[nl]

In SA there are some pump-hydro storage projects in the pipeline which should smooth out some of these variations.

[stOneskull]

Good stuff. I was wondering if maybe a desalination plant could work..

[perilunar]

Adelaide has a desal plant. It was even in the news today: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/how-will-the-sa-desal...

[nl]

How? Or was that meant ironically?

Desalination plants use a lot of power, but it's not obvious to me how to use it to store power.

[cperciva]

The idea there isn't that you store power but rather that you only run the plant when power is cheap (and then keep a large enough fresh water reservoir to serve demand until the next cheap electricity arrives). Demand management rather than supply management, effectively.

[nl]

Yeah, the problem is that it's not easy to store very large amounts of water (at least not near where the Adelaide Desalination plant is).

I believe they can pump the water up into the hill, so I guess it's not entirely out of the question.

[hinkley]

Decal plant when the power is cheap and well water the rest of the time?