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Power Australia

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."
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Giant Tesla Battery In Australia Earns A Million Bucks In a Few Days

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  • Degrade Time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28, 2018 @02:51PM (#56021757)

    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)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Sunday January 28, 2018 @03:15PM (#56021893) Homepage

      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.

      • $1000/MW-hr only happens during emergency conditions. Itâ(TM)s $1/Kw-hr. Thatâ(TM)s a hugely expensive price no matter where you live. If thatâ(TM)s Teslaâ(TM)s shining example of price competitiveness, I am not convinced this makes any sense. It makes a lot more sense just to build out appropriate non-storage capacity at $0.10 to $0.15 per Kw-hr.
        • 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.

          • by Rei ( 128717 )

            For the Australia battery, quite small = ~45 minutes from full to empty or vice versa.

        • 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)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @04:24AM (#56025113) Homepage

          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.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      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.

  • by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Sunday January 28, 2018 @02:56PM (#56021781)

    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.

    • by careysub ( 976506 ) on Sunday January 28, 2018 @03:05PM (#56021837)

      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.

      • 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.

        • by tepples ( 727027 )

          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.

          • If you slightly lead the received frequency in phase, you can take load off the generators, which causes frequency to stabilize.

            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

            • 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.

              • by tepples ( 727027 )

                If you can correct the overall phase a slight amount, then as your correction accumulates, it turns into frequency.

                • Right. But what I see here is that no significant frequency diffference between generators is going to work, and even relatively small phase differences mean energy dissipated into the distribution system.
                  • 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

            • 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.

        • 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.

        • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @05:39AM (#56025339)

          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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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

  • Seriously, this is a complete non-story. For example, pumped-storage hydropower plants have been doing this for ages.

    • 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.

    • by bug1 ( 96678 ) on Sunday January 28, 2018 @03:28PM (#56021979)

      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]

    • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday January 28, 2018 @04:15PM (#56022293)

      "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.

      • 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

        • by complete loony ( 663508 ) <Jeremy@Lakeman.gmail@com> on Sunday January 28, 2018 @06:05PM (#56022877)

          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.

          • 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.

    • 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

      • Hydro reacts within seconds. All they need to do is open the tap. Fine for grid stabilization.

        • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

          Hydro reacts within seconds.

          Is "within seconds" fast enough? I presume "within milliseconds" is better, although I don't know how much better.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            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

  • 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)

      by ZombieEngineer ( 738752 ) on Sunday January 28, 2018 @05:03PM (#56022561)

      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?

      • 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.

        • 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)

      by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Sunday January 28, 2018 @05:08PM (#56022595)

      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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