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Tesla Unveils New Large Powerpack Project For Grid Balancing In Europe (electrek.co)
Tesla has unveiled a new large Powerpack energy storage project to be used as a virtual power plant for grid balancing in Europe. It consists of 140 Powerpacks and several Tesla inverters for a total power output of 18.2 MW. Electrek reports: Tesla partnered with Restore, a demand response aggregator, to build the system and offer balancing services to European transmission system operators. Instead of using gas generators and steam turbines kicking to compensate for losses of power on the grid, Tesla's batteries are charged when there's excess power and then discharge when there's a need for more power.
Restore UK Vice President Louis Burford told The Energyst that they are bundling their assets like batteries as a "synthetic pool": "By creating synthetic pools or portfolios, you reduce the technical requirements on individual assets that otherwise would not be able to participate [in certain balancing services]. By doing so you create value where it does not ordinarily exist. That is only achievable through synthetic portfolios." For those interested, Tesla has released promo video on YouTube about the project.
Restore UK Vice President Louis Burford told The Energyst that they are bundling their assets like batteries as a "synthetic pool": "By creating synthetic pools or portfolios, you reduce the technical requirements on individual assets that otherwise would not be able to participate [in certain balancing services]. By doing so you create value where it does not ordinarily exist. That is only achievable through synthetic portfolios." For those interested, Tesla has released promo video on YouTube about the project.
Sounds good in theory. Batteries aren't cheap, and these don't have huge capacity. The big deal is that they can instantly meet the drops or absorb the peaks. But guess what, they grid does this pretty good on its own already. All this does is reduce the need for idling "spinning reserve".
A couple problems with that. The battery defeats the value of the gas turbine in providing "fast" response regulation up or down-- the turbine is no longer the go-to fast response source. Secondly, storage is generally most valuable close to demand, and not close to generation.
Where batteries will help is plants that cannot be competitively spun up and down fast enough for grid "fast" response-- they can use the battery to achieve a better ramp rate. Unfortunately, prices need to drop nearly an order of magnitude for the value to stack there.
The most logical solution is to fit out the existing power plant and interconnections. Solar panel every roof in the suburbs and double battery pack them and you are mostly done, by far the most competitive solution, especially financially speaking. This because the fit out can be financed in depth, for example some people who can afford it, can directly invest in it, by fitting out their own property to produce more electricity than they need, store the excess during the day and sell it at night. Others of course could lease to buy, still getting their electricity and selling the excess to help with the lease. The cheapest option, the home owner does nothing and simply allows it to be installed for a discount on their electrical price with an option to buy out the equipment in the future. For property investors, they can really effectively invest in their property by fitting it out, and selling electricity to their tenant at the market rate, whilst selling the excess back to the grid, a lot more people could become power plant operators.
This only really works in some countries (AU and US lots and lots and lots of burbs) and for the EU only some cities, most are built up with close in rural, not much suburbia. So on the whole a larger installation makes sense but in the smaller cities with a higher proportion of suburbia, that distributed power generation and storage makes much more sense.
Still the first company to jump and offer it, will win a decided lead in market share ie owning the solar system and batteries on other peoples properties and basically providing market access with collective bargaining. They can hit the market for a better price for their clients, a much better price and keep a percentage as ongoing sales, whilst of course generating much zero tax income. Zero tax because profits from sales of equipment would be covered by tax deduction by direct investment in equipment, poorer suburbs investment covering profits from middle class suburbs.
The power companies will be slow threatens existing power plant investments. Manufacturers of course not so much, it really suits them, hell, even a corporation like Amazon could jump into distributed power generation and storage, using their global buying power to generate that investment opportunity. This is a real snooze and you lose investment, those who get in first, will basically lock up the markets (specific cities, the best ones) they gain a market share lead in.
Coal is fucked.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I have a hunch this is Tesla's true end game. I don't think Musk honestly believes he'll reach $650B market cap in 10 years by selling cars. I think he believes he'll reach $650B market cap by selling these. By turning his gigafactory into a "product" that can be mass-produced, he'll be able to scale up and deploy at a rate and cost that nobody else can match.
Leaving the gigafactory off as collateral in Tesla's last bond issue is pretty interesting as well.
