So just a smoke test.

Well, now that they've let the smoke out, they'll have to repack it with fresh smoke.

More seriously, did anyone expect any different?

As a side note, it's not renewable. There is no such thing as "renewable energy", regardless of the greenaholics oft repeated canon. Entropy says no.

Entropy says no, but the sun says "wait your turn, I'm still only middle aged".

True, there is plenty enough energy in the sun to last forever. But there is a much more finite amount of rare-earth metals (hence the name) here on earth that are unfortunately needed to build each MW of installed capacity. And when it goes on fire like this, Entropy does indeed kick in.

There's a lot of energy needed to turn that pile of blackened scrap back into a functioning battery. Most likely, it will simply be consigned to the toxic waste dump.

Rare-earth metals are not called that because they are rare/scarce.....

Then please enlighten us, my dear Steve.

And tell me where you've hidden all of the neodymium and cobalt that I need for my green projects.

Quoting Wiki: "Although neodymium is classed as a rare-earth element, it is fairly common, no rarer than cobalt, nickel, or copper, and is widely distributed in the Earth's crust." and "Despite their name, rare-earth elements are relatively plentiful in Earth's crust".

Cobalt is found pretty much everywhere you can find copper and nickle, so it's not all that rare, either.

The "wide distribution" is exactly the problem. From the same wiki page, its average concentration in the earth's crust is around 40mg/kg, or 0.004%. How big do you think the hole would have to be, to extract a useful amount from any particlar part of the earth?

World reserves of neodymium are estimated at 8 million tonnes, or 1/100th that of copper.

They are called "rare earths" for a reason.

That's all very well and good but the problem is getting at it, considering its stuck to other things and buried under forests or at the bottom of oceans where disturbing the silt at the bottom will wipe out the life that lives there or removing aforementioned forests to get at the minerals below is this really a good idea?

If the power lasts for a significant portion of a star's lifetime, it is more than renewable enough for the human race.

Regardless, it's fuzzy and/or under educated thinking. This (and several other scientifically inaccurate anecdotes) are part of the reason many folks here at ElReg question the credentials of those who promote global warming. They quite frankly don't have the scientific background to discuss the topic they are regurgitating/parroting as canon.

"to boost the state's energy reliability, drive down electricity prices and support Victoria's transition to renewable energy – as well as creating local jobs as we take steps towards a COVID normal."

Boost reliability - how's that working out so far?

Drive down prices - so spending huge sums on a project that will generate zero new energy will reduce the cost of a unit. Clearly arithmetic works upside down in the antipodes.

As well as creating local jobs - jobs are a cost, not a benefit of doing something.

>>Boost reliability - how's that working out so far?

[1]quite well actually

"After six months of operation, the Hornsdale Power Reserve was responsible for 55% of frequency control and ancillary services in South Australia. By the end of 2018, it was estimated that the Power Reserve had saved A$40 million in costs, mostly in eliminating the need for a fuel-powered 35 MW Frequency Control Ancillary Service. In 2019, grid costs were reduced by $116 million due to the operation of HPR"

>> so spending huge sums on a project that will generate zero new energy will reduce the cost of a unit

these batteries do not just do what you think they do...

>>- jobs are a cost,

only to the company... to "society" they are a benefit (fewer resources required to support the otherwise unemployed, more spending power in the community and a larger revenue stream in the form of taxes).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve

Nice article, I particularly liked how the battery operators price-gouged during a spike in spot prices, selling power at AUD14,000 per MWh, compared to the usual spot price of AUD100 per MWh.

It is quite surprising what the relatively tiny capacity of the site, at 130MWh, can apparently do compared to the average daily Austrailian power generation of 700,000 MWh. Apparently, it was able to inject 7MW and compensate for the loss of a 560MW power plant! Truly fantastic stuff. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Edit: given the much-hyped ability of the HPR to reduce FCAS costs (the cost of regulating the grid), why does the AUS power board report that the FCAS costs in 2021 are the second-highest ever?

https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/wholesale-statistics

Sun energy is catch and use it or lose it.

