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

#71

Post by roel_v » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 7:46 AM UTC

coolguy4 wrote: post #24

politician wrote: post #4

Would someone explain what this battery is for or the surrounding context? The article spends most of its word count on abstract politics.

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…

"The almost entire state (population >1.7 million) lost electricity for at least a day. Some people were without power for up to a week"

I can personally attest that I was without power for about 3 hours. Large parts of the state were back online overnight. Sure there were places where it took a week, but I'm quite sure that even a system that can provide 'only' 3 hours of baseline load would have made a huge difference. (Especially because once you know there is a a problem, you can selectively and in a controlled way start shutting down subsystems, both reducing load and lessening impact over a sudden, unplanned shutdown).

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

#72

Post by cinquemb » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 7:47 AM UTC

petra wrote: post #69

cinquemb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It isn't the case. There are many businesses(both utilities and others) who could use a peak shaving solution, especially one as scaleable as batteries. EDIT: what's unique about the australian installation(in 100 days), is that it is politically driven, or risk management driven(to reduce the risk of outages). see[2]. And so, using a healthy dose of skepticism, All i'm saying: If there's a real economical solution f…

How do you know? Do you have access to the contracts that, for example, a large provider like PG & E signs with it's partners for their current "peak shaving solution"? Do you have detailed access to their balance sheets and appraiser information?

From their latest 10k[0], Gas related equipment represents 26% of the value of their assets. They would, have to write some non trivial amount off because they would no longer have any use of it by switching to use batteries like these. What would their majority shareholders think in response to that? What if they are also invested in the supply chain of such? I assume those would be non-zero losses.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/75488/00010049801700...

Edit:

If you are implying that economics of a thing can be decoupled from politics, then I think that is a faulty belief. You won't get "real deployments" unless current providers are out competed on whatever front (economics/politics) or routed around and made obsolete in some fashion, because they stand to lose economically based on their current investment. Whether you agree with how Elon (or others) is going about it, is irrelevant in so much as you aren't in direct opposition or exposed to the risk of such changes.

I'm not long TSLA nor have no future plans to be so.

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

#73

Post by trhway » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 7:52 AM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #64

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…

Works the other way too. First country footing the massive startup bill will have an economy slowdown compared to other that can be dirty a decade or more while the tech and the solution become commodity. Besides countries won't really change until it's in their economic interest. Taking from your example until the cost of fighting bush fires (and other climate change related stuff) is greater than the cost of implem…

>First country footing the massive startup bill will have an economy slowdown compared to other

not in the modern R&D driven economy. As an example, Silicon Valley is regularly footing the massive startup bill :)

>that can be dirty a decade or more while the tech and the solution become commodity.

and so lacking their own technology they would be naturally buying it from the "first countries" while the first countries will be reinvesting those money into development of even better tech thus ever increasing their lead.

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

#74

Post by btilly » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:01 AM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #64

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…

Works the other way too. First country footing the massive startup bill will have an economy slowdown compared to other that can be dirty a decade or more while the tech and the solution become commodity. Besides countries won't really change until it's in their economic interest. Taking from your example until the cost of fighting bush fires (and other climate change related stuff) is greater than the cost of implem…

The bigger economic problem is a tragedy of the commons. Everyone benefits from the energy that they individually get from fossil fuels. Everyone pays for a share of everyone's contribution to global warming. When you get all of the reward and only a fraction of the cost from your personal use, it is in your personal interest to have burned fossil fuels even when the total cost far exceeds your individual reward.

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

#75

Post by mhandley » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:12 AM UTC

acchow wrote: post #30

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?

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.

For wind at least, it turns out you want to put the batteries as close to the wind turbines as possible, rather than close to the consumer. The reason is that this evens out the power delivery over the grid. If you put the batteries close to the consumer, the grid from the turbines to consumer must cope with peak generation capacity (powering peak demand, plus charging batteries), whereas if the batteries are close to the turbine the grid only needs to cope with peak wind demand (i.e generation capacity minus battery charging), which is considerably less. Source: from a conversation with someone in high in a major wind power generator.

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

#76

Post by grecy » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:14 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?

> Why is Snowy Hydro 2.0 "ridiculous" and "silly"?

Because, at best it's 10+ years and hundreds of millions of dollars away, and that is being very, very optimistic.

The Big Battery is not a pipe dream. It will exist in 100 days.

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

#77

Post by askvictor » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:15 AM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #70

jussij wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it seems they already have it. The Snowy Mountains (the location of the hydro) is a very long way away from South Australia and not even in the same state. So for SA location is a problem. But I think the bigger problem with Snowy Hydro 2.0 is time and the cost. The Snowy Hydro 2.0 feasibility study has only just begun and will be finished in December of this year. If that study finds the project is feasible, i…

Why is it important that something is done quickly? As I understand from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout it was caused by once-in-50-year event. I understand political urgency, but technically there doesn't seem to be anything urgent.

Unfortunately, 1 in 50 year events seem to be happening more and more frequently.

And as yesterday's discussion on this pointed out, it's more about mitigating political risk; if there are any power outages in the next few months then the current state government is toast.

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

#78

Post by JPLeRouzic » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:19 AM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #26

tootie wrote: post #2

This 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.

The turnover of EDF in France in the 90" was above $40 billion. 60% of its production was from nuclear, hence the nuclear costed more than $24 billion each year just to be operated. For a country like France this is huge, several percent of the GDP of that time. But nobody was discussing about that issue mainly because the CGT union had a tight grip on EDF governance.

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

#79

Post by DamonHD » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:20 AM UTC

petra wrote: post #69

cinquemb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It isn't the case. There are many businesses(both utilities and others) who could use a peak shaving solution, especially one as scaleable as batteries. EDIT: what's unique about the australian installation(in 100 days), is that it is politically driven, or risk management driven(to reduce the risk of outages). see[2]. And so, using a healthy dose of skepticism, All i'm saying: If there's a real economical solution f…

Maybe for historical or regulatory reasons those are not always accessible, whatever their value. And in any case costs have been moving lightning fast, so something that I priced up for a utility a couple of years ago may now be a fraction of the CAPEX...

The UK regulatory system is being tweaked furiously to try to remove impediments to otherwise worthwhile arrangements as far as I can see. One can argue about whether it's being done right.

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

#80

Post by Frogolocalypse » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:23 AM UTC

willholloway wrote: post #28

burntrelish1273 wrote: post #3

FYI: 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…

Jehu Garcia's Youtube videos are definitely worth checking out, the guy is doing cool things with 18650 lithium ion cells. He converted a VW bus into an electric vehicle. My main takeaway after watching his videos and others in the same vein is that lithium ion battery packs are the gasoline of the 21st century. You can build 18650 packs for electric bikes, scooters, boats etc... or build your own Power Wall type hom…

I'm going to look myself, but do you have any links about the 18650 packs?

Edit:cheapest aliexpress ones i see are about usd$2.00 each. That's not bad though.