One-Quarter Of Australian Homes Now Have Solar

RenewEconomy - Sophie Vorrath

New data has confirmed the effects of a second rooftop solar boom taking place around Australia – driven by falling technology costs and increasingly volatile electricity prices – with nearly one quarter of all Australian households found to have invested in solar panels.

The survey, published by Roy Morgan on Thursday, shows that on average almost one in four Australian households (23.2 per cent) own a “Home Solar Electric Panel”, as at March 2017. Uptake is shown to be strongest in South Australia, at 32.8 per cent; then Queensland, at 30.2 per cent; and Western Australia, at 26.6 per cent.
The numbers are in keeping with the findings of May 2017 data from SunWiz, which suggested Australian households – and businesses – were installing rooftop solar PV at a rate not seen since 2012.
In its May 2017 report, SunWiz said that a total of 5.7GW of rooftop PV had been installed on 1.7 million households and businesses at the end of May, capping off a record first five months of installs in any year in Australia’s history.
And in Western Australia – as we reported here – the residential PV uptake has resulted in a dramatic reduction in both the scale and the timing of peak demand in the state, reducing peak demand by 265MW, or 7.2 per cent in the last summer.
But solar take-up has been lower for households in New South Wales and Victoria, the Roy Morgan report shows, with 17.7 per cent and 21 per cent of households investing in PV in those states, respectively.
Tasmania, meanwhile, has nearly as high solar penetration as NSW, with 17.3 per cent of households owning PV panels.
Interestingly, the Roy Morgan research seems to suggest that this rate up uptake will slow over the coming 12 months, with only 1 per cent (94,000) of Australian households claiming to have plans to buy or replace their solar panels in the next year.

Links

• One Step Off The Grid
• Cheap wind and solar mean US will meet beat Paris targets despite Trump
• Collinsville 42.5MW solar farm underway as site works begin
• Transmission: We need to start building now to deal with wind and solar boom
• Solar and battery storage to power Victorian coal mine museum

The World Is On The Brink Of An Electric Car Revolution

Climate Central - Brian Kahn

The internal combustion engine had a good run. It has helped propel cars — and thus humanity — forward for more than 100 years.
But a sea change is afoot that is forecast to kick gas-powered vehicles to the curb, replacing them with cars that run on batteries. A flurry of news this week underscores just how rapidly that change could happen.

Robots at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif. put together electric cars. Credit: Tesla Motors

A quick recap: On Monday, Tesla announced that the Model 3, its mass-market electric car, would start rolling off production lines this week with the first handful delivered to customers later this month. Then on Wednesday, Volvo announced that every car it produces will have a battery in it by 2019, putting it at the forefront of major car manufacturers. Then came France’s announcement on Thursday that it would ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2040.
All this news dropped just in time for Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s latest electric car report, which lays out why electric cars are the way of the future and when they’re projected to take over the market. The authors said although electric vehicles are currently a tiny fraction of the car market, that market could reach an inflection point sometime between 2025-2030. After that, electric car sales are slated to increase rapidly.
Driven by the falling cost of batteries and the growing number of automakers producing a wider variety of electric cars, Bloomberg NEF expects that electric cars will account for 54 percent of all car sales globally by 2040. That’s a huge uptick from its forecast last year of electric vehicles accounting for 35 percent of all sales.
The shift to electric vehicles will disrupt the fossil fuel industry. The 530 million total electric cars forecast to be on the road by 2040 will require 8 million fewer barrels of oil a day to run.

A new forecast for electric cars shows explosive growth in new sales, particularly in China. Credit: Bloomberg NEF

One of the big pitches for electric cars is their positive benefit for the climate because they reduce the use of oil. But they will require a lot more power from the electric grid. Energy use from electric vehicles is expected to rise 300 times above current demand, putting more strain on power generation.

