
Tesla battery storage will accelerate exit of coal generators - ph0rque
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/tesla-battery-storage-will-accelerate-exit-of-coal-generators-88203
======
jharohit
Considering DB was one of the inv. banks involved in the IPO, I would most
likely take what they say with a pinch of salt. A little more research into
the price difference "claimed" between Tesla and other industry competitors
shows that actually between 2007-2014 USD1000 per kWH to USD 410 kWh (study-
[http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n4/full/nclimate25...](http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n4/full/nclimate2564.html))
and even to USD300 kWh for some industry leaders. Even with installation costs
and inverter costs excluded from these figures, I am not sure that Tesla has
done something absolutely "staggering" as claimed in the article (although I
absolutely enjoyed Elon's keynote!)

~~~
jacobolus
Did you read that Nature paper? The “some industry leaders” = Tesla. In any
event, the whole chart is based on pretty few data points with highly
heterogeneous sources, so I’d take the average numbers with a pinch of salt.
Prices are clearly falling at a reasonably fast clip industry-wide though.

~~~
jharohit
Yes absolutely. Agree on Tesla being one of the industry leaders driving the
innovation on bringing down battery pack prices BUT my point was what you have
re-iterated in your last line - prices are falling on an average industry wide
and to attribute that success primarily to Tesla is gross overstatement

------
BendertheRobot
Here is a look at the topic that is not so fan-boy about it.
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why-
teslas-powerwall-is-just-another-toy-for-rich-green-people/)

~~~
ghshephard
The fact that writers are actually having to drill down and do the math and
see if Solar Power is less expensive in areas _where power is cheap and
available_ is mind blowing to me.

I find it fascinating, that, by 2017, there will be areas in Hawaii and
Australia, in which you can make an argument that Solar Power is now less
expensive that grid power.

What these authors seem to fail to recognize (or highlight) in their criticism
- is that these lines are being crossed 10-15 years ahead of time. Nobody
expected parity on these edge cases until at least 2025-2030, and we're going
to see it in 2016.

And, what they also seem to fail to recognize, is that the curves for solar
are going down. This is just the start.

~~~
hueving
There isn't any reason for the author to bring up those points because they
are irrelevant.

This article is about whether it makes sense to buy a tesla battery _right
now_. It doesn't matter if solar will be half the cost in five years. If
that's the case, just buy it then when the numbers make sense.

Let's say someone wrote an article reviewing a new apartment complex opening
in the Tenderloin of SF. If they said that the crime there is terrible so
people should look elsewhere, would you be complaining if they didn't provide
in-depth projects of potential future crime rates in the same area?

~~~
justonepost
It makes perfect sense to bring it up because the massive disruption this will
cause to the global energy economy. Oil, coal, the structure of these are
going to be altered massively. Think today how gas is used to blackmail the
Ukraine and prop up autocratic political systems. There are very significant
implications to all of this. By the time it becomes 'relevant' it will be
ancient news to those who appreciate what's going on here.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
The interesting question for solar power is not "When will stand-alone solar
power be cheaper than coal/gas?". It is "How high can we push the fraction of
solar power / total power before the power distribution grid fails?". You need
base power generation to augment solar/wind, there's not a serious scientist
in the world denying that, and the numbers I've heard quoted say you can't
average much more than 50-60% solar and wind combined.

Right now, Germany is charging ahead on solar. Their current __peak __record
is 50.4% of total power from solar, on a sunny midsummer day with low power
usage. Meanwhile, all of their neigbouring countries to the east are doing
massive overhauls /reconfigurations of their power distribution grids just to
be able to supply Germany with enough base power, mainly from nuclear.

~~~
ghshephard
The "We can't do everything with solar" was what everyone was saying
(correctly) in 2005-2010. But, the entire _point_ of the Powerwall product is
that, _today_ (not next year, today), in parts of Australia and Hawaii, it is
now less expensive, and more efficient, to go 100% solar. As the prices of
batteries drop, and solar becomes more efficient, the number of places where
that is true will only increase.

From the perspective of watching trends back in 2005, this wasn't supposed to
happen until 2025, so it's arriving 10 years early.

There's nothing that would prevent a good storage system + wind + power from
supplying 100% of the power requirements reliably. You just need to scale your
Storage system to handle the periods in which solar/wind aren't driving power.

Regarding the Germany Scenario - Let's see how much nuclear they are going to
require after they add a few Terrawatt-Hours worth of battery storage to their
grid.

