Californian carpet-bagger, Elon Musk has been threatening South Australia with a plan to scoop up at least $150 million of the $550 million its hapless Labor government is about to squander on non-fixes for its self-inflicted wind power disaster.

So no time like the present to reflect on just how ‘green’ is SA’s plan to squander mega-$millions on Musk’s mega-battery.

For the record, there is no grid-scale battery storage system operating anywhere in the world; and when we say ‘grid-scale’ we mean capable of storing hundreds of MWhs, rather than the 20-100 MWh being touted by Tesla.

Also for the record, batteries do not generate power they simply store it; the power put into them has to come from some generation source at a cost, they take time to charge and discharge as fast as their operators permit. Moreover, as every mobile phone owner knows, batteries have a limited lifespan…