Green hydrogen is a much hyped commodity. And the world is full of opinions and lists of what it will, and what it won’t do. And at the very bottom of one well-respected ladder of opportunities is using green hydrogen as a balancing power plant for a renewables grid.

Yet that is exactly what the South Australian government has promised to do. It intends to build a 250MW hydrogen electrolyser – 10 times bigger than any other operating plant in the world – to feed into a 200MW hydrogen power plant, which would also be the biggest in the world. The man in charge of this ambitious project is Sam Crafter, the CEO of the Office of Hydrogen Power in South Australia, and he is used to being told that his projects are impossible dreams. He was head of the taskforce that paved the way for the original Tesla big battery, by far the biggest in the world at the time, and 100 times bigger than what the Australian Energy Market Operator had predicted – just a few months earlier – could be accommodated in the grid.

Crafter is seeing a similar level of doubt about this project as he did about the Tesla big battery. “I think everyone was sceptical … I mean, everyone,” Crafter says in the latest episode of RenewEconomy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast . But the battery got […]