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

theguardian.com

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

#91

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

nl wrote: post #20
sintaxi wrote: post #7

I'm happy this is happening but if it requires $50M in tax payers dollars it's not exactly viable now is it?

As a South Australian, I'm (very!!) happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices. The extra tax is more than made up for in savings. On this particular topic, the South Australian government's interests and mine are precisely aligned: We are both getting screwed over by power generators exploiting the intermittent nature of renewables to make bigger profits. Did you know they deliberately keep gas pea…

happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices

That's optimistic.

I guarantee you will be paying more for electricity generation because of this battery. There's no way the incumbents would allow this thing to be connected to the grid if there wasn't a dollar (quite a few dollars) in it for them.

Giving money and power to politicians is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys.

Regards, former SA resident.

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

#92

Post by petra »

cinquemb wrote: post #72
petra wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lon…

>> economics of a thing can be decoupled from politics,

Did i imply that ? i just said that the australian project has little relevance to companies who do seek energy storage, because their reasons, motivations, are different, and this greatly affects cost sensitivity.

But you know what? i don't understand politics.

Maybe Australian Politicians didn't expose the low, low cost of stored kwh using this system, because they are humble.

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

#93

Post by janco »

sitkack wrote: post #38
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…

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.

Australian Synchrotron is already using three giant flywheels as an UPS, here is a short presentation. I am sure that you will be able to find enough information to determine if doing this would be feasible on a commercial scale.

http://www-conf.slac.stanford.edu/wao2012/talks/Thu_Aug9/McG...

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

#94

Post by amygdyl »

shoo wrote: post #37
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…

> 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 t…

I'm also appreciating the same as you quoted above.

But I keep defaulting to a painfully pessimistic imagination that is the costs are collectively going to be so moot so much sooner than any expectation, due to unforseen extreme results.

Am I going through a depression or something manic, maybe, because I don't believe we're not all suppressing contemplation of the outlier worse consequences of climate instability and as a result are walking blindfold in a kind of negotiated but half acceptable death march into a slower extinction and because of this unseen compromise on the range of forecasts that are shorn of the scariest conclusions we're investing in hope and eliminating healthy appreciation of the dangers, and ultimately accommodating skepticism too much for that accommodation to be without inevitable negative effects ?

edit: final words arranged for grammatical clarity, no overt meaning altered by edit.

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

#95

Post by cinquemb »

petra wrote: post #92
cinquemb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lon…

>> economics of a thing can be decoupled from politics, Did i imply that ? i just said that the australian project has little relevance to companies who do seek energy storage, because their reasons, motivations, are different, and this greatly affects cost sensitivity. But you know what? i don't understand politics. Maybe Australian Politicians didn't expose the low, low cost of stored kwh using this system, because…

> i just said that the australian project has little relevance to companies who do seek energy storage, because their reasons, motivations, are different, and this greatly affects cost sensitivity.

>>All i'm saying: If there's a real economical solution for the big problem of energy storage, real deployments are the test, not politically/risk driven deployments, or psychological/marketing[1] driven deployments(like we see with the power wall)

Because other energy companies aren't worried about political risks? If that was the case, why would companies lobby government officials/politicians at all anywhere in the world? I'd think all energy companies have similar considerations, but how they choose to weight them may be different.

A theoretical company might save $300 million dollars in yearly operational costs with a upfront cost of $1 billion to $INSERT_WHATEVR_BATTERY_SOLUTION_PROVIDER, but if they are exposed to $26 billion to "investments" of a $100 billion total that are expected to perform for the next 30 years and have to revalue that suddenly (to the downside, to be clear), then I know they are going to think twice about how to move forward.

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

#96

Post by wklauss »

shoo wrote: post #17
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.

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…

> who pays the costs for australian emissions *: > - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions > - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of emissions

Not that straightforward. Effects of emissions is global, yes, but there are also local effects due to pollution, certain chemical byproducts, etc... meaning the local cost is higher than the average worldwide cost.

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

#97

Post by noir_lord »

The Small bordering on Medium size company I work for has a 30KW solar array on the roof of it's factory.

With batteries they'd basically be able to run the factory close to off grid, while the equipment requires high peak power it's average load is vastly lower.

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

#98

Post by agumonkey »

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…

He's trending hard, took me a few seconds to realize he was the 18650 dude I watch every week on youtube.

I'd love to emulate his work.

ecobot ! assemble !

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

#99

Post by agumonkey »

lifeformed wrote: post #85
sitkack wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't some kind of gravity-based storage be cheaper/safer? Just lift some huge weights with excess energy, lock it in place, and then let gravity pull it down to reclaim it.

Both are back in sight these days.

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

#100

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

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.

One of the other costs of fossil fuels that isnt. mentioned as. much is the resultant pollution and environmental degradation. These externalities are real. Due to the air pollution that gets trapped in the LA basin, Los Angeles has the worst air pollution in the US. 1300 lives are cu5 short each year due to the smog and over the course of a lifetime, breathing the air will shorten your lifespan by a few years.[1]. Also, air pollution is thought to double the risk of dementia in women according to a recent study. [2]

Another grave consequence of bith global climate change and localized pollution is the loss of biodiversity and the chance to study and learn from other organisms and their unique genomes and adaptations.

1 http://www.thoracic.org/about/newsroom/press-releases/journa... 2 https://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v7/n1/full/tp2016280a.html

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