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Generator Glut

I should probably define what I see as the coming "generator glut." There exists globally about 6 TW of power generation capacity. This capacity is utilized about 10 hours on an average day to generate all the electricity consumed. Ignoring renewables, the infusion of batteries into the grid has the potential to stretch this utilization to 20 hours per day and would cost less than adding new generation capacity to add these batteries. Thus, there exists on order of twice as much generation capacity than needed to satisfy electricity demands. If the infusion of batteries is slow, then we have a moderate oversupply problem, but if battery production capacity ramps up quickly, the glut could be severe.

In any case, we are talking about an over supply ploblem that could take decades to resolve. Power plants are designed to be used over a 30 to 40 year timeframe, and this is why having twice the needed capacity could take 20 years to reslove. Meanwhile, installed Powerpacks can be loaded on trucks and redeployed wherever they can yield a bigger return.

The acceleration of solar capacity adds to the severity of the over capacity problem. Utility solar and wind add to the generator glut. Distributed solar matches generation assets to consumption. In a glut, demand is the scarcity sought after. So distributed generation has the advantage of locked in consumption.

The critical driver of this generator glut scenario is cheap, abundant batteries. Tesla has entered this space at $250/kWh which is low enough to scale the battery industry and drive down costs in the process. Tesla's entry price is also not so low as to drive off competitors from entering this market. This too is critical because the more competition there is among battery makers that faster the industry will scale and drive down costs. So $250/kWh seems well calibrated to maximize the pace of disruption. This pace will determine how sudden and severe the glut proves to be.

What is particularly hard to anticipate is how quickly investors will come to perceive this risk and begin to reduce exposure to all investments that would be harmed by such a glut. What catalysts would trigger a sell off? I'll leave that for shorts to figure out, but once the divestment begins, it could be severe. All I know is that I would much rather be invested in Gigafactories today than getting caught in a massive asset bubble betting against the battery.
 
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I should probably define what I see as the coming "generator glut." There exists globally about 6 TW of power generation capacity. This capacity is utilized about 10 hours on an average day to generate all the electricity consumed. Ignoring renewables, the infusion of batteries into the grid has the potential to stretch this utilization to 20 hours per day and would cost less than adding new generation capacity to add these batteries. Thus, there exists on order of twice as much generation capacity than needed to satisfy electricity demands. If the infusion of batteries is slow, then we have a moderate oversupply problem, but if battery production capacity ramps up quickly, the glut could be severe.

In any case, we are talking about an over supply ploblem that could take decades to resolve. Power plants are designed to be used over a 30 to 40 year timeframe, and this is why having twice the needed capacity could take 20 years to reslove. Meanwhile, installed Powerpacks can be loaded on trucks and redeployed wherever they can yield a bigger return.

The acceleration of solar capacity adds to the severity of the over capacity problem. Utility solar and wind add to the generator glut. Distributed solar matches generation assets to consumption. In a glut, demand is the scarcity sought after. So distributed generation has the advantage of locked in consumption.

The critical driver of this generator glut scenario is cheap, abundant batteries. Tesla has entered this space at $250/kWh which is low enough to scale the battery industry and drive down costs in the process. Tesla's entry price is also not so low as to drive off competitors from entering this market. This too is critical because the more competition there is among battery makers that faster the industry will scale and drive down costs. So $250/kWh seems well calibrated to maximize the pace of disruption. This pace will determine how sudden and severe the glut proves to be.

What is particularly hard to anticipate is how quickly investors will come to perceive this risk and begin to reduce exposure to all investments that would be harmed by such a glut. What catalysts would trigger a sell off? I'll leave that for shorts to figure out, but once the divestment begins, it could be severe. All I know is that I would much rather be invested in Gigafactories today than getting caught in a massive asset bubble betting against the battery.

James, do not forget that electrification of transportation will require massive amount on energy. I have to dig for data, but based on my recollection electrification of the light duty vehicle fleet in USA will require close to 100% utilization of the installed generation capacity. I think that evolution of transport electrification, affordable energy storage and solar generation in approximately the same timeframe presents huge opportunity and, at the same time, huge risk for the utilities. (if they do not embrace renewables and energy storage).

