Tesla Energy and utility scale projects

[Christine69420]

The Norwegian "irs" Skatteetaten has just surprisingly started to tax energy sold from home solar panels. At the 37.8% rate used when you sell shares at the stock market. Unfortunately you cannot deduct losses from the same.

Most homes with solar in Norway are without batteries. Since selling surplus energy was a nice little earner. But now batteries make much more sense. Keep the power ourselves and use it later when needed. No tax man involved.

Personally I have put my solar panel plans on hold until Tesla start selling powerwalls in Norway.

Source: Skatteetaten varsler skatt på solenergi: – Kan stanse hele veksten

Translated a part of this:

The most decisive factor is still the price of electricity, and whether you can use the electricity from the solar cells themselves. The problem is that it is during the summer months that you make a profit - when the electricity price and electricity consumption are at their lowest. That's why some electricity companies offer "solkonto", a service that allows people to save their surplus for the dark hours.

The alternative is to sell excess electricity at market price, and then buy electricity in the usual way at a higher price in the winter.

In reality, it will take more than 15 years before the owners of the solar cell plant in the example will start saving money on electricity. The tax authority has notified that their profit stream will also be taxed.

- In that case, you will no longer be able to use the network as a battery in the same way, says Andreas Strømsheim-Aamodt, head of business policy at Nelfo.

He believes that the possibility of getting paid for excess electricity has meant that more people have invested in solar cells.

 

[SageBrush]

Time of Use pricing is key.

I hear you. If people would time shift it would be better for everybody. But without deeply unpopular price signals, in aggregate people are too lazy to voluntarily do so. You are the exception.

When EVs are a massive storage resource, the need for time shifting demand will be highly mitigated.

 

[UkNorthampton]

I hear you. If people would time shift it would be better for everybody. But without deeply unpopular price signals, in aggregate people are too lazy to voluntarily do so. You are the exception.

When EVs are a massive storage resource, the need for time shifting demand will be highly mitigated.

A lot of people in the UK have fixed Time Of Use windows. I'd do the same if we used the cars more. For those people, they know to charge cars midnight to 4am.

There are intelligent systems now in the UK that switch power around. Early days, but they will become more common. We just need to shave the peaks a little, not majorly change anything.

In the UK, we have daily standing charges. If people could disconnect from gas, they'd save quite a lot of money. Once that snowball gets going, gas distribution costs rise, divided into fewer customers, snowball gets bigger.

Gas heating is the big aspect, used for only a few months a year. Increasingly some people skip heating the house, heat people instead - lots of use of heated ponchos by people working from home. Infra red for the room being used at that time.

 

[SageBrush]

lots of use of heated ponchos

Fantastic

Infra red for the room being used at that time

Please explain. Do you mean a small resistance heater ?

 

[UkNorthampton]

Fantastic


Please explain. Do you mean a small resistance heater ?

More on various electrification/ energy channels. Ceiling or wall mounted flat panels disguised or dual use as mirrors, decoration. Various ways to turn them on/off, people sensors, timers, thermostats, intelligent energy dump devices.

Useful for instant heat, bathrooms, work spaces. Just need electricity.

 

[SageBrush]

Ceiling or wall mounted flat panels disguised or dual use as mirrors, decoration.

Nice aesthetics. My first thought was 'pretty much resistance heat,' but the design sure is interesting.
Am I right in thinking that the surface gets hot ? I'm mostly wondering if paper can catch fire if it comes in contact for long periods, and whether they can injure a too curious cat.

 

[UkNorthampton]

Nice aesthetics. My first thought was 'pretty much resistance heat,' but the design sure is interesting.
Am I right in thinking that the surface gets hot ? I'm mostly wondering if paper can catch fire if it comes in contact for long periods, and whether they can injure a too curious cat.

I haven't had a chance to try yet.

Basic physics knowledge speculation...

Something akin to infra red lamp, outputting heat over useful wavelengths as opposed to light.

I would not expect the surface to be hot (or even warm) as the material should be chosen to let infra red straight through. A bit like seekers on heat seeking missiles or infra red goggles. Opaque to light but clear to infrared. The opposite of glass.

Cats have 9 lives and can be used for testing as they always find the optimum spot in any house.

I can't tell you these are 100% safe for paper, cats or geckos.

However, UK and EU safety standards are very high.

I imagine that these devices should feel like standing behind a window on a sunny day.

My main concern would be for ceiling mounted ones. I'm the tallest, with the most exposed skin. Shorties with better hair coverage who feel the cold more than me might turn it up too high for my scalp.

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1744743563689394483

 

[fhteagle]

And battery storage could rapidly go + ~21GW / ~180GWh in the US if they'd quit screwing around and get the bidirectional charging standards finished and solid enough to commercialize them beyond little pet pilot projects.

Gives SAE the stink eye, again

 

[jhm]

Iron-Air Batteries Are Here. They May Alter the Future of Energy.

