Tesla Deploys Over 300 Powerwalls To Give Hawaiian School Kids AC (electrek.co) 147
Fred Lambert reports via Electrek: As part of a state initiative, Tesla deployed over 300 Powerwalls in schools to cool down hot classrooms in Hawaii. Hawaii has a problem with hot temperatures in public classrooms that is affecting students negatively. The problem was so significant that the Hawaii State Department of Education had to intervene. They put together a $100 million fund, which has already helped cool down 1,190 classrooms to date, with contracts set for more than 1,300 classrooms, according to The Garden Island. In order to roll out the program without significantly increasing energy costs for public schools, they partnered with Tesla to pair Powerwalls with solar power to reduce the impact of running the air conditioners in classrooms across the state. It also resulted in an interesting learning opportunity about renewable energy and energy storage for students.
Re:$100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:4, Informative)
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No, they've done 1190 and have contracts for another 1300. This is 2490 classrooms total.
The article is not clear on whether the $100m fund is for all of these classrooms, the initial buy, or a larger project of which this is only one phase.
Re:$100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:4, Insightful)
School happens primarily during the day. Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest. The schools already have an electrical connection to the grid.
Explain again why they needed power-wall batteries for each installation instead of just using the solar power directly when it was needed the most (on hot, sunny days, which generate the most solar power) and relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
This sounds an awful lot like a publicity stunt, i.e. kids + batteries + renewable science, now everyone sing kumbaya!!!
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Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest.
It's Hawaii, man. It's hot all day. Additionally, buildings function as heat sinks.
School is about seven hours, Hawaii gets 14.5 hrs of near-equatorial sun in June. That's 7.5 hrs of storage, assuming the AC is set back outside of school hours.
Also, power is crazy-expensive in Hawaii which is one of the reasons so many people there do solar.
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In other words, there's plenty of solar energy available exactly when it's needed to cool the class rooms.
So, as GP asked, what's the point of the batteries?
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14.5 hours of solar during 7.5 hours of school, hard to do without the batteries.
Easier (and cheaper) to do it without the batteries. Just feed excess power into the grid, and draw out to cover peak demand.
I can't see how batteries make any sense at all for this application. The only plausible explanation is that it is all a stupid PR stunt funded by the taxpayers.
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Utilities in Hawaii are not very grid-tie friendly
Re: $100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:1)
So, power would be free for everyone during the day, and exhorbitantly expensive at night, or in a monsoon? The powerwalls help balance the grid load, which makes it a net positive for the school, and everyone else in the communities.
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The grid is unreliable/too remote
The local net energy metering situation sucks
Re:$100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:5, Insightful)
The local net energy metering situation sucks
Bingo. This is the situation in Hawaii. Power retails for 42 cents/kwhr, about 4 times the highest mainland rate. Solar is currently about 10 cents/kwhr, and federal subsidies push that even lower. So Helco doesn't want to give up 42 cents to get something worth 10 cents. They no longer allow any new net metering installations.
This is, of course, stupid. But from Helco's point of view it makes sense, since they are in the business of maximizing profit from their monopoly market, not serving the public, and the PUC is bought and paid for.
So Hawaiians get one stupid policy ($100M Powerwalls for daytime use) to counteract another stupid policy (no net metering). This is what happens in a one-party state (there are no Republicans in Hawaii).
Hawaii also has zero geothermal energy, despite some of the best volcanic geology in the world, for equally stupid political and bureaucratic reasons.
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The $100M will be used for a number of things. In addition to air conditioners and grid infrastructure improvements, the HIDOE’s heat abatement efforts also consist of installing ceiling fans, using nighttime ventilation, painting roofs with heat-reflective coating and extending shade.
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I doubt it has anything to do with democrats versus republicans.
It simply is the idea of americans that money rules the world.
Regarding geothermal power, it is not so easy to use geothermal power to create electricity. Not hot enough. And on Hawaii you don't need it for heating. So I doubt there are any "political" reasons against geothermal power.
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$100m toward utility level solar PV and some storage, minus $5M or so to put mini-splits in classrooms, would yield much more bang for the buck, but its a political win when you can talk Tesla AND schools, the masses have no clue.
Re:$100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:5, Informative)
People don't realize that Hawaii doesn't just have one electric grid. It has one for each island with a low capacity level on each one. The issue now, and how valid depends on how much trust you put into the utility, is that there is so much solar currently connected there are serious issues of grid stability. It was built with generators with slow response times and now you have MW of power that flash on and off with a passing cloud. Someone had to put a surge system in, not sure the schools are the best ones though.
