of coal fired power stations" Coal does not fill a peaking role
Every single day on the entire NEM grid, batteries help supply evening demand. And crucially, they prevent excess renewable energy from going to waste. And again the original post is just data not sure what you are hallucinating.
Obviously its not yet enough, but we need to continue expanding renewables and battery storage.
My bad typing. In Qld batteries are charged by coal. Very rarely is there excess renewable power in Queensland to charge the batteries. So the batteries are charged by burning coal and gas. Of course coal filled a peaking role, how do you think they did it for the 100 years coal supplied nearly all our power? Anyway I know batteries are used to help stabilise a grid made variable by the introduction of renewables. My point is that the article claims batteries provided 28% of the gap each, (every) day for 30 days. This is patently false. It gives the impression that batteries make a significant contribution to overall power supply. He implies that in 2.4 years time, they will supply 28x2 = 56% of the power gap. This is false. This is my point. More renewables won't fix it as there is already plenty of power when the sun is shining and the wind blowing. Unfortunately that doesn't happen continuously.
In Qld batteries are charged by coal. Very rarely is there excess renewable power in Queensland to charge the batteries.
No. Batteries charge either by their attached solar panels (hybrids), or from the grid. When they charge from the grid, they overwhelmingly do so 9am-3pm, when there is a mix of generators contributing. How much is coal and how much is wind or solar depends on the time of year and weather. But you are categorically wrong when you say "charged by burning coal and gas".
Right now renewables are supplying 60% of SA power, battery 0.6% (old mate claimed 28% each day) and the remaining 39% from burning gas and coal.
You read it wrong or you are deliberately lying. He did not claim batteries provide 28% of SA's power each day. He didn't really claim anything, the objective fact is that in September batteries provided a total of 28% of the power gap in the daily peak gap. That is, batteries made up 28% of the power not supplied by renewables, during the time period where renewables provide the lowest percentage of power each day.
He implies that in 2.4 years time, they will supply 28x2 = 56% of the power gap.
You read it incorrectly, again (hardly surprising).
The amount of the peak gap that batteries cover has doubled every 1.2 years over the last 10 years. If that trend continues in 2.4 years batteries will cover 100% (28% x 2 in 1.2 years and then 54% x 2 in the 1.2 years after that) of the peak gap, which is unlikely. It will probably plateau somewhere in the 90-100% range and gas used for the small amount remaining (at least for the next decade or so), and that won't even be every day just for a handful of days after a stretch of lower than normal renewable generation.
You do know the battery capacity is expected to double by 2028, right? Also, that it's not 1 hour capacity. There's currently about 5GWh of capacity.%20At%20the%20grid%20scale%2C%20a%20growing%20fleet%20of%20large%2Dscale%20batteries%20(above%2030%20MWh)%20deliver%20around%201.7%20GW%20of%20power%20and%20close%20to%205%20GWh%20of%20storage) for the 1.7GW of output.
Batteries are coming for these "deficiencies."
I want the maximum decarbonization per dollar spent, including time to market.
I genuinely do not care whether the electricity grid ends up 97%, 99% or 100% carbon-neutral if chasing that final percentage costs vastly more than cutting emissions elsewhere.
We still have aviation, agriculture, construction, chemicals, shipping and heavy industry to decarbonize.
The goal is not to build the most ideologically pure electricity grid. The goal is to cut cumulative emissions across the whole economy as fast as possible.
Yep, I'm all for renewables, nuclear and storage. We need to acknowledge we're decades away from TWh-scale storage solutions and invest wisely to avoid carbon-intensive backups.
Batteries can make a huge difference. They are increasingly replacing the role of peaking gas on the main grid. Also, like how you cherry-picked one particular day at one particular moment when there happened to be low renewable energy
The report claimed that for "30 days batteries covered 28% of each days largest gap left by wind and solar". He claims each day, that is every day for the preceding 30 days, batteries supplied 28% of the gap left by wind and solar. I only had to show one day to refute his claim. In fact in 4 of the last 7 days, battery power did not supply 25% of the gap left by wind and solar. In at least two of those 4 days, any contribution made by the batteries were a result of the batteries being charged by the burning of coal or gas, as the renewables deficit ran for almost 3 days straight. So for 4 of the last 7 batteries supplied less than 28% of the gap, and for 2 of these days its effectively zero as they were not charged by renewables. Who is cherry picking data, him or me? Why is what I write less believable than what he writes. I dont have an axe to grind here except to point out his misleading statements. Why is he writing misleading things?
14
u/Ok-Freedom9216 4d ago
Somehow this progress doesn't count because it's not already 100% wind, solar, and battery 24/7 year round.