South Australia to get largest lithium battery

[mr friendly guy]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/s ... ry/8687268

Elon Musk's Tesla to build world's biggest lithium ion battery to secure power for South Australia
By Sarah Scopelianos, Tom Fedorowytsch and Sara Garcia
Updated about 3 hours ago

South Australia will be home to the world's largest lithium ion battery thanks to a historic agreement between Tesla and the State Government, with Tesla boss Elon Musk promising to build it in 100 days, or it's free.

Key points:

A 100-megawatt (129 megawatt hour) battery is to be in place before summer
It will provide energy stability for SA and also be emergency back-up for shortfalls
Elon Musk is sticking by a "100 days or free" promise for SA taxpayers
Tesla will build the 100-megawatt battery which will store energy from French renewable company Neoen's Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, which is still under construction.

The project will be in place before summer.

Mr Musk's '100 days or it's free' pledge starts once the grid interconnection agreement has been signed.

But the promise could leave Mr Musk significantly out of pocket if he fails to deliver to deadline.

Elon Musk ✔ @elonmusk
This will be the highest power battery system in the world by a factor of 3. Australia rocks!! https://twitter.com/teslamotors/status/ ... 7594360833 …
11:42 AM - 7 Jul 2017
5,772 5,772 Retweets 19,512 19,512 likes
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He estimated it would cost him "probably $50 million or more" if the 100 days lapse without the battery installed.

"If South Australia is willing to take a big risk, then so are we," he said.

South Australia has been battling power problems since a statewide blackout in September 2016.

In response, the State Government announced a raft of measures to improve stability, including building a 100-megawatt (129 megawatt hour) battery, and owning and operating a $360 million gas-fired plant.

The Government said the battery would put the state at the forefront of global energy storage technology.

Why lithium is a hot item

A black rectangular lithium ion battery with white writing on it.
Dozens of struggling miners have moved to reinvent themselves as lithium companies. Why?
The battery will stabilise the network at all times and will provide back-up power if there is a shortfall.

Mr Musk, who is also the head of space exploration company Space X, told a press conference at Adelaide Oval that this project was "not a minor foray into the frontier".

"There is certainly some risk, because this will be the largest battery installation in the world by a significant margin ... the next biggest battery in the world is 30 megawatts," Mr Musk said.
He said it was "three times further than anyone has gone before" and would "stabilise the grid and buffer power".

"You can essentially charge up the battery packs when you have excess power when the cost of production is very low ... and then discharge it when the cost of power production is high, and this effectively lowers the average cost to the end customer," Mr Musk said.

'100 days or it's free'


Elon Musk's pledge to build the world's largest lithium ion battery within 100 days or it will be free seems too good to be true, but is it?
"It's a fundamental efficiency improvement for the grid."

Mr Musk initially made the 100-day pledge via Twitter in March, after being alerted to South Australia's power woes by billionaire tech guru Australian Mike Cannon-Brookes, who co-founded software company Atlassian.

The pledge caught the attention of the twittersphere and surprised Mr Cannon-Brookes, who tweeted "Holy s#%t".

Mr Musk, who will visit Jamestown before he leaves Australia, said the battery would be "nicely arranged white obelisks".

"We're going to make an effort to have it look good, that it will also be a tourism destination."
SA to lead battery storage technology

SA power milestones and mishaps



SA's power generation and supply security has been under scrutiny in recent times. How did we get here?
Mr Weatherill said the state had led the nation in renewable energy and would now lead the world in battery storage.

"It will completely transform the way in which renewable energy is stored, and also stabilise the South Australian network as well as putting downward pressure on prices," he said.

"It opens up new opportunities for renewable energy in this state, in this nation, and around the world, to be dispatchable [to be used]."

Mr Weatherill said the Government had about 91 international bidders for the battery project.

A crane lifts a part of a wind turbine that is being constructed
PHOTO: The Hornsdale Wind Farm is still under construction. (Supplied: Hornsdale Wind Farm)
"That was of course assisted by a little bit of Twitter exchange in the few days before we released our plan between Elon Musk and also Mike Cannon-Brookes."

"This historic agreement does more than bring a sustainable energy giant in Tesla to South Australia, it will also have some significant economic spin-off," Mr Weatherill said.

10 Mar
Elon Musk ✔ @elonmusk
Replying to @mcannonbrookes
Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?
Mike Cannon-Brookes @mcannonbrookes
legend! You’re on mate. Give me 7 days to try sort out politics & funding. DM me a quote for approx 100MW cost - mates rates!
1:46 PM - 10 Mar 2017
580 580 Retweets 1,878 1,878 likes
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Neoen deputy chief executive Romain Desrousseaux said the company was proud to work with the Government and Tesla to expand the Hornsdale Wind Farm in Jamestown in the state's Mid North.

