Incentivizing usage during peak times makes total sense, but if price swings are this wild, how are grid scale batteries not highly economical? My rough ballpark math was that you need roughly 20 kilowatts of battery storage to make this issue basically nonexistent, and that would cost about 10 billion dollars, which doesn't seem that much for this.
I think it's less a question of batteries being economical, and more a question of the relative economics of batteries vs solar panels.
After all, if the highest demand is between 16:30 and 19:00 you could use batteries to store power at 12:00 and sell it at 18:00 - or in famously sunny Australia you could build enough solar panels that solar output at 18:00 matches power demand.
If batteries have a solid 9% return on investment, but solar panels have an even better 12% return on investment, panels will outpace batteries even though the batteries are a decent investment.
(Also, from a politican's perspective, making batteries highly economical is how you get batteries built. And an awful lot of pro-environment policies involve raising taxes, banning things and creating new chores; it's nice to have some green policy announcements that actually benefit voters in the short term.)
Definitely so. Unless you are on the equator, the sun is up for less than 12 hours a day from the autumnal equinox to the spring equinox. The sun will set before 18:00 local solar time. So apart from funkiness with time zones and summer time (which extends a couple of weeks past the autumnal equinox in Aus), yes, roughly half the year.
You're not crazy in the broad sweep of your idea, but actually because the sun isn't a point of light you're also not strictly correct, for example in Singapore the day is always more than 12 hours long.
Singapore is close to the equator (1°17′N) — the days are roughly 12 hours long all year. No, it's not exact. They vary from +3 to +12 minutes. It's close enough (<2% error).
It's not entirely due to the apparent size of the sun — refraction due to the atmosphere has a slightly greater effect.
(Singapore is also in the 'wrong' timezone. The sun sets around 7 pm every day, giving it effectively permanent daylight saving time.)
But regardless, Australia is not near the equator. The timezones are mostly ok. In most of the country (for most of the population anyway) the sun sets before 18:00 for roughly half the year. No amount of solar is going to power the evening peak demand without storage.
You won't get 12% return if your panels generate electricity which is only paid between 18 and 19, because there is already overcapacity between 16:30 and 18.
> If batteries have a solid 9% return on investment, but solar panels have an even better 12% return on investment, panels will outpace batteries even though the batteries are a decent investment.
Sorry, normally I hate this follow-up on HN, but can you share a source? I tried to Google for sources, but there is a pretty wild range of ROI in different countries/regions. My point: Ideally, can you provide personal/anecdotal experience, or something that is specific to a country or region?
EDIT
I forgot to say: I like your idea of intraday arbitrage using batteries! It is a very cool idea. Surely, this could be well modeled to know your expected ROI before investment/build-out.
One of my co-workers (I'm Australian) has 500 kilowatt-hours of storage at home...which is wild. Much more common is the 10-20 kilowatt-hours of domestic storage for a house.
My dad buys lead acids written off from storm damage to solar systems (The whole system gets replaced under insurance even if the batteries are just a bit worn) and then sells them to preppers in the middle of nowhere. For a while he had above 300KW/h of storage, basically completely off grid with few shutdowns. It was kind of nuts. His house did burn down, but it was arson.
'Is a thing' - obviously, stalled due to red tape. As an immigrant to Australia I am repeatedly amazed at how long anything involving the the government takes.
That's ~8 used EV batteries. Each cost less than 10k, maybe 6-8k AUD.
If you know your way around high voltage DC, got a tractor and appropriate emulator - not exactly difficult or super expensive to pull off.
Granted it's pretty uncommon setup as grid batteries themselves are pretty cheap too and used EV battery is simply too large for home user, too much hassle, liability, etc to save like $2-3k.
Does he have a saltwater aquarium, or any other hobby that can make use of it? If not, I can highly recommend that he get into it, if he's into that kind of overkill :)
The more households that buy them, the less peak power generation is needed and less large scale battery deployments. If the ROI of a household battery was just 4%, you are better off economically paying higher power bills and sticking that money in an index fund. But if subsidies increase that ROI, more people buy batteries. The money the government contributes hopefully ends up less than they would need to spend on large scale battery deployments or on legacy power generation to power peak usage times. It also has the side effect of getting more citizens (literally) invested in sustainable power usage, and people get more interested in insulating their homes, buying more efficient appliances, moving away from gas etc.
> which is why there’s a subsidy required for people to buy them?
the gov't also offers interest free (but inflation indexed) loans to tertiary education.
