South Australia getting a big lithium battery!

[VK5RC]

Interesting, South Australia has a very large amount of renewable energy sources on its electricity grid. Major conventional base load sources are over 800km away. Petroleum gas prices going up. SA Government decides not pumped storeage but lithium.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/sa-to-get-worlds-biggest-lithium-ion-battery/8687268

[3db]

I did read that it's going to be connected to a wind farm.

[Jeroen3]

What are the realistic numbers on this.
It can't pump out all of its 128 MWh in one hour, can it?

[tautech]

What are the realistic numbers on this.
It can't pump out all of its 128 MWh in one hour, can it?

Only if they use the pumped storage for coolant. 

[VK5RC]

Perhaps not unrelated.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-28/sa-has-most-expensive-power-prices-in-the-world/8658434

[TerraHertz]

The SA government are insane. Keeping on pushing the renewable energy cart, despite already running over their feet with it.
With Vic, NSW and Qld governments doing their best to repeat the same mistakes.

Plenty of sensible discussion of Australian energy policies here:
http://joannenova.com.au/

Anyone know what the actual cost to consumers of electricity is now in SA? It's supposed to have become the most expensive in the world, and I've read a figure of 50c per KW/hr, but it would be useful to see that stated on an actual electricity bill scanned and posted.

[VK5RC]

It only went up (by 20% FFS) on the 1st of July.
I don't think much engineering input went into this decision.
All I can think of it is me who will pay for these batteries eventually.

[Someone]

Its all slick marketing, boasting about a contact that has no payment if undelivered in 100 days but wont mention how much the contract is actually for.

Would it need to dump its energy in just one hour? Would there be any point in NOT draining it on a daily basis for example? Or will they keep it in reserve for the peak demand on forecast hot days? How long will it take the wind farm to charge it?

Predicting the price cycles is difficult but in the Australian market the vast majority of the profits will be made on those select few days of the year when supply runs close to empty. You'd need to know the wear costs and expected lifetimes of the specific batteries to make a decent model for it but they'll likely be cycling every few days.

SA Government decides not pumped storeage but lithium.

Batteries are quick and cheap, but much worse value when they scale up. This project is the right size for batteries but a bad use of public funds.

[BradC]

Tesla will be rubbing their hands together just on the ongoing maintenance alone. Batteries just don't have the long-term life cycle to make this a cost viable proposition yet.

That won't stop the useless knob at the helm in SA from scoring some much needed political mileage though. By the time the excrement hits the rotational air distributor he'll be long gone and living on his nice taxpayer funded pension.

Thankfully over in WA we're physically disconnected from the trainwreck that the Eastern States interconnected grid has become.

[cgroen]

Yay, Denmark is no longer the country in the world with the highest cost for electricity, never thought it should come to that day....

Perhaps not unrelated.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-28/sa-has-most-expensive-power-prices-in-the-world/8658434

"South Australia will overtake Denmark as having the world's most expensive electricity when the country's major energy retailers jack up their prices this Saturday."

(as a side note, in Denmark we currently pay approx US$ 0.32 / AU$ 0.43 for 1 kW/H. 80 % of that is taxes, 10% is distribution fee and 10 % is the actual electricity)

I bet that Denmark will now raise the prices to get to number 1 on the list again 

[tszaboo]

Wow, this website actually claims that instead of solar, we all should switch to coal power. That is genius. Make South Australia great again.

mod:

Plenty of sensible discussion of Australian energy policies here:
http://joannenova.com.au/

[BradC]

Wow, this website actually claims that instead of solar, we all should switch to coal power. That is genius. Make South Australia great again.

Which website?

[Jeroen3]

All I can think of it is me who will pay for these batteries eventually.

You. Someone has to try this first. The rest of the world will look at this example to see how effective it is.

[VK5RC]

I have no problem with renewable energy resources, in fact I like the idea of getting energy from sun and wind - free!  (Not really)
What I have problem with is what I see is a political decision without serious Engineering - economic consultation. I think our system's price and instability is in part a reflection of this.

A postee on EEVblog pointed to a recent study in Sth Aus showing the serious viability of several pumped storage sites in SA - an established, well proven and pretty cost effective solution to the problem of renewables and matching their output to demand.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

I have no problem with renewable energy resources, in fact I like the idea of getting energy from sun and wind - free!  (Not really)
What I have problem with is what I see is a political decision without serious Engineering - economic consultation. I think our system's price and instability is in part a reflection of this.

