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Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

reneweconomy.com.au

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Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#71

Post by cromulent »

monob wrote: post #70
grecy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (or wants to make a buzz out of nothing special) It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions. This is very important and big news in Australia, because the coal lobby is so strong and powerful they have been telling the public for a year now the Tesla battery will not work and is a waste of money. Obviously some people such as yourself understan…

>It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions. [[Citation needed.]] How much was the shortfall? How long could the battery have sustained the shortfall? How much damage would there have been at the usual response time? How what is the ROI without government subsidy to building huge battery storage?

The citation that it works is in the article.

Regarding the ROI and subsidies, I guess you would need to compare them to the billions received by the incumbents :)

The power crisis in South Australia has been extremely costly. The cost for the proposed fast start gas power plant was 380 million.

The state-wide blackout cost businesses 367 million.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-09/sa-blackout-costs-coul...

This battery will cost taxpayers 50 million over 10 years, apparently. Seems like a pretty good deal.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-01/tesla-giant-battery-of...

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#72

Post by thisrod »

It's worth pointing out that this battery only solved a second order problem: what to do when one thing unexpectedly breaks. The big technical problem in Australia is what to do when the weather forecast says that a whole lot of things will stop generating power at the same time, and it would take a very large battery to help with that.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#73

Post by cromulent »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #50
nl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else can take the role of supplying the bulk of electricity to grids that doesn't also have it's own environmental concerns? Gas fire plants Hydro Pump Solar Liquid salt storage Geothermal Wind + Large Scale Solar + Storage Tidal Decentralized PV solar plus decentralized storage. There are enormous numbers of combinations of solutions which don't involve coal or nuclear. Both coal and nuclear power are slow to r…

Start a business then! But I think investors may be hard to find - because most of that hasn't proved cost effective.

Yeah, but investors in coal would be hard to find in a free market as they are not cost effective without government subsidies.

Fossil fuel subsidies in 2015 were 6.5% of global GDP. That's quite a lot of money. Coal subsidies were about half of that.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#74

Post by eecc »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #44
grecy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (or wants to make a buzz out of nothing special) It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions. This is very important and big news in Australia, because the coal lobby is so strong and powerful they have been telling the public for a year now the Tesla battery will not work and is a waste of money. Obviously some people such as yourself understan…

On a broader note, it is important that in the age of (mis)information, that genuine advancements/improvements on tech are advertised properly. This is difficult because taxpayers often take a dim view on their money being spent on marketing government programs. Unfortunately with large companies advertising directly against programs that often run contrary to what is in the public interest, it is arguably in the pub…

“Unfortunately with large companies advertising directly against programs that often run contrary to what is in the public interest“ - uh? I think you meant the opposite of what you wrote. ;)

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#75

Post by freeflight »

tbabb wrote: post #2

The shortage was 560MW, and the Tesla facility provided 7.3MW, or 1.3%.

That's because it didn't need to provide more to make up for the slump in frequency, that was the whole purpose of the exercise.

The Honesdale Power Reserve can deliver up to 100 MW; 70 MW of those for 10 minutes and 30 MW up to 3 hours and it was built in less than 100 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Wind_Farm#Hornsdale_...

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#76

Post by monob »

cromulent wrote: post #71
monob wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions. [[Citation needed.]] How much was the shortfall? How long could the battery have sustained the shortfall? How much damage would there have been at the usual response time? How what is the ROI without government subsidy to building huge battery storage?

The citation that it works is in the article. Regarding the ROI and subsidies, I guess you would need to compare them to the billions received by the incumbents :) The power crisis in South Australia has been extremely costly. The cost for the proposed fast start gas power plant was 380 million. The state-wide blackout cost businesses 367 million. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-09/sa-blackout-costs-coul... This b…

>The citation that it works is in the article.

What worked in the article?

It only says the battery supplied less than 2% of the lost power for about 5 seconds before regular power generators took over.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#77

Post by cromulent »

monob wrote: post #76
cromulent wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The citation that it works is in the article. Regarding the ROI and subsidies, I guess you would need to compare them to the billions received by the incumbents :) The power crisis in South Australia has been extremely costly. The cost for the proposed fast start gas power plant was 380 million. The state-wide blackout cost businesses 367 million. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-09/sa-blackout-costs-coul... This b…

>The citation that it works is in the article. What worked in the article? It only says the battery supplied less than 2% of the lost power for about 5 seconds before regular power generators took over.

The battery is not supposed to replace the Victorian Loy Yang. That's one of the biggest power stations in Australia.

It is supposed to kick in and help support the South Australia power grid when power drops. It did that, faster than the designated backup did.

It worked as designed.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#78

Post by rolandnsharp »

thisrod wrote: post #72

It's worth pointing out that this battery only solved a second order problem: what to do when one thing unexpectedly breaks. The big technical problem in Australia is what to do when the weather forecast says that a whole lot of things will stop generating power at the same time, and it would take a very large battery to help with that.

Not many thunderstorms in Uluru mate.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#79

Post by tankenmate »

leereeves wrote: post #66
grecy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (or wants to make a buzz out of nothing special) It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions. This is very important and big news in Australia, because the coal lobby is so strong and powerful they have been telling the public for a year now the Tesla battery will not work and is a waste of money. Obviously some people such as yourself understan…

> and it works better than the existing solutions A few seconds faster, but with less than 2% of the required power. What are the claims from the other side about why "the Tesla battery will not work"? If the claims are "it won't provide enough power to matter", this data seems to support those claims, unless I misunderstand how the 9MW provided by the Tesla battery (the HPR) resolved the sudden loss of 560MW.

The issue is that it helped stabilise the frequency which prevents circuit breakers kicking in and possibly taking South Australia off the air like it did previously. In other words it did exactly what it was bought to do.

Re: Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units

#80

Post by wbhart »

leereeves wrote: post #66
grecy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (or wants to make a buzz out of nothing special) It's important to note it is something special. The battery works, and it works better than the existing solutions. This is very important and big news in Australia, because the coal lobby is so strong and powerful they have been telling the public for a year now the Tesla battery will not work and is a waste of money. Obviously some people such as yourself understan…

> and it works better than the existing solutions A few seconds faster, but with less than 2% of the required power. What are the claims from the other side about why "the Tesla battery will not work"? If the claims are "it won't provide enough power to matter", this data seems to support those claims, unless I misunderstand how the 9MW provided by the Tesla battery (the HPR) resolved the sudden loss of 560MW.

As I understand it, the article is about the frequency stabilisation market. The existing reserves are able to pick up the loss of energy eventually, but reliability of the grid depends on more than just total reserve power. That is why the frequency stabilisation market exists. As the article points out, no one was expected to lose power here.

Power systems are highly nonlinear. At any given time there are power generators spun up and able to deliver more power. In the case of hydro, for example, vanes can control the flow of water. More water at one generator means everyone's turbines can spin slightly faster. Throughout the day, many such adjustments are made to match the load with the supply, e.g. with predictive adjustments every 15 minutes, say. But the systems can only respond so fast and each station can only pick up the frequency so fast. When a large enough generator drops out, or load suddenly increases (lots of people turning their kettles on during an ad break on telly, for example), numerous things can happen, including increasing supply, reducing loads and tripping breakers. In the worst case, some consumers lose supply. The advantage of electric batteries, being pointed out here, is that they can react in milliseconds, helping to stabilise the supply. This can prevent those corner cases where dropping consumers from the grid, due to cascading failures (highly nonlinear events), is the alternative.

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