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Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

reneweconomy.com.au

51–60 of 94 posts

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#51
post #22
post #15

This response by the battery is really interesting. And it is certainly helping the Australian grid. However, it is worth noting that the Australian grid, South Australia's in particular, is so woefully mismanaged that almost anything goes. South Australia is in the running for the most expensive electricity in the world [1]. As far as I've been able to tell, we aren't building coal or nuclear because there are outra…

We are building plenty of gas fired plants. And a fracking ban didn't cause the gas shortage (whoever told you that has a pretty serious agenda!). Australian gas reserves are the second biggest in the world and relatively easy to access. The "problem" is/was that they are tied up in long term export agreements.

Yeah, the contracts are ridiculous. Santos et. al. are locked in to exporting too much of our production to countries like Japan (more than they even need anymore I beleive), there isn't enough of the gas produced being sold domestically so prices locally have jumped significantly, but at the same time the international price has dropped so I don't think the export is even breaking even, and I've read that at this point we could import the surplus back from Japan (that we sold them originally) for less than what we pay on the domestic market!

This is a huge problem because gas is required for a lot of our industry, but also because of where it sits in the energy pricing mix, the gas price almost entirely determines the price of electricity - https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/07/truth-behind-electr...

The economists at MacroBusiness (I linked an article from their site above) believe a gas reservation policy (requiring the producers to sell a larger portion of their supply on the domestic market) could fix a lot of this.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#52
post #27
post #15

This response by the battery is really interesting. And it is certainly helping the Australian grid. However, it is worth noting that the Australian grid, South Australia's in particular, is so woefully mismanaged that almost anything goes. South Australia is in the running for the most expensive electricity in the world [1]. As far as I've been able to tell, we aren't building coal or nuclear because there are outra…

This is not the first time I've heard Australians complaining about the green lobby. From what I understand one of the major problems Australia is the sheer distance the electricity has to travel and the infrastructure required for such a small population. Solar power seems such an obvious choice, yet many Australians seem to be against it.

I don't think anyone (except the coal lobby) is against solar power.

It does have a problem that we do have nights here in Australia, and it is only recently that batteries have got close to the break-even point in terms of cost.

We also have large amounts of wind power, but again it comes at the cost of not being on 100% of the time. Again, storage can solve that as it continues to drop in price.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#53
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are building plenty of gas fired plants. And a fracking ban didn't cause the gas shortage (whoever told you that has a pretty serious agenda!). Australian gas reserves are the second biggest in the world and relatively easy to access. The "problem" is/was that they are tied up in long term export agreements.

Yeah, the contracts are ridiculous. Santos et. al. are locked in to exporting too much of our production to countries like Japan (more than they even need anymore I beleive), there isn't enough of the gas produced being sold domestically so prices locally have jumped significantly, but at the same time the international price has dropped so I don't think the export is even breaking even, and I've read that at this po…

I don't think the export is even breaking even

That's not true. They signed long term supply contracts with a price that was profitable.

at this point we could import the surplus back from Japan (that we sold them originally) for less than what we pay on the domestic market!

This is true. That's the problem with long term contracts! But on the other hand they did guarantee the revenue needed to develop the gas fields.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#54
post #37
post #8

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.

Maybe significantly cheaper though. Our generators often advantage of these events to gouge the grid by having 'unexpected maintenance' and restricting supply to force the market operator to buy their capacity at a much higher price. Having this battery act in a way that isn't profit motivated could actually change this market a lot.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#55
post #29
post #14

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…

Absolutely right grecy.

The fact that Australia has the largest functioning lithium-ion battery in the world, and yet the Federal Government of Australia has done nothing but ridicule and belittle its usefulness should give anyone a clue as to the power of the coal lobby in Australia.

Any news of the flexible uses of this battery should be published far and wide just to blow away a lot of the misconceptions about 'anything other than coal and gas' that are rampant throughout much of Australia's mainstream media.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#56
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Start a business then! But I think investors may be hard to find - because most of that hasn't proved cost effective.

In Australia?

Almost all power companies are already doing combinations of these, while shutting down coal-fired stations - they just aren't economical to run: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-06/electricity-markets-st...

They are all have large renewable generation. See here for the mix: https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Mar...

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#57
post #20
post #15

This response by the battery is really interesting. And it is certainly helping the Australian grid. However, it is worth noting that the Australian grid, South Australia's in particular, is so woefully mismanaged that almost anything goes. South Australia is in the running for the most expensive electricity in the world [1]. As far as I've been able to tell, we aren't building coal or nuclear because there are outra…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#58
post #15

This response by the battery is really interesting. And it is certainly helping the Australian grid. However, it is worth noting that the Australian grid, South Australia's in particular, is so woefully mismanaged that almost anything goes. South Australia is in the running for the most expensive electricity in the world [1]. As far as I've been able to tell, we aren't building coal or nuclear because there are outra…

> we aren't building coal or nuclear because there are outrageous political risks Wrong. We aren't building coal or nuclear for reasons of economics.

The high electricity prices are partially due to gold-plating the poles and wires due to very odd 'oversight' agreements in which any investment in poles and wires infrastructure had a guaranteed return on investment - it allowed the infrastructure owners to increase their charges to cover the poles and wires investment, almost no matter how much they invested, so they went LARGE.

High power prices are also partially due to the generators gaming the market in times of high power usage and low wind / solar generation. Making use of loopholes in the 20-year old rules. Loopholes that didn't exist when everything was coal, but caused by the fact that the rules haven't been updated to reflect the inclusion of wind and solar into the generation mix. The "Market Operator" had been asleep at the wheel for years.

Politics is getting in the way of building Wind and Solar , not the other way round.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#59

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.

A refreshing change from the factually incorrect fluff pieces about coal and gas that much of Australia's mainstream media like to publish.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#60
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Start a business then! But I think investors may be hard to find - because most of that hasn't proved cost effective.

Don't forget the price of carbon. There's billions of $ of profitable business done in these areas recently.
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