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jhm
Well-Known Member
You're right. The whole market is huge about 90,000 GWh cumulative installed, and I suspect the cumulative installed by the end of 2016 may still be less than 5 GWh. So even starting with 5 GWh in 2016, this installed capacity needs to double more than 14 times. To do that, the manufacturing capacity needs to doublenat about the same rate too. It's going to take more than 14 years to double 14 times. Try to imaging doubling Gigafactory capacity every 12 months for more than a decade! Arguably, we are looking at 20 to 30 of intense growth.
Tesla will have their hands fully innovating and ramping up productive capacity in this space. I think this is part of what Musk means when he says that he views Gigafactories as a product. Tesla needs to scale up the production of new GFs. Doing one every couple of years is not going to cut it. There is a whole supply chain just for the tooling of GFs that also must scale. I suspect this is what the Riviera, now Tesla Tool and Die, acquisition is about. Musk needs to cultivate a deep supply chain that can scale. Critical suppliers may need to double every year or two, but lack the financial means to do so. They may have the financial means to grow at upto 20% per year, but growing 60% or more per year is completely out of reach. This incidently is why SolarCity does not work with independent local installers, they simply cannot grow fast enough to keep up with a company that doubles business every year. So SolarCity does its own installation so they can finance it for hypergrowth and maintain consistent practices across the franchise. So Riviera may have been a terrific company, but Tesla needs a tool and die producer that it can finance and structure for hypergrowth. At some point taking control of equity in supplier makes sense. I'm raising this issue because we need to think through the challenges of scaling into this massive undeveloped market. This is where the strategy gets really interesting.
That would be wk057. Interesting thread!
Plan: Off grid solar with a Model S battery pack at the heart - Page 32
Jhm, where can we read about the 90,000 GWh need? Is this to replace all worldwide coal plants with solar plus batteries? How does nat gas and nuclear factor in? The current total US solar installed base is 20GW and most of it is used immediately, causing reductions in auxilliary power plants mid day. If solar were shuttled into batteries, then you currently could store and recover about 60 GWh per day off that 20 GW. Remember, 80-90% efficient, so a good amount is lost to charging losses. Now, store energy at night and use in the daytime improves baseload efficiency and reduces fossil fuel daytime burn for auxilliary power plants using NG and other fuels.
What has to be done is a smoothing of the deployment such that solar PV usage is still helping the grid while battery storage is powered by well off peak energy sources. In addition, battery storage works wonders in island nations and areas where small villages cannot get grid power. Islands use diesel generators now and such grids and microgrids are exactly where renewables and batteries work best.
What has to be done is a smoothing of the deployment such that solar PV usage is still helping the grid while battery storage is powered by well off peak energy sources. In addition, battery storage works wonders in island nations and areas where small villages cannot get grid power. Islands use diesel generators now and such grids and microgrids are exactly where renewables and batteries work best.
jhm
Well-Known Member
I'm using Musk's numbers from the April 30 Powerwall/pack unveiling. He said that 900M Powerpacks (90 TWh) would be needed to replace all fossil fuels in electricity generation worldwide and 2B Powerpacks [equivent] (200 TWh ) to replace all fossil fuels in both transportation and electricity.
I also figure that the global power generation capacity is about 6 TW with average utilization of about 10 to 11 hours per day. So relative to current capacity, 90 TWh is about 15 hours of storage. I think if you work with a mix of wind, solar, bioenergy and other renewables as available, 15 hours of storage should be enough to smooth it all out and match consumption. Globally that would mean generating 66 TWh per day. Solar alone would require many more hours of batteries. Wind and solar production complement each other though the day and night and the seasons. Bioenergy provides fuel based back up to deal with seasonal and extreme weather gaps. Hydro is very helpful too where available. Tidal is easily integrated with batteries to overcome the 11 hour cycles. The essential thing is that the cost of batteries come down to overcome the operating cost of fossil fuel generation. That way renewables with practically no operating cost will suffice to charge batteries with the resulting cost of discharged power being lower than burning any fossil fuel. This sets up the necessary economic condition to eliminate fossil fuels.
