Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#141

Post by vamur » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 1:25 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #137

vamur wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

129MWh is a laughable amount of storage when you need at minimum 10000MWh per day for 1mln people. So you would need at least $12.5bln to build enough plants for just one day per 1mln people. And that's not counting maintenance. For that price 2-3 nuclear plants can be built which can last 30-50 years unlike the 10-20 years of lithium storage. Instead of hideously expensive (and potentially explosive) lithium storage…

It's a buffer to stabilize the grid though, so making gas wouldn't really solve the problem that the battery is supposed to solve.

Why wouldn't it? NG plants are already used to meet grid demands.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#142

Post by fosco » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 1:32 PM UTC

wklauss wrote: post #96

shoo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's true. but to dig a bit deeper, who pays each cost and who benefits from the value? who directly benefits from the value of energy: - australian energy consumers - australian energy producers who pays the costs for energy prices: - australian energy consumers who pays the costs for australian emissions *: - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of…

> who pays the costs for australian emissions *: > - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions > - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of emissions Not that straightforward. Effects of emissions is global, yes, but there are also local effects due to pollution, certain chemical byproducts, etc... meaning the local cost is higher than the average worldwide cost.

While travelling in south east Asia I spent 4 days in Saigon (Hó Chi Minh City). Air impacts locals immediately, it may have an effect everywhere long term but immediately for wife and I was pretty harsh irritation of each breath by the last day. We may have been sensitive to it (guess the US air comes at a price) but it was worse than I imagined.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#143

Post by philipov » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 1:37 PM UTC

WJW wrote: post #136

philipov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What crystal ball are they using to predict the future out for 80 years? Are they making the assumption that there will be no technological paradigm shifts and demand growth will continue along current levels? Do they factor in the effects of climate change and global instability? If you use an estimate of demand to justify increasing demand, you immediately, tautologically invalidate the estimate: the estimate did n…

If you want to know which assumptions they made, why not just read the studies and see for yourself? To be sure, predicting the future is super difficult. If we have a global thermonuclear war in 2020, we will probably not need any tons of lithium at all, what with everyone being dead. Same thing if we get hit by a really large asteroid, etc. Also if someone ever develops man-portable fusion reactors we might not nee…

No studies were cited. I would love to see them.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#144

Post by philipov » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 1:38 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #140

philipov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What crystal ball are they using to predict the future out for 80 years? Are they making the assumption that there will be no technological paradigm shifts and demand growth will continue along current levels? Do they factor in the effects of climate change and global instability? If you use an estimate of demand to justify increasing demand, you immediately, tautologically invalidate the estimate: the estimate did n…

The crystal ball comment is not helpful. The same argument applies to all forecasting. For instance next years budget may be invalidated by a financial crisis, a war, a new invention. What a forecast does is provide a helpful generalization for questions like, 'can we really use Lithium batteries at that scale'. 80 years of expected availability doesn't mean we can will run out in 80 years, it does mean that in our s…

The same argument does indeed apply to all forecasting of what will happen by 2100. You can't predict what demand and supply will be 80 years in the future.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#145

Post by amygdyl » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 1:40 PM UTC

shoo wrote: post #125

amygdyl wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also appreciating the same as you quoted above. But I keep defaulting to a painfully pessimistic imagination that is the costs are collectively going to be so moot so much sooner than any expectation, due to unforseen extreme results. Am I going through a depression or something manic, maybe, because I don't believe we're not all suppressing contemplation of the outlier worse consequences of climate instability a…

Personally I have found reading both history and philosophy is helpful - not in "solving the problem" but being able to manage emotion and anxiety about climate change. I think learning about previous periods of large-scale ecological change or collapse of civilisations helps to normalise the possible/likely/inevitable upcoming events intellectually. Philosophy helps to figure out a workable emotional response. I thi…

Wow thank you so much for your very thoughtful reply. I'm glad you mentioned philosophy albeit I named my company after the most introspective and protective muse of Kirkegaard, so I have to find a way to not loop into a existentialism of my career. But as a reply I think you are correct in saying that I would benefit from a new sight of the philosophers to be at least a clearer mirror of the world than I am possessing now.

I'm possibly finally reaching the simple steps of normal reaction to events that so shocked me I blanked a considerable amount of my life memory and only recently was reunited with by a further trauma. But I have reacted to your comment by latching on to the health side of the equation as patently a relatively simple thing to incrementally improve that is likely to be a positive feedback catalyst. My mind is silently expressing a elongated and expressive Yep to that. But what you say about philosophy and understanding emotions is particularly apt, as it is a pain point that my memory loss is associated with the devaluation of emotions in my life at important times.

I'm unable to add to the thoughts of resources wars, except for mention of the emergency powers in place in the UK for 13 years now which are so draconian the only parallel is Soviet control over the population. Statewatch is a good place to source for the much ignored data and law. In my mind the powers have been long anticipating social breakdown and were ready over a decade ago. I can only wonder at the imagination of the technology advances in recent years without a accompanying chillier political climate and stagnating peacetime. I actually take solace from thinking that it is not a given, the seemingly inseparable advance of tech and the diminished capacity for liberties. I'm inclined to bet long and hard on the positive side of technology.

