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Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

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Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#111

Post by adrianN »

M_Grey wrote: post #42
allendoerfer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the future is rather lame and predictable. When imagining the future we are sometimes thinking there will be some giant jump forward, while in reality it is just decades and decades of minimizing microchips, increasing photovoltaic efficiency, improving batteries. This technology (except the microchip) is from the 19th (!) century. On top of that we are using some statistical m…

The day a room temp superconductor is developed (and is scalable to mass production) you'll see that change in a crazy hurry. Assuming we're alive then, which is probably not a safe assumption. There are a few things like that which could change the game almost overnight, but a room temp superconductor would be one of, if not the biggest.

Room temp superconductors will probably also take a while to come down in price enough to make sense and will see some limited deployment for costly applications before that. It's unlikely that we'll go from "no superconductors except in MRTs" to "superconductors as an essential part of the power grid" in a time frame that is measured in years instead of decades.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#112

Post by TeMPOraL »

greglindahl wrote: post #63
rdl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be pretty happy to pause an EV charge many times. Since Teslas are data-connected, they could possibly do this with no grid interface beyond the power connection.

This is one very nice aspect of a grid when there are a lot of electric cars which charge at night, and have big enough batteries that they don't need to fully charge: you can absorb a lot of variability of overnight wind energy. And if electric cars also plug in at work... jackpot.

The future of transportation - grid balancing batteries that have wheels and incidentally take you somewhere you need. ;).

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#113

Post by XJOKOLAT »

klakier wrote: post #109

What a bullshit. I'd call this Russian way of doing business, where you benefit from unhealthy connections with state. 2500 houses? Go find out how many houses are there in California.

This point has been addressed several times in this discussion. It's not about the number of houses. Thanks.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#114

Post by Hondor »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #99
manicdee wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The batteries used for cars are different to the batteries used for power banks. Tesla is selling internally to themselves, and already has production set up for batteries for stationary power. The best outcome is for demand to ramp up, keeping prices high long enough to fund the rest of the construction of the gigafactory. No praying required.

Musk has stated publically that they're betting the company on the battery price coming down for the Model 3 to be profitable. That's why they're building the Gigafactory, to reach $100/kWh. If suddenly power companies start buying lots of batteries, and prices stabilise at or above today's levels, it would mean (by implication) that the Model 3 won't be profitable (at least initially). Sure car batteries and power b…

If prices don't come down, especially due to higher demand, and the car isn't profitable then the battery factory will be instead. Sounds like they win either way.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#115

Post by barney54 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #69
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure peakers are expensive, but they are profitable, otherwise no-one would build and run them. Supply and demand etc. I'm not sure what you mean by Tesla cannibalizing the peakers? Do they already own traditional peaker plants? I agree revenue is revenue, I'm just saying this is perhaps unlikely to provide more revenue from sales outside CA.

Batteries are now cheaper than peakers everywhere, not just CA. That's what I'm saying. Tesla's PowerPack installs (battery storage receives federal incentives, nat gas does not) will replace peakers, leaving them as stranded assets (the cannibalization I refer to). Edit: unepipe: Tesla packs perform the exact same role as a peaker plant: energy on demand. They are distributed, dispatchable loads and generators, avai…

Peakers are still much cheaper than batteries. Here's the most recent analysis from Lazard: https://www.lazard.com/media/2391/lazards-levelized-cost-of-... See p. 9.

So current peakers will not be stranded assets, especially because the life of batteries is likely less than 20 years.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#116

Post by akiselev »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #64
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd encourage you to spend 15 minutes researching what the costs are of running a peaker plant. There's a reason they're the most expensive generation method per MWh (peakers run for under 100 hours per year). Revenue is revenue. If Tesla is able to cannibalize the peakers to contribute towards its enormous capital expenditures, and continue to reduce costs with the Gigafactory, it only makes utility battery storage…

Sure peakers are expensive, but they are profitable, otherwise no-one would build and run them. Supply and demand etc. I'm not sure what you mean by Tesla cannibalizing the peakers? Do they already own traditional peaker plants? I agree revenue is revenue, I'm just saying this is perhaps unlikely to provide more revenue from sales outside CA.

Peakers aren't "profitable" per se, they're a result of the government granted monopoly given to power utilities. In california, at least, a brown or blackout caused by insufficient capacity can cost the utilities tens or hundreds of millions in fines so the peaker plants are a relatively cheap way to avoid having your margin wiped out in the summer. That said, I'm not sure 20MWh would really help replace any peakers although in the future they definitely will.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#118

Post by WalterBright »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #110
azernik wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been the promise of "smart-grid" attached devices; the implementation hasn't caught up with the dream yet, but in theory, yeah, there are a lot of very elastic loads that can be used to smooth out the demand curve, or to match a jittery supply curve.

It ain't gonna work if you need people watching the electricity prices and deciding what to do. It need to be devices talking directly to the power grid. And that need standards for things like communication protocols. Does anyone here know how are those coming along?

> And that need standards for things like communication protocols.

All that is needed is a way to get the spot price of electricity from the internet, similar to how I can get the current temperature in Anchorage. Devices don't need to talk to the power grid.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#119

Post by hvidgaard »

nl wrote: post #53
flukus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most peoples electricity usage is relatively inelastic and no one wants the cognitive overload of checking electricity prices before they put the TV on.

TV isn't the problem. Most of benefits come if you have a system which can regulate slightly your use of air conditioning and heating (and a few other things like pool pumps). In some cases you can save 50% of a daily powerbill by turning off the compressor in an air conditioner for 15 minutes.. but the right 15 minutes. Few people would get up and turn off the air con for that, but a system that let you say how much…

It's a different beast. The price is high during those 15 minutes because of supply and demand. If you implement a smart grid that regulate load, you upset the supply and demand balance and the power might become so cheap that new self regulating systems are not worth the initial cost.

Re: Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

#120

Post by kwhitefoot »

crdoconnor wrote: post #107
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd encourage you to spend 15 minutes researching what the costs are of running a peaker plant. There's a reason they're the most expensive generation method per MWh (peakers run for under 100 hours per year). Revenue is revenue. If Tesla is able to cannibalize the peakers to contribute towards its enormous capital expenditures, and continue to reduce costs with the Gigafactory, it only makes utility battery storage…

>There is no scenario where the cost curve per kWh of battery storage goes up. Lithium shortage.

Lithium is a common element. The difficulty is always that it is rather even distributed making it expensive to concentrate. It's the kind of thing that is solved simply by scaling up. It is in fact more abundant in the Earth's crust (17ppm) than lead (10ppm) and according to Wikipedia " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... 2012 production of lead was 5.2MT while lithium was 37kT.
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