Tesla Project To Install Another Giant Battery In Australia (bloomberg.com) 63
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: France's Neoen SA will partner with Tesla Inc. to install one of the world's biggest lithium-ion batteries in Australia after reaching a grid connection deal with the power market operator. The 300-megawatt Victorian Big Battery will be located in the southeastern city of Geelong and use Tesla's Megapack technology. It will be double the size of Neoen's Hornsdale site in South Australia, which was the largest facility when it began operation in 2017.
Installing the new system in Australia's second-most populous state will help to modernize and stabilize the local grid, which is targeting 50% of its power to come from renewable sources by 2030, Neoen said Thursday in a media release. The Paris-based company is targeting the battery to be operational by the end of 2021. [...] Victoria's grid still relies heavily on aging coal-fired plants, which have become increasingly unreliable during periods of extreme heat. The state has experienced power outages in recent summers as the system struggled to cope with a surge in demand as businesses and households cranked up air conditioners. Neoen's new project in Victoria will be supported by a 250 megawatt grid services contract with the Australian Energy Market Operator, and will also partner with network provider AusNet Services, the company said.
Installing the new system in Australia's second-most populous state will help to modernize and stabilize the local grid, which is targeting 50% of its power to come from renewable sources by 2030, Neoen said Thursday in a media release. The Paris-based company is targeting the battery to be operational by the end of 2021. [...] Victoria's grid still relies heavily on aging coal-fired plants, which have become increasingly unreliable during periods of extreme heat. The state has experienced power outages in recent summers as the system struggled to cope with a surge in demand as businesses and households cranked up air conditioners. Neoen's new project in Victoria will be supported by a 250 megawatt grid services contract with the Australian Energy Market Operator, and will also partner with network provider AusNet Services, the company said.
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Wouldn't it have been easier to just read the article instead of shooting your mouth off and looking like a fool?
Its right there in the first paragraph. Its not "or" its "and". There are two companies working on it. Obviously.
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"Tesla, as the title claims, or the French company, as the summary claims?"
Since it won't be ready until the end of 2021, it's obviously the French.
Re:Create jobs AND lower prices? No, it won't. (Score:4, Interesting)
> The claim is that this project will create jobs and lower energy prices, those are contradictory goals because it costs money to hire people.
- Coal plant costs 10 dollars and uses coal which costs 100 000 000 per year. It needs 2 people to operate that cost each 50 000 per year. Total cost is 100 100 000.
- Solar plant costs 10 dollars and does not use coal or other fuel. It needs 4 people to operate that cost each 50 000 per year. Total cost is 100 000.
So you save about 100 000 000 per year and double the people you hire. So the goals are not contradictory. Note that the numbers I used are fictional and simplified and were used only as an example of how it might be possible to meet both goals. You would need to use real numbers to see if both goals are met or not.
> Also contradictory is Australia's goals of lowering CO2 emissions while continuing their ban on nuclear fission power.
No, while nuclear was only realistic way in history to prevent global warming, it is possible to lower emissions without it also. So it might be stupid, but it is not contradictory.
Considering technological advancements in solar, I'm not even sure would it actually be faster and cheaper to cut emissions with solar rather than nuclear that takes years to build. If you have actual numbers, please share.
Re:Create jobs AND lower prices? No, it won't. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sovacool, B.K., Schmid, P., Stirling, A. et al. Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power. Nat Energy (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560... [doi.org]
"...Here, we use multiple regression analyses on global datasets of national carbon emissions and renewable and nuclear electricity production across 123 countries over 25 years to examine systematically patterns in how countries variously using nuclear power and renewables contrastingly show higher or lower carbon emissions. We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do..."
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It depends on the economics. If the price of renewables drops faster than the price of batteries, it may become cheaper to just over-provide electricity generation (there are lots of deserts in Australia, and the grid is fairly well interconnected.) So, it may turn out to be cheaper to build a generation network with "too much" generation capacity, and storage for only a day or two.
Let's say that peak energy generation is built to 4x average consumption. On the rare calm, overcast days, even if generation d
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The claim is that this project will create jobs and lower energy prices, those are contradictory goals because it costs money to hire people.
Well, yes, but imagine how many people you could afford to hire by recouping the costs of maintaining ailing coal-fired power plants. I think you are underestimating the amount of revenue this offers to free up. As for nuclear fission, Australia is weird in many aspects. Tesla is just cashing in on being the enabler.
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Unless they build new natural gas power plants they will have to maintain them any way.
They need something when the sun is down and the wind doesn't blow and the battery won't be it.
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The claim is that this project will create jobs and lower energy prices, those are contradictory goals because it costs money to hire people.
What a stupid comment.
Also contradictory is Australia's goals of lowering CO2 emissions while continuing their ban on nuclear fission power.
