Tesla Energy and utility scale projects

[geneclean55]

In the linked article, the CEO of Sunnova (the largest solar provider in Puerto Rico) is touting the advantages of batteries linked to their solar systems, and says is willing to invest 1bill dollars under the "right regulatory structure"

Home battery makers get a boost after Hurricane Maria

 

[geneclean55]

Puerto Rico Lays Out Energy Future With Tesla, Privatization

Federal disaster relief funding could be signed off on by the President this week, I believe.

 

[neroden]

Expect obstruction to this plan from the Trump administration with its oil and gas lobbyists. That said, I'm pretty sure *all* the solar and battery companies will go in as fast as they can -- the economics of solar+battery (or wind+battery) on Puerto Rico are already overwhelming for private citizens with access to capital.

 

[EinSV]

Tesla has been selected to supply a 48 MWh/6MW storage solution for the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, allowing them to forego installation of an expensive underseas cable.

Tesla 48MWh battery eliminates need to build undersea cable in Massachusetts for up to 22 years

 

[Rockster]

Tesla has been selected to supply a 48 MWh/6MW storage solution for the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, allowing them to forego installation of an expensive underseas cable.

Tesla 48MWh battery eliminates need to build undersea cable in Massachusetts for up to 22 years

I once knew a guy from Nantucket.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Tesla has been selected to supply a 48 MWh/6MW storage solution for the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, allowing them to forego installation of an expensive underseas cable.

Tesla 48MWh battery eliminates need to build undersea cable in Massachusetts for up to 22 years

Doing napkin math on this, if we conservatively assume that all in installation of Tesla BES is around $625/kWh, the total cost of the BES comes to $30M.

According to this, the estimated cost for the third undersea cable to Nantucket is a whopping $100M! So Tesla solution saves $70M - WOW!

 

[ggr]

Doing napkin math on this, if we conservatively assume that all in installation of Tesla BES is around $625/kWh, the total cost of the BES comes to $30M.

According to this, the estimated cost for the third undersea cable to Nantucket is a whopping $100M! So Tesla solution saves $70M - WOW!

Well, really it just allows them to defer the $100M for ten years, they don't really save all of it. But even that's enough to pay for the batteries. And by the time that 10 years is approaching it will probably be much better to install some solar and some more batteries.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Well, really it just allows them to defer the $100M for ten years, they don't really save all of it. But even that's enough to pay for the batteries. And by the time that 10 years is approaching it will probably be much better to install some solar and some more batteries.

And batteries will be super cheap by then. And there will be tons of nearby offshore wind by then.

 

[neroden]

Well, really it just allows them to defer the $100M for ten years, they don't really save all of it. But even that's enough to pay for the batteries. And by the time that 10 years is approaching it will probably be much better to install some solar and some more batteries.

Yeah, before the 10 years is up extra solar and wind and batteries will replace the need for the cable.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Finally, news of what appears to be Tesla's first deployment of batteries for Data Center / HPC (High Performance Computing) Center back-up. This is market expected to grow to $5.6B gobally in 2020 and seem t be ripe for deployment of Li-Ion batteries. If Li-Ion batteries, however, will be replacing not only UPS Systems, but back up generators as well, the TAM will be significantly larger. Tesla has an excellent shot to become a major supplier for this market. The news come from the London, UK conference DCD>Zettastructure where both Tesla, and CallisonRTKL, an Architetecture, Planning An Design firm that used Tesla Powerpacks for their HPC project were the participants. CallisonRTKL representative stated that Powerpacks provide 4 hours of backup for peak load, so it seems that the total battery capacity is 2.2 x 4 =8.8 MWh.

This week at DCD>Zettastructure, the company said it is taking the market seriously, revealing one of Tesla’s first deployments in a data center.

“The energy group at Tesla spans a number of different products that you will be familiar with, ranging from residential batteries and solar all the way to grid scale energy storage systems,” Tesla’s global head of energy projects, Archan Rao, said at the event.

“We’re applying some of these energy storage technologies to data centers, which is a new avenue for us and one that we think is growing and where we have a lot of interesting use cases for.”

“By having a very modular approach to the design, we can select appropriate cells based on applications, which allows us that flexibility to select the right chemistry that’s best suited for the application.”

Data center operators have previously expressed concerns to DCD about the response times of Tesla’s batteries, but Rao was confident the latest Powerpack was more than sufficient: “We have demonstrably shown that we have a response time within 10ms, and in some cases, depending on where you are, can be close to 3ms of transition time of being fully dependent on the grid to being fully backed up by a Powerpack system.”

With that in mind, Tesla is “looking at deploying these systems in partnership with data center operators from the end of this year.”

While it is still early days for Tesla in the extremely competitive data center market, the company has found some success - Rajan Battish, VP of design consultancy CallisonRTKL, came to DCD>Zettastructure to announce that the company had deployed enough Powerpacks for a 2.2MW high performance computing data center project.

“A client said we want an HPC system, without generators, without a fuel system,” Battish said. “It improved delivery, because you’re not dealing with permitting - air permits, fuel permits, etc.”

Since the generators were eliminated entirely, CallisonRTKL could not just rely on the Tesla Powerpacks as a short term UPS - it had to last longer. The company installed enough batteries to have a “failover time of four hours at peak load, six on an average load.”

For Battish, the project made him fundamentally question how his company designs data centers: “You’ve got to have a generator. You’ve got to have a UPS… Why? Because all of the white papers and checklists say we need it. But do we actually?

“Think differently,” he added.

