
Tesla has finished building the biggest battery in the world - caio1982
http://mashable.com/2017/11/22/tesla-battery-powerpack-australia/
======
kenoph
Am I the only one who is completely fed up of this "cult of personality"
mentality in tech and tech-related media?

The article itself is not that bad, but the title here on HN makes it look
like he built the damn thing himself. I know everybody is smart enough to
understand that there were tons of people involved, but why put Elon Musk
instead of, idk, Tesla.

I don't have any problem with any single article on Musk/Jobs/you name it but
on aggregate it makes me slightly mad.

EDIT: I'm not trying to take anything away from Musk. He is a very succesful
person for many good reasons.

~~~
simonh
To be fair though, if Tesla build say a giant electic powered jet airplane
next year, it will happen because Elon Musk decides he wants an electric jet
airplane, not because John Doe in the Tesla workshops is really good a
welding.

Some people really do make that much of a difference. If none of the other
people at SpaceX had existed in 2002 when Elon decided to build the company,
so he'd had to hire all different people, there's a pretty good chance we'd
still have reusable orbital booster rockets by now.

~~~
dingaling
> not because John Doe in the Tesla workshops is really good a welding.

As a counterpoint, the idea and concept of the now-successful HondaJet light
jet was developed by a then-mid-level Honda engineer, Michimasa Fujino.

It took nearly two decades for the idea to take form but at least there was
capacity for the organisation to evolve an idea from bottom-up.

~~~
simonh
Right, so without Fujino it wouldn't have gone anywhere.

My point isn't that welders are crap, it's that when you have a product that
exists because of the singular ambition, drive and vision of a single
individual pushing a company to achieve their goal, take that individual out
of the picture and there's really nothing left but an undistinguished mob of
people. That applies to Fujino just as much as to Musk. I say this as a
lifelong card carrying member of the mob of people.

------
nmeofthestate
Not mentioned in the article - its capacity is 129 MWh. So, at full pelt it
would output 100MW for an hour and 20 minutes... ish?

Which I think is about 120 peoples' worth of power. (correction 1MW is not
1KW, so 120,000!)

[https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/blog/tesla-powerpack-enable-
larg...](https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/blog/tesla-powerpack-enable-large-scale-
sustainable-energy-south-australia?redirect=no)

~~~
electricityUser
I don't know what Australian electricity needs are, but we averaged 500 W over
the last year in our 2-person household. This battery would be good for 10000
similar households for a day or 200000 households "for an hour and 20
minutes...ish".

~~~
nmeofthestate
I used UK per capita electrical energy per annum, translated to an average
power usage = 0.8KW. 100/0.8 = 120 ish peoples' power use. So yep - off by a
mere *1000!

------
socceroos
I'm impressed with the pace at which they delivered this. If only all
government projects were this efficient.

~~~
petecox
100 days or it's free was the deal. The urgency was the arrival of summer and
an ongoing spat between state and federal politicians.

~~~
agumonkey
I hope it's gonna make Australia more friendly to Tesla, they need some cash
right now.

------
fu86
I am not sure about that (biggest battery in the world). This looks like a
battery "pack" (an array of batteries connected in parallel/series). This
looks like just a marketing thing to me, because there is nothing new or
special about it. Just "the biggest".

Germany is also working on big batteries for years, but with a completely
different strategy. A redox-flow battery with polymers and saline solution
([https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18909](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18909))
Here is a recent german article about it
([http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/brine4power-so-
fu...](http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/brine4power-so-funktioniert-
die-groesste-batterie-der-welt-a-1179827.html))

This kind of batteries will hold 700 MWh.

~~~
frandroid
Do you understand that the word "battery" means "array"?

~~~
qu1mby
Or the more polite variation: "'battery' actually means 'array', so it's being
used appropriately in this case"

------
jakecodes
I am not a battery expert by any means. But the article says:

> with 100 megawatts of capacity.

Isn't megawatts the measurement of power? Wouldn't Watt Hours be the
measurement for capacity? Sometimes people use Apmere Hours also. Like the
Chevy Bolt has 60 kWh of capacity.

~~~
marcosdumay
Turns out that power output is one of the most important measures for a
battery.

On some applications it's even more relevant than capacity. (If you have an
internal combustion car, take a look at its battery, odds are power is written
in way larger letters than capacity.)

------
bamboozled
I'm Nitpicking, but it's a silly title. It should at least read, like "Elon
Musk and his team built the biggest battery in the world".

~~~
nmeofthestate
I also don't think this is "one battery" \- is a warehouse full of large
pizzas the biggest pizza in the world?

~~~
ioulian
Isn't a battery just a name for the collection of battery cells? Tesla's (the
car) battery is composed from a lot of units that can store electricity.

Some RC batteries are just different cells/smaller batteries that are combined
together in a nice package.

I think even the batteries in cell phones are composed from different
components (some of which doesn't even store energy).

~~~
nmeofthestate
Yeah this occurred to me after posting that pedantry. You're right. Even
consumer batteries can have multiple cells.

------
anovikov
that's still pricey at almost $400 per kwh of capacity... or about $0.2 per
kwh of storage, several times the grid prices.

~~~
keenerd
edit: I too can mix up GW and MW.

~~~
Matt3o12_
I would actually be very surprised if they only lasted for 500 cycles. Apple
currently says their devices last 1000 cycles and Tesla is very careful with
their batteries. They recommend not charging it below and above a certain
percentage in their cars and it would surprise me if it was any different in
their battery packs (though I believe they do not have such an option -- they
just do it automatically). Furthermore, those packs have dedicated cooling and
a low discharge rate, and are made for a lot of discharges (unlike iphones,
which are made to be purchased every two to four years).

According to Wikipedia[0], the original Powerwall was rated for 1000-1500
cycles and it would suprise me if Tesla's new powerwalls are not better.

So, they should be even cheaper then your estimate, especially when you
consider that they will probably be used well after the 20% capacity lose.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall#cite_ref-
te201...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall#cite_ref-
te2015-05-06_11-0)

------
xh3n1
aww

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liudmila
he will charge it with his own personal energy)) Wonder where he takes so much
enthusiasm from)

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agumonkey
God, I read "biggest building in the world" .. I need to get my gigafactory
obsession in check.

