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Education Power The Almighty Buck Technology

Tesla Deploys Over 300 Powerwalls To Give Hawaiian School Kids AC (electrek.co) 147

Posted by BeauHD from the learning-opportunities dept.
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.
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Tesla Deploys Over 300 Powerwalls To Give Hawaiian School Kids AC More

Tesla Deploys Over 300 Powerwalls To Give Hawaiian School Kids AC

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  • Wow! (Score:3)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Sunday February 25, 2018 @11:55PM (#56185825)

    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.

    • 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!

      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

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Sunday February 25, 2018 @11:58PM (#56185831) Journal

    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!)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

      • 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

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fedos ( 150319 )
      The roof shingles are for people willing to pay more to have solar panels deployed on their roof without making it look like they solar panel delpoyed on their roof. They're not meant to compete with roof-deployed solar panels on price.

    • Batteries don't really have a negative impact on environment.
      They get recycled. The mining is simple.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )

      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?

  • sooo let me get this right, to save a few dollars on power, they spent a shitload on powerwalls that will never pay for themselves? or did Tesla give them a special deal so that they aren't economically unviable
    • They don't have maths classes in Hawaii. They only teach one math.

    • 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

      • it is just sad to see such wastage. Nothing wrong with solar, though better solutions are probably geo thermal in that region. Solar with net feed to the grid would be far better, Powerwalls suck balls cost wise, they are purely waste, they only have benefit where connectivity to the grid is expensive or the grid is inherently unreliable.

        • 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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

    • Hawaii is in an awkward situation when it comes to power. They only have a population of 1.5 million, 2/3 of whom live on Oahu. That's borderline too small for a nuclear plant. Because it's a remote island, transport costs dominate the price of fuels, so coal ends up being more expensive than oil. Consequently, most of their electricity is generated by burning fuel oil.

      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
      • It's fairly sunny too. I think that as the U.S. goes, O'ahu makes a really good test case for the viability and sustainability of solar power. Lots of sun, alternatives are inherently expensive, population is fairly centralized (most is in Honolulu), and power needs are modest compared to more heavily industrialized regions of the U.S. Now, I believe that experiment is going to require several decades. But I do hope it succeeds. The supply of fossil fuels is (probably) limited, and burning them results

      • 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

    • When you account for cost of living Hawaii is actually the poorest state in the United States.

  • Trump recommended Hawaii install all the Powerwalls in a row to make an actual wall, to keep out the Mexicans.

  • I went to high school in Hawaii, and I don't understand how this could work without rebuilding the high schools themselves. Most (if not all) the schools are open-air campuses; there's no indoors except the classrooms themselves. The classrooms have no significant insulation (why would they?), and generally feature jalousie windows. How they intend to keep the cold air in is a mystery to me. The other thing to consider here is that it's not just the heat that's the problem. The "heat" itself is generally ju

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