Finally, commenting on your "so Serious Scientists" \- there are a lot of them
that have done the calculations and have come to the conclusion that _only_ a
solar solution will supply the world with the power it requires so that
everyone can have an first-world lifestlye. In particular, check out Nate
Lewis's introduction to Solar Energy -
[https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodca...](https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=385384449#ls=1)
,He "provides a beginner's overview of the concepts behind solar energy
generation as well as the current state of the art and its potential role in
future energy production."

It's eye opening - even nuclear power plants don't stand a chance versus solar
(which, to be honest, is just harvesting the output of a really, really,
really big fusion generator)

The missing component has always been storage, and Elon has jumpstarted that
conversation. The powerall is interesting, the gigafactory is more
interesting, but the fact that he realizes Tesla is only going to be a tiny,
tiny element of a much larger industrial transition, is, in my mind, the most
important part of this story.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Sorry, that's just missing the mark. In northern latitudes, where most of the
world's energy consumption is currently located, the seasonal variation in
solar influx means a 100% solar solution needs to do energy storage for months
at a time. Continuing with the Germany example, the monthly-average production
of solar power in January is ~ 1/15th the production in July.

And I don't believe we will ever be able to get the whole world up to current
western consumption levels. More to the point, we really shouldn't, as current
consumption levels in the west are clearly unsustainable.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
(I'm not able to reply to ghshephard, so I put it here.)

My point about not getting everyone up to western consumption levels isn't
mainly about the things you mention. It's more about the use-and-throw-away
culture, plus the general inability of people to make stuff themselves.
Imagine the impact if people started mending stuff and clothes, cooking their
own food, taking the bicycle with a trailer to the local market to do the
weekly shopping, etc. Not just on reducing direct and (mainly) indirect energy
consumption, but on public health and general happiness levels! There's so
much of our energy consumption that doesn't improve our lives in any
meaningful way.

~~~
ghshephard
I won't argue about how we live in a terribly consumer-fixated culture -
totally agree with you. Ironically, at this exact moment, I'm writing a review
on Amazon, about how much I like my 15 year old Kaito KA007 hand-cranked
radio. It's never seen a single battery, yet I've had it with me on camping,
business trips, burning man - everywhere. 60 seconds on the crank gets me 20
minutes of radio. I hope to have it with me another 15 years.

Likewise, my Mountain Equipment Co-Op Backpack that I've had for 18 years -
I've had that with me _every single day_ for 19 years, it's my laptop case, my
tool case, my document holder - In the Amazon Jungle, Luxembourg, and with
Network Engineers in London, Dubai and Singapore. I've used the _heck_ out of
it - and it's still going strong.

So, I'm totally on board with having a very few things, that you take good
care of, and last a long time.

But - this is a separate conversation (somewhat) from energy usage. Heat,
Pumping/Processing water, cooling - they all have some physical minimum
amounts of power. And even if you are living a hyper-efficient 40 gallons/day
life style (Northern California, see
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/01/us/water-
use-i...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/01/us/water-use-in-
california.html) ) versus the rest of the world (See:
[http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757](http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757))
- there are some physical limits as to how little energy you can use and still
maintain a comfortable lifestyle. We can only be efficient so far - eventually
we're going to have to find a way to provide lots, and lots, and lots of power
to everyone in the world, if they want to live a comfortable lifestyle.

Thankfully, much of that comes from having warm homes, and hot water -
something that Solar does an admirable job of providing (bringing it all back
to the original thread).

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I agree wholeheartedly with all of this. But I think reducing consumption is
probably the most significant thing a person can do to lower their CO2
footprint. My rule of thumb (which is fairly good across a surprising range of
goods for ones that I've tested) is that at least 500g of CO2 is emitted for
every dollar you spend, whether that's on electricity with our current typical
fuel mix or on a cheeseburger or a plane journey. So if your electricity bill
is say 5% of your monthly expenditures, electric energy usage is just
responsible for 5% of your total CO2 emissions. This is very ballpark, but you
get the idea.

------
Havoc
It certainly will.

I still think there is a fundamental need to re-think the energy market though
- specifically on the role the power utility plays. Clearly they won't be
selling a great deal of power but they play a key role in absorbing spikes
(both up and down) and stepping in when the grid needs to be balanced. Somehow
they need to be fairly compensated for that universal arbiter role & charging
per unit of electricity doesn't seem to work well on this new landscape.

~~~
jerf
Not all electricity is consumed by homes or properties where "the amount of
local energy resources" is within an order of magnitude of "the amount of
power used by the facility". "Companies who provide lots and lots of
electricity" aren't going anywhere; you're not going to run an aluminum
smelting plant off of a local, plant-owned installation of solar panels, if
for no other reason that it is a poor use of capital as a plant would not be
able to invest to keep up in the changing landscape of energy generation.