 

[TaoJones]

It would appear that Elon will make his 100-day date in Australia:

Tesla readies Australian mega-battery

 

[adiggs]

Tesla big battery in South Australia is online and was called on today, Thursday (a day ahead of official opening):

Later update: Australian Energy Market Operator tweeted that it has called on Tesla big battery to deliver 70MW of “stored wind energy” to deliver into the market in Thursday’s peak, just as prices soared in Thursday amid the heat, low wind generation in South Australia and a missing coal unit at Loy Yang A.

Tesla big battery shows off its flexibility in final testing

aemo - Twitter Search

 

[TheTalkingMule]

So TSLA can drop this in essentially anywhere within probably 2 months one production is stabilized. Nice.

 

[adiggs]

So TSLA can drop this in essentially anywhere within probably 2 months one production is stabilized. Nice.

Admittedly - part of what made this project happen so quickly is that the installation site was at a wind farm that already had a grid interconnect that was sufficiently sized. Still - that's an awfully short turn time from starting installation, to tested and working. And there are a lot of wind and solar farms in the world - at least some of them will have the incremental ground real estate available to augment their grid interconnect with batteries on their end, so they can provide the same level of power, but do so more reliably. And even take excess power off the ground now and then.

 

[schonelucht]

Tesla's project in South Australia will keep the title as the world largest grid connected battery for only a few more months as Hyundai is set to start up a 150MW battery early next year. The deal, valued at around $45M, was signed in July. That's on top of a 50MWh project the company signed that same month. Total energy storage deployments in S-Korea this year were projected to end up at 413MWh.

Tesla is just one of many players in this market. From the above, Hyundai runs at comparable volumes and on comparable time-to-install schedules. To expect continued exceptional net margins on the Tesla Energy business is a gamble given the highly competitive market.

 

[ggr]

Tesla's project in South Australia will keep the title as the world largest grid connected battery for only a few more months as Hyundai is set to start up a 150MW battery early next year. The deal, valued at around $45M, was signed in July. That's on top of a 50MWh project the company signed that same month. Total energy storage deployments in S-Korea this year were projected to end up at 413MWh.

Tesla is just one of many players in this market. From the above, Hyundai runs at comparable volumes and on comparable time-to-install schedules. To expect continued exceptional net margins on the Tesla Energy business is a gamble given the highly competitive market.

That article doesn't say where they get cells from, and as far as I knew Hyundai doesn't manufacture cells. Anyone know?

 

[EinSV]

That article doesn't say where they get cells from, and as far as I knew Hyundai doesn't manufacture cells. Anyone know?

The article also doesn't say how many MWh. Unless this is published elsewhere we don't know the size of the Hyundai battery since MWh can be less than MW, much less in some cases.

With storage battery installations increasing 4X in 2017 over 2016 industry-wide according to the article linked by @schonelucht, we are off and running with utility-scale storage.

In 2018, I would expect another year of much greater than 100 percent growth with a bunch of installations significantly larger than 100MWh. I also believe Tesla will continue to lead the pack with large Li-ion storage projects.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Nice article in RenewEconomy explaining two distinct functions fulfilled by the SA Hornsdale Power Reserve battery: firming of the renewable generation (wind farm) and frequency support/anciliary service.

The battery complex can be thought of as two systems. First there is a component with 70MW of output capacity that has been contracted to the SA government. This is reported to provide grid stability and system security, and designed only to have about 10 minutes of storage.

The second part could be thought of as having 30MW of output capacity, but 3-4 hours of storage. Even though this component has a smaller capacity (MW), it has much more storage (MWh) and can provide energy for much longer. This component will participate in the competitive part of the market, and should firm up the wind power produced by the wind farm.

The Frequency Control and Ancillary Service (FCAS) market is less known and understood than the energy market. In fact it is wrong to talk of a single FCAS market – there are actually eight distinct markets.

The role of these markets is essentially twofold. First, they provide contingency reserves in case of a major disturbance, such as a large coal generation unit tripping off. The services provide a rapid response to a sudden fall (or rise) in grid frequency.

At the moment, these contingency services operate on three different timescales: 6 seconds, 60 seconds, and 5 minutes. Generators that offer these services must be able to raise (or reduce) their output to respond to an incident within these time frames.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve is more than capable of participating in these six markets

The final two markets are known as regulation services (again, as both a raise and lower). For this service, the Australian energy market operator (AEMO) issues dispatch instructions on a fine timescale (4 seconds) to “regulate” the frequency and keep supply and demand in balance.

Large synchronous generators (such as coal plants) have traditionally provided frequency control, (through the FCAS markets), and another service, inertia – essentially for free. As these power plants leave the system, there maybe a need for another service to maintain power system security.

One such service is so-called “fast frequency response” (FFR). While not a a direct replacement, it can reduce the need for physical inertia. This is conceptually similar to the contingency services described above, but might occur at the timescale of tens to hundreds of milliseconds, rather than 6 seconds.

The Australian Energy Market Commission is currently going through the process of potentially introducing a fast frequency response market. In the meantime, obligations on transmission companies are expected to ensure a minimum amount of inertia or similar services (such as fast frequency response).

I suspect that the 70MW portion of the new Tesla battery is designed to provide exactly this fast frequency response.

 

[SwTslaGrl]

PG&E Expands Commitment to Energy Storage

 

[generalenthu]

Roof top solar punching back NV energy

Regulators Deny NV Energy’s Rate Increase, Garnering Cheers From Solar Advocates