http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...cious-twitter-bet-fix-south-australias-power/
Pretty ballsy and funny tweets,
Pretty ballsy and funny tweets,
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Musk will fix South Australia power grid or it's free
- Thread starter nativewolf
- Start date
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Elon Musk: I can fix South Australia power network in 100 days or it's free
Elon Musk: I can fix South Australia power network in 100 days or it's free
He proposes a 100kwh battery pack installed in 100 days or it's free.
Apparently the Gigafactory is ramping up fast.
Elon Musk: I can fix South Australia power network in 100 days or it's free
He proposes a 100kwh battery pack installed in 100 days or it's free.
Apparently the Gigafactory is ramping up fast.
Given the conflations of MW and MWh in the tweets and article are distracting/confusing, but at least they got the prefix right. 
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Here's some insight into S Australia power market.
Energy retailers making millions off solar feed-in rates
Apparently solar power households are getting screwed by the power companies who buy solar power cheaper than wholesale.
(Sorry about the mix-up in units in the OP ... Should be MWh)
Energy retailers making millions off solar feed-in rates
Apparently solar power households are getting screwed by the power companies who buy solar power cheaper than wholesale.
(Sorry about the mix-up in units in the OP ... Should be MWh)
Australia implemented what I think will be the fair long term solution.
Residential customers buy retail electricity, and sell with a 2/3 discount. They have to over produce by nearly a factor of 3 to end up with a zero electricity bill (depending on how much they consume right when they produce).
If it were a 1/3 discount evolving to a 2/3 discount after 10 years, I would call that 100% fair.
But initially, electricity sold by one consumer is usually consumed by his neighbour, avoiding substations, big transformers and other resources.
The fact that even with such "bad for consumer" deals, solar has been adopted quite that fast, it seems it wasn't so unfair.
Solar panels are ridiculously cheap already.
What's unfair is that Australian grid operators aren't using that extra revenue and installing a bunch of Powerpacks at every substation in Australia.
This pricing also creates huge incentives for end users to own Powerwalls, which is great for Tesla either way. Sell batteries to consumers or to grid operators.
Elon shouldn't had to make any offers. Neither the government should have to be stepping in. Grid operators should have been purchasing GWhs worth of PowerPack 2.0 months ago.
Perhaps grid operators want solar to fail even with the huge incentive of this discount.
The interesting problem would be if everybody tried to put enough solar panels to produce 3x what they consume... With enough batteries, the Australian grid might not need an coal / gas generation at all, and would have to throw a lot of electricity overboard still.
Residential customers buy retail electricity, and sell with a 2/3 discount. They have to over produce by nearly a factor of 3 to end up with a zero electricity bill (depending on how much they consume right when they produce).
If it were a 1/3 discount evolving to a 2/3 discount after 10 years, I would call that 100% fair.
But initially, electricity sold by one consumer is usually consumed by his neighbour, avoiding substations, big transformers and other resources.
The fact that even with such "bad for consumer" deals, solar has been adopted quite that fast, it seems it wasn't so unfair.
Solar panels are ridiculously cheap already.
What's unfair is that Australian grid operators aren't using that extra revenue and installing a bunch of Powerpacks at every substation in Australia.
This pricing also creates huge incentives for end users to own Powerwalls, which is great for Tesla either way. Sell batteries to consumers or to grid operators.
Elon shouldn't had to make any offers. Neither the government should have to be stepping in. Grid operators should have been purchasing GWhs worth of PowerPack 2.0 months ago.
Perhaps grid operators want solar to fail even with the huge incentive of this discount.
The interesting problem would be if everybody tried to put enough solar panels to produce 3x what they consume... With enough batteries, the Australian grid might not need an coal / gas generation at all, and would have to throw a lot of electricity overboard still.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure this is a "fair deal" for solar producers who are providing electricity at peak times when the spot market is up to 14 dollars KWh and they only get 5 cents KWh which the utility then sells at peak prices for 20 to 30 cents KWh.
Presumably, a Tesla Powerpack could buy cheap power overnight and sell it for much more.
Electric companies don't understand solar. They don't want to understand solar. It doesn't fit into their antiquated business plans. They wish it would go away. They want to kill it by paying people a pittance for their power but clearly it is not going to go away.
If they were smart, they would invest in smart meters and power management tools and pay solar producers appropriately and manage their grid properly... but they aren't smart.
