Elon Musk: I Can Fix South Australia Power Network in 100 Days Or It's Free (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Guardian: Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of electric car giant Tesla, has thrown down a challenge to the South Australian and federal governments, saying he can solve the state's energy woes within 100 days -- or he'll deliver the 100MW battery storage system for free. On Thursday, Lyndon Rive, Tesla's vice-president for energy products, told the AFR the company could install the 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage that would be required to prevent the power shortages that have been causing price spikes and blackouts in the state. Thanks to stepped-up production out of Tesla's new Gigafactory in Nevada, he said it could be achieved within 100 days. Mike Cannon-Brookes, the Australian co-founder of Silicon Valley startup Atlassian, on Friday tweeted Elon Musk, asking if Tesla was serious about being able to install the capacity. Musk replied that the company could do it in 100 days of the contract being signed, or else provide it free, adding: "That serious enough for you?"

Comments

First

[Anonymous Coward]

Past the post.

Re:First

[planckscale]

Second

Re:First

[planckscale]

Third

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I don't know is on third.

Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[damn_registrars]

If the batteries will be made in Nevada, and shipped to Australia, I'm curious to know how they plan to transport them. It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough? If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently? If they go by boat how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll be delivered by a suborbital flight made by a Falcon rocket, of course. ;)

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[ausekilis]

The only logical solution is a hyperloop between Nevada and Australia. It wouldn't take long at the 600 mph, plus in a low-pressure environment the resulting fire from a mishap wouldn't spread quickly. :-)

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

no restriction if it's your plane and you don't ask permission.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[PIBM]

End to end land + boat transportation should take less than 20 days from Nevada to the South Africa location with the best shippers.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tunnels. Duh!

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is the problem with shipping batteries via boat?

We (humans) already ship crude oil via boat, and the consequences of an "oops" with that kind of shipment is orders of magnitude more devastating than a fire caused by lithium ion batteries. A fire which, if they aren't stupid - they aren't - would be rather quickly extinguished because it is not self-sustaining. Damaging, yes. Catastrophic, not really.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[networkBoy]

charter air freight.
Or regular air freight (but with the HazMat surcharge from the freight company).

They're only banned on passenger aircraft.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[OzPeter]

End to end land + boat transportation should take less than 20 days from Nevada to the South Africa location with the best shippers.

And then another 20 days to get back to South Australia.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

if he used his (or his company's) own aircraft, or even chartered them vs using an air freight service, i don't think the same restrictions apply.

this is a straightforward marketing ploy.. win-win all the way. whether he meets the deadline or not, its big huge PR. and when (not if) the grid storage capacity works at this scale, it's advertising gold for similar installations. so ya, he'd pull out all the stops and spare no expenses on getting the product from nevada to australia.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[avandesande]

They have this thing called 'insurance' so if something happens to the boat the person shipping the items will be reimbursed.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Guspaz]

That and there is work to be done for such an installation before they could actually put the powerpacks in place. Prepare the land, build the slabs, put all the supporting infrastructure in place. Actually placing and plugging in the batteries is probably one of the quickest parts, and I'd bet they can do that towards the end of the project.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[frovingslosh]

Getting them there is only a small part of the problem. The real issue is that Australia can throw lots of roadblocks in Elon's way, from customs to building permits. And there is a hell of a difference between delivering enough batteries in the stated time and building up a power system to use them. I think Musk's ego go the better of him here and he shot off his mouth too fast. Betting that you can do something in 100 days or it is free against the very people who can block you at every move isn't the smartest thing to do.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think Elon would charter his own plane to deliver the batteries instead of FedEx?

Nathan

Captcha: Action

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[bareman]

" how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?"

With an insurance policy.

It's about 3 weeks by boat. That gives about 25 days for production, 25 to ship, and 40 for installation with 10 leftover for the party afterwards.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[DogDude]

Are you imagining that 10,000 Tesla employees board commercial aircraft carrying batteries in their carry-ons and checked luggage? You DO realize that good are often transported in ways that are different from the way in which you transport your own person, right?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is the problem with shipping batteries via boat?

It takes a lot longer than any other method you can name, except maybe a camel train.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fastest route between any two points is a straight line. It stands to reason that the solution is to bore straight through the core of the earth and pop out on the other side.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

100 days from signing the contract.

I'm certain that the contract will deal with all the roadblocks.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. For work I routinely ship containers trans-Pacific. From LA to Australia you'd be looking at ~30 days in transit if there's no rush. Probably 20 days if they push for speed and can get the shipper to cooperate.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[DontBeAMoran]

I think the fastest route would be a Falcon rocket going through a tunnel bored straight from Nevada to Australia.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[jedrek]

He said from the "day the contract is signed", meaning all those things will be covered by the contract.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[AK Marc]

If there's a rush, they'd hire an entire ship to do the LA to SYD run in under 2 weeks. If that's not possible, then air freight would be trivial. There are a number of C-130s in civilian hands, and you can pack quite a bit in one of those.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Wrath0fb0b]

If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently?

The restrictions are on shipping them on passenger airplanes. You can still fly them around on a cargo plane, where the tolerance for risk has always been significantly higher.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[AmiMoJo]

Air freight is probably out. You are only allowed to ship very small lithium batteries on their own. Slightly more when they are part of a product, but to ship 100MWh...

Boat will be the only realistic option. Maybe 40-50 days, so half the time available. It's not like that time would be wasted though, they would use it to build the infrastructure ready for the batteries to be installed and tested.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! You completely forgot about... Hand-carry.

Tale a Breath
Sink to bottom
Take a step
Surface
Take a Breath
Sink to bottom
Take a step
Repeat until you arrive.

Thank you Giligan's Island!!

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[TWX]

Plus if they're in-negotiations and it looks like the contract will be signed, they'd probably speculatively allocate production for the project, both of the batteries and of other system components. If that ~month manufacturing time under-contract can be reduced then that gives more time for on-site installation and troubleshooting prior to going live. And if the contract falls through those batteries and other components would probably find uses elsewhere anyway.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[bill_mcgonigle]

If they go by boat how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?

Maybe there's an autonomous drone ship available for a jaunt down under.

n/t: if /. is so desparate for ad revenue that they're willing to make the site nearly unusable with these half-page ads, I guess we're counting the days to a parked page. Sad, really.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[wisnoskij]

Well anyway they do it will requires fleets of vessels. We are talking hundreds of tons batteries.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[ShanghaiBill]

Prepare the land, build the slabs, put all the supporting infrastructure in place.

Sure, but all of that can be done while the batteries are in transit. The batteries are manufactured near Reno, so they would be shipped out of either Oakland or Long Beach. Transit time to Adelaide would be about 30 days at standard speed. A faster ship would cost more, and there is no point if the infrastructure isn't ready. 30 days is enough time for a slab and metal frame building. Ideally, you want the batteries installed at distributed locations near point of use.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Salgak1]

Nah, He'd use one of his SpaceX Falcon9's with the as-yet-unrevealed Dragon Heavy Cargo Capsule (grin)

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[nukenerd]

Prepare the land, build the slabs, put all the supporting infrastructure in place.

Sure, but all of that can be done while the batteries are in transit.

I think that was his point.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[guruevi]

If I were Tesla, I'd make the entire system fit in shipping containers. Given he has the things already produced, ship them right away, spread them out across 5 boats and ship an extra boat or two for redundancy (the government is going to be paying for it ANYWAY), plug the shipping containers in the grid and where necessary to each other. Within Australia, you can dispatch hundreds of trucks right away with some geographical redundancy (so a new container isn't too far away regardless of losses)

The entire system can be transported to Australia from the US in ~50-60 days by ship, during those 60 days local crews can pound in the pillars or whatever they need to do for foundation and do the line preparations where necessary so you can install each site in ~2-3 days after arrival of the container.

If you're going for speed, you're not going for cost reduction. It's possible, hell, you can send a number of airplanes over with sufficient redundancy, you'll get the containers there in a few days.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[nukenerd]

What exactly is the problem with shipping batteries via boat?

It just is not trendy enough for some people here.

This is supposed to be a techies' forum, yet people are worrying themselves sick over a simple delivery. It would not take anywhere near 100 days to ship (yes, ship, by ship) stuff from USA to Australia. The bigger challenge, as someone else has said, is the infrasructure and the connection details. A large inverter is going to be needed and a very hefty connection at a suitable point to the existing grid. Then you wonder if 100MWh is going to be enough anyway to solve the problem as Musk claims.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[nukenerd]

They have this thing called 'insurance' so if something happens to the boat the person shipping the items will be reimbursed.

I don't think Musk needs insurance. He could just pay for the ship.

