[HN Gopher] Tesla is building a giant battery in Texas
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Tesla is building a giant battery in Texas
Author : samizdis
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-03-08 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| This battery is obviously not for shock winters since capacity
| falls in cold weather. When i first saw the title i pictured in
| my mind a titanic model y rolling through the rural areas of
| texas...
| umvi wrote:
| At a certain point you would think it's cheaper to soak up excess
| energy with something other than lithium-ion, like gravity
| batteries or flywheels, but apparently not...
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Pumped-water storage is a big thing elsewhere, but afaik Texas
| doesn't have any big mountains to make this convenient.
|
| (also, these dams have failed before to great misfortune
| downstream)
| nine_k wrote:
| Lithium, iron, phosphorus, and oxygen are all pretty abundant
| and cheap. The economies of scale and better processes need to
| kick in (even more) to make them cheaper. Say, steel was very
| expensive until the Bessemer process became widespread.
|
| Gravity batteries are very low-density, and flywheels are prone
| to dangerous catastrophic failures. They also need mechanical
| generators which aren't free. I'm suspect that chemical
| batteries are the future.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| What about cobalt?
| nine_k wrote:
| These batteries do not use cobalt, as mentioned in the
| article; they are lithium iron phosphate. (These are the
| elements I listed.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_batter
| y
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Not all batteries need cobalt. These are LiFePO4 batteries.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Batteries are just straight amazing, aren't they? Every other
| solution is just so complicated. Like pumped storage. You run
| power to a powerful electric pump, which moves water into a
| huge reservoir, which produces power through a hydro plant. Or
| a flywheel. You run electricity to a motor, which spins a huge
| piece of levitated metal, which then can run a generator.
|
| A battery is an inert block you send electricity directly into
| and get electricity directly out of. It's quite literally a
| black box of electrical energy storage.
|
| No other solution is ever going to be quite that simple --
| electricity in, electricity out. There's always some other
| complexity, some other mechanism, some other pump, some
| shielding, some motor.
| giarc wrote:
| Not an expert by anymeans, but it takes a long time for those
| to start producing energy when required (5 mins+). I believe in
| Australia, the Tesla battery was able to start providing energy
| in seconds.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| It is actually. Pumped energy storage is crazy cheap and
| efficient, assuming you have land and water.
| choeger wrote:
| Actually I think batteries will be the cheapest option for a
| very long time. They can be produced at a much higher scale
| than today (I wouldn't be surprised if we see 10x the
| production in the next five to ten years and consequently
| prices below $30/kwh) and they can be setup incrementally. Most
| alternatives are fixed-size all-or-nothing affairs. Oh and the
| biggest downside of batteries, their low energy density doesn't
| really matter for stationary storage.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| 100 MW for 10 msec is 1 MWh
|
| 100 MW for 100 h is 10 GWh
|
| It helps to use proper units, doesn't it?
|
| Large-scale battery storage is completely asinine when PES is far
| superior.
| joelwilliamson wrote:
| 100 MW for 10 ms is 28 Wh.
| pjc50 wrote:
| There are very few areas suitable for pumped energy storage. It
| requires specific topology and geology.
| nawgz wrote:
| What is PES? I only can get results for Power & Energy Society,
| which seems tangentially but not meaningfully related
| croddin wrote:
| I think it means Pumped Energy Storage
| nawgz wrote:
| I was wondering if he was suggesting we roll trains up
| hills with excess power and use regenerative braking or
| something like this, I hope he will respond
| jlmorton wrote:
| No need for a hill! You can dig a deep hole, and fill it
| with concrete weights.
| nine_k wrote:
| What is PES?
| morei wrote:
| Pumped Energy Storage (or rarely: Potential Energy Storage).
|
| Aka pumped hydro.
| nine_k wrote:
| In Switzerland, and maybe in, say, Appalachia, it's an
| obvious thing to do.
|
| But if your land lacks serious mountainous features, like
| much of Texas, it becomes impractical. It's also
| _seriously_ more capital-intensive: you need to pour like a
| million tons of concrete.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Even bigger batteries entered service in California last year.
|
| "At 300MW / 1,200MWh, the world's largest battery storage system
| so far is up and running"
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/news/at-300mw-1200mwh-the-wo...