The original article (referenced here Powerwall 2 "waiting list" ) is behind a pay wall but I did have it on my phone yesterday and have a few excerpts. Lyndon Rive is now VP of Energy, he spoke at the Australia launch of the Powerwall 2 in Newport, near Melbourne. He said
Interestingly, the article went on to talk about distributed Powerwall units but I suspect we are all thinking a utility scale Powerpack installation is what is being promised and this was an editor's non-sequitur.
(getting out in front of Elon on corporate details is not a good move, to paraphrase a previous communications executive).
Interestingly, the article went on to talk about distributed Powerwall units but I suspect we are all thinking a utility scale Powerpack installation is what is being promised and this was an editor's non-sequitur.
As @mspohr mentioned the export to the grid here in most states of Australia is very low. Unless you were an early adopter who got in when the feed in tariffs were higher.
The powerwall and eventually tesla glass roofs have massive potential here, but the buy in cost and wait times are what I think are holding back most from purchase. If Tesla brought out a lease to own system as solarcity has/had before the merger, I think they would have a strong market share.
The powerwall and eventually tesla glass roofs have massive potential here, but the buy in cost and wait times are what I think are holding back most from purchase. If Tesla brought out a lease to own system as solarcity has/had before the merger, I think they would have a strong market share.
EV-lutioin
Active Member
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Elon sent Lyndon to Australia.
That is what got the conversation going.
That was the basis of Mike Cannon-Brookes tweeting @ Musk if the offer was genuine.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
The deal is fair buddy. You're ignoring the facts when they're inconvenient to your side.
Its very common for wholesale generator to get 3-10 cents/kWh from the grid operators, and sell that to retail customers at 20 cents or higher. The bulk of the total electricity system costs are at the retail side (pulverizing that electricity over tens-hundreds of millions of consumers).
If you want to keep the whole price, you must produce and use it yourself, and avoid the grid altogether.
Net metering is an unsustainable as soon as consumers produce even 1/3 of peak demand.
The issue is the grid must be sized for worst case scenarios. Hence things like demand charges.
It creates the right incentives for solar generators to install their own batteries and minimize selling to the grid.
Eventually the grid will flow 2/3 less electricity and prices will go up.
If you want to live off grid (or with the grid as your last resort backup), you might need to install 2x as many solar panels as you'd need with net metering and enough battery capacity for 24 hours of your demand.
I had this argument on clean technica about 2 years ago and got banned for arguing serious about that. The clean reality bubble people wouldn't take it.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
I would love to debate it if you can accept the fact that grid operators aren't charities. Don't get me wrong, they're in deep trouble in the long run, but they're still an entity that exists to make profits. They don't exist to be nice to you.
If you can't look at the real costs of running a grid, then we really can't debate this, both sides must be looked at to reach a useful conclusion.
I have no love for them. But what you guys want is to make them go bust.
Again, don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of anti solar legislation passed in US states that don't even have 1 or 2% solar penetration. Net metering is the right thing to do, until the solar penetration is high enough that the grid begins to suffer in quality or grid operator costs actually begin to threaten profits.
But once solar generation achieves 1/3 of peak demand, net metering must start to be modified into a discount in the power you sell to the grid. Gradually migrating from net metering into something like Australia.
If you crush the grid operators financially they might chose to close shop instead of take losses.
There's plenty of blame in this whole Australia debacle.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
$14/kWh? Did you misplace a decimal or a unit?
The economics of Grid 2.0 rests on 3 pillars. Generation, Storage and Demand Response. What's really missing is a dynamic marketplace that EVERYONE can participate in. SPP has a marketplace but you have to be above a certain threshold to take part. If you buy power by the kW you can't play. We need aggregated on-line brokers that can pool thousands of homes so that those 'pools' can take part in the market.
There is a lot of opposition from utilities since other people solving grid problem undermines their monopoly business model.
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SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
4x
I use 1x
I produce 4x
3x goes to the grid, for which I am paid 1x
That is an awful deal for the residential home PV owner, and Tesla will eat the utilities alive with home battery storage if they do not wake up.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
The crooks at Xcel already got a solution to that... they bribed the utility commission to allow them to charge for PRODUCTION so even if you never use the grid they still get paid
Hopefully that trend doesn't spread because it would be cheaper to buy a generator for backup and go off-grid... that doesn't benefit anyone.
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