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Samoa Plans Switch To 100% Renewable Electricity -- Using Tesla's Batteries and Grid Controller (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fast Company:
In seven years, the island nation of Samoa plans to run on 100% renewable electricity. Over the last year, the local utility has worked with Tesla to install a key piece of that plan -- battery storage, and also a software system that can control Samoa's entire electricity supply. In the past, like many islands, the country ran mostly on imported, expensive, and polluting diesel power. As recently as 2012, the country brought in 95 million liters of diesel.
Spurred by the cost and the threat of climate change -- Samoa is at particular risk from sea level rise and new outbreaks of climate-related diseases -- the country has been ramping up the use of renewables, with five large solar plants, a wind farm, and hydropower plants. But as renewable energy grew, the grid struggled with reliability.
"It had gotten to the point where just the solar, combined, could provide over half of the entire peak demand for the island, but they were having quite a few challenges managing that efficiently," says JB Straubel, Tesla's chief technical officer.... Tesla installed two of its "Powerpack" battery systems, and also developed and implemented island grid controller software that can control both the batteries and all of the power plants. "If a big cloud comes over the island and the solar drops very quickly, we can control the battery to make up the difference so we don't have to start a generator immediately, and we don't have to keep a generator running even when it might not be needed," says Straubel.
"It had gotten to the point where just the solar, combined, could provide over half of the entire peak demand for the island, but they were having quite a few challenges managing that efficiently," says JB Straubel, Tesla's chief technical officer.... Tesla installed two of its "Powerpack" battery systems, and also developed and implemented island grid controller software that can control both the batteries and all of the power plants. "If a big cloud comes over the island and the solar drops very quickly, we can control the battery to make up the difference so we don't have to start a generator immediately, and we don't have to keep a generator running even when it might not be needed," says Straubel.
Only way to be cool is to be AMERICAN!
Now that this is brought up, how does the Tesla power wall, solar cells, and battery operations affect Tesla's bottom line? Are these profitable profit centers?
I'm serious. The power drain of bitcoin mining is an incredible 24-hour powersink, and people have been rooting laptops, desktops, and critical infrastructure hosts to run it on botnets since it was first developed. It's an *insidious* 24x7 power drain on modern data centers. the advent of ARM chips at first led to smaller distributed devices without the resources or software to run these, but ehe growth of more fully capable ARM based operating systems has opened the door for putting these on devices throughout the Internet of Things (IOT).
and more importantly, how "secure" will the grid be? Will it be Internet connected?
I also wonder if Tesla will be selling user power concumption stats to advertisers? /s
It will be disconnected from the public internet.
No. Tesla doesnt sell user data to advertisers, nor do they place ads on any of their platforms.
Glad I could clear that up for you
Given that the batteries are expensive, I'm sure there are significant capital costs. I doubt its more than the cost of the Diesel they are importing. 95 million liters are no joke.
Climate change, sea level rise, TESLA!, brown people... This post won't have any troll responses, guaranteed.
...clean burning coal?
Better for two reasons, it actually provides some data about the battery installation (it is 13.2 MWh of storage) and the site isn't packed with auto-play unstoppable video ad force-feeding like the FastCompany site.
But American Samoa, the U.S. territory, got Tesla batteries two years ago. This installation is 6 MWh, but since the population is much smaller (55,000 vs 195,000 for Samoa) it is enough to run the main island (Tutuila) for three days without needing any power production, and is nearly 100% renewable powered now.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
95 million liters of diesel went to a bar... Ah, i can't tell jokes, but its a funny one, you'd laugh.
Is on Saipan, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. It was constructed back in 2014. And yes, Saipan is American and the system was built and is operated by a private business. It also works a hell of a lot better than the local government run utility company that the US government has poured millions into.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Woo woo - 100% free renewable power! But no mention of up-front capital costs. Given that batteries wear out and have to be replaced, some discussion of life-cycle cost would be interesting.
The summary links to a poor quality, ad-filled site, but this seems par for the course for /. these days. Even a tiny bit of effort Googling brings up more data though.
The entire project cost $8.8 million to install 13.5 MWh of storage, or $650/kWh, which is pretty good. The NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) estimates the lifetime of a grid battery at 10 years. Estimates of swapping out new for old runs $250 kWh (the infrastructure and controllers are still in place, old batteries are recycled) so the average annual replacement cost runs $350,000, or about 3.8% of the original capital cost.
Pretty darn good! Woo hoo!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Since we’re talking about a country’s power grid, long term thinking is a necessity. What is the lifetime of the battery components of these powerpacks; and, when the time comes to replace them, how much of the old material can be reprocessed and reused versus having to go to the hazardous waste dump (and - separately - can that dump be in low-laying Samoa?)?
#DeleteChrome
Jared: Knock, knock.
Joe: Who’s there?
Jared: Diesel.
Joe: Diesel, who?
Jared: Diesel be your last chance to open the door!
Tesla is just selling batteries. If you look closely, it is at the center of everything from Elon Musk, except for the SpaceX, but SpaceX is special.
Electric cars are essentially batteries on wheels, as in, it is the only thing in an electric car that is not better and cheaper than in a gas car.
