Giant Tesla Battery In Australia Earns A Million Bucks In a Few Days (electrek.co) 222
Long-time Slashdot reader drinkypoo writes: Last week, Neoen's and Tesla's massive battery was paid up to $1000/MWh to charge itself and now it could have earned up to 1 million AUD in the last few days by selling the power back to the grid to cover a coal plant outage. Unlike other forms of power storage, battery systems can be switched between states (charging, discharging, or idle) effectively instantly, which permits a stabilizing effect on the grid.
"What we are seeing here," writes Fred Lambert at Electrek.co, "is the Powerpack system enabling Neoen to sell electricity at up to $14,000 AUD per MWh and charging itself at almost no cost during overproduction."
"What we are seeing here," writes Fred Lambert at Electrek.co, "is the Powerpack system enabling Neoen to sell electricity at up to $14,000 AUD per MWh and charging itself at almost no cost during overproduction."
Degrade Time (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how many cycles it can handle before replacement? Would like to see upkeep cost over time on an industrial scale. Sill good news for those of us hoping to use home battery technology at some point in the next five years.
Re:Degrade Time (Score:5, Informative)
The expected lifespan of a Powerpack is 15 years on grid duty.
As someone who's currently pricing electricity for a large project, it's easy to see how timeshifting of power can make a big difference. Our local utilities offer power as cheap as 2,5kr/kWh where the utility can cut off the supply at any time (kr ~= 1 cent), or ~3,5kr/kWh at the cheapest un-cut time-of-use rates, while the most expensive time-of-use rates are 15kr/kWh. That's a huge spread on power costs. And that's here where our power is essentially all baseload (over 99% hydro + geothermal). Places with more intermittent power should be expected to have a wider spread.
Re: Degrade Time (Score:3)
Bullshit article (Score:2)
Yes, most spikes are much smaller. Moreover, the storage capacity of the batteries is relatively small.
My understanding is that the batteries are mainly for frequency stabilization, on quite small time scales.
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For the Australia battery, quite small = ~45 minutes from full to empty or vice versa.
Re: Degrade Time (Score:2)
Actually, it never happens. Electricity doesn't get offers at the time of necessity, the time to do a bidding transaction would destroy the grid. These prices, just like the oft-repeated German negative pricing is speculative pricing. It's the pricing on the equivalent of the stock market for energy. The actual consumers have a much more stable pricing model guaranteed or fluctuating over months, not seconds.
Re: Degrade Time (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is how you build a distributed grid power station, it's called the burbs. The power station is already built, it just needs the generators and storage, solar panels on every suburban home and one battery pack for them and another battery pack for the grid. The entire roof solar panels. So during the day solar and at night batteries and when excess is available sell it to the grid battery and it supplies as necessary to the grid. The typical up coming system for most cities out of the snow zone. It is pretty close now and will shut down a whole bunch of coal power stations because they simply could not compete, seeing as the power station is already there and built, just needs the generators and storage.
The residents can either buy and install, rent and install or allow install and pay with a discount. If they are renting, the landlord can install and sell electricity to the tenant, watch out for rip off rates. Yeah, coal is done.
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It is not a car battery. It stays viable as long as it can hold a reasonable charge. Weight and space used do not matter.
Optimization Algorithm (Score:3)
I would love to understand how they optimize operation; I get the sub-transient and short-time operation logic, and at least at a high level predicting real-time price swings-- but as a whole I can't quite wrap my head around how they control it.
Do they control it based just on what they are paid to do at a given point in time, or does it simply act as a "good citizen" of the grid? Does it work on 24-hour look-ahead (or longer), or is it more responsive real-time? What is the minimum charge level they target?
It will be interesting to see how these large batteries work when there are multiple units controlled independently.
Re:Optimization Algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
They respond automatically to grid voltage or frequency drops. The accounting is done after the fact, but also I suspect automatically subject to previous agreements.
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Well, they can respond to grid voltage drops. Responding to a frequency drop doesn't really work, you must remain exactly in phase with the received frequency or it looks like a short-circuit to the distribution system. If the incoming frequency changes, the best thing you can do is probably disconnect.
So, I think that the way it works is that the power system operator has a SCADA [wikipedia.org] network that controls the battery, ordering it to charge, stand by, or provide power as necessary.
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Responding to a frequency drop doesn't really work, you must remain exactly in phase with the received frequency or it looks like a short-circuit to the distribution system.
