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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.
It takes a while to get a package in South Australia from the US... wonder if we tip the Transport Unions we can get a free mega battery.
For instance, he pleas with the US government to stop giving him subsidies
Enough to power ~8000 households for 8 hours at 2kW per household. Not quite going to solve any large-scale problem.
From your link, "What matters is whether we have a relative advantage in the market." - Musk
He's not complainign about subsidies. He's complaining that Toyota and GM are getting subsidies. That's very, very different.
He's not complainign about subsidies. He's complaining that Toyota and GM are getting subsidies. That's very, very different.
No, he *is* complaining about subsidies - he would rather work in an environment without any subsidies!
The article says the 'plan' has $550M, but it does not specifically mention the battery cost, I assume part of that is for other parts of the plan. If the batteries cost that much.. wow.
I am particularly amazed by the 100 working days.
I assume is a 24hr working day and does not include all bureaucrat approvals.
In Italy, you need 100 days just to have the request for planning being considered....
(Yes, this is one of the reasons we are going down the drain)
Looking forward for how this "bet" pans out.
The cost is right there in the article.
You know Hannity is just a paid mouthpiece right? When coal wants a subsidy they pay him, he spouts his crap, dumb orange idiots believe it, coal gets its subsidy for 'clean coal' and then nobody builds the 'clean coal' power station. Like the Mississippi Power plant that received all those subsidies and never delivered.
Does Musk deliver on his promises? Do you want to buy an electric car with a bunch of self driving features? Or a rocket to space?
Does Hannity? Well I expect they'll try to make Hannity President next, but being a whiney little shit paid to whine, and actually doing and delivering stuff is completely different.
Couldn't find details about the battery in OP. I mean, 3 times bigger than the biggest is good to know, but how much energy will it store?
Does Musk do anything that doesn't involve his hands in the taxpayer pockets?
What you don't see Musk telling us is how much it will cost if delivered on time. I can guarantee you it will be exorbitant. And then where is the cost benefit analysis vs other solutions? Musk won't talk about that stuff.
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"? 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.
The batteries are needed to top up the grid and to create power stability - keep the voltage and current in sync, keep the frequency stable and maintain voltage. They aren't meant to power any individual homes. They are for peaks when everyone turns on AC at the same time and the demand temporarily exceeds the generation or for cases where the wind suddenly dies and the sun stops shinning for a short period.
Take a utility in the southern USA, about 15% of their infrastructure is there for the extreme peaks in demand. The last 8% for Oklahoma Gas and Electric is used less than (I think) 12 hours a year. That's tens of billions of dollars. If a few well placed half billion dollar batteries could do the same thing it would be a good deal.
THIS is a battery.
I am particularly amazed by the 100 working days.
I assume is a 24hr working day and does not include all bureaucrat approvals.
In Italy, you need 100 days just to have the request for planning being considered....
(Yes, this is one of the reasons we are going down the drain)
Looking forward for how this "bet" pans out.
From the summary "100 days from contract signature or it is free." I assume they would wait to sign the contract until after the bureaucracy has been settled?
Why "from the US"? The cells are made in the far east, and the technology around them provided by the French company.
From the US because that's where Musk's company builds stuff. Where the components come from is a separate issue.
It seems inefficient if they were to ship the cells from China/Japan to the US first, and that the short delivery time is precisely due to Australia being much closer.
You are assuming they aren't carrying any inventory of the battery cells and other electronics in question. In reality they probably have substantial stocks so it's not as if they are ordering everything from scratch. That's the beauty of building multiple products using standard components.
But anyhow, isn't this olds? Unless my old brain suffers from Deja Vu again, wasn't this news many months ago?
Musk made the 100 day offer months ago. Now it appears they have taken him up on the bet. Hence it is now newsworthy.
Calling it the 'largest battery' is a bit of a misnomer. It more appropriately would be called the largest group of batteries.
