Tesla Will Install More Energy Storage With SolarCity In 2016 Than The US Installed In 2015 (electrek.co)

Re:I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by NotInHere · 2016-04-25 22:30 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Perhaps it has something to do that with every centimeter the sea rises, the hawaii landmass shrinks? And who is the major land owner in Hawaii? Yes, the taxpayer! Means that raising sea levels destroy state owned real estate in the hundreds of millions. And land in Hawaii is not cheap you know.

Yes, of course its symbolic, but they want to not look like hyppocrites when they demand other states to adopt greener technologies.

Re:I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-25 22:36 · Score: 1

oh yes, because sarcasm is the best way to be taken seriously /sarcasm

yeah, confusing by supernova87a · 2016-04-25 22:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

Agreed, very confusing headline. Maybe a simplified way to explain it would be to say:

"This year, Tesla will singlehandedly double the amount of battery storage installed in the United States."

The point is that so little has been done at large scale with batteries/storage to date that Tesla's efforts are a big leap for the cost and installed base of battery storage, and now feasibly making off-the-grid / backup / peak shaving / frequency regulation / demand response a real possibility to experiment with at scale.

Re:yeah, confusing by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-25 23:03 · Score: 5, Informative

Battery storage is a waste of time, generates massive pollution, and will need replacing every 10 years. It is far better to feed the grid during peak times, and pump water to use hydro generation later in the day. We've know this for over a century!
This is all about PR for Telsa to sell batteries; batteries with obsolescence built in.
Re:yeah, confusing by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-25 23:25 · Score: 1

This is all about PR for Telsa to sell batteries; batteries with obsolescence built in.
tl;dr Tesla is Apple for cars, but with more public money.
The US was once about separation of Church and State, but then Churches were renamed to Corporations.
Re:yeah, confusing by AmiMoJo · 2016-04-26 00:39 · Score: 2, Informative

Battery storage is a waste of time, generates massive pollution, and will need replacing every 10 years.
Utter nonsense.
First, it depends on the type of battery. Utility scale you use sodium sulphur, residential scale you use lithium. Both are highly recyclable and will last for more than 10 years. In the case of lithium, most batteries will already have been recycled from cars anyway, so are on at least their second stint.
Panasonic and Tesla are building the world's largest battery factory, with an output in excess of the current world output. They rightly expect that many of those batteries will be installed in cars that are scrapped long before the battery is dead, so plan to simply remove it and install it in homes with some extra control electronics. Beyond that, recycling lithium cells is going to be big business. You would be crazy to throw away cells that can be refreshed with fairly minimal effort.
So given that the batteries will be used for cars anyway, it makes sense to reduce the cost of the vehicle by planning to extract maximum value from the cells in it.

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Re:yeah, confusing by Moridineas · 2016-04-26 01:36 · Score: 1

First, it depends on the type of battery. Utility scale you use sodium sulphur, residential scale you use lithium. Both are highly recyclable and will last for more than 10 years. In the case of lithium, most batteries will already have been recycled from cars anyway, so are on at least their second stint.

Is that true (the italicized portion)? I had not heard of that before.
Re:yeah, confusing by swb · 2016-04-26 01:44 · Score: 1

The people one block over got really mad when I told them I was going to flood their block so I could use it as a pumped storage reservoir.
I agree that your "solution" makes some sense, but you have to have a lot of geography and water available at your disposal. With 6 ft of head and 20 liters/sec you need about .83 acre-feet to get 10 kwh of power. That's not exactly residential scale.
Re:yeah, confusing by cnaumann · 2016-04-26 02:36 · Score: 2

Pump storage works great as long as you have a mountain, a lake, and all the permits are in place. There are maybe a dozen places in the US where pump storage is viable. Batteries will be needed for EVs and the batteries in the EVs will massive controllable storage facility. When the batteries are no longer suitable for EVs, they can be re-purposed for grid storage for a few more years, and finally they can be recycled.
Re:yeah, confusing by BasilBrush · 2016-04-26 03:39 · Score: 1

Hydroelectric dams make great batteries on the grid for balancing out demand for energy generated in big power stations. But this is for an entirely different purpose. This is for balancing domestic and commercial micro-generation with solar panels and wind turbines. Except in very exceptional circumstances, you can't use hydro for that.
Re:yeah, confusing by thinkwaitfast · 2016-04-26 04:47 · Score: 1

I think it's a bit of a stretch to call a technological limit "obsolescence built in."
Re:yeah, confusing by thinkwaitfast · 2016-04-26 04:50 · Score: 1

You don't get any appreciable power from 2m of water. Thermodynamic availability.
Re:yeah, confusing by Thelasko · 2016-04-26 05:25 · Score: 1

It is far better to feed the grid during peak times, and pump water to use hydro generation later in the day.
People are pissed about Net metering laws, even though the money could be used to build hydro storage. They would rather build their own energy storage than trust the power company to do it for them.

