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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 more appropriately would be called the largest group of batteries.
The technical term for that is: "battery".
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.
The Burj Khalifa isn't the worlds tallest building, it's just a bunch of 1-story buildings stacked on top of each other. It more appropriately would be called the tallest stack of buildings.
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.
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.