Elon Musk: I Can Fix South Australia Power Network in 100 Days Or It's Free (theguardian.com) 274
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Guardian: Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of electric car giant Tesla, has thrown down a challenge to the South Australian and federal governments, saying he can solve the state's energy woes within 100 days -- or he'll deliver the 100MW battery storage system for free. On Thursday, Lyndon Rive, Tesla's vice-president for energy products, told the AFR the company could install the 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage that would be required to prevent the power shortages that have been causing price spikes and blackouts in the state. Thanks to stepped-up production out of Tesla's new Gigafactory in Nevada, he said it could be achieved within 100 days. Mike Cannon-Brookes, the Australian co-founder of Silicon Valley startup Atlassian, on Friday tweeted Elon Musk, asking if Tesla was serious about being able to install the capacity. Musk replied that the company could do it in 100 days of the contract being signed, or else provide it free, adding: "That serious enough for you?"
Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They'll be delivered by a suborbital flight made by a Falcon rocket, of course. ;)
Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Funny)
The only logical solution is a hyperloop between Nevada and Australia. It wouldn't take long at the 600 mph, plus in a low-pressure environment the resulting fire from a mishap wouldn't spread quickly. :-)
Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Funny)
I think the fastest route would be a Falcon rocket going through a tunnel bored straight from Nevada to Australia.
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I think the fastest route would be a Falcon rocket going through a tunnel bored straight from Nevada to Australia.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of that!
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Good point - that's one of Musk's companies, too - right?
Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Informative)
No, the fastest route between two points is to make the two points the same.
Open a hole in the space-time continuum and move the batteries via folded space. It's the fastest way possible, right?
That'll take a lot of Spice
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Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Informative)
charter air freight.
Or regular air freight (but with the HazMat surcharge from the freight company).
They're only banned on passenger aircraft.
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if he used his (or his company's) own aircraft, or even chartered them vs using an air freight service, i don't think the same restrictions apply.
this is a straightforward marketing ploy.. win-win all the way. whether he meets the deadline or not, its big huge PR. and when (not if) the grid storage capacity works at this scale, it's advertising gold for similar installations. so ya, he'd pull out all the stops and spare no expenses on getting the product from nevada to australia.
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They have this thing called 'insurance' so if something happens to the boat the person shipping the items will be reimbursed.
I don't think Musk needs insurance. He could just pay for the ship.
And why are people worrying so much about the battery blowing up? Presumably it will be transported uncharged.
Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Informative)
And why are people worrying so much about the battery blowing up? Presumably it will be transported uncharged.
Despite what some think, Lithium-Ion based batteries are most at risk when either overcharged or undercharged. You want to keep them at around 40% charge to minimize the reactions in the battery.
Depleted Li-Ion batteries are dangerous enough that there's protection circuitry in them that kills the battery if it drops low enough, after which it will refuse to charge.
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I'm certain that the contract will deal with all the roadblocks.
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He said from the "day the contract is signed", meaning all those things will be covered by the contract.
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" how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?"
With an insurance policy.
It's about 3 weeks by boat. That gives about 25 days for production, 25 to ship, and 40 for installation with 10 leftover for the party afterwards.
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Plus if they're in-negotiations and it looks like the contract will be signed, they'd probably speculatively allocate production for the project, both of the batteries and of other system components. If that ~month manufacturing time under-contract can be reduced then that gives more time for on-site installation and troubleshooting prior to going live. And if the contract falls through those batteries and other components would probably find uses elsewhere anyway.
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Lead time (Score:3)
I'm curious to know how they plan to transport them. It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough?
A container ship can cross the pacific in 2-4 weeks so that's not a big deal. Lead time would be a serious problem though for his 100 day boast. Presume it takes 20 days to transport the batteries and maybe another 30-40 to build them all (probably optimistic), they would be left with maybe a month to design, install and test the whole thing. Not saying it would be impossible but it would be a tight squeeze most likely unless he has already built the batteries and designed the system. He could probably
Scrum, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
> Presume it takes 20 days to transport the batteries and maybe another 30-40 to build them all (probably optimistic), they would be left with maybe a month to design, install and test the whole thing.
So you would build it and deliver it, THEN start designing it? A Scrum advocate I'm guessing.