How that energy is produced will go a long ways toward determining how climate-friendly electric cars actually are. A recent Climate Central analysis looked at all 50 states and found that the energy mix was clean enough in 37 of them to ensure electric cars are more climate friendly than their most fuel-efficient combustion engine counterparts.
That’s a sharp uptick from a 2013 analysis, which found that there were just 13 states where electric cars were cleaner than gas-powered ones, and it’s driven in large part by a precipitous drop in coal use.
While the U.S. is projected to be one of the biggest drivers of the electric vehicle revolution, China and the European Union will also be major players. By 2025, Bloomberg NEF’s projections show that China will be the biggest buyer of electric vehicles in the world, a trend that continues through 2040.
That means how China’s energy mix develops will be one of the most important factors to determining how climate friendly all the new electric vehicles on the road will be.

Links

• Electric Cars Becoming Popular As Grid Gets Greener
• States Betting on Giant Batteries to Cut Carbon
• A New Kind of Car Guide
• Scientists Know How Big the Larsen C Iceberg Will Be
• This Is How Climate Change Will Shift the World’s Cities
• Global Warming Tipped Scales in Europe’s Heat Wave
• Climate Change Will Hit the Poorest the Hardest in the U.S.

World Leaders Move Forward on Climate Change, Without U.S.

New York Times - Steven Erlanger | Alison Smale | Lisa Friedman | Julie Hirschfeld Davis

President Trump met with Chinese officials including President Xi Jinping on Saturday during the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

