Tesla and PG&E To Build World's Largest Battery Farm Near Silicon Valley (cleantechnica.com) 36
"Tesla will work with PG&E to build the world's largest battery facility able to store energy generated by both solar and wind power in Monterey, California," writes long-time Slashdot reader Okian Warrior.
Clean Technica reports: "Certainly, combined, this is going to be the largest battery facility in the world, so it's a big boost to our community and our country," said Monterey County Supervisor John Phillips. Both projects will utilize hundreds of lithium-ion batteries to store clean and renewable energy. They will also use the existing power lines to transmit the energy around Monterey County and parts of Silicon Valley.
Next month, Tesla and PG&E hope to break ground on their project with hopes that it will be completed by the end of this year.
Clean Technica reports: "Certainly, combined, this is going to be the largest battery facility in the world, so it's a big boost to our community and our country," said Monterey County Supervisor John Phillips. Both projects will utilize hundreds of lithium-ion batteries to store clean and renewable energy. They will also use the existing power lines to transmit the energy around Monterey County and parts of Silicon Valley.
Next month, Tesla and PG&E hope to break ground on their project with hopes that it will be completed by the end of this year.
Re:Scale of the problem (Score:5, Informative)
First, you have an extra 0 in you percent calculation. Second, you are looking at anual generation capacity and comparing it it to a storage facility that can be charged and discharged several times a day. Third, you do not need to store power to use it. A lot of wind and solar can be used directly.
Re:Scale of the problem (Score:4, Funny)
That said he would be right if there was ever a need to store enough electric energy to power California for a full year without generating any new electric energy.
Re:Scale of the problem (Score:4, Informative)
Those "2000 cycles" are for full charged to fully discharged and back.
If you stay between 20% and 80%, the batteries will last much longer. Even staying between 10% and 90% is a big help.
Also, the battery "life" means degrading the battery to 80% of its original storage capacity. But for grid storage that doesn't matter so much. The batteries can continue to be used even below 80% capacity. In fact, retired Prius batteries have been used for grid storage, because the lower capacity makes them unfit for mobile use, but still okay for stationary use.
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Even still, they have the space. They should use iron/nickel [slashdot.org] batteries that will last 100 years. And they don't need exotic hard to find materials. And if that link is any indication, maybe we can have living batteries that suck up CO2. Now can you see how the Matrix really begins and evolves?
Re:Scale of the problem (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, if you're planning to generate all the electricity the state is going to use a year in advance.
I'm not grid engineer, or any kind of engineer, but let's look at the numbers.
So we can take 285,488 and divide it by 365, around 782GWh a day, let's divide that by 2 because I my guess is half the time you can just use the power directly without needing storage, and divide by the installation's capacity, we need around 326 of them for your scenario, feel free to add 20% for safety margin.
But in reality, even adding a small amount of these storage facilities can make highly inefficient and expensive peaker plants redundant and even out the supply/demand of power generated from nuclear plants.
Personally I prefer the idea of localized power generation and storage per house, so it's more resilient to damage and can be bartered in an open market.
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For solar you definitely cannot assume half the time energy storage is not needed. Maybe for wind you can, but wind is unreliable in different ways. It may not blow at all for a week or more. At least the sun always rises the next day.
The sun is only considered bright by photovoltaic standards 4-6 hours per day. If we assume 6 hours per day then that is only 1/4 of each day. So 75% of the time you will need to run on battery power.
Also as others have stated batteries have a limited number of cycles and the
Re:Scale of the problem (Score:4)
Well, I'm assuming a mix of solar and wind, with the wind being scattered over a large geographical area, but it doesn't really matter if the coefficient is 0.5 or .75, it's just a ballpark.
As for the storage method, whether it's batteries or fuel cells or flywheels or mass-based, I'm sure there are tradeoffs for each.
Tesla has already done pretty well on the capacity loss front for vehicles, and I'm sure there are strategies of load balancing, cooling, over-provisioning etc that are more applicable to stationary batteries.
It's just a matter of cost efficiency, and in the case of Tesla their expertise and economies of scale currently lie in Li-ion.
Re:Scale of the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
You obviously have not looked at the efficiency of those processes.
