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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

#131

Post by crdoconnor »

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…

>The difficulty is always that it is rather even distributed making it expensive to concentrate.

This is exactly what could lead to a shortage. This, demand that is (currently) outstripping supply and the long ramp up time for new operations.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#132

Post by mtgx »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #90
toomuchtodo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are now cheaper than peakers everywhere, not just CA. That's what I'm saying. Tesla's PowerPack installs (battery storage receives federal incentives, nat gas does not) will replace peakers, leaving them as stranded assets (the cannibalization I refer to). Edit: unepipe: Tesla packs perform the exact same role as a peaker plant: energy on demand. They are distributed, dispatchable loads and generators, avai…

I thought about this some more, and I realised, Tesla and other EV manufacturers better be praying that this is not a financially viable replacement for gas turbine peakers in general. Otherwise there will be a big jump in demand for batteries, as power companies will be looking for hundreds of GWh of battery capacity. If they make a yearly profit for the power company that's significant enough to warrant the CAPEX o…

That would only be a problem in the short term - if that. In the long term, if the demand is as high as you say (hundreds of GWh per year), then you'll see Tesla, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Bosch, and whoever else is making batteries step all over themselves to build new mines or mining capacity and more battery pack factories like the Gigafactory.

This would be a great thing for EVs. At worst it will be a few years of slowed down growth for EVs just like we're seeing now with cheap oil. These are all temporary, and neither will "kill EVs". And after the dust has settled, you'll probably see $50-$70/KWh batteries in cars.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#133

Post by Lagged2Death »

A positive development, sure. But 80MWH is a little less than the amount of energy a 1GW power plant produces every five minutes.

I want alternative energy to work, but it's sobering to see the scale of the problems involved. It doesn't seem to me that laptop batteries scale up so well. If I were forced to place a bet on the future of grid-scale storage, I'd look for something else.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#135

Post by nl »

hvidgaard wrote: post #119
nl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV isn't the problem. Most of benefits come if you have a system which can regulate slightly your use of air conditioning and heating (and a few other things like pool pumps). In some cases you can save 50% of a daily powerbill by turning off the compressor in an air conditioner for 15 minutes.. but the right 15 minutes. Few people would get up and turn off the air con for that, but a system that let you say how much…

It's a different beast. The price is high during those 15 minutes because of supply and demand. If you implement a smart grid that regulate load, you upset the supply and demand balance and the power might become so cheap that new self regulating systems are not worth the initial cost.

Indeed.

What a great problem that will be.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#136

Post by Daishiman »

tbarbugli wrote: post #124

"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 p…

This has been his plan for a decade. It was publicly known, no secret whatsoever.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#138

Post by zaroth »

jakub_h wrote: post #86
andruby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How huge are the savings? Do you have any numbers or sources? Do those power utility savings translate into savings to the people who are cut off? I for one would not want to trade electricity price for reliability.

Isn't it somewhat hypocritical to not want to pay for the expensive marginal case but to ask for someone else to do it for you?

It's surely less expensive per capita to have reliable electricity for everyone than to have everyone who wants reliable electricity to have to install a generator.

99% uptime means 7 hours of downtime every month. And it's not random downtime, it's downtime under peak demand.

If the choice was free electricity at 99% uptime and you have to take care of the rest yourself, or $0.13 / kWh for 99.999% uptime, I would go for the 0.13 / kWh.

Of course in AUS they probably charge more than 0.13 / kWh and make you deal with the brownouts anyway. Actually some quick searches reveal AUS pays about the highest rates in the world.

Reliably not being able to handle peak demand isn't a cost saving measure, it's an excuse for a major failure of the infrastructure.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#139

Post by refulgentis »

Daishiman wrote: post #136
tbarbugli wrote: post #124

"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 p…

This has been his plan for a decade. It was publicly known, no secret whatsoever.

Solar City was retconned into a vague document that takes a mile-high view of the problem. This was unambiguously poor corporate governance, unless you completely ignore the business side of...the business?

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#140

Post by zaroth »

WalterBright wrote: post #73
flukus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most peoples electricity usage is relatively inelastic and no one wants the cognitive overload of checking electricity prices before they put the TV on.

Oh, I disagree. A/C is very power hungry, and can be adjusted to cool the house lower than normal during cheap power times and let it go a bit higher during expensive power times. It can also "pre-cool" when power is cheaper. The same goes for an electric water heater. The charger for your Tesla can also adjust when it charges based on power prices. The dishwasher/washer/dryer can be set to come on at night when the…

I'm with you all the way up to affecting appliances. The key is the power shift should be virtually invisible to consumers. You don't turn off A/C, you just bump up the set point by 1 degree for that 15 minutes. The individual impact is minuscule, the aggregate impact is leveling out the peak.

But you need everyone to be wired for this in order for a small change to add up to a big impact. Which isn't worth the cost unless it's mandated. Which is a political mess.

So we solve the problem another way; with batteries to meet the peak power demand at a reasonable cost, and not demand a massive IoT network, constantly monitoring usage and with override control authority.

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