6 ms·

Has anyone done the math to determine whether the added wear-and-tear on the battery is negated by the payout? I wouldn’t want to go from a 7-10 year battery

by xattt 4y ago

Has anyone done the math to determine whether the added wear-and-tear on the battery is negated by the payout? I wouldn’t want to go from a 7-10 year battery replacement cycle to a 3-5 year battery replacement cycle out of pocket just because “I’m Doin’ My Part for the Grid(TM)”.

drewnick 4y ago
At $2/kWh you’re making as much as $16-$20 per cycle so it is almost certainly worth it to the battery owner to use your battery for this vs. load shifting, etc.
- bdamm 4y ago
  $2/kWh is insane though. My power rate is $0.12/kWh. $2/kWh is still 6x California’s most expensive power.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > $2/kWh is still 6x California’s most expensive power. You only need that power ("operating reserve") for extremely short times in a day, the rest of the time the power plant stays idle. Mostly these are hydro pump dams or gas peakers (as they can start in well under 60 seconds), batteries are a relatively new thing - and all three of them are pretty expensive to build, so it is obvious that their power generation comes at a high enough price that the plants still stay profitable.
  - jpalomaki 4y ago
    Yesterday the peak price for electricity in Europe was 4€/kWh (that was in Estonia, was one hour period, due to some production issues at multiple power plants).[1] [1] https://news.err.ee/1608686533/estonia-s-electricity-price-to-peak-at-record-4-000-per-mwh-on-wednesday https://news.err.ee/1608686533/estonia-s-electricity-price-t...
    - ragebol 4y ago
      And FWIW: I pay 0.42029€/kWh to my provider in the Netherlands while getting back 0.115€/kWh back for every kWh delivered back to the grid (after I generated and used most of it in my home) Used to be 0.23ct or something. I don't want to talk about or look at the prices for a cubic meter of gas...
      - jnsaff2 4y ago
        Here in Estonia the spot market pricing works the same both ways. So I set my system to feed at 7kW during the hour and made about 28EUR for helping the grid. That is twice the $2/kWh this Tesla peak power provides but it's literally the only time price has gone this high.
  - dtech 4y ago
    You're confusing peak pricing with average pricing. Peak price is about 50-250x as much as average price.
_ea1k 4y ago
During the trial its $2/kwh. A powerwall costs ~$10.5k for a single unit with a capacity of 13.5KWh. You'd need to do 5MWh to pay for the powerwall, and that would be ~370 cycles. The pack should be good for over 1k cycles. This is definitely a beneficial thing for the owner at these prices.
- judge2020 4y ago
  For reference: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/powerwall/powerwall_2_ac_warranty_us_1-4.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/powerwall/pow... If it's being used for solar-piped home backup it's covered for unlimited cycles, and for any other usage they rate it for 37.8 MWh of lifetime AC output. Now, I don't see anything talking about the Powerwall's warranty within this article explaining Tesla VPP, so whether or not this might be considered when they determine warranty eligibility is anyone's guess.
- dskloet 4y ago
  I would think that just charging $2/kWh during peak time would be enough to bring down peak load without using any batteries.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Well, yeah, probably. You'll also make a lot of people unhappy $2/kWh is very expensive. I guess by paying the powerwall users you can limit how much you spend with them. Not sure with how much local granularity can you turn them on, but it definitely helps
    - dskloet 4y ago
      How can they pay powerwall users $2 if they're not actually charging $2?
      - sebzim4500 4y ago
        Presumably most of the time they are charging end users more than they are paying energy providers.
philshem 4y ago
Although it was a much more extreme event, no fewer than 246 people died because of the Texas outage in 2021. It’s not just the economy that can suffer if there is a grid outage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
- cdot2 4y ago
  That 246 includes all deaths directly or indirectly attributed to the storm. Not specifically the power outages. "In addition to hypothermia, DSHS attributed the storm-related deaths to "exacerbation of pre-existing illness" (10%), motor vehicle accidents (9%), carbon monoxide poisoning (8%), fires (4%) and falls (4%)."
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Seeing as the storm does not produce carbon monoxide itself, I think "storm related" here includes "people dying because the storm knocked out their power"
    - cdot2 4y ago
      not having power also doesn't produce carbon monoxide
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        Portable combustion heaters do. People were using those because they didn't have gas or power for heat, and that's usually how people end up dead from CO. I don't think there's an honest way to spin that into not being the storm and grid failure's fault.
- everforward 4y ago
  The flip side is that in an event like that, the power is worth far more than $20 to the owner of the PowerWall. I lived through that outage, and I lost more than $20 in food that spoiled in the fridge/freezer (didn't have a good storage container to put it outside where the raccoons/cats couldn't get it). Some people lost dramatically more than that when their pipes froze and burst. Central heating also doesn't work without power. They draw less than 600 watts. In that situation, would you rather have $20 or enough power to have your heating run for 24 hours? And that's actual runtime, you could probably keep your house warm-ish for 2 or 3 days by turning it on and off. Personally, I'd only be interested if joining something like VPP came with a substantial subsidy on the price of the PowerWall or a monthly payment that could offset a significant portion of the cost. Or it had enough storage that I actually had extra power after running essentials (it does not currently).
panick21_ 4y ago
These stationary battery should not require anywhere close to a 7-10 year cycle. The chemitry should be above 80% for much longer and te battery should stay usable for decades.
lm28469 4y ago
> out of pocket just because “I’m Doin’ My Part for the Grid(TM)”. Exact mentality why we'll never ever fix our ways of life
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  The grid in California is run by a problematic for-profit company that has a history of starting deadly wildfires. People should generally be willing to make sacrifices to help the greater good, I’m sympathetic to people who don’t feel obligated to do their part.
dhsysusbsjsi 4y ago
For Australia, it was not worth it, except to get a few thousand off the purchase price (then quit VPP as soon as humanly possible). My experience was their algorithm is terrible and it gets into a charge+discharge cycle for no reason for hours at a time, costing $0.40 to charge and earning $0.10 to discharge, plus wear, for no benefit to the grid. I used to turn off my battery a lot.