Battery tech is now entering the Iron Age.

www.popularmechanics.com

I've been trying to understand the point of 100-hour batteries. This article points out that this iron-air batteries could be 10X cheaper than li-ion batteries. I assume that is the price per MWh energy stored not per MW power supplied. 100-hr sounds like a good thing. A 100MWh 100-hr battery can generate 1MW of power for 100 hours. But guess what? A 100MWh 4-hour battery can also generate 1MW for 100 hours! One key difference is the 4-hour can also deliver 25MW when more than 1MW is required. The 100-hr battery is like a fire fighter trying to put out a fire with a garden hose!

The other difference is that the 4-hour battery can recharge in as little as 4 hours. This means if there is enough solar power available, the 4-hour can be reliably recharged almost every single day. On the other hand, it could take a 100-hr battery about sunny 25 days to get completely recharged.

Realistically you get about 2 deep cycles per year on a 100-hr. Suppose on average you charge 9h per day and discharge 8h (about 1h is lost) so for about 4 months you charge 9h discharge 7h, netting about 1h each day. Do this 100 days to get fully charged. Then for 2 peak months charge 7h and discharge 9h. This nets -2h per day (seasonal supplement). Averaging out over the whole year, this is 8MWh per 24h cycle, 33% capacity factor. Suppose this 1MW/100MWh cost $4M @ $40/kWh.

Note that a 4-hour system 2MW/8MWh can also deliver the same 8MWh per day, but at a cost 10X or $400/kWh, this system is just $3.2M.

Thus, for the 100-hr system you are paying an extra $800k to be able to deliver and extra 200MWh of stored power in the two peak season of the year. Suppose your annual lease is 10%. In a year, you pay an extra $80k to deliver 200MWh of peak power. This is an incremental $400/MWh delivered seasonal peak power.

This seems super expensive to get so little. What am I missing?

 

[SageBrush]

This seems super expensive to get so little. What am I missing?

I've understood the underlying problem seeking a solution is how to deal with multiple consecutive days with inadequate clean power. CASE, hydro, pumped hydro, and gravity are some of the proposed solutions. Low cost per kWh is the alt battery solution, albeit with trade-offs like size, weight, and power.

 

[rentierparasit]

On market size: Conservatively, getting to net zero emissions will require 4 hours of battery storage. Many people will argue the need is much greater from 8 hours to 90 day! But generally those who are most opposed to renewable energy want people to believe the battery requirement is super high. So let's go with 4 hour as a pretty confident lower bound.

Global electricity generation in 2022 was 3.55TW. So without factoring in growth in power demand, the grids of the world could easily use some 14 TWh of batteries.

Allowing demand to grow about 3.5%/y to 2030 brings avg generation to 4.7TW and 4 hours of batteries to 18.7 TWh.

Basically, if Tesla and other batterymakers can produce 1TWh in 2030, this comes nowhere close to saturating the market.

Hi, Jim --

> without factoring in growth in power demand, the grids of the world could easily use some 14 TWh [...] if Tesla and other batterymakers can produce 1TWh in 2030, this comes nowhere close to saturating the market.

I'm not sure what to say. I can't argue with your arithmetic -- not saying I agree with it, just that I'm out of my depth. I hope this doesn't sound unkind, but -- Sure, the world could use 14TWh of ESS, so the market opportunity is in some sense effectively infinite. But so is the market for, I don't know, e-scooters, why can't we sell 8 billion e-scooters?

I have no problems believing in 1 TWh BESS by 2030; that's only ~2x McKinsey's estimates, which, sure, I'll buy that. But that doesn't help with, "I'm having a hard time getting to, 'Megapacks worth as much as the auto business,' unless the auto business is worth a *lot* less than the last quote.". I think my math exercise got us to $6/share. Let's call it $20, no, let's call it $40, or about $140B. Anybody think the auto business is only $40?

Yours,

RP

 

[jhm]

I've understood the underlying problem seeking a solution is how to deal with multiple consecutive days with inadequate clean power. CASE, hydro, pumped hydro, and gravity are some of the proposed solutions. Low cost per kWh is the alt battery solution, albeit with trade-offs like size, weight, and power.

Yes, that is the the basic framing. But I'm questioning whether a 100-hr battery effectively solves that problem. The length of time that it takes to fully recharge such a battery interferes with its availability as fully charged. Then at the precise moments that it is needed, it's low power limits how much it can supply. Suppose you had a 100MWh battery and really needed 10MW for the next 10 hours. Yes, you've got 100MWh stored, but limited to just 1MW, you can only deliver 10MWh. So the extra 90MWh is pretty much useless in this scenario.

Alternatively, a 1MW diesel genset running on biodeisel is a much stronger low-carbon solution than a 1MW 100-hr battery. The biodeisel tanks can hold much more than 100 hours of fuel and are quickly refilled. The 100-hr battery at $4000/kW is very expensive compared to a genset, on order of $400/kW at the MW scale. So I don't see a 100-hr battery effectively competing with biofuel-based generation as extreme duration backup.

