Tesla Energy and utility scale projects

[adiggs]

I'd reeeeally like to see Tesla Energy branch out into other types of stationary storage. Not to ramp the R&D, but the execution at scale.

There are plenty of technologies that only "failed" due to someone other than Elon designing the manufacture and execution. This one had me so excited, then they built a production line that looked like this:

WTF kind of effort is that? How in god's name is that scale? China owns this company now, maybe they'll do it right.

As Tesla Energy gets really really big, it seems silly to me to rely on tech meant to be lightweight for transport. Maybe they're already diversified within their gameplan.

I remember reading about Acquion - got me excited as well. Then I lost track of them.

One thing this does is point to the value of scale. I think their technology is better, but as long as they're manufacturing KWh or MWh worth of storage, while li-ion is being made in GWh, getting the cost down and being competitive is going to be tough. Especially when their production line looks more like an engineering line.

 

[Dr. J]

This 2017 article brings the Aquion story up to date to that point: Inside the Fall, and Rebirth, of a Bill Gates–Backed Battery Startup

 

[MC3OZ]

South Australia fast-tracks energy plan to dodge blackouts and meet 100% renewables goal | RenewEconomy

interesting insights on the path to 100% Renewable Energy:-

The AEMO report says that South Australia is the first gigawatt scale power system in the world to approach zero operational demand due to the growth of distributed resources. This had been expected to occur by 2025, but the increasing growth of rooftop solar – now around 200MW a year – means it could happen much earlier, with big risks to the grid if not properly managed.

In the Semi thread I expressed the view that Megacharging will involve a significant installation of batteries at each site...

It is also clear to me that the trend towards EV fast charging sites installing batteries will continue..

All those batteries at EV charging sites are a useful load when the grid approaches zero operational demand.. so the electricity for EV fast charging should be able to be purchased at attractive rates.

South Australia doesn't currently have enough EVs or fast charging stations to make much difference. However a quick roll-out of the Tesla semi and Megacharging in South Australia would help.

For this type of grid Tesla doesn't need to generate their own electricity for Megacharging, there will be abundant cheap electricity available...

 

[MC3OZ]

This is a interesting podcast on project to export Australian electricity to Singapore:-
Energy Insiders Podcast: Sun Cable’s $20 billion solar and storage plan

This is the install process for the type of solar they may use:-

Non-tracking East/West panels make more sense closer to the equator..

 

[Chenkers]

Non-tracking East/West panels make more sense closer to the equator..

They also generally provide the greatest energy yield for a given (flat) footprint. Another similarly dense large scale system is the Belectric PEG, although its not as fast to install.

 

[MC3OZ]

There is is some discussion one using liquefied Air for energy storage in the main thread, the challenge they face is explained in this article:-

Lithium-Ion Energy Storage Cost vs. Pumped Hydro Or Flow Battery Cost Are Dependent On Time | CleanTechnica

Anything that relies on daily cycling to achieve an economic return will struggle to complete with lithium-ion, 9 months of the year.

This is what gets FF proponents excited, seasonal variation is a difficult economic problem, it isn't a difficult technical problem.

Short term the main contribution Tesla can sensible make is targeting home heating/cooling and hot water, make the household more energy efficient reduces the problem.

IMO there a solution needs to be dual purpose, the 2 viable options are:-

• Offshore Wind and HDVC
• Hydrogen - energy storage, powering ships, import/export.

For HDVC the link for Darwin to Singapore is currently estimated to cost $5B, these links are being used to link in offshore wind, and hence the cost has come down a lot of the quality of the solution has improved.

Offshore wind can be located far enough offshore to not be visible from land, it tends to be more reliable than land based wind.

For hydrogen power ships a hydrogen fuel cells is a range extender, I imagine a ship could have 4 X Tesla semi batteries, connect to 4 Megachargers and charge up 4 MWh or $4 Million worth of batteries.

For some applications $2 Million worth of batteries and a 300K hydrogen fuel cell set up may be more economical. The combination of hydrogen and batteries can be right-size for the job.

