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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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

Drug Dealer Model

[TechyImmigrant]

The first is always free

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

[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

[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

[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

[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: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: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.

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.

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.

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.