I have been speaking with Solar City's commercial division about doing large grid-tied solar projects with Tesla batteries in one of USA largest cities and have $100M in projects under development.
These batteries aren't going to power your home at night, nor should they as electricity rates at night are dirt cheap (comparatively) when people aren't at work, in factories and in bed sleeping.
These batteries are going to be performing grid marketplace arbitrage and some governments and utilities are providing amazing incentives to do so. (Currently the incentives require the batteries to be tied to solar.)
There are two pieces of your electricity bill (I'm simplifying here) 1) the electricity charge (EC) and 2) the transmission charge (TC). The EC is calculated by how many kWh you use during each (peak/off-peak) period of the day and the TC is calculated by your max grid demand during your largest 15 minutes for the month.
Tesla Batteries are not just about the batteries, the system calculates how to remove kWh demand from peak hours by pulling power from batteries and then recharging during off-peak hours. This covers the EC cost reduction.
To reduce TC costs the system calculates your peak load over the given month and tries to turn it from a "mountain range" (with many peaks) to a "platou". You pay your TC for the tallest mountain for the month. At first the system doesn't know that much about your usage profile and will just focus on the largest peak demand 15 minute intervals. Then over time it will learn more about your usage patterns and slowly platou your grid demand.
At the end of the day it is going to be much more cost effective and efficient to have a distributed grid with thousands of solar arrays and batteries than build out large billion dollar gas fired turbines or even wind turbines.
I like the idea of having solar cells that charge up a bank of batteries that could power my house at night. I was recently talking to a Solar City rep and they are thinking along those lines.
I wonder if this would be a good time to define a standard low voltage plug for house hold use. An awful lot of modern electrical devices don't need 110VAC and end up wasting a lot of power converting AC to DC. I've seen replacements for wall sockets that combine a single AC socket with a few USB power ports. That's convenient, but USB wasn't designed as a power plug, it's just been co-opted for it. A well designed system of 24VDC or 48VDC would be a nice thing to have. Bonus points if it's a world standard. I'd also like a pony.
There are already widespread programs where utilities pay customers a rebate in exchange for remotely turning off their A/C compressors at the peak of a heat wave in order to chop the top off consumption spikes. Paying high-consumption commercial customers to turn off entirely for a few hours to avoid spinning up another generation plant happens too.
It's not too far-fetched to imagine a rebate program on home battery systems if the utility got the same remote control power to disconnect homes from the grid when needed, or even have their batteries dump power back onto it at those times. Essentially, individual homes become part of "smart grid" management systems.
Beyond that, you can opt into paying a real-time price for electricity (like the utility does) instead of a flat rate. You're at the mercy of the market but can save a significant amount if you voluntarily turn off high consumption devices during peak periods and schedule other loads for overnight or slack periods.
What really gets interesting are the times (especially during early summer mornings) where there's too much supply on the grid and the price drops into negative territory (i.e. they'll pay you to shed load off the network). That's when you need the storage system charging up as fast as it can. I've been working on a personal system that watches the price and other factors (weather forecasts, family schedule) and cycles the A/C as deep as possible during those times.
What might really suck though is if everyone has one of these in their homes, then the price advantage will go away. Not a bad problem to have, but it means we'll have to shift our supply to other places like personal solar panels (hmm, does Musk sell those?)
Doing arbitrage on the power network by storing energy during off-period, and releasing it during high-period is a relatively old concept (eg. [0]). What I don't see happening is the price of this battery going low enough to make this kind of arbitrage profitable in a reasonable amount of time. The article does not mention the cost aspect of such an investment.
Germany along with a few other EU countries are currently high on renewable energy. As far as I know the most profitable way to utilize electric solar panels is to sell excessive energy back to the grid, not store it in batteries.
Paper mills and other wood processing make for great instantaneous interruptible load.
In NZ one of the major electricity generating companies pays some major industrial customers for the ability to cut them off, enabling them to reallocate the power almost as if it were additional generation.
Aluminium smelters are good too, but you can't cut them off without warning, because it will break the arc-furnaces when the aluminium solidifies around the carbon electrodes.
Whenever Solar/Battery power comes up I like to link back to this [0]. There was a HN discussion about it [1] when the article in question [3] referenced that PDF.
My favorite quote is probably:
> To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?”
