The real problem is that fossil fuel plants are designed to be profitable at high load factors. Building a coal plant and only running it at 50% load is not profitable.
It cost $100 million to build.
Batteries energy density puts them so far past green washing that in the current day and age they are Potemkin villages.
It can respond to market demand within milliseconds, and after coming online was responsible for dropping the average wholesale price of electricity by 90%.
And as for distances - power grids have been built at similar scale, and even longer. When there's essentially free power for the taking, why wouldn't you invest into delivering it where it needs to go?
It costs three or more times as much since you need to use uncommon materials and design from scratch.
>And as for distances - power grids have been built at similar scale, and even longer.
There is no country in the world as large and as sparsely populated as Australia. The distance between Perth and Brisbane is the same as that between NY and SF with no one living between them. When I worked in finance here it was always fun explaining to Americans why their algos will fail regardless of what we do, the speed of light matters.
Hilariously enough, even the US doesn't have one grid continent wide, and it's ten times as densely populated as Australia.
And I'm still confused - what kind of "uncommon materials" are we talking about? What exactly is the problem with normal power delivery infrastructure that precludes it from operating at high temps?
> Elevated air temperatures can reduce the rated capacity of electric transmission lines, meaning that their ability to transmit power will be diminished during peak hours.
That said, it looks like it's just a couple percent, so maybe you just overbuild a little.
You say this like it doesn't get sunny in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane (the top three largest cities)
Plenty of room for solar on existing buildings and structures. No need to transport it long distances.
>Ms Zibelman said WA's isolation amplified this trend because the relative concentration of its solar resources meant fluctuations in supply caused by the weather had an outsized effect.
>The only way to manage the solar was to scale back or switch off the coal- and gas-fired power stations that were supposed to be the bedrock of the electricity system.
>The problem was coal-fired plants were not designed to be quickly ramped up or down in such a way, meaning they were ill-equipped to respond to sudden fluctuations in solar production.
Sounds like it's time rebalance the system with lower baseload assumptions for coal and gas plants. I'm quite sure the incumbents are loathe to suggest that since it means investment in buffers to soak up so-called excess power from solar panels and splitting the profit with solar panel owners.