Thanks again for your thoughts. I've actually taken them to heart.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#146

Post by nabla9 » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 1:53 PM UTC

I try to do some numbers the best I can.

Assuming cost of $1.25 per MWh (same as in California) this costs roughly $150 million. You would need 260 of these to cover all Australian households for $39 billion.

This is dayscale storage and emergency supply to stabilize electricity grid. It provides emergency supply for 30,000 homes and grid stabilization. Lithium energy competes in this category with Flywheel energy storage systems. 129 MWh's battery used alone could supply the daily electricity for something like 7000 household daily electricity usage. If it supplies only 1/4 of the electricity then 30,000 homes is realistic.

If Tesla learns how to reuse lithium with reasonable cost, this can scale. Currently Tesla recycles lithium into bricks used in construction.

The price would be $4900 per per household.

sources:

1. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity...

2. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/all-the-details-on-teslas...

EDIT: I used average household energy usage and number of homes but used Australian population. The cost and number of units required was 3X too high. 1̶2̶0̶

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#147

Post by 21 » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 1:58 PM UTC

WJW wrote: post #124

zyngaro wrote: post #115

So basically we are transitioning from a fossil energy based world to lithium based one. Why does media never talk about the sustainability of build lithium ion batteries at large scale? Have the recycling problem been sorted out (I have a couple of lithium ion batteries and I don't know what to do about them) I also heard that lithium is very very scarce on Earth.

It's not talked about in "the media" (at least not front page stuff) because it is not a huge problem. While "scarce" is relative, global demand until the year 2100 is estimated to be between 12 and 20 million tons, while currently known reserves are about 39 million tons. So we should be good for at least 80 years. Recycling is also a solved problem, though we'll have to build a few more factories to keep up with th…

I love it when people make 80 year old predictions with a straight face.

Reminds me of "peak oil" when everybody was predicting us running out of oil. Today somehow that doesn't seem to concern us anymore. Some are even more concerned about over-abundance of oil (Saudi Arabia for one).

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#148

Post by calafrax » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 2:00 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #146

I try to do some numbers the best I can. Assuming cost of $1.25 per MWh (same as in California) this costs roughly $150 million. You would need 260 of these to cover all Australian households for $39 billion. This is dayscale storage and emergency supply to stabilize electricity grid. It provides emergency supply for 30,000 homes and grid stabilization. Lithium energy competes in this category with Flywheel energy st…

So, totally worth it ($120 billion) for a 0.01% reduction in global ghg emissions.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#149

Post by taneq » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #119

Can anyone comment more generally on using lithium ion batteries for grid scale storage? It seems nonsensical to me. Lithium makes sense for cars where power density is essential. But with grid scale storage, there are so many drawbacks, including 1.) High fixed cost vs. other batteries 2.) Degradation from dendrite growth 3.) Need for constant cooling 4.) Possibility of catastrophic failure in case of short circuiti…

I'm excited about flow batteries too, but they still have their analogues of the above.

1) Are prices publicly available yet? I haven't found one online, would be keen to know how much their 10kWh unit costs.

2) The cell has a finite lifespan which is analogous to cell degradation - the warranty covers up to 36,500kWh of delivered energy for the 10kWh model, which equates to 3650 full discharge cycles. This is more than lithium batteries, don't get me wrong, but they're not immortal.

3) I don't believe lithium batteries need constant cooling in most cases, especially since for bulk storage your discharge rate is going to be less than 1C.

4) Fair call, lithium batteries have some scary failure modes.

Also, the round trip efficiency of these batteries is only ~77% which is a fair bit lower than lithium (I think they're 90%+?) and represents a large loss of energy over the life of the battery.

Overall I agree that there are significant advantages to flow batteries, especially at grid scale, but they do have drawbacks too.

Re: Tesla’s big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables

#150

Post by taneq » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 2:30 PM UTC

vamur wrote: post #135

aphextron wrote: post #119

Can anyone comment more generally on using lithium ion batteries for grid scale storage? It seems nonsensical to me. Lithium makes sense for cars where power density is essential. But with grid scale storage, there are so many drawbacks, including 1.) High fixed cost vs. other batteries 2.) Degradation from dendrite growth 3.) Need for constant cooling 4.) Possibility of catastrophic failure in case of short circuiti…

129MWh is a laughable amount of storage when you need at minimum 10000MWh per day for 1mln people. So you would need at least $12.5bln to build enough plants for just one day per 1mln people. And that's not counting maintenance. For that price 2-3 nuclear plants can be built which can last 30-50 years unlike the 10-20 years of lithium storage. Instead of hideously expensive (and potentially explosive) lithium storage…

It's a peaking plant, you don't run it flat out all day, you charge it off-peak and then use it to help cover the 4pm-7pm demand surge.