12 ms·

Tesla battery storage will accelerate exit of coal generators

146 points by ph0rque 11y ago

Havoc 11y ago
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.
- mrmagooey 11y ago
  Agreed, also need to keep in mind that "power utility" can describe 3 discrete agents in electricity markets: the generator, distributor and retailer. The distributors may find themselves with a more active role to play as everyone becomes a sporadic generator.
- jerf 11y ago
  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.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > you're not going to run an aluminum smelting plant off of a local, plant-owned installation of solar panels You are probably going to move where the power is cheap though: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/silicon-metal-producers-flock-to-iceland-for-cheap-power-prices http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/silicon-me... In this case, Alcoa is performing aluminum smelting in Iceland precisely because of cheaper geothermal power generation available there.
    - jerf 11y ago
      "You are probably going to move where the power is cheap though" Yes, as my pre-comment scan of the Wikipedia article on aluminum smelting (to double-check I had the right electricity-intensive industrial process) said in the second paragraph [1]. I didn't think it worth adding to the comment. Of course aluminum plants move to where electricity is cheap, all else being equal... exactly what alternative do you think I was proposing? Further, geothermal is significantly different for this use case, as geothermal can be used for base load applications where solar can not. Since such plants tend to run without regard for where the sun is in the sky, this sort of industry would be very difficult to run off of solar power without absurdly overprovisioning for power storage, which remains a significant problem at this scale. You are also not going to run your aluminum smelting plant for 18 hours out of the day on battery power! [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting
      - saalweachter 11y ago
        I don't know about aluminium smelters specifically, but I personally expect solar to invert the definition of off-peak electricity. Right now, electricity is cheaper at night because the demand is lower and coal plants have a minimum output, so anyone who needs a lot of electricity and can pick a time of day will use it at night. As solar becomes cheaper and more widespread, night-time electricity will become more expensive, because it is either stored in expensive batteries or generated from more expensive non-solar sources. So it seems likely to me that 10 or 20 years from now, electricity will be cheapest at noon and more expensive after dark. Here's another fun thought: 6% of electricity is lost due to transmission costs. Will it be more efficient (in some cases, at least) to physically move charged batteries from solar fields to (nearer to) end users than to send it over the wire?
        brc 11y ago
        >Here's another fun thought: 6% of electricity is lost due to transmission costs. Will it be more efficient (in some cases, at least) to physically move charged batteries from solar fields to (nearer to) end users than to send it over the wire? No, not in this universe, anyway. The most basic power distribution in the world is people with Ox and cart distributing lead/acid batteries to remote villages. Transmitting power this way is the least efficient way possible.
  - douche 11y ago
    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.
    - fennecfoxen 11y ago
      Turning bauxite into aluminum is an electrical process (they don't run on direct heat, steam, or mechanical power) and they use a lot of electricity (one reason aluminum-can recycling is such a big deal). Aluminum plants tend to end up in places with cheap electricity (especially hydroelectric) where they can absorb a lot of off-peak capacity as the power customer of last resort.
    - brc 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        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.
  - lotsofmangos 11y ago
    If you have a good location for a hydroelectric reservoir, apart from it being remote from population areas and existing generation capacity, you might well stick a smelter and some solar next to it.
  - brc 11y ago
    Aluminium smelters typically sign long term power agreements at a fixed price anyway. They typically cannot take advantage of increasing production in times of cheap power because of their agreements. Besides, an ability to increase production implies idle production capacity, which, as you state, is a poor use of capital allocation. Lots of people see a few solar panels and tesla announcing sleek batteries, and think a new age is upon us. Not yet.
  - Havoc 11y ago
    > think you're greatly overestimating the rate of the change Take a look at Hawaii - the "rate of the change" is so big the utility pretty much stopped connecting people's PV panels because the grid couldn't deal with it. As the percentage of renewables increases the fluctuations grow bigger. e.g. Germany already has 40GW of solar installed...so if its overcast then you need an entire fleet of nuclear plants to pick up the slack (sure it doesn't drop to 0GW but you get the point). Those companies you mentioned that will still need power - not sure how that is relevant to the fluctuations? Or do you propose that they carry to cost for everyone?
- jedmeyers 11y ago
  If only Enron was still a company as they were really good at seeking fair compensation for utility providers. I believe they would have found a way to do that again on this new landscape. </sarcasm>
- brc 11y ago
  You are greatly underestimating the production and distribution of power. Worldwide, solar and wind produces about 1% of energy. The majority of energy usage is in commercial processes - factories and commercial buildings. Think about an airline. To make money it has to fly when it's customers want to take a flight - not when the spot price of jet fuel is advantageous. An airline which flew when the price of flying was cheap would attract a niche market of price sensitive travellers. Everyone else wants the flight at a set time. The same goes for industrial production. If you spend money building a large commercial business which has specific energy needs, you want that asset producing a return as close as possible to 24x7x365. There are very few types of industry that lend themselves to batch production (which implies spending capital to create overcapacity to absorb spikes). The need for baseload generation is not going anywhere. The more advanced and productive the society, the higher the need for baseload power.