Maybe making electric cars, and giving away patents, was the excuse he created in order to justify the creation of the gigafactory in the first place? It's like giving away lanterns to sell kerosene.
If this is the case, Tesla intends to be this century's Standard Oil -- a company that makes stored energy more accessible.
Hey may never have intended automobile production to be profitable. Maybe he just wants the world to demand his batteries.
Maybe Tesla's, or maybe someone else's. Tesla isn't the only battery maker
True, but Tesla are the biggest, thus you would expect them to be able to supply more easily and more cheaply.
Why leave money on the table for someone else to grab with a battery only solution?
Also true, but Tesla is selling a complete end to end to solution of out box now. Any other option, while it may be better and cheaper, probably requires someone to design, build, test, project manage multiple suppliers etc which means risk and delays. A bird in the hand etc.
If the grid did this well already, then Tesla's batteries wouldn't be having such a massive impact on the cost of balancing.
In terms of responsiveness, coal and oil plants are like 7200 rpm 3Gbps SATA HDDs, Nuke plants are like 5400 rpm IDE HDDs in RAID 0. Gas plants are like SSDs. Batteries are like L3 cache. Solar and wind are network connections, the former giving a relatively fixed amount of data over the day which changes by the hour, and the latter shoving random amounts of data down the pipe.
"The company refers to its model as a ‘synthetic pool’. Burford said synthetic portfolios can unlock greater value from batteries by enabling other types of assets or load to deliver flexibility into fast response markets that they could not technically deliver by themselves."
Yeah, they're a step ahead of you. That's what they're doing - having fast response from batteries
The European grid companies have no reason to give this out of hands. They can buy their batteries and inverters elsewhere.
And grid storage is discussed since before the start of mass funding of renewable energy about 20 years ago. It wasn't worthwhile yet to build plants just for that, neither hydro (which was cheaper in the past at least) nor batteries. If Tesla found a way to make it work they will probably happily implement it themselves.
Secondly, storage is generally most valuable close to demand, and not close to generation.
That depends on the purpose of the storage. Storage designated for grid stability (e.g. batteries rapidly compensating a shift in frequency while peakers come online) is most valuable close to the generation. The lights stay on if the generators don't trip on load/frequency deviations.
Storage for the purpose of dispensing energy continuously at regular intervals (e.g. batteries compensating for the peak demand after sunset) however is most valuable close to demand as there are less system losses.
Solar and wind are network connections, the former giving a relatively fixed amount of data over the day which changes by the hour, and the latter shoving random amounts of data down the pipe.
So shared connection over TV-cable network vs. 3G connection in an area with bad coverage, resp. ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The first thing to do is insulate houses,
Have a look at micro-grids, you might find that interesting in hooking up local solar/wind into a microgrid
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Peak load in Europe is over 500GW, so yeah, 18MW do not sound exactly game changing...
https://docstore.entsoe.eu/Doc...
Video of some good progressive thrash music
The purpose of the grid is to award certain companies with money for installing wind [...]
No, the purpose of the grid is to even out supply and demand over a larger area, which means that changes are relatively slower and less extreme (see the "law of big numbers") and can be handled much easier and with a wider variety of gear. Without a large-scale grid (or a big pack of batteries), you need to produce exactly the power consumed, which in practice means you have to use a power plant that can gear up and down quickly (no cheap coal here) and still overproduce for a reserve - and then most of the time dump that reserve somehow via cooling. Indeed, some power-plants (e.g. nuclear) have basically no short-time control - adjusting their power output takes from hours to days (and is very cost-ineffective). Nuclear depends on the grid catching short-term fluctuations in demand. Wind and solar, of course, create fluctuations on the supply side, so they also depend on the grid.
Stephan
This is a grid balancer.(it works better if said with Paul Hogan's accent).
This dam plant by itself is about 1TW, and there are many plants like this scattered around Europe since many years. They work by pumping water upside when there is too much electricity production, and reversing the cycle when needed. Elon Musk has nothing to teach here.
They just announced they are building a Giga-factory in China that will produce both batteries and cars: https://electrek.co/2018/05/14...
