
South Australia teams with Tesla, Neoen to build world's biggest Li-ion battery - astdb
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/south-australia-to-get-worlds-biggest-battery/8687268
======
renesd
Tesla sold a financial product. The government needed to cover some of the
risk of when power lines go down, or if something goes wrong in another part
of the network. It needs to cover this risk quickly for political reasons.

The chance of another similar storm knocking out the power lines again, which
now have bigger maintenance crews, is very small. But if there is another
blackout and they didn't do anything? They'd be in big trouble with the
newspapers.

So Tesla really sold a risk product. Since SA could have spent the money on
more generation. But not all people understand that.

The 100MW stage of that wind farm cost $250 million, and took some years to
reach agreement, and some years to build. By promising to build the battery
quicker, they have covered that risk during the time they need it.

They could have installed another wind farm the same size in a different part
of the state in order to reduce the risk, and fill up the valleys of power
generation. That has been proven to work too, and the benefit is you have more
power generation in the peaks.

The cost of the blackout was estimated to have cost $367 million to business.
12% of the businesses had backup power generators themselves, and about a
third of the businesses had bought insurance for such situations. Life
critical systems are required to have independent backup power.

By the time it's built there will probably be a similar amount of solar power
installed as the battery (by current rates of installation). There's 2,034 MW
of industrial solar being constructed in Australia for 2017. This doesn't
include stuff going onto roofs of houses, of which there are millions of
houses already covered and more being done. 5KW solar installed in Australia
can be done for $5,000AUD or less for a 5KW system. That's $100 million AUD
for 100MW on 20,000 homes.

There's also a lead smelter which is being upgraded, so it will have modern
equipment which lets it use power more dynamically... effectively making it a
battery. It can take in power, or not, as it needs. They can also shut down
their power hungry desalination plant if needed (which they don't really need
when there is not a drought).

So now they have a backup battery, a backup gas power plant, and backup power
lines to another state, more efficient industrial power users, and hundreds of
thousands of small independent solar power generators.

They've definitely covered their arses.

~~~
nl
It's not just insurance if power goes down. It'll knock the edges off the
price-peaks, which SA suffers badly from.

Gas fired power stations don't fire up until they can get the maximum price
possible, and often try to drive the price higher by stopping producing power.
SA is very vulnerable to that because there is no backstop of coal prices.
OTOH, the _minimum_ price of wind power and solar is much lower.

These batteries will kill the peaking gas generator game.

------
icanhackit
Anyone here played the real time strategy game Total Annihilation or its
spiritual successor Supreme Commander? I remember playing with a friend around
1998 and he told me off for using energy storage as opposed to just
collecting/producing more energy sans storage. His argument was that my
economy should never be at the point that I'm saving energy for a rainy day -
I should be spending as I collect/produce so that my potential is always
maximised. I told him I need a buffer for when I'm spending more than I'm
producing or if I lose infrastructure in battle.

Either way, we played each other over LAN one day and sure enough he took out
a few of my nuclear plants, but I had enough energy stored to keep bombarding
his base with artillery and eventually struck his commander despite being in
the negative for energy production vs consumption. I won. He changed his
opinion after that.

It's good to save for _that_ rainy day.

~~~
lmm
The costs and benefits in those games are set deliberately at a point where
the decision of which to build is interesting. No such restriction applies to
reality. I very much doubt the relative costs of production and storage in
game are at all close to what they are in real life.

~~~
icanhackit
> _doubt the relative costs of production and storage in game are at all close
> to what they are in real life_

Aren't most games a form of allegory?

~~~
lmm
No, and especially not the good ones (and TA / SupCom stand among the best).
Good game design prioritizes gameplay over moral or political messages, IME.

~~~
icanhackit
> Good game design prioritizes gameplay over moral or political messages

This is tangential to what we're discussing, but TA was politicised:

 _What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to
machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds._

~~~
Balero
The game was made long before the story. From what I remember (I can't
remember where I read this) the story and campaign were fairly rushed
afterthoughts, compared to the mechanics and multiplayer.

~~~
Malician
The story itself was iffy, but the campaign's aesthetic and maps were AMAZING.

I still remember the "defend the harbor" mission where you had one Moho mine
and you had the long range destroyers showing up and desperately salvaging the
long range Ranger missile ships for minerals because they were utterly
nonthreatening but _super_ valuable..

The map with a giant crevasse. The map with a ton of gunships. It was a really
solid campaign. It _felt_ like an amazing story even if the writing was simple
to the point of parody just because everything was so well designed and fit
perfectly together.

------
roenxi
South Australia has a population of ~1.7 million. I'm reading this article as:

* Battery ($140 million)

* Gas Power Plant ($360 million)

These costs are noticeable but not unreasonable.

SA will hopefully turn a nominal profit, although the principle of 'if it were
the profitable option, private enterprise would have done it' suggests this
will be an economic drag at least in the short term.

I suspect this move is a knee-jerk reaction to the power outage in 2016; so I
am very interested in what the long term impacts of this are. I'm adding this
to my watch list along with the German Energiewende to see where it is in
2020. It is a very interesting tour-of-force by Tesla and hopefully we
discover positive things about large-scale lithium deployments.