As I understand "Tesla Big Battery Outsmarts Lumbering Coal Units After Loy Yang Trips" [slashdot.org] from a few weeks ago: If you slightly lead the received frequency in phase, you can take load off the generators, which causes frequency to stabilize.
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OK, I need help with the math here because I'm not an EE and I'm probably doing this wrong.
A 50 Hz system was running at 49.8 . That's 4% off frequency. Consider that another generator in the system was still running at 50 Hz. The long-distance network runs at up to 800 KV. So, we have a (sin(pi * 0.04) * 800,000) voltage difference between the two points crossing zero on the AC wa
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Actually, it's worse than that, because if there's a frequency difference the positive peak and the negative one would be opposed soon enough. My attempt would work better for a difference in phase rather than frequency.
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If you can correct the overall phase a slight amount, then as your correction accumulates, it turns into frequency.
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You're absolutely right about this. Significant differences don't work which is why generators will trip on significant under frequency. The rate of the shortfall of available power will determine if a generator trips on overload or under frequency. The inertia in the system is what causes frequency events to be the most common problem in cascading failures (such as a major generator going offline).
If a big unit trips, the frequency starts dropping.
Suppliers come online to try and push the frequency back up
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Consider that another generator in the system was still running at 50 Hz.
Why are you considering that? A 50Hz generator on a 49.8Hz system will cause that generator to draw a huge amount of power. It will either help pull the grid back up (if it has enough power) or it will be pulled down with the grid (if it doesn't have enough power).
Also there's grid inertia. This stuff doesn't happen instantly. Look at the graph linked you'll see on a sudden disconnect of 560MW it still took about a minute for the frequency to come down to that level.
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You can handle it on a sub-cycle level, shifting your output slightly forward on the waveform to the capacity of your system. You are just limited by your own capacity as to what you can do to stabilize things.
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Re:Optimization Algorithm (Score:5, Informative)
Responding to a frequency drop doesn't really work, you must remain exactly in phase with the received frequency or it looks like a short-circuit to the distribution system. If the incoming frequency changes, the best thing you can do is probably disconnect.
That isn't even remotely true. Responding to frequency drops is precisely what peaking plants do. You only disconnect if you're out of the suitable frequency range. Frequency is exactly how the grid power flows around. A frequency drop is the result of an overloaded grid, i.e. some coal turbine somewhere is desperately unable to keep pushing the required power and hoping someone else kicks on to help. On underfrequency the best thing you can do is kick in and start pushing power onto the grid. That is likely to push the frequency back to where it's supposed to be. If you disconnect during an underfrequency event you'll make that even worse and trigger a cascading blackout.
There is an entire market for stabilising the grid in Australia called the "Frequency Control and Ancillary Services" market (FCAS). Actually it's 8 markets. 30MW of of this Tesla battery is dedicated to 2 of those market (6 second responses to frequency deviation).
We covered previously how well the battery responded to the Loy Yang trip. As soon as the frequency deviated by 0.2Hz the Tesla battery crammed 8MW into the grid to stabilise it while the slower frequency controllers (gas peaking plants) responded. http://reneweconomy.com.au/tes... [reneweconomy.com.au]
Note from the graph the frequency stopped dropping instantly, slowly started raising (the 6 second market responding), and massively correcting 6 minutes later (the 6 minute market responding).
The AEMO is discussing whether to create it's own regulatory market for batteries which can respond far faster than 6 seconds.
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AEMO publishes demand and price forecasts for 24 hours ahead that are revised continually throughout the day and are based on historical demand and weather forecasts.
The battery is 100MW/129MWh, but apparently 30MW/90MWh is used for price arbitrage while the remaining 70MW/39MWh is allocated to the SA Government for FCAS.
Watching the data from the battery you can see that when prices spike, it discharges and when prices fall, it charges. I'm sure there's a deeper strategy to what it does though besides fact
The capacity is actually divided up (Score:2, Interesting)
The battery is owned and operated by a French company called Neoen, which provide electricity and services to South Australian electricity grid.
70MW of the power and 39 MWh of the energy capacity is contractually allocated for grid stabilization: responding to transients. This is about 2/3 and 1/3, meaning that it must keep itself 1/3 charged and not be operating at more than 1/3 load unless "something is wrong".
