1. The subsidy was fixed per kWh at a level that has always been vastly above utility scale BESS.
2. Power usage is flatlining. There is no reason to need transmission upgrades for BESS. Successful projects are colocated at retiring generators, or at existing major grid terminus.
3. Are those benefits worth 4x the price? Noting again, that's 4x the subsidy, not even the actual installed cost which is closer to 8-12x.
4. It would have been cheaper even at just the subsidy rate.
replyre: Power usage is flatlining...
replyWhere are you getting that? The 2026 AEMO plan says:
"Electricity consumption is expected to almost double over the coming decades, driven by population and economic growth, electrification across homes, businesses and industry and the emergence of new large loads such as data centres."
https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/major-publications/isp...
also ignoring that Australia is building snowy 2 which is the world's largest battery by far, due to be finished in 2027-2028.
replyAre you really holding up Snowy 2 as a success story? We're past 20bn on Snowy 2 now. Run those numbers against grid scale BESS, on both capacity and peak generation and get back to me - 10 years ago it looked good, now it's not favourable.
replyOK.
replylots of people confuse a $75-$120 / kWh cell price for grid scale battery installed price, which these days is about $300 / kWh.
1 gigawatt hour of installed BESS therefore at current prices is roughly $300 million.
Snowy 2 is 350 gigawatt hours, which would cost $105 billion in equivalent batteries which is about $150 billion in Australian dollars, or ~7x cheaper per gwh.