A fresh lot might arrive when/if the sun shines tomorrow, but nothing is certain, except it is not renewed. Energy is being radiated all the time by manipulating matter in the nuclear furnace we call the sun

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a problem with using up one finite resource which is polluting for another finite resource which is also polluting but in a more insidious way which is more difficult to measure how much energy and damage is done in its manufacture.

That said we do have acres of roofs fill those with solar, although those would have to be shipped round the world too.

So in Australia, it isn't only beds which are burning.

It would be indeed interesting to know what was the firestarter

Probably something twisted! At least that's what The Prodigy predicted!

If this thingy could crank out 300 Megawatts permanently, I would call it a power plant, not a battery.

Can you user proper units of energy, please? I see that it is just as misleading in the referenced article, but Google takes me to https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/ which educates me that "The Victorian Big Battery is a 300 MW / 450 MWh grid-scale battery storage project in Geelong, Australia which will store enough energy in reserve to power over one million Victorian homes for 1/2 an hour."

So it's a UPS to keep power on till the Diesel kicks in then?

I though Australia had plenty of space, so why pack the building so close? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but maybe future battery farms could have bigger fire breaks between.

How could this be? I was assured by very smart people that massive piles of lithium batteries would be an excellent idea, and would allow us to power our sustainable techno-utopia!

And this is with brand-new cells. Imagine what a similar-sized pile of used lithium batteries could do (and especially if, for example, these great big piles of batteries were being dis-assembled by low-paid workers in an effort to "recycle" them).

I am pretty confident that the economics of lithium extraction, and the realities of lithium battery lifetimes (and chemical properties!), will put an end to this fairly soon.

That's a lot of power, surely! But what's the storage capacity? How long can it sustaain the 300 MW?

It has a storage capacity of 130MWh, which is a truly stinkin' huge battery, but a drop in the ocean compared to the average daily power generation of 700,000MWh in Australia.

I copied this Guardian article to my three American pals. "Three Americans create enough carbon emissions to kill one person, study finds "

I told them to just stop, just dinnae dae that. Australians, did we ever need them anyway?

According to the article, only one shipping container is on fire. Remember OVH? (https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/06/ovh_outlines_threepoint_hyper_resiliance/) Their power supplies were built using shipping containers too.

Why do people build power systems (batteries, UPS, backup generators) in sites made of shipping containers? Is this the best construction method, or merely the cheapest?

Now I accept that we only hear about them when there is a disaster ("Shipping container UPS keeps power running in minor company's IT system after mains power failure" is probably not a headline you'll hear on the BBC 6 O'Clock News any time soon), but are they really an appropriate construction structure for power systems?

Paris Hilton icon because I'm sure she understands this a lot better than I do.

They are probably not second hand shipping containers like you are imagining.

Offsite manufacture of modular units is much, much cheaper than trying to build on site. Once you start down that road you need to be able to ship the modules to site and there is this handy standard that hundreds of thousands of trucks are made to take, the shipping container, The modules will be made to the same maximum diamensions, weight limit, loading points, handing points etc. But that may be all they have in comman with an actual shipping container. The rest may be down to journalists liking of simplifying things to levels the average Daily Star reader can comprehend (so that last word is out).

In the UK we have a lot of grid scale batteries online and being built out. They are almost all 50MW or smaller for regulatory reasons. I am invested in quite a number of them.

The big difference is very, very few use Tesla batteries. Most use NEC batteries. At the minute Tesla only make batteries designed to be mobile. When you need a battery to be mobile you prioritise it being light and dense (small). For fixed installations neither of these matter in the slightest. Reliability is far more important and if you aren't constrained to making the battery as small as possbile you can make the cells much safer by using up more volume. Just look at the Note where Samsung too the battery packing too dense and had to recall and recycle every one made. NEC have a battery line/chemistry designed for fixed installation, with the correct properties prioritised.

The Tesla cells are only used in projects like this because Tesla want to get the volume of manufacture up and so the cost per unit down. So they are offered at a market distorting price to overcome their shortcomings in fixed use. The downside is outcomes like this...