TELSTRA (not Tesla) 1GWh distributed battery

[Shiraz]

Telstra soon expect to have a huge capacity sitting there in backup batteries that could be used for a variety of purposes, including turning them into a big player in stabilising the National energy grid. Presumably to make money. One more cool idea..
http://reneweconomy.com.au/telstra-unveils-its-big-battery-its-nearly-10-times-bigger-than-teslas-29761/

Cheers Ray

[Wavytone]

Not really surprising. Tesla’s “big battery” is nothing special technologically.

[xelasnave]

I want a battery bank so I can buy power off peak and sell it back when the demand is high.
Alex

[JA]

Hi Alex,

The sell price/feed in rate (tarrif) is not that great (5 to 11.5c per kWh, with Victoria soon or already at 11.5c /kWh, post July 2017). I don't think that you can buy electricity that cheap unless you're Alcoa or the like. Also allowing for/amortizing the cost of your plant over its life will degrade any meager buy/sell margin even further.

There was a time, when there were feed-in-tarrif inducements to go solar in the order of 66c /KWh !!!!! (I think in NSW, but also lesser amounts in other states??), however; at that time solar systems were nowhere near as inexpensive as what they are now. I think solar + batteries are a great idea for one's own power need. At current electricity pricing it makes far more sense to use one's own solar generated power, first to run domestic needs, second to charge one's own battery bank and lastly to feed any excess back in to the grid. Doing so will reduce system energy losses and reduce net cost.

It's also beneficial to ,where possible, reorganise the daily load so that it more closely matches the solar system's contemporaneous electrical energy production, i.e: reorganise to more closely use the electrical energy as it's produced, rather than charge any batteries or sell back any electricity.

Best
JA

[xelasnave]

I think it was opportunity missed not to require those putting panels on their roof not to also pit in batteries.
It called a battery bank for a reason .. You get out what you put in (some is lost for various reasons) but in my view it would be a most helpful way to educate folk on where their power goes.

Alex

[xelasnave]

With large banks becoming available we may see companies getting their own banks, particularly if we have a few business losing cash flow due to black outs..er sorry what's it called..power outage.
In Casino Aldi have so many panels I can't count them all, and to me it would make sense, maybe even profitable, to use battery storage.
Alex

[Visionary]

Lead acid banks with every solar install, great idea!

[xelasnave]

Yes I thought so.:)

It would be a start I feel.

And we start a market which attract new players to provide a better product.

Alex

[jenchris]

I'm not sure why we are still talking about panels when paint and coatings have already been proven to be effective and inexpensive.
Coating the top of a factory that operates in daylight will supply all the needs of that business.If you want to continue after dark, you put in some batteries.

[xelasnave]

Where can I get this paint?
Alex

[luka]

Why choose lead acid over Li-Ion?

[jenchris]

Melbourne Uni.

[Visionary]

Where can I buy the paint your referencing, how much is it a liter? I would love to get the roof "working" for me, producing power.

[Visionary]

Most people have limited budgets and its a hell of a lot cheaper to run Lead Acid unless of course, your house is a caravan (mobile) then Li-Ion becomes the obvious choice.

[jenchris]

They don't want to market the paint yet.
It would destroy the energy sector financially.
The printable cells are being trialled in Newcastle this summer. 6 dollars a sq metre is the wholesale price of those.
They're about 20 times as cost effective as solar cells.
If you could buy the paint and a set of batteries, you could go off grid in about 4 hours.... forever. How would the economy work then?
The printable cells are at least renewable as they probably can be printed to have a use by date.

[luka]

I think that it is not correct. Do you have any recent sources to back up that claim?

While lead-acid batteries are initially cheaper to buy, you also have to include the battery lifetime and performance. If this is included the Li-ion batteries have overtaken the lead acid batteries a few years ago and their price keeps going down every day as the technology advances.

1. Li-Ion are almost 98% efficient while lead-acid batteries loose almost 15% of power during each charge and also there are significant losses if they get discharged fast.

2. Lead acid batteries cannot be discharged below 60-ish % without a permanent damage to the batteries. So you get only 40% of usable storage capacity which kind-of defeats the whole point of using them as battery storage. Of course deep cycle lead-acid batteries exist but the price is much higher. On the other hand Li-Ions can be discharged down to 20% without any damage, i.e. you get double the storage capacity compared to a total-capacity-equivalent lead-acid battery.

3. Heat - lifetime of lead-acid batteries is significantly affected by heat. Over 40C is definitely a killer for them and we are in Australia. You will be lucky if you get more than few years of life out of them.

4. Cycle life - up to 4000 cycles for Li-ion vs up to 1000 cycles lead-acid. And this is tested under 20-25C ambient temperatures, the real-life performance of lead-acid batteries will be worse in Australian conditions as per my point 3.

Just look at the warranties. Tesla power wall gives 10 year warranty + optional 10 more years. Please find anything similar for the lead acid batteries.

Also to be mentioned is that lead-acid batteries have much higher environmental impact.

Buying lead-acid batteries may save you money in a short term but it is more economical to get Li-ion batteries nowadays. A few years ago it was the other way around but not any more.

[el_draco]

One more nail in the ADANI nightmare... :thumbsup:
... and more proof to demonstrate the idiotic ideological drive of the idiots in charge of this country... Are we learning yet? :rolleyes:

[jenchris]

Submarine lead acid batteries ate totally serviceable.
Provided you have space for them. They're about 4 foot x 4foot by 3 feet each 2v cell.

[luka]

I am wondering how much one of those would cost... and even worse, how much would the servicing cost.