A postee on EEVblog pointed to a recent study in Sth Aus showing the serious viability of several pumped storage sites in SA - an established, well proven and pretty cost effective solution to the problem of renewables and matching their output to demand.

Well look at any large defence contract, especially F35.
Politicians make political decisions, it's kind of unfair to single this decision out as political.
What would be better is if all their decisions had serious Engineering and economic consultation first.
AFAIK it would take time to do the pumped storage solution and that wont work with an election coming up.

So sure you can say Tesla are heavy on marketing but they also are heavy on engineering, I don't think anyone can deny that.
It would be interesting to see the price tag. I bet the south Australians are hoping it will take 101 days to put in.

[rstofer]

(as a side note, in Denmark we currently pay approx US$ 0.32 / AU$ 0.43 for 1 kW/H. 80 % of that is taxes, 10% is distribution fee and 10 % is the actual electricity)

I bet that Denmark will now raise the prices to get to number 1 on the list again 

Denmark isn't all that high!  In Northern California, our rates are tiered but for larger residential user, a significant number of kWh will be billed at $0.40.  For our July-Aug 2016 bill (the biggest of the year), about half was at $0.40 with about 25% at $0.18 and 25% at $0.24 - average $0.31.

Think of MWh as gallons.  At 124 MWh power source can deliver its entire capacity of 124 MWh in a short period or a long period but, like gallons, it's all the same.  If the load demands 12.4 MW then the 124 MWh source will last 10 hours.  If the load demands 24.8 MW then the source will last 5 hours.

The 2017 Chevy Bolt battery holds 60 kWh so about 2100 of them will hold the 124 MWh.

I have conveniently ignored resistance losses in the inter-battery cabling but a 124 MWh battery isn't all that large.

I would think that storage in batteries would be more efficient than storage in dams.  It's a straight electrical-electrical-electrical cycle whereas the water storage system is electrical-mechanical-hydraulic-mechanical-electrical.  I can't imagine motors and pumps as being anywhere near as efficient as electrical voltage conversion.

[boffin]

(as a side note, in Denmark we currently pay approx US$ 0.32 / AU$ 0.43 for 1 kW/H. 80 % of that is taxes, 10% is distribution fee and 10 % is the actual electricity)

I bet that Denmark will now raise the prices to get to number 1 on the list again 

Denmark isn't all that high!  In Northern California, our rates are tiered but for larger residential user, a significant number of kWh will be billed at $0.40.  For our July-Aug 2016 bill (the biggest of the year), about half was at $0.40 with about 25% at $0.18 and 25% at $0.24 - average $0.31.

We pay C$0.085/kWh; a big reason we haven't got much traction on renewable energy here in Western Canada (although most of the power is generated w/ Hydro Electric, so it's not all bad)

[Cerebus]

I would think that storage in batteries would be more efficient than storage in dams.  It's a straight electrical-electrical-electrical cycle whereas the water storage system is electrical-mechanical-hydraulic-mechanical-electrical.  I can't imagine motors and pumps as being anywhere near as efficient as electrical voltage conversion.

Well the average efficiency of the Ffestiniog Power Station, a 310 MW, ~1.2GWh pumped storage power station in North Wales is 72-73%. I don't know if that's good or bad compared to other pumped storage systems, but at least it's a concrete, non-hand waving, figure we can use to do some back of envelope calculations with.

To meet that efficiency with batteries one is going to need ~85% efficiency on the grid->battery (charging) side and ~85% efficiency going back the other way (discharging), including any incidental power use such as for cooling and any charge losses in the batteries themselves, I²R loses etc.

Knowing typical switch mode PSU efficiencies I'd say it doesn't look good for purely electric beating pumped storage on efficiency grounds.

As to lifetime, the Ffestiniog Power Station has been generating power for around 4 hours every day for 54 years. I wonder how many complete changes of batteries would be required for a battery based system operating on the same basis? If one is lucky a Li-ion battery will last 1000 full power cycles. If we assume one full cycle a day, to keep the basis the same as Ffestiniog which uses its full capacity each day, that's a complete change of batteries every 2.7 years. That's going to sting the old public purse compared to a few gallons of lube and the odd bearing for a pumped system.

