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Tesla Proposes Microgrids With Solar and Batteries To Power Greek Islands (electrek.co)
Tesla is proposing ways to modernize the electric grid of Greece's many islands in the Mediterranean sea with microgrids and renewable energy to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. "Several Greek islands are relatively remote and rely heavily on fossil fuels to power their electric grid," notes Electrek. From the report: The Greek Minister of Environment and Energy, Mr. George Stathakis, confirmed last week that they have met with Tesla to discuss the deployment of microgrids in Greek islands. They issued the following statement (translated from Greek via Capital.gr): "[...] The extremely interesting thing that emerged from the meeting is that technological progress has now significantly reduced the cost of energy storage. At the same time, successful competitions for new RES investments in Greece, led to an equally significant reduction in the cost of energy production. As a result, the conversion of the islands to RES, apart from being environmentally useful, is now also economically viable. In this context, cooperation with Tesla can prove to be extremely beneficial, as the American company officials have highlighted, showing strong interest in the initiatives promoted by the Ministry for 'smart' and 'energy' islands."
Tesla has reportedly already suggested a pilot project to demonstrate their microgrid system in the region. The government would like it to be on the island of Limnos. The idea is to install a large solar array and combine it with an energy storage facility to store the excess energy during the day and use it at night when the sun is not shining.
Tesla has reportedly already suggested a pilot project to demonstrate their microgrid system in the region. The government would like it to be on the island of Limnos. The idea is to install a large solar array and combine it with an energy storage facility to store the excess energy during the day and use it at night when the sun is not shining.
Even if the average IQ of Slashdot readers has gone down in the last decade I think everyone knows what "night" means.
Thanks, dumbass.
Last time we checked the Greeks were broke.
Solar is ideal for the Greek islands. They have been building wind-power generators on some (e.g. the Cyclades), however the peak energy usage on islands is exactly when the sun is shining hot. The battery requirements should not be that great, especially compared to other scenarios. ;)
I've had a solar roof on mainland Greece for several years now, which, at 10kW nominal (Renesola Virtus II hybrid) was predicted to produce 12-13 MWh/year due to its suboptimal E/W orientation, but it is generating over 14 MWh every year, and some islands are even more sunny from that mountainous area. For something geek-cool check out the bottom of this page to see how my solar roof "perceived" a partial solar eclipse
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Most of us reading this are probably thinking the same thing - how does someone who's broke pay for some new tech?
Ever since the Greek financial woes began I've been saying that they are missing a huge opportunity in legalising weed, selling it to the huge number of tourists they get each year and reaping the tax from that. They have the perfect climate for growing it.
Nothing would say F.U to their debtors, like Germany, than letting their citizens get high and wasted for two weeks in the sun each year.
This presents a perfect cover story for why they need to sell dope, something that a Californian business would get behind too.
Where is the nuclear only crowd? Have we finally found a scenario where they won't recommend a nuclear option?
Ok troll...the Greek island grids are small so we can build batteries large enough to backup their tiny grids. And that's a great solution. Doing the same things for CA (or the US or anywhere on a continent really) would be an entirely different proposition requiring the drastic increase (several fold) in global production of the raw materials for whatever type of battery you build. Learn to do math and do some research and you will find quite quickly how stupid the solar/wind only proposals for large countries really are. As for Greece, its a great place to build a solar/wind/tidal only battery backed grid and you don't need to strip mine most of Chile and Australia to do it. Now that's you've trolled the nuclear folks for the day, go get your paycheck from the natural gas folks greenie...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
https://electrek.co/2018/09/24... or it could be like this.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Just like Germany, Greece can contemplate a large renewable energy sector because they have easy and cheap access to nuclear power. They don't have the power plants themselves, but they import from their neighbors.
It doesn’t need to be batteries. You could for example pump water to a higher plane during the day with surplus energy, and use a turbine at night when you let it flow down. I understand that something similar is done occasionally with other energy sources.