Solar panels would only affect the revenue of coupled utilities. Depending on the regulatory framework of the state, Decoupled utilities [0] would be unaffected by solar (and may even benefit if they supply the capital investment to install the solar)
The linked document by the Edison Electric Institute is titled "Disruptive Challenges" and it identifies distributed power generation (among other things) as a potential disruption in the industry. I assume the point is that if the electrical companies view this as a plausible future scenario, then we shouldn't rule it out.
This would be great for the situation were having in South Africa; were experiencing daily loadshedding at the moment as our only power utility basically, cannot meet demand.
The situation is set to continue for at least a year while the new coal power plant "Medupi" is being constructed - its more than 4 years behind schedule.
A battery that could be charged and then used to power your home during loadshedding could be a breakthrough solution as the costs for generators and solar are quite expensive. That being said not sure how much the Telsa "Home Battery" would be.
Any event, if its feasible it could really be a good solution. Im sure in the long run countries experiencing similar a situation could use this.
It's a phenomena in the UK that everyone makes tea using electric kettles during commercial breaks, which is magnified by the popularity of TV events such as sporting events to the point where the power grid is affected by how well the English team is faring in the game. The power service ends up having to predict the popularity of TV shows and how long sports games may last.
Brazil likely would also benefit. Our electricity production and grid are precarious at times and there are occasional rolling blackouts when things are mismanaged. A distributed great would help there.
The real blocker of going electric on everything is the capacity of rechargeable technologies and their lifetime, not some global conspiracy. Even the high price of batteries/capacitors might not be a problem if lifetime and capacity would be great. In that sense Musk might be onto something, but I think it takes a lot more than 20% improvement over current technologies for batteries to become feasible for storing electricity on large scale. If a smartphone could be done with a battery, that lasts a week and is not dead within a year in winter conditions, it probably would have been done allready.
A smartphone with a week of battery life is likely to be possible now. Just do this:
1) use the latest most efficient panel technology - let's say the latest Super AMOLED from Samsung
2) Use a very lower resolution such as 480x320 (also the initial resolution of the iPhone, which many thought looked "great" a few years ago)
3) Put a screen that's as small as possible on it - let's say 3.5" (you now...the "ideal" size that the iPhone used to have?)
4) Put the lowest power chip you can find in it (even if that means lowest performance - although a single-core 1 Ghz Cortex A7 should do the trick).
5) Put a relatively powerful (enough to handle that resolution easily), but very efficient GPU in it
6) Use other components that are also cutting edge in terms of power efficiency.
7) Put a 3,000-3,500mAh battery in it, even if it makes the phone 10-12mm thick (so like the Nokia Lumia 900 that many liked at the time for its "design", despite its thickness).
I would be surprised if all of this didn't lead to a week of battery life for the phone. The "problem" is this phone will be quite expensive unlocked (probably close to $300) due to its cutting edge/more efficient components, yet at the same time it will look like a $100 cheap phone in terms of "specs".
So where I'm going with this is that the market doesn't want such a phone even if it has a "1 week battery life". The market wants "PC-like performance", 2k resolutions and 5.5" screens more than they want "1 week battery life". And the other problem is that they want those specs to keep going up, and as long as those go up, battery life can't go up much either.
They optimize for performance and high specs rather than battery life. So if an OEM can choose between a 1080p panel with 30 percent less power consumption and a 2k panel with the same power consumption, they go for the 2k. And that's how our phones get stuck forever in the ~1 day battery life.
Smartphone batteries could easily last a week right now, with current technology. The reason they don't is because manufacturers prefer smaller size and lower weight to longer battery life, presumably because their customers do.
Size and weight are much less of a concern for fixed installation grid storage, of course.
The financial implications of these threats are fairly evident. Start with the increased cost of supporting a network capable of managing and integrating distributed generation sources. Next, under most rate structures, add the decline in revenues attributed to revenues lost from sales foregone. These forces lead to increased revenues required from remaining customers … and sought through rate increases. The result of higher electricity prices and competitive threats will encourage a higher rate of DER additions, or will promote greater use of efficiency or demand-side solutions.
Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines).
Some companies have battery technology they believe is good for 10,000 [1] or even 16,000 [2] cycles until it reaches 80% of its initial capacity.
On the other hand, some batteries on the market show substantial capacity loss after just 300 cycles [3].