And why are people worrying so much about the battery blowing up? Presumably it will be transported uncharged.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[ebrandsberg]

The regulations on shipping via air including provisions based on the State of Charge of a battery, so an uncharged (or minimally charged) battery would be able to be shipped. I may be wrong, but this seems like something that won't be an issue.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[cb88]

Not a large inverter... at least 50-100 giant inverters, or many more smaller ones.

While there may be a larger one now back in 2012 the largest was 1.4MW. Thankfully, you don't need a single inverter.. you can just operate a bunch of inverters in parallel because that is how a power grid works anyway.

Also, I imagine each battery bank has it's own inverter... just to cut losses and cost of that much DC power having to travel any distance at all.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[argStyopa]

https://www.anl.com.au/ebusine...

Long Beach loading March 12, arrival Sydney Apr 4.
23 days ocean transit, plus a couple of days screwing around at both ends, easily from origin to destination 30d.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the fastest route between two points is to make the two points the same.

Open a hole in the space-time continuum and move the batteries via folded space. It's the fastest way possible, right?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Nidi62]

Or load some Falcon rockets full of lithium ion batteries and crash them into some of the largest cities. The resulting explosions should clear out enough of the population to reduce demand. Problem solved.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[arth1]

And why are people worrying so much about the battery blowing up? Presumably it will be transported uncharged.

Despite what some think, Lithium-Ion based batteries are most at risk when either overcharged or undercharged. You want to keep them at around 40% charge to minimize the reactions in the battery.
Depleted Li-Ion batteries are dangerous enough that there's protection circuitry in them that kills the battery if it drops low enough, after which it will refuse to charge.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Overzeetop]

Good point - that's one of Musk's companies, too - right?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[mschiller]

Um You ship them UPS...

https://www.ups.com/media/news...

Seriously the stringent regulations only apply to passenger air craft. Since most US mail is transported by passenger aircraft, you can't mail batteries. But you can ship them UPS with pre-approval from UPS. For sufficient cash, I'm sure UPS or any other cargo airliner will happily load an entire plane with lithium ion batteries.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[haruchai]

No, the fastest route between two points is to make the two points the same.

Open a hole in the space-time continuum and move the batteries via folded space. It's the fastest way possible, right?

That'll take a lot of Spice

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[haruchai]

Bad enough Australia & Austria gets confused but now we're mixing up South Africa with South Australia?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[damn_registrars]

I think the fastest route would be a Falcon rocket going through a tunnel bored straight from Nevada to Australia.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of that!

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they would go by air for that timeline. It would be a dedicated flight for the cargo where they can minimize the liability if something goes a foul. Additionally, these new batteries are far different than the cell phone batteries that are tossed around and abused.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

YOU are only allowed to ship small batteries. A billionaire who can buy the cargo planes can find a way to ship almost anything by air.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[thegarbz]

It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough?

About 8-12 days.

Now you can add another 40 days for logistics on the sending side, customs out, customs in and logistics on the receiving side, but those exist with a plane too.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[nobuddy]

All of the jokes aside, he could easily contract a ship for the journey. It takes about 30 days to make by freighter from Long Beach port to Sydney. looking at similar battery solutions, it is small enough to fit in a large cargo plane, and be there in a few days if need be.
The liION restrictions you speak of appear to be the US ones on mailing them. trucks can still carry them and ships leaving the country can carry them.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[nobuddy]

I was confused for a sec. Why go from the Gulf of Mexico and around S Africa? Why not go straight out of Long Beach, or even use the Panama Canal??

Then I realized they mistook the destination.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[AmiMoJo]

Various aviation authorities won't allow it. If a plane crashes it's not just the guy who owns the plane that loses out, it's the people that the bits of plane fall on too.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[lgw]

Well anyway they do it will requires fleets of vessels. We are talking hundreds of tons batteries.

A standard, old-school "Panamax" freighter can carry about 45,000 tons of cargo (plus the weight of the containers). The new freighters for the bigger canal can carry more than twice that. There's a reason freight moves by water where practical.

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. Obviously the contract WITH the government would be contingent upon approvals. So no. Musk didn't do what you just did. He is a business man and you are not either. Hehe. Techies trying to be so clever they get myopic. Nice try girly man.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[RoccamOccam]

If there's a rush, they'd hire an entire ship to do the LA to SYD run in under 2 weeks.

If they're really in a rush, I bet they could do it in less than 12 parsecs!

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[swb]

My guess is that jet airliner wreckage is a problem for the people it lands on, period. The presence of lithium batteries probably is a negligible risk factor.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[aix tom]

Well, at least those two are way south and have beaches with sharks, which Austria hasn't ;-P

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Strider-]

You can pack even more into a 747 Freighter. A C-130 really isn't that large of an aircraft, nor does it have a particularly large payload. What it does have is the ability to land on rough/short runways.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Hey no talking sense here. I don't want to hear about massive container ships, massive super tankers, massive natural gas rigs, giant power shovels, or giant haul trucks . There are big machines and then there are big machines and people tend to not realize just how huge of things we build. Having been next to some outdated 240t haul trucks you get a sense of just how huge these things are.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[mjwx]

If the batteries will be made in Nevada, and shipped to Australia, I'm curious to know how they plan to transport them. It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough? If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently? If they go by boat how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?

I take it Elon Musk has never been to Australia, especially South Australia.

Around Australia there exists a rift in space and time that not only ensures there is a minimum 6 month wait time before something reaches Australia, but it also makes it cost twice as much. I call this the Oceanic Price Dilation Field (OPDF).

Besides, then the South Australian government will just go down to Bunnings and get it for 10% less.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Immerman]

And if you wanted it *really* fast, I'm picturing modular shipping containers packed full of batteries and the supporting electronics, so that having a "socket" to plug them in to at the destination is about all the infrastructure that's absolutely necessary. Essentially scaling up a Powerwall into a big honking all-weather PowerCrate.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean like the Titantic?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why it makes little sense that Dell shipped me a completely discharged replacement laptop battery last week.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[aaarrrgggh]

It is about 80 shipping containers worth of equipment. Air freight would not be possible.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Socguy]

If Australia starts to get serious, I bet Musk will have the batteries on boats before the contract is even signed.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Socguy]

Lawyers are smart people. I'm sure a clause in the contract would stipulate the conditions necessary to fulfill the pledge.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Immerman]

Exactly how many other current methods can you name for shipping cargo across oceans?

Airplanes, and....?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Maxo-Texas]

Pretty sure the contract would include protections for bad behavior on the australian's part.

Like, "any actions taken by australia that extend the project duration adds to the 100 days"

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

>You want to keep them at around 40% charge to minimize the reactions in the battery.

Sounds like an idea for a smartphone app.

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Rolman]

Wait... I just found out there's a NEW Mexico!

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[ThePyro]

Not necessarily. The Holtzman effect is sufficient to fold space on its own, and we wouldn't need to employ a guild navigator because there is no current prohibition against thinking machines. Computers can do the job cheaper!

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[myowntrueself]

If the batteries will be made in Nevada, and shipped to Australia, I'm curious to know how they plan to transport them. It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough? If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently? If they go by boat how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?

What I'd do is, once they agree in principle, ship them ahead of signing the actual contract.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[myowntrueself]

Prepare the land, build the slabs, put all the supporting infrastructure in place.

Sure, but all of that can be done while the batteries are in transit. The batteries are manufactured near Reno, so they would be shipped out of either Oakland or Long Beach. Transit time to Adelaide would be about 30 days at standard speed. A faster ship would cost more, and there is no point if the infrastructure isn't ready. 30 days is enough time for a slab and metal frame building. Ideally, you want the batteries installed at distributed locations near point of use.

30 days to actually physically move them.

Add another 30 days at either end for customs clearance so thats 90 days. In fact if the Aussies know what they are doing they'd deliberately slow down the customs clearance so that it can't possibly be completed in under 100 days.

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

A contract with the government of South Australia (end user), the government of Australia ( controls borders, imports, and wants to use the power issues as a political wedge to force new coal power stations), and the Australian Energy Market Operator (who failed to forsee a 40 degree day might increase electricity demand) will take at least one term of governement to get to draft stage!

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[myowntrueself]

If there's a rush, they'd hire an entire ship to do the LA to SYD run in under 2 weeks. If that's not possible, then air freight would be trivial. There are a number of C-130s in civilian hands, and you can pack quite a bit in one of those.

Its about 7500km LA to SYD

Range on a c-130 is 3791km with max payload.

Are there any civilian aircraft that can refuel a c-130 in flight?

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[ventsyv]

I don't know how big those batteries will be but they can probably overnight them via FedEx freight shipping.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cargo planes can carry them.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[jittles]

If the batteries will be made in Nevada, and shipped to Australia, I'm curious to know how they plan to transport them. It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough? If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently? If they go by boat how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?