--
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Re:yeah, confusing by MachineShedFred · 2016-04-26 05:54 · Score: 1

Yeah ok, I'll just build a massive water tower in my back yard with a huge noisy pump to fill with water, and run a big noisy turbine at night off that water. I'm sure that the county and local zoning authorities will have no problems with this, and neither will any of my neighbors.
Or I could put a fucking battery on the wall in the garage and call it a day.

--
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Re:yeah, confusing by swb · 2016-04-26 09:00 · Score: 1

My typo, I mean 6M of water.
Re:yeah, confusing by thinkwaitfast · 2016-04-26 09:36 · Score: 1

That's standard tap water pressure. Even then it's pretty weak/lossy (not efficient). We had to do his for an upper level thermo class.
Re:yeah, confusing by ToddInSF · 2016-04-27 04:56 · Score: 1

It would make much more sense to invest in a updated, modern grid and shift coastal loads during peak hours.

It'll never happen because the amount of energy saved translates now into the amount of profit there is in keeping the grid archaic.

We are all hammers, everything is a nail by TheRealHocusLocus · 2016-04-25 22:47 · Score: 3, Funny

It's a useless project. Can anyone explain any way this would be worthwhile? ..
Yeah, didn't think you could!

PHASE I

1. Install electric utility meter on house [done]
2. Install solar panels on house [done]
3. Install battery storage in house [done]

PHASE II

4. Extend axles through basement windows
5. Mount monster truck tires
6. Hook washing machine and dryer to drive shaft
7. Mount steering wheel on front porch
8. Install La-Z-Boy recliner seat

PHASE III

9. Fire it up!
10. Pull out and head down the highway, dragging the entire North American energy grid infrastructure behind it.

Project REDNECK SOLAR HYBRID HOUSE complete.

--
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>

yeap by AlexAu · 2016-04-25 22:49 · Score: 1

Yes? it is truth

We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-25 23:13 · Score: 1

Tesla is great and facts are irrelevant. Elon Musk will solve all environmental problems with its arrogance-to-electricity technology.

Re:Murika by Errol+backfiring · 2016-04-25 23:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

If the free market wanted your alternative energy storing methods, it would have already happened.

What I read in articles like this is that the "free market" already wants it, and now it becomes more affordable and mainstream, it actually happens. Those batteries are very probable not mainstream enough, but what you see is a market growing. It is happening now.

--
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!

Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Morgaine · 2016-04-25 23:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Can anyone explain any way this would be worthwhile?

Sure. It's obvious to most people but it might as well be explained in case some folks haven't thought about it.

1) Energy will be cheap during the day because the sun is overhead and that power source is effectively free and limitless.
2) The sun isn't available at night, but solar power could be captured during the day and used at night, if storage were available.
3) The battery storage of the article provides that storage.

There you go, it's pretty simple and very sensible. It's also a good idea to add the following prediction to the above as well, as it's really a foregone conclusion and hence very safe to forecast:

4) All normal land vehicles will be electric in just a few decades. Burning fossil fuels may even become illegal, if not because of global warming and pollution then because it's far more valuable to use hydrocarbons as a raw material for industry. Burning money is silly.

Adding item (4) means that everyone will want the energy storage of (3) for recharging their cars when they get home. Paying the grid for that power when the sun can provide it for free during the day would be poor domestic economics. This pushes towards needing even more battery capacity.

Elon Musk is quite a visionary, but he's also a clever cookie when it comes to business. He knows where all this is going and is sewing up the future in EVs, mobile power storage, recharging stations, solar panels, and fixed power storage. He's got it all covered.

--
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra

Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by DemoLiter3 · 2016-04-25 23:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

Too bad in order to go 100% renewable and be able to iron out daily and seasonal input fluctuation, we need an estimated 0.2-1 MWh capacity per person. What Tesla is planning to do this year covers maybe ONE MILLIONTH of what USA would need. Does that sound like a solid plan?
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Diss+Champ · 2016-04-26 00:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

The summary claims they are doubling what they did last year. If they keep investing in the infrastructure to keep scaling up each year, being at one millionth right now is only 20 years away from your estimate of what the US would need.
Of course in practice the trick is to stop scaling up when there won't be people who want it or you business goes bust instead of being highly profitable at the end, but yes, this sort of infrastructure overhaul in 20 years is not only a rational timeline but pretty agressive in historical terms.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by DemoLiter3 · 2016-04-26 00:15 · Score: 2

Do you realize that the cost would be then in the range of 100 trillion? And that's just for USA. Doubling shit every year isn't something that comes for free? Is there even that much lithium on this planet?
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by sjbe · 2016-04-26 00:16 · Score: 2