Details at http://reneweconomy.com.au/wha... [reneweconomy.com.au]
The remaining 30 MW of the power and 70 MWh of the
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Thanks!! Great info.
Yes, works as designed. So what? (Score:2)
Seriously, this is a complete non-story. For example, pumped-storage hydropower plants have been doing this for ages.
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For example, pumped-storage hydropower plants have been doing this for ages.
The difference is that battery storage can be automatically activated in a fraction of a second, providing grid stabilization that avoids extreme measures like rolling blackouts.
Re:Yes, works as designed. So what? (Score:5, Informative)
Batteries can be use for grid stability.Batteries can switch on very fast.
A few weeks ago coal generators tripped, which would normally cause problems for the grid due to power spikes, a frequency drops (or something), anyway, this Telsa battery was able to active while the spike was in progress, its that fast.
Link about the cause of the spike
http://reneweconomy.com.au/coa... [reneweconomy.com.au]
I suspect the original story in the article is this one;
http://reneweconomy.com.au/tes... [reneweconomy.com.au]
Another story on Batteries setting prices
http://reneweconomy.com.au/tes... [reneweconomy.com.au]
They have a nice page to show Aus electricity generation sources as well, its a good site. (this one might have problems with noscript+ad-blockers)
http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem... [reneweconomy.com.au]
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Exporting to other states has been where the problem manifests.
It makes sense with renewable power to have a well connected grid, it makes generation more efficient, because it can be sold where its needed most, but that places a lot of demand on the national grid, or really the inter-connectors between the states grid.
In the past South Australia, where the battery got disconnected because one of the states transmission lines got blown over from a storm which caused a spike which disconnected the state from
Re:Yes, works as designed. So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Seriously, this is a complete non-story. For example, pumped-storage hydropower plants have been doing this for ages."
This is a desert, no mountain and no water.
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Actually, IF you actually look, it is close to the coast, and there are 500+M high ranges in the area (also close to the coast), pumped hydro would be quite practical, as would the already tested locomotive type gravitational storage (cable haul a loaded train up a hill, the roll it down to generate power).
Batteries may be the current best price/performance, however most likely Musk is just a lot more can-do than any other vendor, so got in and did the job, where others wanted deeper government handouts, et
Re:Yes, works as designed. So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
We shut down our coal fired power station. Since we have so many wind turbines, and we're connected to the other big generators in the eastern states.
Then one day we had a storm that knocked over a big power line to the eastern states. Our other power line was down for maintenance. Our wind turbines switched off to save themselves (perhaps a bit more sensitive than they needed to be). Then the whole grid went dark.
This battery was built as a knee-jerk political response to the event. As well as building some over priced diesel generators.
At least the battery was a good investment.
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This battery was built as a knee-jerk political response to the event.
Being knee-jerk doesn't make it wrong. The battery is designed in part to improve stability and stability is precisely what was impacted when the transmission line went down.
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Got any examples of pumped storage hydro power that can react in less than a minute?
This battery reacts in a couple of milliseconds, and because of that it has saved the grid from a blackout due to a coal power station failing. The backup gas power station takes 30 seconds or so to spin up.
The entire state had a blackout in 2016 that may have been averted if they had this battery. A storm took out a bunch of major power lines, which caused protection systems to shut down some wind farms. The link to a neigh
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Hydro reacts within seconds. All they need to do is open the tap. Fine for grid stabilization.
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Hydro reacts within seconds.
Is "within seconds" fast enough? I presume "within milliseconds" is better, although I don't know how much better.
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Yes, it is. The classical generators have a lot of short-time reserves just from spinning. Incidentally, you _can_ keep hydro spinning in idle with pretty low power drain to get just that fast response and you can have flywheels in addition that can be coupled in or out very fast to extend that "spin reserve" time. Whether you need that is another question. The only thing about batteries is that they are cheaper and can be placed basically anywhere, and that is really nice. But there is no "revolution" here
$14 per KW-hr??? (Score:2)
Really? Is someone really paying 14 bucks per KW-hr??? I get my electricity for cents per KW-hr, not dollars....
Re:$14 per KW-hr??? (Score:5, Informative)
Try $14,000/MW-hr => $14/kW-hr
This is the result of a postal auction of supply versus demand. There was suddenly a drop of nearly 500 MW and the other generators are trying to ramp up to fill the void.