Hydrogen import/export is economic if we can't run HDVC everywhere. Small remote islands are not a strong candidate for HDVC.

Putting it all together there is a synergy between offshore wind, HDVC, desalination, hydrogen production, hydrogen import/export and battery/hydrogen powered ships.

For Tesla this isn't a problem a likely increase in using batteries to power ships is another opportunity and multiple hybrid combinations are possible,

For regular 24x7 electrcity time shifting, Lithium-ion is hard to beat.

 

[MC3OZ]

Sixth Tesla community battery installed in Western Australia PowerBank trial | One Step Off The Grid

The addition of the community battery aims to help manage the flow of all that rooftop solar power on the local City of Rockingham grid, make way for more solar to be installed and, further down the track, offer solar households virtual storage to store their excess rooftop power and use it when needed.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Off the shelf solutions wrapped around scalable megapacks is going to take over the world....
Tesla deploys new Megapack project underpinned by 'cutting-edge Autobidder AI' - Electrek

The market for Tesla storage products is going to be quite large.....
German renewables deliver 'record high' in 1H 2020

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Opportunity knocks. This will need a LOT of storage.

Governor Cuomo Announces Largest Combined Solicitations for Renewable Energy Ever Issued in the U.S. to Combat Climate Change

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the largest combined clean energy solicitations ever issued in the U.S., seeking up to 4,000 megawatts of renewable capacity to combat climate change. New York's second offshore wind solicitation seeks up to 2,500 megawatts of projects, the largest in the nation's history, in addition to last year's solicitation which resulted in nearly 1,700 megawatts awarded. The solicitation includes a multi-port strategy and requirement for offshore wind generators to partner with any of the 11 prequalified New York ports to stage, construct, manufacture key components, or coordinate operations and maintenance activities. This solicitation has the potential to bring New York State halfway toward its goal of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035 and meet Governor Cuomo's nation-leading climate and environment goals under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Funding for port investments will include $400 million in both public and private funding.

 

[Christine69420]

The competition?

Statkraft has completed the 11-megawatt (MW) Kerry battery project in Ireland. The project makes it possible to store locally produced wind power.

Statkraft has partnered with Fluence, the global market leader in utility-scale energy storage solutions, to deliver the project, with battery modules produced by LG Chem, a top-tier supplier.​

Source: Statkraft unveils Ireland’s first battery project

 

[MC3OZ]

I was having a discussion elsewhere on solar farms with batteries and I had this Eureka moment:-

The battery should operate behind the meter on the DC side to regulate the Solar farm output:-

• The battery should charge when they want to turn down the solar farm output.
• The battery should discharge when they want to turn up solar farm output.

This is something that should not be overly difficult to do, it is certainly something Tesla could do in conjunction with Autobidder.

While a regular solar farm is a generator of variable electricity output, this kind of solar farm+ battery can be tuned to output the exact amount of electricity contracted for any 5 minute period.

The only issues are overcoming any technical and regulatory issues and the cost of batteries..

I have very little doubt all issues can be overcome...

 

[mongo]

I was having a discussion elsewhere on solar farms with batteries and I had this Eureka moment:-



This is something that should not be overly difficult to do, it is certainly something Tesla could do in conjunction with Autobidder.

While a regular solar farm is a generator of variable electricity output, this kind of solar farm+ battery can be tuned to output the exact amount of electricity contracted for any 5 minute period.

The only issues are overcoming any technical and regulatory issues and the cost of batteries..

I have very little doubt all issues can be overcome...

Why on the pre inverter DC side versus the post inverter AC side? Both can be pre-meter/ net installation controlled.

Even if on the DC side, the battery still needs a high power converter to go from DC to DC to control charge/ discharge.

FWIW, Powerwall 1 had a DC version to do this.

 

[Doggydogworld]

I was having a discussion elsewhere on solar farms with batteries and I had this Eureka moment:-



This is something that should not be overly difficult to do, it is certainly something Tesla could do in conjunction with Autobidder.