What another stupid follow up comment.
Must be all that radiation getting into your brain.
Or just another Orange fan sad.
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Australia sells their uranium to other countries that DO have nuclear programs. So the emissions still get reduced, it just happens offshore. We all share the same atmosphere, so the net benefit remains.
10 Year Life? (Score:1)
"targeting 50% of its power to come from renewable sources by 2030"
Lithium batteries tend to have a 10 year lifespan. If they install it in 2021, won't it be dead by 2030?
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"targeting 50% of its power to come from renewable sources by 2030"
Lithium batteries tend to have a 10 year lifespan. If they install it in 2021, won't it be dead by 2030?
You never change the batteries in your devices?
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Lithium batteries tend to have a 10 year lifespan. If they install it in 2021, won't it be dead by 2030?
Not if they maintain SoC between 30 and 70% most of the time, and keep the batteries in their optimal temperature range. Both are easier to do with larger battery banks.
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Still considerably shorter than the 50 year lifetime of most power stations and thats an awful lot of material that'll need to be recycled after 15 years.
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Since when did maintenance involve replacing all the turbines and generators every 15 years? Because thats the equivalent.
Re:10 Year Life? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if its 20 years its too short (Score:3)
Batteries are a poor long term solution for energy storage. Something like a compressed air storage system would probably last for 40-50 years with good maintenance and only be slightly less efficient.
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Re:Even if its 20 years its too short (Score:4, Informative)
By coincidence I today stumbled over a report [1] that listed various efficiencies.
The data below is from table 5 in [1]. The table also contains references.
Efficiency - - : Energy density : Type of energy storage
[%] __ : [kWh/m^3]
21-57 : 107 _ _ : Liquid air energy storage with heat recovery
42-54 : 2 - 6 _ : Compressed air energy storage
>90 _ : 300 _ : Lithium ion batteries
89 _ _ : 150-250 : Sodium sulphur batteries
85 _ _ : 70.0 : Lead acid batteries
75-85 : 25-35 : Redox flow batteries
70-85 : 0.28 _ _ : Pumped hydro energy storage
20-50 : 160 _ _: Hydrogen
28-45 : 6.5 : Methane
50-90 : 25 _ : Sensible heat storage
75-90 : 100 _ _ : Latent heat storage
75-100: 120-250 : Thermo-chemical energy storage
Note: The report is from a thesis work by two students at a university, but presumably they managed to aggreate most of the results correctly from different sources.
I _really_ hate that I can't just paste in tabular text without hitting that stupid junk filter.
[1] Evaluation of liquid air as an energy storage alternative, 2018, https://kth.diva-portal.org/sm... [diva-portal.org], accessed 2020-11-07,
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I think Stored Energy at Sea makes more sense, storage density will be about the same but because you pull a vacuum instead you don't get losses from heating. It's plain gravity storage.
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PRO: Over 99% conversion efficiency.
CON: They bleed several % per hour fighting earths rotation.
These things will easily last many times longer than their solar/wind inputs.
Re: Even if its 20 years its too short (Score:1)
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How is the type of energy production you have related to the lifespan of batteries?
It seems some people have some misconceptions about the battery-storage. It's there to stabilize the grid and supply power for sudden increases or outages. This saves huge amounts of money since it actually lessens the wear and tear on the systems supplying energy for the base-load since it can react instantly to change in demand while the base-load system spools up or down (which takes time).
The $200m battery Tesla installed
Tesla is not a real company (Score:1)
Like Big Tech, it is a creation of hype alone. I kind of agree with the Toyota guy [cnbc.com]:
Hang On... (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically, Tesla are selling four main products: three vehicles (the Model S, the Model X and the Model 3), plus their domestic power solution. (I realise that this includes both roof tiles and PowerWall technology, but let's aggregate them for the purposes of understanding your point). All of these products are shipping. We know that there are at least three more vehicle products in development (Semi, Roadster II and Cybertruck), so there is evidence of on-going R&D and product development. These seem to be the sorts of things that a real company would do, right?
Maybe you're referring to their profitability? But as recently as October 21st, Tesla set record revenue and posted profits. However, it's possible that you are looking farther back than their recent profitable record to their years of losses? That would not be unreasonable. But are you being fair with that observation? For example, Amazon traded at a loss for 10 years, before it turned a profit. Now, this honestly isn't a fair comparison, because Tesla and Amazon serve two completely different markets. The cost and complexity of developing vehicles - designing them, getting them certified, developing a manufacturing process, scaling production - is always going to be orders of magnitude more complex than implementing a product delivery service.