You can airship lithium ion batteries as long as they're in a pressurized cargo space. But if something were to happen and one were to catch fire, the plane would not survive the resulting conflagration.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[RubberDogBone]

Seriously? They truck them or ship via rail to a port and then cargo ship to Australia, whereupon they are put on trucks or rail again.

They don't need to do anything fancy or hyperlooped or orbital The battery systems would have always been designed for shipment as cargo. So, all they have to do is make them and ship them. No magic in it. Just logistics.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[pikalek]

via boring tunnel

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[HornWumpus]

The South Australian power company is a 'public trust' (a PUD in American parlance). ETSA (Electricity Trust of South Australia, Hi guys, been a long time...) isn't technically part of the S Australian government.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[RubberDogBone]

And there is plenty of cargo capacity at the moment. Elon can ask for bids on the shipping part and probably get a good deal for a load of 80-odd containers.

I don't know what the cargo frequency is from Long Beach (the most likely port of origin) and Australia but there will certainly be more than one shipper eager to take the shipment. Probably be good publicity too. Hell, somebody can do a documentary on the whole process, from construction and build, to packing, to shipping, to installation, and secrete a camera crew ON the boat.

Somebody call Beyond Productions or Seven Network. They'd do it.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Mr D from 63]

He said from the "day the contract is signed", meaning all those things will be covered by the contract.

That's the rub. He hasn't even clearly defined what problem he will solve. The recent articles describe the symptoms of a more complex problem. Musk is proposing to alleviate the local symptoms possibly, not necessarily the core systemic problem which is continuously evolving. And of course he needs to tell them how much it will cost to 'solve' the problem.

Australia clearly won't fall for his rhetoric.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

End to end land + boat transportation should take less than 20 days from Nevada to the South Africa^h^h^h^h^h^h AUSTRALIA location with the best shippers.

FTFY. Don't forget your 20 days of shipping will be followed by up to six months of Customs inspections. I shit you not.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depleted Li-Ion batteries are dangerous enough that there's protection circuitry in them that kills the battery if it drops low enough, after which it will refuse to charge.

Being a lifelong hardware hacker, I've removed the cells from many laptop and power tool packs. I've discovered that the cells themselves become infinity resistance (zero conductivity) - open circuit, when discharged all the way. I applied quite a few volts trying to get them to conduct (not hundreds - yet). The circuits in the packs mostly limit in and out current, and control current based on temperature sensors. Trouble is, if the cell shorts internally, no amount of external current control can stop the fire.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Mr D from 63]

Or they could just buy much lower cost batteries from Asia that are just as good. The reason they have not done that already is cost.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[vtcodger]

Serious answer: You probably can't load the batteries in the cargo hold of a Qantas jet on a regularly scheduled flight. But 100 MWh is a LOT of batteries. More than one aircraft's worth I should think,. You can no doubt lease a cargo aircraft to move them. Insurance will be a bit pricey and the flight crew will likely want combat pay. But I think the transport is doable.

Figuring out how to hook the battery into the South Australian grid and manage its charge and discharge in 100 days might be a bigger issue. I don't think the hardware (or software) to do that is an off the shelf item.

It's also not clear that 100Mwh is anywhere near enough storage to stabilize the SA grid with its very large amount of not all that predictable wind resource.. Peak demand looks to be a bit over 3Gw. What happens if, as has happened in the past, Victoria shuts down the 460MW Heywood interconnect due to excessive demand from SA? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )

OTOH, an additional 100Mwh of dispatchable storage sure wouldn't hurt.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[John.Banister]

A Maersk B class (some of which are now idle) could get them from Los Angles to Sydney in ~11 days. If you wanted to go beyond non-conductive packing material, you could use a nitrogen generator to keep oxygen out of the shipping containers with batteries.

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol! I'm sure there'd be something in the contract that voids the 100 days promise if the Australian government behaves like a bunch of assholes. Alternatively, they could just buy insurance against shark/customs officer/koala attacks. It's a publicity stunt anyways and they'll still get money for maintenance and replacement batteries.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can ship lithium ion batteries by air as long as they have depleted charge. Airlines won't let you do this though unless you have some guarantee that they're coming direct from the factory in a depleted state.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[CanadianMacFan]

For something like that they would probably just shift their production schedule around. Other customers would get their systems or batteries a bit later. They probably would even take the financial hit for missing deadlines or incentives for the delay just to pull this off.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[thegarbz]

Add 20 days for our customs people to go over it with a fine tooth comb ensuring someone doesn't smuggle any bananas into the country.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

But then you'll take infrastructure too. You need targeted tactical strikes. What you need is a rocket you can land so that you can land in the right area *then* light the batteries. Oh...

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[haruchai]

"It's about 3 weeks by boat"

Elon is all about speeding things up. I wonder what's he thinking up to may shipping take less time.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep! The safety concerns are a total non issue!


https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-safety/

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[haruchai]

The total bare weight of the order of 300 MWh of PowePack hardware should be around 850 short tons. Even allowing for a total weight of 1000 tons for shipping materials & containers, that's no big deal for a cargo freighter.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[haruchai]

You're conflating / confusing power & energy / storage in several places in your post.

The system Tesla is proposing is 100 MW power / 300 MWh stored energy. So you can have 100 MW power for up to 3 hours but can't get 300 MW for even 1 minute

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Guspaz]

Their grid storage solutions don't use powerwall, they use powerpack, which are shipped pre-populated on palettes. You're not going to gain much efficiency by building them directly into the shipping container. By the time you need to install the powerpacks, they stick them on the slab, bolt them down, and plug them in. There's a lot more that goes into building the facility than just sticking the powerpacks in.

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Meski]

Does etsa still exist? I thought it'd been privatised and renamed. I sorta come from SA but it's been a while.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

He meant Old Spice.

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[HornWumpus]

Not sure. I did some consulting work for them years ago. In any case, it's not the S. Australian government.

Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[beastofburdon]

I bet they'll be waiting in the harbor at that point.

Re: Batteries from Nevada to Australia?

[Coren22]

Yup, beautiful state. For the East Coast, it is always where the weather man stands.

Drug Dealer Model

[TechyImmigrant]

The first is always free

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[Anonymous Coward]

South Australia would also have to covert to a 120V system and buy all their appliances and light bulbs from the US.

WIN/WIN!

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[sl3xd]

And, as we all know, politicians become addicted to power quickly.

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[magarity]

Not many light bulbs are made in the US anymore. Since regular light bulbs were outlawed the chemicals needed to make CFLs and LEDs mean they have to be made in places with lax environmental regulation.

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[TWX]

Except that Japan is also ~120V 60Hz, and worse, since the Australians drive on the same side of the road as the Japanese, they're probably already accustomed to trade with Japan...

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Japan still split between 60Hz and 50Hz?

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is, they have an inter-tie between the two networks which is just a AC > DC > AC converter.

After the earthquakes much of the generation on one grid was knocked out, the other half was limited in what it could supply via the inter-tie.

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[TWX]

I wonder if Japan's success with electronics on the International market was partially due to the dual-frequency and wide range of input voltage. While the ~240V of Europe was not necessarily in Japan, I would expect that handling the differences between 50Hz and 60Hz with the same appliances for their home market would be helpful when designing for Europe or North America. They'd only have to newly engineer handling the higher voltage.

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[WindBourne]

total BS. LEDs are manufactured here. Cree makes bulbs in America.

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[magarity]

So when I said "not many" and you cite one manufacturer, how is that total BS?

Re:Drug Dealer Model

[magarity]

PS - Cree make lighting fixtures in the US labelled "Made in the U.S.A. of U.S. and imported parts". The "imported parts" bit I suspect refers to the LED subassembly.

Amazing what you can do with modern manufacturing

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in time.

100 days

[planckscale]

So one month to pack up the batteries and another 2 weeks to ship that's 44 days leaving 56 days for installation? It's not the materials, it's the manpower..

Re:100 days

[Sloppy]

If they can perform enough of the "installation" work prior to actually having the batteries present, then I'd make -j 1000000 that thing.

Re:100 days

[DogDude]

It doesn't take two weeks to fly from Nevada to Australia.

Re:100 days

[wisnoskij]

The logistics of moving hundreds of tons of dangerous materials makes a few weeks seem overly ambitious to me.

Re:100 days

[Overzeetop]

The ability to land a rocket using vectored thrust on a moving platform is also a silly, nearly impossible task.

Given the right price, hiring a dedicated transport to do the work is probably not a big deal. That's what, 4kg/kWh, so 4000kg per MWh or 400,000kg for the system.
Sea transport makes the most sense, but it's also only ~4 chartered 777s worth of cargo (based on Fedex custom charters). For a special case, you can get lots of regs waived.