While a regular solar farm is a generator of variable electricity output, this kind of solar farm+ battery can be tuned to output the exact amount of electricity contracted for any 5 minute period.

The only issues are overcoming any technical and regulatory issues and the cost of batteries..

I have very little doubt all issues can be overcome...

I think all the solar+storage projects do this to reduce inverter cost. They also do other things to cut inverter cost, like over-provisioning panels by a crazy percentage.

They hope to approach 60% capacity factor in that big sub-4 cent LADWP solar+storage project. Basically a flat 400 MW AC dawn to dusk plus a few hours of 300 MW to dispatch during late evening (or pre-dawn in winter). I saw another article estimating they'd use a lot more panels than I expected. 900 MW DC maybe?

Panels are cheap. They optimize for BOS now. And steady output, which utilities strongly prefer.

 

[jhm]

Solar+storage reliability puts gas plants at risk - Renewable Energy World

This is good to know. Solar paired with 4 hours of battery storage can provide 99 reliability. This is better than pairing wind with batteries at 62% reliability. I think the difference here is that daily sunshine is a more reliable source for recharging the battery each day than wind. Wind can be insufficient for many consecutive days.

On the other hand, it may make more sense to pair wind with electrolyzers to take advantage of large CFs and lower demand night hours.

 

[SageBrush]

Solar+storage reliability puts gas plants at risk - Renewable Energy World

This is good to know. Solar paired with 4 hours of battery storage can provide 99 reliability. This is better than pairing wind with batteries at 62% reliability. I think the difference here is that daily sunshine is a more reliable source for recharging the battery each day than wind. Wind can be insufficient for many consecutive days.

On the other hand, it may make more sense to pair wind with electrolyzers to take advantage of large CFs and lower demand night hours.

I like the idea of all three. 'Synergism' has lost most of its meaning due to business types but in this case it is real.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Solar paired with 4 hours of battery storage can provide 99 reliability.

IF you happen to have a good desert handy. Does not apply in New England, Pacific NW, etc.

Large solar farms in the SW US are just about unbeatable. El Paso Electric recently signed a PPA at 1.5 cent/kWh! That's a subsidized price, of course, but even pre-subsidy it beats all comers. SW US demand is higher in summer, which lines up nicely with solar. On a daily basis demand peaks in the late afternoon/early evening, which doesn't line up perfectly, but can be addressed with a few hours of storage or (preferably) V2H along with commercial Ice-AC.

 

[SageBrush]

IF you happen to have a good desert handy. Does not apply in New England, Pacific NW, etc.

I think that is true, although the coasts can look forward to off-shore wind once the psychopath in the White House is disposed of.

 

[jhm]

I like the idea of all three. 'Synergism' has lost most of its meaning due to business types but in this case it is real.

Indeed, I like all four working together!

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Large solar farms in the SW US are just about unbeatable. El Paso Electric recently signed a PPA at 1.5 cent/kWh! That's a subsidized price, of course, but even pre-subsidy it beats all comers.

It's been at least 2 years since I remember hearing Tuscon signed a solar+storage PPA at something like 4.5cents/kWh. The unsubsidized cost was 8.5cents. By now I'm sure Tesla has that down to 5 or 6 cents.

Absurd. That's "problem solved" as far as I'm concerned.

 

[MC3OZ]

Why on the pre inverter DC side versus the post inverter AC side? Both can be pre-meter/ net installation controlled.

Apologies for the late reply...

Possibly this just relates to grid regulations in my country if a battery is connected on the AC side it requires its own grid connection and additional network charges apply.

Currently regulations do not permit behind-the-meter batteries on solar farms but everyone expects that rule to change.

I suppose the main point is solar+batteries is a powerful combination, that has the potential to solve many problems.

Some of those problems are caused by sharing the grid with other solar farms in the area...

It is also the case that no matter how up pay for them transmission upgrades are expensive, so avoiding them is a major saving.