Where Tesla leads, Australia is reluctant to follow

Tesla Motors is about to mass produce batteries that could change the global demand for power, and yet Australia is still pinning its short-term hopes on coal. Where’s our long-term plan? Mike Steketee writes.

Elon Musk calls it “a fundamental transformation of how the world works”.

The founder and chief executive of Tesla Motors, the pioneer of all-electric cars in the US, was announcing the company’s move into the mass production of batteries that can store electricity for residential use, solving the problem of the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. He says that his system of “stored sunlight” can be scaled up to literally any size – like the whole world – ending reliance on fossil fuels.

more…

CrazyNeutrino said:

Where Tesla leads, Australia is reluctant to follow

Tesla Motors is about to mass produce batteries that could change the global demand for power, and yet Australia is still pinning its short-term hopes on coal. Where’s our long-term plan? Mike Steketee writes.

Elon Musk calls it “a fundamental transformation of how the world works”.

The founder and chief executive of Tesla Motors, the pioneer of all-electric cars in the US, was announcing the company’s move into the mass production of batteries that can store electricity for residential use, solving the problem of the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. He says that his system of “stored sunlight” can be scaled up to literally any size – like the whole world – ending reliance on fossil fuels.

more…

>>Tesla Motors is about to mass produce batteries that could change

Notice “about to” & “could”. When that is changed to “has” & “has” I’ll be willing to look at replacing coal.

In general, are these batteries a good idea?

CrazyNeutrino said:

In general, are these batteries a good idea?

Tesla say they are. (But they may have a vested interest)

It’s marketing by Musk.

The batteries they are going to be producing are no better than others many other companies can produce.

There is no engineering or scientific breakthrough in any of the announcement.

Musk has announced a 10 kWhr battery pack for around US$3,000.

I could do the same with a standard VRLA battery for around A$2,000. Granted, the lead acid battery won’t have the number of deep cycles available,and probably won’t last as long, but this is not the huge breakthrough that some are making it out to be.

sibeen said:

It’s marketing by Musk.

The batteries they are going to be producing are no better than others many other companies can produce.

There is no engineering or scientific breakthrough in any of the announcement.

That’s a huge call.. I’m going to start with scepticism and wander off to BS street

Dropbear said:

sibeen said:

It’s marketing by Musk.

The batteries they are going to be producing are no better than others many other companies can produce.

There is no engineering or scientific breakthrough in any of the announcement.

That’s a huge call.. I’m going to start with scepticism and wander off to BS street

Why is it a huge call? All he’s stated is that he is going to be mass producing batteries that are already being produced.

its a domestic system based around Li ion

sibeen said:

Dropbear said:

sibeen said:

It’s marketing by Musk.

The batteries they are going to be producing are no better than others many other companies can produce.

There is no engineering or scientific breakthrough in any of the announcement.

That’s a huge call.. I’m going to start with scepticism and wander off to BS street

Why is it a huge call? All he’s stated is that he is going to be mass producing batteries that are already being produced.

It must be nice to have the sort of status where people take everything you say as being the whole and absolute troof though.

Dropbear said:

its a domestic system based around Li ion

Yes, that’s all it is, a very expensive battery system…colour me impressed.

The Rev Dodgson said:

It must be nice to have the sort of status where people take everything you say as being the whole and absolute troof though.

Musk has a lot of genuine credibility. He seems to be one of these forward thinking entrepreneurs who really does have his heart in the right place and is at least as (if not more) interested in contributing to the benefit of humanity as he is building upon an obscene bank account . In my mind at least, he’s one of the (very few) good guys until he does something which proves otherwise; kind of like Nick Xenophon.

sibeen said:

Dropbear said:

its a domestic system based around Li ion

Yes, that’s all it is, a very expensive battery system…colour me impressed.

Cool. Me too.

Australia’s electricity industry is about to undergo a massive transformation, with the advent of cheap storage batteries for solar energy.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-21/powerwall-solar-batteries-to-transform-electricity-industry/6488230

Seems like the marketing is ramping up…

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-21/powerwall-solar-batteries-to-transform-electricity-industry/6488230

ROFL

you’re such an old fart sibeen, wedded to lead.

From that link we have this tidbit:

Parkinson said the company was recognising the new technology was going to be “the biggest change in their industry in more than a century”.