The quoted price is where power companies are willing to turn off entire suburbs. For what it is worth it was a very hot day in Melbourne and there would have been a serious backlash if a power company blacked out a suburb to save a couple of thousand dollars (a bit like Malaysian Airlines taking the Ukraine route to save about $1000 in jet fuel).
If you were a power company - at what point do you start cutting customers off?
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Usually the power companies have contracts with some large customers like concrete factories or cold warehouses, who generally get cheaper electrical power but would have to participate in a rolling blackout at a moment's notice.
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Actually those large consumers have contracts that cause them to pay the spot price. They are often happy to disconnect themselves at times.
Re:$14 per KW-hr??? (Score:4, Informative)
on the wholesale market, yes.
power companies will pay a lot of money for power when generators go offline unexpectedly.
It's bad publicity when an entire state has a blackout.
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Well, the product is meant to deal with abnormal circumstances, so that metric may be a bit off the mark.
$50 million was the initial cost estimate. AU has not revealed the final negotiated price.
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Well, the product is meant to deal with abnormal circumstances, so that metric may be a bit off the mark.
$50 million was the initial cost estimate. AU has not revealed the final negotiated price.
No initial cost estimates by indusry were between $200 million AUD and $250 million AUD from estimates, But the SA government claimed it would be about $150 million and set that amount aside for it. actual number hasn't been published to my knowledge..
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As far as these batteries go. They're too complex and dangerous (they should use nickel-iron for stationary stuff), but they will work until we learn how to make capacitors that don't leak smoke like a Triumph leaks oil.
I hope the glass batteries pan out. Stationary installations will be ideal places to use them. The initial energy investment will be fairly high, but they should have unprecedented lifespans once the tech has been fully developed. It's already over the 1k charge cycle mark.
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As far as these batteries go. They're too complex and dangerous (they should use nickel-iron for stationary stuff),
Too complex and dangerous based on what? This 129MWh installation suggests that they aren't too complex or dangerous, though admittedly it's still early in its lifetime.
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I'd take a guess and say they're too complex and dangerous compared to nickel-iron.
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I'd take a guess and say they're too complex and dangerous compared to nickel-iron.
Sources?
You can't compare a single nickel-iron battery to a 100MWh installation and declare that nickel iron is less complex and safer for this purpose -- if it won't do the job, then it's not a fair comparison. You may as well say that rubber chickens are less complex and safer than batteries, which may be true, but they aren't going to do the job. And note that Tesla installed this plant in under 60 days, so it seems that they aren't all that complex.
Point to a large grid-storage nickel-iron battery insta
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Too complex and dangerous based on what?
Little things like this [chicagotribune.com], the only difference is scale...
The only difference between "smart luggage" and a large scale grid storage plant is scale? Really, that's the only difference? A 100MW battery bank is pretty much the same as thousands of roller bags?
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That's a shame. People shouldn't tolerate so much secrecy when it comes to how their tax money is spent.
$50 million was the public contribution. There's also private investment - Neoen (the wind farm operator) has rights to use some of the capacity and we're not sure what sort of interest Tesla continues to have in the project - obviously they are getting a lot of the publicity here so may have provided some sort of discount (other than the "100 days or it's free" offer)
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Supposedly it was US$100MM construction cost (which seems high; I would expect closer to $50MM). Environmentally and economically, it is a great buffer when coupled to a wind farm like it is; the majority of wind energy is produced at night when demand is lower, and when you are at peak output it is difficult to sell/use all the power.
If you assume a 3,500 cycle life, 90% round-trip efficiency, and just time shifting, you need US$0.25/kWh delta between charging price and discharging price. If these are ac
Re:Nice (Score:4, Funny)
"MM"? They were paid in chocolate candy pieces?
Re:Nice (Score:5, Interesting)
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I don't think I've ever seen billion written out as MMM or trillion written out as MMMM. I've never seen one thousand written out as M (usually k). I often see million as MM. I assume that's a carry over when someone made a decision a long time ago.
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I don't think I've ever seen billion written out as MMM or trillion written out as MMMM.
Yeah that doesn't happen. Specifically billion is often written out in terms of millions due to the unit of billion being ambiguous as either 1000 million or million million.
I've never seen one thousand written out as M (usually k).
Now you've just shown yourself to not do anything in financial circles. M is very commonly used to denote thousands. Though style guides from financial papers agree that the readership may find it confusing and recommend writting it in full, e.g. $100,000.