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If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently?
The restrictions are on shipping them on passenger airplanes [iata.org]. You can still fly them around on a cargo plane [iata.org], where the tolerance for risk has always been significantly higher.
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If they go by boat how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?
Maybe there's an autonomous drone ship available for a jaunt down under.
n/t: if /. is so desparate for ad revenue that they're willing to make the site nearly unusable with these half-page ads, I guess we're counting the days to a parked page. Sad, really.
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Well anyway they do it will requires fleets of vessels. We are talking hundreds of tons batteries.
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Well anyway they do it will requires fleets of vessels. We are talking hundreds of tons batteries.
A standard, old-school "Panamax" freighter can carry about 45,000 tons of cargo (plus the weight of the containers). The new freighters for the bigger canal can carry more than twice that. There's a reason freight moves by water where practical.
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If I were Tesla, I'd make the entire system fit in shipping containers. Given he has the things already produced, ship them right away, spread them out across 5 boats and ship an extra boat or two for redundancy (the government is going to be paying for it ANYWAY), plug the shipping containers in the grid and where necessary to each other. Within Australia, you can dispatch hundreds of trucks right away with some geographical redundancy (so a new container isn't too far away regardless of losses)
The entire
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The regulations on shipping via air including provisions based on the State of Charge of a battery, so an uncharged (or minimally charged) battery would be able to be shipped. I may be wrong, but this seems like something that won't be an issue.
Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.anl.com.au/ebusine... [anl.com.au]
Long Beach loading March 12, arrival Sydney Apr 4.
23 days ocean transit, plus a couple of days screwing around at both ends, easily from origin to destination 30d.
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Um You ship them UPS...
https://www.ups.com/media/news... [ups.com]
Seriously the stringent regulations only apply to passenger air craft. Since most US mail is transported by passenger aircraft, you can't mail batteries. But you can ship them UPS with pre-approval from UPS. For sufficient cash, I'm sure UPS or any other cargo airliner will happily load an entire plane with lithium ion batteries.
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It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough?
About 8-12 days.
Now you can add another 40 days for logistics on the sending side, customs out, customs in and logistics on the receiving side, but those exist with a plane too.
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If the batteries will be made in Nevada, and shipped to Australia, I'm curious to know how they plan to transport them. It seems to me the most logical way would be by boat but could they get there quickly enough? If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently? If they go by boat how would they be packed to minimize the chance of a catastrophe en route?
I take it Elon Musk has never been to Australia, especially South Australia.
Around Australia there exists a rift in space and time that not only ensures there is a minimum 6 month wait time before something reaches Australia, but it also makes it cost twice as much. I call this the Oceanic Price Dilation Field (OPDF).
Besides, then the South Australian government will just go down to Bunnings and get it for 10% less.
Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Funny)
End to end land + boat transportation should take less than 20 days from Nevada to the South Africa location with the best shippers.
And then another 20 days to get back to South Australia.
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Bad enough Australia & Austria gets confused but now we're mixing up South Africa with South Australia?
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That and there is work to be done for such an installation before they could actually put the powerpacks in place. Prepare the land, build the slabs, put all the supporting infrastructure in place. Actually placing and plugging in the batteries is probably one of the quickest parts, and I'd bet they can do that towards the end of the project.
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Prepare the land, build the slabs, put all the supporting infrastructure in place.
Sure, but all of that can be done while the batteries are in transit. The batteries are manufactured near Reno, so they would be shipped out of either Oakland or Long Beach. Transit time to Adelaide would be about 30 days at standard speed. A faster ship would cost more, and there is no point if the infrastructure isn't ready. 30 days is enough time for a slab and metal frame building. Ideally, you want the batteries installed at distributed locations near point of use.
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Prepare the land, build the slabs, put all the supporting infrastructure in place.
Sure, but all of that can be done while the batteries are in transit.
I think that was his point.
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You can pack even more into a 747 Freighter. A C-130 really isn't that large of an aircraft, nor does it have a particularly large payload. What it does have is the ability to land on rough/short runways.
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Nah, He'd use one of his SpaceX Falcon9's with the as-yet-unrevealed Dragon Heavy Cargo Capsule (grin)
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What exactly is the problem with shipping batteries via boat?