How we get to that end state is another question. So we're in agreement that the near term is about stabilizing the grid and boosting the penetration of solar and wind. Commonly, we speak of stabilizing the grid SO THAT more intermittent renewables can be included, but I think this is rhetoric aimed to lay the burden on renewables. The reality is that intermittent demand has always required grid stabilization and that this situation has benefitted fossil fuel generators with opportunities to make above baseload rates. Take away peak rates, stand by and ancillary services and there is little profit left for fossil fuel generators. The problem with solar and wind is not so much that they destabilize the grid, but that they can generate power at below baseload rates which throws off the profitability of baseload and peak providers which need reliable stretches peak prices. So the key thing that batteries accomplish is that they stabilize the grid to such an extent that peak rates will be removed. They provide energy arbitrage that will minimize the spread from peak to trough prices throughout the day. Fossil fuel generators who currently rely on peak power rates for long-term solvency will be deprived of profits when peak rates are arbed out of the market.
I recently read (AES Energy Storage Targets $30B Peak Power Substitution Market : Greentech Media) that about 60 GW of new peak power capacity is added every year at a.cost of about $1000/kW. So that market would be about $60B. Now the Powerpack enters that market at $500/kW with 2 hours storage. I suspect this will compete very well. And we will know that Tesla is making a difference when the GW of fossil peaker capacity starts to decline. Tesla could take this $60B market with 120 to 240 GWh of Powerpacks per year. Moreover, the batteries used for peak replacement also provide frequency regulation and dispatchable load to handle any over supply from renewables. So the battery peak replacements will actually produce much more value to the grid than what a fossil peak plant could ever deliver. So once Tesla and other battery makers have put a halt to virtually any new fossil peak plant, they go down the path sending old peakers into early retirement. This may require more than 240 GWh of Powerpack capacity. So with as little as 5 gigafactories (250 GWh capacity) in addition to what is needed for vehies, Tesla could start turning fossil peak power plants into stranded assets. How long might this take? Suppose Tesla reaches 50 GWh of stationary capacity by 2020 and continues to expand at 50% annually. Then they hit 250 GWh by 2024. My impression is that Musk wants to move faster than that with competitors not far behind, so it could come as early as 2020. What is really cool here is that the economics work even without government incentives. So how about that for a peak theory projection? Fossil peakers become stranded assets sometime between 2020 and 2024. This could also be tough on oil and NG prices.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
I agree with you jhm: regardless of how fast renewables can grow we will definitely see "hybrid fossil plants" (coal+batteries, nat. gas+batteries) soon. I like to call these "plug out hybrids".
jhm
Well-Known Member
Yeah, it's a curious question where these batteries will sit. I suppose we'll see them all over the place, even in coal plants. At least, existing plants have alot of infrastructure in place to minimize intallation costs, and helping with ramping up and down will make these plants more competitive. We might not actually see very many exclusive battery peak plants. Why develop all new facilities, if there are existing facilities that can site and install at lower cost? This is one thing to keep in mind when thinking about the fully installed cost of Powerpacks. If you've already have a solar installation with all the power electronics and a little space, it's cheap to add Powerpacks. Tesla could even design packs that sit right under mounted solar panels for no additional space needed. So I expect batteries to be well distributed. The locations that make the most economic sense will install the most.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
I keep coming back to this picture from the Stratagen report (posted by Vladimir some pages back). It really graphically shows how you could build a say 5MW continuous Nat. Gas. Power plant that operates at close to or at 100% of capacity at all times together with at daily cycled battery pack, instead of building either a 5MW plant + a peaked plant OR building at 10MW plant operating at between 50-100% capacity during a 24h period (with a lot of its capacity being untapped for a large portion of a 24h period).
jhm
Well-Known Member
Johan, it's a great illustration showing how the dynamic range, to borrow from a musical term, is much greater with a battery. In principle, any baseload plant, say coal or CCGT, could be paired with a suitable size battery to transform it into a peak plant with near 100% utilization.
So 100MW battery has a 200MW range from -100MW to +100MW. So that works out to $250 per kW range. But if a traditional peaker costs about $1000/kW, but only has 70MW range from 30 to 100 MW, then this is a cost of $1429 per kW range. So if what you need is range, Powerpacks really deliver a lot for the money.
