Samoa Plans Switch To 100% Renewable Electricity -- Using Tesla's Batteries and Grid Controller (fastcompany.com) 72
An anonymous reader quotes Fast Company:
In seven years, the island nation of Samoa plans to run on 100% renewable electricity. Over the last year, the local utility has worked with Tesla to install a key piece of that plan -- battery storage, and also a software system that can control Samoa's entire electricity supply. In the past, like many islands, the country ran mostly on imported, expensive, and polluting diesel power. As recently as 2012, the country brought in 95 million liters of diesel.
Spurred by the cost and the threat of climate change -- Samoa is at particular risk from sea level rise and new outbreaks of climate-related diseases -- the country has been ramping up the use of renewables, with five large solar plants, a wind farm, and hydropower plants. But as renewable energy grew, the grid struggled with reliability.
"It had gotten to the point where just the solar, combined, could provide over half of the entire peak demand for the island, but they were having quite a few challenges managing that efficiently," says JB Straubel, Tesla's chief technical officer.... Tesla installed two of its "Powerpack" battery systems, and also developed and implemented island grid controller software that can control both the batteries and all of the power plants. "If a big cloud comes over the island and the solar drops very quickly, we can control the battery to make up the difference so we don't have to start a generator immediately, and we don't have to keep a generator running even when it might not be needed," says Straubel.
"It had gotten to the point where just the solar, combined, could provide over half of the entire peak demand for the island, but they were having quite a few challenges managing that efficiently," says JB Straubel, Tesla's chief technical officer.... Tesla installed two of its "Powerpack" battery systems, and also developed and implemented island grid controller software that can control both the batteries and all of the power plants. "If a big cloud comes over the island and the solar drops very quickly, we can control the battery to make up the difference so we don't have to start a generator immediately, and we don't have to keep a generator running even when it might not be needed," says Straubel.
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'This is about the non-american Somoa.'
Since this is a sensible decision we already suspected so.
Bottom line? (Score:2)
Now that this is brought up, how does the Tesla power wall, solar cells, and battery operations affect Tesla's bottom line? Are these profitable profit centers?
Re:Bottom line? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are. The teardowns industry experts executed on their products indicate roughly 30% margin. Citation. [electrek.co]
They are just using the Amazon model of spending on new products and services, investing their capital into growth vs returns. Thats a long-term return strategy and one I think wall street will have to get used to. There is a difference between companies like Sears who cost-cut and sell business units in order to try and remain solvent, and ones like Tesla who throw everything they have in order to deliver the next breakthrough product like the fastest accelerating car on earth, or the first really usable electric Semi-Truck, or win the race to Level5 autonomous driving. Amazon did the same thing when it invested in AWS, Prime Streaming, Alexa, and Kindle. Some of their investments didn't pan out, like Fire Phone and Tablet, but most do. They are smart guys. This is Tesla's approach. Solar Tiles, Battery packs for home, business, infrastructure, cars, suvs, trucks, sports cars, and the underlying platform (autonomous driving, supercharger network).
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They are just using the Amazon model of spending on new products and services, investing their capital into growth vs returns.
*sigh* This lie gets repeated so much, even now. I don't feel like wasting key presses again so take a look at the link. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words. If you don't understand then please take a course on basic accounting principles. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dh... [twimg.com]
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Gross margins are not net margins. They currently make positive gross margins on the S and X, and the 3 was supposedly positive at the end of Q2, but nowhere near 30%— they are targeting 15% at the end of the year.
On the energy division, I have not seen statistics, but from what I have seen it looks like it is primarily subsidizing battery production rates right now for the Model 3. I would expect them to be making 25-30% before long; they appear to be well ahead of more established players in the ma
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I love how I permanently dwell in your brain rent-free ;)
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You know me too well. I'm everywhere. I'm responsible for everything.
I'm a shape-shifter.
I live in the cracks.
I am watching you when you least expect it.
I live in the shadows of your darkest fears and, in your weakest moments, when you're naked and vulnerable, I am there - watching, waiting.
I live through you all.
I am the breath on the back of the neck, the breeze in your hair.
Cheers!
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when you're naked and vulnerable, I am there - watching, waiting.
Eeeeek!
Fortunately I'm not vulnerable when naked, at least not more than dressed in my dirty underwear :P
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Not very significantly yet, the solar roof is not being mass-produced yet, and most of the battery production capacity is being used for the cars.
But I believe they're showing something like 50% annual growth rate for the energy division.
The 50,000 home Australian distributed power system should be a pretty big step forward.
No bitcoin mining!!! (Score:1)
I'm serious. The power drain of bitcoin mining is an incredible 24-hour powersink, and people have been rooting laptops, desktops, and critical infrastructure hosts to run it on botnets since it was first developed. It's an *insidious* 24x7 power drain on modern data centers. the advent of ARM chips at first led to smaller distributed devices without the resources or software to run these, but ehe growth of more fully capable ARM based operating systems has opened the door for putting these on devices throu
Re: No bitcoin mining!!! (Score:2)
Bitcoin miners pay electric bills, electric companies make money. It's fine. Meanwhile these Islanders are getting handouts
What Internet cinnectiviy exists for Non-US Samoa (Score:2)
and more importantly, how "secure" will the grid be? Will it be Internet connected?
