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Tesla's Giant Battery In Australia Saved $40 Million During Its First Year, Report Says (electrek.co)

Posted by BeauHD on from the exceeding-expectations dept.

Last December, Tesla switched on the world's biggest lithium ion battery in South Australia to feed the country's shaky power grid for the first day of summer. Neoen, the owner of the giant battery system, released a new report for the first full year of operation and revealed that the energy storage system saved about $40 million over the last 12 months. Electrek reports: The energy storage capacity is managed by Neoen, which operates the adjacent wind farm. They contracted Aurecon to evaluate the impact of the project and they estimate that the "battery allows annual savings in the wholesale market approaching $40 million by increased competition and removal of 35 MW local FCAS constraint." It is particularly impressive when you consider that the massive Tesla Powerpack system cost only $66 million, according to another report from Neoen. Here are the key findings from the report:

- Has contributed to the removal of the requirement for a 35 MW local Frequency Control Ancillary Service (FCAS), saving nearly $40 million per year in typical annual costs
- Has reduced the South Australian regulation FCAS price by 75% while also providing these services for other regions
- Provides a premium contingency service with response time of less than 100 milliseconds
- Helps protect South Australia from being separated from the National Electricity Market
- Is key to the Australian Energy Market Operator's (AEMO) and ElectraNet's System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) which protects the SA-VIC Heywood Interconnector from overload

6 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Here's the important missing bit: by hey! · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It cost 66 million dollars. That's a 20 month break-even, presuming the performance doesn't drop too quickly or the system doesn't require too much maintenance. Naturally the performance will drop after two years, so while its first year of operation was financially impressive, it'll be interesting to revisit this project after, say, five years, by which time all the cells will have had to be replaced at least once.

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    1. Re:Here's the important missing bit: by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it'll be interesting to revisit this project after, say, five years, by which time all the cells will have had to be replaced at least once.

      Why? Depending on the design parameters, the batteries may last much longer. Even if some batteries have degraded, it is more cost effective just to add new units instead of replacing units with some life left.

      Also, if it has achieved payback in less than 2 years, any performance after that is profit. If you re-visit after 5 years, you won't see a loss.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    2. Re:Here's the important missing bit: by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And since the battery was turned on this past Friday,

      From the very first sentence of The Fucking Summary "Last December, Tesla switched on the world's biggest lithium ion battery " It's been a year.

      That aside, how much did this battery cost?

      I don't know, again, maybe read even the fucking summary:

      It is particularly impressive when you consider that the massive Tesla Powerpack system cost only $66 million

      If you want to critique something here is the error in the logic:
      While the battery saved $40m to rate payers, the owner of the battery didn't make $40m. Those were savings passed on largely to consumers. The battery pack did make like $16m in profit so the payback period is more like 5 years not 18 months.

  2. Re:Cue the denialists... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How much we have spent on oil exploration? how much in cobalt exploration? Are you sure there is no more cobalt to find? Are you sure there is no substitute?

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  3. Re:A word about that then. by skullandbones99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...and renewable energy with battery storage is now starting to eat Natural Gas' dinner: https://www.greentechmedia.com...

    It is clear that Natural Gas Peaker plants are on the danger list of becoming extinct due to:

    1. Battery storage reacts in ms to loss of grid power which is much faster than spinning up a gas fired steam turbine.
    2. Battery storage has lower maintenance costs due to no moving parts
    3. Battery storage can be used to capture any local power produced and from other sources on the grid including surplus Nuclear so providing power buffering
    4. Battery storage has no emissions
    5. Saves costs by not paying for keeping Natural Gas Peaker plants on standby
    6. Renewable energy + battery storage is scalable from domestic (small) to industrial (large)

    You can't deny that the economics of renewable energy + storage will kill off Natural Gas Peaker plants and that will be good for the environment.

  4. Re:A word about that then. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your numbers are off.
    Pumped: >80% (http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/pumped-hydroelectric-storage)
    The Tesla Battery: 80% (https://www.inverse.com/article/49260-tesla-world-s-largest-battery-price-detailed-in-new-report)

    And we do, by definition, need to get to 100% renewables. Because even if we ignore the environmental effects, the non-renewables will eventually run out (or rather, become too rare to be worth extracting).