With further concentration of population in cities and high power density required for large scale manufacturing, distributed generation has it's limits. I believe that grid will still play a role of a backbone of the electrical systems for a foreseeable future (there is an interview with Lyndon Rive out there where he addresses this).
 
I only read the abstract on the first one but it seemed to say that breakeven was possible on systems costing $1,000 to $4,000/kWhr. If that is the case a Tesla System at installed cost of $500/kWh should have a quick return on investment. That is positive for Tesla, and bad news for companies selling higher oriced systems.
 
And at that point Lyndon and Elon declare 'Check Mate'............... Their ability not only to see the future, but to play their chess pieces in a way that the final move ultimately leaves the grid operators and the fossil fuel industry lobbying in support of more EV demand on the grid to keep themselves solvent must have Lyndon and Elon grinning at the end of the day as this becomes more and more transparent. Elon could have rolled out the Model 3 before battery storage, but by rolling out and deploying a very disruptive battery storage plan first, it will literally force the owners of the grid and the fossil fuel industries they are supported by to be the most vocal lobbiests for expanding the very same incentives for EV's that they are so critical of now.......for all the very reasons that jhm and vgrinshpun just mentioned. And think how much further those same incentives will go on a $35,000 vehicle. Wholly cats that is the most strategic set of moves I have every followed.
 
James, do not forget that electrification of transportation will require massive amount on energy. I have to dig for data, but based on my recollection electrification of the light duty vehicle fleet in USA will require close to 100% utilization of the installed generation capacity. I think that evolution of transport electrification, affordable energy storage and solar generation in approximately the same timeframe presents huge opportunity and, at the same time, huge risk for the utilities. (if they do not embrace renewables and energy storage).

With further concentration of population in cities and high power density required for large scale manufacturing, distributed generation has it's limits. I believe that grid will still play a role of a backbone of the electrical systems for a foreseeable future (there is an interview with Lyndon Rive out there where he addresses this).

Vlad, that's a fair point. Let's see if we can scale this. Suppose we have a fleet of 2 billion vehicles that use 9 to 15 kWh per day. If my math is correct, that is 18 to 30 TWh per day. So with 6 TW capacity, this would add 3 to 5 hours of utilization to the existing 10 hours for other purposes. The US has very high motorization compared to the rest of the world, but it also has very slow growth in demand for electricity.

So yes, EV can moderate the generator glut scenario. However, it is largely about timing. The growth of solar can easily cover incremental demand for electricity. It only take 2 to 3 kW of solar to power one car. EV production would have to scale at a much higher rate than solar to overtake that specific contribution to capaicity. Also working against this is the fact that cars have a useful life around 15 to 20 years. So even on really optimistic scenarios for EV growth, it will take multiple decades to achieve a 2 billion EV fleet. The tricky thing is how fast auto batteries grow relative to stationary batteries. If the two roughly keep pace with each other, then I suspect generator glut happens before the electric vehicle fleet creates sufficient demand to resolve the glut, if ever. (I may need to model this to sort it out.)

To be clear, my generator glut scenario does not anticipate any end to the grid. To the contrary, the glut will likely keep grid prices down. Commercial users may be a huge beneficiary of the glut, and let's not forget ubiquitous and cheap EV charging as a benefit.

The advantage of distributed solar is to the producer of solar power who has a locked in buyer. Lyndon has mentioned that Elon has pointed out an invisible wall that SolarCity has done well to avoid, but Lyndon has not said what that invisible wall is. My hunch is that the generator glut may be the invisible wall. Surely SolarCity has had opportunity to get into the utility solar space, but they have elected not to. Why? There are likely multiple strategic reasons. But if you really understand the potential for batteries to disrupt the economics of power generation, you really do want to stay clear of getting sucked into it. A company like FirstSolar, that only does utility scale installations and has low efficiency thin film technology that is only economically competitive at this scale could get really hurt by a generator glut. I'm not saying this will necessarily be the case, but it is risky play. Few people perceive how risky this may be, and this is another reason why Elon and Lyndon might just call it an invisible wall.
 
