Giant Tesla Battery Project Now Proposed For Silicon Valley (digitaltrends.com) 88
Digital Trends reports:
Tesla's largest-ever Powerpack installation may be coming to Northern California. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) applied to the California Public Utilities Commission for approval for a utility-owned 182.5 MW energy storage farm using Tesla Powerpacks at the company's energy storage site in Moss Landing... The Tesla project, however, would have an expansion capacity of 1.1 GW. The storage projects' purpose is to help keep electrical power levels even for PG&E customers. The storage facilities would feed power to the grid when consumption exceeds normal levels and during blackouts or other service interruptions.
Tesla's giant battery in Australia has already reduced grid service costs by 90%.
And speaking of power sources, long-time Slasdot reader judgecorp writes: A disused Stanley Black & Decker factory in New Britain, Hartford County.CT, will get a 20MW micro-grid powered by fuel cells, according to the first phase of a plan unveiled by the State Governor. It's a big deal because it will be the largest indoor micro-grid in the world, and will help provide a reliable power source for a data center in the old factory. Along with the other phases of the project, Governor Dannel Malloy hopes the deal will provide 3,000 jobs and lots of tax revenue.
Tesla's giant battery in Australia has already reduced grid service costs by 90%.
And speaking of power sources, long-time Slasdot reader judgecorp writes: A disused Stanley Black & Decker factory in New Britain, Hartford County.CT, will get a 20MW micro-grid powered by fuel cells, according to the first phase of a plan unveiled by the State Governor. It's a big deal because it will be the largest indoor micro-grid in the world, and will help provide a reliable power source for a data center in the old factory. Along with the other phases of the project, Governor Dannel Malloy hopes the deal will provide 3,000 jobs and lots of tax revenue.
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Elaborate, please. I'd like you to tell us why these aren't needed.
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Re:When all you have is a hammer (Score:4, Informative)
Moss Landing [wikipedia.org] generates 1020 MW, net. This battery provides about (182/1020 * 60) 10 minutes of backup capacity. I don't know if it's at all realistic to think you can find and repair a downed power line in 10 minutes.
No but in 10 minutes you may be able to switch to other transmission lines or bring additional generation online. If you can use batteries to buffer the load while other power sources become available, you can avoid brownouts and more importantly cascading failures.
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Obviously, longer is better, but there are times that even high tension lines have to come down. It could be as simple as moving to a new transformer for maintenance.
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There is a HUGE difference between dealing with downed lines vs ones that you are working on, and you need them to be down for 5 minutes to move some lines.
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For transmission lines, failure rate is proportional to load. Unloading transmission lines during peak periods improves reliability. The same isn’t as true for sub-transmission lines, and is not true for distribution lines.
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Power lines overheat due to overload. They can either literally melt or trip switches are set off which cut power to entire neighborhoods of Silicon Valley. The power workers once grounded a live power line which took out the power to at least a third of the Bay Area. We could tell something was up because everyone was pouring out of their offices.
Re: When all you have is a hammer (Score:1)
Re: When all you have is a hammer (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with solar.
When the solar roofs are installed they'll have their own batteries installed at the house.
This is about backup an load balancing.
When you have a battery farm that can instantly start providing power to the grid and run for four hours, you can save a whole lot of money.
This is cold hard capitalism at work.
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1) The normal lifespan of the batteries is 15 years, not 3-5.
2) Consumer lithium ion batteries usually aren't recycled because they're tiny things that are more trouble than they're worth. EV and grid storage battery packs most definitely are recycled [cleantechnica.com]. For obvious reasons, because people want the large amounts of nickel, cobalt and lithium therein back. Right now Tesla's batteries are recycled by third party contractors, although eventually they want to incorporate the recycling process directly into thei
Re: When all you have is a hammer (Score:5, Interesting)
That is the official rated lifespan for Tesla's grid products. Accelerated lifecycle testing is not a new concept. It's also worth noting that degradation in Tesla's vehicle batteries has been very, very low. Early model-year Model S taxis with several hundred thousand kilometers on them still show over 90% capacity retention. And the grid products use a longer cycle life chemistry.
Re: When all you have is a hammer (Score:5, Informative)
1) we have a 2013 Tesla (i.e. 5 years old), and we are still at 95% load. Basically the same as what it was at 5K miles. According to others, it will remain above 85% clear until 300K miles. All of that is a little bit longer than 3-5 years.
2) Tesla is already recycling their own batteries. [tesla.com]
3) Hydro does not work well without water. And considering that CA is being hit by longer and longer droughts, and many of the reservoirs are still down, means a number of hydrodams are about to no longer work.
4) Energy storage spread around on a macrogrid, makes it possible for utilities to buffer their networks, handle varying demands and supplies, and deal with downtimes on the grids.
5) If CA was smart, they would add a number of nuclear SMRs around the state to provide various capabilities.