While change is happening and change in inevitable I think you're greatly
overestimating the rate of the change and badly misunderstanding the quality.

~~~
douche
Do heavy industrial concerns with high power usage not already usually have an
on-site gas or oil turbine to generate their own power and, often equally
important, steam?

That's the situation I'm familiar with, but that may be a peculiarity of the
under-developed grid in my area.

~~~
brc
Some do, but that implies on-site supply of gas (oil would not be used for
aluminium production much).

Building smelters next to coal fields is a way of producing cheap aluminium.
Coal is still the cheapest way to make electricity - it's only places where
the government has explicitly made this not the case that coal is expensive.

Generally unfavourable government regulations simply moves production to
places without the regulation - for no net change in production or coal
consumption. Sometimes it's a net negative if the new location has lower local
emissions standards and technology.

~~~
olau
Please provide sources. This is not true for the country I live in for new
generation. I read somewhere it's not true for Australia either.

People are sometimes fooled by sunk capital costs of old power plants.

------
yzh
From a friend who is in the battery business: "LIB loses capacity over time
and cycle. Grid storage requires extremely large cycle life, cheap and high
power capability for all the flow of renewable energy source. LIB only has the
last one. Maybe Elon Musk can make it cheap but cycle life is still gonna be
the problem needs to be solved."

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Musk will warranty the hell out of batteries. Maybe they'll wear out in 5
years, but he'll have a giant battery factory in full swing by then.

Tesla cars are warrantied the same way. He over promises now to get traction,
then uses the profit at volume to cover any gaps in initial deployments. It's
a pretty solid plan, but you have to deliver or you lose your reputation. Musk
knows he can do it.

------
Hypx
I certainly hope this will be the end of coal. It would be the biggest single
step forward in reducing GHG emissions.

~~~
hueving
I don't understand your comment. The death of coal is not a single step. It's
already been happening because of cheap natural gas.

Look at this chart for a coal company[1]. It's already been almost dead and a
major chunk of the coal GHG emissions are already cut way back (albeit at the
expense of natural gas emissions).

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ACI+Interactive#{"range":...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ACI+Interactive#{"range":"5y"})

~~~
rgbrenner
Why post a stock chart for a coal company, when we have actual usage data for
coal:

1949-2011:
[http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec7_9.pdf](http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec7_9.pdf)

2008-2014Q2:
[http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t32p01p1.pd...](http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t32p01p1.pdf)

Unfortunately, it doesn't back up your claim at all that it's "almost dead"...
It looks like we're about 18% off from the peak in 2007.

~~~
hueving
>Why post a stock chart for a coal company, when we have actual usage data for
coal:

Sorry if it wasn't obvious, but coal companies have to make money. They are at
the point now where they are on the verge of being wiped out by natural gas.

It will reach a point where coal makes absolutely no sense to invest in and
the game will stop there. It's already at the point where nobody in their
right mind is putting money into new large coal prospects.

~~~
bmelton
So then, coal consumption is up?

[http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/HNRG](http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/HNRG)

A single company's stock production does not indicate the state of coal any
more than Gateway's stock chart represents the state of technology.

~~~
hueving
>Hallador has a 45 percent equity interest in Savoy Energy, L.P., an oil and
gas company with operations in Michigan.

It's a bit daft to point to a company that has a pretty be hedge against the
decline of coal.

I pointed to ACI because they mostly depend on coal sales in the US so it's a
pretty nice reflection of the US domestic coal market.

~~~
bmelton
As has been already pointed out, the domestic coal market is not indicative of
the entire coal market.

In the ten year period between 2002 and 2012 (the only figure I have the most
recent numbers for) coal consumption went from 5 and a half billion tons to
over 8 billion tons, and it's slated to hit 9 billion tons by 2019.

------
marze
It is hard to overstate the impact of this announcement.

Just as solar panels were not expected to reach $0.70/watt until 2030 (reached
it last year), batteries were not expected to reach $400/kWh until years from
now.

It is now quite possible that off-grid will make economic sense across wide
swaths of the globe for new construction, across a subset for retrofits.

~~~
ptaipale
> batteries were not expected to reach $400/kWh until years from now.

What? Your ordinary starting battery for a medium-sized car has 65 Ah @ 12 V.
That is 780 wH. They cost here < 60 € or about 65 $.

So they are significantly less than $100/kWh, and the technology has been
around for more than a hundred years.