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James, do not forget that electrification of transportation will require massive amount on energy. I have to dig for data, but based on my recollection electrification of the light duty vehicle fleet in USA will require close to 100% utilization of the installed generation capacity. I think that evolution of transport electrification, affordable energy storage and solar generation in approximately the same timeframe presents huge opportunity and, at the same time, huge risk for the utilities. (if they do not embrace renewables and energy storage).

With further concentration of population in cities and high power density required for large scale manufacturing, distributed generation has it's limits. I believe that grid will still play a role of a backbone of the electrical systems for a foreseeable future (there is an interview with Lyndon Rive out there where he addresses this).

I believe that it requires about 4.5 to 6KWh of electricity to refine oil into 1 gallon of gasoline. So when an additional EV hits the road, there is an incremental need for more electricity, but it is not a an absolute addition due to the need to refine less petroleum. I realize that this is a gross oversimplification of the matter, but it bears mentioning.
 
If you look over the california S.G.I.P. program data, systems from most of the A.E.S. guys including Tesla have system costs (I believe that is turnkey price) well over $1000/KW in most cases. Recent new projects by Tesla indicate 50 KW systems at $100,000 but it's hard to know what they look like in project cost form. If that really is the final price, then it is getting far cheaper. Going back a year or two, full project costs on a per-KW price scale were up in the $2000-3500 range. A month ago, those 50 KW systems were logged in the spreadsheet as 100 KW systems for $100,000 and they looked "really" spectacular in terms of pricing. I have to imagine that 50KW systems are one powerpack plus inverter and electrician work. Given the "talked about" pricing of $25K per powerpack to the installers, someone is doing well in terms of system value. And, the S.G.I.P. program is rebating $60,000 for that system alone. I want one! :) Everyone would want one in their home if they could have it paid for like that.

Click here: Self-Generation Incentive Program
Use the Weekly Projects Report and do some Data review (excel spreadsheet Data Filter, etc.)

You want to compute "Total Eligible / Rated Capacity" - and if you want per kWh, divide again by 2 (most likely).

You'd think cost of scale for bigger projects like SCE-SGIP-2012-2409 would be adjusted since it was entered in 2012 and now with the low-cost batteries, they could do the system for half price (assuming). But system at 1600KW and the $3.1 M of incentive money already reserved is hard to look away from for the buyer. Even recent systems like SCE-SGIP-2015-1018 are coming up as $3240/KW pricing which again presumes that the balance of system overall project cost really drives the price up. But what I hope does not happen is if Tesla quotes a new system today at $500/kWh ($1000/KW) and these older systems are being given reserve funding at $3000/KW or higher - what will the program do with such data? I see that it really does not matter as the incentive is in fact given based on the nameplate KW power rating and the ability to draw power for 2-hours minimum. But what may be happening is that the project that logged an entry for an expected cost at $3000/KW and the final turnkey system ends up being $1500/KW - then the real benefactor is the buyer. It is possible that the SGIP rebate money could even pay off the entire system price given the battery price drop over the last 3-4 years.

With all that data - it looks like the trickle down effect of the Panasonic battery pricing offered to Tesla allowed for a great progress in the battery storage industry and a leap-ahead into very affordable storage packs. So much so that the incentive reserved can possibly pay for a system installation with no money spent from anyone other than California's S.G.I.P. program. A few short years ago, per-kWh pricing on batteries was what, maybe $500 and now reaching $200. That is for the raw batteries. If it hits $100 by 2020, then programs like this one are paying for the system and the buyer actually isn't paying for much at all. I guess that's good if everyone benefits. Competitors like Coda probably uses a Chinese cell and their 20 KW system shows a system overall price of $72K, so that is $3600/KW. Newer items in the spreadsheet show 78 KW with $234K price or $3115/KW. They are going to have to work harder to source lower-priced batteries to keep up with Tesla. The only one even close is Green Charge Networks and they are just under $3000/KW for 150KW systems.