[Halcyon]

The "renewables" train has certainly taken a battering since South Australia (the entire state) lost power a number of times largely because of an over-reliance on renewable energy.
People are slowly starting to realise that base-load coal and gas cannot be replaced with PV or wind power... but that's just common sense.

Nuclear is starting to be talked about (and about time too) but it will be a long, slow process before we see a nuclear reactor used for power generation in Australia. But even the coal technology these days is orders of magnitude more cleaner than old plants.

I do feel for the South Australian's though, I thought paying 21c/kWh was too much.

[tszaboo]

Yeah, the nuclear. They are building a new plant in Hungary. Costs are estimated 8 BEUR. Return of investment: never. Buliding time: Probably 8 years. In about 8 years, solar power plant can pay for itself.

[TerraHertz]

Wow, this website actually claims that instead of solar, we all should switch to coal power. That is genius. Make South Australia great again.

Which website?

The one mentioned earlier prefaced with "Plenty of sensible discussion". Which in my experience indicates one that establishes a strong sense of comfort through confirmation bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Which works both ways, depending on whose bias is being confirmed. Also ironic to link to the Wiki confirmation bias article, as a jibe at me for posting the original link. Considering it's me that has multiple times here in the past posted links to the Wiki series of articles on cognitive biases. Such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
So you'd expect that I'm aware of such effects, and I am. However the way to avoid confirmation (and other) biases, is to read widely, and encourage others to do so too. Not attempt to suppress mention of sites that don't toe your personal world-view lines, as you and Nandblog are trying.

Anyway, 'that' site again: http://joannenova.com.au/

Even more ironically, the currently 2nd article from the top there is about a classic case of the kind of directly dishonest 'confirmation bias' practiced by the Australian BOM (Bureau Of Meteorology), in which they recently tried to 'adjust up' a particular temperature reading because they thought it was 'too cold'. It's far from the first time they've been caught messing with raw data. Their conformation bias is consistent too - their data manipulations have always been to the benefit of the AGW meme.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/07/on-sunday-goulburn-got-colder-than-the-bom-thought-was-scientificially-possible-and-a-raw-data-record-was-adjusted/

Just scan back through the articles for the last six months, you'll find many on the SA power crisis. The comments are worth reading too. And I'm not surprised mentioning this site causes conniptions in those comfy with AGW spiel. (Anthropogenic Global Warming, short for 'human industry is making the Earth hotter, it's going to be a disaaaaster, and it's all your fault'.) The Warmists dropped the term 'AGW' a while ago and switched to 'Climate Change', and more recently 'Climate Disruption', since a) AGW was too hard to understand for their target audience, b) not scary enough, and c) the awkward fact that there hasn't been any actual warming for around 18 years, which is getting harder and harder for them to keep out of the MSM. Currently they are resorting to data lies to push the oft-repeated 'hottest year ever' - by 'adjusting' current temperature data upwards, and data records for the last 50 to 100 years downwards. And keep getting caught at that too. But no mention of this in the MSM, surprise surprise.

The really funny part, are the indications (very many, and with strong scientific foundations) that the Earth right now is starting into another mini ice age. Expected to be about equivalent in severity and duration to the Maunder Minimum. It's based on a recently achieved strongly predictive modelling of inner dynamics of the Sun. The model accurately 'predicts' solar behavior over the entire history of recorded sunspot data, and is matching the current deep lull. Predicting a really deep solar minimum, starting now. The coupling to Earth's climate is via an influence only discovered in the last decade, involving the density of the solar wind and resulting size of the Heliosphere, which acts as an absorber of high energy cosmic rays. Those that get through it to Earth, are a critical factor in the formation of high altitude clouds. More cosmic rays impacting the upper atmosphere and forming water droplet nucleation sites via ionization, the more clouds. The more high altitude clouds, the greater the Earth's overall albedo. So... quiet sun, weaker solar wind, more cosmic rays reach Earth, Earth gets colder.

