41–50 of 94 posts
I find it curious that a coal plant would be contracted with keeping the frequency stable when both hydro-storage and gas power plants provide better response times than coal. Is it normal in Australia that coal plants do grid stabilisation?
Does anyone know what would have happened if the battery wasn't available? Some sort of brown out?
Not much. Without the battery, everything would have happened as expected; with the battery, it happened a few seconds faster than expected.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
4 seconds faster (within milliseconds of the frequency drop event occurring) than the coal plant contracted to provide frequency response services. "But in reality, the response from the Tesla big battery was even quicker than that – in milliseconds – but too fast for the AEMO data to record. Importantly, by the time that the contracted Gladstone coal unit had gotten out of bed and put its socks on so it can inject m…
When a contingency happens (loss of equipment such as a generator), units respond pretty much immediately due to governor response in the unit itself (good ole' inertia). Most RTO/ISOs in the USA (I know AEMO is in Australia) have a very large amount of power already ready to go if a unit trips offline. Using batteries to help with this is being worked on. They already exist, but new market rules are being drafted in…
This piece is clearly written by someone, who as no glue about the grid. (or wants to make a buzz out of nothing special) Battery power is always faster then generator power. That is the reason why every data center has battery backup for immediate reaction and generator power for the longtime backup. Normally, the battery size is designed that the minimum time is at least twice as long as to start the generator. Exa…
> (or wants to make a buzz out of nothing special) It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions. This is very important and big news in Australia, because the coal lobby is so strong and powerful they have been telling the public for a year now the Tesla battery will not work and is a waste of money. Obviously some people such as yourself understan…
This is difficult because taxpayers often take a dim view on their money being spent on marketing government programs. Unfortunately with large companies advertising directly against programs that often run contrary to what is in the public interest, it is arguably in the public interest to market public sector programs.
This issue being what is the difference between this and tax payer funded propaganda...? It's a tough area of discussion by any stretch, but its become clear that advertising/informing the public is kinda needed to offset the campaigning against public programs from large industry.
>the Tesla big battery responded four seconds ahead of the generator contracted at that time to provide FCAS (frequency control and ancillary services), the Gladstone coal generator in Queensland. I find it curious that a coal plant would be contracted with keeping the frequency stable when both hydro-storage and gas power plants provide better response times than coal. Is it normal in Australia that coal plants do g…
The biggest surprise to me was that a plant in Gladstone (Queensland) was contracted to prop up a plant in Victoria. These two places are 1375 miles apart. Then again, I guess the linky bits between the wires must be pretty high-speed, so the speed-of-light propagation of the grid conditions wouldn't take too much extra time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not much. Without the battery, everything would have happened as expected; with the battery, it happened a few seconds faster than expected.
What I gather from the (incomplete) data, indeed the backup plant would have fired up in about 6 seconds. Isn't it wasteful/inefficient/expensive though, to fire up a whole plant if just providing a few seconds of electricity from a battery is enough to bring a grid back to nominal frequency?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're including regulatory oversight (or lack of) under the 'management' heading, I'd definitely agree. "Since 2009, the electricity networks that own and manage our “poles and wires” have quietly spent $45 billion on the most expensive project this country has ever seen. Allowed to run virtually unchecked, they’ve spent vast sums on infrastructure we don’t need, and have charged it all to us, with an additional…
Nuclear is obsolete to what? As far as I understand, nuclear is the replacement for coal, nothing else comes close to being able to provide a stable constant supply in large quantities. What else can take the role of supplying the bulk of electricity to grids that doesn't also have it's own environmental concerns?
The article pretty clearly demonstrates that grid-scale battery storage systems are able to provide very fast reaction times.
More battery storage systems, along with other forms of energy storage such as Solar-Thermal and pumped-hydro can take daytime generation and make it usable at night. They're proven workable grid-scale technologies.
Large widely distributed deployments of Wind generation can also provide a lot of capacity. For those who claim wind doesn't always blow - well, it's always blowing somewhere.
Having a lot more individually smaller generators plus energy storage will inherently permit a more stable grid - one smaller generator tripping offline doesn't cause a massive issue.
Water is wet and using a battery to cover high speed changes in supply/demand works exactly the way you'd expect at the car, datacenter and grid scale. This is really just a fluff piece.
It's not obvious to Joe Voter who wonders why the South Australian government spent millions of dollars on this battery boondoggle by some American millionaire.
The more the message gets out that the battery is working, today, and is already covering for shortfalls / screwups by large scale (non-renewable) generators the better.
So, yeah, fluff piece.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're including regulatory oversight (or lack of) under the 'management' heading, I'd definitely agree. "Since 2009, the electricity networks that own and manage our “poles and wires” have quietly spent $45 billion on the most expensive project this country has ever seen. Allowed to run virtually unchecked, they’ve spent vast sums on infrastructure we don’t need, and have charged it all to us, with an additional…
Nuclear is obsolete to what? As far as I understand, nuclear is the replacement for coal, nothing else comes close to being able to provide a stable constant supply in large quantities. What else can take the role of supplying the bulk of electricity to grids that doesn't also have it's own environmental concerns?
Gas fire plants
Hydro
Pump Solar
Liquid salt storage
Geothermal
Wind + Large Scale Solar + Storage
Tidal
Decentralized PV solar plus decentralized storage.
There are enormous numbers of combinations of solutions which don't involve coal or nuclear. Both coal and nuclear power are slow to respond to changes in demand (or supply problems), and both are very expensive centralized solutions.
Much more efficient solutions can be built using smaller numbers of smaller, faster, cheaper power stations (ie, gas fired) plus a diverse combination of other sources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear is obsolete to what? As far as I understand, nuclear is the replacement for coal, nothing else comes close to being able to provide a stable constant supply in large quantities. What else can take the role of supplying the bulk of electricity to grids that doesn't also have it's own environmental concerns?
What else can take the role of supplying the bulk of electricity to grids that doesn't also have it's own environmental concerns? Gas fire plants Hydro Pump Solar Liquid salt storage Geothermal Wind + Large Scale Solar + Storage Tidal Decentralized PV solar plus decentralized storage. There are enormous numbers of combinations of solutions which don't involve coal or nuclear. Both coal and nuclear power are slow to r…