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Have they addressed the issues raised in this article from four years ago?
https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear... [ucsusa.org]
Here are the conclusions. You can see the details in the article.
-----
Conclusions
*Unless a number of optimistic assumptions are realized, SMRs are not likely to be a viable solution to the economic and safety problems faced by nuclear power.
*While some SMR proponents are worried that the United States is lagging in the creation of an SMR export market, cutting corners on safety is a shortsighted strat
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Like the NRA, UCSUSA has far too many extremists.
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There's something like 10 navigable harbors between Los Angeles and the Oregon border some 700 miles along the coast. They're all necessary for industry, fishing and pleasure craft. They're all roughly about 100 miles apart which is about a day's travel. Also lol, Moss Landing is flat as a pancake.None of this is a good idea, especially as a long term one. You'd be better off sticking wind turbines under the water at the golden gate bridge
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Moss landing is less of a bay and more of a dredged sandbar at the mouth of a river/tidal estuary, and a small one at that...
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3) Hydro does not work well without water. And considering that CA is being hit by longer and longer droughts, and many of the reservoirs are still down, means a number of hydrodams are about to no longer work.
California has been removing dams including hydroelectric ones.
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Re: When all you have is a hammer (Score:4, Informative)
The summary (and the article it links to) explain the proposal very poorly. The actual PG&E announcement is here: Moss Landing Battery Proposal [pge.com]
There are 4 battery systems being installed for a combined output of 567.5 MW and a specified discharge duration of 4 hours.
Tesla's contribution to this is a 182.5 MW x 4 hours discharge duration, aka 730MWh capacity. Pending approval is a further proposal to expand this to a 6 hour duration -approximately 1.1 GWh from Tesla.
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Power has to be generated as the few dwellings with their own own batteries would be using power from their own batteries.
Should their "own batteries" run out at night they will have to used power again. Load balancing is not going to help at night with a lot of demand.
Load balancing is not going to support 24/7 production that always needs a lot of power.
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It's literally the very first word of the article.
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It's literally in the headline:
But as an aside, can we for once have an article about electri
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Back to the GP: were you confusing the fuel cell project with the Powerpack project? It's a completely different project. The Slashdot summary did not in any way suggest that Tesla was involved. It was introduced with words "And speaking of power sources", not "And speaking of Tesla batteries".
Tesla or Panasonic batteries? (Score:2)
I'm confused, are these the Panasonic batteries Tesla uses, or are these produced by and is the IP owned by, Tesla? I'm trying to figure out which company owns what...
Re:Tesla or Panasonic batteries? (Score:5, Informative)
The Powerpacks use Tesla's new 2170-format cells produced at the Gigafactory, which is a Tesla-Panasonic joint venture.
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Do you know who owns the patents (Tesla, Panasonic, Gigafactory)?
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No - this has never been asked on any of the conference calls. One presumes that all Gigafactory IP is jointly owned, since GF1 is jointly owned.
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Do you know who owns the patents (Tesla, Panasonic, Gigafactory)?
patents are not property and cannot be owned
False [gmu.edu]. Chief Justice Roberts wrote:
“[A patent] confers upon the patentee an exclusive property in the patented invention which cannot be appropriated or used by the government itself, without just compensation, any more than it can appropriate or use without compensation land which has been patented to a private purchaser.”
Patents are property, per the US Supreme Court. End of discussion.
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land which has been patented
Land can be patented? I wish I'd thought of this sooner.
We should just be grateful Apple aren't claiming to have invented it I suppose.
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The 2170 is supposedly based on Tesla's R&D and it is trade secrets, not patented. Panasonic contributed the equipment, that is all.
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Well, the 21700 is not really a new battery. It's a new battery size, yes, just like you have the 18650 battery, Tesla "invented" the 21700 battery. If you can't read the number, the first two digits it eh diameter of the cell in millimeters, so Tesla bumped up the cell diameter to 21mm from 18mm. The last 3 digits are the cell length in tents of a millimeter (or hundreds of a micrometer, to be precise). So the cell length went from 65mm
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I believe the battery chemistry IP is at least shared between Tesla and Panasonic.
Tesla is funding some research in stuff like battery longevity, reducing reliance on scarce resources, etc.
The production of the cells is done by Panasonic with Tesla as the client, but with Panasonic investing in the infrastructure.
Everything above the cell level, integration of the cells into larger modules, cooling, software, electronics, etc is done by Tesla.
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This isn't exactly correct. Your description of the arrangement is accurate for the 18650 cells, but not the 2170s.
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Please elaborate
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You described the arrangement of Tesla's purchase of 18650-format cells for the Model S and X. The model 3 uses 2170 format cells manufactured in GF1. Ownership and management of the plant is jointly held.
