Why doesn't Panasonic just cut out the middleman here? Are they afraid of making their own deals in america?
Combining thousands of cells into large packs that don't overheat, catch fire, leak, or wear out prematurely turns out to be pretty hard.
Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
31–40 of 218 posts
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#32There was a really neat class I took in college on the economics of elctricity markets, and one of the things you discuss is base vs peak power generating plants (as discussed other places in this thread) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor seems to be a nice introduction to the idea.
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#33> Tesla's contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day This is < 0.1% of the total number of homes in SoCal, just to put it in perspective.
It's pretty important to realize that this isn't the problem that needs solving. Batteries aren't great for large amounts of power for long periods of time (yet). What they are good at is smoothing out the supply curve from potentially intermittent suppliers like solar and wind, and that is one of the things that causes price spikes.
Having real-time pricing of electricity coupled with users who can adapt their usage automatically to real-time prices will also considerably moderate power demand.
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#34I find it weird how technological process sometimes plays out. We have been complaining for decades about how green energy is unreliable and that we need innovative storage solutions. And now batteries somehow seem to be good enough and we are like: "Hey, why don't we put a bunch of batteries in a container?" Proving ones again that economy trumps technology. The next really big thing after green energy will be recyc…
I think this is very much a success of technology. I see it as battery tech having advanced enough (at a slow, but exponential rate) to bring us to a point where this is technologically possible AND economical
I guess what I am trying to say is that the future is rather lame and predictable. When imagining the future we are sometimes thinking there will be some giant jump forward, while in reality it is just decades and decades of minimizing microchips, increasing photovoltaic efficiency, improving batteries. This technology (except the microchip) is from the 19th (!) century. On top of that we are using some statistical methods and are trying to emulate neurons.
This has a positive and a negative side: Everything is already there, we just need to implement it, but this does not really encourage you to dream. There is no magic. For me that is part the reason why careers like research or medicine were not attractive to me: You can progress further or save more lifes by just using stuff that has been here for centuries. I believe everybody can make a difference, because we are wasting our potential by not implementing stuff.
I know that this view is oversimplified and there is indeed fundamental research (e.g. new materials), which leads to some of these gradual improvements.
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty important to realize that this isn't the problem that needs solving. Batteries aren't great for large amounts of power for long periods of time (yet). What they are good at is smoothing out the supply curve from potentially intermittent suppliers like solar and wind, and that is one of the things that causes price spikes.
Having real-time pricing of electricity coupled with users who can adapt their usage automatically to real-time prices will also considerably moderate power demand.
Yes.
Also, trading off the reliability of power.
This seems outrageous to many of us in the West, but here in Australia our power utility already cuts power to neighborhoods in half hour blocks during peak power consumption during summer (I believe they exclude hospitals and some other sites like that from this policy).
The infrastructure savings made by this are huge (think of 99% reliability vs 99.99% in software), and the few that really need it can invest in backup solutions for those times.
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty important to realize that this isn't the problem that needs solving. Batteries aren't great for large amounts of power for long periods of time (yet). What they are good at is smoothing out the supply curve from potentially intermittent suppliers like solar and wind, and that is one of the things that causes price spikes.
Having real-time pricing of electricity coupled with users who can adapt their usage automatically to real-time prices will also considerably moderate power demand.
Commercial users do see this, with higher costs for energy in peak hours as well as "demand charges" based on their highest rate of consumption (typically measured in 15 minute increments). Charging more for those gives an economic incentive to trim down the energy consumption bursts that require peaker plants to run.
Buildings can design load leveling into their systems with things like thermal energy storage that shifts air conditioning consumption off-peak by freezing ice overnight and using it to cool the building during the day.
One example with a Calmac IceBank system: http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/energy-soluti...
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#37> Tesla's contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day This is < 0.1% of the total number of homes in SoCal, just to put it in perspective.
Once upon a time Facebook had less than 100 users.
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#38Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#39I think its important to note, for those who complain Tesla can't compete against pumped storage or other utility scale storage methods, that Tesla is able to have this deployed in 3 months (this is partly because Tesla can just drop racks of batteries on site and be up and running, and partly because of the regulatory environment after the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage complex leak fiasco). Edit: This will replac…
Probably can't book the revenue in Q3 though given it won't be realized. But outside of GAAP it can still help gain confidence.
Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid
#40From the Tesla blog:
Addressing Peak Energy Demand with the Tesla Powerpack https://www.tesla.com/blog/addressing-peak-energy-demand-tes...