Needless to say, the product that lasts 50 times longer costs quite a bit more - and they're bigger and heavier to boot. For stationary power storage, you don't care if they're big and heavy, but for transport applications you do.
The car tech has to worry about density and being charged really quickly. A big home battery should be able to make different tradeoffs including more cycles. Also, it lasts a lot longer if you're not discharging it all the way.
I suspect this market will be captured by folks not in homes, but in neighborhoods buying things like Sadoway's liquid metal batteries* and either participating in the bulk electricity market directly (fun fact: the markets run by New England ISO and NYISO are run as linear programming problems to minimize total cost over a bunch of supply curves bid in by suppliers and nuclear plants usually bid negative cost to make sure they get scheduled) or providing reliability-boosting service to utilities.
Seems odd to talk about "stationary batteries" as a separate product, as if a car weren't stationary most of its life. (but I suppose that changes in a future of sharing economies and self-driving cars)
> Seems odd to talk about "stationary batteries" as a separate product
Why? The constraints (in terms of size, cooling, wiring, weight, temperature changes, …) are completely different. A stationary battery is a separate product, competing in a completely different class and with very different constraints.
The cars are mostly stationary, but they're stationary in the wrong place during peak consumption hours: a workplace parking lot, not a garage connected to the grid.
I love it. The elephant in the room with electric cars has always been the power grid. It is simply not capable of sustaining the energy equal to the amount of gasoline distributed to gas stations. The last rough measure I've seen was the grid is about 1/4 what it needs to be to sustain electric cars.
Having batteries as energy cache spread out around the network is a great idea and will offset the need to build out more power lines.
It all really comes down to battery cost. If Tesla's gigafactory does what it says it will do, in seriously reducing cost per kwh, then a huge home storage market will open up naturally.
The projections do seem a bit heroic, though. People seem to have been predicting cost reductions in batteries for the last 15 years, but they don't seem to have come to fruition.
This makes the name of his company interesting homage to Nicola. Nicola competed with Edison and Edison eventually won out.
While Musk's plans aren't the same as Tesla's, the idea that an important part of the new structure of the modern electric grid bears his name is great.
Please correct me if I am wrong in any of this, as I have a rudimentary knowledge of battery/capacitor/flywheel/Cox's timepiece tech at best. Li-ion make sense for supplying power for things which need Ah/kg high, but if you are not limited by mass, wouldn't maximizing aH/$ be the driving factor? Tesla has been making a massive push into li-ion fabrication and, as far as I can tell, not pursuing other energy storage mediums. Totally speculating here, but I would imagine a fly wheel, or even banks of lead-acid batteries, way out performing li-ion on total lifetime costs to the energy stored and discharged.
The original inventors of such technology are AC Propulsion [1] (coincidentally, the same company that Tesla licensed the early drivetrain for the roadster from). They referred to it as "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) technology. Some interesting history in this idea - it's taken somebody like Elon Musk and a company like Tesla to start looking at implementing this technology in production/commodity markets.
Only for short periods of time. If you live in an area subject to natural disasters, you'd still want a generator (either diesel, propane, or natural gas) to get you enough power during extended outages to run a refrigerator, a TV, a few lights, and charge a phone or laptop. I was without power during Hurricane Hugo for almost 10 days. Cold showers suck, but what sucked more was not getting any news.
I wonder if they should also market this to the whole house backup generator market? Those run 2,000-4,000 $ at least, I think.
I'd imagine a lot of houses would pay $1500 for a battery to operate their whole house during an outage.
Another product I'd like to see is a plug in battery to operate the sump pump for a few hours during an outage? Apparently a UPS can't handle the high load, and the battery backup ones you make require an expensive plumbing visit to install the special DC powered pump.
How long will that $1,500 battery power my house? It's still not possible to beat hydrocarbons in terms of energy density, and if you are looking to weather a multi-day outage, it's energy density you care about...
it cannot help that GM has announced they will built the Chevrolet Bolt, a 200 mile range EV. Combined with other articles this car will start building in mid to late 2016.
Cool idea, but I think this is just a fallback plan or hedge for the new gigafactory. If oil prices stay low, it hurts the demand for electric cars. If we get driverless cars and more efficient ride sharing, people will be less inclined to own a car. But I'm sure musk has ideas to directly address those threats. He just doesn't want a $5b battery plant to be underutilized.
