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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
- 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
who said that?
All I'm saying is that the battery is used to make the supply of fossil fueled electricity more stable by storing energy near where it is used. A function that would NORMALLY be accomplished by having a fossil fueled plant online to take up the slack. However, the logistics of transporting fuel and generating power is pretty difficult in the middle of the country and there is no water sources available, which makes electricity production even more logistically difficult (and expensive).
The battery solution helps with logistics and costs, the grid can operate with acceptable margins with less cost and less spinning reserve. Fossil fuels are still where the energy comes from. This has not changed and isn't likely to change in the near future.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
There are multiple solar farms in Australia that are currently not connected to the grid because they haven't been able to get their output stability to the point that the network operator will allow them to connect. The FCAS component of the farms always increased the cost and reduced the output significantly but was key to keeping the network stable.
This has been a relatively new change though, a couple of years ago solar compliance was taking a week to 10 days before allowing connection. Now it's out to 6 months or more. This unfortunately caused RCRTomlinson a large civil contractor to collapse as they had final payments on projects tied to the grid connection of projects.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/rc...
For years now we have had fossil fuel shills claiming that wind/solar/etc... will NEVER work (and should not even be looked into) because they do not provide a constant supply of power (when the wind stops, or sun goes down), or provides a peak surge when demand increases.
The success of the Big Battery shows those claims to be false, and demonstrates a clear advantage to investors in putting their money into more big batteries (along with wind, solar, etc) as opposed to building out more fossil fuel plants. It is the beginning of he end of the fossil fuel industry.
We should give them a fine farewell, with gratitude for as far as they have gotten us, then shove them off a cliff, since they refuse to go quietly
Remember, you are suggesting that we use batteries to hold the grid up for HOURS or DAYS when wind and solar are not producing enough power to meet demand. Right now, the battery being used is only capable of doing this for tens of min, and only while the grid is being reconfigured to fix what ever problem happened to trigger the event.
PG&E is retiring three, count them, one, two , three, peaker plants and replacing them with batteries. They are designed to store 1.2 GWh, 300 MW for four hours. Already.
In less than a decade battery price will fall so much we can store days worth of electricity usage. My Tesla Model 3 stores 75 kWh. That is one week of usage by my home in the winter. 2 days of storage in the summer. We are there.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Powerplants bring home 150 billion a year in revenue. But their profits are in 5% range, they typically pay 3% dividend. 7.5 billion profit. Batteries are attacking its most profitable sector. The base load powerplants barely make money.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's a 20 month breakeven IF the Real World (tm) matches the estimate. Do note that while the Title said "saved $40 million", TFS says "they estimate that the battery allows annual savings in the wholesale market approaching $40 million".
Note that word "estimate", it's important. It's the difference between "saved $40M", and "might save $40M". And since the battery was turned on this past Friday, that $40M is NOT a description of what the battery has done, but of what it might do over the next 12 months.
That aside, how much did this battery cost? Less than $385M, I assume since it's part of a plan that cost $385M. If it, and its infrastructure (the building it's in, the wiring, etc) actually cost the $90.2M that another article says it did, then it'll pay for itself in three years or so. And then they'll have the hassle of recycling it. Won't that be fun?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And where coal is not dying, it is being mechanised. The days of labour-intensive underground mining are well dead.
... and the big savings is not when a robot replaces the first human miner, but when it replaces the LAST human. Because then the mine no longer needs ventilation, lighting, safety equipment, redundant support structures, rescue equipment, triple backup pumps and generators, etc.
These add up to huge expenses. Once you have no humans down-hole, you can cut a lot of corners, and save a lot of money.