‘We have the technologies now’- Cannon-Brookes busts open Coalition myth

Software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes has a happy knack of being able to “cut through”, which probably explains at least in part why he’s a billionaire and you and I are not.

Software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes - we have the technologies now.

When Elon Musk idly boasted in the wake of South Australia’s system black that he could fix South Australia’s energy problems in 100 days, Cannon-Brookes quickly hopped on to his Twitter account and challenged him to deliver.

And Musk did. His company built what has been casually called the Tesla big battery at Hornsdale in less than 100 days, and the battery has changed the thinking about the grid, repeatedly demonstrating its ability to keep the lights on, even when transmission lines are falling down around it.

When prime minister Scott Morrison – having ridiculed the Tesla battery, electric vehicles and other modern technologies –  happened to trip across the phrase “fair dinkum power”, Cannon Brookes jumped on the case, launching a social media campaign to turn the idea on its head.

Cannon-Brookes quickly debunked the idea of “baseload”, as so many energy experts and market operators already had, and made it clear that if  Australia was going to be fair dinkum about energy, it needed cheap, clean and reliable power, and fossil fuels were not the answer. See renewables and storage.

Read the story from RenewEconomy by Giles Parkinson - “‘We have the technologies now’- Cannon-Brookes busts open Coalition myth.”

Tesla big battery delivered a $22 million profit in 2018.

The Tesla big battery in South Australia has delivered a handsome profit in its first full year of operation in South Australia for owners Neoen Australia, as well as playing a key role in lowering market costs and keeping the lights on.

The profitable Tesla 'big battery' in South Australia.

The 100MW/129MWh battery – still the biggest lithium-ion battery in the world, but officially known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve – cost around $96 million to build but pulled in revenue of €18 million ($A29 million) in 2018 (as we reported in February).

It now emerges that the profit from the operation (earnings before interest, depreciation, and tax) was €14.2 million for 2018 ($A22.8 million at current exchange rates), adding on to to €0.4 million of earnings from the single month of operation in 2017.

Read the story from RenewEconomy by Giles Parkinson - “Tesla big battery delivered a $22 million profit in 2018.”

The stunning numbers behind success of Tesla big battery

The Tesla big battery in South Australia has already taken a 55 per cent share in the state’s frequency and ancillary services market, and lowered prices in that market by 90 per cent, new data has shown.

Stunning numbers.

The stunning numbers on the economics of the country’s first utility-scale battery were presented at the Australian Energy Week conference in Melbourne on Thursday by McKinsey and Co partner Godart van Gendt.

Speaking as part of a panel on the leading technologies and strategies that will help manage the transition to renewables in Australia, van Gendt said the data was more evidence that battery storage would “play a very big role.”

He said that a lot of discussion around the success of the big battery – the biggest of its kind in the world, and delivered at break-neck speed – had focused on the fact that “we did it,” and not on the economics.

Read the RenewEconomy story - “The stunning numbers behind success of Tesla big battery.”