~~~
senectus1
where did you get those numbers?

Cause TFA says if he doesnt get it done in 100 days it'll cost him 50 mil

>But the promise could leave Mr Musk significantly out of pocket if he fails
to deliver to deadline.

>He estimated it would cost him "probably $50 million or more" if the 100 days
lapse without the battery installed.

~~~
rndmio
I'm guessing, but would imagine that the contract to build and install is
priced up as above, but if they fail to get it all in in 100 days it's only
the batteries themselves which are free, the rest of the job still needs to be
paid for.

------
perilunar
I'd be interested to know more about the politics behind this decision. The
Federal government (generally conservative and anti-renewables) was pushing
for pumped hydro energy storage, which would have cost several times as much
and taken years to build (and made renewable energy look worse for longer).

This looks very much like the state Labor government giving the federal
government the finger.

~~~
stirlo
Got any sources that show pumped hydro to be more expensive?

~~~
manicdee
[http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-
news/snowy-...](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/snowy-
hydro-20-malcolm-turnbull-announces-plans-for-2-billion-
expansion-20170315-guyozj.html)

This project is about expanding the output of the Snowy Mountains scheme,
which means greater demand on the storage capacity, not forgetting 1000km of
transmission lines to get the energy to Adelaide which means the grid
components that failed them last time are in exactly the same place.

The proposed expansion is $1/W capacity.

The expected price for the Neoen project is in the order of $1/W ($100M for
100MW output, 129MWh capacity)

Note that the actual price on the SA battery is not known, and there has not
even been a tender out for the Snowy expansion much less accompany at work
digging tunnels suddenly finding that Australian conditions are breaking their
equipment more than expected :)

The expected cost overruns on the SA tender are aporoximately zero, the
expected cost overruns on a large hydro project between initial estimates and
completion are approximately 100% based on industry standards.

~~~
jussij
> there has not even been a tender out for the Snowy expansion

There is nothing to tender against.

The plans for the Snowy Mountains expansion is nothing more than the one page
press release.

------
SEJeff
Official announcement from Tesla: [https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-powerpack-
enable-large-scal...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-powerpack-enable-large-
scale-sustainable-energy-south-australia)

------
xupybd
I really hope this works out to be worth the investment. It seems storage is
the missing piece to the renewable energy puzzle.

~~~
syncsynchalt
Based on other comments here it seems like SA sees large price spikes that
this should smooth out, so I suppose it's possible it will pay for itself not
just in a more stable energy utility but also in real Dollarydoos.

------
synicalx
We have a long history here in SA of being the first people in the world to do
stuff, and it nearly never (I mean this literally) works out well.

For once, I'd love it if our ever changing State Government would just spend
its limited budget on tried and tested solutions rather than pissing money up
the wall on things that may or may not work.

~~~
Lxr
Examples?

~~~
bigger_cheese
I'm not from SA but I think the Desalination plant they built to supply
drinking water to Adelaide was a pretty infamous example.

~~~
mphillips
SA certainly wasn't the first to build a desalination plant, and it appears to
have been working as designed for quite a while now ("Water production to date
(to end of June 2017) = approximately 138 billion litres" [1]).

I think the infamy was unearned, and mainly due to people not understanding
that it was never intended to run all the time, but is insurance for a time of
crisis (which we will certainly have again at some point).

So, not a good example.

[1] [https://www.sawater.com.au/community-and-environment/our-
wat...](https://www.sawater.com.au/community-and-environment/our-water-and-
sewerage-systems/water-sources/desalination/adelaide-desalination-plant-adp)

------
dao-
100 MW. For comparison, here's a >30 years old pumped storage power plant with
a capacity of 1,045 MW:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markersbach_Pumped_Storage_Pow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markersbach_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant)

~~~
kalleboo
Which took 20 years to get running instead of 100 days and required favorable
terrain.

~~~
dao-
Construction started in 1970 and it's been running since 1979. That's nine
years, with ancient tech and the GDR's limited resources. There's no reason to
believe a similar project should take nine years today in Australia.

~~~
eigenvector
If anything, large infrastructure projects take longer now with more stringent
worker safety, environmental and engineering requirements. The replacement
cost of 1960s/70s/80s hydro generating stations (particularly their dams) is
much higher than what they cost initially. It's no longer acceptable, for
example, to have 20 people die on your dam construction project. It's also a
hell of a lot easier to forcibly relocate local people in an authoritarian
country like GDR than in Australia.

------
rb808
Doesn't anyone know how long these industrial sized Li-ion batteries last?

If its anything like my Nexus 6p it'll need replacing within a year.

