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Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

reneweconomy.com.au

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Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#61

Post by greglindahl »

hanbura wrote: post #41

>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…

You're confusing coal plants as flywheels and coal plants generating power -- two different things, two different timescales.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#62

Post by caf »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #40
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

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…

Market settings in the Australian NEM mean that generators tend to set their governors with very wide deadbands.

http://www.escosa.sa.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/1047/20170208-I...

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#63

Post by caf »

nl wrote: post #53
stephen_g wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A large amount of the exported gas is coming from pre-existing East Coast fields eg. Bass Strait that were already developed.

What's new is the liquefaction LNG export terminals.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#64

Post by nl »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #50
nl wrote: 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.

There's plenty of investor interest:

Pump Hydro in disused mine: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/pumped-hydro-in-queensland-ready... (more details: http://www.genexpower.com.au/the-kidston-pumped-storage-hydr...)

Solar Thermal Generation: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-14/solar-thermal-power-pl...

Solar/battery combination: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-31/sanjeev-gupta-joins-sa...

Solar/Wind combination: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-03/yorke-peninsula-batter...

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#65

Post by prawn »

icc97 wrote: post #27
roenxi wrote: 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.

Household solar is very popular at least.

I think many Australians would appreciate that we are in a good position to exploit solar potential, but pitched as part of the green/renewable solution, it's quickly tied into tribal politics and people get a bit silly.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#66

Post by leereeves »

grecy wrote: post #29
PinguTS wrote: 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…

> and it works better than the existing solutions

A few seconds faster, but with less than 2% of the required power.

What are the claims from the other side about why "the Tesla battery will not work"? If the claims are "it won't provide enough power to matter", this data seems to support those claims, unless I misunderstand how the 9MW provided by the Tesla battery (the HPR) resolved the sudden loss of 560MW.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#67

Post by leereeves »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #24
jobu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is a bit sparse, but take a look at the output of the Loy Yang 3 and the Tesla (HPR) in this graph: http://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/HPR-fr... Tesla ramps up as the LYA3 is dropping at 1:59am, then the Tesla drops off a bit before 2:02 am as the Gladstone generator kicks in (not in the graph)

There are two types of people in the world: those that can extrapolate meaning from an incomplete set.

While we're extrapolating meaning, I noticed that the first graph shows the HPR kicked in a few seconds before the frequency stopped dropping. Does that mean that the HPR did little to nothing to arrest the fall in frequency, and that it was the Gladstone generator, which the article says activated four seconds after the HPR, which deserves the credit?

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#68

Post by bsanderson »

PinguTS wrote: 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…

I don't think it's making "a buzz out of nothing special"... you compare it to every data centre with battery backup which is a standard thing, but scaling that to apply the same principle at a full grid scale rather than a single data centre is not nothing special.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#69

Post by nickik »

thisrod wrote: post #39
roenxi wrote: 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 This is a one sided way of putting it. The people who build coal plants in Australia say that they've stopped doing it because of climate change. The plants need to run for decades to pay off the cost of construction. The business people expect that, whoever is in charge of Australia, power plants will have to stop burning coal before t…

I guess in another market somebody would bet on the nuclear and hope to draw people with lower prices. Lets see how deep the confections are.

But since build those monsters is such a long process and the approval alone is so difficult already. If you want to develop something new, you can add a couple years to the project.

The hope is China, they are selling mid-sized pebble generators and they should start producing them pretty soon for delivery in a couple of years.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#70

Post by monob »

grecy wrote: post #29
PinguTS wrote: 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…

>It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions.

[[Citation needed.]]

How much was the shortfall?

How long could the battery have sustained the shortfall?

How much damage would there have been at the usual response time?

How what is the ROI without government subsidy to building huge battery storage?

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