India and China have more than enough ability to make their own powerpacks for much less than Tesla is going to sell them. Most batteries are produced in China and they have no intention to stop here. Which means that even with the gigafactory, China is still expected to be the biggest battery producer.
The only way Tesla is going to sell stuff to the Chinese is if they do their manufacturing in China, and forget about their trade secrets too.
Nuclear reactors have really slow startup and shutdown times if they want to operate economically.
You can shut them down in about a week if there's a business case for doing so, and in doing so you'll waste fuel and labour. You can shut them down in hours if there's an emergency, but that's a destructive and wasteful process that will leave you shut down for months while you reset everything. If you want to run them at anything even approaching economically competetive, you schedule the startups and shutdowns about a year in advance.
In this data transfer analogy, a fission reactor is a belligerent tortoise-riding courier who will turn up when he turns up, and won't take no for an answer in entering his data into your systems.
The lights stay on if the generators don't trip on load/frequency deviations.
Storage for the purpose of dispensing energy continuously at regular intervals (e.g. batteries compensating for the peak demand after sunset) however is most valuable close to demand as there are less system losses.
Wouldn't it still make more sense to locate the storage near the point of demand? Providing it there still keeps the load off of the system that would otherwise cause the generators to disconnect.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
India and China have more than enough ability to make their own powerpacks for much less than Tesla is going to sell them. Most batteries are produced in China
Most everything is produced in China... but in partnership with the foreign companies that designed it. The world's biggest battery factory, however, is still the one owned by Tesla, and they also have the most battery production capacity in the world overall (though both these things may be changing shortly — but Tesla is also building a factory there, see sibling comment.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
hmm, botched my supporting link.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The value question is the hardest one to talk about in general terms. That is because not all battery use cases will be the same. For now, most are for fast response for frequency stabilization and then some momentary voltage support (ancillary services). The use case of storage for wind intermittence offset is a very different one.
In any of those cases, the 'cost' and 'value' of the battery depend on the amount it will be used. If you install a battery an rarely use it, it become relatively expensive per kwh. If you use it a lot, then its value increases and cost per kwh decreases. Under certain conditions, ancillary That is why no two cases are easily compared on a cost/value basis.
As far as Tesla's 'distributed' control of batteries. Well that's nothing new in principal. The grid operators already have distributed control of ancillary and generation assets. Treating all batteries as one asset is only needed because any single battery on its own is too small to bother with for a grid operator.
"By creating synthetic pools or portfolios, you reduce the technical requirements on individual assets ...."
Sounds good
synthetic liquid credit default swaps
what could go wrong
I'm still puzzled about the hype here. This is nothing new, compare for example: https://www.younicos.com/case-studies/schwerin/
A couple problems with that. The battery defeats the value of the gas turbine in providing "fast" response regulation up or down-- the turbine is no longer the go-to fast response source. Secondly, storage is generally most valuable close to demand, and not close to generation.
Where batteries will help is plants that cannot be competitively spun up and down fast enough for grid "fast" response-- they can use the battery to achieve a better ramp rate. Unfortunately, prices need to drop nearly an order of magnitude for the value to stack there.
There certainly is interest in batteries by utilities and grid operators because of fast response characteristics. But lets not forget that we can operate large grid very reliably without them. The places they are needed aren't that widespread for most well established grids. There is however increasing stresses on grids as intermittent renewables are added. The systemic costs of adding them past a certain point may include expensive battery storage but more importantly transmission infrastructure changes.
The article isn't clear about what the plan is. If this is a single component and the idea is to use dozens of hundreds of them as a power station, I can see how it's useful. Otherwise, it seems substantially less powerful than the existing installed plant mentioned in the article.
If the grid did this well already, then Tesla's batteries wouldn't be having such a massive impact on the cost of balancing.
They only have a 'massive impact' for short durations in very specific situations. South Australia case is unique and you'd have a hard time finding many similar ones in Europe.
There are other variables— primarily in transmission lines, that constrain optimal placement. The only time they are really valuable at the source is with wind, and that is actually the transmission coupling point. Upstream, you hope the number of turbines provides limited smoothing.