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Re:$100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:5, Informative)
Heat lags peak solar by several hours. Hawaii's grid can't absorb the excess generated at nonn, and strains to supply the need as consumption ramps up just as solar is starting to fall. Some storage to time shift the produced solar power by a few hours is pretty much mandatory, once solar starts to be a large fraction of the total supply. You also need the storage to smooth out sudden dips likes a storm blowing in. Solar production can drop by 80% in a fraction of an hour. That's not a problem if solar is only a few percent of your energy mix, but it can lead to grid instability if the solar is meeting nearly 100% of the total demand at noon, and the conventional power plant is idling near zero output. Fossil fuel plants take time to ramp up. Battery storage (or other grid scale storage) is mandatory for a stable supply once solar (or solar and wind) become a large percentage of total supply.
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If native Hawaiians are freaking out over a telescope being built on a "holy mountain", what exactly do you think their reaction to tapping that holy source of heat would be?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Mauna_Kea_Observatories
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Re: $100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:1)
Part of the issue there is build-up of heat over the day, causing that lag. With better sun screens, building design, insulation, and thermal mass, buildings can work well with solar generation in summer and winter, although not all of those options are going to be cost effective to retrofit for all buildings.
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Heat lags peak solar by several hours. Hawaii's grid can't absorb the excess generated at nonn, and strains to supply the need as consumption ramps up just as solar is starting to fall. Some storage to time shift the produced solar power by a few hours is pretty much mandatory, once solar starts to be a large fraction of the total supply. You also need the storage to smooth out sudden dips likes a storm blowing in. Solar production can drop by 80% in a fraction of an hour. That's not a problem if solar is only a few percent of your energy mix, but it can lead to grid instability if the solar is meeting nearly 100% of the total demand at noon, and the conventional power plant is idling near zero output. Fossil fuel plants take time to ramp up. Battery storage (or other grid scale storage) is mandatory for a stable supply once solar (or solar and wind) become a large percentage of total supply.
Nat Gas and even hydro generation can ramp fast enough to deal with wind variability, it is more challenging for solar in a small area where you can have those massive swings but it doesn't have to be 100% battery backup.
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How much natural gas and hydro power does Oahu have? We're talking about a special case here, not like anything on the mainland.
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A source for this claim about Singaporean classroom temperatures? Because it would be very unlike the Singaporean government to not put AC in classrooms.
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Did you really ask why do solar panels need batteries? It's almost like the power they generate isn't smooth and they needed something to help with that.
You know, I hear capacitors help smooth out energy curves. Maybe a big capacitor? Oh! Like a....
Battery.
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School happens primarily during the day.
Yeah, and it's not like the school cafeterias need refrigeration to store food.
relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
Because electricity from the grid in Hawaii is devilishly-expensive, over USD $0.40/kWh, and much of it comes from burning diesel fuel that must be imported by huge tanker ships that burn even more fossil-fuels. More than likely it's also designed so that extra electricity generated will be sold back into the grid and offset costs while reducing pollution and fossil-fuel use even further.
It's like the Left hates Musk because Musk
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Sorry Mary Poppins would disagree :-)
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Sorry Mary Poppins would disagree :-)
Well naturally, That evil Poppins woman created the Umbrella Corp and doomed Racoon City. after all.
Strat
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The left always like to thing along the lines of "How can we best make do with what resources we already have and redistribute them fairly?"
So they would prefer to remain stuck with high electricity prices and have taxation on the wealthy to pay the high electricity bills of the poor.
When someone comes along with the ability to bring down energy prices to close to zero, suddenly their whole economic model pops like a bubble and the left have no purpose.
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Do we leftists hate Musk? I must have missed the last Masters of Socialism meeting.
Re:$100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:4, Insightful)
School happens primarily during the day. Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest. The schools already have an electrical connection to the grid.
Explain again why they needed power-wall batteries for each installation instead of just using the solar power directly when it was needed the most (on hot, sunny days, which generate the most solar power) and relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
This sounds an awful lot like a publicity stunt, i.e. kids + batteries + renewable science, now everyone sing kumbaya!!!
Silly questions but I'll try to answer it in a factual manner. On the Hawaiian archipelago they generate anywhere from 60-75% of their electrical energy (depending on which island you are on) with oil of all things. That and the fact that Hawaii is located in an area where solar panels should be quite efficient should result in there being a a good chance that the energy from the solar installation is considerably cheaper than the mains energy (In 2016, Hawaii actually had the highest electricity prices in the entire USA) so why not maximise the use of every spark of solar energy you can harvest even during periods of low sunlight? ... or should they be maximising the use of oil generated electricity and then sitting around a a big pile of extortionate electrical bills singing jolly songs in praise of the oil companies? If I was a Hawaiian I'd dimension my solar panel installation and battery pack in such a way that I'd never have to tap the grid for a single kilowatt all year round, the next thing I'd do after that would be to buy an electric car.