Just because there's a subsidy, doesn't mean the tax payer is paying a price for inefficiency. The policy itself needs to be individually examined to determine whether it's an efficient use of funds, not simply that it's a subsidy (time frame needs to be taken into account too).
Is it so out of the ordinary that a government tries to help people save money or what's the question? Sounds like you've only had the American experience in life unfortunately.
If something actually saves money then it doesn't require a subsidy because people would be doing it regardless.
Meanwhile the government doesn't have any of its own money, so it can't really give you something that was yours to begin with, all it can do is take it from you and then give it back with strings attached. How is that helping you? Instead of subsidizing something you can make up your own mind about whether you want, they should just lower your taxes by the amount of the subsidy and let you use your money for that or something else at your choice.
> If something actually saves money then it doesn't require a subsidy because people would be doing it regardless.
Spoken as someone who never been poor. There is definitely a ton of stuff people with money can do to save more money, that is completely out of reach for the people who would actually benefit from those savings the most. Subsidies is quite literally about reaching these folks that others tend to forget about.
> all it can do is take it from you and then give it back with strings attached. How is that helping you?
Compared to "take it from you and not give it back to you", it's definitely helping people who have less money. Not sure how this needs explaining.
> Spoken as someone who never been poor. There is definitely a ton of stuff people with money can do to save more money, that is completely out of reach for the people who would actually benefit from those savings the most. Subsidies is quite literally about reaching these folks that others tend to forget about.
Except that there is no additional money, its just your own money but now there are strings.
On top of that, that still isn't necessary for things that save a non-trivial amount of money, because that's what loans are for. If it has a $100/mo loan payment and saves $150/mo on the electric bill then you take out a loan or buy it on an installment plan and don't need to have any accumulated capital in order to do it.
> Compared to "take it from you and not give it back to you", it's definitely helping people who have less money. Not sure how this needs explaining.
Why would anybody want that either, instead of just not taking it from you to begin with?
>>> If it has a $100/mo loan payment and saves $150/mo on the electric bill then you take out a loan or buy it on an installment plan and don't need to have any accumulated capital in order to do it.
This depends on whether you'll pay back the loan. Just because paying the loan back saves you $50 / month forever starting immediately doesn't mean you'll do it. You might be the kind of person who takes out a loan, spends all your money on something else, and lets the bills go unpaid.
If you aren't that kind of person, you probably do have some accumulated capital.
But if you are, just the fact that the loan is hugely profitable and you should be able to pay it back - if you were a completely different person - doesn't mean you'll be able to get the loan. You shouldn't be able to get the loan, because you won't pay it back.
The recipient doesn't necessarily know ahead of time how profitable the investment will be. Risk aversion will cause them to avoid investments that are profitable in expectation if they believe the chance of ending up worse off is too high. By offering interest-free loans, the government can pool that risk so that individual loan recipients hesitate less to make the positive-expectation investment.
> The recipient doesn't necessarily know ahead of time how profitable the investment will be.
Neither does the government.
> Risk aversion will cause them to avoid investments that are profitable in expectation if they believe the chance of ending up worse off is too high.
Risk aversion works both ways. The risk of not making the investment is that electricity prices in the evening get too high and then you have to pay them. If you install the batteries then you have a known fixed loan payment. If you don't you have an unpredictable variable electric bill. Which one triggers more risk aversion?
> By offering interest-free loans, the government can pool that risk
Risk pools don't work for correlated risk. The primary financial risk is that too many people install batteries -- which subsidies make more likely -- causing the price differential between various times of day to become too small to justify the investment. And that can happen even with interest subsidies. So then you have the government expending tax money to not just cause the people who would have installed them anyway to end up underwater, but to increase the number of such people.
... for purchases from "approved" "accredited" suppliers[]. AKA the interest differential is regressive tax to funnel money to favored suppliers. Notice there's no option for the poor to simply install it themselves, which would save them more money than an interest free loan, but wouldn't funnel money to rich government approved install contractors.
And there's your grift. As soon as the home owner wants to allocate the "profit" of install to themselves, it is a swift kick in the ass but that will go to our buddies, and thank you very much for your taxes.
> Except that there is no additional money, its just your own money but now there are strings.
I understand what you mean, and yeah, "it's just your money", but also, it really isn't. Poor people have to pay taxes, no way around it, getting them back as subsidies is still better for them than not getting it back at all. The choice isn't "Keep the money or have subsidies", the choice is "The money goes to other stuff or get subsidies".