But let's look at it another way. When Tesla delivered the first grid-scale battery solution to Australia, do you remember the circumstances in which the deal was negotiated? Musk literally tweeted that Tesla would deliver the entire solution within 100 days of contract signing, or install the solution for free. Now I'm sure that many people [myself included] dismissed that as a classical bit of Musk bravado and theater. But Tesla met that deadline. That was a deal for Aus$200 Million in technology, including manufacture, shipping to site, site prep, installation, testing, commissioning and hand-off. In 14 weeks. Could an institution that wasn't "a real company" achieve that?
Genuine question here - really interested to understand what your criteria are for a "real company" and why you think Tesla still falls short when compared with other companies.
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Part of the reason every other auto company isn't bankrupt is because they're able to BUY those environmental credits. If those weren't available, they would have to pay fines that end up being several times more than what they pay for those credits from Tesla.
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GM? Ha! They don't even make enough EVs to cover their own gas guzzlers.
GM and Fiat Chrysler are buying Tesla's regulatory credits [techcrunch.com]
And Nissan doesn't have enough credits to go around.
Re:Tesla is not a real company (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how much of that comment is due to the fallout that occurred between Tesla and Toyota. Toyota was an early investor in Tesla and the factory Tesla uses is an old Toyota one that they got for cheap. The reports around the place seem to suggest there was a falling out due to cultural differences between the companies.
I don't imagine Musk is an easy person to partner with, and I'm sure Mr Toyoda has plenty of ego himself. By looking at how Toyota pivoted away from EVs after the relationship broke down and have been pushing hydrogen instead, it's hard not to take his comments without a grain of salt.
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I wonder if Toyota's plan was to wait to see if Tesla was successful, then buy the company, but this plan was wrecked by the dramatic increase in Tesla's market cap.
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Why are they still using coal? (Score:2)
You'd think in a country like Australia which is 90% semi desert solar power would be a no brainer.
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I asked why they used coal, not the batteries you plank.
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I asked why they used coal, not the batteries you plank.
Two reasons:
1. it's fucking cheap
2. "campaign funds" from coal companies
You stick.
Re: Why are they still using coal? (Score:2)
Sunshine is even cheaper given it's free apart from installation and maintenance costs. But yes, I suspect it's all down to politics in the end.
Need a lot more than this (Score:1)
Giant Battery (Score:4, Funny)
One can only wonder how tough it will be to depress those spring clips when fitting it into the battery compartment.
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Tesla is including two giant thumbs with the purchase, for free.
Another 'Big Banana'? (Score:2)
Great, their Prime Minister will like that.
Re:Another 'Big Banana'? (Score:4, Informative)
The first "Big Banana" was so spectacularly successful that it was saving $116 million a year in frequency regulation costs alone in 2019. It cost $90 million to build at the end of 2017. They've since expanded it since. Those savings don't even take into account load shifting.
People mock it because they are looking at it like a giant grid-scale UPS, but in reality it has been far more valuable for frequency stabilization. Dumping power into the grid for 30 seconds when a power station goes offline to keep the frequency stable while other generators spin-up can be enough to prevent widescale blackouts. They were previously paying a fortune for grid stabilization services and the Tesla battery dramatically reduced those costs. Yes, it also can do the other stuff, load shifting, storing green energy for use at night, etc. But that turned out to not be as important.
LFP from CATL (Score:2)
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Why do they install LiIon and not LFP from CATL? LFP is cheaper
You have that exactly backwards. LiFePo4 costs on average about twice as much per Ah in a packaged product as does Li-Ion. It doesn't matter if it's a storage battery or an RC car battery.
Its primary advantage to the user is reduced flammability, which means you can reasonably include LiFePo4 batteries in the same compartment as humans without using a metal box. Every other kind of battery should be separated from people or flammables by a firewall. But arguably, so should LiFePo4 batteries, because they ca
No love for flow batteries? (Score:2)
Not even from a 100% australian company?
Redflow's zinc bromides stuff looks great for non-portable operations.
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Flow batteries are currently far more expensive than lithium-ion batteries in the real world, and it's not clear that will ever change.
People often mention flow batteries because their manufacturers claim they will be very cheap in the future, but none of them actually deliver anything like that today, and the cost of lithium-ion is also decreasing in the meantime.
Redflow cited an MSRP for their ZBM2 flow batteries of $800/kWh in 2015, but by 2018 they were still talking about "deliveries about to get under
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Ah I didn't know about any of that, thanks for the info.
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The Redflow batteries have one major disadvantage is that they can't operate 24x7. That could be fixed by adding more cells to their design which might be a plumbing problem. We have talked to them a few times about their system but we have some space and duty cycle issues and we would need to buy 3 systems to replace two of our current lead acid battery systems to keep the same uptime. The price is a bit high but they seem to have the temperature problem fixed as the air temp will be over 40C when we n
Install a giant battery (Score:2)
Install a giant battery sideways in Trump supporter Musk's butt.
Nice post (Score:1)
Switching flights (Score:1)