What Tesla is planning to do this year covers maybe ONE MILLIONTH of what USA would need. Does that sound like a solid plan?
Umm, yeah. It does sound like a solid plan. What on earth makes you think we need to or even could replace all fossil fuel generation in one year by one company with a nascent technology? It's going to take a while. That doesn't make it a bad idea or make it impossible. I can't be bothered to verify your generating capacity claims but quite frankly we should have as much battery backed solar and wind power as our technology feasibly will permit.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Diss+Champ · 2016-04-26 00:36 · Score: 2

There is plenty of lithium on this planet. But that isn't the problem. As we have both said, the problem is the economics. The assumption in my comment, highlighted by the second half, is that since they are doing this as a business, they will stop scaling when they no longer see profit to be made by doing so. As long as there is profit in doing so, the total potential market size is a POSTIVE for the business case, not a negative.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by ricky-road-flats · 2016-04-26 00:40 · Score: 2

Yes, it does. He doesn't have to satisfy the ENTIRE potential market in the first year, or the second, or the tenth. But there's not much doubt it will be a market that will not be outgrown by supply for a good long while, and that makes it profitable. It also is a key part, as others have said of Musk's over all strategy to make electric cars much more feasible for many more people - more profit for him again. All power to him, no pun intended.
When Ford started churning out the Model T, the factory could only make 11 per month. Eleven. That then grew thanks to demand to 12,000 produced over 15 months, and that paid for the new plant which churned out 15 million over the following years. There are now over 250 million cars on the road just in the USA, and Ford is a MUCH bigger company than it was in 1908.
Did Henry Ford think like you? No. Will Elon Musk? Never.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Alomex · 2016-04-26 00:42 · Score: 1

Do you realize that the cost would be then in the range of 100 trillion?
Lesee... 100 million households at a cost of $10-30K per household.. total cost $1-3 trillion i.e. a whole two orders of magnitude less than the figure you claimed.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by slimshady76 · 2016-04-26 00:54 · Score: 1

Too bad in order to go 100% renewable and be able to iron out daily and seasonal input fluctuation, we need an estimated 0.2-1 MWh capacity per person. What Tesla is planning to do this year covers maybe ONE MILLIONTH of what USA would need. Does that sound like a solid plan?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't SolarCity's main objective to provide the new Tesla Gigafactory with 100% renewable energy?
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by beanpoppa · 2016-04-26 00:55 · Score: 1

'Batteries' come in many forms. From lead-acid (cheap and plentiful) to LiPo chemical batteries (expensive, but lightweight and dense). Batteries can also be in the form of an electric pumping station that pumps water from a low altitude to a higher one during periods of generation surplus so that hydro plants can generate power at night.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by angel'o'sphere · 2016-04-26 01:11 · Score: 1

Actually it is not worthwhile.
It is likely more an experiment.
As long as you don't produce the day consumption and (at least a part of) the night consumption during daytime, it makes no sense to store anything.
Unlike wind, solar power is 100% predictable, so you can schedule your fossile power plants long enough ahead of time to react to all fluctuations.
NO STORAGE
You have overproduction during daytime, you power down gas/oil/coal plants. So you safe fuel at daytime.
At night you power them as usually. What you safe at daytime, you now have to invest at night time.
WITH STORAGE
Now you have overproduction at day time, you store it and the conventional fuel plants run as normal: no fuel savings at day
Now at night you can use stored power: now you save fuel at night.
Unfortunately the saved fuel in both cases is exactly the same amount, minus losses due to storage.
In other words: storage only makes sense if you had to power down conventional plants below zero production.
And: solar power can not "overproduce"
Wind is another matter, wind can overproduce (double the wind speed, you have eight times the power). Hence you have sporadic peaks in wind power which are so extreme that you rather want to store wind power than to power down an ordinary plant.
But again: unless the total amount of production of renewable energy is far above 50% (actually the "overproduction" should top things over 100% peak load) it makes no sense at all to have storage beyond the ordinary pumped storage which you need anyway to balance the grid.
So ... Now we come to a different matter. Economics. Depending if the power prices fluctuate greatly over daytime (and nighttime), then it perhaps makes sense to to store solar power at times when power is cheap and use the stored power when ordinary power is expensive. But is unlikely the case in Hawaii.