Re:100 days

[Strider-]

It's not just the batteries that are the issue, unless Elon is only saying that the batteries will be there within 100 days. Utility scale electrical equipment is generally bespoke and/or custom manufactured and has long lead times. On top of the batteries you need to have utility scale inverters. You need switchgear to direct the produced power, you need large transformers to boost it up to utility voltages. In the organization I work with, we just finished a major electrical upgrade where we purchased 12 pad-mount transformers. While they were out of the catalogue, the lead time before shipping was still 8 weeks, and that was from a major manufacturer. Really big transformers, those capable of working with megawatts of power, take months to manufacture.

When Vancouver lost one of the two large transformers that supply the downtown part of the city, it was found that it would take 18 months to get a replacement manufactured.

Not about winning a bet

[kuzb]

Then they'll be back on Elon's doorstep in 5 - 10 years getting replacements because nobody else sells the batteries and they don't last forever...

Of course he'd make this bet. It's not about solving a problem, it's about creating a very expensive dependency on his company.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[gmack]

If the contract is large enough, you can get a third party to make the batteries for you.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[MrLogic17]

It's a solution to blackouts. Of course it's going to cost money - but the question is, does this solution make economic sense?
I'd wager (and so it Elon) that a big lump of batteries just might be cheaper than a new peaker power plant.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[kuzb]

It's a solution to blackouts. Of course it's going to cost money - but the question is, does this solution make economic sense? I'd wager (and so it Elon) that a big lump of batteries just might be cheaper than a new peaker power plant.

Sure, but is it cheaper in the long run? I agree with you in so far as to say that this is a question about total cost of ownership and continued maintenance. Power plants require their own expensive maintenance but those parts can be acquired from a number of different sources. Those sources can compete on pricing. Who does Elon presently have to compete with?

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than knocking on coal or oil's door asking for hundreds of tons worth of material every day for 50 years while being at the mercy of some random world leader's mood swings.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[meta-monkey]

Of course he'd make this bet. It's not about solving a problem, it's about creating a very expensive dependency on his company.

It's probably also about making a big PR splash. Even if he has to bust ass to get it done, ever other municipality in the world that has inconsistent power supply problems will ask "gee, if Elon could do it in Australia, why not here?"

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is a thing, and it's actually quite good.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[randallman]

Huh? I'm pretty a company filled EEs could swap out one battery storage system for another. Slashdot. Where did all the nerds go?

Re:Not about winning a bet

[The Grim Reefer]

Nuclear power is a thing, and it's actually quite good.

Maybe in northern Australia. But being that close to Japan, you don't want to take the chance that Godzilla decides to stomp all the way through on land because he gets the munchies.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

If the batteries fail in 5-10 years, there is nothing tying them to replace it with another Tesla solution.

Re: Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries are completely fungible. I don't see this creating any dependency.

Ask yourself the question why battery production isn't a larger scale today than we'd expect. The answer is complex but there are monied interests involved everywhere in energy policy. Why do you think the administration is coming down hard on solar?

Tesla is challenging energy policy by going against the grain. He should probably be a bit careful though, I hear energy and oil also invest in militaries and surface-to-air ordinance.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[AmiMoJo]

They would be insane to buy them with less than a 20 year warranty. That's well within what you would expect for lithium batteries.

For example, quality cells of the type used in Tesla cars (developed by Panasonic, who are partners in the gigafactory) are rated for 3000 cycles to 80% remaining capacity. That's the minimum you would expect to get from a cell that doesn't have manufacturing defects, not the average.

So 3000 cycles, with one full cycle a day is over 8 years. But of course you won't do one full cycle a day. I don't know what the energy situation is down in Aus, but let's say they are pushing the batteries hard and getting 1 cycle every 4 days, or 25MWh/day average. That pushes them to 32 years, although there is some self-discharge and ageing so that might be pushing it. I'd expect a 20 year warranty though.

For comparison their 6.6kWh Powerwall comes with a 10 year warranty. It will be lower because the environment is less controlled and there isn't any regular maintenance. Again, 10 years is the absolute minimum, just like your car doesn't fall apart the second the warranty expires either.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Lacking electric reliability is a drag on the economy. Energy prices in this part of Australia are skyrocketing. The economics on this are pretty straight-forward.

As reported in the Australian Financial Review, prices in the state have been “frequently surging above $1000 a MWh this month and at one point hitting the $14000MWh maximum price”. The Australian Financial Review reports that average monthly prices have been three to four times higher than in the eastern states during the month of July and new contract prices in South Australia are nearly double the prices in the eastern states.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear takes decades to build out though and is extremely expensive in the short term (admittedly mostly due to political factors instead of technical ones). You can drop in a megawatt class battery pack in less than a year for a few million.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Grishnakh]

This idea is about solving blackouts, which as I understand it result from the peak load being too high for the current generation level.

Nuclear power doesn't help here: nuclear power is used for baseload because it can't increase or decrease its output quickly. For that, you need peak load generators, which usually run on things like natural gas, or various stored-energy schemes such as pumped hydro.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[OneSmartFellow]

As apposed to every other solution which creates a dependency upon a different company.

What's your point ?

Re:Not about winning a bet

[thegarbz]

Then they'll be back on Elon's doorstep in 5 - 10 years getting replacements because nobody else sells the batteries and they don't last forever...

And we'd do it too given how cheap that would be compared to what we have now.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[pastafazou]

It all depends on how much the batteries are being drained before being recharged. Discharging past 80% of capacity will drastically cut the number of cycles you can get out of them. https://cleantechnica.com/2016...

Re:Not about winning a bet

[lgw]

Power plants take fuel, too, which can be the dominant expense. Some percentage--perhaps all--of the "peak only" generation capacity has to be kept spinning so that it can ramp up fast enough to matter, which adds significantly to fuel and maintenance costs.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon is making money, yes - but if SpaceX is any indication, he wants to make in on volume, not on overpricing stuff.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Prien715]

They would be insane to buy them with less than a 20 year warranty.

Tesla would be insane to sell the new batteries -- what are they going to do with their old ones? Sure, they could recycle them immediately -- or they could get another decade of use out of them by putting them on the grid and recycle them later. Which is better for the environment *AND* Tesla's bottom line?

The main reason you recycle batteries is that they hold too little charge per unit of mass to be effective. With immobile storage, this ratio is much less a concern.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[HornWumpus]

Hydro and CTs (combustion turbines) spin up fast enough they are often considered 'spinning' even if they technically aren't. Definitions vary, spinning reserve, ready reserve etc.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[HornWumpus]

Australia has tons of crappy brown power coal. It's a big export for them.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[idji]

Where do you get the idea that they need replacing in 5-10 years? Cite references please! In 5 years they'll be able to buy any batteries they like from any supplier - this is not locking them to Tesla at all, this is about not locking them to gas, or other fossil fuels.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Dare nMc]

> But of course you won't do one full cycle a day.

The price thrown around appears to be around $250 / kwhr for this system with batteries. If you want them to add only $.05 /kwhr (current price of electric generation from fossil.) then they need 5000 cycles to get down to that price. That would be 15 years of life if cycled to capacity only once a day. Granted it may be 4 cycles of 1/4 capacity per day... Although the batteries will probably be less than 1/2 the cost of the system to replace (especially in 15 years) if they are the only part that fails, but you want some capital return on your investment as well.

> I'd expect a 20 year warranty though.

Yeah, and if it was my money paying for it and not the taxpayers, I would need that guarantee to be from Musk's personal money as well. I think it might be a 50:50 chance for Tesla to not declare bankruptcy at least once in the next 20 years.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about solving a problem, it's about creating a very expensive dependency on his company.

Haha! I knew I could count on slashdot to figure out how something that Elon is doing that looks like a good thing is actually evil. Thank you for not disappointing!

Re:Not about winning a bet

[wall0159]

It is probably _much_ cheaper. The estimated cost of a 100 MW, 100 MWh battery is AU$25M, which is a pittance compared with the cost of building a new power station!

Re:Not about winning a bet

[angel'o'sphere]

Spinnin reserves is an outdated term, they technically don't exist since decades.
A gas turbine is on 50% power in 30 seconds from a cold start and on 100% in less than three minutes, usually around one minute.
Pumped storage takes a second or two and can dispatch anything from 1% to 100% imediatly.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[thegarbz]

Not in the slightest. Especially since the cause of the blackouts was transmission lines going down upsetting the balance of everything causing various loads to trip and disconnect. Guess what happens to solar power, wind power and battery inverters when this happens? Same thing that happened to the 220MW Murraylink HVDC interconnect, tripped on loss of sync.