In this case, the islands are quite literally islanded micro-grids that are not connected to the outside world. There are no undersea power cables, instead they rely on diesel/fossil fuel generation.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
It doesn’t need to be batteries. You could for example pump water to a higher plane during the day with surplus energy, and use a turbine at night when you let it flow down. I understand that something similar is done occasionally with other energy sources.
You understand very little about power apparently. Pumping water uphill is at best about a 30% energy conversion. Electricity to kinetic energy stored in the form of water at a higher elevation. Then capturing back that kinetic energy back to electricity is about 30-40%. So any power you put into your idea, needs to be sold at ~10x the price to make it break even. And that's before you deal with the cost of building an artificial lake and a dam. Even in the warped energy market of CA, price only varies about 3x each day so its not a viable idea either from a physics or business perspective. All of those problem plus you have to destroy a beautiful mountain valley too. That's why nobody is doing it. Its a terrible idea...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
oh, you mean molten salt storage needing that rare earth sodium chloride?
we don't need nuclear any more
First, nobody uses NaCl. They do use floride or chloride salts, but not NaCl as if the Na separates from its ionic bonds, its explosive. Second, conversion to and from molten salts is about 45% each way. So it has the same problem with pumped hyrdo, when you do the 2 conversions (from and back to electricity) you get about 16-20% conversion meaning the power needs to increase in value 5-6x from the time its purchased/generated to the time its used. For comparison, in the CA market the daily swings are about 3x.
The choices are nuclear, some magic battery or flywheel technology that doesn't exist and doesn't look like it will in our lifetimes or natural gas. Guess which one you are picking...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Nothing wrong with that - they want to hand it to a local contractor - good for local employment
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Maybe Tesla can work with them, or with alternative energy companies like East Bay Community Energy (EBCE), to help supply power.
Or Tesla might help large numbers of customers get power off the grid, using their solar panels and power walls. (For that to take off, Tesla should lower their prices.)
Good idea, PG&E won't be bankrupt again for at least a month if you force them to buy even more overpriced power they don't want. CA is already completely oversupplied with power generation and doesn't needs more. PG&E is declaring bankruptcy to get out of liability for all the recent wildfires. They know huge settlements are coming against them from the wildfires. That combined with the sweetheart deals they were forced to sign to buy rather expensive solar and wind at losses and its no surprise they want a reset. And that's what a PG&E bankruptcy is, a reset. They declare bankruptcy on a regular basis for various reasons (3x in the last 20 years) including their own bad management at times (see San Bruno, 2008) but more significantly the regulations that force them to buy renewable power at huge losses.
And I'm sure that Elon is willing to use the entire year's output of a gigafactory to build a battery that could backup CA's grid for an entire hour. The CA grid is entirely too big for battery backups to be useful for anything more than load shifting (which we don't really need in CA). EBCE is a feel good initiative and nothing more. They can't bend the laws of physics any more than PG&E or the regulators can and will likely only make even more of a mess of the situation than the last round of do-gooders did.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
You don't have to build all required battery capacity overnight though. And I'd point out that going all nuclear, or at least replacing all fossil fuel plants with nuclear, would require a several fold increase in the supply of nuclear fuel and reprocessing too.
At the moment lithium batteries are getting a lot of investment as they can be used for many different things, but for grid scale we will probably want to use other tech like low temperature sodium sulphur too. At this point it's not really a question of developing the technology, it's already there. It's a question of what is the most economical and what are the incumbents going to do to prevent it devaluing their assets.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
and Tesla gets to replace the batteries every 10 years
win win for Tesla
Go well
Most of the Greek islands already use renewables, and they could work fine on candlelight and wood, as they allegedly have since the times of Homer.
Mod parent Funny!
(emphasis mine)
Hi Tesla.
Just get the money up front.
Best regards
The rest of the EU
L'Idiot
The round-trip energy efficiency of Pupmed Storage Hyrdo (PSH) varies between 70%–80%
"Energy storage - Packing some power". The Economist. 2011-03-03. Retrieved 2012-03-11.
