Repository file
Capture — 500,000 homes
evidence/2017/five-hundred-thousand-homes/source.md
From Can’t Explain Raw capture
Capture — 500,000 homes
- Claim filed: “a giant 2,000 megawatt battery… providing enough power for 500,000 homes.”
- Who: Malcolm Turnbull, 21 December 2017
- URL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-21/snowy-hydro-2.0-could-actually-cost-as-much-as-$4.5b/9277368
- Date on page: 21 December 2017
- Publisher: ABC News
- Title: Snowy Hydro 2.0 could actually cost as much as $4.5b — more than double the initial price tag
- Captured: 2026-08-14
- Method: saved HTML (
abc-2017-12-21.html)
Verbatim (ABC, quoting Turnbull’s statement)
The project will act as a giant 2,000 megawatt battery in the centre of the National Energy Market, providing enough power for 500,000 homes and much-needed backup for the increasing amount of wind and solar coming into the system.
Same pitch, March — the week and the 20× battery
guardian-2017-03-16.html / abc-2017-03-16.html
Turnbull:
In one hour it could produce 20 times the 100 megawatts an hour expected from the battery proposed by the South Australian Government, but would deliver it constantly for almost a week
Guardian also: “350,000 MW hours over seven days.” Expansion aimed to add 2,000 MW, “enough to power 500,000 homes.”
Paul Broad, March 2017 (Guardian): it would “absolutely” help keep the lights on.
The other meter
2,000 MW is power. 350 GWh is energy. 500,000 homes is a power house-count. “A week” is an energy duration. They are not interchangeable.
2023 reset: capacity revised 10% higher to 2.2 GW; house-count became “three million homes for a week” (see that card). Tank still ~350 GWh.
First power still listed late 2027 as of June 2026. The 2017 lights-on line is still the old scheme.
What this file does not do
It does not file “the turbines are fake.” It files a tap slogan and a tank slogan used as one number.