Throwing batteries in there won't fix anything. Improving the transmission infrastructure and geographically diversifying major baseload would.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[thegarbz]

This idea is about solving blackouts, which as I understand it result from the peak load being too high for the current generation level.

Depends on the cause. South Australia is neutral in generation and consumption at the moment and has some 800MW of interconnections to other grids as a buffer. The blackouts where nothing to do with peak load or lack of generation. Well at least they weren't until storms took down power lines (including some of the main UHV transmission towers) which caused the disconnection of several wind farms due to the voltage spikes on the network, followed by tripping of some baseload, the interconnectors then falling over due to the high load, and finally everything that was left losing sync.

It is projected that after the upcoming shutdown of a major powerplant in SA there's still several hundred MW of capacity in the grid thanks to importing from neighbours at peak times. I'm a fan of musk but he really should understand the problem before making this promise. Not that I think it's a bad thing to have, just that it's not solving the issue he thinks it will.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Grishnakh]

Sounds like it can help mitigate problems like this: if I understand you correctly, the initial cause of the problem was storms which disconnected wind farms, which presumably are remotely located. This sudden loss then caused a cascading failure. Having backup batteries close to the point-of-use (namely, urban areas that use the bulk of the power, which probably are not located near the wind farm) seems to me to be a good insurance policy against something like this happening in the future.

Importing from neighbors in peak times can result in the same failure, if storms take out those long-distance power lines, like they did the lines to the wind farm.

Of course, I'm not a power engineer (though I did get an 'A' in my one power engineering class in college, but I'd have to go study for a while to remember how to do 3-phase calculations now since it's been so long), so maybe having a backup battery still wouldn't help in this case, I dunno. But on the face of it it does seem like a good idea when one of your important connections goes down suddenly due to storms, to provide a buffer to the network and give you time to spin up some other generators to handle the load.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, Captain Obvious!

Re:Not about winning a bet

[dhammabum]

It isn't so much about a new power plant, it is the cost of another interconnector to the eastern states. There are currently two and the system wasn't stable when one was taken out by tornadoes (or maintenance). Another one comes in at AU$500 million to $1 billion at the cheapest.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand costs of electricity at this scale. 100MWh is about 10k off peak and over 100k at peak prices. So in 5 to 10 years 100s of millions of dollars would have shifted hands. This thing can be expensive *and* totally worth it. Thing is 100MWh isn't much for a country the size of Australia, but there are a lot less people in the east.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of us left when the constant drum of click bait headlines popped up. I check for the odd news i may miss from elsewhere. But i don't even bother to log on anymore.

/. click bait, for clicky bait people.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Gussington]

Sure, but is it cheaper in the long run? I agree with you in so far as to say that this is a question about total cost of ownership and continued maintenance. Power plants require their own expensive maintenance but those parts can be acquired from a number of different sources. Those sources can compete on pricing. Who does Elon presently have to compete with?

No idea of actual costs, but I'd be willing to bet that a warehouse full of batteries costs considerably less than maintaining a large scale power plant for decades.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[thegarbz]

It would, but only on a huge scale. The very first fault on a distribution system knocked one wind farm offline that instantly took out 123MW of capacity. Already larger than the batteries needed to mitigate this. But the problem wasn't the sudden loss of generation, it was a grid upset.

Importing from neighbors in peak times can result in the same failure, if storms take out those long-distance power lines, like they did the lines to the wind farm.

The storm didn't take out some line to a power plant. It took out a major UHV distribution line right into the CBD of Adelade. No power plants actually got cut off at any time, it was just a grid balance issue and the resulting voltage spikes caused power plants which still had connections to trip. Smoothing out these voltages isn't as simple as putting a few batteries around the place.

It still seems like a good idea to have it, but it won't make the grid magically power outage free. To be perfectly frank a metal structure that doesn't get hit by anything hard should be designed and maintained well enough to not simply fall over in a 1 in 50 year storm. That's the design and maintenance issue of the tower, and the other thing the kneejerkers in the government need to remember is ... 1 in 50 year storm. SA's grid is no where near as bad as they say. The entire situation is purely political now with some numbnuts in parliament taking fire at wind power (even though he was briefed that it wasn't the issue before his speech) as the cause of the outage. The coal lobby has pounced on this to promote clean-coal as a future for the state. And the green companies are understandably pissed.

Actually I hope Musk's little promise is a catalyst to put the breaks on "clean" coal.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course he'd make this bet. It's not about solving a problem, it's about creating a very expensive dependency on his company.

He doesn't even need that, he could include free parts for decades. It's an advert for other countries to buy the same system, and he can make the profit there.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually they aren't kept spinning because it's too expensive, and they are slow to start up. They usually trigger a hydroelectric station to provide the power while a station starts up. Batteries would fit the same slot without the strict requirements on where you can place hydro (steep hill, place for 2x reservoirs, not many people to move). You can also spread batteries throughout the country which has advantages.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Anonymous Coward]

So 3000 cycles, with one full cycle a day is over 8 years. But of course you won't do one full cycle a day. I don't know what the energy situation is down in Aus, but let's say they are pushing the batteries hard and getting 1 cycle every 4 days, or 25MWh/day average. That pushes them to 32 years, although there is some self-discharge and ageing so that might be pushing it. I'd expect a 20 year warranty though.

They'll charge off-peak and discharge peak time. There are many events daily where people will collectively do the same thing at the same time (advert breaks during popular soaps for example). Power stations take a while to start up to increase supply so to avoid brownouts they use hydro power or buy it from abroad which can increase supply nearly instantaneously. Batteries would be used for the same purpose, so they would be used daily. Perhaps not completely used, but enough they'd probably be recharging them every day.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Catbeller]

Panasonic batteries, and they're easily replaceable. In 5-10 years, the batteries will be 50% or more capacious, at a fraction of today's cost. The cost to replace will shrink constantly.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Catbeller]

The country is drowning in potential solar power. This is a solvable problem, to be sure.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[kuzb]

..and that right there is the problem. You're willing to "bet" on this sort of stuff without any facts. We have a name for people who form their opinions like that. We call them idiots.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[kuzb]

My point is that Elon isn't being an altruist. He's doing what he always does - he's looking out for #1. You shouldn't just instantly believe he's doing it as a favor for mankind.

Re:Not about winning a bet

[Gussington]

..and that right there is the problem. You're willing to "bet" on this sort of stuff without any facts. We have a name for people who form their opinions like that. We call them idiots.

Well that added value to the discussion. You must be fun at parties...

Red Tape

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite sure getting all the permits takes longer than 100 days.
Where can I sign the contract for a free 100MW battery storage system.

Re:Red Tape

[quonset]

He said after the contract was signed. Presumably all permits would have been worked out by that time.

Also, while he's waiting on the permits and contract to be signed he could be loading up all the needed equipment, getting his people ready, making arrangements for passage on ships and/or planes, and getting the logistics down. Before the ink is dry he'd already have the stuff moving so if, as others above had said, it takes 20 days to get to Australia by boat, that leaves him 80 days to do the work.

Ambitious? Certainly. Doable? Only one way to find out.

Re:Red Tape

[OzPeter]

He said after the contract was signed. Presumably all permits would have been worked out by that time.

That comes down to how much risk is Musk willing to assume. Until the contract is actually signed he would be fronting 100% of the cost and taking on 100% of the liability if it fails.

Re:Red Tape

[MrLogic17]

You think Elon & crew aren't smart enough to put that into the contract as a clause?

Dude, it's only free if it doesn't solve the problem. These battery packs are *designed* to solve this kind of problem. Buy low, sell high - only with electricity.

Re:Red Tape

[Talderas]

He boasting on his ability to deliver the on the promise. The contract will certainly include clauses that remove liability of providing the system for free in the case of other actors that can influence it that are outside of his control including a nature induced issue during shipping, piracy, the shipment held up by Australian customs, and union strikes that remove the ability to actual move material. That's just a limited list of the things that will probably show up.

Re:Red Tape

[Guspaz]

In terms of it being doable, they built an 80 MWh installation in Los Angeles in 90 days, so building a 100 MWh installation in 100 days doesn't sound unreasonable.

Re:Red Tape

[DontBeAMoran]

Given that it took 1.125 days per MWh for Los Angeles, I would have given a quote of 112.5 days for the Australia installation. I bet they're be almost two weeks late and will have to give it for free.

Re:Red Tape

[Wulf2k]

Of course, his battery factory can probably find something to do with all those extra battery-making materials laying around if this falls through.

Re:Red Tape

[Guspaz]

There are likely certain aspects that can be scaled up in parallel such that installing a higher capacity takes more workers rather than more time.

Re:Red Tape

[magarity]

He said after the contract was signed. Presumably all permits would have been worked out by that time.

