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Tesla Switches on Giant Battery To Shore Up Australia's Grid (reuters.com)
Tesla switched on the world's biggest lithium ion battery on Friday in time to feed Australia's shaky power grid for the first day of summer, meeting a promise by Elon Musk to build it in 100 days or give it free. From a report: "South Australia is now leading the world in dispatchable renewable energy," state Premier Jay Weatherill said at the official launch at the Hornsdale wind farm, owned by private French firm Neoen. Tesla won a bid in July to build the 129-megawatt hour battery for South Australia, which expanded in wind power far quicker than the rest of the country, but has suffered a string of blackouts over the past 18 months. In a politically charged debate, opponents of the state's renewables push have argued that the battery is a "Hollywood solution" in a country that still relies on fossil fuels, mainly coal, for two-thirds of its electricity.
Did they ship it fully loaded?
Elon Musk did nothing wrong.
Dark Reflection
"Today in 1910 it is time to make a robust investment in buggy whips and horse manure disposal because horses are responsible for two thirds of our road transportation"
South Australia (and Australia generally) is a special case for renewable energy since it is a small continent, and sparsely inhabited.
This is a fix for a remote corner in Australia, the edge of the 5th largest population center (Adelaide*) separated from it by 100 miles and isolated by hundreds of miles of emptiness from anywhere else. There is little redundant/backup infrastructure, or all that many people.
More generally battery facilities shouldn't be needed in larger, more populous continents (North America, Eurasia).
The solution to issues of variable power production is to connect the entire continent together with high voltage DC power lines (a nearly century old technology) which can ship power from one coast of North America to the other with losses of under 5%. You build enough excess solar and wind capacity that even under the worst conditions you still have enough for the entire continent (Canada and Mexico should be part of this grid also).
This also allows using the sun out west to power the evening peak back east, and so forth, leveling out production/consumption mismatches.
Pumped storage can service the entire grid since power can be transported long distances. The U.S. currently has enough pumped storage on-line to provide 2.2% of US grid capacity (and about twice this much more has been licensed), so it can be sited where ever geography makes it most convenient.
We need some national-level vision to help bring this about (good luck with that at present), but mostly this can be done by private investment.
*The greater metropolitan area of Adelaide has a population of 1,317,000 which is 77% of the entire population of South Australia (which is 50% larger than Texas). Things get really sparse really fast out past Adelaide's metro area.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Australia was so quick to go green with renewables, they didn't realize that it's called intermittent generation for a reason. Once they retired their reliable fossil generation, they had blackouts because the wind is only consistent on average, and now they need an even more expensive solution to shore up the wind energy output.
Coal today, coal tomorrow, coal forever!
I am sure that the fact that Australia is a coal exporter has absolutely nothing to do with the politician's coal-protecting attitude. Or that Australia has decided its economic future lies in being an exporter of raw materials to advanced countries like China.
What people don't realize is that the electric grid is on demand; there has never before been a battery system. The power requirements of society must be monitored continuously, and generators must not only be put online as demand increases, but must also be taken offline as demand decreases.
This has been one of the problems with the growth of solar panels in Hawaii. Those panels would dump more electricity into the grid than was needed, causing outages as safety mechanisms kicked in. Until batteries have become workable, the only thing to do with that extra power has been to squander it.
Now, those batteries can be charged at off-peek hours by even those fossil fuel plants, and the batteries can then be used to supplement/smooth power requirements during peak hours. This will put fossil fuel plants under less stress, in terms of mechanics and personnel. It will make fossil fuel usage more efficient.
Star Trek's PADD device was a hollywood solution too. Until it wasn't.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
For those wondering how much 129 MWh is in real life, it's the energy equivalent of about 3300 gallons of Diesel fuel.
In other words, the battery is basically storing the same energy as the fuel tank to a large backup generator. For comparison, a semi-tanker has a capacity of about 9000 gallons (which after considering conversion losses is probably what it would take to put the same energy onto the grid).
The benefit of a LiIon battery is that it can discharge the energy much more quickly than a mechanical generator.
dom
please explain
Why do you think there have been problems already, as in Hawaii? The battery systems aren't meaningful enough.
Every home is an energy battery. This example isn't that big, but good on tesla for staying in the news cycle.
Do you own a lot of oil stocks or something?
He might end up a pauper dying alone in a hotel room like his inspiration, Nicholi. Or he might actually deliver enough of what he promised to be ranked along with Whitney, Colt, Edison, Westinghouse, Ford as the leading light of American Industry....
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In Soviet Russia....
With a comment so evil, he must own dinosaurs stocks.
#DeleteFacebook
This is so funny. Here comes Musk--again--makes a big boast "Battery in 100 days or it is free!" Beats his own goal, turns on the battery, and some people here just can't stand it. Musk wins. You lose. Get over yourselves.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Don't the seasons generally change around the 21st of the month?
You either serve other people, or you control them with an iron fist.
