
Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90% - seomint
https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-australia-reduced-grid-service-cost/
======
ggm
This outcome is in a particularly distorted badly operated market, one where
for no very good reasons regulatory power is not being applied, and distorted
bidding for FCAS and peak supply has been the norm. It's hugely politicised,
and in the context of a rejection of carbon trading and an attempt by the
ruling federal liberal-national government to wedge coal into the mix (it's
basically uneconomic now, and won't get any better but the lib hats want it
_come what may_ )

The battery couldn't have come at a better time. It's an initiative of a state
labor government, now tossed out, and it's signals how much could have been
achieved with decent capital investment in alternative power sources. That
said, it's role here is _frequency stabilisation_ not power: it's a tiny
percentage of the states power burden. The states solar and wind was (alas)
not required to have any associated storage capacity or supply FCAS services,
both things which alter the economics in favour of more traditional coal, and
gas peaked power supply.

There are more batteries on the way. There are pumped hydro systems in design.
Things are getting better.

~~~
spodek
> This outcome is in a particularly distorted badly operated market, one where
> for no very good reasons regulatory power is not being applied . . .

You described most energy markets on the planet.

~~~
sbov
Not to the point where it costs $14,000 per MW. At that pricepoint hiring
humans to hand crank generators is not the laughably ridiculous proposition it
should be.

~~~
Retric
A human might average 100W per hour over a workday at say 10$ per hour to keep
the numbers clean (1$ = 10Wh). 14,000$ per 1,000,000Wh is 72wh per dollar so
far cheaper. Except this is instantaneous power so they would need 1,000,000
people to sit around doing nothing most of the day and then occasionally have
have some or all of them work, because again that battery caps at 100MW.

Really, people in AU don't pay 14$ per kWh making 14$ per MWh meaningless.
They are really paying to _keep generating capacity online_ not for actual
power. A backup generator that's never used costs infinite dollars per W, that
does not make it useless.

PS: Well under 1 million beause people can generate more power in short
periods.

~~~
jessaustin
_A human might average 100W per hour..._

This seems like the wrong unit to use.

[EDIT:] I mean that power is already a "per time period" measure; there's no
reason to say "joules per second per hour".

~~~
basementcat
A rule of thumb is a large hamburger with all the fixings is about one kWh.

~~~
wcarron
His point is that a Watt is a unit of power being equal to 1 joule per second.
As an aside, this corresponds to an electric circuit with a potential
difference of 1 volt and a current of 1 Ampere.

Saying a human produces 100W/hr is wrong. What I assume he meant is this:

A human can produce 100W for 1 hour, on average. This is reasonable, since
humans produce about 1/8 Horsepower, on average; and 1 HP = 746W.

~~~
thaumasiotes
He meant a human can produce 100W. He specifically doesn't mean "for one
hour"; he says the human works a full workday, producing 800 watt-hours of
energy.

~~~
wcarron
Right, but 100W/hr is very different from 800wHr.

~~~
jessaustin
Mostly because "100W/hr" doesn't really mean anything sensible? If you wanted
to write "100W" like "100W·hr/hr", that would be fine.

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boyter
It’s also a national embarrassment according to the government treasurer who
likened it to Australia’s tourist stop big things such as The Big Banana.

What I love about it is that it’s forcing the governments hand. They have
vested interests in the coal industry but cannot continue to overlook this
when electricity prices are so high in Australia.

~~~
ImaCake
The South Australian government at the time did an incredible thing. They gave
the national government the middle finger, in a live-televised conference no
less: [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/josh-frydenberg-jay-
we...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/josh-frydenberg-jay-weatherill-
verbal-biff/8359056)

~~~
jamdav16
No video in that article, here's the full press conference with the badass
former premier of SA downplaying the federal government MP standing next to
him: [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/video/2017/mar/16...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/video/2017/mar/16/jay-weatherill-gives-josh-frydenberg-a-serve-at-
bizarre-media-conference-video)

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vosper
For obvious reasons there's a lot of focus on Tesla's automobiles, but part of
me wonders if these Powerpack grid batteries aren't the real innovation and
killer product for the company.

~~~
ballenf
Where's Tesla's secret sauce in this solution: the battery chemistry, the
control circuits or well-engineered integration of the parts?