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School happens primarily during the day. Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest.
Well, there's your problem right there. Just implement a daylight savings time extreme in Hawaii, shifting the clocks by 12 hours.
Send the little bastards to school at night!
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Yeah! By God, when I was their age, I had to walk to school! In the snow! Up hill! Both Ways!
Sweating builds character.
Now get the hell off my lawn!
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Explain again why they needed power-wall batteries for each installation instead of just using the solar power directly when it was needed the most
Electricity is relatively expensive in Hawaii. If they are buying panels anyway to offset AC consumption, it could easily make economic sense to buy batteries. The batteries allow them to continue using those panels even when the kids aren't in class.
And I don't buy the argument that they could just feed the excess power into the grid. Where I live, the utility company pays jack compared to what they charge. I double the value of my generation if I store/use instead of sell/buy. This makes batteries a very
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1 aircon unit = 300 bucks installed. (Score:2)
thats thai pricing, roughtly. enough for a room.
1000 gets you an office space/bigroom luxus model.
basically those school systems pay off themselves in 30 years. I really have to think that tesla is starved for buyers for the powerwall. which is a stupid fucking name anyways. Tesla powerBANK would be a better one, since it would lead to less disappointment about what it actually is.
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free air conditioning
Except for one thing, you forgot the $100,000,000.
The only way I see this making any sense is if the current Hawaiian electrical infrastructure simply can not supply the demand of these added air conditioners. Otherwise it is just a publicity stunt all while Tesla once again sucks away on the tit of the taxpayer funded government.
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Consider, fuel for generators comes from the mainland. Grid electricity is expensive in Hawaii.
Meanwhile, solar is highly effective in Hawaii.
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Consider, fuel for generators comes from the mainland. Grid electricity is expensive in Hawaii.
Meanwhile, solar is highly effective in Hawaii.
I'm sure the coal lobby is desperate to start doing investigative mining.
If they're not successful, they'l be more than happy to ship coal from the mainland... /s
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Re: $100 million for 2490 classrooms? (Score:2)
and the earthquakes that come with them
As those are shield volcanoes, the region should be fairly stable, seismically...
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A better mid continental hotspot example would be Yellowstone.
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If only there were articles describing the other efforts being funded by the $100m. Like "HIDOE’s heat abatement efforts also consist of installing ceiling fans, using nighttime ventilation, painting roofs with heat-reflective coating and extending shade."
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+ HIDOE’s heat abatement efforts also consist of installing ceiling fans, using nighttime ventilation, painting roofs with heat-reflective coating and extending shade + Solar-powered weather stations mounted on these schools transmit data to a receiver in the school office, which is then posted to the new HIDOE Thermal Comfort website. Indoor classroom temperatures are monitored by the use of 737 data loggers that record the temperature and humidity every 30 minutes
RTFA (Score:2)
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They do not get that their work is absolutely critical for the future of a nation. Or rather those that decide the budget and staffing of education departments do not get that and place 2nd and 3rd rate people there and give them too little budget to do the job well in addition. The underlying problem is that politicians cannot see or plan beyond the next election and bad education has an effect that is delayed by 10 years or so and then only ramps up over time. That bad education continues to have a negati
Wow! (Score:3)
Hawaii has a problem with hot temperatures in public classrooms that is affecting students negatively.
For sure? Have studies been done? Is Hawaii hot? Wow, new info for me!
But seriously, this is the kind of stuff that will keep giving back to Tesla, they may be "giving away" a lot of stuff, but they are actually building the network that will be the foundation for the future and they are getting their foot in the door before GE or some other huge infrastructure company gets a foothold on the technology.
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giving away? Tesla ainted giving away shit. The tax payer is funding this
So? This is the kind of thing the government SHOULD be paying for.
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New info for me, too.
I lived on Oahu for a year way back in the '70s. When we moved in, we opened all the windows in the house. When we left, we closed them. Never needed A/C, never needed heat. Hell, with the windows there (think large venetian blinds - the glass was cut into 10cm strips that rotated when you cranked the handle to o
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Hawaii has a problem with hot temperatures in public classrooms that is affecting students negatively.
For sure? Have studies been done? Is Hawaii hot? Wow, new info for me!
But seriously, this is the kind of stuff that will keep giving back to Tesla, they may be "giving away" a lot of stuff, but they are actually building the network that will be the foundation for the future and they are getting their foot in the door before GE or some other huge infrastructure company gets a foothold on the technology.
What technology? Batteries? Solar Panels? Tesla has zero technology foothold on anybody when it comes to solar, except possibly in solar shingles. They have a brand and marketing advantage because people love Musk, and he's a master at getting government $$. He knows the brand, even if it costs more, is something politicians can sell.
