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Power Australia

Tesla Project To Install Another Giant Battery In Australia (bloomberg.com) 63

Posted by BeauHD from the keep-em-coming dept.
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.
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Tesla Project To Install Another Giant Battery In Australia

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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?

    • "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?

    • 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.

    • The one Tesla previously installed in Australia has a 15 year warranty.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        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.

        • You don't do maintenance on your power stations?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            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)

              by rattaroaz ( 1491445 ) on Saturday November 07, 2020 @03:06PM (#60696534)
              Batteries don't just stop working after a certain number of years. Their ability to hold a charge degrades. How much it degrades dictates what you do. If it degrades by 20%, you may do nothing. If it degrades 50%, you may keep the old and add new batteries. If it degrades 90%, you replace the batteries all together. We don't know the ACTUAL cost to maintain the batteries, so their lifespan may or may not be longer than most power stations. Having clean air might not be worth it in that case, but I think it is.

    • 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.

      • Im all for renewables, but compressed air is a LOT less efficient. Losses are around 50 percent for compressed air and 10-30 percent for batteries. Thats a very big difference. Not saying compressed air has no uses, but the cost due to loss needs to be taken into account when designing these systems. Even at super cheap energy costs, compressed air will bleed away a lot of extra terajoules over the long haul.

        • Re:Even if its 20 years its too short (Score:4, Informative)

          by chr1973 ( 711475 ) on Saturday November 07, 2020 @01:28PM (#60696052)

          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,

      • 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.

      • If you want longevity, look no further than flywheels on magnetic bearings.

        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.

    • 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

  • Like Big Tech, it is a creation of hype alone. I kind of agree with the Toyota guy [cnbc.com]:

    “I am hesitant to say this — Tesla’s business, if you want to use the analogy, is like that of a kitchen and a chef,” Toyoda said.

    “They have not created a real business in the real world yet. They are trying to trade recipes. The chef is saying ‘Our recipe is going to become the standard of the world in the future!’ At Toyota, we have a real kitchen and a real chef too, and are creati

    • Hang On... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Saturday November 07, 2020 @09:39AM (#60695122)
      I'd like to invite you to expand on what you mean by, "not a real company".

      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.

    • Re:Tesla is not a real company (Score:4, Interesting)

      by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Saturday November 07, 2020 @09:42AM (#60695128)

      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.

      • 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 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.

    • This quote would make so much more sense if it were from about 9 years ago.

  • You'd think in a country like Australia which is 90% semi desert solar power would be a no brainer.

  • While 300 MW is a lot for battery storage it is in no way enough to replace the capacity of the current coal plants. The current three coal plants in that state generate anywhere from 1000-2200 MW. You can get some wind power after dark but the solar will only be generated during the day so if they want to get to 50% renewable they better get ready to buy plenty more batteries.

  • Giant Battery (Score:4, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday November 07, 2020 @11:37AM (#60695408)

    One can only wonder how tough it will be to depress those spring clips when fitting it into the battery compartment.

  • Great, their Prime Minister will like that.

    • Re:Another 'Big Banana'? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Saturday November 07, 2020 @05:37PM (#60697202)

      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.

  • Why do they install LiIon [wikipedia.org] and not LFP [wikipedia.org] from CATL [wikipedia.org]? LFP is cheaper and while it has lower energy density that does not matter for land-installed batteries.

    • 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

  • Not even from a 100% australian company?

    Redflow's zinc bromides stuff looks great for non-portable operations.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      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

      • Ah I didn't know about any of that, thanks for the info.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thogard ( 43403 )

        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 sideways in Trump supporter Musk's butt.

  • Nice post
  • And what if passengers start switching flights to carriers that don't have 737 MAX airplanes and leaving the MAX's almost empty? Will that be the final nail in the coffin of the 737 MAX and Boeing? Let's find out.

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