So 100MW battery has a 200MW range from -100MW to +100MW. So that works out to $250 per kW range. But if a traditional peaker costs about $1000/kW, but only has 70MW range from 30 to 100 MW, then this is a cost of $1429 per kW range. So if what you need is range, Powerpacks really deliver a lot for the money.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
Exactly, dynamic range is a good term (I associate it with photography). As batteries start making their way in to the large scale production and distribution markets the benefits will be highest in the beginning, in the economic sense you just calculated. As more and more batteries come in to place the need for peak generation and supply/demand balancing (smoothing of the duck curve) will be less and less and hence the economic benefit will be smaller for installing the 100th GWh as opposed to the first or second GWh in a given market. However, this decrease in economic benefit should coincide nicely with the price coming down and availability of batteries increasing which all-in-all should allow for the battery market to keep growing until more-or-less saturated (if it ever gets saturated, considering humanities ever increasing hunger for energy, especially as energy becomes cheaper and available without that much damage to the climate and environment).
I'm not sure he's accounting for the reduction in electricity usage in developed countries due to efficiency improvements such as LEDs. And I'm not sure he's calculated the energy usage in transportation correctly either; we know that electric cars are much more efficient than gasoline cars. I guess what I'm saying is that Musk is probably making an overestimate of the requirements.
jhm
Well-Known Member
Yes, I very much agree. It's hard to know what amount of energy will be demanded 20 or more years out because of leapfrogging utilities, lower cost power, and EVs. So any forecast would want to start there and work backwards to the production mix and battery penetration. So I think aggregate demand for electricity will go up. But I am not so sure that 15 hours of storage will be needed on a global basis. It has to do with production mix. I think about 2 hours of storage will gain economic benefits just about everywhere and will largely knock out the need for incremental peak power. Beyond that we'll need to see how markets evolve. The cool thing is that batteries present a very flexible way to bring arbitrage into power markets. With the means to arbitrage comes new market efficiencies, and this will be transformative. So how much arbitrage is needed to lead to arbitrage free prices? Thats what is hard to say. Maybe something less than 15 hours will suffice. But as efficiencies are gained and prices come down, the amount demanded globally will increase. So either way, it works out to a very big market.
Heh, i don't know if I have ever heard Elon use the word conserve or conservation in any energy ideas. It does seem to be larger number to stimulate a market. As CEO that is expected, but ask any EV owner and they probably use less electricity after "going EV" than before.
in the big picture, factor in the millions of homes piping in NG for winter heating and many suburban homes using trucked in Propane. To replace such fossil fuels, one must go to either carbon neutral wood pellet stoves for winter heating or resistive. Replacing a propane burning furnace with equivalent solar pv and batteries and you will find a huge market for solar and batteries but a lot of people who really cannot afford those products. I do not think humanity can yet plan to remove use of fossil fuels. We can extend the way we use them and flatten the demand curve such that maybe we halve the consumption of NG and Distillates while conserving and shifting.
but again, batteries do not generate energy. They are a net user of energy due to their charging losses. JB's presentation to PG&E indicate 80% rt efficiency of their larger power storage system at 1/2C cycling and 89% at 1/4C. With those type if numbers, a wide scale education plan to get people to conserve first is important. The US and similar first world countries use far more power per capita than many emerging markets who themselves want to increase their energy use as they grow. This means less coal in the US and more in India and China, etc. We are just moving the demand offshore, it seems.
What I would like to see as a sizable accomplishment and a proof of concept. Turn off the NG pipes to Buffalo, NY where the solar city gigafactory is going in. Install a giant 3GW local solar array and some windmills on lake erie and ontario. Then run Buffalo on electricity only through two consecutive full year seasons. If that is easy to do, then extend it nationally. But these fuels have made us rely so much on them that renewables will be deployed for decades in a catch up race to keep up with population growth, demand growth and our desire to have many first world services. I read that gasoline demand is going up 3% this year in the US. Renewables in total in the US are creating less energy per year than contained in 3% of gasoline (a guesstimate but I could go research to determine).