"At 100MW and 129MWh, the Hornsdale Power Reserve will become not only the largest renewable generator in the state but also home to the largest lithium ion battery in the world, with our company's long-term, direct investment in South Australia growing to almost $1 billion since 2013," he said.

Climate Council chief councillor Professor Tim Flannery said the state was moving away from polluting, expensive and inefficient fossil fuels.

"South Australians are witnessing first hand how swiftly this technology can be built and used, with the battery expected to be up and running this summer," Professor Flannery said.

"South Australia joins the likes of California as a world leader in demonstrating how renewable energy and storage technologies can power our economy cheaply and cleanly."

Well I will hope to post in 3 months and see what happens.

[aerius]

Well, it'll keep the lights on in my city for about 2 minutes.

[Simon_Jester]

Just to be clear, that is a 129 megawatt-hour battery, as I'm reading it. "Megawatts" are a unit of power, measuring the rate at which energy flows; "megawatt-hours" are units of energy, measuring the amount of energy accumulated by generating at a rate of one megawatt for one hour.

That said, hm. Well, for stabilizing a grid, that might actually be good enough- in that it lets you make sure there are no sudden, very abrupt losses of power. As aerius notes, it won't store enough energy to run all of Australia, or even a province, on 'battery backup.'

Looking around the Internet for yearly power consumption of Australia, I get numbers in the single digit exajoules. Picking a number vaguely in line with the typical estimates, call it 6*10^18 joules. There are roughly thirty million seconds in a year, so that's about... 2*10^11 joules per second, or 200 gigawatts. A 129 megawatt-hour battery stores 464 gigajoules, so it'd last the whole country about two seconds.

But again, that's not really the point here, I suspect; it's to stabilize the local grid, in the immediate vicinity of specific power plants, by inputting power at a rate measured in, probably, no more than tens of megawatts for a period of tens of minutes. Presumably, if you're going to need that amount of power for hours, you have to call in power supply from elsewhere in Australia that can be 'switched on,' but you'd rely on the battery to hold you while you make the phone call. And that's something it CAN do.

[GuppyShark]

A little bit of local context:

The national network cut us off not long ago because one of the interstate transmission lines went down and they were fearful that it would take down the eastern states.
Getting sufficient base power fired up requires time - they have to slowly ramp up power generation, it can't just all be switched on instantly.
Having to do it from domestic power alone meant that huge chunks of the state went without power for days.

The batteries aren't intended to power the entire state, they are there to prevent the entire energy system falling over again.

[Simon_Jester]

That's about what I figured.

Honestly, if it were intended to store energy on the scale of the daily grid output (say, so that solar could charge it during the day and let it discharge to power an area at night)... Well, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't use lithium batteries. At some point, ridiculously large mechanical projects involving, say, pumping bazillions of gallons of water up a mountainside and letting them flow back down through turbines would be more cost-effective.

[Alyrium Denryle]

That's about what I figured.

Honestly, if it were intended to store energy on the scale of the daily grid output (say, so that solar could charge it during the day and let it discharge to power an area at night)... Well, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't use lithium batteries. At some point, ridiculously large mechanical projects involving, say, pumping bazillions of gallons of water up a mountainside and letting them flow back down through turbines would be more cost-effective.

South Australia uses about 12.9 terrawatt hours per year, which means that this battery will provide about 4 minutes of emergency power. It will solve problems related to rolling blackouts, but the problem of a main interstate transmission line going down... not so much

[mr friendly guy]

Just to be clear, that is a 129 megawatt-hour battery, as I'm reading it. "Megawatts" are a unit of power, measuring the rate at which energy flows; "megawatt-hours" are units of energy, measuring the amount of energy accumulated by generating at a rate of one megawatt for one hour.

That said, hm. Well, for stabilizing a grid, that might actually be good enough- in that it lets you make sure there are no sudden, very abrupt losses of power. As aerius notes, it won't store enough energy to run all of Australia, or even a province, on 'battery backup.'

Looking around the Internet for yearly power consumption of Australia, I get numbers in the single digit exajoules. Picking a number vaguely in line with the typical estimates, call it 6*10^18 joules. There are roughly thirty million seconds in a year, so that's about... 2*10^11 joules per second, or 200 gigawatts. A 129 megawatt-hour battery stores 464 gigajoules, so it'd last the whole country about two seconds.

But again, that's not really the point here, I suspect; it's to stabilize the local grid, in the immediate vicinity of specific power plants, by inputting power at a rate measured in, probably, no more than tens of megawatts for a period of tens of minutes. Presumably, if you're going to need that amount of power for hours, you have to call in power supply from elsewhere in Australia that can be 'switched on,' but you'd rely on the battery to hold you while you make the phone call. And that's something it CAN do.

Yeah we like using kilowatt hours or megawatt hours instead of megajoules for energy usage. Of course we also call energy, power, which makes it confusing for the science terminology minded.

