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Elon Musk Says Tesla Could Rebuild Puerto Rico's Power Grid With Batteries, Solar (electrek.co)
After Puerto Rico was hit by hurricane Maria, Tesla quickly started shipping hundreds of its Powerwall batteries there to try and get power back on to some houses with solar arrays. Now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to say that Tesla could rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid with batteries and solar on a bigger scale. Electrek reports: Puerto Rico's electricity rates were already quite high at around $0.20 per kWh and reliant on fossil fuels. After it was pointed out that Puerto Rico's destroyed grid is an opportunity to build a better one, Musk wrote on Twitter: "The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit so it can be done for Puerto Rico too. Such a decision would be in the hands of the Puerto Rico government, PUC (Public Utilities Commission), any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of Puerto Rico."
Musk is referring to solar and battery projects that Tesla recently deployed on other islands, like Tesla's visually stunning Powerpack and solar project in Kauai. Those projects power grids for much smaller populations, but Musk has always said that it's scalable to support much larger islands, like Puerto Rico, and ultimately entire continents, which are just like big islands to a certain degree. The thing is that those systems are still reliant on power lines for larger communities and devices, like solar panels and wind turbines, that are still subject to problems with natural disasters. The advantage of Tesla's solution is that it has the potential to be distributed, which increases the odds of at least some systems staying online or bringing some back online quicker.
Musk is referring to solar and battery projects that Tesla recently deployed on other islands, like Tesla's visually stunning Powerpack and solar project in Kauai. Those projects power grids for much smaller populations, but Musk has always said that it's scalable to support much larger islands, like Puerto Rico, and ultimately entire continents, which are just like big islands to a certain degree. The thing is that those systems are still reliant on power lines for larger communities and devices, like solar panels and wind turbines, that are still subject to problems with natural disasters. The advantage of Tesla's solution is that it has the potential to be distributed, which increases the odds of at least some systems staying online or bringing some back online quicker.
In other news Elon Musk doesn't understand being poor.
As far as I know currently available lithium batteries still wear out after 1,000 cycles and slightly more for LiFePo4. There have been lots of breakthroughs but nothing for mass production. So if they go for this they'll have to buy a massive pile of new batteries every 5 years or so? Doesn't seem like a great solution
It's not about being easy, it's about being cost effective.
If you already have a lot invested in the equipment and infrastructure of using petroleum for your energy needs, it's a large financial outlay to invest in a whole new technology that you don't necessarily need (even if the long-term benefits are clear).
However, since Puerto Rico is now in the unfortunate position of having to rebuild much of their infrastructure anyway, and having to spend a ton of money to do so anyway, there's hardly any reason NOT to spend it on new technologies that save money in the long run... and also reduce dependence.
=Smidge=
Never let a disaster go to waste. $$$$$$$
Presumably because he's a busy man with at least three companies to run and he can't be made aware of and try to solve every possibly problem on earth.
But when large highly talked about events happen people tend to learn new information about them and act on it.
1) Despite the name, there just isn't that much lithium in a lithium-ion battery - and thus battery manufacturers can pay significantly more and not profoundly affect battery prices.
2) "Reserves" figures are based on a given A) exploration level, B) production tech level, and C) market price point. A) has historically been low, B) hasn't had reason to advance much, and C)... well, see point #1.
3) Growth in reserves with respect to 2A is roughly linear, while it's exponential with respect to 2B and 2C.
As an example of extremes: there's approximately 2,4e17 kilograms of lithium in Earth's oceans. Yes, producing from seawater with current tech (see 2B) costs a few times more than producing from land-based lithium sources per kilogram, so it's not commercially done. But battery manufacturers certainly can afford to pay those prices. And because of that, it's essentially impossible for them to run out of lithium. There can be temporary shortfalls due to production scaleups, but no long-term barriers.
(Not that they would go straight to seawater lithium; there's lots of land-based sources far larger than current "reserves" that would be turned to first)
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Because though their grid was in a shambles, it existed and was 'good enough' for the locals.
Now that it's effectively gone and they have to build something to replace it, it's a good time to look at options. There's not much cost savings in reusing the old grid.