HAMBURG, Germany — World leaders struck a compromise on Saturday to move forward collectively on climate change without the United States, declaring the Paris accord "irreversible" while acknowledging President Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement.
In a final communiqué at the conclusion of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, the nations took "note" of Mr. Trump's decision to abandon the pact and "immediately cease" efforts to enact former President Barack Obama's pledge of curbing greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
But the other 19 members of the group broke explicitly with Mr. Trump in their embrace of the international deal, signing off on a detailed policy blueprint outlining how their countries could meet their goals in the pact.
The statement and the adoption of the G20 Climate and Energy Action Plan for Growth ended three days of intense negotiations over how to characterize the world's response to Mr. Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, and it came as this year's meeting of major world economies here laid bare the stark divide between the United States and the rest.
"This is a clear indication that the U.S. has isolated itself on climate change once again, and is falling back while all other major economies step up and compete in the clean energy marketplace created by the Paris Agreement estimated to be worth over 20 trillion dollars," said Andrew Light, a senior climate change adviser at the State Department under Mr. Obama.
Differences between the United States and other nations on climate, trade and migration made for a tricky summit meeting, which unfolded amid large protests that sometimes turned violent, with several injured and demonstrators setting fire to cars and looting in the streets of the German city.
"Nothing's easy," Mr. Trump said of the gathering on Saturday as he complimented its host, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who has toiled to bridge the gap between the United States and other nations, for handling the challenge "so professionally."
Hours later, at the start of a high-stakes meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, Mr. Trump vowed to confront the threat posed by North Korea "one way or the other," and said he appreciated the Chinese leader's efforts to respond to Pyongyang's latest provocations.
"It may take longer than I'd like, it may take longer that you'd like, but there will be success in the end, one way or the other," Mr. Trump said. "Something has to be done about it."
The wording on climate change in the communiqué represented a victory for Ms. Merkel, who played a major role in forging compromise language after France raised objections.
In most other respects, though, the summit meeting had to be a bitter disappointment for the chancellor. When the meeting was first planned for Hamburg, Ms. Merkel's birthplace, she would have reasonably expected Hillary Clinton, a likely political partner, to be the American president, and she had expected the event to be a strong part of her re-election campaign for a fourth term, with voting in September.
But Mr. Trump tends to suck all the media air out of a room, even in Germany, where he is deeply unpopular. This summit meeting was always going to be primarily about Mr. Trump and his first meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
It has also been about efforts by most of the rest of the world to cajole the American president into softening his stances on global trade and the climate, with Ms. Merkel in a secondary role, trying to come up with compromises.
Her standing has also suffered as Germans have been shocked by violent protests by a small bloc of anarchists who saw the G-20 as a perfect platform for their rejection of capitalism and order.
The atmosphere around Hamburg has been that of an armed camp, hardly welcoming, with 20,000 police officers asking for further reinforcements to try to protect the various leaders. So far, 213 police officers have been injured, and 43 people have been arrested and 96 more detained.
The central city has been shut down. There is no taxi or bus service, trams are often blocked by protesters and the subway is overcrowded. The area around the conference center is ringed by riot police officers while helicopters fly overhead and police sirens scream around motorcades.
Some shops were looted and cars were burned, and the smell of burning tires wafted over the conference center. Even Melania Trump could not leave her guesthouse on Friday to join a spousal tour of the harbor.
Ms. Merkel expressly backed the 100,000 or so peaceful demonstrators who massed here in recent days and were marching on Saturday. She may have been hoping to show authoritarian leaders like Mr. Putin and Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, how to tolerate protests in a democracy. If so, she and the security forces failed, losing control in parts of the city. Ms. Merkel was born in Hamburg in 1954, weeks before her parents moved east to Communist Germany.
This was always going to be risky for Ms. Merkel, and Mr. Trump's presence only intensified what were widely anticipated to be widespread and sometimes violent protests against globalization, even though Mr. Trump is a sharp critic of globalization.
Whether the criticism of holding the summit meeting here will hurt Ms. Merkel in the September elections is not clear. Her popular conservative finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, appeared on national television on Friday strongly defending the decision. Only large cities like Hamburg, a picturesque Hanseatic port, have the infrastructure to host the thousands of leaders, delegates, journalists and lobbyists who gather at a G-20 meeting, he said.
And some diplomatic work was done at the meeting, even beyond Mr. Trump's meetings and his hyperbolic praise — regardless of his private views — of every leader he meets, including Ms. Merkel. ("You have been amazing and you have done a fantastic job.")
Working overnight, diplomats first agreed on a common text on trade, with a nod toward Mr. Trump's "America First" demands for restrictions on unfair trade, but they had great difficulty on climate, with the Americans demanding a reference to the use of fossil fuels.
President Emmanuel Macron of France said he would continue to press Mr. Trump on climate and would hold a follow-up summit meeting in Paris in December to move the Paris deal forward.
The trade section in the statement the aides thrashed out read: "We will keep markets open noting the importance of reciprocal and mutually advantageous trade and investment frameworks and the principle of nondiscrimination, and continue to fight protectionism including all unfair trade practices and recognize the role of legitimate trade defense instruments in this regard."
The climate section is more of a dodge. It takes note of the American decision to withdraw from the Paris accord and says the other countries regard the deal as "irreversible." Yet it subtly left open the possibility that the United States could someday come back into the pact, specifying that the country is putting the brakes on its "current" emissions pledge.
It then nods toward fossil fuels, saying: "The United States of America states it will endeavor to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently."
Mr. Trump, who spent so much time with Mr. Putin on Friday that he delayed meeting the British prime minister, Theresa May, until Saturday, tried to fortify her delicate political fortunes. He said that they had had "tremendous talks" on trade and were working on a "very powerful" trade deal for a post-"Brexit" Britain that could be completed "very, very quickly."
It is not clear what Mr. Trump meant, since the two sides cannot sign such an agreement until after Britain leaves the European Union, in March 2019 at the soonest.
Mr. Trump also confirmed that he would eventually make a state visit to Britain, but the dates continue to be unclear.
Also on Saturday, American officials said that Mr. Trump would order the State Department to redirect $50 million from its foreign-aid budget to a new international public-private partnership to aid midsize businesses run by women, a group that his daughter Ivanka Trump helped create.
The partnership aims to "help women in developing countries gain increased access to the finance, markets and networks necessary to start and grow a business," a spokesman for Ms. Trump said.
The contribution comes as Mr. Trump's administration weighs a drastic scaling-back of foreign aid as part of his "America First" campaign pledge to target federal funding to create jobs at home.
His budget, released in April but largely ignored on Capitol Hill, would include deep cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, a major conduit for foreign assistance.

