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Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%
- vosper 8y agoFor 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.
- SEJeff 8y agoIn the long run, it does seem like a bigger business opportunity than the vehicle based business.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- _ph_ 8y agoThe car sales of Tesla are creating the battery production volume that allows to be price competitive for the grid solutions. Grid scale battery storage will be the future, as the car industry alone is going to increase the world battery production by about 100x, driving down the prices strongly, and not even counting the second life of car cells in storage after they are down on capacity.
- _o_ 8y agoHm, I wonder where they will get enough lithium, or they are using some other technology?
- bdamm 8y agoIs lithium hard to acquire? Sure, it's costly to mine, but it's not like there are shortages. Besides, it seems that Australia is a major producer of lithium.
- _ph_ 8y agoIn a Tesla battery pack there is only about 8 kg of lithium used - less than lead in a normal car battery. As lithium is a rather common element, it shouldn't be too difficult to mine it in the neccesary amount. Current mining capacitly is set by the comparatively low demand before electric cars.
- foepys 8y agoLithium will never be a problem. Cobalt and rare earth elements will be.
- mrep 8y agoI've been meaning to do the math on how much capacity used car batteries can be continuously recycled into grid storage where capacity/weight isn't a big deal but haven't gotten around to it. My hunch is that those used batteries will single handedly store peak reusable energy for down times if electric cars grow to dominate the market.
- _ph_ 8y agoThe current automobile production is over 70 million/year. The battery capacity for a single car ranges from 30-100 kWh. The current middle class is offering 60kWh (Model3, Bolt, Leaf 2019). So if we assume only 30 kWh/car at the end of the useful battery life, we get about 2 TWh of used battery capacity every year - though that point of time is quite in the future, as batteries are expected to last at least 10 years, if not more. As a comparison, the daily energy usage of Germany is about 1.6 TWh.
- Osseric 8y agoAre they unique in the fact that they're uniquely producable by Tesla? I agree it's a much more tangible market from my perspective (ref. the prod issue on the vehicle side) and is only really purchasable by state actors. If they can get the first mover advantage actually rolling before someone else enters the market than this will be a huge boon to their bottom line.
- hinkley 8y agoThe history of business is littered with companies that got into business to do A, discovered they couldn't make that work unless someone tackled B, did B because nobody else was doing it well enough, then stopped doing A because they were doing so well at B.
- adwn 8y agoDo you have a couple of examples?
- anoncoward111 8y agoAmazon got into the business of selling goods online, but it turns out that renting their computers to others is way more profitable
- ZWoz 8y agoAmazon isn't stopped doing A and I would say thet they are still more known as A company - average person on street probably don't know AWS. That said, I am sure there is good examples company doing A but abondoning it to more profitable B.
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- icebraining 8y agoDocker was originally an internal tool to power dotCloud's platform.
- hinkley 8y agoF5 was a load balancer for a video game. In that article about financial concerns of pot growers in Colorado a few months back there were two people moving into services and out of growing. And some restaurants switch to wholesaling and distributing their more noteworthy products and either close the restaurant or hand it over to somebody else to manage. When you used to be the customer for your new product you have access to a wealth of insights about what could make the product work. If you are better at that than your old product, well...
- ballenf 8y agoWhere'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 8y agoFYI 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-battery-cells-129-mwh-south-australia-facility/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/30/tesla-using-samsung-sdi...
- altcognito 8y agoWow, 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)
- jgord 8y agoTesla's core innovation is that they don't give a fuck about nonsense opinions, they care about facts - science and engineering. Plenty of other viable technologies exist, we just need some rich science-aware people to help us roll them out.
- vosper 8y agoMaybe little more than big-time name recognition and a first-mover advantage (but I imagine there's some good engineering and a few patents in there, too). That worked long enough for IBM :)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dougmany 8y agoThere was a link here recently with a video of a consultant talking about a Model 3 tear-down. He basically said the "Skateboard" was amazing, the rest of the car was sub par. The were most impressed with the battery pack, saying it was was above and beyond anything they had seen with cell to cell voltages being astonishingly close.
- zaroth 8y agoAlso the electronic control systems, motors, suspension, and drivetrain. You know, everything but the fit and finish.
- jessaustin 8y agoIsn't all that part of the skateboard?
- inopinatus 8y agoTesla is as much a battery company as Cray was a refrigeration company.
- icebraining 8y agoYou mean, except for the fact that Tesla sells batteries, whereas Craig never sold refrigeration products?