Look at SCE-SGIP-2015-1172 - 150KW (3 powerpacks) - rebate of $180,000 ($1750/KW or $1.75/W due to the 1.20 multiplier since Tesla is in Calif) available on a proposed $300,000 system price allowance. Is the powerpack really $25K? So, this one would be $75K of powerpacks, let's say $30K for inverters and $15K for permits and various electrical engineering work. Round it to $120K, add $10-20K sales and marketing and you have $180K incentive paying for a possible $130-150K turnkey system (wholesale). I like the numbers. Now, what is the price exposed to the buyer? That's hard to know. The margin here is perhaps the grey area that is held close. What I wouldn't know - maybe someone here like jhm knows - is the pricing of 50 KW inverters (charge and discharge). They do have to have the "Grid Sell" features like the small units that Solar City used for home installs of the 10 kWh systems, the Schneider Electric XW, if I remember correctly. And larger systems need some sort of telemetrics tied to the power company so it can regulate charge and discharge cycles.

I don't think we're at $500/kWh just yet. But even $1000/kWh is quite good. I doubt a delivered commercial system will reach below $1000/KW in the next two years, mainly due to the rich incentives in some states like CA and NY. $700-800/kWh for a single powerwall system seems about right for now. In CA - the "break even" is not even an issue. It looks like the systems pay for themselves (if priced in the buyers' favor) in just a couple years given the incentive returned. If I were a buyer, I would seriously NOT lease such a system but rather work out the price, installed, turnkey and pay for the system myself as long as the rebate check was coming my way.

it is just too bad that V2G is not allowed with MS or most EVs today. Especially for rare blackout power scenarios, a couple times a year.
 
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I believe that it requires about 4.5 to 6KWh of electricity to refine oil into 1 gallon of gasoline. So when an additional EV hits the road, there is an incremental need for more electricity, but it is not a an absolute addition due to the need to refine less petroleum. I realize that this is a gross oversimplification of the matter, but it bears mentioning.

Interesting. So to go about 30 miles in an EV, you need about 10 kWh. In a gas car to need about 1.33 gallons which require 6 to 8 kWh to produce. So the incremental demand for electricity with EVs is around 2 to 4 kWh per day, not 10.

This pretty much also explains why EVs will alway cheaper and more energy efficient to power than gas cars.

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For sure. Also, desalinization plants can eat pretty arbitrary amounts of electricity. And then you have to pump the resulting fresh water up hill. I don't think there will be a glut.

But the question for such uses is whether they will pay high enough rates for electricity to pay for the capital cost of fossil plants in addition to operating and fuel costs. And if willing to pay such rates for electricity, would they not also get better rates from renewable power. Pumping water can accomodate the intermittency of solar and wind. That's a really tough position to be in.
 
But the question for such uses is whether they will pay high enough rates for electricity to pay for the capital cost of fossil plants in addition to operating and fuel costs.

No, it's not. If there's a glut, an oversupply, electricity will be sold at market price (one afternoon recently it went negative in Australia). For users who can be choosy, the average spot price is what renewable power is competing with. I still say no glut because there's too much negative feedback.
 
Interesting. So to go about 30 miles in an EV, you need about 10 kWh. In a gas car to need about 1.33 gallons which require 6 to 8 kWh to produce. So the incremental demand for electricity with EVs is around 2 to 4 kWh per day, not 10.

This pretty much also explains why EVs will alway cheaper and more energy efficient to power than gas cars.

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But the question for such uses is whether they will pay high enough rates for electricity to pay for the capital cost of fossil plants in addition to operating and fuel costs. And if willing to pay such rates for electricity, would they not also get better rates from renewable power. Pumping water can accomodate the intermittency of solar and wind. That's a really tough position to be in.