--
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by shilly · 2016-04-26 02:04 · Score: 1

And of course scale effects and learning curves will drive the costs down much further.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by bill_mcgonigle · 2016-04-26 02:26 · Score: 1

Burning fossil fuels may even become illegal, if not because of global warming and pollution then because it's far more valuable to use hydrocarbons as a raw material for industry. Burning money is silly.
If it's actually more valuable, you don't need to worry about people 'burning money'. The literal example is actually quite apropos: nobody heats their homes with $100 bills.
Now, we might need better tech and financial instruments to address the capital costs, but if the value is there and such instruments are not made illegal (like most of the instruments that are proven to help poor people, like savings lotteries) then the price system can easily work this out.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by DemoLiter3 · 2016-04-26 02:45 · Score: 1

A 1 MWh battery however costs around 1 million dollars, and not 10000. Whole two orders of magnitude more than the figure you claimed
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by crunchygranola · 2016-04-26 03:08 · Score: 1, Insightful

A 1 MWh battery however costs around 1 million dollars, and not 10000. Whole two orders of magnitude more than the figure you claimed
Please link to an analysis that shows a 1 MWh battery per household would be needed in any kind of rational power system. This is a full months worth of electricity for an (extremely wasteful) American household, and almost 3 months of electricity for a more efficient OECD economy.
This is a preposterous made-up "requirement".

--
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Alomex · 2016-04-26 03:49 · Score: 1

And a 1GWh costs 1 billion dollars which is another whole two orders of magnitude. So?
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 05:20 · Score: 1

You're forgetting the industry and transportation. Households account for a mere quarter of electricity consumption in the industrialized countries. Also you're forgetting that this is a storage, not source of electricity. The battery does not generate power by itself. Also you're forgetting that your input from renewables is not guaranteed - you don't know how long will be the period of bad weather where you will have little or no input. Unless you don't mind to occasionally stay without electricity for a few days (including your work place!) you need to plan for sufficient capacity. This estimation is based on the capacity necessary to equalize daily, seasonal and weather-dependent input fluctuations in a reasonable mix of renewables (wind/solar/biogas). These estimations vary depending on used models and locations, but even the best case estimations in various studies still came to at least 1/10 of that - equally unreachable goal.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by MachineShedFred · 2016-04-26 05:42 · Score: 1

Damn. I guess we'd better do nothing until someone comes up with a solution that addresses THE WHOLE WORLD AT ONCE.
Clearly you can't start somewhere, and grow from there. That would never work!

--
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Agripa · 2016-04-26 08:39 · Score: 2

Napoleon: I want trees planted along the sides of the roads so my soldiers can march in the shade.
Minister: But sir, the trees will take years to grow?
Napoleon: Yes, so start immediately.
Re:Easy to explain, it's a rational plan by Stuarticus · 2016-04-27 01:29 · Score: 1

Where did you get that number from because it smells a lot like your ass.

--
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.

Now we can state by M0j0_j0j0 · 2016-04-25 23:57 · Score: 1

The future looks so bright, you have to wear shades! Expensive shades.

Tesla's PowerPacks 2x as expensive as promised by haruchai · 2016-04-25 23:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Last year, Tesla had a press release stating PowerPacks would be ~$250/kWh but the recently released pricing on their site shows a cost of $470/kWh even if you purchase FIFTY-FOUR PowerPacks for a total of 5,4 MWh of energy storage.
And the inverters aren't cheap either.

--
Pain is merely failure leaving the body

Re:Tesla's PowerPacks 2x as expensive as promised by AmiMoJo · 2016-04-26 02:14 · Score: 3, Informative

Welcome to Tesla Maths. They include the savings on your energy bill, any available subsidies and other random things they could think of.
It's like when Musk said you could own a Model S for $350/month. What he meant was, $350 if you put down a massive deposit, include all the fuel savings, include billing for the time to saved not pumping gasoline, took advantage of all tax breaks, free parking for EVs etc.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Tesla's PowerPacks 2x as expensive as promised by BasilBrush · 2016-04-26 03:55 · Score: 1

Demand outstripping supply presumably.
Re:Tesla's PowerPacks 2x as expensive as promised by thinkwaitfast · 2016-04-26 04:54 · Score: 1

My lead acid batteries are about $80/kwh and good for about 7 years.
Re:Tesla's PowerPacks 2x as expensive as promised by haruchai · 2016-04-26 10:14 · Score: 1

Let's hope so; if it's because they were unable to control costs and could be off that much in just one year, that doesn't bode well for the Model 3 price 2 years from now.

--
Pain is merely failure leaving the body

Re:I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by Gr8Apes · 2016-04-26 00:07 · Score: 2

$3500*365*15=$19M, plus plant costs. Doesn't seem so crazy all of a sudden.

--
The cesspool just got a check and balance.

Re:I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 00:15 · Score: 1

Interesting that suddenly a lot of anonymous, caustic comments turn up every time there is an article about renewable energy or cheap energy storage. If you didn't know better, you would almost think that there is an astroturf campaign going on...

Re: I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 00:24 · Score: 1

Solar flux in the tropics is rather steady over the course of a year.