by xattt 4y ago

drewnick 4y ago

At $2/kWh you’re making as much as $16-$20 per cycle so it is almost certainly worth it to the battery owner to use your battery for this vs. load shifting, etc.

bdamm 4y ago
$2/kWh is insane though. My power rate is $0.12/kWh. $2/kWh is still 6x California’s most expensive power.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > $2/kWh is still 6x California’s most expensive power. You only need that power ("operating reserve") for extremely short times in a day, the rest of the time the power plant stays idle. Mostly these are hydro pump dams or gas peakers (as they can start in well under 60 seconds), batteries are a relatively new thing - and all three of them are pretty expensive to build, so it is obvious that their power generation comes at a high enough price that the plants still stay profitable.
- jpalomaki 4y ago
  Yesterday the peak price for electricity in Europe was 4€/kWh (that was in Estonia, was one hour period, due to some production issues at multiple power plants).[1] [1] https://news.err.ee/1608686533/estonia-s-electricity-price-to-peak-at-record-4-000-per-mwh-on-wednesday https://news.err.ee/1608686533/estonia-s-electricity-price-t...
  - ragebol 4y ago
    And FWIW: I pay 0.42029€/kWh to my provider in the Netherlands while getting back 0.115€/kWh back for every kWh delivered back to the grid (after I generated and used most of it in my home) Used to be 0.23ct or something. I don't want to talk about or look at the prices for a cubic meter of gas...
    - jnsaff2 4y ago
      Here in Estonia the spot market pricing works the same both ways. So I set my system to feed at 7kW during the hour and made about 28EUR for helping the grid. That is twice the $2/kWh this Tesla peak power provides but it's literally the only time price has gone this high.
- dtech 4y ago
  You're confusing peak pricing with average pricing. Peak price is about 50-250x as much as average price.

