The utilities will pay for it. Because it is cheaper to use batteries to handle peak load power than to fire up the boilers and the natural gas powered gas turbine.
Green technology is usually more expensive, so there is a lot of resistance to it from the operators and the users. But the moment Green becomes cheaper, the utilities will adopt it en masse and you could not do a thing to stop it.
PG & L 1.2 GWh batteries, and 750 GWh batteries to replace three natural gas peak power plants. It costs very little to store electricity in a battery now.
South Australian grid is an earlier generation. Next generation grid scale batteries are in the US of A.
PG&L, the California utility is shuttering three peak power plants fired by natural gas and replacing them with batteries. Four projects, two of them experimental 10 GWh systems. Biggest system (not Tesla) 1.2 GWh, (300 MW times 4 hours), next one (Tesla) 700 MWh (175 MW x 4 hours).
The grid scale batteries are expected to damp down the peak power costs in the spot market. In fact, they are likely to make the price of electric power in the spot market as predictable and as non volatile as the price of base load power.
This development is good and bad in some sense. Since solar PV produces maximum power during peak demand, it gets better return on investment. Loss of peak power price would hurt it a little. But solar PV and wind are cheaper than natural gas, which means no new natural gas power plants are going to come on line. No new coal plants since 2014. Most likely no new natural gas plants after 2020. That is a good development.
Used model S are available under 40K. Still it is a stretch for budget minded people, I agree.
There are tree huggers who pimp Tesla to the max. But there are other reasons to at least test drive a Tesla. It performs like a 150K car. Fantastic acceleration and the low CG, regen braking with differential disk brake application gets you close to torque vectoring. Front and rear axle motors can apply torque or brake with milli second lags creating perfect cornering. There is a lot to like in a Tesla, other than pretending to save the world.
Have you test driven a Tesla? What do you think of Tesla as a very long time BMW driver? I would not expect sensible spenders like you to buy a new Tesla. But, if the test drives for 70K dual motor performance version are available, you might have tried. So what do you think?
The original paper is behind some paywall. So the cited article is all we have. So the line about, "this research was undertaken by a grant from the Association of Fossil Fuel Purveyors of America" could not be verified. Since it can not be verified I make this allegation casting doubt on the impartiality of the researchers with impunity.
The paper examines cost savings on one axis and the carbon reduction on another. It showed reduced cost and reduced emissions does not happen. Under certain circumstances it can happen. The aim of the paper seems to be to provide spokescritters, spin masters and the politicians to claim, "Residential battery does not reduce carbon emissions, as shown by the (implied impartial) UCSD study".
In some sense those who paid for this study are likely to be disappointed by the delay in the report. Already PG&E has awarded four battery projects (two small experimental, and two full scale) for peak power generation. It is retiring three natural gas powered combined cycle gas turbine peak load power plants and replacing them with a 1.2 GWh ( 300 MW for 4 hours) and a 700 MWh (175 MW for four hours). Already the Southern Australian grid made up of wind mills connected by long lines with very serious load imbalances have bee stabilized by batteries. In fact the battery vendor is complaining the batteries are responding so fast, in milli seconds, the sensing equipment used for payments is too slow and it is being under paid.
Utility scale battery storage is a game changer. Already solar PV and onshore wind is cheaper than natural gas powered CCGT! It fell below coal in 2014 and no new coal plant has opened since. It is falling below CCGT now, and future plants are going on ice. Solar PV is 1 $/Watt installation cost. Storage is 12 cents a watt. For 1.12 $/watt you can have renewable solar/wind providing the same kind of "power when you want, not when I make" deals provided by traditional power plants. I doubt new CCGT plants will be built after 2020.
It will take a very long time to replace existing plants with renewable sources. In the short run, the electricity spot market for load balancing is going to go away. With all utilities storing enough energy for quick load balancing, the insane prices for spot electricity will be gone. Solar makes lots of money providing peak power. So its revenue could be adversely affected in the short run.
Maybe some new battery design may make sense, but then money should be going into battery bR&D, not battery installations.
Then we need to make it profitable.
How do you square these two statements? Capitalism has this chicken and egg issue. Till there is a evidence people will pay money for a residential battery no body would invest seriously in residential battery technology.
The current Li-ion batteries were developed for automotive applications, battery weight is very important, heavy fluctuating loads and rapidly switching between charging and discharging. It is not surprising it is not very cost effective for residential application, with more steady current draw and infrequent charging/discharging mode changes, without size/weight restrictions.