|
| _Phase 1 of Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility was connected
| to the power grid and began operating on 11 December 2020, at the
| site of Moss Landing Power Plant, a natural gas power station
| owned by Vistra since it acquired the facility's previous owner,
| Dynegy in 2018._
|
| _At 300MW / 1,200MWh, the BESS is considerably larger than the
| 250MW / 250MWh Gateway Energy Storage project brought online
| earlier this year by LS Power, also in California. Not only that,
| but Phase 2 of Vistra's project will add another 100MW / 400MWh
| and is scheduled for completion by August this year._
| j-pb wrote:
| I wonder if the boring company has any plans to create tunnels
| that could be used for gravity energy storage.
|
| After all, if they have the tech to continuously bore long
| tunnels, boring straight down becomes a much easier task as you
| don't need as much anchorage to provide forward pressure.
|
| You can essentially use the front plate of a TBM, and have it
| "fall" into the ground with a large weight behind it.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| Better idea (maybe): store even more gravitational energy by
| sending heavy weights into orbit. Just use booster rockets to
| make it fall through the atmosphere, regenerating vast amounts
| of energy in the process.
| loufe wrote:
| Good lord can we please move away from the common misnomer of kW,
| MW, GW, and TW when we mean kWh, MWh, GWh, and TWh? It makes me
| angrier than it should, but aside from BTUs (heating/cooling)
| it's the only one I'm aware of that is so stubborn.
| ar0 wrote:
| As far as I read the article they are really talking about 100
| MW maximum power output; they mention that the Australian
| version can supply that 100 MW for a bit more than an hour (so
| store a bit more than 100MWh), so they seem to be aware of the
| distinction but apparently don't know (?) the energy storage
| capacity of the planned battery installation.
| lr1970 wrote:
| To put it in perspective. During the recent cold weather the
| State of Texas was short of 16GW of power for more than 40 hours
| making it 640GWh shortfall in amount of energy needed. You would
| need 6400 batteries 100MWh each to meet such demand. The only
| thing that a single 100MWh battery in Texas will be good for is
| stabilizing the grid against short-term load fluctuations -- the
| job a similar Tesla battery has been successfully doing in
| Australia.
| ACAVJW4H wrote:
| I remember that some facilities were shutdown because their
| auxiliary power generation units froze. So if batteries would
| only supply these mission critical apparatus their overall
| effect can be multiplied.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Critical facilities in locations where the grid is shut down?
| Well in that case a giant central battery can't help those
| places either, you need on-site batteries.
| [deleted]
| grey-area wrote:
| That is a very important job though and is dramatically cheaper
| than peaker plants.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| 'Undeniable success': South Australia's 129MWh Tesla battery
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/news/undeniable-success-
| sout...
|
| South Australia's Tesla 'Big Battery' saved consumers $116
| million in electricity costs last year
|
| https://www.startupdaily.net/2020/03/south-australias-
| tesla-...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Batteries are not going to substitute for winterized
| generation. They are to provide ancillary services such as
| frequency response (as you mention regarding the Tesla
| Hornsdale Power Reserve install), previously provided primarily
| by thermal generators, as well as short term dispatchable
| discharge (think expensive peaker plants). ERCOT (in Texas)
| also has a market for generators able to provide black start
| services (note the grid location of Gambit's install in this
| article, it sits at the intersection of transmission
| infrastructure connecting it to thermal generators in the area
| [1]).
|
| During the rolling blackouts, no attention was paid to avoiding
| circuits that were powering natural gas compressors and other
| similar natural gas distribution infra [2] (sidenote: I expect
| Tesla to do well in battery backing such loads). More
| distributed battery infra makes the grid more durable, and less
| at risk for totally black starts [3] [4].
|
| From the city's link to project information [5]:
|
| "Will the battery provide energy to Angelton during a black out
| or natural disaster?
|
| If charged, the battery can help the local electric system come
| back online by providing energy to 'jump start' electric
| generators in the. This service is called 'black start'
| capability; the battery is able to help the grid come back
| online after going 'black'."
|
| [1] https://openinframap.org/#9.18/29.1828/-95.4064
|
| [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/giant-flaw-texas-blackouts-
| cu... (A Giant Flaw in Texas Blackouts: It Cut Power to Gas
| Supplies)
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start (A black start is
| the process of restoring an electric power station or a part of
| an electric grid to operation without relying on the external
| electric power transmission network to recover from a total or
| partial shutdown.)
