I'd be interested to know more about the politics behind this decision. The Federal government (generally conservative and anti-renewables) was pushing for pumped hydro energy storage, which would have cost several times as much and taken years to build (and made renewable energy look worse for longer).
This looks very much like the state Labor government giving the federal government the finger.
As someone living in Australia, I think the pumped-hydro is nothing more than a thought bubble introduced to take the heat out of renewables debate, which the government was loosing.
They announced it as a certainty, even though the design was nothing more than the one page press announcement, the project feasibility study yet to started and no construction expected for many years, if it indeed it is feasible.
The government is pretty much 100% anti-renewables with their pet love being coal with their catchcry being Coal is good for humanity.
Currently they are considering a $1B government loan to an Indian coal mining company, only because no bank will lend them the money.
My take on this SA announcement is it might end up being a big blow for the government.
If it works out as designed and fixes some of the issues in the SA electricity grid, it be egg on the face of the government, since they insist the SA grid is a disaster only because it has such a high reliance on renewables and is missing a coal powered generator.
To reinforce the point, he's talking about the guy literally standing next to him. It's got to be one of my favourite parts of our otherwise desolate, depressing political landscape in the last 5 years.
I'm glad SA is going this alone. The Federal govt is too tied up in politics to produce a functional solution based on hard data. It'd be all talk and no action and by going it alone, SA undercuts that.
An inevitable campaign based on electricity prices is easily the biggest risk to the state government. The state opposition hasn't really built a viable identity in recent years, but many people are quickly incensed about rising bills.
For Labor, pitching that they are standing up to the Federal government and moving forward regardless, is a reasonable strategy against that.
This project is about expanding the output of the Snowy Mountains scheme, which means greater demand on the storage capacity, not forgetting 1000km of transmission lines to get the energy to Adelaide which means the grid components that failed them last time are in exactly the same place.
The proposed expansion is $1/W capacity.
The expected price for the Neoen project is in the order of $1/W ($100M for 100MW output, 129MWh capacity)
Note that the actual price on the SA battery is not known, and there has not even been a tender out for the Snowy expansion much less accompany at work digging tunnels suddenly finding that Australian conditions are breaking their equipment more than expected :)
The expected cost overruns on the SA tender are aporoximately zero, the expected cost overruns on a large hydro project between initial estimates and completion are approximately 100% based on industry standards.
The Cultana proposal was A$500 million for 300 MW, which is more expensive per Watt but not several times. No way they could build it in 100 days though.
This looks very much like the state Labor government giving the federal government the finger.