> On top of that, that still isn't necessary for things that save a non-trivial amount of money, because that's what loans are for. If it has a $100/mo loan payment and saves $150/mo on the electric bill then you take out a loan or buy it on an installment plan and don't need to have any accumulated capital in order to do it.
Are those interest-free or managed by for-profit entities? Because "loans" are vastly different things compared to subsidies, but I'm guessing you already knew this.
> Why would anybody want that either, instead of just not taking it from you to begin with?
Because "not taking it from you to begin with" isn't a practical and realistic alternative, that's not how the world, and especially taxes and government works...
> The choice isn't "Keep the money or have subsidies", the choice is "The money goes to other stuff or get subsidies".
That's the false dichotomy that happens in a broken government, but then why hold that out as something desirable?
> Are those interest-free or managed by for-profit entities?
Is the larger amount of mortgage or car loan debt they have to carry when they pay the extra money in tax?
> Because "not taking it from you to begin with" isn't a practical and realistic alternative, that's not how the world, and especially taxes and government works...
Your argument seems to be that lowering taxes on ordinary people is impossible?
> That's the false dichotomy that happens in a broken government, but then why hold that out as something desirable?
Personally I see it as stuff that happens in countries where the government care about the well-being of all, not just a select few (usually the ones with the most money). It's desirable that society improves, lots of that happens because of tax money. Subsidies usually means re-allocating funds, not raising taxes, although that might happen over time. Still, increasing taxes isn't inherently bad, especially when used for good. But I also know this is a somewhat controversial point of view in many hyper-capitalistic societies.
> Your argument seems to be that lowering taxes on ordinary people is impossible?
Yeah sure, I'm also clearly arguing for murdering children. Fun discussion, hope you'll enjoy the rest of your Tuesday :)
I'm honestly having trouble comprehending what your position is supposed to be here. It really seems to be that using the money to lower taxes on ordinary people rather than providing them with subsidies is a thing that could never happen. As if the prospect that their taxes could be lower than they are now, rather than only the same or higher, is something you can't even imagine.
Well off people do not allocate capital in a way that's socially or economically (on a national level) optimal. So the government has to do that for them (even if those who the majority of taxes personally benefit less from that than if they were allowed to keep that money).
I don't think that's entirely unreasonable. After all there are hardly any personal incentives for individuals to invest into infrastructure, education or healthcare of people who can't afford it and plenty of other areas even if that's what allowed them to accumulate a significant proportion of not the overwhelming majority of their wealth over the long term.
> Well off people do not allocate capital in a way that's socially or economically (on a national level) optimal. So the government has to do that for them (even if those who the majority of taxes personally benefit less from that than if they were allowed to keep that money).
But we're talking about a government subsidy for something people do have a personal incentive to invest in.
On top of that, the misalignment of incentives applies even more to government officials, who have perverse incentives to enrich cronies, make inefficient transfers to special interests in a specific range of "not currently voting for them but close enough to the line to be worth paying off" at the expense of the public at large, or just not care about getting a given thing right because their position is being secured by something unrelated.
If there's hardly any individual desire, as you say, to fund the development of the poor then taxes in that pursuit are illegitimate under a theory taxation happens by the assent of the people (even if only roughly a majority or their representatives).
Given that most taxation done with the the advertised goal of helping the poor in Australia does happen with popular assent of individuals, I would theorize your position is false and that people do have some individual incentives to develop services offered to the poor -- for profit, humanitarian / charitable reasons, and a variety of other considerations.
> have some individual incentives to develop services offered to the poor
I never said that wasn't the case but historically that "some" was never sufficient. On average people are rational and selfish to a larger extent than they are altruistic.
> taxes in that pursuit are illegitimate under a theory taxation happens by the assent of the people
Well the whole concept of an organized society falls apart if individuals can personally freely chose which laws to obey and which taxes to pay. You have to have a balance based on a reasonable consensus, otherwise you end up with totalitarianism or anarchy (and in that case the people who have the means and resources to do that will establish alternative power structures and will end up subjugating those who do not AND also outcompete those how have the means but are unwilling to do the same).
No, I'm not talking about picking and choosing for a voted tax. I'm saying it can't be true most people don't want to help fund the poor if the majority are voting to tax themselves to fund the poor. Clearly under anything remotely resembling the Australian representation of what they claim their representative democracy is, the majority of people already decided they individually are incentivized to help the poor develop infrastructure.
It can't simultaneously be true that most don't want to help the poor at their own cost while also the tax has been legitimized by the majority wanting to help the poor at their own cost. Only individuals or representatives elected by individuals can vote and if their incentive was to not help the poor then they'd vote not to and that would be that.