Moss Landing isn't in Silicon Valley (Score:2, Informative)
Silicon Valley is a narrow stretch of the Santa Clara Valley, from Palo Alto to San Jose, where semiconductor companies were located during the 1980s. Moss Landing is a coastal area in Monterey County, which isn't even in the SF Bay Area.
Units! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the article appears to confuse MW with MWh at one point I suspect that this is yet another example of journalists not understanding the difference between power and energy.
Not Silicon Valley (Score:4, Informative)
Moss Landing is on the coast, between Monterey and Santa Cruz. It is not silicon valley.
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That is why 3DFS is making a killing and changing everything that we know.
With their tech, they are stablizing the grid which cuts the electricity use in half AND actually improves the lifespan of electronics/electrical devices.
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Solar, wind, and batteries aren't technical issues, I am thoroughly convinced the people that react so badly to anything that points out flaws are operating under religious belief and couldn't calculate RMS power if you handed them the formulas and told them the values of the variables.
If you go back a few years here, you will find the usual idiots saying that batteries won't be needed because you will just be transmitting power from areas where it's sunny.
Now that that boats sailed they are shilling like t
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Yet, when all is said and done the electricity is still more expensive than before renewables.
These large scale grid storage solutions are arbitrary opportunities created by subsidized renewables.
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Meant arbitrage.
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Congratulations on understanding exactly nothing that is going on. Johnny, tell him what's he won!
Congratulations on having your electric rates raised, while California can no longer supply you with water
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Idiot. Hydro was maxed out before you were born. The last and likely last of the major hydro projects was 3 gorges damn.
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The only 6 year old here would be you.
During the 1980s, the idea of a dam reemerged. The National People's Congress approved the dam in 1992: out of 2,633 delegates, 1,767 voted in favour, 177 voted against, 664 abstained, and 25 members did not vote.[24] Construction started on December 14, 1994.[25] The dam was expected to be fully operational in 2009, but additional projects, such as the underground power plant with six additional generators, delayed full operation until May 2012
It doesn't even have the world record anymore.
The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22,500 MW). In 2014, the dam generated 98.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) and had the world record, but was surpassed by the Itaipú Dam, which set the new world record in 2016, producing 103.1 TWh.
Seems hydro maxed out in 2016. I guess there is also no more water for hydro left anywhere...
Yeah because accounting for a flat 24% of the worlds generating capacity with a long term growth rate of less 1/2% of base annually isn't maxed out.
Hey are you going to bite the bullet and pedal to operate your computer, read books by candle light or do you just figure you will be privileged enough to make other people live that way ?
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Thats jobs, exports and more new jobs all over the USA.
Having to pay more for power when the wind stops and the sun is not out (night time) is not going to provide the 24/7 power cost needed to grow jobs.
Low cost energy all over the USA 24/7 is what makes the USA productive and able to export at a lower cost.
A production line that has to stop every 12 hours as the sun goes down and power prices become unpredictable is
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What set power cost? Do you think the production line will have its own dedicated coal plant, not connected to the grid? That hardly seems efficient. It won't solve the problem of variable power demand from everything/everyone else anyway, just increase the minimum.
You're looking at it backwards anyway. Does having cheaper power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining make the coal more or less expensive? When the sun is shining or the wind is blowing power will be cheaper, when it's not it wont ma
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That power will be priced to reflect a profit given a lot of demand and low supply.
When sun is shining and wind power is working again then prices will go lower for hours in the day.
The low cost of power cost needs to be 24/7. Not just a price reduction when the wind is blowing and the hours when the sun is shining.
Pumped hydro is good but not every part of a nation has that set
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The batteries themselves I would think would be fine as long as they're fused as they should be. That would be an overload condition. Back when they discovered this in Hawaii during US Nuclear tests, batteries, ignition points, traffic lights, anything electro-mechanical was fine. Tubes radios and such were for the most part fine. It was transistors that blew. Semiconductors for the small stuff. For electrical grids where wires can pick up a lot of current from the blast, it was the transformers. If they're
Let's be real, folks. Lots of misinformation here. (Score:2, Informative)
The Australia battery plant does not reduce grid costs 90%. It reduces the cost of frequency correction, which is a tiny percentage of the total grid cost. We should also be aware that this is only a power storage system, it does not produce any electricity on its own. The point here is that if there is an excess of solar, wind, hydroelectric, or fossil-fuel generated power at one point, this can be stored and released at another point in time. This release happens almost instantly, where with a more conven
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Except the battery is right next to a huge wind farm, placed there specifically to use excess output, so the combination does generate power.
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Though gas power plants were taken offline, nuclear and coal plants can’t be quickly shut down, so they went on running and had to pay to sell power into the grid for several hours, while industrial customers such as refineries and foundries earned money by consuming electricity.
Or just shut them down and clean up the environment.
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it does not produce any electricity on its own.
But maybe you can take it to a Supercharger and charge it for free?