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ev-enthusiast
Active Member
I think people forget that there are very significant incentives (for companies and individual people) to install residential and commercial storage units, where the power comes from Solar instead of the grid. In some cases, the incentives equal or exceed half the price of the product.
Although other companies sell grid storage, none of them are producing systems at the scale Tesla is, and almost all of the non-Tesla systems cost more than Tesla's. Also, 99% of people probably have no idea what any of the other companies are.
Large-Scale Energy Storage to Reduce Load in New York City : Greentech Media
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com...nergy-tax-credit-but-imposes-limitations.html
https://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/Issu...ents/taxes-incentives-renewable-energy-v1.pdf
Although other companies sell grid storage, none of them are producing systems at the scale Tesla is, and almost all of the non-Tesla systems cost more than Tesla's. Also, 99% of people probably have no idea what any of the other companies are.
Large-Scale Energy Storage to Reduce Load in New York City : Greentech Media
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com...nergy-tax-credit-but-imposes-limitations.html
https://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/Issu...ents/taxes-incentives-renewable-energy-v1.pdf
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Jonathan Hewitt
Active Member
Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA) 7kWh Powerwall May Payback Investment In 6-Years In Australia: UBS
http://www.bidnessetc.com/43270-tes...-payback-investment-in-6years-in-australia-u/"According to calculations by UBS’s analysts, if the project is reaping such a return, it means that the Powerwall will be adopted by the mass-market sooner than expected."
Everyone is still focusing on the Powerwall and not the Powerpack...
jhm
Well-Known Member
Morgan Stanley sees 2.4m Australia homes with battery storage : Renew Economy
Morgan Stanley slaps a "caution" tag on AGL and Origin, utilities in Australia. They face earnings reductions and asset write-downs stemming from the potential for 2.4 M homes in that country to install Powerwall units.
This is really big. This is what we've been talking about.
So note well that banks and other investors are going to take seriously this potential for write-downs. With this, it will become increasingly difficult for these utilities to get financing. New peak power plants are a risky bet. The best response tor utilities may be actually to increase feed in tariffs, perhaps on a variable basis to achieve effective peak power without new plants.
Judging by this I think that Australia may be a good candidate for the next Gigafactory. Powerwall demand could be as high as 25 GWh over multiple years. Powerpack demand could be 5 to 10 times as much, 125 to 250 GWh. One 50 GWh GF could have annual local demand in in excess of supply for 5 or more years. Making a few GWh of auto batteries would also make sense.
Morgan Stanley slaps a "caution" tag on AGL and Origin, utilities in Australia. They face earnings reductions and asset write-downs stemming from the potential for 2.4 M homes in that country to install Powerwall units.
This is really big. This is what we've been talking about.
So note well that banks and other investors are going to take seriously this potential for write-downs. With this, it will become increasingly difficult for these utilities to get financing. New peak power plants are a risky bet. The best response tor utilities may be actually to increase feed in tariffs, perhaps on a variable basis to achieve effective peak power without new plants.
Judging by this I think that Australia may be a good candidate for the next Gigafactory. Powerwall demand could be as high as 25 GWh over multiple years. Powerpack demand could be 5 to 10 times as much, 125 to 250 GWh. One 50 GWh GF could have annual local demand in in excess of supply for 5 or more years. Making a few GWh of auto batteries would also make sense.
I really like the powerpack. For a larger suburban home, it actually makes sense to get a powerpack @ 100kWh than powerwalls in-series.
If PowerPack is used for load shaving and arbitrage, then it is using the same cells as the 7kWh powerwall for daily cycling. $3K per powerwall is 8 powerwalls @ $24K to an installer. One powerpack is said to be $25K (to an installer) and is 100 kWh. I just don't see why the powerpack is not offered for larger home use. Even someone with an 8KW solar array could charge that up over the course of two days. Given the physical size of the Model S battery itself (giant pizza-box scenario) - it seems that a PowerSlab could be done for homes where the need to put up a visible powerwall is not as necessary as enclosing an 85-100 kWh "slab" in sub-flooring somewhere in the home. Current 40-80 kWh standby off-grid battery solutions usually use up good amounts of floor and racking space. A PowerSlab could be installed in a garage, perhaps, right underneath where you would park a car. Just cut a sizeable six-inch depression into the flooring or plan for it up front during construction. Only issue with code would be "what if it floods?" and I suspect it would need drainage or sump or some such thing. I think if you want to take a large home off the grid, you would want a powerpack. Another aspect of going off-grid is that the battery is able to take the 30% Federal Tax Credit as would a Solar PV array. Makes it almost a no-brainer in states with high power costs like Hawaii or CA.