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That would be 'in English/American financial information'. This use is uncommon in Europe, where SI units are used instead. ;)
So, we'll consider 'MM' another silly Imperial unit
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Hi, European here. That isn't even remotely the case. We use MM = million and M = thousand constantly in the financial sector.
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As much as I do hate the MM abbreviation, the alternative “m” that is commonly accepted for million just pisses me off. The ambiguity of a single M likewise makes it a poor choice. I guess you could be pedantic and write 100M$... but what the hell...
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Maybe the confusion is that nobody in the US uses MM either. Of course US people don't use it as an excuse to jump on a weird anti-European rant.
Hey, care to tell us how great the Nokia n900 was, and that diesel is obviously the best way to fuel a car?
Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Closer to the right question, which is: is this the cheapest way to achieve this level of brownout protection and is that cheaper than the brownouts themselves.
Brownouts can destroy equipment, and severe shortages can also lead to blackouts. Both of those things can literally kill people. Let's prioritize keeping the power on. There's no better/cheaper/more effective device for grid stabilization than battery storage, today.
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Closer to the right question, which is: is this the cheapest way to achieve this level of brownout protection and is that cheaper than the brownouts themselves.
Brownouts can destroy equipment, and severe shortages can also lead to blackouts. Both of those things can literally kill people. Let's prioritize keeping the power on. There's no better/cheaper/more effective device for grid stabilization than battery storage, today.
But there's still a cost-benefit decision to be made, even when lives are at stake. Money is a finite resource, and if the more you spend on brownout protection, the less you have to spend elsewhere that may save more lives.
Re: Nice (Score:2)
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There's no better/cheaper/more effective device for grid stabilization than battery storage, today.
That depends on the technical requirements. Stabilising a grid requires a lot of different actions to happen at defined time intervals with a defined output. Battery backup is only one small component of grid stabilisation that operates on the fastest acting and most volatile areas. That doesn't mean it's better than gas turbines, just that it serves a different purpose.
Batteries by themselves attempting to prevent large brownouts would be prohibitively expensive. This is a great example of adding a battery
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Batteries by themselves attempting to prevent large brownouts would be prohibitively expensive. This is a great example of adding a battery to an energy mix that desperately needed it.
The system is working as designed in a worst-case scenario, so it has been conclusively proven that it works. The high cost to the consumer for energy coming out of the system only proves that such projects should be built by the state.
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No doubt... and a competently designed smart grid would allow even less pointless appliances to dip their power usage for short periods of time. However, as renewable penetration increases I think this problem will end up being solved mostly on the supply side with storage solutions... there are less cats to herd and the need for longer and longer term reserves will continue to grow for some time.
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"If you don't think a Russian can get drunk enough to kill himself by falling all over the place, you've never gotten drunk with a Russian"
Boris Yeltsin got so drunk on a trip to Washington DC in '95, he tried to hail a cab to go get a pizza wearing nothing but his tighty-whities
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
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He was found in his hotel room, but many of the bruises could have happened as he stumbled home. Blackout drunks can do a lot of damage to themselves. It is not that uncommon for them to be found dead from self-inflicted injuries
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Question:
If you offer a good at a certain price, predictably, in writing, with prices that rarely fluctuate much but that you control...
And people take you up on that offer.
And then you can't deliver.
Is that THEIR fault? Or yours?
If electricity were free and in short supply, sure, people using it for strange non-essential purposes would indeed be a bit immoral. But those people who want that electricity are paying for it.
If the money you're charging for electricity can't put in place infrastructure to del
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That would be $280/MWh but that's still a far shot from $14000/MWh so your point still stands.
As for other solutions in other countries I'm not really sure any are "much more cost-effective" as I don't believe any other countries have built out a battery pack system to the scale of the Australia installation. Of course the fact that Australia needed the installation (and I seem to recall it was a pretty rushed job to deal with an emergency of some sort) still kind of puts a question mark on the state of th
Re:Is that price right? (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the graph in TFA it appears that they sold 30 megawatts for two one hour periods at this price, i.e. a total of 60 MWh. This is an extreme, but very limited marginal pricing event.
To your broader point, it is important to realize that the reason this battery backup was deployed in the first place is that this is an unusual, problematic local grid situation. This is a fix for a remote area of Australia, the edge of the 5th largest population center (Adelaide*) separated from it by 100 miles and isolated by hundreds of miles of emptiness from anywhere else. There is little redundant/backup infrastructure, or all that many people.