Re: I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by DemoLiter3 · 2016-04-26 00:38 · Score: 1

countries in the tropics are usually too damn poor to buy these batteries (or a Tesla car)

Re: Sums up USA by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 00:39 · Score: 2, Informative

The gigafactory is in Nevada not Japan, the Solar cells are from New York not China, Musk is a US citizen....who has a Hebrew first name but isn't even a little Jewish.

Energy storage is expensive by bigwheel · 2016-04-26 00:40 · Score: 5, Informative

Sorry, I don't have time this morning to glean exact numbers. But there is a misconception that energy storage is free. I just went through these calculations for my off-grid dream home. (My cabin has been off-grid for 20+ years, so I am intimately familiar with wind+solar+storage.)

In reality, batteries don't last forever. The best of the best Rolls/Surette sealed lead acid batteries are good for 3,300 discharges to 50%. So, when you calculate the cost of those batteries against their total number of KWH that they will EVER store, it works out to approximately 10 cents per KWH. I've looked at every option available, and there are no other options close to flood lead acid storage amortized price.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... the Tesla powerwall has/had projected cycle life of 1000–1500 cycles. On a cost per KWH of new battery, they are about 3x the cost of flooded lead acid. So, for 3x the price, you get about half the energy storage over their lifespan. Again, apologies for not presenting the arithmetic. But the stored energy will cost somewhere between 30-50 cents per KWH. So, it is already not competitive with on-demand generation - even if the cost of generation is zero.

Re:Energy storage is expensive by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 02:51 · Score: 1, Insightful

Everybody who is focusing on off-grid uses, and residential energy prices, is missing the point. The better market for battery energy storage, right now, is businesses on-grid, who pay for peak electrical usage at absurdly high rates.
http://pipedot.org/story/2016-01-18/high-electrical-fees-lead-school-districts-to-install-batteries
With the peak billing, the cost per kilowatt at peak can actually be over $40... Batteries can easily be more expensive. And since it's not a daily charge/drain cycle, they can last MUCH longer than simple residential off-grid use.
Re:Energy storage is expensive by FeelGood314 · 2016-04-26 04:04 · Score: 1

Another way to look at this is that it will always become economical for the utility to use battery storage before it does for for urban city individual. The utilities get killed by the swings in electricity price plus having to build out for the maximum demand for those few hours each year where every AC unit is on. The last 8% or so of a typical North American utilities capacity is only used a few hours a year. That's a huge capital expense in transmission lines, generation and switching stations. Texas utilities can potentially pay the ERCOT max of $9/kwh for electricity and the price this year in some places in NA has gone as low as $-0.02/kwh. For individuals where I live the maximum we pay is $0.24/kwh and the min is $0.15/kwh.

Bottom line - If utilities aren't rolling out batter storage then it obviously isn't viable for urban individuals.
Re:Energy storage is expensive by nightfire-unique · 2016-04-26 04:23 · Score: 1

3300 cycles to 50%?
That seems unlikely. The 50% DoD cycle life indicated in the Rolls 12V 8D 275AH@20h battery is somewhere between 1250 and 1500, which seems pretty consistent with most quality flooded lead acid batteries.
They may have some longer lifespan batteries, but 3300 is pretty optimistic, and firmly in lithium chemistry territory.

--
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Re:Energy storage is expensive by thinkwaitfast · 2016-04-26 04:42 · Score: 1

10 cents per KWH
I think you mean 10 cents per WH, not kwh. That's the number that I used for my off grid house.
Just out of curiosity, how much battery storage do you have? I have 4kwh, but limit myself to ~20% dod and haven't found that I need more.
Re:Energy storage is expensive by thinkwaitfast · 2016-04-26 04:44 · Score: 1

can actually be over $40
Are you sure? This seems high by a factor of about 100.
Re:Energy storage is expensive by Gravis+Zero · 2016-04-26 05:15 · Score: 1

Tesla powerwall has/had projected cycle life of 1000–1500 cycles.
you aren't wrong but a recent advancement could change that number by orders of magnitude.

--
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Re:Energy storage is expensive by bigwheel · 2016-04-27 00:08 · Score: 1

Your cells are the cheaper ones. Rolls specs say 3300 cycles for Series-5000 cells.
"5000 series is no-compromise solution for extended use. Dual container construction, 10 year limited warranty. Rated for 5000 cycles at 20% depth of discharge. 3300 cycles at 50%. Capacities are listed at 100 Hr. rate." http://www.cosolar.com/catalog...
They are designed for a 15 year lifespan. Mine are still nearly good as new after 10 years.
Re:Energy storage is expensive by bigwheel · 2016-04-27 00:27 · Score: 1

No, 10 cents per *amortized* KWH is correct.
My system has 4 Surrette 6CS-25PS. About 28-30 KWH total storage, stored at 24v.
Those batteries cost about $1100 each, depending where you buy them. 6v, 1158 AH (20 hour rate)
So, without splitting hairs on load rates and voltage, $1100/(6x1.156) = $159/KWH
But when amortized against the rated 3300 cycles to 50%: $159 / 3300 / .5 = $0.096 per KWH to store your energy. Again, I've done a lot of research, and that's the best I could come up with.
Amortized cost is the number you need to look at when pricing a system.