Nice PR move, but .... (Score:5, Interesting)
These Powerwalls just don't add up as truly economic solutions if you're a regular customer buying at Tesla's asking price.
Same problem Tesla has with those solar roof shingles. The estimated cost to cover the average size roof on a home makes them totally non-competitive with regular panels.
I really hope I'll see this change in my lifetime, and even better if it's fairly quickly. But battery technology really hasn't evolved at that fast of a pace. Much of the gains we've seen in how long you can go before needing to recharge a laptop or a phone have more to do with CPUs and other components increasing their efficiency.
Plus, the whole battery making process is REALLY environmentally dirty. The more batteries we use, the more negative environmental impact that production creates -- and right now, companies like Tesla are really trying NOT to address that issue. (It's nice to promise all the "feel good" things about batteries being able to be recycled over and over whenever they wear out, but many, many NEW batteries need to be manufactured to meet the needs for battery powered automobiles and power capture for PV solar. We're FAR from a point where all the batteries we'd ever need already exist can can just be re-used on demand!)
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The estimated cost to cover the average size roof on a home makes them totally non-competitive with regular panels.
Only if you ignore the fact that the energy generated over their lifetime gets you a free roof and maintenance and tidy profit.
Plus, the whole battery making process is REALLY environmentally dirty.
Compared to what? Burning more petrol and coal and gas? Creating more nuclear waste? Plus we haven't really started recycling those batteries on a large scale yet because the vast majority of them are still working.
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While I'm a big fan and super interested in the solar roof, I'm still waiting to see 4-5 years of data for a better cost/benefit analysis. On the face of it, the numbers do add up, but it's a brand new product, and I do expect that there will be some bugs to be shaken out.
Given the weather and climate diversity in this country, I want to see how the roofs perform across a wide geographic area for a couple of years. How do they handle extreme events? What does maintenance really look like?
I tend to distrust
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You got to hand it to Tesla's PR department, though. If this was ANY other solar sell or battery manufacturer, this wouldn't be front page news.
Elon pretty much has the tech press trained to track his every bowel movement at this point.
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Batteries don't really have a negative impact on environment.
They get recycled. The mining is simple.
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But battery technology really hasn't evolved at that fast of a pace
An average increase in power density of 10% per year or 2.6x over the past decade.
much of the gains we've seen in how long you can go before needing to recharge a laptop or a phone have more to do with CPUs and other components increasing their efficiency.
Don't forget about everyone being obsessed with "slim". Cellphone is made 25% slimmer while having 25% more capacity in one generation. "QQ, batteries are not getting better fast enough, just look at my cell phone". My cellphone with a case is slimmer than my cellphone without a case from just a few years back, yet the battery storage has gone from 2AH to 3.5AH. Do you have an agenda against battery tech developing too slowly?
perhaps send those that signed this to maths class (Score:1)
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Why would you care? Unless you've had a lot to say about fossil fuel subsidies totalling $5.3 trillion (more than 6% of the entire planet's GDP), you should probably just relax about a few bucks going to solar power, especially when it keeps getting cheaper and cheaper to install and use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
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TFA isn't clear, but a lot of the state doesn't really have a grid. It would be good to know how many of those walls will wind up in places like Kauai, where they still provide power to buildings by running diesel generators.
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You think it's the only Hawaiian island?
And I though the US is a developed country... (Score:2)
How come a country as highly developed and as rich as the USA doesn't even have A/C in schools in what is possibly one of the hottest parts of the country?
And, as others pointed out, an electricity network that is not even able to provide the power for those A/C units?
At maybe 10 kW per classroom (with halfway decent isolation that should be more than enough to cool it down) that's a mere 25 MW of electricity - spread out over the network.
Re: And I though the US is a developed country... (Score:3)
in what is possibly one of the hottest parts of the country?
I take it you've never been to Hawaii. FYI, it's generally very pleasant; tradewinds and all that.
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This leads to Hawaii having the highest electricity cost of any state [eia.gov], higher than even Alaska. It's what makes alternatives like wi
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Actually, last time I priced electricity from a powerwall, it cost something like 0.08 UKP/kWh (about 12c/kWh) plus the cost of the electricity (solar panels in Hawaii might be as low as 5c/kWh depending mainly on the installation costs.) So it's fairly plausible they could hit 20c/kWh. Which although not fantastic is still pretty good compared to the 40c/kWh the grid costs you. But even that's only for the stored electricity; most of the electricity you could just generate and stick straight into the AC un
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Some like it not. (Score:2, Funny)
Trump recommended Hawaii install all the Powerwalls in a row to make an actual wall, to keep out the Mexicans.
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Seems legit (Score:1)