How much a threat is constrained lithium supply to the business model?

~~~
keltex
FYI this project wasn't built with Panasonic / Tesla / Gigafactory batteries.
They were purchased from Samsung:

[https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/30/tesla-using-samsung-
sdi...](https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/30/tesla-using-samsung-sdi-battery-
cells-129-mwh-south-australia-facility/)

~~~
altcognito
Wow, that's even more impressive in some ways. That was a huge gamble to rely
on another company (though perhaps they already have a good relationship I'm
not aware of) and it's great that the system was "easy" enough to build with
different parts (though, again, perhaps they've always kept multiple vendors
in mind)

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mmanfrin
It is _so obnoxious_ when a website immediately asks to send you
notifications.

~~~
ovao
I’ve actually never seen it approached any other way (triggered by a direct
action), which is somehow even more obnoxious than the prompt itself.

~~~
loosescrews
Gmail at least used to do that. There was sometimes a link near the top of the
page with text instructing you to click it if you wanted to enable
notifications.

~~~
icebraining
Slack too ("Slack needs your permission to enable desktop notifications"). But
I don't find it more annoying than showing the prompt.

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bassman9000
_Zero emmissions_

If nuclear has to include the costs of dismantling the plants, batteries have
to include the cost of building them. And wind generators are massive aluminum
structures, which are extremely costly to shape.

Some day, maybe. Let's be fair in the meantime.

~~~
toomuchtodo
No one has any way to dispose of nuclear waste (except reprocessing, which has
significant cost and safety concerns). It sits in storage pools waiting for
that day. Lithium batteries have no such issue.

~~~
ovao
While not cost effective in the slightest, jettisoning nuclear waste into
outer space is one proposition.

Naturally, launching rockets filled with nuclear waste comes with its own
safety concerns.

~~~
sxates
What's the carbon footprint of a thousand rocket launches?

~~~
CommieBobDole
Somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand 747 flights at maximum range, maybe a
little less.

The Falcon 9 carries 147 metric tons of RP-1, which is functionally the same
thing as Jet A (both are kerosene), while a 747-400 carries 165 metric tons of
Jet A.

For a very broad estimate, I'd say the carbon footprint of a thousand Falcon 9
rocket launches is somewhat less than the carbon footprint of a day's worth of
aircraft travel, globally.

~~~
a1369209993
It's also relatively easy[1] to switch over to liquid hydrogen rocket fuel if
you decide space lauches really must be hit with pointless double standards.

1: where "easy" means "literally rocket science"

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otalp
Their Q1 earning report revealed they lost money on the grid service.

~~~
ggm
pointer please. I'd like to understand this in more detail. Its not just any
Q1, its their very first Q1. I'd want to believe thats a one-off, since for
much of the quarter they were in test mode, but its possible you have a good
point that bidding in this model, whilst a net public benefit, doesn't earn
profit.

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_nalply
Which one is cheaper to build and operate: Pumped hydro or batteries?

~~~
vasco
In a lot of places pumped hydro is at capacity. There's only so many rivers,
but you can generally put batteries anywhere.

~~~
jaddood
You don't really need a river to pump hydro up and down. As long as you have
some kind of container for the water (usually a dam though not necessarily
so,) you can pump any water. The cheapest to pump is probably sea water. I'm
not really sure how cheap that would be compared to batteries, but it's still
an option.

~~~
pjc50
To make it cost-effective, you need a height advantage and a "natural"
container. The ideal sites are mountaintop lakes. It's a fairly rare
topography.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Could be a dry lake tho, no? Are those rare?

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_bxg1
Good to hear. Hopefully the massive success they're having in this area can
carry them through their car troubles until that becomes profitable too.

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foobar1962
The 90% cost reduction claim disturbs me because I find it quite ambiguous.
The original quote in the article is:

>it reduced the cost of the grid service that it performs by 90%

Let's examine "the grid service that it performs". What does this mean? Which
"grid service" is it performing?

I imagine the "grid service" it performs is that of inputting energy: it's a
source of electricity into the grid. So the claim can be re-written as:

>[the battery] reduced the cost of <putting energy into the grid> by 90%

Reduced, compared to what, a coal-powered steam turbine power station?

~~~
plantain
It's clearly explained in the article it's frequency stability it's talking
about.

>When an issue happens or maintenance is required on the power grid in
Australia, the Energy Market Operator calls for FCAS (frequency control and
ancillary services) which consists of large and costly gas generators and
steam turbines kicking in to compensate for the loss of power.