Both getting a contract signed and permits approved are peanuts next to navigating any local union rules.

Re:Red Tape

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing they have other ways to use those batteries if this doesn't work out :)

Re:Red Tape

[myowntrueself]

He said after the contract was signed. Presumably all permits would have been worked out by that time.

Also, while he's waiting on the permits and contract to be signed he could be loading up all the needed equipment, getting his people ready, making arrangements for passage on ships and/or planes, and getting the logistics down. Before the ink is dry he'd already have the stuff moving so if, as others above had said, it takes 20 days to get to Australia by boat, that leaves him 80 days to do the work.

Ambitious? Certainly. Doable? Only one way to find out.

yeah then theres customs clearance! Good luck with that, Elon! Especially given that the Aussies will probably deliberately hold it up to get their free batteries.

That's a bold claim

[avm]

Given what seems like pretty steep logistical challenges, this is quite a bold claim. It'll be interesting watching this unfold...I for one am hoping the process is documented and presented either way.

Re:That's a bold claim

[Anonymous Coward]

They have already succeeded in a quick implementation of another battery system:

Manufactured, shipped, installed and readied for operation in roughly three months, the batteries are connected to distribution circuits at Southern California Edison’s Mira Loma substation in an industrial section of Ontario, Calif., about 40 miles east of Los Angeles.

“Essentially, we can go and pour a slab and install the basic wiring, but each one of our Powerpacks is quite self-contained,” said J. B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technical officer.

So could I...

[bosef1]

if I made everyone in South Australia asphyxiate themselves.

I feel like we've heard a lot of talk lately from Mr. Musk, but seen less action. I'd be pleased if he could resolve the problem, but let's have an actual plan with timelines, deadlines, costs, and enforceable penalties for poor performance or missed dates.

Re:So could I...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the gigafactory opening, solar roof tiles or SpaceX landings as "less action". But maybe that's just me.

Re:So could I...

[DogDude]

Are you asking for a detailed contract from Elon Musk for a battery installation for an Australian government? Do you need medical attention?

Re:So could I...

[sl3xd]

I'm careful to about how I judge other's really boring hobbies... after all, I get jazzed about getting my clock 10 microseconds more accurate.

Re:So could I...

[sims 2]

Dedicated clock or are you just resyncing more often?

For what computers cost most are surprisingly bad at keeping time.

I'm still looking for a digital light timer that doesn't lose a few minutes every year.

Re: So could I...

[brianerst]

Considering Tessa just installed a similarly sized installation in LA, I think they're doing fine.

Re:So could I...

[sl3xd]

GPS Disciplined NTP.

Some GPS modules have a PPS (Pulse per second) accurate to around 10 ns, though cheap ones are more like 20-200 ns. Interrupt latencies on the computer adds some inaccuracy.

But with a Raspberry Pi 3 and a $35 add on board, you can get a stratum 1 NTP server accurate to a couple microseconds.

https://www.ntpsec.org/white-p...

Re: So could I...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're using AMP. Just say no to it. It's evil.

Drop bears

[Oswald McWeany]

Drop bears are attracted to batteries. I can't see the battery storage solution surviving the first drop bear attack.

Re:Drop bears

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the very real problems involved here, THAT's the one you focus on?
Sheeesh. OBVIOUSLY, as part of rigorous certification for the US market, Elon has tested against Jackalopes, and will simply extrapolate (extrapolope?) those results!

Duh.

Re:Drop bears

[sl3xd]

Jackalope pose a similar problem in the American Southwest, where the Gigafactory is located.

The Gigafactory and its employees can easily survive an onslaught of Jackalope, so I'm pretty sure the drop bears will be familiar, comfortable territory.

Re:Drop bears

[guruevi]

Mod drop bears funny.

MW-Hr not MW.

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Do the Slashdot editors not understand basic physics? Battery capacity is measured in MW-Hr -- a measurement of energy capacity --, not MW -- a measurement of power. The article gets it right.

Re:MW-Hr not MW.

[DontBeAMoran]

Can we please switch to DeLorean units of power?

Re:MW-Hr not MW.

[tsqr]

You need to get with the program. In the post-literate era, words mean what the writer wants them to mean, not what you are accustomed to knowing they mean. Looser can be the opposite of winner, not the opposite of tighter. Your might mean you are. It's does not have to be possessive, because apostrophes are just decorative. Begs the question means raises the question. The writer is too ignorant or too much in a hurry to be accurate, so stop whining and do your best to pick it up from context.

Re:MW-Hr not MW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Power and capacity are both interesting metrics of a battery storage system. The article and the summary both list the power as 100MW and the capacity as 100-300 MWh. Given that, I have no idea what you're complaining about.

Re:MW-Hr not MW.

[sl3xd]

Well, we all love our dancing watts.

Re:MW-Hr not MW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Don Quixote. Keep tilting at those windmills.

Re:MW-Hr not MW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly, but it should be noted that there are two factors to any battery, its "capacity" and its "discharge rate". Both can use the same units (Megawatts in this case), but one represents the amount of energy contained in the battery and the other represents how quickly said battery can dispense that energy. For example a Tesla Powerwall 2 can hold 13.5 KWh, but it can only discharge that power at 5KW (7KW peaks), so it can run flat out for around 2 hours. It's not inconceivable that they were talking about the discharge rate for the larger 300 MWh battery pack, which would be somewhere in the 100-150 MW range.

Re:MW-Hr not MW.

[lite99]

I hale you for this, tank you shir! Comment in support role.

Sales pitch

[Zemran]

Whether this is a good offer or not depends on the price etc. It is just a sales pitch. Buy my stuff and I guarantee it will be delivered within 3 months... Nothing special here. If he is asking some ridiculous price or if his product is not suitable for the job it is just air being emitted.

Re:Sales pitch

[Mr D from 63]

Whether this is a good offer or not depends on the price etc. It is just a sales pitch. Buy my stuff and I guarantee it will be delivered within 3 months... Nothing special here. If he is asking some ridiculous price or if his product is not suitable for the job it is just air being emitted.

Tesla products are expensive. And for this offer there is nothing technologically unique about Telsa. They can find and install storage products from Asia for much less. If it were cost effective, they would be doing it already.

Lead time

[sjbe]

I'm curious to know how they plan to transport them. It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough?

A container ship can cross the pacific in 2-4 weeks so that's not a big deal. Lead time would be a serious problem though for his 100 day boast. Presume it takes 20 days to transport the batteries and maybe another 30-40 to build them all (probably optimistic), they would be left with maybe a month to design, install and test the whole thing. Not saying it would be impossible but it would be a tight squeeze most likely unless he has already built the batteries and designed the system. He could probably get it up and running quickly but perhaps not at full capacity.

Re:Lead time

[Immerman]

Presumably they manufacture a limited range of standard-size cells, so they could be designing and manufacturing simultaneously, needing only to decide on the cell size first.

Plus, in reality they would probably have at least a rough design before they even signed the contract. Heck, they might already have a generic reference design or three for different sizes of power-buffering facilities just waiting for customers - I'm sure "And as an added bonus your purchase of $MMMMMMM worth of batteries comes with a complementary set of blueprints for building the buffering facility" would be a great sales pitch.

Re:Lead time

[haruchai]

"Presumably they manufacture a limited range of standard-size cells"

The Gigafactory is all about the 2170 format which is being / will be used in the PowerWall2 / PowerPack2 and forthcoming Model 3.
Tesla scales up from a basic Powerpack module, originally 50 kW / 100 kWh but now 210 kWh with PowerPack2.
A PowerPack module is 16 battery modules plus control cabinet / supporting hardware and incl Tesla-designed inverter.

grid storage market competitors

[Anonymous Coward]

GE has some Zebra battery technology waiting around to be used. Japan has sodium sulfur battery tech waiting around. They are just waiting around for the stationary grid storage market to get big enough before reentering the market.

Quite a logistical task

[lifeisshort]

If they plan to use PowerPack 2, they will need about 1430 units for 300MWh.

(source: http://www.energymatters.com.au/commercial-solar/battery-energy-storage/tesla-powerpack/)

The weight of a unit is 1622 kg for the battery and another 1200 kg for the inverter. If one inverter is needed per battery, the total weight will be about 4000 tons.

Boeing 747 400F max payload is around 123 tons

(source: https://www.aircraftcompare.com/helicopter-airplane/Boeing-747-400F/3),

so only about 33 flights will be necessary.

If they are scheduled one per day that is 33 days.

Doable.

Re:Quite a logistical task

[nickersonm]

Or less than 160 containers on one of these.

Re:Quite a logistical task

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a combination. You can have stuff showing up and being installed then later in the project the rest shows up... Shipping is not binary.

