Elon, DM me a quote for approx 100MW cost - mates rates!

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Tesla boss Elon Musk pledges to fix SA's electricity woes in 100 days 'or free'

apparently Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian Jira) tweeted him that he will take him up on the offer.

@elonmusk legend! ?? You’re on mate. Give me 7 days to try sort out politics & funding. DM me a quote for approx 100MW cost - mates rates!
4:46 PM - 10 Mar 2017

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-10/tesla-boss-elon-musk-pledges-to-fix-sas-electricity-woes/8344084

  for trying

  I'll be watching

[GreenHW_GUY]

yes the news is everywhere https://futurism.com/elon-musk-promises-to-solve-australias-energy-crisis-in-just-100-days/

[HAL-42b]

That's how you do it.

98% showmanship + 2% actual engineering.

Most important of all - Never ever allow the press to forget you. No matter how ridiculous or unfeasible, you got to feed the press on regular basis.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

98% showmanship + 2% actual engineering.

Most important of all - Never ever allow the press to forget you. No matter how ridiculous or unfeasible, you got to feed the press on regular basis.

2% engineering, that's a harsh call.
Is it ridiculous or unfeasible? We will find out.

In case you didn't know the spot prices for electricity in the Australian market are already ridiculous and and unfeasible.
The only ways I can see to solve this is with more grid storage or better management or more stuff on standby.

[floobydust]

Kudos to Elon for offering a large-scale storage solution for electricity.
I don't think it is particularly high-tech, probably a zillion 21700 cells and inverters. Whether or not it works well and can take the crazy high-temps in Australia...

But I give him credit for at least putting something commercial out there. My balls are tiny in comparison, lol

[josecamoessilva]

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but hold on to your wallets, fellas:



Those are the same cells that make up laptop batteries. Consider how good these batteries are at holding charge after two years of moderate usage, then consider that there are potentially two consumption peaks a day, so two deep discharges per day. Conservatively, 1000 deep discharges in two years. So count on a "maintenance contract" about 30-40% of capital cost per year, ongoing. And add contingent fees, since demand for lithium is expected to increase significantly in coming years.

(I like Elon Musk's ideas, as a geek, but every time he comes up with a new one, I feel the hand of government reaching deeper into my pockets.)

I'm partial to building dispatchable generation, myself, but if it's batteries you want, perhaps go for ones that were designed for grid-level storage from the beginning, like the molten salt ones (not MSRs, stuff like Ambri makes), not technologies developed specifically for mobility in more-or-less disposable electronic devices.

BTW, the 1GW for peak is a guesstimate, informed by data from AEMO and a bunch of twitterers (for some strange reason there are lots of people in SA unhappy with the current situation); here's another day in South Australia:



Now, when someone invents a way to use venomous animals to produce electricity, Australia will be ascendant! It's literally crawling with them. 

JCS

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Afaik nobody mentioned 1GW in power, maybe you could demonstrate why this much power is needed.

I assume (like Elon) that MC-B is talking about the cost of 100MWh of storage.

Not sure what the power capability would be rated at but it would be a lot less than 1GW.
Why do you think the batteries would need to have 2 deep cycles per day? The interlink is there for that, the batteries are there to try to avert wide scale blackouts.
He arguing about Non-Dispatchable? Batteries are dispatchable.
But the twitterer is obviously knocking wind generation not batteries.
So I ask you was pelican point number 2 dispatchable on 8th Feb 2017? So it somehow counts as baseload but doesn't generate anything when required.
Was extra generation actually needed on 8th Feb 2017?
What amount of Tesla batteries would have made a difference to AEMO on this day?

IMO that blackout (which I think was for 45 minutes) was due to generators trying to rort the system by limiting output in collusion.
IMO the batteries would go a long way to repairing competition in this market.

[moz]

So I ask you was pelican point number 2 dispatchable on 8th Feb 2017? ... IMO the batteries would go a long way to repairing competition in this market.

Especially because they could be distributed. Not something they can do as the Elon Musk "instant solution - just add money", but longer term we'd all win from a bunch of smaller battery stations around the place. Fewer disaster-based power cuts. Put them near the load not near the generator. In substations would be my guess. This is where the ATA proposal to put even smaller batteries in end-of-line substations, to allow bigger solar feed-in without making the poor grid operators cry.

The ongoing media struggle with power vs energy isn't going away but makes me cry every time. I reckon, though, that you could guess based on PowerWall and generic LiIon performance that they're going to be aiming a C/4 or slower not 1C discharges, so 100MWh is only going to get you 25MW or less. Might be enough, though, for the edge cases.

At some point you do have to wonder whether solar thermal with storage might be better - you could count the cost as 1/4 storage, 3/4 generation.

I also suspect that Musk would make a profit even if he gave the plant away, because as suggested above ongoing maintenance is not going to be cheap but it is going to be obvious. Plus there's the joy of bleeding-edge proprietary technology where you can't exactly shop around for suppliers of the parts or skills. That also ignores the marketing aspect (and possibly also the one big sale making Tesla's finances simpler... I wonder what their pre-sale conversion rate it, although I suspect it's quite high).

[Someone]

I also suspect that Musk would make a profit even if he gave the plant away, because as suggested above ongoing maintenance is not going to be cheap but it is going to be obvious. Plus there's the joy of bleeding-edge proprietary technology where you can't exactly shop around for suppliers of the parts or skills.

This is the big unknown, going for a cutting edge technology thats no better than other proven options seems like a bad choice. So we know the upfront cost Musk is anticipating, but its around the same price as pumped hydro:
http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1526592/Tim-Forcey-AESCE-2014.pdf
Which is very mature technology with extremely low operating costs and which we already have extensive experience of in Australia, oh and the sites are already identified and available in SA. If you want storage, why not do it with Australian jobs and plant?

