Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#51

Post by nindalf » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:42 AM UTC

coolguy4 wrote: post #32

eyeareque wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You missed his point. If a person is getting something for cheap (coal fired electricity) while allowing the rest of society to pick up the tab (dealing with climate change), perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to. Putting a dollar value on the damage being done through burning coal and adding that to the bill of the people who prefer to burn coal is the best way for them to take responsibility for their actions.

Your arguments seem to be straight from the conservative playbook. No doubt then you would also object to people getting handouts from the govt. A situation where a person gets cheap electricity and allows someone else to pay for it sounds exactly like a handout.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#52

Post by petra » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:44 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #22

cameldrv wrote: post #11

The 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…

How much is the price for kwh stored/dispatched , over the long term ? that's the missing data here.

And btw: i don't know the economics of this project, but in general, if this was cost effective, Musk would have tons of customers(including power companies), to supply power during peak hours and save them a lot of money.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#53

Post by redial » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:44 AM UTC

coolguy4 wrote: post #32

eyeareque wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are paying extra, you are just not realizing it. The environment is subsidizing your "cheap electricity".

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#54

Post by senectus1 » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:53 AM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #34

sametmax wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

the same process for when a coal fired power station breaks down. the price of regular maintenance and in the event of catastrophic failure, insurance.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#55

Post by jacobolus » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:54 AM UTC

tominous wrote: post #42

jdietrich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Paradoxically, more frequent fires can often mean less severe fires. That's the rationale behind controlled burns and traditional aboriginal land management practices. And because this is Hacker News, have a play with the simulation hosted at Fourmilab: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest

Some places getting dramatically hotter drier weather all the time does not lead to less severe fires.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#56

Post by resu_nimda » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:57 AM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #21

Why 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?

Battery technology will continue to mature and at a certain point it will undoubtedly be the better option in most cases. Instead of a giant one-off civil engineering project every time (with all the ways that could go poorly), it would presumably be a relatively straightforward and repeatable install. Unless there is a dire need to bring a ton of storage online right now, it seems that investing in batteries is the better option.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#57

Post by cinquemb » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:57 AM UTC

petra wrote: post #52

nl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How much is the price for kwh stored/dispatched , over the long term ? that's the missing data here. And btw: i don't know the economics of this project, but in general, if this was cost effective, Musk would have tons of customers(including power companies), to supply power during peak hours and save them a lot of money.

>Musk would have tons of customers(including power companies), to supply power during peak hours and save them a lot of money.

Assuming such customers don't already have existing contractual obligations with existing providers nor assets whose valuation depends on no significant changes to current operations.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#58

Post by coolguy4 » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 7:04 AM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #49

coolguy4 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't have the moral high ground forcing others to absorb the cost of your dirty coal. Poisoning people is, in general, a great deal less moral than charging them more money.

The problem is your statement is that CO2 is not poisonous. It is a natural gas that is produced by human breath.

It is also not dirty. We're not talking about particles of carbon in the air, we're talking about CO2, an odorless, invisible gas.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#59

Post by danmaz74 » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 7:15 AM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #34

sametmax wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And who pays the cost when you need to decommission a nuclear power plant?

I'm not against nuclear in general, but accounting should be apples-to-apples.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#60

Post by roel_v » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 7:23 AM UTC

tominous wrote: post #42

jdietrich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Paradoxically, more frequent fires can often mean less severe fires. That's the rationale behind controlled burns and traditional aboriginal land management practices. And because this is Hacker News, have a play with the simulation hosted at Fourmilab: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest

Having written (as in, programmed, based on process knowledge from fire departments) a model for forest fires in Australia myself over the last few months, I feel that I can say that while a fine demo application of CA based modeling, this model is not an accurate description of forest fir behaviour (well unless it's just to illustrate how planned burns interact with their crude approximation of fuel load). E.g. it doesn't even consider slope and wind direction, or vegetation type.