Also this is a local context. Its for my "home" state of South Australia (ok I live in Western Australia for 20 + years, but SA would have a place in my heart as the first state we lived in when we move to Australia). SA suffered blackouts recently this year. I am not sure if this would be sufficient to offset significantly the power needs, especially in light of your and AD's calcs. Which just reinforces my belief that renewables aren't enough by themselves even with improvements in battery tech.

[mr friendly guy]

Just on another note, you know what I like about SD.net vs some general news website. Even compared with the Australian Broadcasting corporation which is neutral, 3 people in this thread already ran some basic calculations on this. I don't believe one mainstream news site would even bother. Maths, what's it good for?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Just to be clear, that is a 129 megawatt-hour battery, as I'm reading it. "Megawatts" are a unit of power, measuring the rate at which energy flows; "megawatt-hours" are units of energy, measuring the amount of energy accumulated by generating at a rate of one megawatt for one hour.

That said, hm. Well, for stabilizing a grid, that might actually be good enough- in that it lets you make sure there are no sudden, very abrupt losses of power. As aerius notes, it won't store enough energy to run all of Australia, or even a province, on 'battery backup.'

Looking around the Internet for yearly power consumption of Australia, I get numbers in the single digit exajoules. Picking a number vaguely in line with the typical estimates, call it 6*10^18 joules. There are roughly thirty million seconds in a year, so that's about... 2*10^11 joules per second, or 200 gigawatts. A 129 megawatt-hour battery stores 464 gigajoules, so it'd last the whole country about two seconds.

But again, that's not really the point here, I suspect; it's to stabilize the local grid, in the immediate vicinity of specific power plants, by inputting power at a rate measured in, probably, no more than tens of megawatts for a period of tens of minutes. Presumably, if you're going to need that amount of power for hours, you have to call in power supply from elsewhere in Australia that can be 'switched on,' but you'd rely on the battery to hold you while you make the phone call. And that's something it CAN do.

Yeah we like using kilowatt hours or megawatt hours instead of megajoules for energy usage. Of course we also call energy, power, which makes it confusing for the science terminology minded.

Also this is a local context. Its for my "home" state of South Australia (ok I live in Western Australia for 20 + years, but SA would have a place in my heart as the first state we lived in when we move to Australia). SA suffered blackouts recently this year. I am not sure if this would be sufficient to offset significantly the power needs, especially in light of your and AD's calcs. Which just reinforces my belief that renewables aren't enough by themselves even with improvements in battery tech.

Lets put this in perspective. SA has electricity demand roughly equal to the state of Arizona. If a single L-ion battery were to be used to provide 1 day of reserve power, it would require 59 times the global annual production of lithium, and would be several times the size of the really big Boeing factory in washington state. You know, the largest (by volume) building on earth.

[aerius]

That's about what I figured.

Honestly, if it were intended to store energy on the scale of the daily grid output (say, so that solar could charge it during the day and let it discharge to power an area at night)... Well, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't use lithium batteries. At some point, ridiculously large mechanical projects involving, say, pumping bazillions of gallons of water up a mountainside and letting them flow back down through turbines would be more cost-effective.

It's definitely grid stabilization to keep the breakers from tripping while they shuffle juice around and get additional generating stations fired up.

But for energy storage the scale gets really out of hand real fast. For instance, to run my city will require about 70-80% of the full flow of the Niagara River assuming a 90m drop which is what they have at the generating stations. The water going over the falls during the daytime in tourist season is about half the full flow, so you actually need about 150% of what's going over the falls to power my city. Works out to about 4 billion gallons per hour, so yeah, fucking bazillions of gallons. Most places in the world don't even have that much water, not even close.

[JI_Joe84]

All this "what if they cut us off to save their own hides" is good reasoning to go with solar roofs not "let's make a huge expensive battery"
Is there no room for wind turbines around there?

[atg]

All this "what if they cut us off to save their own hides" is good reasoning to go with solar roofs not "let's make a huge expensive battery"
Is there no room for wind turbines around there?

The large scale wind turbines are part of why we need the battery. SA has approx 1500MW of turbines running (something like 1/3 of Australia's wind power) and we have a relatively large percentage of households with solar panels. However these turbines, AFAIK, aren't able to provide grid stabilization.

A few posters have mentioned about the big power outage last year, which due to a huge storm knocked out some transmission lines and because the local grid couldn't maintain frequency stabilization the interconnect to the rest of the country went off. This lack of stabilization was in part due to closures of coal plants and some gas plants not wanting to be turned on due to running costs. The battery is supposed to help with the stabilization issues and also reduce the need for load shedding at peak usage periods. Note that the state government is also going to be building a new gas plant (500MW I think EDIT: just checked and it'll be ~250MW) to be run also as a peaking generator.