Jaysus, what crap.

sibeen said:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-21/powerwall-solar-batteries-to-transform-electricity-industry/6488230

ROFL

—-

You might ROFL but I see a big marketing campaign that will generate more sales and then the economies of scale will kick in to make it cheaper.

Do the tesla batteries use rare earths? Do we hold any rare earth resources?

Is that a huge coming thing?

sibeen said:

From that link we have this tidbit:

Parkinson said the company was recognising the new technology was going to be “the biggest change in their industry in more than a century”.

Jaysus, what crap.

They had photo-voltaic cells in 1915.

AwesomeO said:

Do the tesla batteries use rare earths? Do we hold any rare earth resources?

Is that a huge coming thing?

Rare earths aren’t rare.

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

From that link we have this tidbit:

Parkinson said the company was recognising the new technology was going to be “the biggest change in their industry in more than a century”.

Jaysus, what crap.

They had photo-voltaic cells in 1915.

He’s not talking about PV cells, but the ability to store excess energy. That was certainly being done in 1915. This is a better technology, I’ll grant that, but it really isn’t that much better.

Witty Rejoinder said:

AwesomeO said:

Do the tesla batteries use rare earths? Do we hold any rare earth resources?

Is that a huge coming thing?

Rare earths aren’t rare.

Ahhh ok. So no sunny uplit lands then?

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

From that link we have this tidbit:

Parkinson said the company was recognising the new technology was going to be “the biggest change in their industry in more than a century”.

Jaysus, what crap.

They had photo-voltaic cells in 1915.

He’s not talking about PV cells, but the ability to store excess energy. That was certainly being done in 1915. This is a better technology, I’ll grant that, but it really isn’t that much better.

Fair enough. I’m glad you read the article. I just read the first paragraph and then scrolled though to look at the pictures.

JudgeMental said:

you’re such an old fart sibeen, wedded to lead.

Probably true. I have put in place many millions of dollars worth of lead batteries over the years :)

sibeen said:

JudgeMental said:

you’re such an old fart sibeen, wedded to lead.

Probably true. I have put in place many millions of dollars worth of lead batteries over the years :)

Well there ya go, you are just a shill for big lead.

sibeen said:

JudgeMental said:

you’re such an old fart sibeen, wedded to lead.

Probably true. I have put in place many millions of dollars worth of lead batteries over the years :)

Stooge!

what’s the recycling cost for these batteries? comparable to LA?

Well, I for one will be pleased if by the time my flooded LAs are fucked, two, three or four years down the track maybe, I can get something better. Depending what the cost is(later), for the moment i’m in love with what i’ve got.

JudgeMental said:

what’s the recycling cost for these batteries? comparable to LA?

I have no idea. Of course with beautiful lead batteries you actually get paid for them when they eventually give up the ghost…filthy lucre right into your pocket.

You would have to hope it’s not like NiCad. They can cost you as much as the initial installation just to get rid of them There’s not even anywhere in Australia that will process them and they have to be sent to NZ. Costs a bloody fortune.

sibeen said:

There’s not even anywhere in Australia that will process them and they have to be sent to NZ. Costs a bloody fortune.

Why can NZ process them and we can’t?

What is the difference between Tesla’s batteries and comparable ones here?

CrazyNeutrino said:

What is the difference between Tesla’s batteries and comparable ones here?

—

From: sibeen
ID: 719978Subject: re: Where Tesla leads, Australia is reluctant to follow
Musk has announced a 10 kWhr battery pack for around US$3,000.

I could do the same with a standard VRLA battery for around A$2,000. Granted, the lead acid battery won’t have the number of deep cycles available,and probably won’t last as long, but this is not the huge breakthrough that some are making it out to be.

Reply Quote

Witty Rejoinder said:

sibeen said:

There’s not even anywhere in Australia that will process them and they have to be sent to NZ. Costs a bloody fortune.

Why can NZ process them and we can’t?

Not so much that we can’t process them, we certainly used to; just that no company wants to touch them with a barge pole. Cadmium is apparently quite a nasty thing to deal with in bulk.

Coal to Diesel Conversion using State-of-the-Art Pyrolysis (Gasification) System (Revised Ver.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILAiQURrMH0

tauto said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

What is the difference between Tesla’s batteries and comparable ones here?

