You don't have to be a Silicon Valley billionaire like Elon Musk or Mike Cannon-Brookes to get excited about the 100-day race to patch over South Australia's power blackout problems with a spare battery or three. On behalf of Australia's future, thank you @elonmusk & @TurnbullMalcolm for taking time to talk. Excited to see what comes this week https://t.co/T2A2gnRE1a??? Mike Cannon-Brookes (@mcannonbrookes) March 12, 2017 The excitement has caught on with some locally listed players with an oar dipped into this part of the energy stream. AFL chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick, would have been pleased to see that the rising tide of interest has lifted his own boat in this race: Carnegie Clean Energy. The stock boomed after CEO Michael Ottaviano confirmed it is "in discussions" with the South Australian government to provide a "home grown" battery storage solution. "We look forward to working with the government of South Australia to unlock this opportunity," said Ottaviano. That'll show Musk! Fitzy and Ottaviano's Carnegie Energy was also getting a boost from another source on Monday. In its other ASX announcement of the day, the company confirmed that the newly elected Mark McGowan Labor government in Western Australia has confirmed its election commitment to fund a $19.5 million commercial-scale wave farm in Albany. Shares of Tesla's local battery rival, Redflow, were also up by double-digit levels in the morning, which would have been great news for its recently appointed board member - former Santos boss, David Knox. You would expect Redflow's chief executive and chairman, Simon Hackett, the entrepreneur who made a success of Internode and sold it to Michael Malone's iiNet, to really use the opportunity to sell the benefits of what he claims is the world's smallest zinc-bromine flow battery. But modesty appears to have got the better of Hackett in his market release. "Elon Musk's promise to deploy 100 MWh of batteries for SA in 100 days is a big challenge, even for a $US40 billion company like Tesla. Redflow, which by contrast is a $90 million company, is not configured to produce the required volume of batteries in the proposed timeframe," said Hackett in response to the query whether it should pitch for the potential deal. "The issue here is not Redflow versus Tesla, it is about renewables and energy storage demonstrating their capacity to technically and affordably replace fossil fuels," said Hackett in a response which may explain the subsequent deflation of its share price. Various people have asked if @RedFlowLimited should pitching in SA grid storage; https://t.co/25vL3REcI5 is the response at this time.??? Simon Hackett (@simonhackett) March 12, 2017 At least it gives Hackett something fresh to talk about as one of the guest speakers at a business seminar in Adelaide later this month titled: South Australia's Future Energy Needs. Also on the bill is former Reserve Bank board member and Energy Australia boss Catherine Tanna. iFrameResize({ enablePublicMethods : true, heightCalculationMethod : "lowestElement", resizedCallback : function(messageData){}, checkOrigin: false },"#pez_iframeA"); Davo and Sheila CBD's recent item about the exorbitant cost of attending the white-men-in-suits festival, Davos, kept nagging at your columnist and we could not think why. Until we remembered a particularly impressive pilgrimage by Leighton in 2014 when it was being run by Hamish Tyrwhitt. He took along no less than four underlings: head of investor relations, Janet Payne, chief development officer, Patrick Brothers, CEO of Leighton Offshore, Boyd Merrett, and the head of Leighton Asia, India and Offshore, Ian Edwards. According to The New York Times report that would have required Leighton to pick up the tab for a "Strategic Partner" level membership, which cost somewhere north of 500,000 Swiss francs, plus tickets that would have been around 18,000 francs. Interestingly, the report said that, as of 2011, Strategic Partners were required to bring along at least one woman to help with diversity of the exclusively white male ranks of the windbagfest. Good thing Tyrwhitt did not have to resort to that sort of sexist tokenism. Girl talk Speaking of which, one of CBD's favourite releases from the recent International Women's Day, came from State Street Global Advisors' SPDR ETF business, which released a white paper offering techniques financial advisers can employ when working with female investors. "Genetic factors like levels of testosterone and how the brain deals with stress can skew female investors into being more risk adverse," it says. "Unlike their male counterparts women also have more vivid memories of negative experiences - the female brain is hardwired for less-selective memory which can further deter risk taking." CBD suspects no women were involved writing this trash. Follow CBD on Twitter. Got a tip? ckruger@fairfaxmedia.com.au