Basically Tesla is pushing hard on this application as a way to realize vast economies of scale for its automotive batteries. Like the affluent liberals paid huge premia for the Model X and Model S as a way to fund the R&D needed to bring about the, yet to be released 35K Model 3SR, people would pay for these power walls when they can afford it to send a costly unfakable price signal to the market. Model S and X sales have been sending the same price signals for five years and still the automotive market does not want to listen to it.
Last May Microsoft hired a bunch of Volkswagen diesel emission control software developers to work on the Edge browser. So it was just a matter of time before it nailed the benchmarks.
Any of the workers can take that $40, and put it on their card. Can work in most situations. Stand in line, give the cash to the next one in line and order the coffee to be put on the card of another person. They get the brownie points and the benefits...
Sears and Roebuck started the company, but Mr Roebuck bailed out early. Sold his stake to Sears for the princely sum of 25,000$. Later, after Sears became a super success, he came back. Sears installed him in a very ornate office in the Chicago HQ and paid him a salary. Good cop/bad cop negotiations with small vendors will include, "No, Mr Hancock, even if I agree to this deal, Mr Roebuck would not. Let us see if we can convince him". Mr Roebuck played his part by saying yes or no according to instructions.
Now finally Roebuck can console himself, "I knew it would go bankrupt, eventually. Glad I got out with my investment intact!".
Let me guess, philosophy major. Some liberal arts minor.
Anthropomorphizing "nature" or "evolution" and treating it as a sentient being with intention is a short hand used in the field of evolution.
Evolution is blind, and it does not have foresight, it is a mechanical process with random changes. But we talk about "evolution designed the eyes of Eagle to have two fovea" or "evolution gave white fur to polar bears". It is merely a shorthand. We all know, some random mutation happened to eagles or polar bears that gave very small survival benefit and eventually the accumulation of these small changes over time resulted in white fur for the polar bears or a double fovea retina for the eagle.
It is a short hand, we all know what this means. Of course, philosophy majors love such terms that use ordinary English words and attach their interpretation of what it means and run wild.
What is entropy? In thermodynamics it has a precise definition and can be measured. It is the heat energy transferred divided by the temperature. It is a calculated quantity like density or speed or acceleration. But unlike speed, density or acceleration it is difficult to give a "meaning" to this calculation. So some scientist came up with a vague statement, "entropy can be thought of as a sort of approximate rough guestimate of the disorder in the system". That is it. Every divinity major and every philosophy major piled on. People who could not tell enthalpy from entropy, who can't tell any form of the second law of thermodynamics even approximately correctly write PhD theses on entropy.
It was there first. Was used by all living things for a long time. Eventually nature abandoned it. (Yes, I am anthropomorphizing nature and attributing to it free wheel and motives. Suck it up. It is the short hand we use. )
Why? Germs adapt. At every vulnerability they thrive. Asexual reproduction results in genetically identical organisms highly vulnerable to diseases and parasites. Already we have very few species (as few as 6) providing 60% of the calories used by the entire human population. We are already very vulnerable to something like Irish Potato famine, only orders of magnitude more devastating. And, replace these species with genetically identical clones?....
But, it would be the dream of agri-chem business. I could see the dollar signs blinking on the executives "they are going to need more pesticides? and fungicides? Wow!". They will write staid professional dry proposals and forecasts, "Monsato believes there is great potential for the company due these scientific breakthroughs and development" in their prospecti and conference call guidance.
The most expensive people to care for are the old people. And people older than 65 are already in the government plan, because no private company wants to provide coverage for them.
Just start gradually reducing medicare eligibility age from 65 to 50. Cover all children below 10, call them unborn Americans and their hosts and give pre natal care and cover child birth for free. Gradually raise it 18.
Slowly allow people to buy into medicare. Eventually we will have a single payer system.
Automotive batteries have gone through the tipping point. It is now simply a matter of producing them. It is below 120 $/kWh already and it is going to crack through 100 $/kWh soon.
Smart phone market has saturated, and the shakeout is coming. I am sure the handsets with headphones will thrive, market research will show the value and it will come back.
Same way the free checked bags will come back. Aviation kerosene prices are set to plunge in five years. It will remove all the nickel and diming from the air lines, 35$ for exit row seats, 25$ for guaranteed aisle seat...
But the 40$ late fee for credit cards will stay. The banksters are cruel jerks and they got poor people by their balls. They are not going to stop squeezing anytime soon.
The theory you are mentioning is actually called the Rational market theory. It works when an informed public acts rationally. Not altruistically, not socially responsibly, not any highflatulating weirdly. Simply rationally.
And you apply it to iPhone market? That is the most irrational market there is.
