Winning a bet, Tesla builds the worlds biggest battery for Australia
Source: Marketwatch
South Australia will soon begin testing the worlds biggest lithium ion battery, the regions government has declared.
And with that, Tesla Motor Inc.s TSLA, -1.64% Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk just won a fairly sizable bet. Not only that, but the guy whose electric-car company has earned a bit of a reputation for delays actually managed to deliver a product on time.
The premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, said in a statement Thursday that the Tesla Powerpack battery will soon start regulatory testing. It will connect to French renewable energy company Neoens Hornsdale Wind Farm in South Australia, and hopefully put an end to the states serious energy problems. Neoen and Tesla were awarded the contract in July.
The worlds largest lithium ion battery will be an important part of our energy mix, and it sends the clearest message that South Australia will be a leader renewable energy with battery storage, said Weatherill.
Read more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/winning-a-bet-tesla-builds-the-worlds-biggest-battery-for-australia-2017-11-23
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)hunter
(38,312 posts)It's a meaningless phrase. A single car battery could power 30,000 homes for some fraction of a second.
Electricity is typically sold in kilowatt hours so that would be a good measure of this plant's storage capacity. A large lead-acid battery, the kind you might see in an RV, larger truck, or powering the electric trolling motor of a little fishing boat, holds about a kilowatt hour, which is 10-25 cents worth of electricity where I live.
What this giant Tesla battery pack does is stabilize the electric grid as the output of wind turbines fluctuates. The wind rarely blows at a constant speed. Existing electric grids powered by fossil fuels or hydroelectric power may not have been engineered to handle the fluctuating output of solar or wind turbines. This problem is typically solved by replacing plodding coal fired power plants with nimble natural gas power plants that can immediately pick up the load during brief lulls in the wind.
This Tesla battery farm is nowhere near large enough to power 30,000 homes on days the wind is not blowing.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)remarkable capacity of the battery, how quickly it can be deployed and the future potential for storage and use.
Perseus
(4,341 posts)You never know when special interests may want to disrupt.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)The flow battery has no solid electrodes; instead, the "electrodes" are a liquid solution stored in tanks and pumped through the battery. It should last several times longer than lithium batteries. It's also easily scalable.