Its true that nuclear reactors have slow start up and ramping times. But most people don't realize that large generators like nuclear and coal plants provide very short duration frequency and voltage support. They don't need to ramp way up and down, they are large and only need to slightly adjust their output. A nuclear plant is many thousands of Powerwall batteries. Only a 0.01 percent shift in output has a big impact compared to a battery. Nuclear (and coal) plants have voltage regulators that are constantly adjusting their output in both frequency and VARs, including absorbing VARs.
Storage designated for grid stability (e.g. batteries rapidly compensating a shift in frequency while peakers come online) is most valuable close to the generation.
Not true. Storage for grid stability is most valuable in the portion of the grid that is susceptible to instability. South Australia is a great example. They have instability due to the great distance of much of the generation supply over a inadequate transmission infrastructure.
I have a hunch this is Tesla's true end game. I don't think Musk honestly believes he'll reach $650B market cap in 10 years by selling cars. I think he believes he'll reach $650B market cap by selling these. By turning his gigafactory into a "product" that can be mass-produced, he'll be able to scale up and deploy at a rate and cost that nobody else can match
It should be more than a hunch. Tesla is really a battery/power company and should be regarded as such. Yes they are trying to sell cars because they need to develop the market for their real products. Same thing with their roof and battery pack products. They have the unenviable task of trying to both build a market and build a company. I think their purchase of SolarCity is more than a financing play. I think it really speaks to their real goals which are more about electric power technology rather than any specific product.
In a sense it is like several other companies in that their core business isn't what you probably know them best for. Honda is really an engine company but they make products like cars and lawn equipment to sell their engines. Apple is really a software company but they make cool hardware to sell their software. Anheuser-Busch is (well, was) really an entertainment company (they own amusement parks) which uses alcohol as a key product to provide that entertainment.
Leaving the gigafactory off as collateral in Tesla's last bond issue is pretty interesting as well.
Bear in mind the gigafactory is a partnership with Panasonic and Panasonic is the one doing much of the heavy lifting there since they are the largest battery maker in the world. Tesla probably couldn't use it as collateral because they don't own it (Panasonic financed the majority of it) and Panasonic probably wouldn't agree to allow it to be used in such a fashion.
look it up then you'll find out what it is and how it works, it'll cure your ignorance.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The most logical solution is to fit out the existing power plant and interconnections. Solar panel every roof in the suburbs and double battery pack them and you are mostly done, by far the most competitive solution, especially financially speaking. This because the fit out can be financed in depth, for example some people who can afford it, can directly invest in it, by fitting out their own property to produce more electricity than they need, store the excess during the day and sell it at night. Others of course could lease to buy, still getting their electricity and selling the excess to help with the lease. The cheapest option, the home owner does nothing and simply allows it to be installed for a discount on their electrical price with an option to buy out the equipment in the future. For property investors, they can really effectively invest in their property by fitting it out, and selling electricity to their tenant at the market rate, whilst selling the excess back to the grid, a lot more people could become power plant operators.
This only really works in some countries (AU and US lots and lots and lots of burbs) and for the EU only some cities, most are built up with close in rural, not much suburbia. So on the whole a larger installation makes sense but in the smaller cities with a higher proportion of suburbia, that distributed power generation and storage makes much more sense.
Still the first company to jump and offer it, will win a decided lead in market share ie owning the solar system and batteries on other peoples properties and basically providing market access with collective bargaining. They can hit the market for a better price for their clients, a much better price and keep a percentage as ongoing sales, whilst of course generating much zero tax income. Zero tax because profits from sales of equipment would be covered by tax deduction by direct investment in equipment, poorer suburbs investment covering profits from middle class suburbs.
The power companies will be slow threatens existing power plant investments. Manufacturers of course not so much, it really suits them, hell, even a corporation like Amazon could jump into distributed power generation and storage, using their global buying power to generate that investment opportunity. This is a real snooze and you lose investment, those who get in first, will basically lock up the markets (specific cities, the best ones) they gain a market share lead in.
Coal is fucked.