You are confusing the terms battery with cell. All batteries consist of one or more cells. So the word battery is the correct one regardless of size. A large array of connected batteries is still a battery.
What is the price if he delivers on time?
Whatever they agree to in the contract.
Why is that not in any of these articles?
Because they are probably still negotiating.
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
How much will it cost?
Costs were not detailed on Friday. Tesla founder Elon Musk has previously quoted US$250 ($AU330) per kilowatt-hour "at the pack level" for 100-megawatt-hour-plus systems.
The proposed system would contain 129,000 kilowatt-hours of capacity, meaning the project's cost would start at around $42 million. The head of Tesla's battery division has quoted a cost of about $65 million in the past. Other experts say a system of that size is likely to cost somewhere between $60 and $120 million.
hi!
Ahh, victim-blaming. I'd expect as much from a guy who's way down deep on Elon's cock.
And no, this isn't because I'm some kind of Musk fanboi riding his e-cock. Understanding the sales guy would recommend nothing but the solution they're selling, is common fucking sense.
And here I was debating on needing to add that to my original statement. Should have counted on bullshit responses like yours.
From TFA Tesla only promised the "worlds biggest". TBH that's pretty easy to deliver. If I was asking I would have instead requested the largest capacity in watt hours with enough actual capacity at the watts/second needed to meet my peak demands.
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.
Don't think about it as a mere battery.
It is a power plant.
Instead of burning coal, it uses previously stored power.
A power plant with 100MW peak (saw that here in the threat, not sure if that is correct) and a few hours time to actually deliver so much power is equivalent to a small power plant.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Lithium ion batteries are the best choice when you need a *light* battery, such as in a laptop, phone or car.
For a fixed, permanent installation where weight isn't a big factor, other types of batteries (or other power storage technologies) are far cheaper.
I assume the Australian state government did an analysis. It could be that they did find a cheaper and/or better solution, only they are betting that Tesla cannot deliver on time. If the margin is small enough then why not take that bet?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Musk has been building an inventory of power-wall batteries because nobody is buying them. They are sitting there costing money, so this is a brilliant play.
There are so many batteries that they are stored in the old set where they filmed the moon landing hoax and chemtrail juice
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Its supposed to be operational for summer, which is 5 and a half months away
after 1000 charges it should be fun to watch them dispose of the worlds largest poisonous explosive paper weight
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
How much will it cost?
Costs were not detailed on Friday. Tesla founder Elon Musk has previously quoted US$250 ($AU330) per kilowatt-hour "at the pack level" for 100-megawatt-hour-plus systems.
They actually used the term kilowatt hours? Something is very very off there.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"South Australia's population of 1.7 million people suffer regular power cuts and energy shortages. In September, much of the state was left without power after a storm damaged crucial transmission lines. Another major blackout happened in February after an unexpected spike in demand due to a heat wave."
Seem to me solar would be a much better solution than a battery center. Solar on houses, businesses, and strategically placed solar farms. If 1.7 million regularly suffer power cuts and energy shortages I think I'd solve that first.
Does nothing to solve the true energy crisis in South Australia. That being, we source our energy from the least economical source available.
Czech language for absolute beginners
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.
And here I was debating on needing to add that to my original statement. Should have counted on bullshit responses like yours.
Illegitimi non carborundum man. Don't let the trolls get under your skin. Your original post was spot on, and I suspect that the guy trolling you is just projecting his own sexual fantasies.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Same billing term used industry-wide. Would you prefer mAH or AH? This is from a press release, not a science journal article.
Really? I would have thought that if they're struggling with peak load some trivial high school maths would make it clear that buying a power wall is worth while.
At least here in CA, if you're on the EV rates electricity costs 3 times as much during peak times as it does during off peak. You gain $0.34 for every kWh you can time shift from off peak to peak. That's $1240 a year on the 10kWh model. Given that a PowerWall only costs $4000 after rebates, it's pretty trivial to see that that's well worth while.