|
| [4] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-
| outages-... (Texas was "seconds and minutes" away from
| catastrophic monthslong blackouts, officials say)
|
| [5] http://angleton.tx.us/DocumentCenter/View/3793/Gambit-
| Energy...
| sschueller wrote:
| I would argue that a water damn would be a better storage of
| energy than batteries. Although it can be environmentaly
| problematic depending where you put it, it can hold an enormous
| amount if energy which can be switched on in seconds.
| photojosh wrote:
| Given the discussion about the Australian Tesla battery,
| worthwhile mentioning that we're also doing a massive pumped
| hydro project "Snowy Hydro 2.0". 2000 MW, 350 GWh storage.
| But it's a tad controversial.
|
| [0] https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/snowy-20/about/
|
| [1] https://theconversation.com/snowy-2-0-will-not-produce-
| nearl...
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Can we have "100 MW" in the title, either after "giant", or in
| substitution with "giant"? I think it would be a much better
| title.
|
| Edit: also, forgot to mention that most people don't seem to know
| that batteries used for these type of large projects are not in
| competition with batteries used in cars, in the sense that they
| are either of a different kind, or recycled/used ones.
| retzkek wrote:
| Both TFA and the Bloomberg article it references [1] mention the
| 100MW power throughput of the battery, which is pretty
| meaningless without also knowing the energy capacity. For
| reference, the similar 100MW battery installation in Australia
| has 129MWh capacity [2].
|
| This project is less remarkable when you read "About 2,100
| megawatts of battery storage ... are in advanced stages of
| connecting to Ercot's grid." [1].
|
| 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-08/tesla-
| is-... 2. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/12/tesla-beats-
| deadline-sw...
| ar0 wrote:
| Also for comparison: a single pumped-storage plant will often
| have storage capacity in the GWh; e.g. the Linth-Limmern pumped
| storage part in Switzerland can store 33 GWh and provides 1000
| MW peak power.
| ACAVJW4H wrote:
| When I overlay the population density map, on top of the
| elevation map. I think there aren't many opportunities in
| Texas for grid scale pumped hydro storage. Although pumped
| hydro has huge potential it is not homogeneously distributed
| all over the world according to this map.
| https://www.hydroreview.com/world-regions/22-million-gwh-
| of-...
| retzkek wrote:
| Bill Gates mentioned pressurized pumped-hydro storage in
| his book, (which was the first I had heard of it), and it
| sounds quite promising and something Texas is well-suited
| for:
|
| > GLIDES costs as low as $13/kWh and $346/kWh and roundtrip
| efficiencies as high as 80% can be achieved using depleted
| oil/gas reservoirs and high-pressure pipe segments as
| pressure reservoirs, respectively.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/12/f69/02_ORNL
| _...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Elevation translates in to 'head' and that's the single
| reason that this works well in Switzerland which has
| something that many other places do not have: very high
| mountains. With sufficient head the potential energy of a
| reservoir of modest size can be very impressive, and without
| you can have a huge reservoir that barely moves the needle.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > pumped-storage plant
|
| Seeing the title, I jokingly thought of generating
| hydroelectric power off a dam, and storing excess power by
| pumping the water back up, Sisyphus like. I'm very surprised
| this is actually a thing.
| glogla wrote:
| Yes!
|
| It's also only slightly less efficient than batteries.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2021/01/27/961242867/the-worlds-
| biggest-...
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Taken to extremes of solar+pumped-storage, we could end up
| with a situation where the earth spins more quickly in the
| early morning when the moment of inertia of the planet is
| lower because the solar panels haven't started moving all
| that water mass to its higher elevation yet.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > which is pretty meaningless without also knowing the energy
| capacity
|
| I disagree. You can reasonably assume a battery bank will have
| a capacity between an hour and a few hours.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| (Dons his prophetic hat.)
|
| Even if this battery seems to be gigantic now, in 15 years it
| will look small, much like Falcon 1 is now just a tiny teeny
| rocket compared to Starship + Super Heavy.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| (dons his prophetic tie clip)
|
| In 110 years time Elons' interstellar Universeship will dwarf
| both his battery _and_ the Starship.
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