(These are starting batteries, not entirely suitable for storing e.g. solar
which are currently a bit more expensive, but not nearly twice as expensive,
and the difference in price comes just from manufacturing and sales volume).

~~~
bainsfather
Here [0] is a lead-acid storage battery, UK price £90 ($135) for 1.26kWh. That
is $107/kWh.

You do not use the whole 1.26kWh each cycle - you only want to use e.g. 50% of
that, so that you get reasonable battery life (fully discharge your lead-acid
batteries, and you won't have any electrodes left). So $208/kWh might be the
'actually usable' value.

The harder number to find is battery lifetime - it depends on many factors
(discharge depth, number of cycles per year, storage temperature, exact
battery type, etc). And when you are doing cost-benefit analysis, this number
is a vital part of your calculations. You also want to know 'if I wait x
years, will the price of Tesla batteries have dropped so much that I would be
better holding cash now, and buying Tesla batteries in the future).

This headline number is not the total cost of course, you need charge
controller, inverter, building to house the batteries, etc.

[0]
[http://www.bimblesolar.com/27DC105-105AH-12V?search=battery](http://www.bimblesolar.com/27DC105-105AH-12V?search=battery)

~~~
ptaipale
BTW that £90 clearly includes VAT, but is the VAT on home battery systems in
UK 20 % or 5 %? Domestic fuel is 5% but that doesn't necessarily mean that the
same reduced rate applies to replacement energy devices?

~~~
bainsfather
For ballpark numbers, I am not worrying about 15%. e.g. will your batteries
last 10yrs, 20yrs, or more, is a bigger unknown.

But to try answering your question, here [0] the UK govt says it is 5% for
battery banks for wind power, and for hydro power. Solar is not mentioned, my
_guess_ would be that the rate on the battery we are discussing is 5%.

[0] [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-
notice-7086-e...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-
notice-7086-energy-saving-materials/vat-notice-7086-energy-saving-materials)

~~~
ptaipale
Yes, this is not at all relevant for ballpark numbers, I was just interested
whether the VAT rules appreciate the fact that these batteries are for
alternative energy and not just generic consumer goods.

I'm afraid my country (Finland) taxes them with 24 % VAT just like almost
everything else.

------
ck2
Can Li-Ion batteries in 2015 deliver enough charge/deplete cycles to run a
house off the grid and not need to be replaced every two years?

Because use in laptops would demonstrate otherwise.

~~~
will_hughes
Laptop and mobile phone use are pretty aweful for batteries - they get hot a
lot, and don't have much smarts for managing charge.

Considering there's 3 year old Teslas that are still running with 80%+
capacity, I'd say that yes, they can manage to last more than two years.

------
beloch
Question: How easy will it be to recycle these battery packs once they've been
cycled too many times to be effective?

~~~
nodivbyzero
IKEA has recycling batteries service
[http://www.ikea.com/aa/en/store/adelaide/services_recycling](http://www.ikea.com/aa/en/store/adelaide/services_recycling)

~~~
ptaipale
I think they can do it as a free service for consumer volumes, but if we talk
about recycling the local power station's storage batteries, your local IKEA
won't accept them. The question is more like "what kind of industry do we need
to build to recycle the materials, and how to manage its emissions".

~~~
toomuchtodo
Tesla has already built recycling into the lifecycle (outsource to Umicore
since 2011):

------
jheriko
i like how everyone's definition of affordable is different. us centric net
journalists seem to have a pretty low bar in particular...

~~~
netcan
Come on.

The definition is the relevant one for the context. The definition of
affordable here is relative to the people who may buy it. If it is affordable
for >50% of new homebuilders in US, Europe, Japan, etc, and for the minority
middle classes in middle income countries (china, Brazil..) then it is
"affordable" in the context that we are talking about.

------
ksec
In the City with many high rise building, installing Solar Panel in lower rise
building causes horrible concentrated Light reflection. Generally I would
rather have utility making solar farm then roof top solar panel.

~~~
ghshephard
I've always thought that was an indication of poor efficiency on the part of
the PV Solar Panel module. Wouldn't you expect to see, on very efficient
Panels, no reflection? Indeed, isn't the ideal to see dark black pools where
the panels are doing their best work?

~~~
jakobegger
Even if the solar panel only reflects 1% of the light, the reflection of the
sun would still be blindingly bright.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Welding filter shade 5 lets through more light than that.

~~~
ghshephard
Can you look directly at the sun with a Welding Filter shade 5?

~~~
lotsofmangos
Not continuously for hours, that takes about 14 or 15. But it isn't dazzling.