[+] [-] startupfounder|11 years ago|reply
These batteries aren't going to power your home at night, nor should they as electricity rates at night are dirt cheap (comparatively) when people aren't at work, in factories and in bed sleeping.
These batteries are going to be performing grid marketplace arbitrage and some governments and utilities are providing amazing incentives to do so. (Currently the incentives require the batteries to be tied to solar.)
There are two pieces of your electricity bill (I'm simplifying here) 1) the electricity charge (EC) and 2) the transmission charge (TC). The EC is calculated by how many kWh you use during each (peak/off-peak) period of the day and the TC is calculated by your max grid demand during your largest 15 minutes for the month.
Tesla Batteries are not just about the batteries, the system calculates how to remove kWh demand from peak hours by pulling power from batteries and then recharging during off-peak hours. This covers the EC cost reduction.
To reduce TC costs the system calculates your peak load over the given month and tries to turn it from a "mountain range" (with many peaks) to a "platou". You pay your TC for the tallest mountain for the month. At first the system doesn't know that much about your usage profile and will just focus on the largest peak demand 15 minute intervals. Then over time it will learn more about your usage patterns and slowly platou your grid demand.
At the end of the day it is going to be much more cost effective and efficient to have a distributed grid with thousands of solar arrays and batteries than build out large billion dollar gas fired turbines or even wind turbines.
[+] [-] rootbear|11 years ago|reply
I wonder if this would be a good time to define a standard low voltage plug for house hold use. An awful lot of modern electrical devices don't need 110VAC and end up wasting a lot of power converting AC to DC. I've seen replacements for wall sockets that combine a single AC socket with a few USB power ports. That's convenient, but USB wasn't designed as a power plug, it's just been co-opted for it. A well designed system of 24VDC or 48VDC would be a nice thing to have. Bonus points if it's a world standard. I'd also like a pony.
[+] [-] dangrossman|11 years ago|reply
It's not too far-fetched to imagine a rebate program on home battery systems if the utility got the same remote control power to disconnect homes from the grid when needed, or even have their batteries dump power back onto it at those times. Essentially, individual homes become part of "smart grid" management systems.
[+] [-] joezydeco|11 years ago|reply
What really gets interesting are the times (especially during early summer mornings) where there's too much supply on the grid and the price drops into negative territory (i.e. they'll pay you to shed load off the network). That's when you need the storage system charging up as fast as it can. I've been working on a personal system that watches the price and other factors (weather forecasts, family schedule) and cycles the A/C as deep as possible during those times.
What might really suck though is if everyone has one of these in their homes, then the price advantage will go away. Not a bad problem to have, but it means we'll have to shift our supply to other places like personal solar panels (hmm, does Musk sell those?)
[+] [-] xxxyy|11 years ago|reply
Germany along with a few other EU countries are currently high on renewable energy. As far as I know the most profitable way to utilize electric solar panels is to sell excessive energy back to the grid, not store it in batteries.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
[+] [-] NickNameNick|11 years ago|reply
In NZ one of the major electricity generating companies pays some major industrial customers for the ability to cut them off, enabling them to reallocate the power almost as if it were additional generation.
Aluminium smelters are good too, but you can't cut them off without warning, because it will break the arc-furnaces when the aluminium solidifies around the carbon electrodes.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joshstrange|11 years ago|reply
My favorite quote is probably:
> To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?”
[0] Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business (http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivecha...)
[1] Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities (http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-util...)
[2] HN Discussion 261 points, 670 days ago, 139 comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543603)
[+] [-] DINKDINK|11 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_%28utility_regulati...
[+] [-] freyr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gorillapower|11 years ago|reply
The situation is set to continue for at least a year while the new coal power plant "Medupi" is being constructed - its more than 4 years behind schedule.
A battery that could be charged and then used to power your home during loadshedding could be a breakthrough solution as the costs for generators and solar are quite expensive. That being said not sure how much the Telsa "Home Battery" would be.
Any event, if its feasible it could really be a good solution. Im sure in the long run countries experiencing similar a situation could use this.
[+] [-] nerfhammer|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] malandrew|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olla|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] higherpurpose|11 years ago|reply
1) use the latest most efficient panel technology - let's say the latest Super AMOLED from Samsung
2) Use a very lower resolution such as 480x320 (also the initial resolution of the iPhone, which many thought looked "great" a few years ago)
3) Put a screen that's as small as possible on it - let's say 3.5" (you now...the "ideal" size that the iPhone used to have?)