Links

• G20 leaders reaffirm support for climate change action and stand against
• United States
• G20 closes with rebuke to Trump's climate change stance
• G20 Leaders Note Trump's Dissent on Climate Change in Communique
• G20 summit: Leaders fail to bridge climate change chasm
• US stands alone at G-20 summit with position on climate change

Hopes Of Mild Climate Change Dashed By New Research

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Planet could heat up far more than hoped as new work shows temperature rises measured over recent decades don’t fully reflect global warming already in the pipeline

The dried up bed of the river Po in northern Italy due to an exceptional drought, 23 June 2017. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

Hopes that the world’s huge carbon emissions might not drive temperatures up to dangerous levels have been dashed by new research.
The work shows that temperature rises measured over recent decades do not fully reflect the global warming already in the pipeline and that the ultimate heating of the planet could be even worse than feared.
How much global temperatures rise for a certain level of carbon emissions is called climate sensitivity and is seen as the single most important measure of climate change. Computer models have long indicated a high level of sensitivity, up to 4.5C for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere.
However in recent years estimates of climate sensitivity based on historical temperature records from the past century or so have suggested the response might be no more than 3C. This would mean the planet could be kept safe with lower cuts in emissions, which are easier to achieve.
But the new work, using both models and paleoclimate data from warming periods in the Earth’s past, shows that the historical temperature measurements do not reveal the slow heating of the planet’s oceans that takes place for decades or centuries after CO2 has been added to the atmosphere.
“The hope was that climate sensitivity was lower and the Earth is not going to warm as much,” said Cristian Proistosescu, at Harvard University in the US, who led the new research. “There was this wave of optimism.”
The new research, published in the journal Science Advances, has ended that. “The worrisome part is that all the models show there is an amplification of the amount of warming in the future,” he said. The situation might be even worse, as Proistosescu’s work shows climate sensitivity could be as high as 6C.
Prof Bill Collins, at the University of Reading, UK, and not part of the new research, said: “Some have suggested that we might be lucky and avoid dangerous climate change without taking determined action if the climate is not very sensitive to CO2 emissions. This work provides new evidence that that chance is remote.” He said greater long term warming had implications for melting of the world’s ice sheets and the rise of sea levels that already threatens many coastal cities.
The reason the historical temperature measurements indicated a lower climate sensitivity than models or paleoclimate data is because the Earth has a fast and a slow response to increases in carbon emissions, Proistosescu said.
Land, mostly in the northern hemisphere heats up quickly. But there is also a slow response, he said: “This is mostly associated with warming over the oceans. They are big and full of cold water, especially at depth, and take a long time to heat up.” Furthermore, when the slow warming does kick in, it is likely to reduce the cloud cover that shades the Southern ocean and the eastern tropical Pacific, amplifying the heating.
The new research shows the 4.5C upper limit for climate sensitivity is real and means projections for global temperature rises cannot be reduced. The global temperature is likely to be 2.6C to 4.8C higher by the end of the century if emissions are not cut, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or 0.3C to 1.7C if sharp emissions cuts begin in the next few years.
The world may already be seeing the increasing rises in temperature, said Prof Piers Forster at the University of Leeds, UK: “It may already be happening – the rapid increase in temperatures since 2014 could be partly due to the eastern Pacific catching up.”
Reconciling all the estimates of climate sensitivity has also shown that climate models are not flawed. “Historical observations give us a lot of insight into how climate changes and are an important test of our climate models,” said Prof Peter Huybers, a colleague of Proistosescu’s at Harvard University. “But there is no perfect analogue for the changes that are coming.”

