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.

Comments

Elon Musk ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

An engineer who delivered one fourth of what Elon Musk has delivered will be assured of a place in Engineering Hall of Fame. But what he has delivered is still a fraction of what he promised to deliver and he will be judged by how much he fell short...

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....

Musk wins again: Slashdot is butthurt

[mschuyler]

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.

Re:Special Solution for a Special Problem

[Mr D from 63]

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).

Many folks may not fully appreciate the primary function of these batteries. It is not to levelize renewables, but rather to provide fast response to prevent overloads and voltage/frequency support when there is a sudden event on the system. That is because, as you say, they rely on a small number of lines and therefore don't have the networked/redundancy to maintain reliability. Adding new transmission lines for these long distances is expensive.

With the batteries, if there is a transient event on the grid the hope is they provide voltage and frequency support to ride it through without some overload on a major line. Now that it is operational, it will be interesting to see how well that works and how often that support is needed.

One important factor to note, when batteries need to be available for this type of support they must retain a certain percentage of capacity. They can also use them for renewable levelization or peaking support, but they don't want to discharge them too much or they may not be able to supply adequate voltage/frequency support when called upon. Full discharge/recharge cycles will likely not happen often.

Re:Elon Musk

[Rei]

Sure he did - he made a bunch of Slashdotters (and "experts") look silly ;)

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.

(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)

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.

Link

Getting them there is only a small part of the problem. The real issue is that Australia can throw lots of roadblocks in Elon's way, from customs to building permits. And there is a hell of a difference between delivering enough batteries in the stated time and building up a power system to use them. I think Musk's ego go the better of him here and he shot off his mouth too fast. Betting that you can do something in 100 days or it is free against the very people who can block you at every move isn't the smartest thing to do.

That's the rub. He hasn't even clearly defined what problem he will solve. The recent articles describe the symptoms of a more complex problem. Musk is proposing to alleviate the local symptoms possibly, not necessarily the core systemic problem which is continuously evolving. And of course he needs to tell them how much it will cost to 'solve' the problem.

Australia clearly won't fall for his rhetoric.

A container ship can cross the pacific in 2-4 weeks so that's not a big deal. Lead time would be a serious problem though for his 100 day boast. Presume it takes 20 days to transport the batteries and maybe another 30-40 to build them all (probably optimistic), they would be left with maybe a month to design, install and test the whole thing. Not saying it would be impossible but it would be a tight squeeze most likely unless he has already built the batteries and designed the system. He could probably get it up and running quickly but perhaps not at full capacity.

Reminder: it was not only done 99 days from the bet, but only 55 days from the contract signing ;)

It's not just the batteries that are the issue, unless Elon is only saying that the batteries will be there within 100 days. Utility scale electrical equipment is generally bespoke and/or custom manufactured and has long lead times. On top of the batteries you need to have utility scale inverters. You need switchgear to direct the produced power, you need large transformers to boost it up to utility voltages. In the organization I work with, we just finished a major electrical upgrade where we purchased 12 pad-mount transformers. While they were out of the catalogue, the lead time before shipping was still 8 weeks, and that was from a major manufacturer. Really big transformers, those capable of working with megawatts of power, take months to manufacture.

When Vancouver lost one of the two large transformers that supply the downtown part of the city, it was found that it would take 18 months to get a replacement manufactured.

I'm quite sure getting all the permits takes longer than 100 days.
Where can I sign the contract for a free 100MW battery storage system.

Given that it took 1.125 days per MWh for Los Angeles, I wo