I also wonder if Tesla will be selling user power concumption stats to advertisers? /s
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It will be disconnected from the public internet.
No. Tesla doesnt sell user data to advertisers, nor do they place ads on any of their platforms.
Glad I could clear that up for you
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Tesla is just selling batteries. If you look closely, it is at the center of everything from Elon Musk, except for the SpaceX, but SpaceX is special.
Electric cars are essentially batteries on wheels, as in, it is the only thing in an electric car that is not better and cheaper than in a gas car.
Tesla make batteries and cars with batteries, hyperloop is about battery powered trains, boring company intends to make tunnels for electric cars only, solarcity install solar panels (or tiles?) that charge batteries
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and more importantly, how "secure" will the grid be? Will it be Internet connected?
I also wonder if Tesla will be selling user power concumption stats to advertisers? /s
Why would they? If we have learned anything from Slashdot, the only power production that works is Nuclear or coal. Nothing else. So there isn't much use Tesla selling his made up figures. They are as fictitious, as Solar is dead and always will be.
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Given that the batteries are expensive, I'm sure there are significant capital costs. I doubt its more than the cost of the Diesel they are importing. 95 million liters are no joke.
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Woo woo - 100% free renewable power! But no mention of up-front capital costs. Given that batteries wear out and have to be replaced, some discussion of life-cycle cost would be interesting.
The summary links to a poor quality, ad-filled site, but this seems par for the course for /. these days. Even a tiny bit of effort Googling brings up more data though [electrek.co].
The entire project cost $8.8 million to install 13.5 MWh of storage, or $650/kWh, which is pretty good. The NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) estimates the lifetime of a grid battery at 10 years. Estimates of swapping out new for old runs $250 kWh (the infrastructure and controllers are still in place, old batteries are recycled) so
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That seems quite high. I think that Tesla's battery costs are about $100/kWh.
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A Better Article, And American Samoa Too (Score:5, Informative)
Better for two reasons [electrek.co], it actually provides some data about the battery installation (it is 13.2 MWh of storage) and the site isn't packed with auto-play unstoppable video ad force-feeding like the FastCompany site.
But American Samoa, the U.S. territory, got Tesla batteries two years ago [cleanegroup.org]. This installation is 6 MWh, but since the population is much smaller (55,000 vs 195,000 for Samoa) it is enough to run the main island (Tutuila) for three days without needing any power production, and is nearly 100% renewable powered now.
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The largest Pacific solar bank (Score:4, Informative)
Is on Saipan, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. It was constructed back in 2014. And yes, Saipan is American and the system was built and is operated by a private business. It also works a hell of a lot better than the local government run utility company that the US government has poured millions into.
Future considerations (Score:1)
Since we’re talking about a country’s power grid, long term thinking is a necessity. What is the lifetime of the battery components of these powerpacks; and, when the time comes to replace them, how much of the old material can be reprocessed and reused versus having to go to the hazardous waste dump (and - separately - can that dump be in low-laying Samoa?)?
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Tesla has been investing in some research into longevity of the batteries.
So far it looks like they can maintain 80% charge after 800,000km traveled for the car batteries.
I'm not sure how that translates to the stationary batteries, because they have different power cycles, and a different chemistry optimized for their use, but overall should be pretty good.
Tesla has stated that battery recycling is part of the design of the factory that manufactures them, though I doubt it's become an issue yet.
Generally,
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"Tesla has been investing in some research into longevity of the batteries.
So far it looks like they can maintain 80% charge after 800,000km traveled for the car batteries.
I'm not sure how that translates to the stationary batteries, because they have different power cycles, and a different chemistry optimized for their use, but overall should be pretty good"
I'm not convinced that Tesla's NCA battery cells are best suited for this use long-term; LiFePO4 should be much better and the greater number needed be
This is a large part of why TSLA has bright future (Score:3)
When people think of Tesla mostly they think of cars.
Those are doing well enough, sure, but longer term Tesla is more about battery tech than anything else - with cars just a part of that equation.
Tesla has been locking down a lot of supplies for batteries, like lithium. Tesla is really well positioned to dominate any field that needs batteries on a large scale.
Re: This is a large part of why TSLA has bright fu (Score:4, Informative)
And where are they sourcing lithium, cobalt, rare earth metals? Any consequences?
They've been reducing the amount of cobalt required, down from 11 kg per car for the original Roadster and early Model S to 7 kg for S and X beginning in 2016 and an estimated 4.5 kg for the Model 3
Re: This is a large part of why TSLA has bright fu (Score:4, Interesting)
Th rest is Lithium, Nickel, and Aluminum. No REMs.
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"rare-earth metals" is the name of a group of 17 elements of which only 1 element is rare. When the group was originally defined in around the year 1800 the elements were considered rare. But in modern times, that is no longer true and the elements are plentiful except for 1 element. Therefore, it is a misnomer to say that these elements are rare. The issue for battery manufacturing is geo-political rather than chemical.
Also, Cobalt is not in the group of rare-earth metals.
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great,but still needs baseload power (Score:1)
This would also allow the island to prohibit any more ICE vehicles and instead require that all vehicles be EVs.
Heck, push for electric boats and planes too.
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Every year li-ion batteries get 10% cheaper and less p
Well Done I Reckon (Score:1)
Ferret