Are the Federal Coalition and conservative commentators misreading the public view on battery storage, and particularly the “world’s biggest lithium-ion” battery storage array soon to be built by Tesla in South Australia?
Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison has been mocking it, saying it is about as useful as the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, or the Big Prawn in Ballina.
Energy minister Josh Frydenberg prompted a major riff on conservative commentators about its usefulness when he said it could only store 1 per cent of the state’s wind output.
(Er, may be that’s not what it is intended to do. Here’s an explainer if you are still in doubt).
But if the conservatives are struggling with new technology, the public seems to be embracing it. Energy analyst Ketan Joshi published this graph above on his Twitter feed which shows that even 70 per cent of Liberal/National supporters think the battery is a good idea, or a very good idea.
