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

theguardian.com

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

#151

Post by nabla9 »

calafrax wrote: post #148
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.

Roughly $4800 per household. The price of huge flat screen. If it scales, it's acceptable solution for rich countries with cheap wind or solar.

(if it truly scales, the price will drop dramatically when volumes grow).

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

#152

Post by olivermarks »

melling wrote: post #126
olivermarks wrote: post #43

Hawaii and HECO are worth watching closely in the real world of energy and modern grids. http://www.utilitydive.com/news/hawaiian-electric-proposes-n... There is a great deal going on in the energy world right now around storage of electricity, I think it's a shame opEd websites such as the Guardian feature and focus on Musk, a single entrepreneur and his companies, over the broader advances that are unfolding...

Hawaii gets 85% of its electricity burning imported oil. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Hawaii If solar is cost effective then Hawaii should be an easy place to build it?

You would think so, but I've been following this for 4 years and there are huge issues to resolve. There is a pre existing grid designed to distribute electricity generated from imported oil which is now woefully out of date. There is huge home solar usage in Hawaii but the grid is incapable of redistributing surplus power created by owner panels. Storage for redistribution at a reasonable cost is the big challenge there, and is being watched closely by other regions and places before they emulate...

From the Energy Dive article I linked to:

'At the end of 2016, about 26% of Hawaiian Electric’s customers’ electricity was sourced from renewables, Greentech Media notes. Customer owned solar power was the largest contributor at 34% of the renewables total, followed by wind, 29%, and biomass at 19%.

On the Big Island of Hawaii renewables accounted for 54% of customers’ needs and on Maui and Molokai it was 37%.'

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

#153

Post by _ea1k »

Animats wrote: post #6

Can Tesla deliver the batteries in the next 100 days? Tesla had a battery shortage last quarter when production couldn't keep up, and had to delay some car deliveries.[1] With Model 3 deliveries starting, is Tesla's battery production sufficient? [1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/03/technology/tesla-battery-car...

They indicated that the problem was with the extremely power dense 100Kwh packs that are now fairly common in the Model S and Model X. It may be that there is no similar issue with the less power dense utility scale packs.

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

#154

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

tominous wrote: post #42
jdietrich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale. One country taking decisive action could trigger a chain reaction of political pressure. Australia has a horrendous wildfire problem. The frequency and severity of wildfires has drastically increased…

Paradoxically, more frequent fires can often mean less severe fires. That's the rationale behind controlled burns and traditional aboriginal land management practices. And because this is Hacker News, have a play with the simulation hosted at Fourmilab: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest

I know that some trees have adapted to fires. Some pine cones are held closed by a resin that is sensitive to high temperatures. These cones will not open to release their seeds until the critical temperature is reached, out with the old and in with the new and such.

However, if there's nothing left ot burn and the whole ecosystem is destroyed, that's a problem

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

#155

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

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.

Hopefully, we'll be mining asteroids by the time lithium scarcity becomes a problem

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

#156

Post by greglindahl »

_ea1k wrote: post #153
Animats wrote: post #6

Can Tesla deliver the batteries in the next 100 days? Tesla had a battery shortage last quarter when production couldn't keep up, and had to delay some car deliveries.[1] With Model 3 deliveries starting, is Tesla's battery production sufficient? [1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/03/technology/tesla-battery-car...

They indicated that the problem was with the extremely power dense 100Kwh packs that are now fairly common in the Model S and Model X. It may be that there is no similar issue with the less power dense utility scale packs.

Also note that there are 2 different kinds of cells involved, manufactured in different places.

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

#157

Post by greglindahl »

vamur wrote: post #141
maxerickson wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NG plants can't start delivering power in seconds. That's what "stabilization" means.

You're right that NG plants do play an important role in the grid today, but it's a "we predict that we'll need more power generated in an hour" role.

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

#158

Post by greglindahl »

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.

I've seen the media talk about the sustainability of lithium ion batteries at scale.

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

#159

Post by greglindahl »

pavlov wrote: post #117
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.

Seems like there is plenty of lithium, but mines are not keeping up with demand. Here's an interesting story from FT about Chile's lithium mines, with pictures: https://www.ft.com/content/cde8f984-43c7-11e6-b22f-79eb4891c... (You may need to Google for the title to bypass paywall: "Lithium: Chile’s buried treasure")

It takes time to construct new mines. When Tesla started building the gigafactory, they signed long-term contracts with companies building new mines in the US and Mexico.

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

#160

Post by greglindahl »

olivermarks wrote: post #43

Hawaii and HECO are worth watching closely in the real world of energy and modern grids. http://www.utilitydive.com/news/hawaiian-electric-proposes-n... There is a great deal going on in the energy world right now around storage of electricity, I think it's a shame opEd websites such as the Guardian feature and focus on Musk, a single entrepreneur and his companies, over the broader advances that are unfolding...

Here's a big Hawaii example of solar + battery:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/10/teslas-kauai-solar-storage...

By putting the two together, the combination looks like a conventional power plant in terms of the grid.

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