> I'm saying it can't be true most people don't want to help fund the poor if the majority are voting to tax themselves to fund the poor.
Or people have a tendence to perceive a system where everyone is required to pay their "fair share" as more just and are more willing to (often begrudgingly) participate in it. If the system was fully voluntary the average contribution would be significantly lower that it is now. Also a significant proportion might feel they benefit from this system more than they pay into it (or are risk averse and prefer having the safety net even if they contribute more than they benefit)
> decided they individually are incentivized to help the poor develop infrastructure
Well I'm generally vaguely incentivized to help the poor and develop infrastructure. Would I be willing to voluntary give up 40% of my income to do that rather than a significantly lower proportion? No, of course not. When it comes to infrastructure I'd be willing to pay very little or nothing at all if I know my neighbour isn't contributing anything. I don't think the average person would behave particularly differently than me.
I can tell you you're absolutely wrong about the average person. I live in a place with no public infrastructure (I'm talking about, not even public roads, and not some rich HOA, a ~poor unorganized community without any infrastructure association) which has allowed me to view how average people react when there is no taxation based infrastructure. When it breaks, the neighbors help. I help maintain the roads for my poor neighbor. My other neighbor helped fix my water line when it broke. Sometimes I take my heavy equipment and donate labor to prepare for storms, etc. The infrastructure is literally donation based. We get it done for a tiny fraction of what the tax based system cost and everyone is far better off, even if the amount donated is less than what the taxes would be and some people "cheat" the system.
It's actually quite rare to find someone who says I will help the poor, but only if my neighbor also pays, otherwise they can get fucked. This is very bizarre thinking. The people in my basically ancap-dystopia neighborhood don't even behave in this sadistic way. It honestly sounds more like a manufactured "gotcha" to win an argument than a way someone would think.
In reality the fraction people that would vote to tax themselves, are more than willing to donate in the case they don't get the tax, your sadistic MAD view where you punish the poor just because some other guy didn't help too is relatively rare and not indicative of the mindset of most people who are voting to help the poor. I honestly think that most anyone who would vote for the tax, does not act that way when dropped in a neighborhood like mine, and you probably would not either.
> It's actually quite rare to find someone who says I will help the poor, but only if my neighbour also pays, otherwise they can get fucked
You are seeing all of this in a very, very black and white way. It's about how much the average person is willing (or forced to) to contribute in either system especially when you try to scale it up to hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Libertarianism is an utopian ideology not particularly different to Communism in the sense that both are incompatible with human nature.
I mean there is simply no empirical evidence this approach scales beyond small high trust (usually homogeneous) communities. Tragedy of the commons is a thing.
> your sadistic MAD view where you punish the poor
That's extremely reductive... and you are making this way too personal than it should be ; )
Well that would apply to a lot of thing governments spend money on. I think the idea is that governments are better at allocating capital in certain cases (obviously one might disagree with that) than the people/companies who generate the most tax revenue. I mean on an individual level even if solar batteries are profitable people who have sufficient disposable income might chose to invest it into the US stock market (if it still offers better returns) amongst other things than into something that benefits the Australian economy or society.
To target the "poor people need more money" problem, the most direct answer is give them money. If someone's answer is a variety of politically-allocated narrow subsidies, you should wonder what interest they're really aiming to satisfy.
When you get money, you can choose to spend it on what's worth the most to you. Thus "strings attached" on the opposite.
> If something actually saves money then it doesn't require a subsidy because people would be doing it regardless.
…assuming people are good at math.
And given that most people probably don't have a bunch of cash just sitting there doing nothing, they will have to take out a loan and most folks probably don't like going into debt even though 'the math says' it's a good ROI.
The idea that 'ROI good, therefore people will do it' is the 'spherical cow' of economics. In reality there are all sorts of other motivations for human economic actions:
To be clear, this doesn't change the price floor for ROI calculations. A non "approved" contractor or DIY job non-subsidized is well cheaper than a piddly few percent interest rate arbitrage to a pre-approved list. This does nothing beyond let some rich contractors regressively allocate money from taxpayers to themselves by artificially appearing a bit less of a premium to the alternatives.
It looks more like to me some installers saw their industry was becoming commoditized and the government got together with them to figure out how to grift taxpayers into making the more connected ones command a premium while simultaneously being better positioned to eat the lunch of the small middle class "guy and a truck" who does cash jobs for cheap but has no resources to become "accredited" on a subsidization list.