Hydrogen as a fuel source is a bullshit idea that is being promoted by fossil fuel industry interests.
That's not what this system is for. It's to handle the peak loads between about 6pm and 10pm and take advantage of the solar oversupply earlier in the day. Google the "duck curve" for more information.
As long as you don't charge above about 80-90% and discharge below 10% too often, that degradation can be very slow. Tesla knows very well how to maximize battery life and what the expected life is.
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Hydrogen as a fuel source is a bullshit idea that is being promoted by fossil fuel industry interests.
Even the FF industry knows that H2 is economically infeasible. They just promoted it as FUD to delay the adoption of EVs.
The hydrogen fuel-cell scam [cleantechnica.com]
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It may not blow at all for a week or more.
That may be true for a single location, but not over an area the size of California. California is big. In Europe, it would stretch from Rome to London.
Also, California has interconnects with neighboring states and can import excess wind and hydropower from Oregon and Washington.
Re: Scale of the problem (Score:2)
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It may not blow at all for a week or more. At least the sun always rises the next day.
How should that be physical possible? Especially in 100m hights where the generator of the wind turbine is?
Re: Scale of the problem (Score:2)
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I think it's probably unlikely California would be without any wind or solar generation for an entire year.
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The purpose of this thing is not supply all of California's electricity. It's to provide peak load service with cheaper off-peak electricity locally.
In the long term if you want to totally renewable electricity, battery storage is only one aspect of how you'd do that. There are currently two million rooftop solar installations in the US, so I'd be thinking in terms of millions of *much smaller* installations rather than hundreds of thousands like this.
On top of that improving the grid so you can import en
Re: Scale of the problem (Score:1)
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Monopoly Power? (Score:2)
2) PG&E has threatened to declare bankruptcy
3) PG&E is apparently leveraging its monopoly position to compete with other businesses (battery manufacturers).
This seems like an especially bad combo for the public interest.
Re: Monopoly Power? (Score:2)
PG&E is a highly regulated monopoly. Nuff said. They are one of the most regulated power companies in the US because of the Enron fiasco.
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And yet they help burn down large sections of the state and then can shutoff power any time they want. That regulation is really working, obviously. Both power and water regulation in California have been a giant fraud-fest. The 'de-regulation' that made Enron possible was anything but 'de-regulation', political double-speak. Its a shit show all around.
Re: Monopoly Power? (Score:1)
The world is transitioning (Score:5, Insightful)
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"It wasn't all that long ago that many, many individuals were all over this and other comment boards screaming that the very thing that's going on now was/is impossible."
In fact, in most stories on energy and/or climate change, they're still doing it, and claiming that only nuclear can solve our energy/pollution problems. I had hoped that the Australian battery would have put a stop to most of that... But it didn't. And sadly, neither will this. The nuclear playboys will simply keep inventing reasons why wh
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Batteries don't generate electricity, they take in electricity and return it to the grid with some losses, like any other storage system such as pumped hydro.
There's no real way to compare batteries with generating facilities like non-fossil-carbon nuclear plants except to note that battery installations like this one make solar and wind both more dispatchable and more expensive due to the cost of building and operating the battery systems and also decommissioning them and replacing them at end-of-life.
By
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"There's no real way to compare batteries with generating facilities like non-fossil-carbon nuclear plants"
Sure there is. You compare renewables plus batteries to nuclear plants. And renewables plus batteries produce less CO2 (in construction) and no nuclear waste, yet cost less and are built more rapidly. They're also recyclable or even reusable. (At the end of their supposed service life, solar panels still work, and can be sold on to people who will come and get them so you don't even have to pay shippin
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It happens every day. Literally. People actually SELL used solar panels every day. And people buy them. Quality panels still have over 80% output after ten years of [expected service] life â" in fact, usually over 90%.
Re: The world is transitioning (Score:2)
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The thing with electricity is that generation and consumption must be matched. You don't call the power company to tell them you intend to turn on your air conditioner in an hour so they can plan for it, you just turn it on and the power grid reacts.
This is easy when there's a lot of "inertia" in the system - if you turn on an air conditioner and need another kilowatt of power, the power company needs to generate another kilowatt of power at the same time. But since it's only reactive, the generators genera
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