It just is not trendy enough for some people here.
This is supposed to be a techies' forum, yet people are worrying themselves sick over a simple delivery. It would not take anywhere near 100 days to ship (yes, ship, by ship) stuff from USA to Australia. The bigger challenge, as someone else has said, is the infrasructure and the connection details. A large inverter is going to be needed and a very hefty connection at a suitable point to the existing grid. Then you wonder if 100MWh is going to be enough
Re:Batteries from Nevada to Australia? (Score:5, Informative)
While there may be a larger one now back in 2012 the largest was 1.4MW. Thankfully, you don't need a single inverter.. you can just operate a bunch of inverters in parallel because that is how a power grid works anyway.
Also, I imagine each battery bank has it's own inverter... just to cut losses and cost of that much DC power having to travel any distance at all.
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Drug Dealer Model (Score:5, Funny)
The first is always free
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And, as we all know, politicians become addicted to power quickly.
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Not many light bulbs are made in the US anymore. Since regular light bulbs were outlawed the chemicals needed to make CFLs and LEDs mean they have to be made in places with lax environmental regulation.
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Except that Japan is also ~120V 60Hz, and worse, since the Australians drive on the same side of the road as the Japanese, they're probably already accustomed to trade with Japan...
100 days (Score:2)
Re:100 days (Score:4, Funny)
If they can perform enough of the "installation" work prior to actually having the batteries present, then I'd make -j 1000000 that thing.
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The logistics of moving hundreds of tons of dangerous materials makes a few weeks seem overly ambitious to me.
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The ability to land a rocket using vectored thrust on a moving platform is also a silly, nearly impossible task.
Given the right price, hiring a dedicated transport to do the work is probably not a big deal. That's what, 4kg/kWh, so 4000kg per MWh or 400,000kg for the system.
Sea transport makes the most sense, but it's also only ~4 chartered 777s worth of cargo (based on Fedex custom charters). For a special case, you can get lots of regs waived.
Not about winning a bet (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course he'd make this bet. It's not about solving a problem, it's about creating a very expensive dependency on his company.
Re:Not about winning a bet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not about winning a bet (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a solution to blackouts. Of course it's going to cost money - but the question is, does this solution make economic sense?
I'd wager (and so it Elon) that a big lump of batteries just might be cheaper than a new peaker power plant.
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It's a solution to blackouts. Of course it's going to cost money - but the question is, does this solution make economic sense? I'd wager (and so it Elon) that a big lump of batteries just might be cheaper than a new peaker power plant.
Sure, but is it cheaper in the long run? I agree with you in so far as to say that this is a question about total cost of ownership and continued maintenance. Power plants require their own expensive maintenance but those parts can be acquired from a number of different sources. Those sources can compete on pricing. Who does Elon presently have to compete with?
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Power plants take fuel, too, which can be the dominant expense. Some percentage--perhaps all--of the "peak only" generation capacity has to be kept spinning so that it can ramp up fast enough to matter, which adds significantly to fuel and maintenance costs.
Re:Not about winning a bet (Score:4, Informative)
Lacking electric reliability is a drag on the economy [utilitydive.com]. Energy prices in this part of Australia are skyrocketing [decarbonisesa.com]. The economics on this are pretty straight-forward.
As reported in the Australian Financial Review, prices in the state have been “frequently surging above $1000 a MWh this month and at one point hitting the $14000MWh maximum price”. The Australian Financial Review reports that average monthly prices have been three to four times higher than in the eastern states during the month of July and new contract prices in South Australia are nearly double the prices in the eastern states.
Re:Not about winning a bet (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course he'd make this bet. It's not about solving a problem, it's about creating a very expensive dependency on his company.
It's probably also about making a big PR splash. Even if he has to bust ass to get it done, ever other municipality in the world that has inconsistent power supply problems will ask "gee, if Elon could do it in Australia, why not here?"
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Huh? I'm pretty a company filled EEs could swap out one battery storage system for another. Slashdot. Where did all the nerds go?
Re:Not about winning a bet (Score:5, Insightful)
They would be insane to buy them with less than a 20 year warranty. That's well within what you would expect for lithium batteries.