Links

• Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
• Climate Change Authority loses last climate scientist
• Europe's extreme June heat clearly linked to climate change, research shows
• Liberals have a responsibility too: make climate change a top issue
• Arctic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global level
• By failing to rein in climate change, our children's rights are being disregarded
• Soil carbon storage not the climate change fix it was thought, research finds
• UK poorly prepared for climate change impacts, government advisers warn
• Times's climate change coverage 'distorted' and 'poor quality'

Greenhouse Gas Pollution Up, Data Released After FOI Struggle Reveal

Fairfax - Lucy Cormack

The federal government has answered calls to release greenhouse gas pollution data it had been sitting on since last year.
Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg released the quarterly updates on Friday, less than 24 hours after a Fairfax Media exclusive revealed documents confirming the department had failed to release data for the two quarters leading up to the end of 2016.


Greenhouse gases: not just a bunch of hot air
From tracing the exact source of CO2 in our atmosphere to measuring the earth's "carbon budget", the scientists studying climate change know a lot more about the greenhouse effect than you might think.

On Friday, Mr Frydenberg announced Australia's greenhouse gas emissions had increased by 0.4 per cent in the September quarter and by 0.3 per cent in the December quarter of last year.
"Interestingly, electricity sector emissions fell by 1.3 per cent over the December quarter and fell 0.6 per cent in the September quarter as a result of the use of more hydro and less brown coal," Mr Frydenberg said.
"The government has adopted new, more effective, methodologies which improve the way satellite data is used to estimate land sector emissions and to incorporate the latest CSIRO research."
He said Australia was on track to "meet and beat" the second Kyoto 2020 target by 224 million tonnes.
The whereabouts of last year's pollution data was confirmed by documents obtained under freedom of information laws by the Australian Conservation Foundation, extracts of which were published by Fairfax Media on Thursday.
Despite being heavily redacted, a report and departmental correspondence confirmed advice that the data would be released "from March 31", with a release date indicated for "late on Friday 26 May". But that did not happen.

Australia's greenhouse gas emissions increased by 0.4 per cent in the September quarter and by 0.3 per cent in the December quarter of last year. Photo: Getty Images

"The government has been embarrassed into releasing this data, which shows pollution levels are still rising at a time they need to be drastically falling," ACF chief executive Kelly O'Shanassy said.
"It should not take an FOI request and a front-page story to get the government to be honest with the Australian people."

Federal Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg announced the release of the pollution data on Friday morning. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

In the absence of the government's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, consultant Ndevr Environmental conducted independent estimates, which suggested Australia's emissions had risen sharply since the last quarterly data set was released last year.
However, on Friday, Ndevr said its own estimates for the September and December quarters had in fact been "a little conservative".

An extract from a departmental document obtained through an FOI request, regarding the release date of government pollution data. Photo: Supplied

"We're interested that our projections were a little bit under the government's," Ndevr managing director Matt Drum said.
Ndevr would need to make adjustments to account for the government's methodology changes, he added.
"We also picked up the decrease in electricity emissions in the December quarter, which was due to a massive amount of renewable energy generation. The results from the March quarter of this year will be very interesting, because we have estimated a big spike ... it was a shocker."
For the September and December quarter, Ndevr's estimates were 98.3 and 97.5 per cent accurate, respectively, when compared with the data released on Friday.
Ms O'Shanassy said it was positive to see electricity emissions declining, but it remained "difficult to tell if that would continue" with ongoing investment in coal.
"They talk about us meeting our Paris targets, but that is only because they have been able to bank pollution savings from past years under previous Kyoto agreements.
"That's why you can still have growing emissions and say you will still meet Paris targets."
According to the government's pollution data, last year electricity emissions decreased by 0.3 per cent, emissions from fuels in the manufacturing, mining and commercial sectors increased by 4.6 per cent, and emissions from the production and transmission of fossil fuels increased by 6 per cent.
Greens climate change and energy spokesperson Adam Bandt said the figures painted a "grim picture".
"Gas isn't a clean transition fuel. It's pushing pollution up and, if the figures keep rising like this, catastrophic global warming is a near certainty," he said.

