Isn't that an overstatement? Australia's installed generating capacity is 67GW and about 50% load factor. It needs at least 100 systems like that to make a significant impact on grid stability. Even in South Australia alone, at least 10x that much is needed.
Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
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Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
South Australia is the 5th most populous Australian state, out of 6 total states in Australia. It has had a left-leaning government in power for the past 15 years. South Australia has a lot of mineral resources and a very large land area but it is mainly desert. Since renewable energy is cool with left-leaning governments, South Australia has built a lot of wind farms. The wind farms are heavily subsdised by the gove…
You're forgetting about the cost on the environment that coal burning power plants create. No one ever takes the damage of our environment into consideration of how much something really costs us. Of course there is renewable power environment cost as well, batteries aren't very green to produce or dispose of. But over all, we are better off by not burning coal even if there are more upfront costs.
Let people who care about the environment pay extra for their electricity. You do not have the moral high ground if you force people to pay extra for electricity through coercion.
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#33This article, like Turnbull, is incorrectly equating cost with price. Emissions are a cost. Price + emissions = cost. Renewables have been beating coal on cost for quite a while, only now they can start to win on price.
that's true. but to dig a bit deeper, who pays each cost and who benefits from the value? who directly benefits from the value of energy: - australian energy consumers - australian energy producers who pays the costs for energy prices: - australian energy consumers who pays the costs for australian emissions *: - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of…
Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale. One country taking decisive action could trigger a chain reaction of political pressure.
Australia has a horrendous wildfire problem. The frequency and severity of wildfires has drastically increased over recent years. A small increase in global temperatures could render vast areas of the country effectively uninhabitable due to the risk of fire.
I think that most Australians are willing to act; that will is being subverted by a powerful coal lobby. They see the hellish scenes every summer. They see the immense financial, environmental and human cost. They see the weight of scientific evidence.
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#34This article, like Turnbull, is incorrectly equating cost with price. Emissions are a cost. Price + emissions = cost. Renewables have been beating coal on cost for quite a while, only now they can start to win on price.
To be fair, the maths behind rentability is tainted with so much agenda from all parts. E.G: when you give prices for a nuclear plant in France, you include only assembly price and running costs. While for wind turbines you include assembly, disassembly, running costs and wiring (which must be underground by law). This makes it hard to make fair comparisons.
Who pays the cost when the wind turbine melts down?
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#35Why is Snowy Hydro 2.0 "ridiculous" and "silly"? What exactly is advantage of battery over pumped storage? Big problem with pumped storage is that it needs specific location, but it seems they already have it. As I understand, pumped storage is cheaper, more energy efficient, more mature technology. I understand battery swithes faster. What else?
You mentioned location, but that advantage can't really be understated. How can you have pump storage near every major city? It's not feasible in most places. Then there is the enormous transmission cost to get the energy to (and from) that remote location. Batteries can also meet fluctuations in demand instantly. Hydro cannot.
What enormous transmission cost? Total transmission loss of Australia is 5% (2014).
I already said battery switches faster. You are simply repeating what I said.
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#36The article, of course, is guilty of exactly what it accuses its opponents of -- truthiness. They say that this is affordable, and then don't even say how much it costs! He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense [1] [1] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
This is true, but I'd note this quite from the article: Nyhan showed a clear tendency for people with high numeracy skills to misread graphs about gun control or climate change, even when they’d just correctly read the same graph about soap. To address you specific point though - the price is less than A$150M/$US115M[1]. By comparison, the SA government is also building a new 250MW gas fired power station which costs…
One with a big enough sink could get paid to take power off the grid. I repeat, you could make money charging your batteries.
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's true. but to dig a bit deeper, who pays each cost and who benefits from the value? who directly benefits from the value of energy: - australian energy consumers - australian energy producers who pays the costs for energy prices: - australian energy consumers who pays the costs for australian emissions *: - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of…
Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale. One country taking decisive action could trigger a chain reaction of political pressure. Australia has a horrendous wildfire problem. The frequency and severity of wildfires has drastically increased…
> Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale
Thanks - I wasn't aware of that. Are there any books / articles that go into this in more detail and might be accessible to someone with a decent math + comp sci education but no knowledge of game theory?
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#38FYI: 129 MWh would be about 1300 42U-style racks for batteries alone. Source: there's a guy in socal (Jehu Garcia) building a reclaimed peaker 1 MWh pack in about 10 racks from used batteries and equipment (50 kW 480VAC inverter) on the cheap in order to store energy off-peak (plus possibly charge using solar) and use it at peak supplemented by grid power. This is how manufacturing and other heavy industry / large el…
I had this idea 10 years go to use flywheels to buy cheap power and re-sell it during peak demand. Day vs night pricing will quickly normalize.
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#39Would someone explain what this battery is for or the surrounding context? The article spends most of its word count on abstract politics.
Batteries are used in lieu of pumped energy storage for several purposes: - emergency use: it's much faster than even the fastest pump sets which can switch over in seconds - load smoothing to avoid spooling up/down expensive peakers too much - daily energy arbitrage by downstream / middle consumers to buy off peak and use at peak in time-of-use billed electrical services - store solar energy for night use 129 MWh is…
The other advantage of substation level energy storage is in not having to upgrade the feed circuits. Design for average consumption not peak. Storage and renewables make the edges of the network resilient.
Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables
#40Isn't that an overstatement? Australia's installed generating capacity is 67GW and about 50% load factor. It needs at least 100 systems like that to make a significant impact on grid stability. Even in South Australia alone, at least 10x that much is needed.
Yup, it is. And you know what? Pumped storage the article calls "ridiculous" and "silly", is what is needed. It is 10x much, exactly as you said.