Tesla Big Battery Outsmarts Lumbering Coal Units After Loy Yang Trips (reneweconomy.com.au)

The Tesla big battery is having a crucial impact on Australia's electricity market, far beyond the South Australia grid where it was expected to time shift a small amount of wind energy and provide network services and emergency back-up in case of a major problem. From a report: Last Thursday, one of the biggest coal units in Australia, Loy Yang A 3, tripped without warning at 1.59am, with the sudden loss of 560MW and causing a slump in frequency on the network. What happened next has stunned electricity industry insiders and given food for thought over the near to medium term future of the grid, such was the rapid response of the Tesla big battery to an event that happened nearly 1,000km away. Even before the Loy Yang A unit had finished tripping, the 100MW/129MWh had responded, injecting 7.3MW into the network to help arrest a slump in frequency that had fallen below 49.80Hertz.

Comments

AC frequency

[ebcdic]

For the benefit of Americans reading: the nominal AC frequency in Australia is 50Hz, not 60Hz.

Re:AC frequency

[Anonymous Coward]

More demand / less supply > generators have to work harder > greater force needed to spin them > turbines slow down > frequency drops.

There's not really anywhere on an electricity grid where one can connect a meter and say "we need more power" so they monitor frequency instead.

It is getting a little old

[NEDHead]

When is Musk going to stop making big promises and then following through?

He sure is a bad politician.

Re:na

[Mr D from 63]

...where it was expected to time shift a small amount of wind energy and provide network services and emergency back-up in case of a major problem.

No, the primary purpose of the battery was to help the grid ride through transients just as the one described, not for time shifting. Who is writing this stuff?

Re:na

[Rei]

Actually, no, it wasnt engineered to back up a power plant in Victoria, it was engineered to back up power in South Australia. There was an entirely different coal power plant that was supposed to back up Loy Yang (which is one of Australia's largest) - a plant that ratepayers have to pay to keep running on standby, which is supposed to hold the grid up until downed power plants can be brought back up and/or more baseload elsewhere ramped up. But from nearly 1000km away, the Tesla battery did the standby plant's job for it during its 4-second wakeup time - stopping and reversing the decline in grid frequency so that there wasn't even a meaningful blink in power quality.

This is not what the Tesla battery was designed to do. It was designed to deal with situations with downed lines / plants in South Australia, to keep the lights on there. It wasn't supposed to take over the work from standby plants halfway across the country. That it technically can should surprise nobody. But that's not what it was purchased to do.