Most street food in India is made with questionable ingredients, loaded with fat, salt and harsh spices, made in unsanitary conditions, sold by vendors who pay protection money to the local thugs, and the local police...
Good thing there are canteens in the affluent tech campuses, at least now we can begin to give the bus boys, bearers and waiters some decent wages, and treat them like human beings.
Japan is generally respectful of nature. They have a slightly different value system than whats promoted by the typical modern western intellectualism.
They subscribe to ancestor worship, Buddhist doctrine. That the movies of The Superstar became an unlikely hit in Japan, much liked by the older generation shows they have some strong value system not visible to the West.
So, it is particularly disappointing that they don't value whales and they seem to condone exterminating a species. Hope something changes and they begin to see whales in a different light.
Given that the company closed in 2008 and it is legally bound to provide spare parts only till 2018, it is really surprising its piston rings are going to last for 100 million years....
Slashdot Mirror
High society lady to the pianist, "That piece was excellent, very nice. Wondering who composed it"
Pianist, "Vivaldi madame, Four Seasons".
Lady: "Good, is he still composing?"
Pianist: "No madame, he is decomposing."
Green technology is usually more expensive, so there is a lot of resistance to it from the operators and the users. But the moment Green becomes cheaper, the utilities will adopt it en masse and you could not do a thing to stop it.
PG & L 1.2 GWh batteries, and 750 GWh batteries to replace three natural gas peak power plants. It costs very little to store electricity in a battery now.
PG&L, the California utility is shuttering three peak power plants fired by natural gas and replacing them with batteries. Four projects, two of them experimental 10 GWh systems. Biggest system (not Tesla) 1.2 GWh, (300 MW times 4 hours), next one (Tesla) 700 MWh (175 MW x 4 hours).
The grid scale batteries are expected to damp down the peak power costs in the spot market. In fact, they are likely to make the price of electric power in the spot market as predictable and as non volatile as the price of base load power.
This development is good and bad in some sense. Since solar PV produces maximum power during peak demand, it gets better return on investment. Loss of peak power price would hurt it a little. But solar PV and wind are cheaper than natural gas, which means no new natural gas power plants are going to come on line. No new coal plants since 2014. Most likely no new natural gas plants after 2020. That is a good development.
Both have oil and both are mired in 17th century mentality. ?
There are tree huggers who pimp Tesla to the max. But there are other reasons to at least test drive a Tesla. It performs like a 150K car. Fantastic acceleration and the low CG, regen braking with differential disk brake application gets you close to torque vectoring. Front and rear axle motors can apply torque or brake with milli second lags creating perfect cornering. There is a lot to like in a Tesla, other than pretending to save the world.
Have you test driven a Tesla? What do you think of Tesla as a very long time BMW driver? I would not expect sensible spenders like you to buy a new Tesla. But, if the test drives for 70K dual motor performance version are available, you might have tried. So what do you think?
The paper examines cost savings on one axis and the carbon reduction on another. It showed reduced cost and reduced emissions does not happen. Under certain circumstances it can happen. The aim of the paper seems to be to provide spokescritters, spin masters and the politicians to claim, "Residential battery does not reduce carbon emissions, as shown by the (implied impartial) UCSD study".
In some sense those who paid for this study are likely to be disappointed by the delay in the report. Already PG&E has awarded four battery projects (two small experimental, and two full scale) for peak power generation. It is retiring three natural gas powered combined cycle gas turbine peak load power plants and replacing them with a 1.2 GWh ( 300 MW for 4 hours) and a 700 MWh (175 MW for four hours). Already the Southern Australian grid made up of wind mills connected by long lines with very serious load imbalances have bee stabilized by batteries. In fact the battery vendor is complaining the batteries are responding so fast, in milli seconds, the sensing equipment used for payments is too slow and it is being under paid.
Utility scale battery storage is a game changer. Already solar PV and onshore wind is cheaper than natural gas powered CCGT! It fell below coal in 2014 and no new coal plant has opened since. It is falling below CCGT now, and future plants are going on ice. Solar PV is 1 $/Watt installation cost. Storage is 12 cents a watt. For 1.12 $/watt you can have renewable solar/wind providing the same kind of "power when you want, not when I make" deals provided by traditional power plants. I doubt new CCGT plants will be built after 2020.
It will take a very long time to replace existing plants with renewable sources. In the short run, the electricity spot market for load balancing is going to go away. With all utilities storing enough energy for quick load balancing, the insane prices for spot electricity will be gone. Solar makes lots of money providing peak power. So its revenue could be adversely affected in the short run.
Then we need to make it profitable.
How do you square these two statements? Capitalism has this chicken and egg issue. Till there is a evidence people will pay money for a residential battery no body would invest seriously in residential battery technology.