Capitalism demands that you serve other people; socialism implies that you must control them.
There's nothing 'evil' about being a moron, it's just conservatism in action today. Refuse the new facts!
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
This old trope needs to be updated. How about, "Imagine a Bitcoin mining cluster of these?"
Another fine PR move and all the supporters gobble it up.
The problem with environmental disasters is due to a lack of property rights; those problems are caused by government.
And what shall we do with said battery when it has outlived its usefulness?
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
The State of South Australia went on a privatisation binge and sold off state owned assets such as the electricity grid and generating stations. The new owner underinvested and did tot keep up capacity to meed demand. When a series of freak weather events occurred (big winds) that happens to topple just the wrong transmission line towers everything went black.
Capitalism is the philosophy that no one knows what people want or need, and that the answer to this question must be found through voluntary trade in a market.
Socialism is the philosophy that The Dear Leader has all the answers, and you should just do what you're told, comrade.
Sure he did - he made a bunch of Slashdotters (and "experts") look silly ;)
(It cost $50M. And judging from Semi battery prices, if they were to do it again late next year, it'd be a small fraction of that much)
Link
Reminder: it was not only done 99 days from the bet, but only 55 days from the contract signing ;)
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
Leading the world in dispatchable renewable energy? That's a load of hogwash, even for Australia, which has hydropower in other states.
The state of Tasmania pretty much runs on hydro power, while the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme that is shared by the states of New South Wales and Victoria has gigawatts of dispatchable renewable energy and a small pumped storage component.
I mean, if you define "capitalism" as accumulation of resources at all costs, then you'd have to admit that the Soviet Union was capitalist, or that absolute monarchs were capitalist, etc.
Clearly, that makes no sense.
Capitalism depends on individual ownership of resources; exchange of resources must be voluntary, otherwise it is by definition not capitalism—if you use your material might to take what you want from people against their will, then obviously that is a lack of respect for individual property rights; it cannot be capitalism; it must be something else.
Guess what?
Eminent domain, taxation, regulation by decree, prohibition, etc., are all examples of anti-capitalism. Your real problem is not with capitalism, but with the authoritarianism inherent in government.
That is what existed before capitalism: Authoritarianism. That is what you want chucked into the dustbin of history.
Get your terms straight, man.
Weatherill (the South Australian Premier who is trying to enjoy his last few days in the sun, before he gets voted out of power) has also bought 276 MW of diesel fuelled generators "the state Labor government will purchase nine new GE TM2500 aero derivative turbines through APR Energy, providing up to 276 MW of generation to the grid when required." . These of course will be very useful for providing baseload power when the wind doesn't blow.
I was under the impression that Australia already had substantial industrial-scale power grid energy storage using vanadium redox flow batteries.
Seems to me that's a better match to the problem - unless Tesla has made drastic improvements in cost and cycle-life as a fallout of their work to improve them for cars and house-scale renewable storage.
Lithium Ion batteries are, IMHO, more about portability of energy storage than price-efficiency.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Personally I only ever hire armchair engineers. Real engineers are useless for a comedy show.
I hope he didn't use the design from the original Galaxy Note 7 for his battery.
Hitler installed giant batteries better than Musk??
I am so glad you posted these. Fucking know-all nutbags. Shame there's no names pretty sure some of these weren't AC
You have to admit that it's a big surprise that the people who work for the Australian government went along with it. In my experience they just enjoy wielding power and will block things just to feel good.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You have to admit that it's a big surprise that the people who work for the Australian government went along with it. In my experience they just enjoy wielding power and will block things just to feel good. Also to give a big fuck you to the Americans, which everyone likes to do. I mean, look at the result, America wins. This is terrible.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Hollywood spends similar figures in a year. Never heard you complaining about the waste of cash....
There is a general misconception about what this battery system is doing. Traditional generation stores energy for short time response (faster then the governor can open or close the throttle) as rotating inertia. So large grids having many generators tend to have plenty of rotating inertia, with the demand for short term storage coming entirely from users.
In the new model with substantial wind and solar, wind and solar has a demand for short term stabilization without bringing along a corresponding amount of rotational inertia storage. What is most likely happening here is that the battery will be dispatched per the grid frequency control signal, rather than the energy dispatch signal.
IE Questions: What Is Inertia? And What’s Its Role In Grid Reliability?
AEMO publishes final report into the South Australian state-wide power outage
Australia doesnâ(TM)t have a âoeshaky power gridâ. The majority of Australia has no power grid issues, only a single state, South Australia, has a joke of a power grid (shaky is an understatement). Why is that one state so bad you might ask, well the answer is in the state mandated unachievable renewable/green power target. They had no issues until the true-huggers and criminally naive forced them to close coal powered power stations.
Not the Federal Australian Government (who are anti-renewables, and anti-climate change), but the South Australian staye government, who are a bit more level headed, and believe in renewables etc.