Links

• FOI documents suggest government 'hiding pollution': ACF
• Scientists are starting to clear up one of the biggest controversies in climate science
• Tropics in trouble as climate change turns deadly: study
• The chart that shows how much sea levels have risen
• South Australia announces Tesla as backer of world's largest battery
• Climate change: Now it's personal

The Great Barrier Reef Isn’t Listed As ‘In Danger’ – But It’s Still In Big Trouble

The Conversation - James Watson | Martine Maron

The Great Barrier Reef is reeling under a combination of bleaching, over-fishing and land clearing. AP Image/Bette Willis

In a somewhat surprising decision, UNESCO ruled this week that the Great Barrier Reef – one of the Earth’s great natural wonders – should not be listed as “World Heritage in Danger”.
The World Heritage Committee praised the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan, and the federal minister for the environment, Josh Frydenberg, has called the outcome “a big win for Australia and a big win for the Turnbull government”.
But that doesn’t mean the Reef is out of danger. Afforded World Heritage recognition in 1981, the Reef has been on the warning list for nearly three years. It’s not entirely evident why UNESCO decided not to list the Reef as “in danger” at this year’s meeting, given the many ongoing threats to its health.
However, the World Heritage Committee has made it clear they remain concerned about the future of this remarkable world heritage site.

The reef is still in deep trouble
UNESCO’s draft decision (the adopted version is not yet releasesd) cites significant and ongoing threats to the Reef, and emphasises that much more work is needed to get the health of the Reef back on track. Australia must provide a progress report on the Reef in two years’ time – and they want to see our efforts to protect the reef accelerate.
Right now, unprecedented coral bleaching in consecutive years has damaged two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. This bleaching, or loss of algae, affects a 1,500km stretch of the reef. The latest damage is concentrated in the middle section, whereas last year’s bleaching hit mainly the north.
Pollution, overfishing and sedimentation are exacerbating the damage. Land clearing in Queensland has accelerated rapidly in the past few years, with about 1 million hectares of native vegetation being cleared in the past five years. That’s an area the size of the Brisbane Cricket Ground being cleared every three minutes.
About 40% of this vegetation clearing is in catchments that drain to the Great Barrier Reef. Land clearing contributes to gully and streambank erosion. This erosion means that soil (and whatever chemical residues are in it) washes into waterways and flows into reef lagoon, reducing water quality and affecting the health of corals and seagrass.
Landclearing also directly contributes to climate change, which is the single biggest threat to the Reef. The recent surge in land clearing in Queensland alone poses a threat to Australia’s ability to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target. Yet attempts by the Queensland Government to control excessive land clearing have failed – a concern highlighted by UNESCO in the draft decision.

Land clearing can lead to serious hillslope gully and sheet erosion, which causes sedimentation and reduced water quality in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. Willem van Aken/CSIRO

A time for action, not celebration
The Reef remains on UNESCO’s watch list. Just last month the World Heritage Committee released a report concluding that progress towards achieving water quality targets had been slow, and that it does not expect the immediate water quality targets to be met.
The draft decision still expressed UNESCO’s “serious concern” and “strongly encouraged” Australia to “accelerate efforts to ensure meeting the intermediate and long-term targets of the plan, which are essential to the overall resilience of the property, in particular regarding water quality”.
This means reducing run-off of sediment, nutrients and pollutants from our towns and farmlands. Improving water quality can help recovery of corals, even if it doesn’t prevent mortality during extreme heatwaves.
The Great Barrier Reef is the most biodiverse of all the World Heritage sites, and of “enormous scientific and intrinsic importance” according to the United Nations. A recent report by Deloitte put its value at A$56bn. It contributes an estimated A$6.4bn annually to Australia’s economy and supports 64,000 jobs.
Excessive landclearing in Queensland, which looks like being a core issue in the next state election, has been successfully curbed in the past, and it could be again.
But the reef cannot exist in the long term without international efforts to curb global warming. To address climate change and reduce emissions, we need to act both nationally and globally. Local action on water quality (the focus of the Reef 2050 Plan) does not prevent bleaching, or “buy time” to delay action on emissions.
We need adequate funding for achieving the Reef 2050 Plan targets for improved water quality, and a plan to reach zero net carbon emissions. Without that action, an “in danger” listing seems inevitable in 2020. But regardless of lists and labels, the evidence is clear. The Great Barrier Reef is dying before our eyes. Unless we do more, and fast, we risk losing it forever.

