Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk Promises World's Biggest Lithium Ion Battery To Australia (cnn.com)
Elon Musk is following through on his promise to solve an energy crisis in Australia. From a report: His electric car company, Tesla, has teamed up with a French renewable energy firm and an Australian state government to install the world's largest lithium ion battery. Paired up with a wind farm in the state of South Australia, the battery will be three times more powerful than the next biggest in the world, Musk said at a news conference in the city of Adelaide on Friday. "If South Australia's willing to take a big risk, then so are we," he said. The announcement comes after billionaire entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes threw down the gauntlet to Musk in March, asking if Tesla was serious when it claimed it could quickly end blackouts in South Australia. "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?" Musk wrote on Twitter at the time.
I'd also expect Tesla to start the state-side work well ahead of that signing, so the post-signature project is more of a 'deliver and install' than 'design, fabricate, test, deliver and install'.
And given the mass and distances we're talking about, I'd not even be surprised if there were components on Australia-bound ships before the signing, too.
It'd be a gamble, but a pretty solid one, with a huge publicity payoff.
I like this, this is good news for nuclear power.
Imagine a Q&A during an announcement of breaking ground on a new nuclear power plant.
Reporter: Would you care to comment on the recent meltdown at the Springfield nuclear power plant?
Person at podium: Oh, that was terrible and I feel sad for all those people displaced and otherwise affected. However we've made a deal with Tesla for their new battery backup system so nothing like that can happen here. We'll have enough reserve power on site to run the lights, computers, sensors, fire fighting systems, and cooling pumps for two days.
People believe new batteries are what wind and solar need to be replace coal and nuclear power. I believe that technology like this will help nuclear power more than it could wind or solar. A lack of a power source capable of running the cooling pumps was what killed the reactors at Fukushima. Chernobyl didn't have such a problem but that was (effectively) an experimental dual use (for energy or weapons production) reactor, it also lacked a protective dome that would be required had it been built anywhere else. Any new reactor would not likely even need a separate power source to shutdown safely but a big battery like this would be very useful for peak load management. It'd also look good to regulators, to the public, and look good for Tesla.
(Yes, I realize that I typed "power" when "energy" would be (more) correct, I just imagine that's how someone at a podium would speak to reporters.)
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So an African in the Americas is shipping European tech made in Asia to Australia?
All I can say is that Antarctica is under-represented.
I'm sure the penguin is involved somehow. It would be hard to pull of such an operation without Tux somewhere in the chain.
To summarize, a vendor (a.k.a. Tesla/Musk) is selling a solution for a blackout problem in South Australia.
Now tell me, WHY do you think we should ask the sales guy for the "cost benefit analysis vs. other solutions"?
Because this is Slashdot, the once proud home of technology savvy nerds, but now the rest home for a lot of anti-technology reactionary anti-science people.
Do you honestly think if we burdened Musk with that he's gonna identify a solution other than the one he is selling, even if it was cheaper or better? Give me a break.
The burden of cost/benefit analysis is on the Australian government and no one else. Tough shit if they don't want to expend the time and effort to find a cheaper or better solution.
And no doubt they have looked at the alternatives. One thing to note is that Australia got to their sad state by using some of the alternatives.
And for the folks that have an issue about the guvmint being involved, well, which power source doesn't? Finally though, what is overlooked here by so many is that battery systems are even considered in the mix. With Los Angeles installing a battery peaking system, and now this project, it is just pathetic that so many people here are simply opposed because of because. I guess their sense of wonder at just how impressive we have become at storing electricity in chemical systems has evolved.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I wonder if Musk understands that a single large battery group might not meet grid demands despite its size. A key factor is discharge rate, and for grid stabilization discharge and charge rates need to be, on occasion, much faster than what is required for cars or even home supplies.
Well you better go tell Mr Musk! Some random guy on Slashdot can save the day again by giving all of the engineers and scientists working for him some really basic information that they no doubt have completely overlooked.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Indeed. It's effectively acting as a peaking plant. An extremely responsive one.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
One thing to note is that Australia got to their sad state by using some of the alternatives
To be fair, South Australia go to that sad state. Australia as a whole has no problem with power, but they also don't have enough interconnect capacity to SA to help them along.
The problem was no so much that they used some of the alternatives, but more that they didn't use them correctly and were overly keen to cut baseload capacity without testing if the market could handle what they needed.
The September outage was a one in 50 year storm which took out several UHV transmission lines linking to the supply of baseload and the interconnects. The entire grid lost synchronisation. There was plenty of capacity but no baseload to synchronise.
The December outage was again a storm this time taking out 300 individual power lines. There was plenty of capacity.
The February outage was caused by marketing masturbation. There was a capacity shortage due to some peaking plants refusing to power up their generators due to contractual disagreements. The day after the outage energy consumption was actually higher than the day of the outage and yet no problem occurred.
Now while the current problems are the result of storms and market failure, the future is due well and truly due to mismanagement. SA doesn't need batteries, they need either another interconnect or another baseload supplier. Instead they closed 700MW of baseload, and claimed tax credits as a result.