It baffles me that people still think distributed generation is a good idea. Putting up solar panels on individual residential properties, with a grid-tie inverter at each one, in a city, is expensive and inefficient. It simply can not compare to building a large array on flat land in a rural area and minimizing the ancillary equipment by optimizing the number of inverters and busbars.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
No. The same impacts that cause system losses in grids also cause time delays and affect transients that occur on the grid. For providing energy supply, low loss is king. For stability ... errr stability.... is king.
Storage for grid stability is most valuable in the portion of the grid that is susceptible to instability.
Like the generators? I mean it's not like my toaster cares if the freqency isn't right.
They have instability due to the great distance of much of the generation supply over a inadequate transmission infrastructure.
The goal is keeping the lights on so to do that you stabilise the source of generation. The closer you locate batteries to the generating equipment the more likely it is to ride through a grid upset, the more stable the grid during a major disconnection event (both remote protecting the local generator and local reducing the effects of disconnecting the local generator on the rest of the grid). There's a reason the Hornsdale Power Reserve is located at the Hornsdale Wind Farm and not in Oodnadatta.
Yeah, it seems to me (based on talking to friends in the industry) that the make or break financially comes down to how cheaply you can mount the panels. It's way easier to mount a bunch of panels in a field on the outskirts than on a bunch of different shaped roofs.
Modded -1: Not a car analogy
At the load, a battery can serve as an internal cost offset, or an external cost offset-- providing a backup power function may have a "value" comparable to the cost of the unit and capacity is not required for rate arbitrage. Or, the internal offset in rate arbitrage might be more compelling. Or... the power quality opportunities could dominate. External offsets are revenue opportunities, which may or may not be part of the math.
At the source, the only "internal" benefits would be in meeting whatever contracted requirements you have to the grid operator. Transmission would generally work the same way, although preventing an overload might also be an incentive.
Yes, the FERC changes will eventually make a market for just batteries; my point you referenced was that the batteries as part of a system can help a slow (say steam) turbine deliver the required ramp rate (up and down) that would otherwise require a gas turbine or gas recips.
18 MW is the capacity of the emergency generators being installed at O'Hare airport. And they have enough diesel on site to power them for at least 48 hours (I doubt the batteries would last that long.), and can get more diesel delivered if needed.
18 MW is large compared to the needs of a lot of buildings, but not much on the scale of a grid.
I think saying this isn't important b/c the grid already balances "on its own" is kind of like saying Y2K preparations were a waste of money because nothing really happened. There's a lot of capital and effort that goes into keeping the grid balanced. It's not some kind of Weeble that will take care of itself if we just ignore it.
Sure. But that's if you only compare direct energy generation prices, and ignore everything else.
Would it be cheaper per watt if my parent's little town made a field of solar panels than them putting them on their house? Absolutely. Will there be revenue sharing with my parents if the town does that once the panels are paid off? Not likely. Maybe taxes will stay flat for a few years. And that's if you can get half the town to vote for the project, and willing to let it be town owned and run rather than privatized.
Since that's not going to happen, my parents bought solar panels for the house. Granted it's only 9 months of extrapolation right now, but it looks like their ROI is going to be 5-7 years in the NE US. After that it's a profit maker for them.
Why wouldn't they make that investment? It gives them a bit of independence from the grid and will make them money in a relatively short period of time. They can get neither of those benefits by the local town building a large array. Which it wasn't going to do anyway.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
India and China have more than enough ability to make their own powerpacks for much less than Tesla is going to sell them.
And it's generally assumed that Tesla makes their own powerpacks for less than they sell them for too. The difference between the two values is what we call profit. Perhaps you meant
India and China have more than enough ability to make their own powerpacks for much less than Tesla makes them for.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
The lights stay on if the generators don't trip on load/frequency deviations. Storage for the purpose of dispensing energy continuously at regular intervals (e.g. batteries compensating for the peak demand after sunset) however is most valuable close to demand as there are less system losses.
Wouldn't it still make more sense to locate the storage near the point of demand? Providing it there still keeps the load off of the system that would otherwise cause the generators to disconnect.
In theory, sure, but also keep in mind that you would then have to deal with maintenance at hundreds or thousands of local sites instead of a single large power plant.
Its not an instability of a given generator.
I didn't say it was. We're talking about the grid here. We're talking about the same thing here.
Nevah been done befoh. http://www.powermag.com/two-sc...