Tesla make batteries and cars with batteries, hyperloop is about battery powered trains, boring company intends to make tunnels for electric cars only, solarcity install solar panels (or tiles?) that charge batteries.
Consumer data is an asset of Tesla but it doesn't look like a master plan. Selling batteries does. And such news reinforce the idea that Tesla's batteries are the way forward. It is all they need. No need for user data, they aren't Google.
When people think of Tesla mostly they think of cars.
Those are doing well enough, sure, but longer term Tesla is more about battery tech than anything else - with cars just a part of that equation.
Tesla has been locking down a lot of supplies for batteries, like lithium. Tesla is really well positioned to dominate any field that needs batteries on a large scale.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tesla doesn't make batteries. Tesla buys batteries from Panasonic.
That seems quite high. I think that Tesla's battery costs are about $100/kWh.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The only thing that has been keeping Tesla alive for the last 15 years are frequent cash infusions.
And from I've seen from the last quarterly issued a couple of days ago, Tesla will need another one (560million AR+, 2.2 billion cash and 3.3 billion+ AP - in a month or two, Tesla will need more cash.). It looks like it'll be from the Chinese so that Tesla can build its Chinese "Gigafactory".
Tesla just doesn't generate enough cash to keep its doors open long enough. It's an unsustainable company.
That's what the fanboys don't seem to understand.
And where are they sourcing lithium, cobalt, rare earth metals? Any consequences?
and more importantly, how "secure" will the grid be? Will it be Internet connected?
I also wonder if Tesla will be selling user power concumption stats to advertisers? /s
Why would they? If we have learned anything from Slashdot, the only power production that works is Nuclear or coal. Nothing else. So there isn't much use Tesla selling his made up figures. They are as fictitious, as Solar is dead and always will be.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And where are they sourcing lithium, cobalt, rare earth metals? Any consequences?
They've been reducing the amount of cobalt required, down from 11 kg per car for the original Roadster and early Model S to 7 kg for S and X beginning in 2016 and an estimated 4.5 kg for the Model 3
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Seriously, the batteries are useful, but they need to have a system that does NOT depend on the sun. In particular, geo-thermal or nukes would be far better way to go. NuScale is ideal. With 3 small reactors, they could have 180 MW. This would also solve the issue of hurricane, tsunamis, etc.
This would also allow the island to prohibit any more ICE vehicles and instead require that all vehicles be EVs.
Heck, push for electric boats and planes too.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Current battery design uses 2.8% Cobalt. Next design, which is already tested, will have none.
Th rest is Lithium, Nickel, and Aluminum. No REMs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is that $100/kWh for just the battery, or for the battery, plus the grid control and infrastructure?
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I had not heard they found a way to eliminate the rare earth metals, seems like that would have been included in the bi-weekly /. "amazing new battery tech" posts.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
WTF are climate-related diseases? How is it that a couple of volcanic islands about 13deg south of the equator, probably 3000km from a major landmass suddenly becomes the poster-child for a newly invented climate scare?
Samoa's Met says the "climate is characterized by uniform temperature, pressure, abundant rainfall and high humidity." It's always about 28C with 80% humidity.
It isn't going to change a whole lot no matter what over the next century or so. Rainfall from 3M to 6M should keep the drinking water supply in the OK range.
Inundation? Not so much. These are volcanic islands. Think Hawaii. It isn't the famed Carteret Islands - you know, the ones that were going to be completely gone by 2015?
Here's an update on that climate tragedy btw:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
There are no rems in Tesla battery cells. The model 3 is using neodymium for 1 motor.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid.
Islands typically have much higher electricity prices and small demands, and still, none have successfully transitioned to wind and solar. When are people going to wake up and look at the evidence? All over the world, aggressive deployment of renewables has a terrible record in actually offsetting carbon emissions. The genuinely green nations are using a combination of nuclear and/or hydro.
They sell stuff to customers. Seems to me like what a business should be doing.
Tesla does make batteries and also buys from Panasonic.
"rare-earth metals" is the name of a group of 17 elements of which only 1 element is rare. When the group was originally defined in around the year 1800 the elements were considered rare. But in modern times, that is no longer true and the elements are plentiful except for 1 element. Therefore, it is a misnomer to say that these elements are rare. The issue for battery manufacturing is geo-political rather than chemical.
Also, Cobalt is not in the group of rare-earth metals.
It would be very good for them to get off of anything they have to pay to bring in, that's for sure.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
This new tech was announced several years back and the first round of commercial production starts later this year or sometime next year. I forget when. Uses silicon. 30% high capacity and charges 8x faster, in the lab. In other labs, they forwent the faster charging and made it have 3x the cycles.
I've never seen it so it must be rare.
--Windbourne
They're not getting cash from the whims of some infinitely rich person. They're getting cash from venture capitalists that see no real losses. All of Tesla's "losses" are in the form of heavy investment into infrastructure. Even if Tesla closed their doors, the investors could sell off the assets for more than the amount they invested. Investing into Tesla is very low risk with a currently high return in the form of owning some portion of the very valuable assets.