SA to get world's biggest lithium ion battery in 'historic' deal with Elon Musk

Discussion in 'Australia, NZ, Pacific' started by Sallyally, Jul 7, 2017.

  1. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Is Jay Wetherill the bees knees or what? Tony Abbott will be scuppered by this. 100 megawatt storage will take out the peaks and troughs. Thoughts?
     
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  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Somehow I doubt the actual energy economics were considered, in comparison to other options.

    It's usually not very practical to store electrical power supply energy in batteries. It is far easier to transport the energy than to attempt to temporarily store it. And lead acid is usually much more practical and lower cost than lithium for fixed structure electric storage.

    I haven't read all the details, but it sounds like this could have been a huge waste of money on a whimsical renewable fantasy.

    More practical strategies, though less appealing to the ideological purist, involve having a back-up natural gas power plant to supply the energy when the wind turbines are not working or the sun is not shining to power the solar panels. Another strategy has been to start releasing water from dams to power hydroelectric turbines when no other renewable power source is available. The water building up in the reservoir acts like a store of energy. Combining some of these strategies, you might only have the natural gas plant running 5 percent of the time.

    But that's not enough for these ideological pure clean energy crazies, who have to waste huge amounts of rate payer money on impractical energy storage schemes.

    I'm talking about a 100 million clean energy project turning into a 400 million clean energy project, all because some politicians don't want to burn a little bit of gas. Those batteries are expensive. And they need continual reservicing and replacement every few years.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2017
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  3. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Jay Wetherill is the Premier of a very dry state. Last summer, the coal electricity supply failed when a big storm took out the HT transmission lines from the adjoining state. The wind turbines were unavailable because of the very high wind speed and the state was blacked out.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-28/sa-power-outage-explainer/7886090
    Elon Musk said he could give them adequate battery storage for their renewable supplies and it would be free if he could get it up and running within 100 days.
     
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  4. truthvigilante

    truthvigilante Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If it works super fine and drops energy costs it is a massive win. Big coal will be nervously anxious you'd think. Certainly a big win for wetherill!
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2017
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  5. Diuretic

    Diuretic Well-Known Member

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    I'll be watching for the colour of the electricity to change....new fangled stuff :)

    I used to work at Andamooka opal fields back in the 1970s. There was no power there, we all had generators. At dusk you could hear all the generators starting up in town. Ah nostalgia!
     
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  6. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    At the time when Elon Musk proposed this deal I was surprised no one jumped at it. Good to see this deal go ahead, it would be not be in the best interest of South Australians to turn him down.
     
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  7. Moi621

    Moi621 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And they get it free if not completed in 3 months from contact sisgning.

    Imagine the fire ball when that Lithium facility does its' Lithium battery thing.
     
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  8. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    I'm sure the engineers will build it properly and not let the batteries overheat.
     
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  9. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    yes besides... fireball is much better than nuclear fallout
     
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  10. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    I was just thinking big banana, big prawn, big battery.
     
  11. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Apparently he finished it, just in time for summer.. we've had some really hot days here in Melbourne... very unusual for it to be so early

    Elon Musk's giant lithium ion battery completed by Tesla in SA's Mid North



    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-...ul-lithium-ion-battery-finished-in-sa/9183868
     
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  12. Thought Criminal

    Thought Criminal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Last edited: Nov 24, 2017
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  13. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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  14. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am highly skeptical of Tesla because they have a history (Musk in particular) of making wild claims then completely and utterly failing to meet them, and getting through off the backs of government subsidies.

    If it works out and they aren't full of it this time the all the better for SA.
     
  15. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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  16. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Last edited: Dec 8, 2017
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  17. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Jay wetherill puts his(the states) money where his mouth is. I like young Elon because, heavens above, who else would start his own space travel company.
    Is he a visionary or just lucky?
     
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  18. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Battery is in and up
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2017
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  19. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    He is 4.5 billion in free government money lucky.

    And very intelligent. Unfortunately, the very intelligent can often get ahead of themselves and consistently over promise, as Musk has done with Tesla. They constantly miss their production targets and are criminally overvalued on the stock market. I am shorting the **** out of them and think I'll do alright in the medium term.
     
  20. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Hope you do.
     
  21. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    The giant battery is already having an impact. it is doing what it was constructed to do - inject power into the grid during unexpected shortfalls to bridge the gap before larger generators can jump in. This may not have prevented a blackout yet, but it will.

    This article is a bit on the excitable side, but the info is still good.

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-bi...bering-coal-units-after-loy-yang-trips-70003/
     
  22. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    That is very interesting. I didn't know about the five minute rule so this will make a huge difference to the income of the power generators.
     
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  23. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    I am betting the "it only lasts a couple of hours" crowd who were dissing on this will not change thier attitudes
     
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  24. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    Since their attitudes were never based on factual data but ideology that is highly likely.
     
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  25. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Since the coal power plant failed completely and the backup plant was slow to come up to speed the Tesla battery was there to cover the gap.

    When it comes to power outages they are bad for everyone. Traffic lights fail, computers go off line, transactions don't get processed on time, etc, etc.

    Having a UPC at home is a given unless you are fond of having to reboot your desktop and missing the winning plays in the game you were watching.

    Now Tesla is essentially providing a UPC that could cover all of Australia if they wanted it to.

    I can see why California opted for one of these mega batteries and it makes sense to have them all over the world IMO. The global economy operates 24*7 so the need for uninterrupted power 24*7 is there. If Tesla is ready to fill that gap in the market then Elon Musk is poised to become even wealthier than before. Building batteries is simple in comparison to building cars.
     
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