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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.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:22AM (3 children)
The total costs of the grid infrastructure will not change and will be divided among the users. The house next to me installing solar power means I am paying it's bills in electricity.
That's called "riding the infrastructure".
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:34AM (1 child)
So make everyone on the grid pay a basic "grid maintenance fee" as the base of their bill, and then charge energy used on top of that. Just like you pay "line rental" for your phone and then pay for calls on top.
That's wasn't hard, was it?
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday August 01 2019, @08:15PM
That "maintenance fee" will be almost what you pay now. I, for example, use less than half of electricity as compared to average and probably already being subsidized by others. Idle power generation is not much cheaper than at full capacity.
The only fair way to use new energy sources is to use them for new consumption only. You bought Tesla, you have a right to charge it from solar on the roof. The rest of your consumption you have to buy off the grid as everybody else or help them to pay their bills.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by Sabriel on Thursday August 01 2019, @10:36AM
That's not a problem with solar, that's a problem with whoever's in charge of the grid and/or billing in your part of the world.
We have separate line items in our utility bill for the service (the grid), consumption (what gets used) and production (what gets produced, whether by solar, wind, hydro or anything else). Heck, there's even a line item for the cost to read the meter.