Tesla battery deal: Sheep graziers given one day to decide in favour of largest lithium ion battery.

A whirlwind decision led South Australian sheep graziers Paul and Bill Stacey to end up with the world's largest battery being planned for their property.

Sheep graziers Paul and Bill Stacey already have
wind turbines on their land near Jamestown.

French company Neoen called them up on Tuesday afternoon and asked whether they wanted to house Tesla's lithium ion battery on their land near Jamestown in SA's mid-north.

Neoen owns the Hornsdale Wind Farm, with nine turbines located on the fifth generation farmers' 4,655-hectare station.

Read the ABC News story - “Tesla battery deal: Sheep graziers given one day to decide in favour of largest lithium ion battery.”

Barnaby Joyce floats national royalty plan to dismantle coal seam gas bans

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has
 welcomed the South Australian government's
 decision to pay landholders royalties.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has started dismantling Australia's sweeping ban on coal seam gas drilling, arguing a new scheme to divert a share of government royalties to farmers will overcome furious opposition in the bush.

Mr Joyce on Friday embraced a South Australian government plan to pay farmers 10 per cent of royalties in exchange for allowing gas wells on their land, saying the scheme should be rolled out nationally, with an exclusion of prime agricultural land.

The Agriculture Minister said lifting moratoriums and giving landholders a fair price in exchange for access would equate to "a substantial turnaround in attitude and that is a very good outcome”.

"I can't see people who start making hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of dollars a year having a backlash," Mr Joyce told Fairfax Media.

Read the story in the Melbourne Age - “Barnaby Joyce floats national royalty plan to dismantle coal seam gas bans.”

SA seeks bid for 100MW battery plant to kick off storage boom

The South Australian government has announced plans to install the country’s biggest battery storage installation as part of a sweeping response to the series of blackouts and what it says are the failures of the National Electricity Market.

The $500 million scheme includes plans for a new battery storage installation of at least 100MW, a new 250MW government-owned gas-fired generator to act as an emergency back-up, and a new “energy security” scheme that could encourage solar thermal and other storage technologies.

The state will also introduce a new competitor to the market through its previously announced government procurement scheme, will encourage more gas exploration, and will give treasurer and energy minister Tom Koutsantonis greater power to intervene in the market and instruct generators to deliver supplies.

The idea, premier Jay Weatherill said, is for the state to take control of its own energy future, and not rely on a “broken” National Energy Market, and to forge ahead with its push into renewable energy.

Read Giles Parkinson’s story on RenewEconomy - “SA seeks bid for 100MW battery plant to kick off storage boom.”

World’s first wind farm towers featuring Indigenous art unveiled in South Australia's mid-north

The murals featured on the two wind
turbines were created by artists from the
Ngadjuri and Nukunu people.

Art on the side of Australia's iconic grain silos has taken the world by storm in recent years — but it is not just regional grain infrastructure that are being transformed into artistic canvases.

The world's first wind farm towers featuring indigenous art have been officially unveiled in South Australia's mid north last week.

The Hornsdale wind project outside Jamestown is a joint venture between French company Neoen and the Australian Capital Territory Government.

It has been estimated that it will inject $250 million into the South Australian economy and deliver clean energy to the capital.

Read the ABC Rural story - “World’s first wind farm towers featuring Indigenous art unveiled in South Australia's mid-north.”

Early skirmishes point to a war over renewable energy lasting well into 2017

South Australian Premier, Jay Weatherill -
concerned about looming energy crunch.

Just before last year's federal elections, Jay Weatherill, the South Australian premier, was ruminating about what it would take to finally get attention paid to the nation's looming energy crunch.

Would it be the closure of the brown coal-fired Hazelwood power station, which accounted for a fifth of Victoria's power and a supplier to SA when the wind didn't blow? Or perhaps the shutdown of the ageing Portland aluminium smelter – a huge consumer of electricity adjacent to his state?

"It may be those sorts of events that might precipitate that discussion," Weatherill told Fairfax Media in his parliamentary office in Adelaide.

The Premier wasn't to know that within months, a series of mishaps would thrust energy – and in particular, his state's relative dependence on renewable sources such as wind and solar – into the spotlight.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Early skirmishes point to a war over renewable energy lasting well into 2017.”

Why South Australia's power blackout could happen here

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce
 has linked the SA storm to "too
 many solar panels or wind turbines".

Could the South Australian power outage repeat itself in Victoria? The answer is unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility, because extreme storms happen here too.

SA's power outage was not the result of too many solar panels or wind turbines, as suggested by our Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, but rather severe winds and lightning. In particular, several of the major transmission line towers that form the backbone of SA's power supply were bent over like matchsticks by the extreme winds.

This, and possibly lightning strikes as well, led to an imbalance in power supply that was far too rapid to be managed via adjustments in other sources of supply. In such circumstances, the entire power system had to be shut down, otherwise it would become dangerous with electricity supply exceeding the tolerances of power equipment.

If, for example, the series of power lines running between Melbourne and the Latrobe Valley coal generators were to suffer a similar fate due to storms, or maybe a severe bushfire, then our state's entire power system would also shut down. Victoria is vulnerable because it is so reliant on power from just one geographic location. But thankfully it would take something quite extreme to take out these powerlines.

Read the comment piece in today’s Melbourne Age by Tristan Edis - “Why South Australia's power blackout could happen here.”

Keeping the lights on: lessons from South Australia’s power shock

Keeping the lights on in SA has been
something of a problem of late.

Soaring South Australian wholesale electricity prices in July have exposed the urgent need for Australia to develop climate change and energy policies that combine to maintain reliable, affordable and sustainable power.

In that month the state’s wholesale electricity price averaged $230 per megawatt hour – three and a half times the price in eastern states.

The price even skyrocketed to nearly $9000 per megawatt hour on July 7, when a lack of wind, coupled with the closure of two coal plants and the temporary closure of a back-up electricity connection meant that gas was generating nearly all the state’s power needs.

The intermittent nature of wind – which now generates about 40 per cent of South Australia’s electricity – creates challenges for the price and reliability of power generation in the state.

Yet while the high July prices triggered a furious blame game, criticisms of wind farms, gas generators or the electricity market are alarmist and unfair. The market worked, the lights stayed on and prices have since fallen to levels more comparable with the eastern states.

Read the Grattan Institute story Tony Wood and David Blowers - “Keeping the lights on: lessons from South Australia’s power shock.”