It can work when the marginal cost of new capacity is high, compared to existing capacity.
E.g., if the marginal cost of supporting 1 kW of new capacity may be X, while the current averaged cost of 1 kW provided to existing customers may be Y, with Y < X.
The customer will calculate their ROI on a battery purchase based on the cost Y of kW to them, which may be poor (4%), while on the government level of the ROI may is closer to that implied by the cost X (say 10%). However, the government cannot easily pass on the "marginal cost" to customers as there is no specific kWh which is that marginal one across all customers.
In this case a subsidy directly picks out customers who can reduce their demand by buying a battery (e.g., a subsidy which raises the ROI to somewhere between 4% and 10%).
Think about people who could not afford the initial investment. It's beneficial for society here if the government redistributes wealth for the benefit of all.
> Think about people who could not afford the initial investment.
This is what loans and installment plans are for, the payments for which come out of the savings on the utility bill.
> It's beneficial for society here if the government redistributes wealth for the benefit of all.
Which has nothing to do with batteries. If you want to do that then provide them with a refundable tax credit that allows for a negative tax rate in cases where that's deemed desirable.
And even that doesn't apply to the majority of people who are currently paying a non-negative amount of tax. Why attach strings to the money going to a middle class homeowner who should have just been allowed to keep that portion of their own salary?
But that's the point. It isn't. Electricity costs more in the evening than during the day and there is a technology that can profitably be used to arbitrage the difference. There is no coordination problem at all, people have the direct individual incentive to buy the technology, on credit if necessary, without any form of government subsidy or involvement whatsoever.
Because the individualized incentives do not take into account the community benefits.
The money saved is distributed across the community, for both those that directly benefit and those that can't (eg renters, apartments etc). The general benefit is of greater value than the individual savings.
Your attitude that somehow taxation is theft is a very silly Ayn Randian Objectivism outgrowth that has never been true, even in the most "free" US states.
> Because the individualized incentives do not take into account the community benefits.
Only if the utility company is pricing things incorrectly.
If the price of electricity is ~free during the day and expensive in the evening then the individualized incentives for installing a battery line right up.
> Your attitude that somehow taxation is theft is a very silly Ayn Randian Objectivism outgrowth that has never been true, even in the most "free" US states.
Whether it's theft or not doesn't change the arithmetic. When you're paying them the money they're paying you, it was your money to begin with.
Yes, the government subsidies for home batteries specifically are a very poorly targeted handout. Unfortunately splashy policies like this are classic vote buying measures, even if economically they don't make much sense
- home batteries cost more
- homeowners buying batteries are already pretty well off on average
- a large portion of the population (renters) is excluded from the policy.
- prices are falling anyway so the subsidy is just a waste of tax dollars, arguably
- grid scale batteries are more cost effective and benefit everyone via cheap prices broadly, instead of specific homeowners.
Yes. People can't always afford super economical things when the initial cost is high and the pay-off takes a while, but is easily worth it in the end.
Yeah this is why a lot of people were thinking that the Australian opposition asking for spending $40-50 billions for nuclear that would come online in 20-30 years and to keep using coal and gas till then were being stupid.
I think the likely cost would have been hundreds of billions considering Australia does not have a nuclear energy generation industry. It currently has a very small nuclear workforce as it only has a small nuclear medical reactor on the outskirts of Sydney.
I am talking about the $30 billion that the opposition was making up. My point was that even those made up numbers for nuclear were still more expensive than installing solar and batteries.
They are, and they are being rapidly rolled out and the "post sunset" spikes are rapidly being flattened by both grid storage and "behind the meter" home batteries.
One issue with grid scale batteries is that the solar is predominantly generated in the suburbs, but the grid wasn’t built for a huge “generator” in the suburbs. It requires retrofitting the grid for this huge excess. It would be better to instead store it in the suburbs in household batteries (which they are also building out like crazy).
Well, i can only be cheaper to shift demand to high production hours then building a battery. Especially as you don’t only need an inverter for the battery but also the charger or MPPT to suck up the peak solar power which is only lasts for about 3 hours. So you can save building a lot of excess batteries
They've already burned at least $15bn on that disastrous Snowy Hydro "battery" project... Could've just rolled out consumer batteries on a large scale instead.
At current battery project prices, matching Snowy 2.0’s roughly 350 GWh of energy storage capacity with Tesla Megapacks would cost around AUD $218 billion [0] and require Tesla’s entire global Megapack production capacity redirected to a single client for five years.