  - olau 11y ago
    > The need for baseload generation is not going anywhere. Yes, it is. Baseload is a principle you can take advantage of to introduce massive plants that need to output at 100% almost all the time, like nuclear plants. There's no intrinsic need for baseload. What matters is always matching the demand curve. You can do that with variable sources like wind and solar with a dispatchable source like hydro or gas, just as in the baseload + peak situation.
    - brc 11y ago
      No, that's wrong. Look around you at the things which are consuming power 24/7. Look beyond your dwelling at the street, the neighbourhood, the city and the country. All those things require constant power 24/7, without interruption. That is what baseload is. It's not some invention of the existing generation industry, it's a function of demand. It's not some conspiracy theory dreamt up by the nuclear power industry. Cities without baseload power have long periods of blackouts and intermittent power. These are places of lower standard of living.
Hypx 11y ago
I certainly hope this will be the end of coal. It would be the biggest single step forward in reducing GHG emissions.
- hueving 11y ago
  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":"5y"} http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ACI+Interactive#{"range":...
  - schainks 11y ago
    This. The number one influencer of grid tech investment is energy prices before politics (not going to discuss nuclear). Cheap gas -> we build more gas generators. Expensive gas -> we build fewer generators and even try to schedule less use of the ones we've already built, and bring online cheaper fuel sources (ie coal), etc.
  - Daishiman 11y ago
    Yes, but natural gas is not a magical solution for CO2 reduction. It's substantially better given the reduced particulates emissions, but you're still spewing tremendous amounts of GHG into the atmosphere.
    - stox 11y ago
      Per unit of heat generated, natural gas produces about half the CO2 of coal. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11 That is already a big win.
  - rgbrenner 11y ago
    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.pdf http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t32p01p1.pd... 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.
jharohit 11y ago
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/nclimate2564.html http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n4/full/nclimate25...) 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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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
marze 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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?
ksec 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    Even if the solar panel only reflects 1% of the light, the reflection of the sun would still be blindingly bright.
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      Re: "Even if the solar panel only reflects 1% of the light, the reflection of the sun would still be blindingly bright." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo suggests otherwise. 4% is equivalent to Black Asphalt (basically the least reflective common surface they could find).
      - jakobegger 11y ago
        I'm a bit late, but you are mixing up diffuse reflection with specular reflection. The problem with solar panels is that they are practically mirrors.
    - lotsofmangos 11y ago
      Welding filter shade 5 lets through more light than that.
      - 11y ago
yzh 11y ago
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."
- ghshephard 11y ago
  The batteries come with a 10 year warranty.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    And an optional 10 year extension.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      So at what capacity is the battery warranty going to kick in? At what number of deep-cycle discharges does it void?
      - ghshephard 11y ago
        There is some chatter that the 10 kWh battery is actually larger, under the hood, so deep-cycle discharges never occur. Anyways - the entire purpose of the 10 kWh battery, is to be used in scenarios in which you fill them with Solar during the day and (potentially) drain them at night. So, unless someone states otherwise, I'd presume daily full discharge of the 10 kWh for that 10 year warranty.
- TaylorAlexander 11y ago
  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.
BendertheRobot 11y ago
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-teslas-powerwall-is-just-another-toy-for-rich-green-people/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why...
- ghshephard 11y ago
  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.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/13/solar-wind-power-prices-often-lower-fossil-fuel-power-prices/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/13/solar-wind-power-prices-... "Deutsche Bank actually predicts that all 50 US states will be at grid parity by 2016 — that’s next year. (Note that it takes several years to build coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants.) Deutsche Bank also predicts that ~80% of the global electricity market will be at grid parity by 2017. This is why solar power is scaring coal companies, natural gas companies, and utilities so much, and why you see so many anti-solar myths out there being repeated over and over again… despite being several years out of date."
  - hueving 11y ago
    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?
beloch 11y ago
Question: How easy will it be to recycle these battery packs once they've been cycled too many times to be effective?
- nodivbyzero 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      Tesla has already built recycling into the lifecycle (outsource to Umicore since 2011):
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
jheriko 11y ago
i like how everyone's definition of affordable is different. us centric net journalists seem to have a pretty low bar in particular...
- netcan 11y ago
  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.
- will_hughes 11y ago
  FYI: It's a write-up on an Australian site, by an Australian journo.
ck2 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.