Drop in the ocean by mr.gson · 2016-04-26 00:42 · Score: 2

116 MWh of battery capacity is still a drop in the ocean compared to the total electricity use. In the 2016, the US consumed 4,686,400,000 MWh of electricity. If we could run the entire country on those 116 MWh of batteries, they would run out in 0.78 seconds.

Re:Drop in the ocean by Maxwell · 2016-04-26 01:43 · Score: 2

How many seconds would it take before people figure out this is actually going to happen? Would 5s be the tipping point? 1 minute? An hour?
Re:Drop in the ocean by Smidge204 · 2016-04-26 03:27 · Score: 2

There is absolutely no reason to consider the battery requirements for running the entire country, and it's kind of asinine to just average it out like you did.
Solar can handle a significant portion of the peak loads, since the peak loads coincides strongly with time of day. Wind, hydro and whatever other whatever region-appropriate renewable can fill in for most of the night/off peak loads. You'd only need storage to cover the edge cases, and not all of that storage would need to be chemical battery (see: pumped hydro, compress gas, hydrogen, thermal, etc)
Chemical battery has the advantage of being easily deployable in small amounts, perfect for private homes and small businesses.
=Smidge=

Re:They did it for rain water.They will do it for by angel'o'sphere · 2016-04-26 00:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

In a bunch of socialist states collecting rain water is illegal.
We had that topic a few days before: AFAIK only in the USA there are "states" where collecting rain water is illegal.

for those who are using free sun will not be paying their fair share of taxes.
They pay taxes on the installation, VAT etc. and pay workers who pay taxes. And they have money left over that they spent somehow and pay taxes again, VAT etc.

Your concerns are overrated.

--
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.

SCTY articles by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 01:18 · Score: 1

Why do these anonymous pro Solar City articles appear after SCTY stock declines? I didn't think Slashdot had been infected by the stock pumpers but now I'm not so sure.

Re:SCTY articles by MachineShedFred · 2016-04-26 06:03 · Score: 1

I love how you say that, and SCTY is up at least $2 today. And, was up yesterday. In fact, they're trading at their highest price of 2016.
What was your point again?

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Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.

Re:Murika by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 01:27 · Score: 1

What I read in articles like this is that the "free market" already wants it, and now it becomes more affordable and mainstream, it actually happens.

You are right, now. The only reason that alternative energy prices are so high is that they are still paying off the capital investment, however as more and more competition comes on line that is going to be forced down. The price of oil has probably permanently gone below the cost of exploration and alternative energy will replace all fossil fuels except gas surprisingly soon. However remember that it would never have got to this stage via the free market. The reason that China is overtaking the US in solar is that the Chinese government made longer term plans for that than the market would ever bear.

Re:Are they still using slave labor panels? by Maxwell · 2016-04-26 01:42 · Score: 1

FTA:" Suniva Inc, a Georgia-based solar cell and panel maker that is backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc, farms out a small portion of its manufacturing to federal inmates as part of a longstanding government program intended to prepare them for life after prison." Teaching prisoners useful skills is bad, if they learn a job while in there they may not re-offend and keep the prison supply system working. Or something like that?

Fringe sites by Trachman · 2016-04-26 01:57 · Score: 2

The most famous fringe site is Washington Post. Here is the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Those who do not see the results, are too sensitive to scroll down the results page in google query. Nobody reads page #2 of google results anyway.

Re:Fringe sites by 110010001000 · 2016-04-26 02:02 · Score: 2

Those are very very old laws that aren't enforced. It has nothing to do with "socialism".
Re:Fringe sites by shilly · 2016-04-26 02:16 · Score: 2

Why on earth would you cite water laws as being something instituted by "a bunch of socialist states"?? As the article you yourself linked to demonstrates, these laws are actually an embodiment of crazy ideologies about individual ownership -- the principle being that the owner of the rainwater is not the person on whose head it falls, but the person whose great-grandpappy laid claim to a river into which the raindrops might conceivably wend their way in due course. Extremes of individual property ownership, in other words, not state appropriation.
You really have to live in the most bizarre headspace to conceive of the wild frickin' West of the 19th Century, the era in which these laws typically originated, as an era of socialism.
Re:Fringe sites by jbengt · 2016-04-26 06:22 · Score: 1

And I've been involved in construction projects in desert states where it was the opposite - you had to retain all of the runoff from your roof and parking lot completely within your property without any outlet to the storm sewer or river / drainage ditch, up to a certain amount of rainfall (can't remember if the amount was for a 50-year storm or what).