*The greater metropolitan area of Adelaide has a population of 1,317,000 which is 77% of the entire population of South Australia (which is 50% larger than Texas). Things get really sparse really fast out past Adelaide's metro area.
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The wholesale structure is different than the retail structure; while I doubt the premise of earning $1MM in a week, being paid to absorb energy for a few minutes and possibly up to a half-hour is common for grid stabilization as plants spool down. It averages out to a rounding error in the scale of the grid and given the limited duration.
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You are right, there are serious problems with the electricity grid in Australia. The problem is fundamentally that there are tangible periods of insufficient energy, at which points the price of energy increases dramatically. Under normal circumstances, when ample energy is available, the prices are very low. However, the consumer pays aggregate energy costs which do include these periods of very high cost. As these periods of insufficient energy increase, so does the cost paid by the consumer.
The solution
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Re:Is that price right? (Score:5, Insightful)
The battery was installed primarily to provide stability to the grid. Australia has a poor grid and the previous year had several costly blackouts. The battery can respond within milliseconds to grid instability whereas traditional power plants take minutes at a minimum. The battery has saved the grid multiple times in the few months it's been operational. When you want to stabilize the grid, it doesn't require a lot of power for a long time... just short bursts of power when it detects problems.
So, paying a lot of money for a small amount of power for a short period of time makes perfect sense if it keeps the grid from going down.
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Almost. There are several suppliers that operate on a 6 second timeline. Whether the battery has "saved" the grid at any point is entirely debatable. What is clear is that the grid has been more stable as a result of the battery being in operation, but so far it has yet to get near the point where it would cause a blackout.
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Firstly, you multiply by 1000 and not 100 when converting from cost per kilowatt hour to megawatt. Secondly, the article you linked to claims that the $0.28 estimate is too low. In fact, for South Australia, where the battery is located, they show a rate that is just under $0.50.
With both your corrections that brings us up to almost 500AUD/MWh, we are still off by almost two orders of magnitude compared to the claim.
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With an average rate of $500/MWh, spending 28x that to prevent a blackout seems reasonable.
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If you changed that "HUNDRED" to a "THOUSAND" you would probably be closer to the mark.
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That is very high cost of peak power. A lot to pay for instantaneous backup.
Normal wholesale prices are $20 per MWh in the US. Even real time usually doesn't hit more than $150.
This. Seems they would be better off trying to address the problem that causes their rates to spike.
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The rates spike because there is a power shortage. It's pretty simple.
To fix the problem they'd need to build more power stations that can spin up faster.
Australia has huge numbers of roof-top solar installation and nearly every house also has air conditioning.
This leads to big fluctuations in power generation and demand. Lots of sun = lots of power generation from solar, lots of power consumption from A/C. The two don't always run in sync, so there's big gaps to fill.
Re:1000 to 14K per MWh? (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesa... [aer.gov.au]
The problem is the australian population is relatively low for the space that it covers. The networks are built around the normal demand levels and not able to cope with the very high peaks. This is made worse by the distances that power has to be transmitted.
Add onto that a complete lack of political will to build any large capacity power generation and you end up here.
It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, The Loy Yang power stations in the La Trobe valley are coming up on end of life. They are the largest plants in Australia and provide 1/3rd of Victoria's power. Going to be up the creek without a paddle when they EOL.
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You forgot to add the political goal to sell the power network. On terms that allow the network operator to guarantee a return on any upgrades.
Most of the recent price rises in SA have gone into the grid infrastructure, not power generation.
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There is also that. But QLD has public ownership of its poles and wires yet the consumer is getting skinned, vs NSW which privatized it and is paying less. I get the feeling that situation could change at any time though. Bad regulation in NSW and consumers get skinned, QLD no longer needs to raise secret taxes and the price goes down.
As far as I can tell there isn't a direct link between public / private ownership and cost outcomes.
Of course then you have the situation in QLD now where 1 public owned c
Re:Ideological Suicide (Score:5, Informative)
People can't seem to get their head around the fact that Australia is not a suitable country for 100% renewables.
So, the country with some of the worlds highest solar irradiation levels, huge expanses of empty land, thousands of kilometres of coastline and is in the line of the roaring 40s wind stream, is not a suitable country for solar PV, solar thermal, wind (including off-shore), wave or tidal energy?
