I agree it's a little contrary but I don't think a lot of the market understand renewable electricity generation very well. At least not as well as Ash. I expect some will see this as a 28 million dollar cost without additional generation capacity but we know the cost benefit of storage at low spot prices, frequency management and CI contract advantages.
Lake Bonney is 278.5MW capacity. 18Mw is ~6.5% of that. Last quarter's revenue numbers showed 329 out of 345 GWh were sold for Infigen. That is 4.7% loss of salable energy. Assuming that was indicative of Lake Bonney's efficiency, then the battery would take up all of that loss and allow it to be sold to CI customers at a premium to average spot prices. The average selling price based on the quarterly was $43.4 million / 329MWh = $131.91 /MWh . 28 million at~13MW extra production at that rate would be paid off in about 100 days assuming full wind and no big price fluctuations. Obviously that is not likely but even a year to pay off (3 times uncertainty factor for unknowns) is pretty good and then add 28 million a year to the sales.
I bought some more yesterday because I just can't believe the bargain the SP is at now. I think we have an advantage in that the market won't get it until the financials show the benefit. Until then we get a discount opportunity.