Re:Quite a logistical task

[Anonymous Coward]

Or less than 33 days when using a fraction of the capacity of a large container ship.

Re:Quite a logistical task

[Strider-]

Don't forget the transformers and switchgear needed to connect those inverters to the grid. I'd be shocked if you could get that electrical equipment designed and delivered within 6 months, never mind 100 days.

Of course

[mridoni]

They'll power the thing with Musk's ego and sense of importance, that should provide enough power for the next 100 years.

Re:Of course

[sl3xd]

The Ozzies will have to make do, as we already have the world's 2nd biggest ego and sense of importance as President.

The world's most powerful ego and sense of importance is, of course Kanye West, and he's usually on tour.

Scrum, eh?

[raymorris]

> Presume it takes 20 days to transport the batteries and maybe another 30-40 to build them all (probably optimistic), they would be left with maybe a month to design, install and test the whole thing.

So you would build it and deliver it, THEN start designing it? A Scrum advocate I'm guessing.

Re:Scrum, eh?

[Socguy]

They've done a 90MW in California already. Not much tinkering necessary.

Re:Scrum, eh?

[senileoldfart]

Reminds me of an old IT cartoon. "You guys start coding, and I'll go see what they want."

Alternatively: Buy Australian

[r0kk3rz]

As popular as Musk is, and he is no doubt doing cool things, I can't help but think that the SA Government should be looking locally for a possible solution before importing battery units from Nevada.

We have an Australian company that is bringing Grid Storage products to market using Flow Battery tech called RedFlow, and it seems to be better suited for grid based applications rather than a re-purposed automotive unit, particularly when it comes to risk of fires.

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I don't even like Tesla and I read that as a "buy local" because of this FUD about fires "that the local product surely doesn't share."

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[r0kk3rz]

Wow, I don't even like Tesla and I read that as a "buy local" because of this FUD about fires "that the local product surely doesn't share."

Lithium-Ion batteries don't like being set on fire, thats well known. In Australia we get bush fires rather regularly and I don't really want to know what happens when a bushfire hits a substation filled with Lithium-Ion batteries. Zinc-Bromine batteries however, are completely different and as such have different pros and cons, one of which is that they dont fail quite so spectactularly when set on fire.

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[Anonymous Coward]

plus taking example from US, why outsource to some third world dictator run country when you can make your own.

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[SuperKendall]

Presumably Musk will not plant bushes between the batteries?

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Australia but here in the US electrical substations are often in fenced in areas completely devoid of outwardly flammable materials (trees, shrubs wood buildings, grass, etc) and are often in areas situated well away from anything overly flammable (woods, residential neighborhoods, etc). I think generally even in major wildfires the substations are the part of the power distribution grid that survives the best, its the poles/lines that tend to get destroyed.

Re:Alternatively: Buy Australian

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? Thanks to neocon globalism and the LNP, Australia is a banana republic that can only sell raw primay industries and land to foreigners. Make something? Don't make me laugh!

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[Gussington]

I don't really want to know what happens when a bushfire hits a substation filled with Lithium-Ion batteries.

Um, this is probably solved by not building your battery farm in the middle of the bush? (seems obvious, but here we are...)

Re:Alternatively: Buy Australian

[thegarbz]

I can't help but think that the SA Government should be looking locally for a possible solution before importing battery units from Nevada.

What the SA government needs is tower maintenance not some major changes to the grid. Though they will need storage eventually with the incredibly large amount of wind power they are introducing and only 800MW on the interstate interconnects available, the power outages were not caused by this but rather by a few big metal towers falling over in a 1 in 50 year storm event.

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[r0kk3rz]

I don't really want to know what happens when a bushfire hits a substation filled with Lithium-Ion batteries.

Um, this is probably solved by not building your battery farm in the middle of the bush? (seems obvious, but here we are...)

Yes obviously, but its still a risk that needs to be managed which limits where and how these units can be used. Do you even build a battery farm? or do you install units into every substation acting somewhat like a UPS for the local area? Crazy idea i know, that different technology might be best suited for different applications.

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[r0kk3rz]

Anyway, i'm just suggesting that using a battery tech that doesnt exhibit thermal runaway effects sounds like a good idea in a country thats hot and gets fires on a yearly basis sounds like a good idea should such a technology exist and otherwise performs adequately

Re: Alternatively: Buy Australian

[Gussington]

Anyway, i'm just suggesting that using a battery tech that doesnt exhibit thermal runaway effects sounds like a good idea in a country thats hot and gets fires on a yearly basis sounds like a good idea should such a technology exist and otherwise performs adequately

If it makes you feel better, there are tonnes of batteries (literally) used in UPS's all over the place already and this hasn't been a problem.

100 Tons of TNT

[wisnoskij]

100 MW hrs solds a similar amount of energy to 100 tons of TNT. I really hope they plan on distributing the energy storage across the country, and not just having a few giant plants.

Re:100 Tons of TNT

[Anonymous Coward]

100 tons of TNT sounds like a lot, but it's not.

It makes a big boom, then it's over. Place it at a safe distance, which they have a lot of in australia, and you'll be fine.

Re:100 Tons of TNT

[Anonymous Coward]

While technically true (actually I didn't compare the energy equivalents - but yes, they both contain lots of energy), comparing Li-ion batteries to TNT is comparing apples to oranges. Li-ion batteries do not release their energy like TNT does. A more appropriate comparison would be with large tanks of gasoline. Like there are at any refinery. Certainly something to be careful with! But not the same as storing huge quantities of actual explosives.

Re:100 Tons of TNT

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the 80MW or 100MW mega battery pile refuses to explode, but simply catches fire, population as far as eye can see will have to be evacuated before the toxic smoke arrives and it will take years before anybody can return, due to the soil getting polluted by a fall-out chemically toxic elements. Next best thing to a nuclear disaster... Who wants to be a volunteer firefighter there?

The kind of overly ambitious plans that come from american yuppies lately remind me of soviet mega-project ideas, like turning back huge siberian rivers to water central asian deserts, instead of flowing into the Artic Ocean, magnetically suspending fusion-powered mini suns mid-air to melt northern tundra into agricultural land, etc.. The environmental impact and risk analysis was never important for them, just dream big. We know what happened to the USSR eventually. Musk will implode, too. Technology is not omnipotent and not necessarily the answer to all possible questions.

Re:100 Tons of TNT

[wisnoskij]

Li-ion batteries are known for exploding if anything goes wrong with any part of them. When they fail, that seems to be their default mode (explosion and fire).

What about the EULA?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Aussies better read the EULA carefully.

Payment when it works

[tomhath]

Australia would also be wise to have Musk install it and show that it works first, before handing over any cash.

Batteries only?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does adding batteries, which only hold energy and not produce it stop energy problems? Do they have plenty of solar or something that only works sometimes?

Re:Batteries only?

[jonwil]

South Australia has a lot of wind turbines which generate plenty of power when the wind is blowing but not much at other times.
Adding battery storage will make excess power from the wind turbines available at times when the wind isn't blowing so much.

Adding battery storage to the grid as the way to solve the problems (assuming it will in fact do what Musk claims it will do) is a much better option than building more gas generators (which then require gas to operate which makes gas more expensive and has flow-on effects) or worse, so-called "clean coal" power stations.

That said, I suspect our current prime minister (who has a love of all things coal) will probably come up with some FUD and BS about why batteries aren't a good idea or why they won't solve the problems and building clean coal stations is the only way to ensure grid stability into the future...

The backup plan .

[Diakoneo]

The backup plan if he can't get the batteries up and running....
1. Buy the USS Nimitz
2. Back it into a large South Australian port
3. Hook it up to the grid
4. Profit!

Batteries don't generate power?

[jediborg]

Batteries don't generate power, so how would they help Australia's Power grid woes?

Is the idea to 'charge' the batteries from the electric grid during non-peak hours, and then discharge them back into the grid during peak hours? Basically that solution would not be 'adding' electricity to the grid, but would be helping smooth out the troughs and peaks of energy capacity, which i guess to a suburbanite they don't care as long as it keeps the lights on? Or does Australia have some massive solar plants that i don't know about? Solar plants that generate electricity during the day when energy is needed the least, so that the batteries can charge then and discharge during the peak hours?

Is there enough lithium on the planet for this kind of energy solution to be deployed across the world?

Customs

[Anonymous Coward]

I foresee a lot of customs violation investigations taking, oh say, 100 days to remedy!! :)

Just scale up

[Higaran]

The just finished a similar project in Hawaii, just scale it up a bit. http://www.theverge.com/2017/3...

Re:Just scale up

[RuffMasterD]

Is it web-scale though? South Australia has internet and needs a web-scale power supply to keep pace.

"less action" : other than the EVs and rockets?

