3 ms·
If I understood correctly, they are using batteries in same manner as pumped storage: https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower https://www.e
by _o_ 8y ago
If I understood correctly, they are using batteries in same manner as pumped storage:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower
We have a few of those for decades, it is actually quite simple, when there is surplus of el. energy it is used to pump water on a hill and acumulate it there. When you need it, the water is than used to generate el. energy. This is the traditional way of flattening the spikes in el. grid.
Now I wonder why the batteries were choosen instead of water, are they cheaper? Does it acumulate more energy on less space than water, it is due to efficiency (there is some loss when you pump water up) or for Austrialia, the water based storage is just not an option (not enough water / hills)?
- icebraining 8y ago(Warning: I have zero expertise on this) Apparently there's an argument about that, since there's a plan to upgrade the Snowy Hydro pumped storage system, but it'll cost $2B and it couldn't be done in 100 days like the Tesla installation. The other advantage seems to be that the battery can respond very quickly (0.14s), so it's still useful to avoid instability in the network.
- zik 8y agoThey're not using it in the same manner as pumped storage. They're using it for millisecond level FCAS response. Turbines can't do that very well.