I have often heard that refining gasoline/diesel requires certain amount of electricity but never seen a reliable source for the exact numbers, if any of you have one please post it here and make my life easier arguing with deniers.
Thx
 
Has anyone read the two studies from 2013 found on the CPUC website? Their storage prices and break even numbers seemed crazy high to me. (If true, Tesla's price is super duper amazing?) Not sure If I read them correctly/understood them fully.

Report from EPRI on its energy storage cost-effectiveness study

Report from DNV KEMA on its energy storage cost-effectiveness study

We discussed that up thread before April 30. At the time we were trying to figure out what Tesla could get for batteries. Most of us were surprised with how low Tesla set the price, $250/kWh. I'm glad Tesla entered this low. I think it is low enough to trigger substantial change.

Regarding the EPRI study, they were modeling complete installations, which include a lot of cost beyond the batteries alone. What was missed is that batteries can be moved into existing facilities like an active or retired coal plant for minimal siting and installation cost. Additionally, the cost of capital is quite different considering the modularity and mobility of Powerpacks. Suppose you have an existing and active coal plant. You can install just a few Powerpacks and evaluate the financial performance. If the performance suggest a positive return, you can add more packs. And as market contitions change you keep adding packs until there is little to no marginal benefit. But what if the situation changes such that marginal packs have negative benifit? Then you uninstall and redeploy to another location. An existing fleet of Powerpacks can be redeployed as needed to optimize the value of the entire fleet. This the downside risk of a particular deployment is limited to the cost of redeployment. This is a very different financing proposition then, say, building out a 100 MW NG plant, where Capex is pretty much a sunk cost that can never be recovered should the economics deteriorate. Powerpacks will be quite nimble at seeking out the highest possible returns. So if anything, the EPRI underestimates the economic value that batteries can create.
 
Now it makes sense, then. It wasn't clear from the context...to me, at least.

Yeah, I was only trying to address the question of how quickly production could be scaled up to install 200 TWh of stationary and mobile battery packs, which depends critically on the rate of growth leading upto 10 TWh annual production capacity. An annual growth rate of 42% gets us to this midpoint in 15 years, and 30% gets us there in 20. I think the expansion of solar has been closer to 42% which gives me hope.

So my concern was just the pace of expansion. Bonaire brings up many other complexities of just how to achieve such a pace. My feeling is that, if we can get far enough along the experience curve to cut the coat well below the economic benefit, then the transition can come pretty quickly. So for me the key issue is to drive down the cost with scale. Government incentives are, as Musk has recently said, not necessary, but are useful catalysts for reaching scale efficiencies quicker.
 
Growth of photovoltaics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So I looked up some data on the growth of PV solar. The cumulative installed base has grown from 566 MW in 1998 to 2735 MW in 2003, 15844 MW, and finally 138856 MW in 2013. So over this 15 year period the annualized growth rate was 44.3%. In the last 5 years, the pace has picked up a bit to 54.4%. This quickening of pace makes economic sense as solar his hit unsubsidized parity prices in differ geographical markets. If we were back in 1998 and someone said that solar needs to grow 200 fold over the next 15 years, most people would not have believed it could be possible. And, of course, now we have the benefit of hindsight and selection bais to see that in fact PV solar grew 245 times. So now as we look forward to the growth advanced batteries, we know that it is at least possible to scale manufacturing at a rate of 44% per year for 15 or more years all while driving the cost down year after year. In fact, the sustained annual growth was made possible by these successive reductions in price. Should the pace of price reductions slow in the coming years, then the expansion will slow as well.

Anyone want to figure out when there will be enough solar to power 2 B vehicles, about 5 TW (5,000,000 MW) of PV?
 
That answer is strange. They are estimating that based on the amount of loss from crude to gasoline? I suppose that is because refineries make their own electricity?

The answer is indeed strange. I do not believe energy loss during the refinery process is equivalent to the electricity consumed during the process. I am not a chemist, but it seems that if refining of oil requires energy in form of, for example, heat, this energy is not necessarily obtained from electricity. The methodology seems to be flawed.