This effect turns out to be far more powerful than any (disputed) temperature change due to atmospheric CO2 content. Which btw, was well over 2000ppm for most of the history of life on Earth, and the Earth was fine. See http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html among others.
Current levels (300ppm around 1900, and about 410ppm in 2017) are near the lowest atmospheric CO2 has ever been in the history of Earth. It's not far about plant starvation levels. With higher levels the Earth teems with life, since plants grow much more robustly and need less water when CO2 is up in the 1000s ppm. Other life including us, doesn't care.
Those indulging in confirmation bias by only reading MSM & Warmist views on AGW, likely won't have heard of any of that. And won't even understand why the MSM would be presenting a highly uniform pro-AGW construct, lying about 'scientific consensus', etc.

That graph of CO2 vs temp over geological aeons, and my looking into the validity of that, was what kicked me out of my previous acceptance of the AGW premise. That was around 2008. Then the CRU email leaks made the 'why' a lot clearer. Reading core Warmists discussing the various lies they would use to push their agenda was quite eye opening. "Hide the decline" and "making the Medieval Warm Period disappear" being just a couple of examples. It's very satisfying to see some chickens now coming home to roost for Michael 'Mr Hockey Stick' Mann. See:
  http://principia-scientific.org/breaking-fatal-courtroom-act-ruins-michael-hockey-stick-mann/
  Breaking: Fatal Courtroom Act Ruins Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann
  The "hockey stick" climatologist now faces criminal prosecution for fraud.
Though I'm only cautiously hopeful, as there isn't an actual judgement yet.


For anyone in Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney, next week there's a free showing of Climate Hustle, a movie reviewing the Warmist antics.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/06/finally-see-climate-hustle-in-australia-melbourne-brisbane-sydney/
* July 12- Melbourne. Village Roadshow Theatrette- State Library of Victoria. Doors open at 5:30 PM, film to start at 6:00 PM
Reception and Q/A session to follow
* July 15- Brisbane. Sponsored by the Australian Institute for Progress. New Farm Cinema. Doors open at 4:30 PM
* July 18- Sydney. Club Five Dock. Doors open at 7:00 PM
Ticket booking (free) via links in the joannenova article.

I'm attending the Sydney showing. Come along and have your confirmation bias tickled. Or outraged, either way should be interesting.

More background:
http://everist.org/archives/links/__AGW_links.txt  (includes short list at top of the best climate-truth sites)
http://everist.org/archives/links/__AGW_quotes.txt
http://everist.org/archives/links/__AGW_CRU_emails_links.txt

As for coal fired power plants... yes, we absolutely should be building more. Lots of them, right now, crash priority. We are going to be needing them very badly soon. Solar and wind power installations won't be working very well at all in a mini-ice age. Not that they are ever much use in terms of EROEI, reliability, maintainability, grid stability, and investment life cycle.
Also, more CO2 in the air is a good thing. The increase from 300 to 400ppm is already starting to green up a lot of the world's desert areas, and that's very desirable. Especially with an ice age starting.

[Someone]

I would think that storage in batteries would be more efficient than storage in dams.  It's a straight electrical-electrical-electrical cycle whereas the water storage system is electrical-mechanical-hydraulic-mechanical-electrical.  I can't imagine motors and pumps as being anywhere near as efficient as electrical voltage conversion.

Well the average efficiency of the Ffestiniog Power Station, a 310 MW, ~1.2GWh pumped storage power station in North Wales is 72-73%. I don't know if that's good or bad compared to other pumped storage systems, but at least it's a concrete, non-hand waving, figure we can use to do some back of envelope calculations with.

To meet that efficiency with batteries one is going to need ~85% efficiency on the grid->battery (charging) side and ~85% efficiency going back the other way (discharging), including any incidental power use such as for cooling and any charge losses in the batteries themselves, I²R loses etc.

Knowing typical switch mode PSU efficiencies I'd say it doesn't look good for purely electric beating pumped storage on efficiency grounds.

As to lifetime, the Ffestiniog Power Station has been generating power for around 4 hours every day for 54 years. I wonder how many complete changes of batteries would be required for a battery based system operating on the same basis? If one is lucky a Li-ion battery will last 1000 full power cycles. If we assume one full cycle a day, to keep the basis the same as Ffestiniog which uses its full capacity each day, that's a complete change of batteries every 2.7 years. That's going to sting the old public purse compared to a few gallons of lube and the odd bearing for a pumped system.