And becoming less so... At some point we get to a point where it becomes cost effective. Musk is claiming that this point is now.
Yes. Hence doing this when the grid has already been destroyed means that it's more cost effective.
Before, the cost of existing infrastructure was zero. Now the cost of that infrastructure is the rebuild cost. It makes sense to explore more cost effective alternatives.
Cost and maintenance. Fiber optics is easy, power comes with an entirely different set of difficulties. Fibers get cut frequently and take months to repair, we only donâ(TM)t care because we got sufficient numbers in a cable and enough cables to be redundant.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Are the expensive power generation facilities destroyed? No.
Just the wires between houses need to be replaced.
Another hurricane will probably destroy Elon's solar and wind so they will have to start over.
The expensive power plants are still there, mostly paid for, and ready to be connected to the wires.
The wires between houses need to be constructed in either scenario.
Bermuda can take a direct hit and keep on truckin'. Hurricanes are very powerful, but it's still possible to design around them. They are certainly easier to cope with than large earthquakes, and you get a lot more warning.
Trouble is that, to paraphrase JM Keynes, the sun can not shine for longer than any practical, affordable, battery bank can hold out. For applications where you can't turn off the juice occasionally, you really need a nuclear/hydro/fossil fuel backup with wires connecting the generation to the users. And you need to pay to maintain that generation and distribution grid even if you don't use it all that often.
If you try to visualize a system using only wind/solar/waves and "batteries" -- as solar/wind advocates often do -- you'll end up with a system that doesn't always work. And by the time you've appended the stuff you need to make the lights come on reliably when folks throw their light switches, you're going to end up with very expensive electricity.
It's not that there aren't some applications, e.g. pumping water to "reservoirs", running air conditioning, where wind/solar can work fine today. It's that the high reliability and low costs US/Canadian electricity users are used to are VERY difficult to replicate with current "green" technology.
BTW - What's green about huge stacks of Lithium-ion batteries?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Its going to cost $x to rebuild the grid with what was there before.
Its going to cost $y for this solution from Tesla.
If the difference between $x and $y is low enough that it makes sense to go with the Tesla solution (because it can most likely restore power to some parts of the island faster, because it will probably require a lot less rebuilding after the next major hurricane and because it may reduce power bills for residents) then they should do it rather than just rebuilding the old solution.
Someone's got to do it - either the government pays the old electric companies to do it, and they go ahead and fix up whatever old crap they have (or maybe they'd get new stuff in, we don't really know), or else the government pays Musk, who definitely puts in new stuff, which arguably should have a lower running cost than anything that preceded it.
I wouldn't really call this 'preying on the weak' - it's not like the people in PR are going to pay directly for this - it'll come federally, and then possibly get paid back by raising the price of electricity. If Musk is true to his word, he'll be able to make the power so cheap, that even with some paying back added to the price, it'll still work out cheaper for the people in PR.
'bashing' Musk (or indeed anyone else) is a bit unnecessary - he's saying he's got a way to help. I haven't really heard anyone else stepping up and saying "we can fix this" - have you? If so, who? How are they better than Musk?
What the island needs is wind farms. The trade winds are quite strong and blow almost constantly. They would also take up far less land than solar farms.
We have underground utilities in the area I live in. They are reasonably reliable, but fixing them when they do fail is extraordinarily expensive and time consuming. They might be better in an urban setting if all utilities -- water, sewer, communications, power, whatever -- were run through tunnels big enough for humans or robots to work in.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
It's a good thing he tested on smaller islands first. Now we know the weight of the batteries won't cause Puerto Rico to tip over like Guam.
Trouble is that, to paraphrase JM Keynes, the sun can not shine for longer than any practical, affordable, battery bank can hold out.
This has been untrue for some time now, especially in places where energy costs are high due to fuel being expensive. Practical batteries have existed for over a decade, and costs are now making them a cheaper option than fossil or nuclear.
