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posted by janrinok on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the tesla-unplugged dept.

Tesla just won a bid to supply grid-scale power in Southern California to help prevent electricity shortages following the biggest natural gas leak in U.S. history. The Powerpacks, worth tens of millions of dollars, will be operational in record time—by the end of this year.

Tesla Motors Inc. will supply 20 megawatts (80 megawatt-hours) of energy storage to Southern California Edison as part of a wider effort to prevent blackouts by replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with lithium-ion batteries. Tesla's contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. But the real significance of the deal is the speed with which lithium-ion battery packs are being deployed.

"The storage is being procured in a record time frame," months instead of years, said Yayoi Sekine, a battery analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "It highlights the maturity of advanced technologies like energy storage to be contracted as a reliable resource in an emergency situation."


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:43AM

    by tftp (806) on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:43AM (#403049) Homepage

    I understand the value of lightweight batteries in a vehicle or in a laptop. However this is a stationary installation. Why do they use Li-Ion batteries there? They have only a limited number of cycles. They do better if you barely charge-discharge them, like in battery-saving charging modes of EVs, but then you lose capacity. Why not to use energy storage methods that are not dependent on fragile chemistry and millions of hand-made packs of plastic film and electrolyte goo? California is well equipped with mountains, you can pump a lot of water uphill during the night and drain it during the day. There is no shortage of sea water for this purpose (even if desalinated to prevent corrosion.) Per Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

    Pumped storage is the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of March 2012, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) reports that PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk production capacity worldwide, representing around 127 GW,[1] with storage capacity at 740 TWh.[citation needed] Typically, the round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies in practice between 70% and 80%,[1][2][3][4] with some claiming up to 87%.[5] The main disadvantage of PHS is the specialist nature of the site required, needing both geographical height and water availability. Suitable sites are therefore likely to be in hilly or mountainous regions, and potentially in areas of outstanding natural beauty, and therefore there are also social and ecological issues to overcome.[6]

    Are modern batteries better, in every aspect, than those mechanical systems, or they are just what Tesla happened to have at the moment when they were given a contract? Elon Musk is a talented businessman. Such people sometimes get too many deals - biting more than they can chew. Note that the Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage station generates 1.6 GW over 22 hours and imposes no considerable wear on water :-)

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  • (Score: 2) by Username on Saturday September 17 2016, @07:50AM

    by Username (4557) on Saturday September 17 2016, @07:50AM (#403058)

    Cronyism. They invested heavily into these battery packs without having any buyers. Now their buddies in the public sector are bailing them out.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @08:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @08:56AM (#403069)

      That sounds right. How are they deploying in record time? Tesla must have excess batteries in the warehouse.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @08:01AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @08:01AM (#403650)

      I assumed it was because they have easy access to a lot of exchanged Tesla batteries that no longer provide enough range yet are still useful for storage.

  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:26AM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:26AM (#403074) Journal

    Ease of installation and availability.

    It is likely even an "ordinary" electrician is allowed to instal these battery packs.
    They do no all have to sit in one (big) room.
    Grid-tie *may* require specialist support from the power company, but that's it.

    Pumped storage requires massive infrastructure: space, and height, and pumps, and grid-tie pylons or underground works to connect.

    Smaller batteries can probably fit inside existing sub stations and even local transformer boxes.

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RedBear on Saturday September 17 2016, @11:07AM

    by RedBear (1734) on Saturday September 17 2016, @11:07AM (#403088)

    Um, yeah, wow. Pumped hydro is actually a great way to store energy. But it's quite expensive, and can be devastating to the local environment. You have to not only build a dam but a power generation plant with massive, expensive turbines. It can easily take a decade to get all the engineering and permitting done. Now you want to build a pipeline to the sea and a desalination plant to add to the expense? Seems like you don't know how expensive and energy intensive a desalination plant is to begin with, plus the fact that the water can't be desalinated completely, so you'll be flooding a valley with partly salty water. And you want to desalinate enough water to fill a reservoir large enough to provide significant energy storage? I am fairly certain there are numerous major cost and engineering issues with what you're proposing. But pumped hydro will no doubt be part of the equation that lets us get away from fossil fuels, don't worry about that. It will be used, where appropriate.

    Now, pumped hydro is a good solution for another reason. Big traditional power plants can take a significant period of time to respond to changes in grid power usage. Pumped hydro can be turned off or on in a matter of minutes, so the guys running the grid love it. But battery arrays can respond even faster. Like, almost instantaneously. Batteries can be a big help in smoothing out dips and surges in both power generation and power consumption. With the right combination of batteries and other short-term energy storage solutions like pumped hydro, entire power stations can be permanently taken off the grid rather than being turned on and off daily just to deal with intermittent peak power usage spikes.

    I understand the value of lightweight batteries in a vehicle or in a laptop. However this is a stationary installation. Why do they use Li-Ion batteries there? They have only a limited number of cycles. They do better if you barely charge-discharge them, like in battery-saving charging modes of EVs, but then you lose capacity.

    As far as I'm aware, the lithium cells Tesla are using in their power pack products are the same cells used in their vehicles. So far over the last few years those cells have proven themselves to be capable of handling being deep discharged and rapidly recharged daily all year round while losing approximately 1-2% capacity per year. Obviously batteries don't need to be lightweight in a stationary installation, but the cells are proven performers that should last for quite a few years in this usage scenario, and Tesla sees no need to spend tens of millions to come up with a totally different battery technology when they can just use what they are already producing in bulk from their Gigafactory.

    The Tesla battery arrays are modular and can therefore be easily upgraded to add capacity over time, and when the packs reach the end of their useful lifetime they will be recycled into new battery packs. The battery chemistries keep improving as well. Tesla started with a maximum 85kWh battery in the Model S and just announced a new 100kWh battery pack in the same form factor. Bottom line is that I have little doubt that Tesla's offering is cost-competitive and appropriate for the designated task. Batteries will never provide more than part of the total solution to ending fossil fuel dependence. But the problem is not going to be solved by sitting on our hands waiting for the perfect solution to come along.

    Along with batteries and pumped hydro, there's also a very interesting compressed-air solution claiming high efficiency that is supposed to start real-world testing next year. It's intended for massive grid-level energy storage. Search YouTube for "Danielle Fong" or google "LightSail Energy" if interested. It's one of the most promising grid-level energy storage solutions I've seen so far. If it really works the cost savings over most other proposed solutions could be quite impressive.

    --
    ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
    ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday September 19 2016, @06:59AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Monday September 19 2016, @06:59AM (#403641) Journal

    California already has at least five pumped-storage facilities, each able to provide much more power than this battery-based station (how their energetic capacity compares, I don't know--obviously it depends on how much water is on hand):

    San Luis, 424 MW

    http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/196 [energystorageexchange.org]

    Castaic, 1247 MW

    http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/185 [energystorageexchange.org]

    Oroville-Thermalito, 120 MW

    http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/213 [energystorageexchange.org]

    Big Creek, 199.8 MW

    http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/198 [energystorageexchange.org]

    Helms, 1212 MW
    http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/187 [energystorageexchange.org]

    Your quote understates "the specialist nature of the site required" because it doesn't mention the two reservoirs that are needed.

    The battery-based facility may have some advantages: I'm assuming that it takes on the order of a minute to "spin up" a pumped-storage plant, because of its mechanical nature; batteries can be more responsive. The battery plant is small, so it can be placed close to population centres, so that transmission losses are less.