Big money for green SA
Billionaire Sanjeev Gupta is buying even further into South Australia’s industrial sector.
Mr Gupta earlier this year bought both the Whyalla steelworks and a controlling stake in renewable energy firm Zen Energy through his company Liberty House.
But even more money will flow to the state with Mr Gupta’s announcement this week of plans for $700 million worth of solar, battery storage and pumped hydro.
Zen says the projects will together provide one gigawatt of “additional dispatchable renewable generation assets”.
While details are fairly slim, the company says the plans include 200 megawatts of solar PV in Whyalla, some of which will be located at the steelworks itself.
The company also says it will build 120MW worth of pumped hydro at a disused mine in the Middleback Range near Whyalla, and a 100MW lithium ion battery at Jamestown.
“Electricity costs today are at astronomically high levels ... so to beat these prices is not difficult,” Mr Gupta said.
“We think, eventually, renewable power is cheaper than fossil fuel and we want to participate in that transition.
“We'll be powering most of the high-energy users in South Australia. Currently the Whyalla works imports power from the grid. It has a small power plant itself but largely it imports power from the grid.”
Mr Gupta has set a two-year timeframe for the projects, pledging to “be done by 2019”.
Energy analyst Bruce Mountain says Mr Gupta’s projects, in combination with other renewable energy plans by billionaire Elon Musk, will reduce power bills in SA.
“If he gets close to implementing all of this, this will be a revolution in electricity supply. This is a major, major development,” Mr Mountain told the ABC.
“The total capacity that's being spoken about here is considerably greater than the needs of his own plant and I suspect after meeting his own needs he intends to sell a lot of that capacity on the market.
“[A gigawatt] is roughly two-thirds of the system average demand and about one-third of the peak demand.”
“There's a land grab going on in the world of battery storage at the moment. Everyone's clamouring for scale and market positioning, and I think Elon Musk's operation has achieved global scale in battery production a lot quicker than others,” he said.