For example, quality cells of the type used in Tesla cars (developed by Panasonic, who are partners in the gigafactory) are rated for 3000 cycles to 80% remaining capacity. That's the minimum you would expect to get from a cell that doesn't have manufacturing defects, not the average.
So 3000 cycles, with one full cycle a day is over 8 years. But of course you won't do one full cycle a day. I don't know what the energy situation is down in Aus, but let's say they are pushing the batteries hard and getting 1 cycle every 4 days, or 25MWh/day average. That pushes them to 32 years, although there is some self-discharge and ageing so that might be pushing it. I'd expect a 20 year warranty though.
For comparison their 6.6kWh Powerwall comes with a 10 year warranty. It will be lower because the environment is less controlled and there isn't any regular maintenance. Again, 10 years is the absolute minimum, just like your car doesn't fall apart the second the warranty expires either.
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What's your point ?
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Then they'll be back on Elon's doorstep in 5 - 10 years getting replacements because nobody else sells the batteries and they don't last forever...
And we'd do it too given how cheap that would be compared to what we have now.
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Nuclear power is a thing, and it's actually quite good.
Maybe in northern Australia. But being that close to Japan, you don't want to take the chance that Godzilla decides to stomp all the way through on land because he gets the munchies.
Re:Not about winning a bet (Score:5, Insightful)
This idea is about solving blackouts, which as I understand it result from the peak load being too high for the current generation level.
Nuclear power doesn't help here: nuclear power is used for baseload because it can't increase or decrease its output quickly. For that, you need peak load generators, which usually run on things like natural gas, or various stored-energy schemes such as pumped hydro.
That's a bold claim (Score:2)
Given what seems like pretty steep logistical challenges, this is quite a bold claim. It'll be interesting watching this unfold...I for one am hoping the process is documented and presented either way.
Drop bears (Score:4, Funny)
Drop bears are attracted to batteries. I can't see the battery storage solution surviving the first drop bear attack.
Re:Drop bears (Score:4, Funny)
Jackalope pose a similar problem in the American Southwest, where the Gigafactory is located.
The Gigafactory and its employees can easily survive an onslaught of Jackalope, so I'm pretty sure the drop bears will be familiar, comfortable territory.
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Mod drop bears funny.
Sales pitch (Score:2)
Payment when it works (Score:2)
Alternatively: Buy Australian (Score:4, Interesting)
As popular as Musk is, and he is no doubt doing cool things, I can't help but think that the SA Government should be looking locally for a possible solution before importing battery units from Nevada.
We have an Australian company that is bringing Grid Storage products to market using Flow Battery tech called RedFlow [redflow.com], and it seems to be better suited for grid based applications rather than a re-purposed automotive unit, particularly when it comes to risk of fires.
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Presumably Musk will not plant bushes between the batteries?
100 Tons of TNT (Score:2)
100 MW hrs solds a similar amount of energy to 100 tons of TNT. I really hope they plan on distributing the energy storage across the country, and not just having a few giant plants.
So ~4% of Fat Man nuclear bomb (Score:2)
Not to minimize the devastation on Hiroshima, but they're not putting this 1mi directly above a city, and the results won't be radioactive.
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So ~4% of Fat Man nuclear bomb
I am not really sure. From what I was reading, Hiroshima was incredibly inefficient. On the order of 1%. And next to the "15 kilotons of TNT", they seem to be indicating that that is just the theoretical number based on the mass of the payload. Implying that the Hiroshima explosion was just 1% of the number given (15 kt).
So it might actually be something closer to 400% of Fat Man. As for Little Boy (aka Hiroshima) it is either .7% or if I am reading this right 70% of the actual explosion of Hiroshima (minus
Just scale up (Score:2)
Twitter, the new business comm tool (Score:3)
I find it interesting that lots of high-level business is now done through Twitter - both Trump and Musk are doing it, soon others will follow.
Silicon Valley Startup (Score:2)
In what way is the Australian company Atlassian a Silicon Valley startup?
Sure, it has an office in San Fran, but really .... (yes, yes, I know it listed on the NASDAQ)
Maybe, "Billionaire tech founder Mikey Cannon-Brookes" or whatever. No need to co-opt everything ;)
--Q
Fix what in South Australia? (Score:5, Informative)
There was no power shortage in south Australia.
There was:
- A huge storm which took down several UHV power distribution towers.
