On Friday, the billionaire tech entrepreneur said energy storage could solve the state's electricity problems with a battery farm, and work could be completed within 100 days, or it would be free. The idea appeared to gain the support of Australian Mike Cannon-Brookes, who co-founded software company Atlassian, who said on Twitter that if Mr Musk could guarantee 100MW in 100 days, he could "make the $ happen", and offered "mates rates". Mr Musk, who is also at the helm of the Space X project, has been spruiking Tesla's Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 battery products in Australia this week. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-11/tesla-storage-proposal-for-sa-should-not-be-ignored/8344730 He has a point. South Australia with its diverse communities would be ideal for setting up an interconnected microgrid system. I have also always been a fan of battery back up for power
Energy storage is crucial to weaning us off fossil fuels. Hybrid & electric cars, wind generators, and solar all need battery storage. Elon Musk is brilliant man - he does not introduce himself with : ‘Trust me, I'm like a smart person’
I just can't help thinking though that SA just might get that battery bank for free. Very easy for non-Australians to underestimate distances between anywhere here in Aus and SA is a state where a lot of it is rural and remote. Most of it is desert and those "lakes" - well mostly they are desert too!
The beauty of batteries is that they can be added in small increments. You can distribute them geographically. They can be extremely reliable and low maintenance, making them ideal for remote applications.
I am no civil engineer but from what I have read the essence of where we are going is the concept of "microgrids" so each town has it's own RE array that feeds into a battery bank now this bank is not only on standby for that town but also via a larger grid on standby to the rest of the state. That way if there is a power pull from the capital city Adelaide it might be drawing reserve from say, Ceduna and Whyalla. There was even talk that they could tap into home owner power walls to feed back into the main grid. Now THAT is distribution One of the underlying reasons why we need to go down this path is terrorism. Distribute the power supply lines into microgrids and the whole is harder to take down. Natural disasters are also more avoidable - like the massive wind storm that hit SA (remember there is nothing between Antarctica and SA but a couple of frozen penquins). But for years Scientists have been warning of what a CME would do to our poser grids - micro grids would survive better
CME? Not familiar. One of the ideas I heard of was to have Hybrid cars that are plugged in overnight to charge their batteries serve as an emergency power source. The hybrid batteries would feed into the grid instead of drawing from it in an emergency. If the car owner needed to go somewhere they would drive via the hybrid's gas engine. Pure electric car owners could also agree to sign on.
Apparently he has already spoken to the SA Premier. Weatherill is in need of a quick solution. Failing to keep the power on & the water running is political death, no matter if it is your fault or not. Politically this could be a super smart move. Be interested to see if it goes ahead.
Sorry CME is a Coronal Mass Ejection. They happen when sunspot activity is high and is one grazes Earth it is bye bye power grids as it will take down main tranasformers
They'd have to be insane to turn him down... if he can't do it within the time frame it's free. In fact if I was in SA I'd be insisting the government take him up on this offer.
Look, I would be happy for them to succeed but I do also consider the problem is not storage, it is not failure of the renewable sector directly but failure of infrastructure due to the cost of renewable energy. That is to say successive governments decided to skimp on the infrastructure to artificially reduce the cost of power and try assert the political advantage of reduced costs. Sure this is a good move but since the risk of failing infrastructure is high there could be an artificial event detracting from the intention of storage. while there is much merit governments need to stop corrupting the system for political gain and focus on operational method.
I don't necessarily disagree - truth is we are operating with an aged infrastructure that LOOOONG ago should have been upgraded. Energy companies have been pocketing big returns without putting in improvements
However the truth is various governments in the past have skimped on new infrastructure that was put in place to bring the wind generators into mainstream operation which caused the failure. Due to the fact that it was directly linked to the renewable chain many made the connection of failure of the renewable sector. Technically it was but for political reasons NOT the actual sector. The generators were still powering but since the towers the state governments built and while it is ALP who pushed the system to max the coalition needs to stand and take just as much blame for helping to create such a system on the verge of failure... We can argue the cost of the sector all you want but since it is in place it is the responsibility of the government to insure they carry their end of the deal and not just give lip service. However, since the energy sector is in such disarray, perhaps this deal could make SA the cutting edge of energy supply, storage and consumption. Such an experiment might bring about decent change for the better rather than highly subsidised industry that is just expensive and unreliable. We can only hope because SA is in desperate need of something to help them survive such inept government actions of the past decade or two…
I do think that interconnected microgrids with battery backup might still be viable there but I'm going to be following this with interest
It could change the energy game in Australia for sure and seems highly probable. You can't help but otherwise think that Frydenberg was batting on behalf of the fossil fuel industry in his swipe at SA. Weatherill will have to be expectant of some nasty attacks in the lead up to the next state election in a year and if booted out you'd have to also expect that SA's 100% renewable energy dream will be thrown out the window. Keen to watch this space with interest also!