[Marco]

I'm partial to building dispatchable generation, myself, but if it's batteries you want, perhaps go for ones that were designed for grid-level storage from the beginning, like the molten salt ones

Round trip efficiency isn't great, unless you start with solar thermal molten salt doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Flow batteries more.

The MSR advocate is making a fool of himself by the way ... Musk over-promising is on a different level from suggesting a reactor design which won't be available commercially for decades. In my opinion never, if we really want a next gen reactor lead cooled fast reactors make far more sense. It's not like we are going to run out of uranium any time soon with fast reactors.

Of course if we extend lines on a graph, by then PV will be so cheap in Australia that even low round trip efficiency storage methods like high temperature thermal storage will become viable compared to the cost of nuclear power.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Have you heard of these, they sound interesting.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-successfully-tests-underwater-energy-storage-sphere/

It would be good if the decisions were made on an economic basis by private enterprise not the government. Kind of why I was pleased Elon was talking to the Atlassian guy.
But I guess you need a properly functioning market for this to happen.
IMO we were spluttering toward this with the ETS.  

[Marco]

Have you heard of these, they sound interesting.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-successfully-tests-underwater-energy-storage-sphere/

The HVDC underwater cables are going to add a bit to the cost.

Also it's a megaproject, you'd have to design a ton of specialist equipment. Repair boats. Robots which could do some of the work underwater, connecting cables for instance. Etc etc. Lots of up front costs and engineering.

[Marco]

The Aquion batteries look really interesting. They are much further back on the learning curve than Lithium Ion, but they already have consumer products near the price of Tesla's Powerwall. About an order of magnitude away from what's necessary to make PV truly competitive (in countries with high sun-day deserts, such as Australia). But once you get within an order of magnitude you're almost there.

Primus and ESS flow batteries too, but without a consumer product it's harder to compare real prices.

[tszaboo]

That's how you do it.

98% showmanship + 2% actual engineering.

Most important of all - Never ever allow the press to forget you. No matter how ridiculous or unfeasible, you got to feed the press on regular basis.

Yeah, dont expect anything smart. Just connect a bunch of powerwalls together and there you go. This is like brute force engineering. If you want a 100W resistor, just connect 1600 pieces of 0603 resistors in parallel, because 0603 is cheap!
Probably he has the powerwall in stock anyways.

[moz]

The Aquion batteries look ... within an order of magnitude.

We have a whole lot of technologies that are within an order of magnitude of being useful, though. Lead-acid and nickel-iron batteries, for example, which any fool can buy in arbitrary quantities right now. That's the key point Musk is making - his batteries are not pie in the sky, they are available in quantity right now.

It's like fusion power or hydrogen cars - we just need billions of dollars and 10 years to complete the project, then they'll be commercially viable. Wait, what? How do you know that a technology will be commercially viable when you don't even have a working prototype?

[Marco]

But they don't all have same level of cost reduction potential (left).

Batteries aren't pie in the sky, but they can't compete economically with just building more gas powered plants either.

[Someone]

But they don't all have same level of cost reduction potential (left).

Batteries aren't pie in the sky, but they can't compete economically with just building more gas powered plants either.

Gas power stations have a shorter time to recover the initial investment, but their lifetime profit is lower than pumped hydro. And that assumes "normal" increases in fuel supply. With the wild price fluctuations in the Australian grid there has been a lot of investment in gas peakers and the coal plants are becoming uneconomic, interesting times ahead.

[moz]

But they don't all have same level of cost reduction potential (left). Batteries aren't pie in the sky

There is a world of difference between "batteries are a solution" and "this particular battery is the solution". And "cost reduction potential" is just another way to say expensive. It's one of those magic phrases that pushes the concrete benefits out into the future while we pay the price now.

We need a solution that we can buy now, install in a year or two, evaluate by its performance in similar installations that have been running for at least a few years, and since we will be paying for it with taxes levied on our children I think we have an obligation to do better than promises and potential. Show me the actual installation and tell me what the running costs are.

Leaping from "they have something like this under development" to "we should buy a billion dollars worth" runs a very real risk that certain people will switch from the Solar Roadway project to our "sounds like it should work" batteries. The fossil fool Liberal faction would *love* that.

[josecamoessilva]

The Actinide Age puts dreams of batteries in context:

https://actinideage.com/2017/03/13/fixing-a-power-crisis-with-a-battery/

It's much worse that I thought. I guess that 7.2 GW single peak means South Australians don't work three shifts. As for the batteries, 37MW is about the scale of the emergency power plant for a large server farm; feels very small for a state, unless it's North Dakota.  Maybe if people didn't insist that their electrons be organic shade-grown fair trade kosher socially-approved electrons... 

"The actinide age" is a great name.

[Marco]

And "cost reduction potential" is just another way to say expensive.

Not relative to Lithium Ion.

It's one of those magic phrases that pushes the concrete benefits out into the future while we pay the price now.

Only if government forces companies into using it, otherwise it will simply remain niche (including grid storage to a limited degree, simply for it's response time). Also it will remain interesting for it's cost reduction potential :p

We need a solution that we can buy now

Gas powered turbines are cheap to build, have most of the cost is in the fuel and allow relatively fast response. They are perfect for a quick fix, looking at the news that's what they are going for, also some battery storage too but I assume that's more for very short duration load balancing. If there is still untapped hydro potential start up the process to make use of it by all means, but that's going to take ages.

In the mean time I'm waiting for 3M's polymer barrier layer among other things to drop PV prices and for the interesting battery technologies to get cheap enough.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

It's on.

100-megawatt (129 megawatt hour) battery

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/sa-to-get-worlds-biggest-lithium-ion-battery/8687268

100-megawatt (129 megawatt hour) battery