- inopinatus 8y agoSeymour Cray sold Freon cooling systems with an integrated supercomputer. Famous for it. Any bio of Cray will speak of his pioneering work in refrigeration. “Remove heat” was practically design rule #1. Hilarious stories are told of Cray machines where the processor crashed but not the refrigeration, and a block of supercomputing ice was found the next morning. So it is with Tesla, who will be remembered for their batteries.
- RandomNameName 8y agoThe point behind Gigafactory1 and any subsequent gargantuan battery plants it's to drive the cost of all Tesla batteries down. Decreased cost per unit is increased margin. The reason Elon is pushing, pushing, pushing is because the longer he has the (diminishing) lowest cost of batteries, he's ahead of everyone else. People thought he was of his rocker when he bought Solar City; it's all one giant play to have the cheapest cost per battery. Sidenote, commercial and utility battery backup like this have been sold for over 10 years. Unless you were a hotel in Vegas, you probably weren't noticing. Did they sell many, dunno, but they've been working at every distribution for a long time.
- ggm 8y agoThis 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.
- krl02 8y agoLife is hugely politicized We think we’re boxing it off from that but if you look closer, through the abstract nonsense people peddle, you’ll see it comes down to a political yes/no process You’re welcome to pretend otherwise. I’d rather just dispense with the notion life is anything but dialog back and forth, jockeying for acceptance and access into some clique or the “right” to build useful infra
- jgord 8y agoYou comment seems to suggest there is some rational decision making emerging from an open back-n-forth of facts and ideas. I wish that were the case, but the simplest explanation of political reality both in AUS and USA is that our leaders owe favors to a few very rich people, in fact work for them.
- ggm 8y agoCan you explain in this model, how any useful bipartisan investment happened, in the past wartime expediency aside? I think its true this has always been a dimension of things, but the scale of this dimension set against other dimensions has substantially changed in the last two decades. Before this, there were some things that both (notional) sides were prepared to express some unanimity on. For example: "soviet power plus electricity == socialism" did not actually stop anyone of a more rightist persuasion from investing in electic generation.. did it?
- boyter 8y agoIt’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.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ImaCake 8y agoThe 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-weatherill-verbal-biff/8359056 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/josh-frydenberg-jay-we...
- jamdav16 8y agoNo 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/jay-weatherill-gives-josh-frydenberg-a-serve-at-bizarre-media-conference-video https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2017/mar/16...
- bassman9000 8y agoZero 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.
- the8472 8y ago> decomissioning You have to decomission nuclear plants unless you want radioactive waste in your ground water. You don't have to do such a thing with wind turbines. You could just let them turn into industrial ruins. It's probably more economical to recycle the materials, but that's a choice. > construction All plants require that. Nuclear or coal plants are not made from unicorn hair and dreams. And modern wind turbine blades are made of reinforced fiberglass composites, not aluminium.
- chatmasta 8y agoI'm not an environmental scientist, but I thought this argument is usually applied to the cost of mining and refining the materials used to make the batteries and solar cells, which are not necessary for other methods of electricity generation.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoNo 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.
- mmanfrin 8y agoIt is so obnoxious when a website immediately asks to send you notifications.
- ovao 8y agoI’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 8y agoGmail 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 8y agoSlack too ("Slack needs your permission to enable desktop notifications"). But I don't find it more annoying than showing the prompt.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoIt will be nice when someone discovers the next step: A catalog of topical subscriptions, which you only offer after the user has signaled interest in a specific subdomain. What’s galling about the immediate ask is the site knows literally nothing about my intents and is deigning to suggest content to me.
- aembleton 8y agoIn Firefox: - about:config - Find dom.webnotifications.enabled - Set to False
- _bxg1 8y agoGood to hear. Hopefully the massive success they're having in this area can carry them through their car troubles until that becomes profitable too.
- otalp 8y agoTheir Q1 earning report revealed they lost money on the grid service.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago1.0s needn’t be profitable.
- ggm 8y agopointer 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.
- _nalply 8y agoWhich one is cheaper to build and operate: Pumped hydro or batteries?
- vasco 8y agoIn a lot of places pumped hydro is at capacity. There's only so many rivers, but you can generally put batteries anywhere.
- tripletao 8y agoAlso not directly comparable, since the batteries respond near-instantly but pumped hydro still has some lag.
- jaddood 8y agoYou 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 8y agoTo 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 8y agoCould be a dry lake tho, no? Are those rare?
- _nalply 8y agoI forgot to add: in Switzerland. Switzerland is big on pumped hydro. Is pumped hydro in Switzerland cheaper than batteries?
- ggm 8y ago
- foobar1962 8y agoThe 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 8y agoIt'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.