—

From: sibeen
ID: 719978Subject: re: Where Tesla leads, Australia is reluctant to follow
Musk has announced a 10 kWhr battery pack for around US$3,000.

I could do the same with a standard VRLA battery for around A$2,000. Granted, the lead acid battery won’t have the number of deep cycles available,and probably won’t last as long, but this is not the huge breakthrough that some are making it out to be.

Reply Quote

The ABC is reporting that the same system will be about $5,500 in Australia. So getting even more ripped off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery

Installations

There are several notable currently installed vanadium batteries:
A 1.5 MW UPS system in a semiconductor fabrication plant in Japan.
A 600 kW, six hour system, installed by Prudent Energy in Oxnard, California, USA.
A 275 kW output balancer in use on a wind power project in the Tomari Wind Hills of Hokkaido.
A 200 kW, 800 kW·h (2.9 GJ) output leveler in use at the Huxley Hill Wind Farm on King Island, Tasmania.
A 250 kW, 2 MW·h (7.2 GJ) load leveler in use at Castle Valley, Utah.
Two 5-kW units installed in St. Petersburg, Florida, under the auspices of USF’s Power Center for Utility Explorations.
A 100 kWh (360 MJ) unit supplied with 18 kW stacks manufactured by Cellstrom (Austria) has been installed in Vierakker (Gelderland, The Netherlands) as part of an integrated energy concept called ‘FotonenBoer’/‘PhotonFarmer’ (InnovationNetwork/Foundation Courage)
A 400 kW, 500 kWh (1.8 GJ) output balancer in use on a solar power project in the Bilacenge Village in Sumba Island, Indonesia.
A 50 kW, 100 kWh (360 MJ) peak shaving for manufacturing facility in Gongju, South Korea.
A 5 kW, 60kWh unit integrated with photovoltaic generation at University of Évora, Portugal.
A 100 kW, 1.26 MWh installation is planned for the island of Gigha, Scotland.
A 5MW, 10 MWH (20 MWH) system at the Woniushi wind power farm was connected to the Liaoning Power Grid, China, on 23 May 2013 .
1MW, 5MWh installed by Sumitomo Electric Industries in Yokohama

if you could make small units that used this method to store power you’d be laughing

in a small neighbourhood spare electrical power from solar could be stored and released back onto the system of a night

Vanadium solution is used in both half cells

· Cross-mixing of electrolytes across the membrane does not lead to the contamination of electrolytes.

· The solutions have an indefinite life so that replacement costs are low.

· Indefinite life of solution means that they can be continuously recycled so that there are no waste disposal problems – shelf life is theoretically unlimited.

· Vanadium redox couples are electrochemically reversible so that high energy efficiencies are possible.

· The system can be recharged at high rates at a fraction of the time needed for the lead-acid battery.

· Vanadium is readily available and relatively low cost, so manufacturing and capital costs are low.

http://www.ceic.unsw.edu.au/centers/vrb/technology-services/vanadium-redox-flow-batteries.html

sibeen said:

tauto said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

What is the difference between Tesla’s batteries and comparable ones here?

—

From: sibeen
ID: 719978Subject: re: Where Tesla leads, Australia is reluctant to follow
Musk has announced a 10 kWhr battery pack for around US$3,000.

I could do the same with a standard VRLA battery for around A$2,000. Granted, the lead acid battery won’t have the number of deep cycles available,and probably won’t last as long, but this is not the huge breakthrough that some are making it out to be.

Reply Quote

The ABC is reporting that the same system will be about $5,500 in Australia. So getting even more ripped off.

—-

But given more interest in solar viability, the price will fall.

Can sibeen translate to a solar invested economy….

Ok you’ll be dead and so will I ;).

the other option is don’t use batteries – use the solar system to pump up a compressed air tank

then of a night use the compressed air to run a small motor that turns a generator

this way is a purely mechanical way of storing power

no battery life problems – low tech

all you need are standard and existing fittings and components

as I see it

the answer to the problem is wrong

tauto said:

But given more interest in solar viability, the price will fall.

Can sibeen translate to a solar invested economy….

Ok you’ll be dead and so will I ;).