Links

• What’s the economic value of the Great Barrier Reef? It’s priceless
• Politics podcast: Anna Krien on the climate wars
• Land clearing on the rise as legal ‘thinning’ proves far from clear-cut
• Adani gives itself the green light, but that doesn’t change the economics of coal
• Report: government won’t rule out underwriting Adani’s Carmichael coal mine

South Australia Announces Tesla As Backer Of World's Largest Battery

Fairfax - Michael Koziol

South Australia has announced Elon Musk's Tesla as the principal builder of the world's largest lithium ion battery to expand the state's renewable energy supply.

Tesla to build world's largest battery
Elon Musk's Tesla will be installing the world's largest lithium-ion battery storage project in South Australia. Video courtesy ABC News.

The mega-project will be built in conjunction with French renewable energy firm Neoen and paired with Neoen's existing Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, north of Adelaide.
SA Premier Jay Weatherill said the "extraordinary collaboration" would deliver a grid-scale battery that would "stabilise the South Australian network as well as putting downward pressure on prices".
"Battery storage is the future of our national energy market, and the eyes of the world will be following our leadership in this space," he said.
The project is intended to sustain 100 megawatts of power and store 129 megawatt hours, which could power about 30,000 homes according to Tesla. That was more than three times as powerful as the world's next-largest such battery, Mr Musk said on Friday.
The billionaire entrepreneur, who first expressed interest in the project over Twitter in March, promised to stick by his pledge to have the system installed and operating within 100 days from signing a contract "or it is free".
"That's what we said publicly, that's what we're going to do," Mr Musk said.

"There was an opportunity to make a significant statement to the world about renewable energy," said Tesla boss Elon Musk. Photo: ABC

The project, slated for completion by December, will harness the existing Hornsdale Wind Farm to charge the mega-battery while the wind is blowing and discharge power when it is most needed.
"It's a fundamental efficiency improvement to the power grid, and it's really quite necessary and quite obvious considering a renewable energy future," Mr Musk said.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill (right) with Treasurer and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis. Photo: AAP

Romain Desrousseaux, deputy chief executive of Neoen, said the project would demonstrate "large-scale battery storage is both possible and now commercially viable" and can provide "dependable, distributable power".
South Australia's electricity troubles, including numerous blackouts, have become a politically contentious issue between the state and federal governments, amid debate about the capacity of renewable energy.
A freak storm in September destroyed transmission lines, triggering backup systems. A key interstate connector with Victoria was ultimately tripped "off" due to automatic safety precautions. But early responses from Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and other commentators pinned some of the blame on the state's reliance on renewables.
In a final report, the Australian Energy Market Operator said a higher reliance on "non-synchronous" forms of energy such as wind and solar meant the power grid was "experiencing more periods with low inertia and low available fault levels", and was more susceptible in times of crisis.
"AEMO is working with industry on ways to use the capability of these new types of power generation to build resilience to extreme events," the report noted.
Tesla, which had become the most valuable carmaker in the US, has seen its share value fall by 20 per cent since June 22, losing $US12 billion ($15.8 billion) in market capitalisation.

Links

• Elon Musk announces Tesla's plan to build world's biggest lithium ion battery in South Australia – video
• South Australia to get $1bn solar farm and world's biggest battery
• Windfarm settings triggered South Australian blackout, final energy report finds
• South Australia to build battery storage and gas-fired power plant in $550m energy plan
• Turnbull under pressure as gas supply takes centre stage in power crisis
• Battery-makers on Turnbull's Tesla chat: 'Give Australian companies a fair go'
• Elon Musk and Malcolm Turnbull talk battery solutions for energy problems
• Elon Musk: I can fix South Australia power network in 100 days or it's free