This Hornsdale battery has been a wake up call to a lot of governments in Australia, and when the SolarReserve tower in Pt August goes live it's going to generate a wave of similar generators elsewhere.
Yes, nuclear is another huge advantage that Australia has had in the past, and if we didn't have the renewable resources it would have been a great idea, but nuclear today is many times more expensive that renewables and the lead time to build such a station is about 10 years (including the politics of it). It would have been the ideal solution 30-40 years ago, but it's time has passed now.
The concept of a single nuclear power station in the outback supplying 4 major population centres is a risky one too. A 500MW coal generator tripping causes issues with the grid. Can you imagine if a single 1-2GW power station suddenly shut down? Also, I always thought nuclear power stations had to be near water for cooling.
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It is the huge expanses of empty land that are the killer for PV or wind for Australia.
Sure the wind is always blowing somewhere, but the transmission distances are huge and you need to have the baseload supply. Comparing it to europe with 750+ million people and the related infrastructure power shifting is much much easier.
Australia is perfect for a renewable suplimented system. Not a whole hog replacement system. Not till batteries are way way cheaper.
Re single point of failure, I wasn't proposing shut
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It is the huge expanses of empty land that are the killer for PV or wind for Australia.
Sure the wind is always blowing somewhere, but the transmission distances are huge and you need to have the baseload supply.
That's easy - the wind/solar doesn't have to be built way out in the middle of the outback - you can still build just outside the major cities. In fact rooftop PV is about the only realistic generation type that has a zero distance transmission!
But the long transmission lines aren't a deal breaker, after all Loy Yang etc. are 150km+ out of Melbourne.
Re:Wth are they doing? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is a peak for one 30 minute period. It is some function of the way the market is controlled, for instance yesterday the price peaked at $3/kWh, yet for the rest of the day it has hovered around $0.10 per kWh
Here's the past and future price estimates over 24 h
https://www.aemo.com.au/Electr... [aemo.com.au]
And here is the far more entertaining power flow between the states
https://www.aemo.com.au/Electr... [aemo.com.au]
As I write the '57%' renewable SA system is absorbing all the coal power it can get from Victoria and its '57%' renewable generators are actually supplying less than 20% of the state's needs.
Here's a snapshot on a nice sunny windless day last Saturday where SA's renewable generators were producing virtually nothing. It demonstrates that you have to have 100% baseload generation, you cannot rely on renewables to replace them, at least until we install hundreds of batteries the size of the one in SA.
http://res.cloudinary.com/engi... [cloudinary.com]
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The operator of the grid sets prices for 5 minute blocks of power, and generators dont bid for it the operator increases the price. There are problems when a big generator suddenly goes offline, and supply cant easily meet demand. Which causes spike in prices.
Generators have been accused of gaming the system also, and there are process underway to improving the bidding process.
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Germany has a solid, well managed grid.
Australia has a weak grid with frequent instabilities.
The battery has helped stabilize the grid and that is why they installed it. It provides a valuable service for short periods of time. The cost per MWh is high but it's only for a short time.
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"Yet it is totally stable just due to backup power plants, which produce more electricity than is consumed."
That they pay neighboring countries to take off their hands. Countries whose power plant owners are not amused about that fact.
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"Yet it is totally stable just due to backup power plants, which produce more electricity than is consumed."
That they pay neighboring countries to take off their hands. Countries whose power plant owners are not amused about that fact.
No, that's a different issue. Yes, lots of electricity is sold abroad. Germany is pretty much using the whole EU to buffer its network. But the network providers always must have a few GW of backup power capacity, which is only used if there are any issues.
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The peak electricity price at the German exchange was 135€/MWh. How do they come to 14,000 AU$?
The significant difference is one of scale and distance. More specifically the number of power plants, their range due to power drops in lines and number of interconnects due to density.
The nearest city and major power consumer to Adelaide - the major city in the area we are talking about - is Melbourne, roughly 700km away. Most of the power generation which supplies Melbourne is on the far side, so even further.
In comparison, 700km from Berlin includes the entirety of Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Au
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It's not constant electric supply. It's very short term grid stabilization which is worth a lot more.
Recent bids for solar electric with battery backup for constant electric supply come in at about 3-4 cents/kWh (without battery, it's about 2 cents/kWh).
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