146 points by ph0rque 11y ago

Havoc 11y ago

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.

mrmagooey 11y ago
Agreed, also need to keep in mind that "power utility" can describe 3 discrete agents in electricity markets: the generator, distributor and retailer. The distributors may find themselves with a more active role to play as everyone becomes a sporadic generator.
jerf 11y ago
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.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > you're not going to run an aluminum smelting plant off of a local, plant-owned installation of solar panels You are probably going to move where the power is cheap though: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/silicon-metal-producers-flock-to-iceland-for-cheap-power-prices http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/silicon-me... In this case, Alcoa is performing aluminum smelting in Iceland precisely because of cheaper geothermal power generation available there.
  - jerf 11y ago
    "You are probably going to move where the power is cheap though" Yes, as my pre-comment scan of the Wikipedia article on aluminum smelting (to double-check I had the right electricity-intensive industrial process) said in the second paragraph [1]. I didn't think it worth adding to the comment. Of course aluminum plants move to where electricity is cheap, all else being equal... exactly what alternative do you think I was proposing? Further, geothermal is significantly different for this use case, as geothermal can be used for base load applications where solar can not. Since such plants tend to run without regard for where the sun is in the sky, this sort of industry would be very difficult to run off of solar power without absurdly overprovisioning for power storage, which remains a significant problem at this scale. You are also not going to run your aluminum smelting plant for 18 hours out of the day on battery power! [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting
    - saalweachter 11y ago
      I don't know about aluminium smelters specifically, but I personally expect solar to invert the definition of off-peak electricity. Right now, electricity is cheaper at night because the demand is lower and coal plants have a minimum output, so anyone who needs a lot of electricity and can pick a time of day will use it at night. As solar becomes cheaper and more widespread, night-time electricity will become more expensive, because it is either stored in expensive batteries or generated from more expensive non-solar sources. So it seems likely to me that 10 or 20 years from now, electricity will be cheapest at noon and more expensive after dark. Here's another fun thought: 6% of electricity is lost due to transmission costs. Will it be more efficient (in some cases, at least) to physically move charged batteries from solar fields to (nearer to) end users than to send it over the wire?
      - brc 11y ago
        >Here's another fun thought: 6% of electricity is lost due to transmission costs. Will it be more efficient (in some cases, at least) to physically move charged batteries from solar fields to (nearer to) end users than to send it over the wire? No, not in this universe, anyway. The most basic power distribution in the world is people with Ox and cart distributing lead/acid batteries to remote villages. Transmitting power this way is the least efficient way possible.
- douche 11y ago
  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.
  - fennecfoxen 11y ago
    Turning bauxite into aluminum is an electrical process (they don't run on direct heat, steam, or mechanical power) and they use a lot of electricity (one reason aluminum-can recycling is such a big deal). Aluminum plants tend to end up in places with cheap electricity (especially hydroelectric) where they can absorb a lot of off-peak capacity as the power customer of last resort.
  - brc 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
- lotsofmangos 11y ago
  If you have a good location for a hydroelectric reservoir, apart from it being remote from population areas and existing generation capacity, you might well stick a smelter and some solar next to it.
- brc 11y ago
  Aluminium smelters typically sign long term power agreements at a fixed price anyway. They typically cannot take advantage of increasing production in times of cheap power because of their agreements. Besides, an ability to increase production implies idle production capacity, which, as you state, is a poor use of capital allocation. Lots of people see a few solar panels and tesla announcing sleek batteries, and think a new age is upon us. Not yet.
- Havoc 11y ago
  > think you're greatly overestimating the rate of the change Take a look at Hawaii - the "rate of the change" is so big the utility pretty much stopped connecting people's PV panels because the grid couldn't deal with it. As the percentage of renewables increases the fluctuations grow bigger. e.g. Germany already has 40GW of solar installed...so if its overcast then you need an entire fleet of nuclear plants to pick up the slack (sure it doesn't drop to 0GW but you get the point). Those companies you mentioned that will still need power - not sure how that is relevant to the fluctuations? Or do you propose that they carry to cost for everyone?
jedmeyers 11y ago
If only Enron was still a company as they were really good at seeking fair compensation for utility providers. I believe they would have found a way to do that again on this new landscape. </sarcasm>
brc 11y ago
You are greatly underestimating the production and distribution of power. Worldwide, solar and wind produces about 1% of energy. The majority of energy usage is in commercial processes - factories and commercial buildings. Think about an airline. To make money it has to fly when it's customers want to take a flight - not when the spot price of jet fuel is advantageous. An airline which flew when the price of flying was cheap would attract a niche market of price sensitive travellers. Everyone else wants the flight at a set time. The same goes for industrial production. If you spend money building a large commercial business which has specific energy needs, you want that asset producing a return as close as possible to 24x7x365. There are very few types of industry that lend themselves to batch production (which implies spending capital to create overcapacity to absorb spikes). The need for baseload generation is not going anywhere. The more advanced and productive the society, the higher the need for baseload power.
- olau 11y ago
  > The need for baseload generation is not going anywhere. Yes, it is. Baseload is a principle you can take advantage of to introduce massive plants that need to output at 100% almost all the time, like nuclear plants. There's no intrinsic need for baseload. What matters is always matching the demand curve. You can do that with variable sources like wind and solar with a dispatchable source like hydro or gas, just as in the baseload + peak situation.
  - brc 11y ago
    No, that's wrong. Look around you at the things which are consuming power 24/7. Look beyond your dwelling at the street, the neighbourhood, the city and the country. All those things require constant power 24/7, without interruption. That is what baseload is. It's not some invention of the existing generation industry, it's a function of demand. It's not some conspiracy theory dreamt up by the nuclear power industry. Cities without baseload power have long periods of blackouts and intermittent power. These are places of lower standard of living.

