Tesla Wins Contract to Help Power the California Grid

Post by mikeash » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

paulyg wrote: post #162

mikeash wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are comparing them because they serve the same purpose here. Base and peak loads on the grid can be wildly different. Without storage, if you want to avoid brownouts or blackouts, your generating capacity needs to match the peak load, even though you might only hit peak load a few times per year. The traditional way to handle this is to have power plants that can be spun up rapidly but sit idle 99% of the time…

Yes I know how all that works becuase I worked in the utility industry for over a decade. My point was (1) when comparing peakers vs storage you need to consider the cost of: Off-peak generation + storage cost vs peaker cost. (2) This wasn't a cost driven thing. This is a demand driven thing.

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

KamiCrit wrote: post #52

I love Tesla and Elon Musk as much as the next person. But isn't it a little crazy how much Elon is betting on 18650 lithium ion batteries. I really hope I'm mistaken and they have a homemade battery package made up.

Post by amelius » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

paulyg wrote: post #125

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is only financially viable because of Californian risk aversion after last years gas leak. If you have a reliable natural gas distribution network, like the rest of the world, batteries don't make any financial sense versus gas power plants. I mean, this entire plant can supply 20 MW and will cost somewhere around $20 million. For that price you can buy two General Electric LM2500 gas turbine generators that…

Why are people comparing and debating "batteries vs combustion turbines"? Batteries only store energy and you still need to generate it somewhere. Probably from a CCGT plant. And it's not risk aversion. Its buried subtly in the article but part of SoCal's gas infrastructure is shut down because of the leak. They literally can't provide enough gas to generate enough electricity for peak demand. So they will generate o…

Post by kencausey » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

One of the things I wish I could buy would be a Bloom Energy 2kW natural gas fuel cell and a 50kWh LiON battery pack with whole house inverter. The nice thing about the Bloom fuel cells is very efficient conversion of natural gas to electricity, the weakness is that it's response time is long (an hour or more to change its output by 50%). The nice thing about LiOn battery packs like the ones in Tesla cars are that th…

If you can get the Bloom fuel cell, you could already do this with several PowerWalls ganged together and the proper inverter. Why the fuel cell though instead of solar? Trying to sidestep the monthly electric utility charge? If so, I'd still go solar, and rely on a natural gas generator as your supply of last resort.

Post by pmyjavec » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 7:34 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #166

nl wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, in Aus we don't have 99% reliability. It's about 45 min every 2 years (whatever that works out to). That number was to explain the cost savings. In much of the world those cost saving are directly applicable. Most of the world's population doesn't have 99% reliable electricity, and so they build reliability at the edges with everything from batteries in phone towers, to batteries in lighting. It isn't at…

Rooftop solar is on average a $25,000 - $35,000 investment, and that's not even counting energy storage required to actually be off-grid. I don't think that only the rich should have reliable energy, and the poor should suffer brownouts to theoretically save some infrastructure costs. For countries who don't yet have a reliable electric grid, I think investing in providing quality / reliable electricity to their popu…