4) Put the lowest power chip you can find in it (even if that means lowest performance - although a single-core 1 Ghz Cortex A7 should do the trick).
5) Put a relatively powerful (enough to handle that resolution easily), but very efficient GPU in it
6) Use other components that are also cutting edge in terms of power efficiency.
7) Put a 3,000-3,500mAh battery in it, even if it makes the phone 10-12mm thick (so like the Nokia Lumia 900 that many liked at the time for its "design", despite its thickness).
I would be surprised if all of this didn't lead to a week of battery life for the phone. The "problem" is this phone will be quite expensive unlocked (probably close to $300) due to its cutting edge/more efficient components, yet at the same time it will look like a $100 cheap phone in terms of "specs".
So where I'm going with this is that the market doesn't want such a phone even if it has a "1 week battery life". The market wants "PC-like performance", 2k resolutions and 5.5" screens more than they want "1 week battery life". And the other problem is that they want those specs to keep going up, and as long as those go up, battery life can't go up much either.
They optimize for performance and high specs rather than battery life. So if an OEM can choose between a 1080p panel with 30 percent less power consumption and a 2k panel with the same power consumption, they go for the 2k. And that's how our phones get stuck forever in the ~1 day battery life.
[+] [-] mikeash|11 years ago|reply
Size and weight are much less of a concern for fixed installation grid storage, of course.
[+] [-] nradov|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themgt|11 years ago|reply
Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines).
http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u...
[+] [-] xxxyy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eldavido|11 years ago|reply
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-elec...
Who's building the "I have a 10kW load, I'm in zip code XXXXX, when is the cheapest/best time to turn this on" API?
[+] [-] mrfusion|11 years ago|reply
(Maybe I'm wrong about the number of cycles?)
[+] [-] michaelt|11 years ago|reply
On the other hand, some batteries on the market show substantial capacity loss after just 300 cycles [3].
Needless to say, the product that lasts 50 times longer costs quite a bit more - and they're bigger and heavier to boot. For stationary power storage, you don't care if they're big and heavy, but for transport applications you do.
[1] https://www.toshiba.com/tic/datafiles/Battery_Energy_Storage... [2] http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah-Da... [3] http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA400...
[+] [-] sp332|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diltonm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] afarrell|11 years ago|reply
* http://www.ambri.com/technology/
[+] [-] patcon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|11 years ago|reply
Why? The constraints (in terms of size, cooling, wiring, weight, temperature changes, …) are completely different. A stationary battery is a separate product, competing in a completely different class and with very different constraints.
[+] [-] michaelt|11 years ago|reply
Stationary power storage applications can use larger batteries with worse power density, if they offer a longer life per $.
[+] [-] dangrossman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarfy|11 years ago|reply
Having batteries as energy cache spread out around the network is a great idea and will offset the need to build out more power lines.
[+] [-] lotsofcows|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brakenshire|11 years ago|reply
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-solar-battery-stor...
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the-solar-e...
It all really comes down to battery cost. If Tesla's gigafactory does what it says it will do, in seriously reducing cost per kwh, then a huge home storage market will open up naturally.
The projections do seem a bit heroic, though. People seem to have been predicting cost reductions in batteries for the last 15 years, but they don't seem to have come to fruition.
[+] [-] malandrew|11 years ago|reply
While Musk's plans aren't the same as Tesla's, the idea that an important part of the new structure of the modern electric grid bears his name is great.
[+] [-] pm90|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EVdotIO|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixdimensional|11 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.acpropulsion.com/products-v2g.html
[+] [-] nsxwolf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiph|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|11 years ago|reply
I'd imagine a lot of houses would pay $1500 for a battery to operate their whole house during an outage.
Another product I'd like to see is a plug in battery to operate the sump pump for a few hours during an outage? Apparently a UPS can't handle the high load, and the battery backup ones you make require an expensive plumbing visit to install the special DC powered pump.
[+] [-] JshWright|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krschultz|11 years ago|reply
I'm sure they'll build it some day, but call me when you can buy it.
[+] [-] vidarh|11 years ago|reply
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/how-te...
The new thing here appears to be a new model and impending larger scale production.
[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail...
[+] [-] webXL|11 years ago|reply