Dick Smith’s advertisement – $6.5 trillion for battery storage will be unaffordably expensive

Dick Smith’s latest advertisement is for publication in The Australian on Wednesday 15 January 2025.

An Industry Super Australia discussion paper “Modernising electricity sectors” by economist Stephen Anthony and Professor Alex Coram, notes that the South Australian Tesla battery (Hornsdale) has a storage capacity of about one hour, and cost $90 million to build. The report says that we would need 72,000 of these batteries to provide energy backup for one and a half days.

The report states:

“This gives a total cost of $6.5 trillion ($US4.9 trillion).  In terms of opportunity costs, this is about ten times that of pumped hydro or about 1,000 nuclear reactors.”

Battery prices are coming down, but even at half the price of the Hornsdale battery, the power will still be unaffordable.

No other country has an energy system based on the experimental CSIRO plan with high levels of intermittent wind, solar and storage. However over 30 countries use nuclear power, with another 60 nuclear reactors being built now. It’s certainly the most reliable, proven and lowest cost way to provide emission free base load power.

Click here to see the full advertisement.