I certainly hope so, especially as I currently have a gig where I’ll be doing some work on two reasonably sized solar systems, and certainly hope to parley that into more work.

I just don’t see why a storage system needs to be wedded to a solar. Of course there’s plenty of applications for that, but it won’t be the most economical use of resources, certainly not even with Mr Musk’s batteries.

he’s irish.

>the other option is don’t use batteries – use the solar system to pump up a compressed air tank

just having a gander in wiki re that, the history is interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage

transition said:

>the other option is don’t use batteries – use the solar system to pump up a compressed air tank

just having a gander in wiki re that, the history is interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage

one of my other brilliant ideas was to recover braking energy as compressed air as in a hybrid car

turns out some French company has recently done this

no batteries just a tank of air that gets pumped up and released

a house could have a metal tank encased in some concrete and buried

the tank would last for years

a compressor would pump the tank up during the day using solar power

during the night a tap would be turned and through a gas regulator would be fed to a reciprocating engine that turned a generator

transition said:

>the other option is don’t use batteries – use the solar system to pump up a compressed air tank

just having a gander in wiki re that, the history is interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage

you could use the energy of the sun to keep the tank warm to increase efficiency

one crazy idea someone pitched me was having a community where compressed air is used to transfer power to the houses

ie compressed air lines are run to a house run a turbine to generate electrical power

on a similar thought

you could use the compressed air to turn over an air con unit overnight if the air con unit was purely mechanical with no electrical component

Bump.

Witty Rejoinder said:

AwesomeO said:

Do the tesla batteries use rare earths? Do we hold any rare earth resources?

Is that a huge coming thing?

Rare earths aren’t rare.

And freedom isn’t free

Normal deep cycle batteries get you about 5 years, don’t know about Li Ion.

It’s not so much about the lifespan, because you’re not really comparing like for like.

It’s more the number of deep discharges that the battery can provide, and for lead acid that can be fairly poor, even for the batteries designed to be deep discharge.

Dropbear said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

AwesomeO said:

Do the tesla batteries use rare earths? Do we hold any rare earth resources?

Is that a huge coming thing?

Rare earths aren’t rare.

And freedom isn’t free

But it’s another word for nothing left to lose.

I heard today they’re sold sans inverter. So you’re looking at that as well

the future

electric cars for commuters

diesel made from coal used to drive trucks/ locomotives pulling coal/ farm machinery

residential power – underground power cabling with built in fibre optic to provide data

solar energy used to provide power during the day

wind energy stored via compressed air in large caverns for night time power

electrical power transported over large distances using HVDC

solar power no longer installed on roofs but in large arrays – you buy a the array and take advantage of the buying power of millions of dollars and the cheaper installation costs – power is provided more cheaply to you and the credits of your purchase feed into your bills – its actually cheaper to build large arrays than small installs on roofs

by the looks of it you must heat the coal in a near vacuum and the vapours from the coal are then either liquids or gases, the end product is ash

they must be able to remove the metals and sulphates in the process

sibeen said:

Normal deep cycle batteries get you about 5 years, don’t know about Li Ion.

It’s not so much about the lifespan, because you’re not really comparing like for like.

It’s more the number of deep discharges that the battery can provide, and for lead acid that can be fairly poor, even for the batteries designed to be deep discharge.

I haven’t been able to find anything on deep discharge, but this report, in the German _PV Magazine_, and based on research done at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, says that Li-Ion batteries from Germany and Japan last 3000 – 5000 cycles (fully charged terminal voltage 80% of new), whereas those from U.S.A. and South Korea, 1000 – 3000 cycles, and those from China up to 1000 cycles.

I should add this quote from that article:
PV Magazine said:

Gutsch did offer detailed information on one particularly successful model, the Tesla battery. It only lasted 400 cycles.

btm said:

I should add this quote from that article:
PV Magazine said:

Gutsch did offer detailed information on one particularly successful model, the Tesla battery. It only lasted 400 cycles.

Does a cycle equal one days worth of electricity

Cymek said:

btm said:

I should add this quote from that article:
PV Magazine said:

Gutsch did offer detailed information on one particularly successful model, the Tesla battery. It only lasted 400 cycles.

Does a cycle equal one days worth of electricity

No, it’s a charge-discharge cycle, although the battery is not completely discharged.