- The Heywood interconnector was down so the state was short some 650MW of capacity.
- A massive upset from the infrastructure damage that tripped off the base load energy suppliers.
- The loss of baseload caused the Murrylink interconnector (HVDC) to loose sync and trip (another 220MW gone)
- A loss in all that wonderful green energy they have because without the baseload or the interconnect there was nothing left to synchronise wind, solar, storage, or anything else to the grid.
You want to fix South Australia? Fund the upgrades to the SA/VIC interconnects that have been requested for the past 10 years. Do some much needed maintenance on the distribution network. SA currently has some capacity left in its generation. In 2018 they are expected to have a 600MW shortage during peak periods leaving them 200MW spare on the interconnect capacity.
Throwing in a 100MW battery system won't do anything to prevent the next major blackout.
Correction: (Score:3)
The Heywood interconnect was online but it did trip on overload when much of the wind capacity couldn't handle the upset caused by downed transmission lines.
Re:Red Tape (Score:5, Insightful)
He said after the contract was signed. Presumably all permits would have been worked out by that time.
Also, while he's waiting on the permits and contract to be signed he could be loading up all the needed equipment, getting his people ready, making arrangements for passage on ships and/or planes, and getting the logistics down. Before the ink is dry he'd already have the stuff moving so if, as others above had said, it takes 20 days to get to Australia by boat, that leaves him 80 days to do the work.
Ambitious? Certainly. Doable? Only one way to find out.
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He said after the contract was signed. Presumably all permits would have been worked out by that time.
That comes down to how much risk is Musk willing to assume. Until the contract is actually signed he would be fronting 100% of the cost and taking on 100% of the liability if it fails.
Re:Red Tape (Score:4, Insightful)
He boasting on his ability to deliver the on the promise. The contract will certainly include clauses that remove liability of providing the system for free in the case of other actors that can influence it that are outside of his control including a nature induced issue during shipping, piracy, the shipment held up by Australian customs, and union strikes that remove the ability to actual move material. That's just a limited list of the things that will probably show up.
Re:Red Tape (Score:4)
In terms of it being doable, they built an 80 MWh installation in Los Angeles in 90 days, so building a 100 MWh installation in 100 days doesn't sound unreasonable.
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Given that it took 1.125 days per MWh for Los Angeles, I would have given a quote of 112.5 days for the Australia installation. I bet they're be almost two weeks late and will have to give it for free.
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There are likely certain aspects that can be scaled up in parallel such that installing a higher capacity takes more workers rather than more time.
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You think Elon & crew aren't smart enough to put that into the contract as a clause?
Dude, it's only free if it doesn't solve the problem. These battery packs are *designed* to solve this kind of problem. Buy low, sell high - only with electricity.
Re:So could I... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the gigafactory opening, solar roof tiles or SpaceX landings as "less action". But maybe that's just me.
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I'm careful to about how I judge other's really boring hobbies... after all, I get jazzed about getting my clock 10 microseconds more accurate.
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Dedicated clock or are you just resyncing more often?
For what computers cost most are surprisingly bad at keeping time.
I'm still looking for a digital light timer that doesn't lose a few minutes every year.
Re: So could I... (Score:2)
Considering Tessa just installed a similarly sized installation [google.com] in LA, I think they're doing fine.
"less action" : other than the EVs and rockets? (Score:3)
You mean apart from delivering 100k+ electric cars per year and launching rockets that can land vertically on floating platforms in the middle of the ocean, or how about the gigantic battery factory? Yeah, other than that the dude is a total snake oil salesman.
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Can we please switch to DeLorean units of power?
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Well, we all love our dancing watts.
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You need to get with the program. In the post-literate era, words mean what the writer wants them to mean, not what you are accustomed to knowing they mean. Looser can be the opposite of winner, not the opposite of tighter. Your might mean you are. It's does not have to be possessive, because apostrophes are just decorative. Begs the question means raises the question. The writer is too ignorant or too much in a hurry to be accurate, so stop whining and do your best to pick it up from context.
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The Ozzies will have to make do, as we already have the world's 2nd biggest ego and sense of importance as President.
The world's most powerful ego and sense of importance is, of course Kanye West, and he's usually on tour.
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