Hypx 11y ago

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

hueving 11y ago
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":"5y"} http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ACI+Interactive#{"range":...
- schainks 11y ago
  This. The number one influencer of grid tech investment is energy prices before politics (not going to discuss nuclear). Cheap gas -> we build more gas generators. Expensive gas -> we build fewer generators and even try to schedule less use of the ones we've already built, and bring online cheaper fuel sources (ie coal), etc.
- Daishiman 11y ago
  Yes, but natural gas is not a magical solution for CO2 reduction. It's substantially better given the reduced particulates emissions, but you're still spewing tremendous amounts of GHG into the atmosphere.
  - stox 11y ago
    Per unit of heat generated, natural gas produces about half the CO2 of coal. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11 That is already a big win.
- rgbrenner 11y ago
  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.pdf http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t32p01p1.pd... 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.

jharohit 11y ago

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/nclimate2564.html http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n4/full/nclimate25...) 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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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

marze 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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?

ksec 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  Even if the solar panel only reflects 1% of the light, the reflection of the sun would still be blindingly bright.
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    Re: "Even if the solar panel only reflects 1% of the light, the reflection of the sun would still be blindingly bright." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo suggests otherwise. 4% is equivalent to Black Asphalt (basically the least reflective common surface they could find).
    - jakobegger 11y ago
      I'm a bit late, but you are mixing up diffuse reflection with specular reflection. The problem with solar panels is that they are practically mirrors.
  - lotsofmangos 11y ago
    Welding filter shade 5 lets through more light than that.
    - 11y ago

yzh 11y ago

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."

ghshephard 11y ago
The batteries come with a 10 year warranty.
- kbenson 11y ago
  And an optional 10 year extension.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    So at what capacity is the battery warranty going to kick in? At what number of deep-cycle discharges does it void?
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      There is some chatter that the 10 kWh battery is actually larger, under the hood, so deep-cycle discharges never occur. Anyways - the entire purpose of the 10 kWh battery, is to be used in scenarios in which you fill them with Solar during the day and (potentially) drain them at night. So, unless someone states otherwise, I'd presume daily full discharge of the 10 kWh for that 10 year warranty.
TaylorAlexander 11y ago
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.

BendertheRobot 11y ago

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-teslas-powerwall-is-just-another-toy-for-rich-green-people/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why...

ghshephard 11y ago
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.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/13/solar-wind-power-prices-often-lower-fossil-fuel-power-prices/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/13/solar-wind-power-prices-... "Deutsche Bank actually predicts that all 50 US states will be at grid parity by 2016 — that’s next year. (Note that it takes several years to build coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants.) Deutsche Bank also predicts that ~80% of the global electricity market will be at grid parity by 2017. This is why solar power is scaring coal companies, natural gas companies, and utilities so much, and why you see so many anti-solar myths out there being repeated over and over again… despite being several years out of date."
- hueving 11y ago
  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?

beloch 11y ago

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

nodivbyzero 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    Tesla has already built recycling into the lifecycle (outsource to Umicore since 2011):
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

jheriko 11y ago

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

netcan 11y ago
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.
will_hughes 11y ago
FYI: It's a write-up on an Australian site, by an Australian journo.

ck2 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.