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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.
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.
They are. The teardowns industry experts executed on their products indicate roughly 30% margin. Citation.
They are just using the Amazon model of spending on new products and services, investing their capital into growth vs returns. Thats a long-term return strategy and one I think wall street will have to get used to. There is a difference between companies like Sears who cost-cut and sell business units in order to try and remain solvent, and ones like Tesla who throw everything they have in order to deliver the next breakthrough product like the fastest accelerating car on earth, or the first really usable electric Semi-Truck, or win the race to Level5 autonomous driving. Amazon did the same thing when it invested in AWS, Prime Streaming, Alexa, and Kindle. Some of their investments didn't pan out, like Fire Phone and Tablet, but most do. They are smart guys. This is Tesla's approach. Solar Tiles, Battery packs for home, business, infrastructure, cars, suvs, trucks, sports cars, and the underlying platform (autonomous driving, supercharger network).
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
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
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
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
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.
$2.5tril is about half a year of costs and subsidies for fossil fuels. Seems difficult to get numbers from an official source, but the articles I'm finding are claiming between $2tril and $5tril per year spent on fuel. So we spend 6 months of fuel costs to build a 100% renewable grid, then we start saving $2tril/year. What's the issue? That's ignoring the low end estimated $100bil/year healthcare costs caused by pollution from fossil fuel power plants.
Every year li-ion batteries get 10% cheaper and less polluting to create. Silicon li-ion is just starting production and is a pretty big improvement in every way. I see no reason to rush it, but we should be making a stronger effort.