_ea1k 4y ago

During the trial its $2/kwh. A powerwall costs ~$10.5k for a single unit with a capacity of 13.5KWh. You'd need to do 5MWh to pay for the powerwall, and that would be ~370 cycles. The pack should be good for over 1k cycles. This is definitely a beneficial thing for the owner at these prices.

judge2020 4y ago
For reference: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/powerwall/powerwall_2_ac_warranty_us_1-4.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/powerwall/pow... If it's being used for solar-piped home backup it's covered for unlimited cycles, and for any other usage they rate it for 37.8 MWh of lifetime AC output. Now, I don't see anything talking about the Powerwall's warranty within this article explaining Tesla VPP, so whether or not this might be considered when they determine warranty eligibility is anyone's guess.
dskloet 4y ago
I would think that just charging $2/kWh during peak time would be enough to bring down peak load without using any batteries.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Well, yeah, probably. You'll also make a lot of people unhappy $2/kWh is very expensive. I guess by paying the powerwall users you can limit how much you spend with them. Not sure with how much local granularity can you turn them on, but it definitely helps
  - dskloet 4y ago
    How can they pay powerwall users $2 if they're not actually charging $2?
    - sebzim4500 4y ago
      Presumably most of the time they are charging end users more than they are paying energy providers.

philshem 4y ago

Although it was a much more extreme event, no fewer than 246 people died because of the Texas outage in 2021. It’s not just the economy that can suffer if there is a grid outage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

cdot2 4y ago
That 246 includes all deaths directly or indirectly attributed to the storm. Not specifically the power outages. "In addition to hypothermia, DSHS attributed the storm-related deaths to "exacerbation of pre-existing illness" (10%), motor vehicle accidents (9%), carbon monoxide poisoning (8%), fires (4%) and falls (4%)."
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Seeing as the storm does not produce carbon monoxide itself, I think "storm related" here includes "people dying because the storm knocked out their power"
  - cdot2 4y ago
    not having power also doesn't produce carbon monoxide
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      Portable combustion heaters do. People were using those because they didn't have gas or power for heat, and that's usually how people end up dead from CO. I don't think there's an honest way to spin that into not being the storm and grid failure's fault.
everforward 4y ago
The flip side is that in an event like that, the power is worth far more than $20 to the owner of the PowerWall. I lived through that outage, and I lost more than $20 in food that spoiled in the fridge/freezer (didn't have a good storage container to put it outside where the raccoons/cats couldn't get it). Some people lost dramatically more than that when their pipes froze and burst. Central heating also doesn't work without power. They draw less than 600 watts. In that situation, would you rather have $20 or enough power to have your heating run for 24 hours? And that's actual runtime, you could probably keep your house warm-ish for 2 or 3 days by turning it on and off. Personally, I'd only be interested if joining something like VPP came with a substantial subsidy on the price of the PowerWall or a monthly payment that could offset a significant portion of the cost. Or it had enough storage that I actually had extra power after running essentials (it does not currently).

panick21_ 4y ago

These stationary battery should not require anywhere close to a 7-10 year cycle. The chemitry should be above 80% for much longer and te battery should stay usable for decades.

lm28469 4y ago

> out of pocket just because “I’m Doin’ My Part for the Grid(TM)”. Exact mentality why we'll never ever fix our ways of life

vineyardmike 4y ago
The grid in California is run by a problematic for-profit company that has a history of starting deadly wildfires. People should generally be willing to make sacrifices to help the greater good, I’m sympathetic to people who don’t feel obligated to do their part.

dhsysusbsjsi 4y ago

For Australia, it was not worth it, except to get a few thousand off the purchase price (then quit VPP as soon as humanly possible). My experience was their algorithm is terrible and it gets into a charge+discharge cycle for no reason for hours at a time, costing $0.40 to charge and earning $0.10 to discharge, plus wear, for no benefit to the grid. I used to turn off my battery a lot.