[Brannon]

You mean apart from delivering 100k+ electric cars per year and launching rockets that can land vertically on floating platforms in the middle of the ocean, or how about the gigantic battery factory? Yeah, other than that the dude is a total snake oil salesman.

Twitter, the new business comm tool

[SuperKendall]

I find it interesting that lots of high-level business is now done through Twitter - both Trump and Musk are doing it, soon others will follow.

Re:Twitter, the new business comm tool

[Gussington]

I find it interesting that lots of high-level business is now done through Twitter - both Trump and Musk are doing it, soon others will follow.

Er, none of this really qualifies as 'business'. People who run businesses are performing PR stunts on Twitter, that is all. The real business still happens with a contract, which happens in offices with lots of boring stuff and boring people.

Re:Twitter, the new business comm tool

[SuperKendall]

You say the real business happens with a contract. That is simply details, the REAL business is done up front when deciding to do something at all. That appeared to have happened with Musk/Australia mostly over Twitter!

Re:Twitter, the new business comm tool

[Gussington]

You say the real business happens with a contract. That is simply details, the REAL business is done up front when deciding to do something at all. That appeared to have happened with Musk/Australia mostly over Twitter!

You clearly have no experience with doing any sort of business deal....

So ~4% of Fat Man nuclear bomb

[Overzeetop]

Not to minimize the devastation on Hiroshima, but they're not putting this 1mi directly above a city, and the results won't be radioactive.

Re:So ~4% of Fat Man nuclear bomb

[wisnoskij]

So ~4% of Fat Man nuclear bomb

I am not really sure. From what I was reading, Hiroshima was incredibly inefficient. On the order of 1%. And next to the "15 kilotons of TNT", they seem to be indicating that that is just the theoretical number based on the mass of the payload. Implying that the Hiroshima explosion was just 1% of the number given (15 kt).

So it might actually be something closer to 400% of Fat Man. As for Little Boy (aka Hiroshima) it is either .7% or if I am reading this right 70% of the actual explosion of Hiroshima (minus the dirty bomb aspect).

Something else that makes it seem like even 70% is grossly underestimating it. I am reading that an interview with someone who I am guessing must know something about it, stated that only seven-tenths of a gram of uranium did anything at Hiroshima. And Wolfram alpha stated that this 100 MW hrs was equivalent to 4.4 grams of uranium. So by that comparison we get 630% of Hiroshima.

Silicon Valley Startup

[quarrel]

In what way is the Australian company Atlassian a Silicon Valley startup?

Sure, it has an office in San Fran, but really .... (yes, yes, I know it listed on the NASDAQ)

Maybe, "Billionaire tech founder Mikey Cannon-Brookes" or whatever. No need to co-opt everything ;)

--Q

Back of the envelop calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

A 14kWh powerwall sells for $5500. For 100 MWH of battery, that's only 715 power walls, and a $4,000,000 order. Maybe not small potatoes, but not earth shattering either I think.

Re:Back of the envelop calculations

[lite99]

Umm get more envelopes. 14 kWh vs. 100 000 kWh is rather 10 times your calculated sum, 40 million dollarings. Dear. :-)

Elon is my Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why Elon is my Hero

Fix what in South Australia?

[thegarbz]

There was no power shortage in south Australia.

There was:
- A huge storm which took down several UHV power distribution towers.
- The Heywood interconnector was down so the state was short some 650MW of capacity.
- A massive upset from the infrastructure damage that tripped off the base load energy suppliers.
- The loss of baseload caused the Murrylink interconnector (HVDC) to loose sync and trip (another 220MW gone)
- A loss in all that wonderful green energy they have because without the baseload or the interconnect there was nothing left to synchronise wind, solar, storage, or anything else to the grid.

You want to fix South Australia? Fund the upgrades to the SA/VIC interconnects that have been requested for the past 10 years. Do some much needed maintenance on the distribution network. SA currently has some capacity left in its generation. In 2018 they are expected to have a 600MW shortage during peak periods leaving them 200MW spare on the interconnect capacity.

Throwing in a 100MW battery system won't do anything to prevent the next major blackout.

Re:Fix what in South Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

... power shortage in south Australia.

There will be; This is in the news because a power station is being shutdown. IIRC, another 2 are scheduled for refurbishment, which no-one wants to do, because it's holding onto old technology: Yay, for conservative government not investing in infrastructure.

NOTE: For US-ians; since Australia has a socialist party, conservative means like the Democrats, although those politicians are starting to adopt the 'gifts for the rich' policies of the Republicans. It always amuses me that the Republicans call themselves the conservatives and patriots.

Re:Fix what in South Australia?

[thegarbz]

Yay, for conservative government not investing in infrastructure.

Except for the whole being able to shut down the power plant because of the recent investment in the Heywood inter-connector. But hey let's pretend like there isn't a plan at all.

Re:Fix what in South Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been many more power outages than the one you describe.

We don't need more interconnects with other states we need our own generation and to be independent. Privatising ETSA was not a good thing.

Fortunately I got a Honda generator in 2010 which I have had to use quite a few times on the house in the last 2 years. I originally got it for when I went away camping. I also have 15 UPS around the house and sheds as the power fluctuates too much and there is a lot of power sags that cause equipment to turn off or reset.

It's funny seeing business owners complain about power loss and loosing thousands of dollars in stock and trade and then say they are considering purchasing a generator when a good quality generator can be had for around $2000 which would of kept the basics running. 4 stroke petrol generators don't cost a lot to run or maintain and the Honda ones are quiet.

I'm paying $700 - $800 every 3 months for power now when it used to be $450 ish for 2 people 2 years ago in a house with gas and no air-con. I can't get solar because of private rental so I'm saving to get my own property instead.

Re:Fix what in South Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh... people are trying to enjoy their self-congratulatory confirmation bias.

Correction:

[thegarbz]

The Heywood interconnect was online but it did trip on overload when much of the wind capacity couldn't handle the upset caused by downed transmission lines.

'startup'?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia, Atlassian was formed in 2002.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlassian

I'd hardly call it a startup. But this term has been thrown around for just about every tech business that isnt IBM or Microsoft. Can you still be a startup after 15 years and 4 billion in market cap?

Re:'startup'?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia, Atlassian was formed in 2002.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlassian

I'd hardly call it a startup. But this term has been thrown around for just about every tech business that isnt IBM or Microsoft. Can you still be a startup after 15 years and 4 billion in market cap?

Also, the summary describes Atlassian as a 'Silicon Valley' startup.

Same Wiki article lists founder and headquarters in Sydney. Their only listed office in the US is in Austin, Texas.

Lots of Luddites here

[Anonymous Coward]

All we need to do is deploy a 3D printer in the outback and the problem is solved.

Re-write that for you

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am able to sign my name on a piece of paper 100 days before I'm ready to deliver 100MWh of batteries"

that's all he's saying. He's not saying "i'll sign a contract today to *fix your power grid* within 100 days" and he's not even saying "I'll sign a contract today to deliver 100MWh of batteries 100 days from now" he's saying "if you're interested, I will after I negotiate for a while and get myself ready, sign a contract for a 100 day delivery horizon for some batteries" no promises that the batteries will solve the problems, and no promises as to how long he'll dick around negotiating...

nothing to see here... move along

Telsa has already done that

[ventsyv]

Tesla announced mid September that they've been chosen to build a 80 MWh storage facility. They cut the ribbon in late January - 4 months. Now that was in California, not Australia, but we do have airplanes ... https://electrek.co/2017/01/23...

Good luck with that

[scdeimos]

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of electric car giant Tesla, has thrown down a challenge to the South Australian and federal governments, saying he can solve the state's energy woes within 100 days -- or he'll deliver the 100MW battery storage system for free.

The power problems in South Australia are due to the both the state and federal governments mothballing coal-fired power generation to satiate the Greens, so good luck getting anything out of them. A lot of SA's baseload power is imported from neighboring states and when the interconnects went offline last September due to storm damage the wind power network had nothing to synchronise to so dropped their power from the network as well. The coal-fired power station in Port Augusta, SA was shut down last year; the gas-fired power station in Torrens Island is running at half-power (AGL is blaming soaring gas prices, but they're a gas producer themselves, so the truth is they don't want to maintain the full facility) and the coal-fired power station in Hazelwood, Victoria will be shut down next month. It's only going to get worse. I don't see how adding a paltry 100MW of battery storage is going to help the matter.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

And the gas prices going up are because of demand from places like China.

Why we cant have priority in Australia of our own gas and it be cheap for us I do not know.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Model 3 batteries?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, sales of the Model 3 will be delayed indefinitely while Elon strokes his ego. Early adopters than blew $3000 on a down payment are fine with this, as they are stroking his ego as well.