A military museum in the Northern Territory has made a “life saving” switch to solar, after the installation of a 100kW rooftop PV system that is expected to reduce its electricity bill by $270,000 and pay for itself in the next four years.

Energy storage has reached a tipping point, so much so that around 320GW of new large scale power plants that might have been planned in the 10 years to 2023 will now no longer be needed.

First thing first, this scheme won’t amount to a hill of beans unless the Paris climate targets are adopted, and that does not mean the modest down-payment from the Coalition on which this blueprint is modelled, but a serious attempt to deliver on the pledge to limit average global warming to well below 2°C.

The release of the long-awaited Finkel Review and its promise of cheaper bills for consumers, even as emissions are reduced, underline the fundamental challenges addressing Australia’s electricity sector that the chief scientist fails to address.