No one is a victim here. He's told them what he's going to build, and he's offered them a certain price. As long as he delivers what he said for the price he claimed, no one is being victimized.
kWh(B) - the cycle discharge rating of the battery. The bi-directional inverter is generally rated at 20% discharge rate (5-hours).
Basically to make it work they need 20-30 commodity pad-mount transformers and a dedicated 35kV circuit (or two), and level concrete pads. S&C had a similar product for years as a UPS, but this is considerably more elegant.
They actually used the term kilowatt hours? Something is very very off there.
Why is that? Kilowatt hours is how electrical energy use is billed (at least in Australia) and I just pulled out my last bill and can see I used around 2200 kWh for last quarter, so around 24 kWh per day so it's a convenient unit for comparison. Unless you're thinking of seeing batteries quotes in Ah which doesn't mean much without knowing the nominal voltage.
A single-cycle gas-fired plant is undoubtably cheaper, but the lead time for ~30MW is likely closer to 8 months. A dual-cycle is closer to 12 months.
Long term, for wind power to be viable it will require batteries. Beyond about 10% penetration you are stuck curtailing capacity in the spring and fall, as can be seen from California and Germany. My math makes it look like you need 10-20% of rated capacity for an hour for it to work well from a system level.
Whoops, it is only 10 transformers.
AFAIK Tesla is delivering a whole system, not just some batteries that someone else integrates. It's known that this system should provide a given voltage and AC frequency to the grid. How the plant works internally, is not really interesting.
You're right! No company should ever provide anything to the government. People should build their own roads, their own power grids, their own power plant, own water treatment systems, they should maintain it themselves.
This will be of great benefit to all as we'd be living in the dark ages and not have to put up with reading shit posted on the internet by people with no clue.
is selling a solution for a blackout problem in South Australia.
Actually I think he's selling a battery. How that would have solved the major blackout problems in SA due to grid synchronisation issues when the baseload is cut-off I'm not quite sure yet.
I have no idea why you responded to this ridiculous AC. Glad it got modded down quickly. How would a sales guy for Tesla know about the cost/benefit of other solutions anyway? Maybe there's a better solution out there for the Australian government and maybe not. It would be silly for a sales guy from one vendor to talk about the cost/benefit of another vendor's solution since (s)he won't be nearly as familiar with it as their own. Plus there is a conflict of interest. In a government procurement situation, each vendor presents their solution in the best light, the customer takes a critical eye, and then decides what solution is best. This probably should happen in commercial situations as well. Sometimes in non-government business, there is a bit more room for personal preferences, but even then the general process is the same. If Tesla had been hired to do the independent comparison, I'd expect a large glass wall to avoid conflict of interest, but that's not what's happening here.
Whoops, it is only 10 transformers.
Ahh, that's okay. Probably more important to the consumer is what that kilowatt hour of electricity will cost them. not the capacity of a group of batteries will cost. Kilowatt hour apparently can mean multiple things when costing.
In reality, this is just a scaling up of the new Los Angeles peaking system, also to run lithium battery packs.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They actually used the term kilowatt hours? Something is very very off there.
Why is that? Kilowatt hours is how electrical energy use is billed (at least in Australia) and I just pulled out my last bill and can see I used around 2200 kWh for last quarter, so around 24 kWh per day so it's a convenient unit for comparison. Unless you're thinking of seeing batteries quotes in Ah which doesn't mean much without knowing the nominal voltage.
Here's the confusion over kilowatt hours. Did you pay $330.00 for each kilowatt hour? $72,600 is kinda pricey.
Capacity available versus capacity consumed.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How the plant works internally, is not really interesting.
For people who are not interested - it isn't. I'm interested.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You kidder you....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It makes sense that they are pitching it for energy-time units. A typical RV battery would cost about $100 for a kilowatt-hour worth of charge on average. However, lead-acid batteries get permanently damaged if drawn below 50% SoC, so $250 per kWh is a pretty good deal, factoring in standard battery prices.