$15 billion is far more than Snowy 2.0 should have cost. But it remains substantially cheaper than any lithium-ion battery build for bulk storage. Storage on this scale is essential in a post-coal electricity grid, and batteries are not (yet) plausible substitutes for bulk storage.
[0] This assumes linear scaling. In reality, placing an order like this would grossly distort supply and demand on many levels. Thus the cost would ultimately be superlinear.
Snowy 2.0 has major limitations on what it can supply, the headline number is very misleading.
And the comparison shouldn't be to batteries alone, but solar/wind and batteries. The former can be used directly and fill the batteries repeatedly on a timeline that is predictable.
It provides no extra value for the electricity to be stored long term if for the same money you can generate and store it short term.
Your reply — and especially the attached article — misunderstand the reality of operating a grid at scale.
Responding to you:
Solar and wind are just as relevant to pumped hydro, which is really just a different kind of battery. The real question is how much short-duration storage is needed from chemical batteries and how much long-duration storage is needed from pumped hydro. Chemical batteries are essential for grid stabilisation, frequency control, and intra-hour balancing. They're necessary, but not sufficient.
Pumped hydro provides something that no economically realistic combination of batteries, solar, and wind can yet deliver at scale: enough stored energy to contribute towards grid stability through consecutive overcast, low-wind days. The main alternative is to build and maintain gas-fired peaking plants for occasional backup, which is both costly and keeps us dependent on fossil fuels.
Responding to the article:
While there are credible doubts about the value of Snowy 2.0, the article does not establish its headline claim that batteries are a cheaper system-level alternative. Most critically, it doesn't acknowledge the role of pumped hydro as an insurance asset. The point of insurance isn't to be cost effective in normal times, it's to be cost effective against the risk-adjusted consequences of grid destabilisation.
It is true that under normal conditions, Snowy Hydro would have little incentive to discharge fully because doing so could depress market prices. That is why capacity contracts, underwriting arrangements and reliability options exist. We know that strategic storage has substantial social value that its owner cannot fully capture through energy arbitrage. This is a common problem for reliability assets: their success can destroy the scarcity rents needed to finance them. Hence contracts.
We want to eliminate fossil fuels and lower costs as quickly as possible.
Vague claims that some alternative like nuclear or Snowy 2.0 will somehow make that last 1% of fossil easier to eliminate are both dubious and irrelevant if their construction uses money that could have easily eliminated 1% of fossil fuel every year for decades.
And once we get close to that last few percent of fossil gas in the electric system it would be better for costs and climate to focus on electrifying industry and homes with cheap electricity anyway.
Yeah the battery storage story has to acknowledge the fact that global production capacity simply isn't actually high enough to deliver that many batteries so we need alternative solutions to the problem as well.
The cost of the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project is estimated to range from \(\$12\) billion to as high as \(\$42\) billion depending on the scope of costs included (such as direct construction, interest, and broader transmission). Originally announced in 2017 with a $2 billion price tag, the project has faced massive scale and logistical blowouts. The cost of the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project is estimated to range from $12 billion to as high as $42 billion depending on the scope of costs included (such as direct construction, interest, and broader transmission).
That said , hydro systems have a LONG LIFESPAN - 100 YEARS ?
Batteries need to be replaced every X years.
So the ecomiomics of the comparisoan would need to be calculated ...
All the complexity has been in geotechnical issues, pockets of mud, sinkholes, then ultra hard rock, then loose shale, damage in blasting operations, needing to pump liquid nitrogen into the rock to deal with subterranean water flow, soluble limestone etc etc.
One of the scariest industrial deaths you can imagine: cutting into a pocket of shale and the TBM and crew just vanishing into the maw of the Midgard serpent and the whole tunnel filling.
That was exactly the point of the project though - it was designed by the conservative side of politics in our country to try and crowd out investment in batteries and other renewables while taking enough time to build to keep coal plants operating longer in the meantime.
It didn't work at all for that though - we had a lot of private investment in large-scale batteries anyway, because the cost came down quickly just as most people (apart from the conservatives) expected. Then the other side of Government got in and put a subsidy scheme to get hundreds of thousands of home batteries installed, which has been multiple times better bang-for-buck than the Snowy 2.0 scheme, as well as taking far shorter a time. At the same time coal plants are shutting down as expected because they are increasingly unreliable given their old ages.
Snowy 2.0 be an expensive stranded asset basically, it will work and be somewhat useful but extremely uneconomical so basically relying on the cost being written off - if it had to recoup any investment then it couldn't run because it'd never be able to sell the power for high enough.