~~~
nextweek2
Such information is more than likely commercially sensitive. However, given
the large number of cells, a charge controller can optimise charges to ensure
optimum cell use.

Bit like wear levelling with SSD drives.

Your phone probably has an erratic charge discharge cycle.

Most Li-ion batteries have 400-1200 duty cycle. That should give this project
a 3 year cycle a least.

~~~
rb808
Infrastructure is usually measured in decades though, I would have thought < 1
decade isn't good enough. Maybe its easier to maintain large scale batteries.

------
pongogogo
Do you need multiple batteries though to really stabilise the flow? I.e. these
look like they will be right at the point of power generation, guessing that
the bulk of inhabitants will actually be in Adelaide, why not put the
batteries there after you have suffered the lossiness of transmission?
Directly in people's homes would also probably be more effective...

~~~
manicdee
The losses will happen somewhere, and the power is coming from the wind farm
anyway. Combining grid interconnect with what is already there probably makes
the power engineering easier.

~~~
renesd
Also Australia is one of the most expensive places on the planet - in the
urban centers. They already have space near the wind farm for very cheap. As a
bonus you don't have a giant Samsung Galaxy situation near so many people.

------
suyash
Didn't they announce last year that the largest battery manufacturing plant
was being built near Reno, NV as part of the Gigafactory. Now all of a sudden
this one in Australia, what's the deal?

~~~
tacticus
Not a factory. This is a battery stored peaking power plant.

~~~
suyash
thanks for clarifying.

------
bquinlan
Isn't 129MWh of capacity a bit low for 100MW of peak discharge? That would
provide 77 minutes of power at peak discharge. Does anyone have any insight
into the rationale for this capacity?

~~~
davedx
From what I've seen this is quite common with batteries -- the rated power
output number is usually in the same ballpark as the storage number.

I'm no expert, but I would guess it's because most of the time the wind will
be blowing _somewhat_ , so you will rarely need peak discharge. Most of the
time the batteries will be providing load smoothing and frequency regulation.

~~~
itengelhardt
According to Tesla's website
([https://www.tesla.com/powerpack](https://www.tesla.com/powerpack)) each
Powerpack has 50 kW / 210kWh with a scalable inverter power ranging from 50
kVA to 625 kVA.

So they could have gotten a system with 100 MW/420 MWh

------
pascalo
This is certainly a step in the right direction for South Australia.

~~~
pascalo
I should qualify why: The South Australian power network, due to its
increasing reliance on Wind and Solar, struggles with fluctuations in the
network. The battery will aid to stabilise the grid in peak demand times.

~~~
tacticus
So what were the causes of the queensland outages with their coal?

It was transmission tower failures that took out the network for the
significant outage.

~~~
pascalo
The really big 2016 blackout in SA also wasn't caused by wind or solar energy,
but that doesn't mean that stabilising the network isn't something that won't
be required if the energy production develops more towards renewables.

------
neillyons
Wow. This story makes you believe anything is possible.

------
askvictor
Does anyone know if large scale capacitors are being investigated for this
sort of application (or in home storage)? Strikes me as more appropriate than
batteries; don't really need to store that energy for months, but rather hours
or days. I know that Tesla utilises economies of scale, but still curious why
I've never heard of large scale capacitors even being researched.

~~~
extrapickles
The Energy density of capacitors is very low (10-100x less than lithium) and
they cost quite a bit more per watt-hour.

Capacitors are good if you need power for seconds rather than the minutes-
hours that batteries are good at.

------
gluczywo
Unfortunately no word on durability and maintenance guarantees. What happens
after a few years when batteries lose most of their capacity? Who is going to
take care of recycling? I'm honestly curious about details because as opposed
to lead-acid batteries industry, there is no profitable or existing li-ion
recycling market.

~~~
audunw
> What happens after a few years when batteries lose most of their capacity?

That's rather pessimistic isn't it? In their cars, which is arguably a less
stable environment, they don't seem to fall much beyond 70-80% capacity. The
lose capacity quickly at first, but then it stabilizes. I haven't heard
anything that implies that a lithium-ion battery in a stable, temperature
environment will lose "most" of their capacity, i.e. over 50%.

And unlike cars, it's not like the value of the battery becomes so much less
when they lose capacity. There's plenty of space, that's not the problem. They
could just add a few extra batteries if they want to keep the capacity (more
likely they will add more batteries other places).

Of course battery capacity loss will be part of the contract. Tesla will
probably guarantee a certain capacity after a certain time, and they will tell
the customer how much loss they can expect. It will all be taken into account
when calculating the profitability and life-time of the system.

Why would they report this in the media? It's not something most people is
interested in. It's the kind of thing you find in datasheets for the product.

~~~
sgentle
I wonder if that could be part of Tesla's cross-market strategy. You can put
fresh batteries in cars where high energy density is really important, then as
the capacity drops you reuse them in lower energy density applications like
commercial power.

