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Tesla's Giant Battery In Australia Reduced Grid Service Cost By 90 Percent (electrek.co)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla's giant Powerpack battery in Australia has been in operation for about 6 months now and we are just starting to discover the magnitude of its impact on the local energy market. A new report now shows that it reduced the cost of the grid service that it performs by 90% and it has already taken a majority share of the market. It is so efficient that it reportedly should have made around $1 million in just a few days in January, but Tesla complained last month that they are not being paid correctly because the system doesn't account for how fast Tesla's Powerpacks start discharging their power into the grid.
The system is basically a victim of its own efficiency, which the Australian Energy Market Operator confirmed is much more rapid, accurate and valuable than a conventional steam turbine in a report published last month. Now McKinsey and Co partner Godart van Gendt presented new data at the Australian Energy Week conference in Melbourne this week and claimed that Tesla's battery has now taken over 55% of the frequency control and ancillary services (FCAS) services and reduced cost by 90%. "In the first four months of operations of the Hornsdale Power Reserve (the official name of the Tesla big battery, owned and operated by Neoen), the frequency ancillary services prices went down by 90 percent, so that's 9-0 per cent," said Gendt via Reneweconomy. "And the 100MW battery has achieved over 55 percent of the FCAS revenues in South Australia. So it's 2 percent of the capacity in South Australia achieving 55 percent of the revenues in South Australia."
The system is basically a victim of its own efficiency, which the Australian Energy Market Operator confirmed is much more rapid, accurate and valuable than a conventional steam turbine in a report published last month. Now McKinsey and Co partner Godart van Gendt presented new data at the Australian Energy Week conference in Melbourne this week and claimed that Tesla's battery has now taken over 55% of the frequency control and ancillary services (FCAS) services and reduced cost by 90%. "In the first four months of operations of the Hornsdale Power Reserve (the official name of the Tesla big battery, owned and operated by Neoen), the frequency ancillary services prices went down by 90 percent, so that's 9-0 per cent," said Gendt via Reneweconomy. "And the 100MW battery has achieved over 55 percent of the FCAS revenues in South Australia. So it's 2 percent of the capacity in South Australia achieving 55 percent of the revenues in South Australia."
Reality is, a new power plant in every city. Basically every residence in the burbs with their entire roof with solar panels. One battery pack for their household and one battery pack for the grid. The power station and grid is already built, all you need is the generators, solar panels and batteries and every typical western city now has a new already build power station and they only need to fit it out. Reason why a second battery pack, it takes surplus energy from homes and uses it for commercial and medium/high density housing. You still need power planets for industrial and likely for vehicle charging and isolated major battery storage to balance out renewables on a large scale. You would still likely need nuclear, just the right design, to ensure energy reliability (don't want a major hail storm to put you city right out of business for month on end, slowly adding replacement panels at the current rate rather than an overnight replacement of millions of panels). That nuclear can also be used for high energy recycling for zero waste cities (more effective to use energy than to dump material and find it's replacement).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
My only real concern is how much battery waste this will lead to.
Lithium-ion batteries are 100% recyclable. Currently they are not recycled due to economics but that will change in the future either due to regulation or a shift in economics.
Cells need to be replaced every 3-5 years.
Actually, for grid scale stuff it's more likely to be every 20 years because they do not need to function at 100% capacity and Tesla has developed excellent technology to prolong the lifespan of their batteries due to their use in EVs. However, that's just for current battery technology. Solid state lithium-ion battery cells should have an increased the capacity and lifespan.
the only somewhat-environmentally-safe way to store energy long-term is thermal.
Wrong. Lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries are both sustainable solutions.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There's a NOVA show called search for the super battery. Lithium (like tesla's) is great for cars and phones because it's lightweight and stores a reasonable charge, but somewhat expensive. After talking about lithium batteries they said pretty much anything (not nobles) could be made into a battery. Then they put up a list of the most abundant elements in the earth's crust (among them Si, S, and O) and said if you didn't mind a battery that was large and heavy, pretty soon there'll be batteries made out of that stuff cheaply. The ingredients are plentiful and making them was cheaper, for example no need for a humidity-controlled clean room meant they could be made on a large but efficient assembly line with machines made for food handling. Also nontoxic, the interviewer scooped some up and ate it, said it tasted like sand.
So yeah, Australia, Nevada, and Texas all have plenty of vacant land they could put big, heavy, cheap batteries on, and store power with. Save the lithium for batteries that go places.
In Germany, in 2012 the law was changed to require certain mechanisms for load smoothing in solar generation. Medium to large solar plants have to provide a "remote control" for the grid operator to reduce their output in case of excess generation.
Small solar plants may use a fixed maximum output of 70% of installed capacity instead. That cuts the generation peaks at noon when solar output is highest, and also helps to avoid excess generation.
C - the footgun of programming languages