It looks like the Aussies are getting their money's worth, just on the battery capacity side. The LiFePO4 batteries used tend to be long lasting, so this is something that would require little in upkeep (no watering systems needed.)
Translation...
Public/external statement:
"Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free."
Private/internal statement:
"Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or you're all fired."
That fails basic economics. If the embedded energy cost of a solar panel was greater than any possible eROI, they couldn't be sold at a profit. You might be able to get some suckers early on and government subsidies could help somewhat, but you're talking about a many multi-billion dollar industry with dozens of multinational suppliers and enormous factories. At some point, there has to be a positive eROI or the whole system would grind to a halt, as we can see from Solyndra which, despite large subsidies, failed.
But plenty of other companies are making good profits from solar (and wind, and batteries, etc.).
Solar panels (and batteries) will never have an eROI of, say, a drill head or gas turbine, but that's comparing apples to oranges. The total systems ROI of solar and wind farms are currently near, at or exceed various carbon and nuclear power systems.
If you want to make an argument that renewables will have a hard time replacing all baseload energy systems (because the power is more more diffuse, requiring a lot of land and more complicated grid management), that's a better argument to make. But any argument that starts with renewable energy simply not being able to compete in any context is wrong.
100 days... if this means working days, that could be decades in real time in Venezuela. Not sure about Australia.
No, because, obviously, consumption happens only once, while charge-discharge cycles happen thousands of times per pack.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
Indeed. It's effectively acting as a peaking plant. An extremely responsive one.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
True-- not much different than Mira Loma, beyond being close-coupled with a wind farm. Personally, I think that is where the technology will really shine, as it increases the value of power produced from the wind farm dramatically.
As for customer rates, if the goal is to maximize renewables batteries are a necessary part of the equation. Modern wind turbines turbines are around 5x the cost of gas or diesel-- 15x when you factor in a 35% capacity factor, although you don't have the fuel cost.
Wind just has so many problems when it is at peak output that it becomes very hard for the grid to absorb. Cutting the top 10-20% of generation off the top really can change the game (depending on total grid penetration).
That's actually a pretty nice price for a 100MW peaker. $65m for 100MW = 65 cents per watt? Most around around $1W a watt or more in capital costs. Now, to be fair, they also need to supply it with charging power - but it can buy at the cheapest possible rate, whenever power is cheapest (and conventional peakers still have to buy fuel).
Sounds like a great deal.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
You wouldn't want to cycle your batteries that deep. Half power cycles and they will last _many_ times longer. Which will slow down the payback, but increase it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
From one of the articles linked from a reader above, it's 100 days after the signing of the grid interconnect contract with whoever runs the Aussie national grid, not the supply contract with Musk.
Hope they have a site ready for him, leveling and concreting a section of land can take years. Yeah, yeah, I know Aussie is flat, but not that flat.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
These are the people your looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Many years ago, they were clients. Nice folks, Adelaide is a really nice city. I guarantee you, they crunched the numbers four different ways, then hired consultants to crunch the numbers (as cover). I also guarantee you they are very concerned about good and bad publicity. Not wanting politicians sticking their noses into things outside their competence, like grid operations. Which is what bad publicity gets you in SA. At the time they were winding up the regional power pool, which tells you how long ago this was...damn I'm old. I'm pretty amazed ETSA could move this fast, they couldn't have done it back then.
I've never seen such an incompetently managed network in my fucking life. Apparently, a government PHB had hired EDS to do the job. EDS was running the servers for ETSA in fucking Victoria, apparently over IP by carrier pigeon. As a practical matter their network didn't work, no local shares 'allowed'. It took all day to move a file from one workstation to another, all work had to be done against data on the hard drive.
I assume they fixed this a decade or more ago, but at the time 'the contract is signed, nothing anybody can do about it, for years.'
