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

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

Comments

Re:Here's the important missing bit:

[whoever57]

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.