That would be the most expensive way to do it… …I did some back of the envelope calculations here… for residential only…
My estimate was about $27B for 1 hours supply. Or $678B for 24 hours. The duration of battery support could be anyone’s guess, but assume that it is needed for maximum 12 hour duration (night + spare capacity for peaks). This would be around $340B. 12 hours also assumes there will be over generation in some regions to cater for no generation in others.
I know these figures are rubbery and assume the capacity reported in the media for the SA Tesla network support are correct…l know the batteries don’t have this purpose, but it does give an indication of cost of mass battery storage connected to a network (which is cheaper than single residential battery packs)
Now if one includes non-residential electricity users…commercial and manufacturing…
(From DoEE, 2017, Australian energy update)
This would be about 3.5 times residential. The total would then be about 4.5 (3.5+1) residential or about $1.5T…what a minute, that is what the article says and not I am not the author of the article.
So a figure in the order of $1T+ may not be unreasonable based on today’s prices.
The cost would need to spread across all electricity consumers…or the additional costs would be about $100B per year (assuming batteries have a 10 year life before replacement).
These numbers while guesstimates, show the cost of a battery a supported could be very expensive and cost consumers about $100B+ extra per year (or about $4000 per head of population). If the numbers are real, an average families power bill would increase by about $2-3k per year (assuming residential pay on their share 1/4.5).
While home electricity prices will increase, so will every product a household uses as the costs to business will be transferred to the consumer through higher prices. If one assumes the consumer pays all the additional cost, either directly or through tax subsidies, the average household costs would increase by about $10K per year (including residential electricity bills). The actual costs would be less as some costs would be exported if we are still able to pass on the higher costs to consumers in other countries and we still have an export market as a result of higher product costs.