And there it sat. No spider of Cat-5 as they setup their own, floor at a time, outlaw network and servers. Bunch of law abiders, I didn't really understand them, WTF, do what you gotta do. Route around EDS for fucks sake. (Adelaide is smug about being 'not a prison colony', like the rest of Australia is. Bunch of goddamn law abiders.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They actually used the term kilowatt hours? Something is very very off there.
Why is that? Kilowatt hours is how electrical energy use is billed (at least in Australia) and I just pulled out my last bill and can see I used around 2200 kWh for last quarter, so around 24 kWh per day so it's a convenient unit for comparison. Unless you're thinking of seeing batteries quotes in Ah which doesn't mean much without knowing the nominal voltage.
Batteries like this are typically sized and sold in 'amp-hours' along with a discharge time rating. Like you say, KWH means little on its own. Batteries require a number of other specs to tell you if it suits the purpose. For example, a battery might supply fewer KWH on a given charge with a faster discharge rate than a slower one.
Indeed. It's effectively acting as a peaking plant. An extremely responsive one.
And an extremely expensive one
Sure, how it works is interesting. I'm just saying that there is nothing fishy with the system being sold for a set number of $/energy stored.
I find that the new type of Slashdot denizens are mostly interested in arguing politics and the superiority of the imperial system of measurements over the SI system, when they are not complaining over the layout of the webpage or the terribleness of the other posters. Which is why I haven't really read Slashdot for a few years now...
I'd say it's a safe bet that the contract has some number of provisions that stop the 100-day counter for bureaucratic delays. Otherwise there'd be nothing stopping the government from dragging their feet and forcing the project past the deadline just for the free battery.
I wonder if a battery system like this can replace a baseline power plant for a small town. If it could, it would be very useful.
With the gigafactory in production the latest news I've seen is that Tesla can produce 1kwh of batteries for about $125 so they are making nearly $100 in gross margin per kwh on that sale.
I find that the new type of Slashdot denizens are mostly interested in arguing politics and the superiority of the imperial system of measurements over the SI system, when they are not complaining over the layout of the webpage or the terribleness of the other posters. Which is why I haven't really read Slashdot for a few years now...
Don't forget the ones who are so worried about the superiority of the SI system that they seek out anything that doesn't conform to their zealotry and call it flamebait.
It is not possible to have a rational discussion about it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, because, obviously, consumption happens only once, while charge-discharge cycles happen thousands of times per pack.
Huh? I've been consuming and paying for kilowatt hours for years and years now. Or did I get whooshed with sarcasm?
As a peaking system, the batteries will have a pretty easy life. Similar to the Prius batteries, they will lead a pretty cushy and well tended life.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
True-- not much different than Mira Loma, beyond being close-coupled with a wind farm. Personally, I think that is where the technology will really shine, as it increases the value of power produced from the wind farm dramatically.
As for customer rates, if the goal is to maximize renewables batteries are a necessary part of the equation. Modern wind turbines turbines are around 5x the cost of gas or diesel-- 15x when you factor in a 35% capacity factor, although you don't have the fuel cost.
Wind just has so many problems when it is at peak output that it becomes very hard for the grid to absorb. Cutting the top 10-20% of generation off the top really can change the game (depending on total grid penetration).
Wind and battery combo is definitely important. We have a lot of wind turbines along the Allegheny front and I'm going to have to check with my contact on how they will deal with the peak powering. I know they feather the turbines a lot, but it would be interesting to level out that semi-erratic power production. I've even seen them run the blades flat to stop some of them when they are really moving. Who ever knew we could get to a point of occasionally having too much power to use at times?
I think this is very exciting stuff.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Now tell me, WHY do you think we should ask the sales guy for the "cost benefit analysis vs. other solutions"?
Because typically vendors do this anyway for their own benefit before they invest in the R&D for a product. The CEO says "We have $30 million to invest over the next 3 years, convince me I should invest in your project rather than the one down the hall." And someone has to prove to the CEO that the product will be economically viable, that the market will buy it, that it can be released in a timely fashion, that the regulatory and legal hurdles won't kill it, etc.