Practically you would want some wind turbines instead of just solar, but building a suitable size/cost battery is not the issue now. The old major barrier is the need to rebuild the grid to be more suitable, and this disaster presents an opportunity to do that at no additional cost over what would be needed to go back to the old ways.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The hospital ICU can buy enough power bank batteries to last longer than any predictable solar/wind outage. The data center can buy its own back up power, even use a dirty diesel engine genset. Who cares?
You do not design a system for the outliers. If you do, every doorway must accommodate 7' 8" tall people, every five seater car must accommodate 2000 lb of passenger weight... Hospital ICU and data centers are users well above three or four sigma over mean. Their needs should not be the primary design consideration. They need a solution that does not increase the cost of mean + 2 sigma users appreciably.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why would it take removing the existing grid? Do what they did on the island of T'au in American Samoa - install the solar and batteries, and then just shut off the diesel generators. Keep them there in case the battery storage isn't going to last through several days of clouds, and turn them off when the sun shines again.
Why would you need to rip anything out that isn't broken beyond repair, completely obsolete, or entirely redundant?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's not that there aren't some applications, e.g. pumping water to "reservoirs", running air conditioning, where wind/solar can work fine today. It's that the high reliability and low costs US/Canadian electricity users are used to are VERY difficult to replicate on an island over a thousand fucking miles from the mainland.
Fixed it for you.
Nope, no sig
With Musks's batteries, the wires that need to be "reconnected" to the power generating facilities can be smaller - hence cheaper - because the batteries will take the local load during peak times, and recharge during off peak.
So, by distributing batteries accross the island, the grid can be smaller, and handle multiple sources, inclusive of oil, solar and wind.
The wires between houses need to be constructed in either scenario.
One of the benefits of on-prem solar is that the generation is distributed. So no, the two scenarios are not equivalent in terms of distribution (wires).
"BTW - What's green about huge stacks of Lithium-ion batteries?" Not spewing combustion products into the air. Recyclable/Reclaimable. Over the last 10 years, they've improved dramatically in energy density, longevity, and cost. And as slashdoters should know, they're still well under their theoretical potential.
From an engineer's POV, creating energy on demand is insane. We only do it because storing it has been too expensive. We SHOULD be aggressively pursuing practical energy storage solutions, not denigrating progress and clinging to the status quo. And since you like economics, try this:
Economies of scale: The cost of a full scale, mass market product = its marginal cost.
The marginal cost of wind and solar = $0. The marginal cost of oil, coal, and natural gas??? Solar panels today already last 25-30 years and their capital costs is MUCH less than any new power plant. Wind turbines are competing with nat gas today on levelized costs, thanks to scale. Most of the cost of wind turbines is in their construction, so larger turbines are more cost effective. Battery prices have plummeted by 400% in the last decade and are forecast to continue. Doubling the lifetime of a battery isn't like trying to double the efficiency of a heat engine (limited by carnot). As we understand the reactions better, it's very likely that we'll develop batteries that last practically forever. We have some today that can cycle 10,000 times (25 years at one full cycle per day). So if you see where this is going, these systems have virtually no marginal cost, their capital expenses are falling and their lifetimes are increasing. Coal, nat gas, etc. are at their limits.
Now, if you want to talk about nuclear fusion, ...
Nice thought, but their is not just down, but wiped out. Not only is the wiring on the ground, but many of the cheap poles we're knocked over. Otoh, if they start fresh, put in a single high voltage line down the middle and then divide into say 4 grids, each with their own batteries, solar, they can then have redunacy in their system.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
BMW Series 5 sales:
Shiny new infrastructure is what they need at this point. The old stuff is trashed!
A distributed system is ideal for an island, especially when hurricanes can blow everything to bits so often. In this case, two storms wiped out the whole grid.
Now the island has the chance to put power distribution lines for the island's grid underground since they are likely to get big hurricanes more often now, due to climate change.
With a bit of engineering foresight, the solar arrays could be designed with a "hunker-down" mode to better survive the high winds, especially for critical facilities. Solar installations can be designed to withstand 150+ mph winds with minimal damage if need be.
