I'm sure that batteries will be part of the mix for energy stability / security, but I do worry about whether the reporters and politicians who are getting caught up in Elon Musk's plan to "fix" South Australia's energy problems have any grasp of the scale of what he is offering, and what it would take to "fix" things?
As I understand it, Musk is proposing a 100 MW.hr battery pack. That facility could store surplus generated energy (e.g. when the wind turbines are running while the demand for electricity is low), and then provide 10 MW for 10 hours, or 100 MW for 1 hour, for example.
According to the live chart on this page
http://www.statedevelopment.sa.gov.a...ply-and-market at the time of writing this post (9:25 am on Wednesday 15 March), South Australia is generating 803 MW by Gas, 675 MW by wind, and 192 MW by solar photo-voltaic, for a total in-state instantaneous generation of 1670 MW.
So Elon Musk's "fix" will store enough energy to supply something like 6% of South Australia's current instantaneous electricity demand for 1 hour.
Hmmmm ....