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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?"
charter air freight.
Or regular air freight (but with the HazMat surcharge from the freight company).
They're only banned on passenger aircraft.
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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.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
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.
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.
-Styopa
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.
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
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.