With that said, we understand the publicly released version will be the most optimistic versions of that analysis, to make it look good. But it is still a viable place to start. And sometimes, companies actually really make good products and they can prove it.
EDS was running the servers for ETSA in fucking Victoria, apparently over IP by carrier pigeon.
Ah, good 'ol reliable RFC 1149.
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.
Bullshit! Idiot, lair, asshole and fool! These are your own alternative facts to shield yourself from the truth. People that see Elon for the swindling piece of South African shit he is are NOT, I repeat and bold, NOT anti-science.
Damn, di you forget to take your Thorazine, or did you combine it with Purple Drank again?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not in the least. $65M (see earlier in the thread) for a 100MW peaking plant is cheap, not expensive.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
It cant, it violates the description what baseline/base load means.
Base load is the amount of energy you constantly never changing regardless of demand (regardless of higher or even lower) pump into the grid.
That battery pack obviously has to be charged at some point.
If your question is: could it be a buffer for a small town, then the answer is yes.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Its not a 100MW peak plant. They said 100 MWh, which is not fully clarified as to how that is rated. Plus, it only appears to have a 5-10 year life.
But total energy stored seems like a reasonable way to measure the size of a battery.
I assume they make sure all other things are reasonably in spec, and then sell the unit as amount of energy (KWH).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It is 'part' of a reasonable way to measure size, but 100 MWh doesn't mean you can supply 100 MW of power. It might supply 10 MW for 10 hours. You need more info to know the capabilities.
I actually think that if you asked Musk what other potential solutions there were, he'd both be able to tell you and be happy to do so and how they stacked up.
I suspect he could as well. Altogether too many slashdotters have a courtroom type of mentality towards everything, whereas if you do not have a doctorate in say batteries, that means you know absolutely nothing about batteries and cannot ever know anything about batteries.
Chemistry is not my field, but I have learned about battery chemistry. It really isn't that difficult to learn -- the devil is in the manufacturing implementation. I'm interested in a lot of things and enjoy learning. It is obvious that Musk is a very smart guy, that he is interested in a lot of things. So I have no doubt that he could stand and deliver intelligent facts about them.
Just not in court.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It isn't peak load they are struggling with and the main issue isn't households. What they have created is a system that doesn't handle disasters or unexpected conditions well as they have lost a lot of the stable base load from shutting down more traditional generation which causes massive problems for large manufacturing businesses that require stable consistent power. the home scenario is the lesser issue though also a political problem and regardless a power-wall install is a really bad choice in Australia as the cost is too high for what you get.
The little known french company is Neonen, a subsidy of also little known Direct Energie, which is owned at 35% by Jacques Veyrat's Impala SAS.
This for long term energy storage yes? Why not use a better chemical for this, and a local company like Redflow's zinc bromide flow batteries. Those shitters don't drop in capacity over age.
http://redflow.com/
No, they said 129MWh at 100MW. That's a 100MW peaking plant.
And where are you getting the lifespan on it? Powerwall units have an expected lifespan of about 15 years, with a 10 year warranty. And how expensive exactly do you think batteries are going to be that far down the line? Not to mention that the battery is only about $40m of the cost (see earlier).
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
Their existing warranty appears to guarantee 70% remaining capacity at 10 years for Powerwall. We'll have to see what it will be for grid storage. One article I read said 5-10 but I can't find it again. It would make sense that a grid system would undergo greater deep cycling than home Powerwall and therefore have a more limited life.
As usual with Musk announcements, a lot is left unclear. It seems the quoted price may not have included transportation and installation. And the discharge capabilities are still unclear as well. If max power is 100MW, which is at full charge, what is output during the discharge cycle? It will reduce below 100MW as it discharges. Is 129MWH accessible storage or max (you don't want to fully discharge Li-ION batteries)?
Bottom line is that battery is very different from a gas plant, and comparing ratings is apples to oranges. The power from the battery gets 'paid for twice'. Once for generating it, the second for cost of storage.
