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Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

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Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#121

Post by cowsandmilk »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #56
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

I 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…

So this is only financially viable because of Californian risk aversion after last years gas leak. If you have a reliable natural gas distribution network, like the rest of the world, batteries don't make any financial sense versus gas power plants. I mean, this entire plant can supply 20 MW and will cost somewhere around $20 million. For that price you can buy two General Electric LM2500 gas turbine generators that…

> If you have a reliable natural gas distribution network, like the rest of the world, batteries don't make any financial sense versus gas power plants.

In the US, gas companies seem to be having issues expanding natural gas distribution recently. Plenty of cancelled projects, lots of protests on construction sites, etc.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#122

Post by planteen »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #120
crdoconnor wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no scenario where the cost curve per kWh of battery storage goes up. Lithium shortage.

Lithium is a common element. The difficulty is always that it is rather even distributed making it expensive to concentrate. It's the kind of thing that is solved simply by scaling up. It is in fact more abundant in the Earth's crust (17ppm) than lead (10ppm) and according to Wikipedia " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... 2012 production of lead was 5.2MT while lithium was…

Abundance in Earth's crust doesn't help at all during a supply crunch. Bringing a mine up takes at least 5 years. And your mine is going to be on an orebody, not just processing random rocks. Cobalt is another critical element for batteries I believe.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#123

Post by raverbashing »

crdoconnor wrote: post #107
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd encourage you to spend 15 minutes researching what the costs are of running a peaker plant. There's a reason they're the most expensive generation method per MWh (peakers run for under 100 hours per year). Revenue is revenue. If Tesla is able to cannibalize the peakers to contribute towards its enormous capital expenditures, and continue to reduce costs with the Gigafactory, it only makes utility battery storage…

>There is no scenario where the cost curve per kWh of battery storage goes up. Lithium shortage.

Ramping up recycling of old batteries helps

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#124

Post by tbarbugli »

"The deal fits into Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's long-term vision of transforming Tesla from an an electric car company to a clean-energy company. That's the same motivation behind his pending deal to acquire SolarCity Corp., the rooftop solar company founded by his cousins, of which he is also chairman and the largest shareholder."

Yeah man, what a lucky coincidence your cousin can help you saving the planet!

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#125

Post by paulyg »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #56
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

I 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…

So this is only financially viable because of Californian risk aversion after last years gas leak. If you have a reliable natural gas distribution network, like the rest of the world, batteries don't make any financial sense versus gas power plants. I mean, this entire plant can supply 20 MW and will cost somewhere around $20 million. For that price you can buy two General Electric LM2500 gas turbine generators that…

Why are people comparing and debating "batteries vs combustion turbines"? Batteries only store energy and you still need to generate it somewhere. Probably from a CCGT plant.

And it's not risk aversion. Its buried subtly in the article but part of SoCal's gas infrastructure is shut down because of the leak. They literally can't provide enough gas to generate enough electricity for peak demand. So they will generate over capacity at night, store in the batteries, and discharge during the day.

Also what seems to be lost here is that Tesla created it's utility battery products as a renewables play, but are just taking advantage of extra-ordinary circumstances in this case.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#126

Post by adventured »

oneplane wrote: post #106

I don't understand why there are so many power grid issues in the USA. It's not that hard to generate power and make it go from A to B, yet for some reason (political? commercial? geological?) there seem to be decades of general issues in generating enough to meet demand. Does someone know what the actual issue is?

Famously the US had an extraordinary power grid for many decades. Among the most reliable of any nation. Blackouts used to be very rare in the US, now they're still rare but not nearly so.

Since the 1980s there has been a significant under-investment in the grid. Since the 1970s there has been a significant under-investment in production. The outcome to that is what you see now.

Good article on the rising blackout phenomenon from 2010:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/08/09/smart.grid/ind...

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#127

Post by forgetsusername »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #78
itissid wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you share a reference for "Batteries are now cheaper than peakers everywhere"

Bookmarked to come back to show my math in the morning. The gist is they can absorb power at a cost that is pretty close to free (when there is excess power flowing through the grid) versus burning a fuel whose price is volatile, a steep declining cost curve for batteries, and aggressive federal government tax incentives.

>aggressive federal government tax incentives.

I'm not sure that should be included in the cost analysis, otherwise anything can be subsidized to the point of being "cheaper".

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#128

Post by ZeroGravitas »

WalterBright wrote: post #75
greglindahl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one very nice aspect of a grid when there are a lot of electric cars which charge at night, and have big enough batteries that they don't need to fully charge: you can absorb a lot of variability of overnight wind energy. And if electric cars also plug in at work... jackpot.

Even better than that, it could be set up so that your house drew power from the car battery when rates were high! You could set it to, for example, draw from the car battery until the charge drops to 80% or some settable limit. Then all the rechargeable cars become part of the battery moderation of the whole grid!

The Tesla engineering head said giving power back isn't likely, as it would degrade the battery too much, but he stressed how much benefit to grid stability could be delivered just by altering when the batteries drew power to charge.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#129

Post by Roritharr »

Without reading this somewhere or having anything to back it up: This, combined with the acquisition of SolarCity, looks like a move to get Tesla into a different Asset Category to make it even cheaper to loan money. If they can be seen in the same risk/asset-category as a power utility, they can rely even more heavily on loans.

Does anyone know if that would be a viable strategy?

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#130

Post by forgetsusername »

wallace_f wrote: post #14
honkhonkpants wrote: post #8

Why doesn't Panasonic just cut out the middleman here? Are they afraid of making their own deals in america?

Because the world we live in has certain types of people -- politicians, lawyers, business executives -- that don't solve problems for the world as in, "what is the most efficient way to accomplish this;" rather, they solve problems as in, "what is the most efficient way I can enrich myself. I guess it's maybe rational in a self-interested way--no longer do we live in a world of many competing tribes advancing oursel…

>certain types of people -- politicians, lawyers, business executives

I forgot how altruistic software engineers, web developers and IT consultants were.

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