Basically, we want enough RE and storage that very little fuel-based backup generation is needed. After there is a sufficient amount of storage with say 12 hours or less duration to get fuel backup down to minimal levels, is there much left for 100-hr batteries to do?

On the other hand, this is also a question of relative cost. If you could get a 100-hr 25X cheaper than a 4-hr battery, the 100-hr would win hands down. 15X cheaper would be strongly competive.

I'm still puzzling it out.

 

[jhm]

Hi, Jim --

> without factoring in growth in power demand, the grids of the world could easily use some 14 TWh [...] if Tesla and other batterymakers can produce 1TWh in 2030, this comes nowhere close to saturating the market.

I'm not sure what to say. I can't argue with your arithmetic -- not saying I agree with it, just that I'm out of my depth. I hope this doesn't sound unkind, but -- Sure, the world could use 14TWh of ESS, so the market opportunity is in some sense effectively infinite. But so is the market for, I don't know, e-scooters, why can't we sell 8 billion e-scooters?

I have no problems believing in 1 TWh BESS by 2030; that's only ~2x McKinsey's estimates, which, sure, I'll buy that. But that doesn't help with, "I'm having a hard time getting to, 'Megapacks worth as much as the auto business,' unless the auto business is worth a *lot* less than the last quote.". I think my math exercise got us to $6/share. Let's call it $20, no, let's call it $40, or about $140B. Anybody think the auto business is only $40?

Yours,

RP

The point of my argument was that the market potential is so huge that saturation is not a limitation for quite a while. I think the auto market saturates much sooner. Basically once EVs are more than half the new auto market, exponential growth will be over. I think this will be about 2027. The battery market will still grow exponentially for many more years.

I'll let you sort out what that means for share price. Cheers, JHM

 

[Buckminster]

The point of my argument was that the market potential is so huge that saturation is not a limitation for quite a while. I think the auto market saturates much sooner. Basically once EVs are more than half the new auto market, exponential growth will be over. I think this will be about 2027. The battery market will still grow exponentially for many more years.

I'll let you sort out what that means for share price. Cheers, JHM

My theory is that batteries aren't needed and even V2G isn't needed, just many Robotaxis. They will dominate the grid and selecting when they are charged will smooth the grid.

 

[MC3OZ]

My theory is that batteries aren't needed and even V2G isn't needed, just many Robotaxis. They will dominate the grid and selecting when they are charged will smooth the grid.
View attachment 1008139

This theory has some merit because we can imagine that Robotaxis are busy during the morn/evening peak, school drop off etc, but a lot of the fleet should be idle in the middle of the day for locations with a lot of solar, or in the middle of the night for locations with a lot of wind.

However, why V2G/V2H and batteries typically a not needed, they are handy/essential in at least one situation, when the gird goes down. And local battery storage can allow a household to make maximum use of rooftop solar generation,

V2H also provides handy power on jobsites, when camping or allows the emergency changing of other EVs.

In the long run the cost of V2H and a home battery will not be a major consideration, households invest in many things that they only need to use infrequently

When energy, transport and storage are cheap, we will have more than we need, and that excess translates to convenience and comfort.

 

[rentierparasit]

I'll let you sort out what that means for share price. Cheers, JHM

Hi, JHM --

Well, we are in the "Tesla Investor Discussions" section ...

Anybody else want to take a crack at valuing the BESS business?

Yours,
RP

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1750279371124850688

 

[Buckminster]

Good news or bad news? Tesla is owed billions for megapacks delivered but not fully commissioned.

Primarily good. It means energy growing faster than the revenue tells. But needs tighter contracts and faster connection permits?

edit: I may have read something about lower prices for those who self commission their project. If so, Tesla already moving to address the problem.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1751993706553499729

Not a problem. The vast majority of Megapack volume is paid on schedules of typical project finance, which typically covers actual cash expenses on a predefined percentage fo completion basis with a final payment upon project completion and handover. The precise schedules vary greatly from project to project, but the net effect is to have very 'lumpy' payments at the end of the project. That usually means that the supplier has large accounts receivable that are pending completion of final delivery and performance evaluation. For power plants those final payments often are made only after extended tests in full production. Again, contracts are individual, but slow payment in full is the norm.

The interesting divergence is that Tesla seems, on the surface, to be maintaining neutral cash flow on the projects at worst. It's too soon to know for certain, but by 2025 we should know much more as disclosures increase with the growing business. BTW, while I am familiar with project financing I have never had close look at any VPP or utility-level solar, wind or storage. My perspective is from fossil fuel and nuclear projects.

 

[jhm]

My theory is that batteries aren't needed and even V2G isn't needed, just many Robotaxis. They will dominate the grid and selecting when they are charged will smooth the grid.
View attachment 1008139

Yeah, I think there is something to this. Have enough solar and wind capacity that there is as a daily surplus. Then highly adaptive load like robotaxis consume when power is very cheap.

I have often thought of electrolyzers playing this sort of role. We'll need green hydrogen (and derivatives) for certain uses beyond the grid. Just consuming seasonal excesses (above ordinary grid demand) creates demand for RE overcapacity.