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Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

electrek.co

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Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#51

Post by roenxi »

tgtweak wrote: post #45
sbov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to the point where it costs $14,000 per MW. At that pricepoint hiring humans to hand crank generators is not the laughably ridiculous proposition it should be.

Is this per mWh? That seems like a rediculous amount if true.

It does seem a bit high because that is a peak statistic, not an average. The energy regulator keeps some statistics on the subject at [1].

Regardless, there is a good point to be made that South Australia was a strong competitor in the hypothetical 2017 Worlds Most Expensive Electricity Competition. It is possible that the batteries success is due to some quirk of their particularly poorly run grid. It is also possible that wind-battery combinations are now a competitive option. The situation continues to unfold.

[1] https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/wholesale-statistic...

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#52

Post by azernik »

ggm wrote: post #48
krl02 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is hugely politicized We think we’re boxing it off from that but if you look closer, through the abstract nonsense people peddle, you’ll see it comes down to a political yes/no process You’re welcome to pretend otherwise. I’d rather just dispense with the notion life is anything but dialog back and forth, jockeying for acceptance and access into some clique or the “right” to build useful infra

Can you explain in this model, how any useful bipartisan investment happened, in the past wartime expediency aside? I think its true this has always been a dimension of things, but the scale of this dimension set against other dimensions has substantially changed in the last two decades. Before this, there were some things that both (notional) sides were prepared to express some unanimity on. For example: "soviet pow…

Bipartisan consensus is also a political process.

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#53

Post by klondike_ »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
bassman9000 wrote: post #9

Zero emmissions If nuclear has to include the costs of dismantling the plants, batteries have to include the cost of building them. And wind generators are massive aluminum structures, which are extremely costly to shape. Some day, maybe. Let's be fair in the meantime.

No one has any way to dispose of nuclear waste (except reprocessing, which has significant cost and safety concerns). It sits in storage pools waiting for that day. Lithium batteries have no such issue.

Nuclear waste is supposed to be disposed of in an underground, geologically stable repository by law [1] but because of repeated government incompetence the project has yet to be completed.

So now all nuclear waste across the country sits in pools instead of being disposed of properly.

This should be trivial to fix but I suppose the government would rather wait for a disaster to happen than to deal with it proactively

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#54

Post by pbreit »

ggm wrote: post #3

This outcome is in a particularly distorted badly operated market, one where for no very good reasons regulatory power is not being applied, and distorted bidding for FCAS and peak supply has been the norm. It's hugely politicised, and in the context of a rejection of carbon trading and an attempt by the ruling federal liberal-national government to wedge coal into the mix (it's basically uneconomic now, and won't ge…

I’m confused. Is it 90% savings vs regular power (awesome) or 90% vs “emergency” power (ok)?

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#55

Post by CommieBobDole »

sxates wrote: post #28
ovao wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While not cost effective in the slightest, jettisoning nuclear waste into outer space is one proposition. Naturally, launching rockets filled with nuclear waste comes with its own safety concerns.

What's the carbon footprint of a thousand rocket launches?

Somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand 747 flights at maximum range, maybe a little less.

The Falcon 9 carries 147 metric tons of RP-1, which is functionally the same thing as Jet A (both are kerosene), while a 747-400 carries 165 metric tons of Jet A.

For a very broad estimate, I'd say the carbon footprint of a thousand Falcon 9 rocket launches is somewhat less than the carbon footprint of a day's worth of aircraft travel, globally.

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#56

Post by ggm »

pbreit wrote: post #54
ggm wrote: post #3

This outcome is in a particularly distorted badly operated market, one where for no very good reasons regulatory power is not being applied, and distorted bidding for FCAS and peak supply has been the norm. It's hugely politicised, and in the context of a rejection of carbon trading and an attempt by the ruling federal liberal-national government to wedge coal into the mix (it's basically uneconomic now, and won't ge…

I’m confused. Is it 90% savings vs regular power (awesome) or 90% vs “emergency” power (ok)?

It's 90% cheaper bids into a frequency stability service. It corrects for drift from 50hz. It doesn't supply power in that sense, it supplies a slightly out of phase AC to refocus the frequency back to where it should be. It does it inside milliseconds of a drift and prevents overreaction by other generators with synchronous power, and can do it more often for less "cost" (synchronous flywheel systems lose most of their power reserve reacting, and have to be recharged over a longer and more costly period. A battery is really ideal for this frequency adjustment service)

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#57

Post by ImaCake »

boyter wrote: post #4

It’s also a national embarrassment according to the government treasurer who likened it to Australia’s tourist stop big things such as The Big Banana. What I love about it is that it’s forcing the governments hand. They have vested interests in the coal industry but cannot continue to overlook this when electricity prices are so high in Australia.

The South Australian government at the time did an incredible thing. They gave the national government the middle finger, in a live-televised conference no less: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/josh-frydenberg-jay-we...

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#58

Post by ggm »

azernik wrote: post #52
ggm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain in this model, how any useful bipartisan investment happened, in the past wartime expediency aside? I think its true this has always been a dimension of things, but the scale of this dimension set against other dimensions has substantially changed in the last two decades. Before this, there were some things that both (notional) sides were prepared to express some unanimity on. For example: "soviet pow…

Bipartisan consensus is also a political process.

Yes. One which is increasingly absent from western electoral democratic process. Oppositional politics is currently the preferred model even though it wedges capital investment in infrastructure. Are you bringing anything to this conversation or just trying to win an argument here?

Re: Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%

#60

Post by stephen_g »

jazoom wrote: post #49
boyter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s particularly bad in Australia and South Australia where this battery is was the worst. Australia despite having abundant reserves of coal, gas and uranium as well as excellent solar and wind locations has some of their most expensive electricity prices in the world.

This is true and it blows my mind. It also makes me sad. We have some really smart and educated people in this country. What's the problem here?

Mostly the Coalition. Seriously.

It’s clear from the AEMO market makeup etc. that almost all the cost increase was attributable to the cost of gas (due to Santos having contracts to export more gas than they had supply for to Japan etc., while the international gas price has fallen. So they are sucking up gas on the domestic market pushing up domestic prices and their liquefication operation is unprofitable anyway). But the Coalition instead chose to use the cost of electricity as a political tool in a bizarre anti-renewables push.

Economists have suggested that a large enough gas reservation policy (like WA has) would rectify that. The LNP could legislate it in a few weeks at worst. This would also benefit industrial gas users that have been struggling with big increases.

A more minor part (like what this battery is helping to stop) is the privatised generators gaming the market by constraining supply artificially to push up prices at certain high-demand times. Some of this also naturally happens with some of the older coal stations tripping out and falling off for a few hours (I think Liddel is only achieving something like 46% capacity on average or something?).

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