
California Moves to Replace Gas Plants with Batteries from Tesla - philipkglass
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/california-moves-to-replace-gas-plants-with-batteries-from-tesla
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philipkglass
Additional details in this GTM story:
[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pges-
recording-...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pges-recording-
breaking-battery-proposal-wins-loses)

 _...four projects, totaling 567.5 megawatts /2,270 megawatt-hours, to go into
the transmission-constrained Moss Landing area south of the San Francisco
Bay._

 _The portfolio includes a 300-megawatt /1,200-megawatt-hour system that
Vistra Energy would build in an existing power plant owned by its subsidiary
Dynegy, as well as a 182.5-megawatt/730-megawatt-hour Tesla system that PG&E
would own at a substation nearby._

This is a _lot_ of capacity and storage compared to recent projects. The
Hornsdale Power Reserve that Tesla installed in South Australia last year is
"only" 100 MW/129 MWh.

~~~
Gibbon1
> This is a lot of capacity and storage compared to recent projects.

California's policy makers and utilities are all in at this point.

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masonic
_Storage_ is fine, but it doesn't replace the lost _supply_. Do they just plan
to recharge off the grid during off-peak hours?

~~~
philipkglass
Basically, yes. Recall that in California the cheapest production is actually
mid-day now, since that's when solar produces most strongly.

There's a chart here that shows renewable production over the course of the
day and includes battery charging/discharging in another chart at the bottom:

[http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx](http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx)

Looking at November 8, 2018 you can see that batteries began charging around
7:30 AM as solar power started ramping up for the day, and switched over to
discharging around 4:00 PM. There were also brief excursions to discharging
from charging in between to deal with smaller fluctuations.

If you compare that supply chart to the net demand chart for the same time,
you can see why the batteries are mostly charging in that time period:

[http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx](http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx)

There's a big "scoop" taken out of net demand by solar in the middle of the
day. After the early-evening demand peak there's often a smaller "scoop" taken
out by late night wind power. In states with better wind resources, like
Texas, the net demand reduction is usually in the middle of the night instead
of the middle of the day.

[http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.htm...](http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.html)

Today's wind generation in Texas is up past 12,000 MW as of 11:00 PM but
dropped as low as 2,000 MW at noon.

------
Ice_cream_suit
"batteries from Tesla" == Batteries from Panasonic, rebranded , repackaged and
resold by Tesla.

~~~
btian
"GPUs from nVidia" == GPUs from TSMC, rebranded, repackaged and resold by
nVidia

"CPUs from AMD" == CPUs from TSMC, rebranded, repackaged and resold by AMD...