Re: I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by shilly · 2016-04-26 02:00 · Score: 1

Gosh, I wonder if there are any externalities associated with your choices? Because the way you write it, it sounds like the only factor to consider is cost. That might be just a teensy bit shortsighted.

Re:Are they still using slave labor panels? by drinkypoo · 2016-04-26 02:13 · Score: 1

FTA:" Suniva Inc, a Georgia-based solar cell and panel maker that is backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc, farms out a small portion of its manufacturing to federal inmates as part of a longstanding government program intended to prepare them for life after prison."

No. It is a longstanding program intended to use them as slaves while depriving Americans of jobs. Nobody is going to hire ex-cons to assemble solar panels, and we're continuing to incarcerate people for victimless and nonviolent crimes so that the supply of slave labor won't dry up.

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Re:Sums up USA by shilly · 2016-04-26 02:19 · Score: 1

With whining racist AC complaining about the wrong facts on Slashdot but too cowardly to speak clearly and so resorting to hints ("moneychanger"). Poor ickle racist AC. I bet you pine for the days when men were men, women knew their place, and you could carry out a lynching without anyone complaining.

Re:Murika by oh_my_080980980 · 2016-04-26 02:39 · Score: 2

You mean government investing in infrastructure. Wow.

You're free market screed is misplaced. There was and is a lot of opposition by market forces towards renewables, particularly from the fossil fuel industry. Renewables do not have the same political clout that the fossil fuel industry has, nor do they enjoy special treatment that the fossil fuel industry receives from government.

If this were truly a free market, renewables would be offered the same opportunities as fossil fuels and would see a much greater growth.

Re:I hope taxpayers aren't on the hook for this by crunchygranola · 2016-04-26 02:58 · Score: 3, Informative

...The problem with coal is not the strip mining, but what happens thereafter.....

As if those were separate, unrelated things. It is precisely the mess left over that is the problem with "strip mining" (now typically "mountain top removal" which also completely buries watersheds). Mining operations are typically conducted by specially formed companies owned by shell companies that are the real mining operator. When the project is done, the company declares bankrupcy, disappears, and leaves an awful mess behind with no one to hold accountable or pay the bills for remediation.

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Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age

Re:Murika by Anonymous Coward · 2016-04-26 03:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

I live in the center of Texas... and the town that I live in is getting a sizable chunk of its power from a solar array. It already has been asserted that solar is cheaper than coal, especially with the fact that upkeep costs are relatively low compared to other methods of energy generation.

Even though we see a lot of battery improvement announcements, most of them likely flashes in the pan at best, there is a cumulative effect. A battery that holds 1/10 as much energy per volume as gasoline would revolutionize transportation in fundamental ways.

The free market does want alternative energy storage methods. People and companies are sick and tired of being beholden to a very fickle market when it comes to oil and energy, and don't want to see their entire business trashed if another Enron comes to power and is able to cause prices to skyrocket with regards to fuel and grid prices. Of course, few businesses can completely power themselves with their on-site solar arrays, but the cumulative effect does a lot to mitigate what speculators can do.

As for the battery part, it has to meet a lot of criteria. Not just energy dense, but usable in a wide variety of temperatures, idiot resistant, able to be packaged and used in high vibration environments (automotive), and fairly environmentally friendly to produce and use. However, advances are being made on all these fronts because the benefits to this are substational.

Re:To all you doubters and haters by Jeremi · 2016-04-26 03:07 · Score: 2

Whatever your anonymous trash talk might be Your doubt and hate fuels the very fire of people of Musk's ilk. They love to prove you wrong. So thank you for degrading yourselves for the public good.

See? We're helping already! We're the reverse-psychology cheerleaders of the clean-energy market! ;^)

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I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.

Question for you... by number6x · 2016-04-26 03:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Are you intentionally comparing apples to oranges, or was it a typo? You say you can get 10 KWh of storage or about 2500 kWh of petrol for around $1200. Are you including the cost of storing the petrol? Are you including the cost, and loss of energy, when converting the petrol to electricity? The cost of obtaining, extraction, shipping and refining petroleum is already in the price and taxes (for the most part not including the military cost to keep the oil flowing).

I'm not arguing with you that the energy density of petrol is very high, and other forms of storage are often not as efficient. Are you also considering the highly inefficient nature of creating petroleum in the first place? It took hundreds of millions of years for the petroleum to form. You're taking advantage, and rightfully so, of a very long and inefficient process that produced a very dense energy storage product.

We can manufacture batteries for storage from raw materials relatively efficiently. We cannot manufacture petroleum efficiently from raw materials and there is a limited supply available to us. We can manufacture alcohol, methane and plant based oils as energy storage from raw materials (with the help of plants, yeast and bacteria and animal waste). These are not as energy dense as petroleum, but they cost much less to manufacture than petroleum.