By the way, Japan is already using Li-ion batteries instead of the old lead-acids in their new submarines (http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7747/japan-goes-back-to-the-future-with-lithium-ion-battery-powered-submarines) and we are also considering similar change (https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australias-future-submarine-the-great-battery-debate/). Give it a few years and the old lead-acid submarine batteries may be very cheap once our submarines stop using them :)

[Peter Ward]

We recenty installed a Tesla Powerwall 2.

Despite having 5kw of PV panels on our roof, our last energy bill was just over $1k. ( sadly no mains gas in out area...how ’effing typical of Sydney’s infrastructure) peak costs being some $0.52c per Kw/hr...very easy to run up a tab of about $10 a day.

The Tesla has been a revelation.

Next projected quarterly bill will likely be $90....if it’s sunny, maybe less! Sure the battery was not cheap, but based on ROI... A no brainer IMHO.

[jenchris]

I have no PV panels. My last two bills have been 160 and 200 dollars for 2 people.
I'm on bottled gas for the stove but the oven and water heater are electric.
A friend who looked after our home last year for 6 months used nearly twice what we did on her own.
Not sure how profligate you have to be to use 1000 dollars worth of power in a quarter.

[Visionary]

Mmmm..... all the hype surrounding Li-Ion batteries, let me frame this differently via a question "Who is satisfied with the battery life of their Laptop"? I am not happy with either the life of my laptop batteries nor their service life. Who believes their laptop battery will last 10 years sic Tesla Powerwall!
It's about it we all look beyond the hype (advertising Bs') and adopt a pragmatic approach to power. The storage of elections is not aided by Musk-type press conferences, electrons don't care how successful a product launch is, nor how good the press is following a product launch.
The efficient storage of elections is the stuff of engineering & science, not marketing.

[JA]

I'm sure any detractors will try to cite battery manufacturing technology or quality as being higher, however; you ask an excellent question^ David. Battery manufacturers ( Lead-acid, Li-ion etc..) are not likely to give their all in terms of divulging specific battery cycle life data for their products so other than 3rd party independent tests it's hard to be specific.

Best
JA

[jenchris]

Kinda wish we COULD store elections - leave em all til 2025 and then do them all at once.

[Peter Ward]

We try not to waste enery. LED fixtures throughout , run appliances outside of peak billing hours, but a pool (low energy pump) and ducted air certainly do not help.

NSW energy providers also have you over a barrel by charging about $90 a quarter just for being connected to the grid.

[xelasnave]

Solar panels are not too expensive.
Recently I spent approx $1200. 00 4 panels
I am surprised the charge when overcast.
Alex

[Visionary]

More than once I have mentioned I am visually impaired, I don't appreciate the ridicule. In any case, my intention was clear.

[luka]

1. You not being happy with how long your laptop battery lasts is a pointless argument. It simply means that the manufacturer decided to go for smaller battery to make the laptop smaller and more user-friendly. By the way, here (http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-debuts-windows-10-on-arm/) is a laptop with 22h of video playback battery life.

2. The service life is a different story but somehow unrelated to the Li-ion batteries used for power storage. Different application, different charge/discharge cycles, different power etc will have different effect on the battery life. Apples and oranges.

3. Criticizing Li-ion batteries for having a good marketing is not a point.

4. Criticizing Li-ion batteries without comparing them to the alternatives is not a point, especially after previously saying how much better the alternative is.

5. Tesla is not the only manufacturer selling Li-ion storage solutions and Tesla is not the only manufacturer having 10 years warranty.
Just to name another one, Mercedes-Benz Energy Storage Home has warranty that the batteries will keep 80% of original charge capacity after 8000 charging cycles. That is over 20 years of daily charge/discharge cycles, typical for a household. And Mercedes-Benz is a brand name that has lots to lose by selling dodgy batteries that do not perform (unsure what those batteries cost, probably more than Tesla. But the point is that the Li-ion batteries can last much longer than you say).

5. Talking about "electrons, engineering and science" while only criticizing Li-ion batteries is very, very misleading. The lead-acid batteries have to obey exactly the same laws of physics as the Li-ion batteries. So do I and so do you. Musk, advertising, whatever. It makes no difference, physics is physics, science is science.

6. Instead of saying that Li-ion batteries are bad how about actually comparing them with your preferred solution, the lead-acid battery. How would Li-ion powered laptop compare to a lead-acid powered laptop? And let's ignore the size/battery density for the comparison purposes.

The facts are:
Both types of batteries will degrade over time.
The modern Li-ion battery will outlast the modern lead-acid battery for power storage.
Li-ion batteries have more suitable charging/discharging characteristics for power storage.
Li-ion batteries cost more.
Both types of batteries have been around for a long time and there was lots of independent testing. Science is there and not being hidden my Musk and the others.
Both battery types present a good power storage solution.

However, if the whole life of the battery is taken into account the Li-ion works out cheaper (at the current state of technology). On the other hand lead-acid is a cheaper entry solution. Take a pick.

Apologies to OP for going off-topic.

[jenchris]

I'm not aware of your impairment.
I'm not ridiculing you either.
It just seemed apt. More like a freudian slip.
I know what you meant. I wasn't taking the piss.

[Visionary]

It irritates the crap outta me that I make such mistakes, at one time I didn't, a personal issue I guess. Cheers

[jenchris]

I too am getting impatient but with poor English unfortunately.
There's just so many times I can read there telescopes or some other unsolicited variation that is beyond reckoning.
Poor eyesight does make life difficult though and you have my commiserations and even sympathy - to be an astronomer with a sight impairment must be akin to being a racing driver with one eye.
I blame the newspapers and in particular The Guardian for the pathetic level of English language portrayed in the daily rags.
Sadly, every day I see worse and worse interpretations of grammar and dialect.
There are something like 2 billion people who supposedly speak English and I'd warrant that only 5% can actually write competently.