Jacob, Thierry.Pumped storage in Switzerland - an outlook beyond 2000 Stucky. Accessed: 13 February 2012.
Levine, Jonah G. Pumped Hydroelectric Energy Storage and Spatial Diversity of Wind Resources as Methods of Improving Utilization of Renewable Energy Sources page 6, University of Colorado, December 2007. Accessed: 12 February 2012.
Yang, Chi-Jen. Pumped Hydroelectric Storage Duke University. Accessed: 12 February 2012.
Bath County Pumped Storage Station claims 79% Overall efficiency and Large modern Water Turbines are commonly operating at greater than 90% efficiency.
You understand very little about power apparently.
And you have no clue at all.
Pumping water uphill is at best about a 30% energy conversion. ...
No it is 99% for floating down effective and something like 95% for pumping up, so we are at roughly 94% efficiency. Idiot
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Second, conversion to and from molten salts is about 45% each way.
No it is not, idiot!
Heat transfers nearly 100% ... making heat into electricity via a turbine is your 45% (actually less as molten salt is not that warm).
WTF, stop talking about energy, power, electricity or storage ... you have no clue at all!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We are talking about the islands, idiot.
They are not connected to any mainland or international grid, idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You understand very little about power apparently. Pumping water uphill is at best about a 30% energy conversion.
Closer to 70%. The New York State Power Authority has been operating pumped storage facilities for power generated in off hours at Niagara Falls for decades. If it didn't make economic sense, they wouldn't be doing it.
BUT the economics only work if you use the facility every day and there are not a lot of sites suitable for pumped storage.in typical terrain.
Google Gilboa-Blenheim for more information on an actual facility that has been in operation for about half a century.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
You're right. It doesn't HAVE to be batteries. There are other energy storage options, but to date only pumped storage has been able to actually deliver acceptable performance -- 70-plus percent efficiency, costs as low as a few cents per kwhr. Problems with pumped storage -- shortage of good sites, storage costs are a function of frequency of use (i.e. it's cheap to store energy for a few hours, not as cheap to store energy for weeks/months), difficult to scale to small installations..
On the bright side, there are a zillion battery technologies -- each with it's own unique combination of capabilities and problems. Tesla would presumably use Lithium-ion because Lion is what they do. But grid storage doesn't really need Lion's high energy density. For example multi-megawatt Sodium-Sulfur installations have been deployed here and there around the world in grid backup applications. Strong point -- Sodium and Sulfur are abundant and cheap. Drawback -- tanks full of molten sodium and sulfur probably aren't something you want to live in close proximity to.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I love the fact that suggesting nuclear power is not viable gets you accusations of being in the pay of natural gas miners, but suggestions that nuclear or coal proponents are in the pay of their respective industries are met with angry denials and/or outrage.
As for the reference to strip mining whole continents - exactly how much uranium is required to run the whole world on nuclear power for 100 years? What will it cost to do it with unconventional nuclear reactors? Ignore the expense of storing and transporting millions of tons of highly radioactive waste, I know you were going to anyway.
Solar, wind and storage have their issues too. But the wind is always blowing somewhere, the South Australian Tesla battery is doing very well, and pumped storage and geothermal are under-utilised right now. Battery technology is improving every year. It’s a safer bet than hoping for a magical nuclear solution.
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
Fuck off, ignoramus. Poland has how many billions now?
What has Poland to do with the islands of Greece?
Why are you posting your bullshit here?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You are making things up. sodium chloride indeed is used in some systems mixed with other common salts. Sodium nitrate in others. Potassium salts also used, and you think elemental potassium is safe too? A mixture of lithium nitrate and sodium chloride can be used.
You don't understand thermodynamics either, 70 percent of the thermal energy can be converted to electricity. Sure, not the 90 percent of battery storage, but this is free solar power we're talking about, not something from a fuel that costs money.
Your choices are stupid, you make strawman arguments for a dirty polluting power source that leaves deadly waste, which is nuclear.