I'm not a petroleum engineer, but I'm familiar with the industry and I can find no process known for manufacturing petroleum products from raw materials. You can find processes for converting one form of fossil fuel from another (ie petrol from coal) or for extracting petroleum from tar sands. None of these processes actually create petroleum from raw materials.

We will run out. As petroleum becomes more scarce, the costs will increase. You can lead humanity into the future, or you can cling to the past. Investing in renewable energy and robust electrical storage infrastructure is not opposition to using petroleum, but it does lessen dependence on one source for power. This would make a future more resilient to wild swings in oil prices and shortages of oil. It is especially important to a place like Hawaii, as so much of their energy is imported, and yet they have abundant sun and wind.

Re:Question for you... by Jonathan_S · 2016-04-26 07:33 · Score: 1

I'm not a petroleum engineer, but I'm familiar with the industry and I can find no process known for manufacturing petroleum products from raw materials. You can find processes for converting one form of fossil fuel from another (ie petrol from coal) or for extracting petroleum from tar sands. None of these processes actually create petroleum from raw materials.

I guess it depends on how you define "raw materials" but my understanding is that the old Fischer Tropsch process can produce petroleum products from carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This was invented in the '20s and was used by the Germans in WWII to produce something like 1/4 of their automobile fuels.
Now admittedly for economic reasons the raw materials tend to be derived from coal and/or natural gas; the later often in places where it's not economical to distributed that gas directly into the marketplace. But there's nothing, AFAIK, in the chemistry to prevent you from using other raw sources - they'd just take more energy to process and generate the petroleum.
Of course there is a net energy loss in this process, but it would let you use fixed power generated by other sources, plus raw feedstocks, to generate synthetic petroleum for mobile applications. However there's little economic point at this time given that it costs more than even shale oil.
Re:Question for you... by number6x · 2016-04-26 08:36 · Score: 1

Thanks,
I'll look into it. It seems like it would take a lot of energy input to do that, which is kind of my point. As long as petroleum is plentiful we will continue to use it. We have already reached the point where we are turning to more and more expensive extraction techniques. The big benefit to petroleum is that the process of storing the energy in petroleum didn't cost us much as it took place naturally over many aeons. We get to release that energy.
If the choice is between manufacturing petroleum and generating electricity, I think wind, hydro and solar are going to win out on efficiency. We're still not past 'peak oil' yet, but if oil were limitless, we wouldn't be messing around with tar sands or having to do liquid or steam well injection to get the stuff out.
I don't know how long oil will remain our main source of energy, but I would rather be ready with the alternatives and ready to make money off of them, than scrambling to buy the alternatives from others.

Re:Murika by vtcodger · 2016-04-26 03:22 · Score: 4, Informative

> Really? Because what I read is $44M in a multi trillion dollar energy industry suggests that behind the meter storage is a niche market at best, and a small one.

Yes and no. In the lower 48, it's largely confined to a small number of people living beyond the reach of the power grid, a few eccentrics, and victims of poorly thought out "green" policies. Hawaii, however is a special case being 4000km from any source of hydrocarbon fuels. Residential electricity rates on Oahu are over 25 cents per kw/hr and on the outlying islands are pushing 40 cents. https://www.hawaiianelectric.c...

Seems to me like a great testbed for rooftop solar with on-site storage and similar renewable based technologies.

Then there's California which seems to be determined to test renewables on a large scale. Nice of them to do so assuming that the rest of us are capable of learning from their experience -- good or bad. They may be able to make it work as they have a favorable situation for grid scale solar as well as hydro and a significant percentage (about 25%) of the world's actual up an running grid-scale geothermal generation.

Personally, I think Hawaii might do OK eventually although probably not 100% renewable. There's some stuff -- aircraft, emergency vehicles, etc that probably work best with liquid fuels.

California? Iffy, I think. But I don't live there. And they aren't all gonna die if their experiment founders.

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You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey

Re:They did it for rain water.They will do it for by thinkwaitfast · 2016-04-26 05:01 · Score: 1

The reason for limiting rainwater collection is that it harms the natural environment by robbing it of needed water. The affects do not show up for about 70 years after you do it, but they are real.

Re:To all you doubters and haters by bennebw · 2016-04-26 05:07 · Score: 1

Excellent! It takes all types to make the world go round.

Re:Murika by MachineShedFred · 2016-04-26 05:19 · Score: 2

Given that it's unlikely that solar panels can be legally made in the US or western Europe

Except for the billion dollar solar panel manufacturing plant being built by SolarCity in Buffalo, NY right now? Due to start production this year, and ramp to capacity some time in 2017.

Yeah, try to Google for 5 seconds before asserting something completely false.