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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-06-20 Daily Xml
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Grid scale Storage Fund

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (14:20): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Will the minister update the house on the government's grid-scale storage fund policy?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:20): Yes, sir, I certainly will.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: All members in this place, on both sides of the chamber, know that we must create less pollution through the generation of electricity. Where we differ, though, is that we don't want renewable energy asap at any cost, as we saw was the position of the former government, the Labor government, with regard to their energy policy, having been warned for years that, if they kept allowing more and more wind farms to come into South Australia, the grid would destabilise, prices would go up and South Australian consumers would be punished along the way.

They were warned by consultants, whom they paid to give them opinions, but they ignored those warnings. They were warned by other commentators. They were warned by the Premier. They were warned by people for years not to do this. They did it anyway. So we are going to take hold of this issue. We are going to fix this issue for the people of South Australia. Largely, fixing this issue includes the delivery of storage, of batteries, for South Australians.

Everybody in this place knows about our household storage system, supporting households to get batteries connected to their solar, which is a key plank of our policy. But we also have $50 million set aside for grid-scale storage. To be very clear, grid-scale storage is not just about batteries, but it may be big batteries, like the one at Hornsdale, which the previous government implemented after years of being asked to do so by the opposition.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: They did finally get to do that. Mr Speaker, as you know, anybody can check the media records going back years and years and find members of the opposition saying to the government, 'This is exactly what you have to do.'

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: So finally they did that. Finally, they did that, and we are going to build on that with our grid-scale storage fund. We have $50 million set aside. It might be towards large-scale batteries, it might be towards pumped hydro, it might be towards hydrogen and it might be towards more solar thermal. These are the things that we need to put in place so that the variability of renewable energy can be harnessed, so that electricity can be delivered on demand when consumers want it. Consumers are the ones that the previous Labor government forgot all about. There was nothing in their energy policy or what they did that had anything to do with consumers. It was all looking at the supply side.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left!

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: But we are focused on consumers. We know that we need a good supply industry—a sustainable, long-term energy supply industry—so that consumers can be served. Consumers are the focus of our energy policy. We have this grid-scale storage policy so that, at the very large scale, we can store energy. We are very good in South Australia at making electricity from wind and sun. When it's windy and sunny, we have an overabundant supply of it, but when it's not windy and it's not sunny it obviously doesn't do a lot.

So this grid-scale storage system will go not just to paying for a project to happen, the way the previous government did at Hornsdale, but we will spend taxpayers' money to help projects which might not quite get over the line from the proponent's perspective but we can put in other benefits to the consumer that the company did not include in their cost-benefit analysis. We will use consumers' money for that to get projects over the line for the benefit of consumers. All South Australians will benefit from the Marshall Liberal government's energy solution.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is called to order.

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