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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

#151

Post by michaelt »

WalterBright wrote: post #118
TeMPOraL wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ain't gonna work if you need people watching the electricity prices and deciding what to do. It need to be devices talking directly to the power grid. And that need standards for things like communication protocols. Does anyone here know how are those coming along?

> And that need standards for things like communication protocols. All that is needed is a way to get the spot price of electricity from the internet, similar to how I can get the current temperature in Anchorage. Devices don't need to talk to the power grid.

If you're going to be billed by the minute, presumably you won't be taking meter readings manually, so your meter will be connected to some sort of communications network anyway.

And if you're /not/ getting billed by the minute, what's in it for the buyer to choose an AC that sometimes turns itself off?

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#152

Post by garretraziel »

mikeash wrote: post #146
paulyg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

People are comparing them because they serve the same purpose here. Base and peak loads on the grid can be wildly different. Without storage, if you want to avoid brownouts or blackouts, your generating capacity needs to match the peak load, even though you might only hit peak load a few times per year. The traditional way to handle this is to have power plants that can be spun up rapidly but sit idle 99% of the time…

Or you can use PHS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#153

Post by whamlastxmas »

KamiCrit wrote: post #52

I love Tesla and Elon Musk as much as the next person. But isn't it a little crazy how much Elon is betting on 18650 lithium ion batteries. I really hope I'm mistaken and they have a homemade battery package made up.

What's wrong with the 18650 form factor? Or lithium ion batteries?

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#154

Post by themartorana »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #69
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure peakers are expensive, but they are profitable, otherwise no-one would build and run them. Supply and demand etc. I'm not sure what you mean by Tesla cannibalizing the peakers? Do they already own traditional peaker plants? I agree revenue is revenue, I'm just saying this is perhaps unlikely to provide more revenue from sales outside CA.

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…

Since they're not technically a "plant" - just storage - is there any advantage to be had to build in many smaller (say per-neighborhood) battery plants? Seems like they could act not only as peak providers, but also battery backup in the case of storms and whatnot. Plus it reduces a single-point of failure.

I ask for I am uneducated in this area.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#155

Post by nl »

zaroth wrote: post #138
jakub_h wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

To be clear, in Aus we don't have 99% reliability. It's about 45 min every 2 years (whatever that works out to). That number was to explain the cost savings.

In much of the world those cost saving are directly applicable. Most of the world's population doesn't have 99% reliable electricity, and so they build reliability at the edges with everything from batteries in phone towers, to batteries in lighting.

It isn't at all clear to me if this is more or less expensive for new infrastructure. Given the increasing popularity of roof-top solar, the pricing model for 24/7 reliable wiring doesn't work out now in places where it is already built out. Network operators are trying various legislative measures to get subsidies for the networks, because no one wants to pay the rates they cost to maintain.

If I had free (or very cheap) electricity 99% of the time, spending $5K to get 99.99% reliability via a battery system is very tempting (and we are getting close to that point now). $1K for 99.9% - maybe.

One interesting thing is that the distribution of the downtime matters.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#156

Post by toast0 »

afarrell wrote: post #93
WalterBright wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have always tried to come up with a reason to connect the refrigerator (and other appliances) to the internet. Finally, we have a reason - to moderate the power consumption of the refrigerator based on the spot price.

Do you trust the software industry to keep others' from turning off your refrigerator for the lulz?

Sensible price conscious refrigeration control would just be different temperature targets based on the price, not turning off the system. If l33t d00dz wanna make my milk one degree warmer, it's not a big deal.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#157

Post by h4nkoslo »

mikeash wrote: post #150
h4nkoslo wrote: post #22

Musk really does seem to be following his pattern of maximally engaging government contracts and subsidies. (That's not necessarily a criticism, just an observation, and one others have made before.)

Is this really unusual? I've seen that said before, but I'd expect everyone to take maximum advantage of such things, aside from a very few extremely principled people.

It's not that unusual, especially in the (broadly construed) energy sector, but it is a distinct business model.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#158

Post by nl »

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…

Extra demand for that giga-battery factory Tesla is building? What a dreadful problem that is(?!)

Also, there are other vendors happy to sell more batteries, including alternative technologies which are unsuited to cars but very suited to static power battery stations. (eg, Flow Batteries)

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#159

Post by chillingeffect »

barney54 wrote: post #115
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…

Peakers are still much cheaper than batteries. Here's the most recent analysis from Lazard: https://www.lazard.com/media/2391/lazards-levelized-cost-of-... See p. 9. So current peakers will not be stranded assets, especially because the life of batteries is likely less than 20 years.

holy cow that is an amazing pdf file! Or maybe I just especially like it bc it's exactly what I've been looking for in the last few weeks.

I'm really very interested in the economy and technology associated with deploying clean energy. I'm an idealist and want to see green power, but only in a way that makes sense. And I'd like to profit it from tracking the process.

Have you got any other resources or directions to go to find more information like this? I've found this: https://sam.nrel.gov/download

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#160

Post by nl »

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.

Lithium isn't always required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/08/hecate-...

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