If PowerPack is used for load shaving and arbitrage, then it is using the same cells as the 7kWh powerwall for daily cycling. $3K per powerwall is 8 powerwalls @ $24K to an installer. One powerpack is said to be $25K (to an installer) and is 100 kWh. I just don't see why the powerpack is not offered for larger home use. Even someone with an 8KW solar array could charge that up over the course of two days. Given the physical size of the Model S battery itself (giant pizza-box scenario) - it seems that a PowerSlab could be done for homes where the need to put up a visible powerwall is not as necessary as enclosing an 85-100 kWh "slab" in sub-flooring somewhere in the home. Current 40-80 kWh standby off-grid battery solutions usually use up good amounts of floor and racking space. A PowerSlab could be installed in a garage, perhaps, right underneath where you would park a car. Just cut a sizeable six-inch depression into the flooring or plan for it up front during construction. Only issue with code would be "what if it floods?" and I suspect it would need drainage or sump or some such thing. I think if you want to take a large home off the grid, you would want a powerpack. Another aspect of going off-grid is that the battery is able to take the 30% Federal Tax Credit as would a Solar PV array. Makes it almost a no-brainer in states with high power costs like Hawaii or CA.
Paracelsus
Active Member
"I really like the powerpack. For a larger suburban home, it actually makes sense to get a powerpack @ 100kWh than powerwalls in-series."
Great comments bonaire, and my thoughts exactly. I am very much hoping to be able to purchase a 100 kWh powerpack to take our Northern Idaho farm off the grid with a combination of solar and wind for the very reasons you mentioned. Winter weather here requires both, and we need several days of reserve capacity and the ability to charge from a generator for those long stretches of dreary calm NW winter days if we are not using firewood. Most rural properties like ours can simply place the powerpack in a shop building and backfeed the house from the shop when there is not garage space. My work takes me to rural facilities across the Pacific NW and Alaska where the powerpack can create the flexibility to look at projects in a new light, including many facilities that have multiple housing units and/or a bunkhouse unit on station. Many of these facilities currently use fuel-oil or propane for heat because there was no way to store intermittant renewable opportunities, and of course there is always the concerns & risk of transportation and storage of fossil fuels at logistically difficult locations. I am confident that facilities concerned with mitigating these spill risks will make the transition now that they can rely on stored energy for several days at a time if necessary.
Great comments bonaire, and my thoughts exactly. I am very much hoping to be able to purchase a 100 kWh powerpack to take our Northern Idaho farm off the grid with a combination of solar and wind for the very reasons you mentioned. Winter weather here requires both, and we need several days of reserve capacity and the ability to charge from a generator for those long stretches of dreary calm NW winter days if we are not using firewood. Most rural properties like ours can simply place the powerpack in a shop building and backfeed the house from the shop when there is not garage space. My work takes me to rural facilities across the Pacific NW and Alaska where the powerpack can create the flexibility to look at projects in a new light, including many facilities that have multiple housing units and/or a bunkhouse unit on station. Many of these facilities currently use fuel-oil or propane for heat because there was no way to store intermittant renewable opportunities, and of course there is always the concerns & risk of transportation and storage of fossil fuels at logistically difficult locations. I am confident that facilities concerned with mitigating these spill risks will make the transition now that they can rely on stored energy for several days at a time if necessary.
It depends what you want to do with it. The powerpack, from my understanding uses the NCA chemistry. That's the lower cycle life chemistry (around 3000 cycles in normal conditions from what I know). So if this is about daily cycling, as in, going off grid, you might be better off with stacking 7 kWh (NMC) units. If this is for backup there is no way a normal home would need 100 kWh unless you have no solar, and expect the grid to be down for 2-3 days. Which might be the case if there are more super-storms in the east coast.
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