The cost of solar is comparable to the fossil fuel based systems, and critical facilities like hospitals and airports could be up and running again very quickly (using backup panels stored in a safe place) even if the rest of the grid was knocked out.
PlaynBass
"We SHOULD be aggressively pursuing practical energy storage solutions"
Of course we should. And we (humanity) actually are. Really. DARPA alone funded about 50 projects last year. Lots of researchers and engineers in universities and companies in the US, EU, Japan, China, etc are working on various "battery" projects. Lots of money to be made from better energy storage.
Trouble is that people are impatient and want decades worth of R&D done no later than the end of November at the very latest.
Then there are the folks who think no R&D is necessary because the problems are already solved. Trying to confront them with reality is like arguing with a Sportsfan, Jihadi or Libertarian.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
> Man has product to sell, says his item is the one.
Shades of MONORAIL [a.k.a. TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY]
Friend... either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated the suggestion of 'solar 'n storage'! Well, ya got trouble, my friend! Right here in Puerto Rico! Why sure I'm a solar fan, certainly mighty proud I say.... I'm always mighty proud to say... I consider that the hours I spend cultivatin' the little solar patch on my roof golden.
Helps you cultivate self-sufficiency it does, and a keen eye for conservation. It takes judgment, brains, and gumption money to score in the personal energy game, but any boob kin shove a tiny bit 'o power onto the grid when the conditions are right. But the power companies call that sloth. They call it 'negative load'. The first big step on the road to the depths of deg-ra-Day-- I say! First, subsynchronous resonance from a passing cloud, then a phase whammy, then stressin' Northbound South and Eastbound West, slap-a-doodle backflash jigglety pop. An' the next thing ya know, your local energy co-op is doing a no-op and the money's flowing backwards too, some big out-a-town Jasper is undercuttin' the power plant that serves your bread an' butter, but only when it suits 'im. He's gonna suck yer plants dry puttin' folks out 'o work, then swallow you whole!
'Cause energy's not a trottin' race, see? Not this great industrial country! Ne'er has been! Where a little from here and a bit from there lights up everywhere, you take care! It ain't a race when they call the shots and some stuck-up slickers get in your knickers 'an plant Enron stickers on your electric bills to make your blood boil? Well that's night soil, I should say!
Now, friends, lemme tell you what I mean. Ya may have one, two, three, four, five, six plants in your state. Gigawatt plants that mark the difference between a gentlemen and a bum, 'cause they bring jobs with a capital 'J' from bonds with a 'B' that rhymes with 'P' that stands for PAY! And pay they will unless they're fritter'n away their time spinnin' at idle 'cuz solar is waxing at noontime, waning at suppertime, dropping out in the rain and ice storms too! Wind is worse! The grid is cursed! Between time, disaster time, who's left holding the ball? That my friend is YOU 'cuz your power plants are sufferin' as subsidies are flowin' and solar fat cats are strummin' the grid like a money makin' banjo in its time of need. And the microgrid folks demandin' retail from power companies that could get it wholesale... what greed!
Now you can't fault the Sun, folks, for not shinin' at night, growin' dandelions in Winter. But it can't cook your electric dinner or pump yer city water or treat yer waste with haste! Show me a man who flushes into the City, thinks he's sittin' pretty with his solar lights ain't hardly bright enough to read by! How did we come by, forgive me, such fools? They're tools! Wearin' fancy duds may as well been knit from coal, countless other things massive energy brings. And that's trouble, Oh, yes we got lots and lots a' trouble. I'm thinkin' of the kids in the schools warm through the Winter, big buildings here and there, night lights everywhere, 'cause we've got energy to spare and haven't a care! But now Puerto Rico's laid bare!
Wires and poles on the ground all around! Not a pretty sight, you should cross yourself 'an hope it will never happen to you, but what to do? Gotta put 'em up agin, no doubt about it. But here comes trouble, folks, trouble's come to Puerto Rico. Trouble with a capital "T" And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for Powerwall!
Now I know all you folks like the scent of Musk, but I'm gonna be perfectly frank, his ideas stink. He may have the future in a bottle but that future looks like snake oil. Would ya like to know what kinda co
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