Based on 2013 US yearly Finished Motor Gasoline production of 845,935,000 barrels (35,529,270,00 gallons) and 2013 US yearly electricity purchased by all US refineries (46,078,000,000 kWh), the total electricity consumed during the refining is 1.26 kWh per gallon of produced gasoline.

In addition, comparing electricity used in the process of gasoline production to the electricity used to propel an EV is very misleading. The proper comparison would involve comparing usage of electricity in the process of refining oil to usage of electricity in the process of generating electricity, i.e. electrical energy consumption by a power plant. I do not have references handy, but to the best of my recollection it is in the range of 5 to 10%, i.e. it takes about 5 to 10 kWh to produce 100kWh of electrical energy.

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Interesting. So to go about 30 miles in an EV, you need about 10 kWh. In a gas car to need about 1.33 gallons which require 6 to 8 kWh to produce. So the incremental demand for electricity with EVs is around 2 to 4 kWh per day, not 10.

This pretty much also explains why EVs will alway cheaper and more energy efficient to power than gas cars.

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But the question for such uses is whether they will pay high enough rates for electricity to pay for the capital cost of fossil plants in addition to operating and fuel costs. And if willing to pay such rates for electricity, would they not also get better rates from renewable power. Pumping water can accomodate the intermittency of solar and wind. That's a really tough position to be in.

I believe that this line of reasoning is erroneous, please see my post above.
 
Vlad, that's a fair point. Let's see if we can scale this. Suppose we have a fleet of 2 billion vehicles that use 9 to 15 kWh per day. If my math is correct, that is 18 to 30 TWh per day. So with 6 TW capacity, this would add 3 to 5 hours of utilization to the existing 10 hours for other purposes. The US has very high motorization compared to the rest of the world, but it also has very slow growth in demand for electricity.

So yes, EV can moderate the generator glut scenario. However, it is largely about timing. The growth of solar can easily cover incremental demand for electricity. It only take 2 to 3 kW of solar to power one car. EV production would have to scale at a much higher rate than solar to overtake that specific contribution to capaicity. Also working against this is the fact that cars have a useful life around 15 to 20 years. So even on really optimistic scenarios for EV growth, it will take multiple decades to achieve a 2 billion EV fleet. The tricky thing is how fast auto batteries grow relative to stationary batteries. If the two roughly keep pace with each other, then I suspect generator glut happens before the electric vehicle fleet creates sufficient demand to resolve the glut, if ever. (I may need to model this to sort it out.)

To be clear, my generator glut scenario does not anticipate any end to the grid. To the contrary, the glut will likely keep grid prices down. Commercial users may be a huge beneficiary of the glut, and let's not forget ubiquitous and cheap EV charging as a benefit.

The advantage of distributed solar is to the producer of solar power who has a locked in buyer. Lyndon has mentioned that Elon has pointed out an invisible wall that SolarCity has done well to avoid, but Lyndon has not said what that invisible wall is. My hunch is that the generator glut may be the invisible wall. Surely SolarCity has had opportunity to get into the utility solar space, but they have elected not to. Why? There are likely multiple strategic reasons. But if you really understand the potential for batteries to disrupt the economics of power generation, you really do want to stay clear of getting sucked into it. A company like FirstSolar, that only does utility scale installations and has low efficiency thin film technology that is only economically competitive at this scale could get really hurt by a generator glut. I'm not saying this will necessarily be the case, but it is risky play. Few people perceive how risky this may be, and this is another reason why Elon and Lyndon might just call it an invisible wall.

James, unfortunately your estimate of the energy needed for the electrification is not accurate.

As seen from the several slides from the power point I prepared for my workplace presentation, according to the very detailed Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study, complete utilization of the existing US power generation (less the peakers) will cover only 73% of the US light duty vehicle (LDV) fleet. Complete electrification of transportation (including heavy duty vehicles) will require substantial increase of the installed generation capacity **and** installation of the vast amount of the grid connected battery storage.

NOTE TO THE MODS: we are probably OT here, it seems that this post and related posts from jhm and others should be moved to the Stationary Storage Investors thread. Thanks

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