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Tesla Deploys Over 300 Powerwalls To Give Hawaiian School Kids AC (electrek.co)
Fred Lambert reports via Electrek: As part of a state initiative, Tesla deployed over 300 Powerwalls in schools to cool down hot classrooms in Hawaii. Hawaii has a problem with hot temperatures in public classrooms that is affecting students negatively. The problem was so significant that the Hawaii State Department of Education had to intervene. They put together a $100 million fund, which has already helped cool down 1,190 classrooms to date, with contracts set for more than 1,300 classrooms, according to The Garden Island. In order to roll out the program without significantly increasing energy costs for public schools, they partnered with Tesla to pair Powerwalls with solar power to reduce the impact of running the air conditioners in classrooms across the state. It also resulted in an interesting learning opportunity about renewable energy and energy storage for students.
School happens primarily during the day. Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest. The schools already have an electrical connection to the grid.
Explain again why they needed power-wall batteries for each installation instead of just using the solar power directly when it was needed the most (on hot, sunny days, which generate the most solar power) and relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
This sounds an awful lot like a publicity stunt, i.e. kids + batteries + renewable science, now everyone sing kumbaya!!!
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The local net energy metering situation sucks
Bingo. This is the situation in Hawaii. Power retails for 42 cents/kwhr, about 4 times the highest mainland rate. Solar is currently about 10 cents/kwhr, and federal subsidies push that even lower. So Helco doesn't want to give up 42 cents to get something worth 10 cents. They no longer allow any new net metering installations.
This is, of course, stupid. But from Helco's point of view it makes sense, since they are in the business of maximizing profit from their monopoly market, not serving the public, and the PUC is bought and paid for.
So Hawaiians get one stupid policy ($100M Powerwalls for daytime use) to counteract another stupid policy (no net metering). This is what happens in a one-party state (there are no Republicans in Hawaii).
Hawaii also has zero geothermal energy, despite some of the best volcanic geology in the world, for equally stupid political and bureaucratic reasons.
geez if only Hawaii had some other more efficient and reliable sources of energy like Geo Thermal, shame they are in a region of the world with no such good alternatives,
School happens primarily during the day.
Yeah, and it's not like the school cafeterias need refrigeration to store food.
relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
Because electricity from the grid in Hawaii is devilishly-expensive, over USD $0.40/kWh, and much of it comes from burning diesel fuel that must be imported by huge tanker ships that burn even more fossil-fuels. More than likely it's also designed so that extra electricity generated will be sold back into the grid and offset costs while reducing pollution and fossil-fuel use even further.
It's like the Left hates Musk because Musk is doing all the cool things they thought a huge nanny-state government would do for them while adding insult to injury by doing it better and cheaper than the government could. Nannies don't do cool stuff, they just nanny.
School happens primarily during the day. Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest. The schools already have an electrical connection to the grid.
Explain again why they needed power-wall batteries for each installation instead of just using the solar power directly when it was needed the most (on hot, sunny days, which generate the most solar power) and relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
This sounds an awful lot like a publicity stunt, i.e. kids + batteries + renewable science, now everyone sing kumbaya!!!
Silly questions but I'll try to answer it in a factual manner. On the Hawaiian archipelago they generate anywhere from 60-75% of their electrical energy (depending on which island you are on) with oil of all things. That and the fact that Hawaii is located in an area where solar panels should be quite efficient should result in there being a a good chance that the energy from the solar installation is considerably cheaper than the mains energy (In 2016, Hawaii actually had the highest electricity prices in the entire USA) so why not maximise the use of every spark of solar energy you can harvest even during periods of low sunlight? ... or should they be maximising the use of oil generated electricity and then sitting around a a big pile of extortionate electrical bills singing jolly songs in praise of the oil companies? If I was a Hawaiian I'd dimension my solar panel installation and battery pack in such a way that I'd never have to tap the grid for a single kilowatt all year round, the next thing I'd do after that would be to buy an electric car.