Australia has a long history of operating hydro (pumped and not) and the lifespan of the turbines is 40-50 years. Currently both batteries and pumped hydro will claim similar 80% round trip efficiencies, while the large hydro dams get free input from rain but that is offset against evaporation losses:
http://www.bom.gov.au/watl/evaporation/
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/rainfall/index.jsp
So a catchment would need to be roughly 10x greater than the surface area of the pond to avoid it losing energy from evaporation which is easily done in ideal sitings.

The "renewables" train has certainly taken a battering since South Australia (the entire state) lost power a number of times largely because of an over-reliance on renewable energy.
People are slowly starting to realise that base-load coal and gas cannot be replaced with PV or wind power... but that's just common sense.

Going around on that old line again? Renewables + storage can deliver lower lifecycle costs than the traditional coal power sources so dominant in Australia. But its long term investment and few people are willing to take the risks so we get a grid thats losing capacity with some short term open cycle gas to try and fill the gaps.

[Halcyon]

The "renewables" train has certainly taken a battering since South Australia (the entire state) lost power a number of times largely because of an over-reliance on renewable energy.
People are slowly starting to realise that base-load coal and gas cannot be replaced with PV or wind power... but that's just common sense.

Going around on that old line again? Renewables + storage can deliver lower lifecycle costs than the traditional coal power sources so dominant in Australia. But its long term investment and few people are willing to take the risks so we get a grid thats losing capacity with some short term open cycle gas to try and fill the gaps.

Yep, that old line again!

Even on a small scale (think residential/commercial size systems), current battery technology and capacities are more expensive than paying for power off the grid at retail prices. I did the sums on 3 different systems. The Telsa Powerwall II was the cheapest when you looked at price per kilowatt hour over the life of the system. Panasonic and Sonnen systems were much more expensive (at least double) but all of them were significantly more expensive than what I pay off the grid over a 10 year period.

Unless Tesla is going to guarantee the government a bloody huge discount, explain how is it going to be any cheaper? I don't think Elon Musk is doing this out of the goodness of his heart.

I'm not saying battery technology will never be the answer, as technology improves and the cost of power increases, batteries will become cheaper to purchase and run. But right now, I haven't seen any savings at all. For a small system, the price would need to be well under $750 per kWh of storage with current energy prices just to break even, before the batteries are out of warranty and start requiring replacement.

[Someone]

The "renewables" train has certainly taken a battering since South Australia (the entire state) lost power a number of times largely because of an over-reliance on renewable energy.
People are slowly starting to realise that base-load coal and gas cannot be replaced with PV or wind power... but that's just common sense.

Going around on that old line again? Renewables + storage can deliver lower lifecycle costs than the traditional coal power sources so dominant in Australia. But its long term investment and few people are willing to take the risks so we get a grid thats losing capacity with some short term open cycle gas to try and fill the gaps.

Yep, that old line again!

Even on a small scale (think residential/commercial size systems), current battery technology and capacities are more expensive than paying for power off the grid at retail prices. I did the sums on 3 different systems. The Telsa Powerwall II was the cheapest when you looked at price per kilowatt hour over the life of the system. Panasonic and Sonnen systems were much more expensive (at least double) but all of them were significantly more expensive than what I pay off the grid over a 10 year period.

Unless Tesla is going to guarantee the government a bloody huge discount, explain how is it going to be any cheaper? I don't think Elon Musk is doing this out of the goodness of his heart.

I'm not saying battery technology will never be the answer, as technology improves and the cost of power increases, batteries will become cheaper to purchase and run. But right now, I haven't seen any savings at all. For a small system, the price would need to be well under $750 per kWh of storage with current energy prices just to break even, before the batteries are out of warranty and start requiring replacement.

I did not specify what sort of storage, pumped hydro still appears to be the cheapest available. As for the costs Tesla have publicly said they are aiming for $250/kWh which is more close to a typical cost of pumped hydro. Its the life cycle costs that are the killer open cycle gas (or new coal) are low upfront investments with a short payback period, while wind/solar renewables have better returns over their life even if you lump in the cost of storage with them.

[NiHaoMike]

For a small system, the price would need to be well under $750 per kWh of storage with current energy prices just to break even, before the batteries are out of warranty and start requiring replacement.

Nissan Leaf batteries are going for around $200/kWh, even less in bulk. Granted, it's still tough to break even on energy alone. Programs like Ohmconnect giving larger than usual credits help a lot, and other uses like portable or backup power also help justify the cost.