Actually it is.
The political opponents of the SA government argued that, incorrectly, then went very quiet when the same problems hit the NSW government two weeks later. You've been fed politically motivated partisan bullshit. I suggest looking at it in technical terms instead of political rhetoric.
Anyway, at the heart of it is a stupid attempt at fake competition in the electricity market that is based on the idiocy rampant in California when Enron was robbing everyone blind. All it takes is making sure that the gas turbines on standby have the gas they need to do their job, instead of some weird after last minute bidding on gas and electricity prices, and all the "stability" problems go away barring once in decades storms blowing lines down (which is what really happened).
I did some work at a place with some very old (and very small for coal) 60MW units that had a few problems for a few years. Every time one went down the distributor immediately blacked out the same small city a couple of hundred kilometres away.
But as another poster pointed out, the answer is no - it's not actually a generator even if the size is right.
The vast majority of the electricity generation by in Australia is provided by burning coal. Perhaps it's best to consider reality instead of assuming that most Aussies live in Bartertown getting their electricity from pig shit.
Ol Olsoc's fiction not mine.
I hear Samsung is considering putting it in their next phablet.
Perfect fro those long boring flights across the ocean, when you're just dying for some entertainment right there in your seat.
If you want to make an argument that renewables will have a hard time replacing all baseload energy systems (because the power is more more diffuse, requiring a lot of land and more complicated grid management), that's a better argument to make. But any argument that starts with renewable energy simply not being able to compete in any context is wrong.
My two arguments against solar and wind are the expense of power storage systems and the cost, both expense and lower reliability, of the extra complexity.
Besides the direct subsidies, there is also rent seeking where power consumers are legally required to buy from renewable sources leading to negative prices where the producers are still making money. This also results in non-renewable sources operating at a lower capacity factor making them less economical which is particularly problematical for nuclear power where the fuel costs are low.
Of course non-renewable energy generation receives its own subsidies at least in the form of not applying a Pigovian tax. To me this just demonstrates the largest problems we face, politics and rent seeking.
Storms blew the wires down - so a couple of blackouts (not low voltage "brownout" events that happen in developing countries with struggling electricity grids and the USA).
It's kind of funny to have an American being critical of Australian power transmission even on a bad day. Maybe you should complain about things closer to home that are in a far worse state?
One thing to note is that Australia got to their sad state by using some of the alternatives.
Worth noting that the problems are mostly South Australia the state, not a general geographic area. And the reason is that unlike the US or Europe, Australia's population isn't evenly distributed, so the electricity 'grid' is more like a long string with South Australia at the end of it. When transmission lines went down, the people at the end of the string were screwed, regardless of generation type.
Worth noting that the problems are mostly South Australia the state, not a general geographic area. And the reason is that unlike the US or Europe, Australia's population isn't evenly distributed, so the electricity 'grid' is more like a long string with South Australia at the end of it. When transmission lines went down, the people at the end of the string were screwed, regardless of generation type.
I've long been a fan of decentralizing electrical power as much as possible. Those long stretches of HV transmission lines with very few if any users is a symptom of a problem. I get into arguments with my NucE friends all the time about this. Smaller, less energy dense power generation is the way to go, without the kaboom risks. While they argued that the power generation must be balls to the wall, economy of scale or not at all; solar and wind have come along and started decentralizing power generation without them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've long been a fan of decentralizing electrical power as much as possible. Those long stretches of HV transmission lines with very few if any users is a symptom of a problem. I get into arguments with my NucE friends all the time about this. Smaller, less energy dense power generation is the way to go, without the kaboom risks. While they argued that the power generation must be balls to the wall, economy of scale or not at all; solar and wind have come along and started decentralizing power generation without them.
To a point, and it's all still relatively new so you can't expect new tech to take over immediately. In 50 years we'll look back and laugh at how some people tried to hang on to coal generation and centralised distribution, but for the next 5-10 years at least it's still the most reliable/efficient option.