Tesla battery in Australia

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newby_investor

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So...
www.teslarati.com

Tesla “big battery” in Australia is becoming a bigger nightmare for fossil fuel power generators

Tesla’s “big battery” utility-scale Powerpack system at the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia has yielded more than doubled the savings to consumers in 2019 than the year prior as it dominates fossil fuel generators on quicker demand response for the grid. Hornsdale Power Reserve saved...
www.teslarati.com www.teslarati.com

If this thing is so successful, and is paying for itself so quickly, why doesn't Eskom get something like this, which should (in theory) reduce the need to burn diesel and whatever other "emergency reserves" they use when their generators break down, and save loads of money.

Does anyone know whether something like this has been investigated?
 
newby_investor said:
So...
www.teslarati.com

Tesla “big battery” in Australia is becoming a bigger nightmare for fossil fuel power generators

Tesla’s “big battery” utility-scale Powerpack system at the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia has yielded more than doubled the savings to consumers in 2019 than the year prior as it dominates fossil fuel generators on quicker demand response for the grid. Hornsdale Power Reserve saved...
www.teslarati.com www.teslarati.com

If this thing is so successful, and is paying for itself so quickly, why doesn't Eskom get something like this, which should (in theory) reduce the need to burn diesel and whatever other "emergency reserves" they use when their generators break down, and save loads of money.

Does anyone know whether something like this has been investigated?
Click to expand...
No opportunities to loot so it's not viable.
 
And we'd need 20 of them just to circumnavigate stage 2 load shedding.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Yeah, the use case in Aus isn't to prevent Loadshedding, its to provide stabilisation to the grid for very short periods...
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Though they do actually have Load shedding on occassion, which they're trying to mitigate as well, by using this to provide stabilisation.
 
Lupus said:
Though they do actually have Load shedding on occassion, which they're trying to mitigate as well, by using this to provide stabilisation.
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Yeah, but they aren't trying to shed 2000MW for an entire day for extended periods of time, because they can't generally meet the standard demand.
 
I was wondering if the solution wouldn't be for neighbourhoods to self-fund these kind of things through the municipal improvement programs.

Get X amount of people to agree to paying for it through Rates & Taxes and off you go it's funded and implemented and no more load shedding.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Yeah, but they aren't trying to shed 2000MW for an entire day for extended periods of time, because they can't generally meet the standard demand.
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Well depends on the peak demand I guess, they also only generate 45 0000Mw. Though it happens rarely though.
 
SauRoNZA said:
I was wondering if the solution wouldn't be for neighbourhoods to self-fund these kind of things through the municipal improvement programs.

Get X amount of people to agree to paying for it through Rates & Taxes and off you go it's funded and implemented and no more load shedding.
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Bigger muncipalities could get them for some backups. I mean Johannesburg getting 40 of them would negate stage 4 in the City.
 
SauRoNZA said:
I was wondering if the solution wouldn't be for neighbourhoods to self-fund these kind of things through the municipal improvement programs.

Get X amount of people to agree to paying for it through Rates & Taxes and off you go it's funded and implemented and no more load shedding.
Click to expand...
You can probably get more capacity for less than that battery.

And those batteries wouldn't be able to make up the more 3000MW Eskom's emergency reserve systems can supply.
 
Lupus said:
Bigger muncipalities could get them for some backups. I mean Johannesburg getting 40 of them would negate stage 4 in the City.
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The problem is half of Joburg are direct Eskom customers thus it'll be a very complicated capex unless it was Joburg Power's own initiative.
 
quovadis said:
The problem is half of Joburg are direct Eskom customers thus it'll be a very complicated capex unless it was Joburg Power's own initiative.
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Okay City Power customers ;-)
 
R13... said:
You can probably get more capacity for less than that battery.

And those batteries wouldn't be able to make up the more 3000MW Eskom's emergency reserve systems can supply.
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Exactly why I’m saying doing it at the per neighbourhood level so people can fund it all themselves.

You seem to have forgotten that the capacity itself is failing so throwing more money at that doesn’t help.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Exactly why I’m saying doing it at the per neighbourhood level so people can fund it all themselves.
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I have a feeling that this will become common in estates/neighbourhood associations that start doing this but also including generation capacity.
 
quovadis said:
I have a feeling that this will become common in estates/neighbourhood associations that start doing this but also including generation capacity.
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Yup, that’s if they are allowed to do it.

Makes more sense to pool capacity like this rather than each house doing its own thing.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Yup, that’s if they are allowed to do it.

Makes more sense to pool capacity like this rather than each house doing its own thing.
Click to expand...
Allowed to do it is the operative phrase here. I suspect NERSA wouldn't take kindly to rogue neighbourhoods freeing themselves from Eskom's tyranny protective care.

But even from a national grid point of view - I'm sure that something like this could be thrown into the mix. From what I've read about this mega-battery, it seems to be able to respond to demand within milliseconds, so while the ~50MW might not save even one level of load-shedding, if we can turn on a few less diesel turbines in the event of a breakdown of one of the coal generating units, surely that'll save Eskom money in the long term, not to mention emissions.
 
The capacity is quoted at about 120MWh. So to mitigate Stage 1 loadshedding for 1 hour you would need 10 of them (with some losses). Stage 2 you would need 20 and for a working day of 8 hours you would need 160 installations. That is quite a large number of them.

On an off note, pray tell how long it would take before these battery cabinets start being "relocated" at night on the back of a flatbed.

Plus they would need recharging so hope you don't have loadshedding for 2 days in a row.
 
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