The current Li-ion batteries were developed for automotive applications, battery weight is very important, heavy fluctuating loads and rapidly switching between charging and discharging. It is not surprising it is not very cost effective for residential application, with more steady current draw and infrequent charging/discharging mode changes, without size/weight restrictions.
Basically Tesla is pushing hard on this application as a way to realize vast economies of scale for its automotive batteries. Like the affluent liberals paid huge premia for the Model X and Model S as a way to fund the R&D needed to bring about the, yet to be released 35K Model 3SR, people would pay for these power walls when they can afford it to send a costly unfakable price signal to the market. Model S and X sales have been sending the same price signals for five years and still the automotive market does not want to listen to it.
Last May Microsoft hired a bunch of Volkswagen diesel emission control software developers to work on the Edge browser. So it was just a matter of time before it nailed the benchmarks.
Any of the workers can take that $40, and put it on their card. Can work in most situations. Stand in line, give the cash to the next one in line and order the coffee to be put on the card of another person. They get the brownie points and the benefits...
Now finally Roebuck can console himself, "I knew it would go bankrupt, eventually. Glad I got out with my investment intact!".
Anthropomorphizing "nature" or "evolution" and treating it as a sentient being with intention is a short hand used in the field of evolution.
Evolution is blind, and it does not have foresight, it is a mechanical process with random changes. But we talk about "evolution designed the eyes of Eagle to have two fovea" or "evolution gave white fur to polar bears". It is merely a shorthand. We all know, some random mutation happened to eagles or polar bears that gave very small survival benefit and eventually the accumulation of these small changes over time resulted in white fur for the polar bears or a double fovea retina for the eagle.
It is a short hand, we all know what this means. Of course, philosophy majors love such terms that use ordinary English words and attach their interpretation of what it means and run wild.
What is entropy? In thermodynamics it has a precise definition and can be measured. It is the heat energy transferred divided by the temperature. It is a calculated quantity like density or speed or acceleration. But unlike speed, density or acceleration it is difficult to give a "meaning" to this calculation. So some scientist came up with a vague statement, "entropy can be thought of as a sort of approximate rough guestimate of the disorder in the system". That is it. Every divinity major and every philosophy major piled on. People who could not tell enthalpy from entropy, who can't tell any form of the second law of thermodynamics even approximately correctly write PhD theses on entropy.
Exactly. Bananas use asexual reproduction. ( info for those who are unaware of the connection)
Wheel = auto correction for will
Why? Germs adapt. At every vulnerability they thrive. Asexual reproduction results in genetically identical organisms highly vulnerable to diseases and parasites. Already we have very few species (as few as 6) providing 60% of the calories used by the entire human population. We are already very vulnerable to something like Irish Potato famine, only orders of magnitude more devastating. And, replace these species with genetically identical clones? ....
But, it would be the dream of agri-chem business. I could see the dollar signs blinking on the executives "they are going to need more pesticides? and fungicides? Wow!". They will write staid professional dry proposals and forecasts, "Monsato believes there is great potential for the company due these scientific breakthroughs and development" in their prospecti and conference call guidance.
They made it as a serious movie, but see it as a spoof of Hollywood CGI madness, it transforms into a fantastic comedy movie.
Just start gradually reducing medicare eligibility age from 65 to 50. Cover all children below 10, call them unborn Americans and their hosts and give pre natal care and cover child birth for free. Gradually raise it 18.
Slowly allow people to buy into medicare. Eventually we will have a single payer system.
An oil glut is coming.
Same way the free checked bags will come back. Aviation kerosene prices are set to plunge in five years. It will remove all the nickel and diming from the air lines, 35$ for exit row seats, 25$ for guaranteed aisle seat...
But the 40$ late fee for credit cards will stay. The banksters are cruel jerks and they got poor people by their balls. They are not going to stop squeezing anytime soon.
And you apply it to iPhone market? That is the most irrational market there is.
Good thing there are canteens in the affluent tech campuses, at least now we can begin to give the bus boys, bearers and waiters some decent wages, and treat them like human beings.
If feeding shrimps keep the whales around, looks like the Japanese could farm whales. That way wild whales can be saved.
They subscribe to ancestor worship, Buddhist doctrine. That the movies of The Superstar became an unlikely hit in Japan, much liked by the older generation shows they have some strong value system not visible to the West.
So, it is particularly disappointing that they don't value whales and they seem to condone exterminating a species. Hope something changes and they begin to see whales in a different light.
That counts as a book, right? I mean it is called some book... right?
Wait... it's not that Saturn right...?