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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 31 2019, @09:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the re-energizing-the-power-industry dept.

Tesla's Megapack Battery is Big Enough to Help Grids Handle Peak Demand:

Tesla announced a new massive battery today called Megapack that could replace so-called "peaker" power plants, which provide energy when a local electrical grid gets overloaded. Tesla says that Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will deploy several Megapacks at Moss Landing on Monterrey Bay in California, which is one of four locations where the California utility plans to install more cost-effective energy storage solutions.

Each Megapack can store up to 3 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy at a time, and it's possible to string enough Megapacks together to create a battery with more than 1 GWh of energy storage, Tesla says. The company says this would be enough energy to power "every home in San Francisco for six hours." Telsa will deliver the Megapacks fully assembled, and they include "battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls." Tesla says the Megapack takes up 40 percent less space, requires a tenth of the parts to build, and can be assembled 10 times as fast as alternative energy storage solutions.

Also at cnet.

Would also have the benefit of essentially instant activation versus peaker plants which take some amount of time to spin up, even if kept warmed up and idling.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @07:12PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @07:12PM (#873688)

    The problem this is trying to fix is the usage curve. Basically solar generates useful electricity from a few hours after sunrise to a few hours before sunrise, peaking at around 1 P.M. (due to DST). The peak power demand occurs about six hours later, peaking at six P.M. Note that solar won't generate a lot of energy during the peak time. So, if you have the giant batteries, you can shift the power generated in the morning and early afternoon, to the evening and night. That, in turn, reduces the amount of power you have to buy off the grid at insane peak power prices (in Southern California, it is over 30x the cost of baseline power, spots can go even higher than that). Now the difference isn't that high everywhere or all year, but the fact of the matter is that peak power is expensive.

    In addition, peak power is wasteful because the peak plants are kept in various levels of hot start, so they are just burning whatever fuel they use, but not actually putting any useful energy into grid.

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  • (Score: 2) by legont on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:17AM (2 children)

    by legont (4179) on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:17AM (#873793)

    that, in turn, reduces the amount of power you have to buy off the grid at insane peak power prices

    The less you buy this power the more it is going to cost because the total costs of the service will not change.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @02:20AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @02:20AM (#873825)

      Do you realize this is specifically talking about grid-scale storage, right? The utilities have their own programs where they buy power at wholesale prices. If a utility installs this in the right location, it doesn't take that long to pay for itself even if they don't use renewable energy. Sure, assuming their electrical generation doesn't increase and they are buying the same amount off the grid, there is no possible way they would end up paying the peak rates or spot prices with proper timing. Sure, it would be met with an increase in baseline power cost, until supply increases as well and the prices reach equilibrium again due to the market pressure.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @02:46AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @02:46AM (#873830)

        I just realized that the evil plan of Christopher Walken's character in Batman Returns was to make huge piles of money off of just this sort of arbitrage.