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It’s pretty easy to see why the Tesla battery farm is working out. The emergency power rates of $14,000 per MWh is criminal. Those are generators who know they are going to get called to generate only during select timeframes and can charge whatever they want. The article states that Tesla is cutting the costs in the area by 90%, which given some leeway on price averages could still be charging $500-$1000 per MWh. I really hope those numbers are some sort of typo. At the peak of Enron craziness, power in the US topped out at like $1000 per MWh
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Oct 24, 2018 00:32
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I thought it was in the $10ks during Enron. The spot price has briefly been over $800/MWh a few times in the last year in CA.
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Oct 24, 2018 00:37
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Australia has some weirdness in how the power grids are run that offers a lot of leeway for peak power prices to skyrocket. The last time this came up it was mentioned that there was essentially no connection from Western Australia and Northern Territory into the other states, and that for historic reasons the state of South Australia has had issues getting enough energy import from the Victoria/NSW bound transmission lines to cover needs, resulting in peaker plant operators in that state being able to hold people for ransom. US interstate power grid connections, and connections between the West, East, Texas and Quebec grids, are far more robust and make it very difficult to end up in the same situation. Also I could swear that in the Enron shenanigans, what happened was that California electricity prices were capped to a certain hundreds of dollars price, and Enron's scam was to pick up cheap energy in "California" and resell it to other states for a few thousands at most, which resulted in electricity being diverted out of the state as it wasn't "paid for" locally. And Enron was also essentially using their position to keep peak power producers in Arizona, Nevada, etc from having a reason to be on the grid because Enron was making the power from California available. Part of the response from California after the whole scandal was to change the price cap rules significantly since it was effectively disincentivizing electricity conservation within the state.
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Oct 24, 2018 01:47
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A lot of the ILLEGAL part of what Enron was doing was dumping losses in shell companies and abusing mark-to-market to make themselves look super profitable. But with the price caps they weren't actually diverting the energy, they were buying it at capped rates, "exporting it" to other states, and then turning around and "importing it" back to sell back to Californians at huge markups. And shutting power plants to create artificial scarcity when it suited their bottom line, which is a big part of why Gray Davis was recalled.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:11
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fishmech posted:Australia has some weirdness in how the power grids are run that offers a lot of leeway for peak power prices to skyrocket. The last time this came up it was mentioned that there was essentially no connection from Western Australia and Northern Territory into the other states, and that for historic reasons the state of South Australia has had issues getting enough energy import from the Victoria/NSW bound transmission lines to cover needs, resulting in peaker plant operators in that state being able to hold people for ransom. US interstate power grid connections, and connections between the West, East, Texas and Quebec grids, are far more robust and make it very difficult to end up in the same situation. The retail price was capped; but not the wholesale price. Enron did a lot of shenanigans on the wholesale market to drive the cost up and they also appear to have colluded with utilities to have them shut down production at key times causing blackouts and forcing California to buy on the "open market". pangstrom posted:A lot of the ILLEGAL part of what Enron was doing was dumping losses in shell companies and abusing mark-to-market to make themselves look super profitable. But with the price caps they weren't actually diverting the energy, they were buying it at capped rates, "exporting it" to other states, and then turning around and "importing it" back to sell back to Californians at huge markups. And shutting power plants to create artificial scarcity when it suited their bottom line, which is a big part of why Gray Davis was recalled. What's really interesting is to read and listen to Andrew Fastow (Enron CFO that set up all the shells and took advantage of mark to market) talk about this period because he truly believed that what he was doing was legal. And it actually very well might have been had he not dipped into it personally to profit off the schemes (remember this is before Sarbanes Oxley required directors to attest to the truthfulness of their financial reporting; and even then iirc they included notes about all of the shell companies). And of course the full extent of the fraud is unknown because of all the document destruction Arthur Anderson conducted (which remember SCOTUS let them off the hook on because jury instructions were too vague; thankfully AA's role as an independent auditor was already destroyed and was impossible to repair at this point, but good god). Overall though Fastow is an interesting character and he spends most of his time lecturing about accounting and financial fraud and even things that should be considered such that aren't due to the vagueness of accounting standards and the desire to conduct earnings management to meet targets.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:44
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Raldikuk posted:... they also appear to have colluded with utilities to have them shut down production at key times causing blackouts and forcing California to buy on the "open market". What were the utilities getting out of the collusion? I thought that aspect (the capped retail + floating wholesale + no long term supply contracts) led to multi-billion dollar losses for the utilities. Raldikuk posted:What's really interesting is to read and listen to Andrew Fastow (Enron CFO that set up all the shells and took advantage of mark to market) talk about this period because he truly believed that what he was doing was legal. Mark to Market was legal, in the sense the government approved that approach. Their big problem was their basic business model (selling offsetting long term sell/buy contracts) is really risky, and they used off balance sheet corps to hide losses. That said, it's worth noting that it's the same basic business model that forms the basis of all banks.
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Oct 24, 2018 22:14
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Smiling Demon posted:That doesn't strictly follow, although it would be a decent indicator. Many of the batteries we use daily are optimized for mobility. For grid level systems you can use things that would be otherwise prohibitive, eg liquid metal batteries that are both heavy and hot. But as I said, last I looked into it no significant progress had been made. Li-Ion is way too good technology to use for grid storage, but the R&D and manufacturing resources available for Li-Ion are vastly superior to what other battery technologies could dream of achieving. They may not reach Li-Ion pricing until the demand increases enough for Li-Ion prices to rise significantly and the battery prices to plateau. Even then Li-Ion will have the advantage of recycled batteries from scrapped cars or that have been replace because they aren't quite good enough for car use anymore. Those would probably still have lot of life left in stationary use. For example the football stadium of Ajax in Amsterdam utilises new and used Nissan Leaf batteries for storage. Second life LEAF batteries to power Amsterdam ArenA
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Oct 25, 2018 01:24
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Saukkis posted:Li-Ion is way too good technology to use for grid storage, but the R&D and manufacturing resources available for Li-Ion are vastly superior to what other battery technologies could dream of achieving. They may not reach Li-Ion pricing until the demand increases enough for Li-Ion prices to rise significantly and the battery prices to plateau. I think with Tesla's factory we'll soon have better energy density per dollar than lead-acid. Don't forget that lead-acid has 5%+ self discharge per month compared to li-ion's basically nothing, and li-ion has many more cycles and years of use with way less degradation. I believe as it stands, the cells Tesla are making are the most economical grid storage technology. On a smaller scale, $5000 worth of Tesla power wall can run my server room for 10 hours in an outage while $5000 worth of traditional SLA battery UPS units can manage roughly 40 minutes.
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Oct 25, 2018 02:03
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What's holding back lithium-sulfur? That was supposed to be the new hotness a few years ago.
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Oct 25, 2018 02:24
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Orvin posted:It’s pretty easy to see why the Tesla battery farm is working out. The emergency power rates of $14,000 per MWh is criminal. Those are generators who know they are going to get called to generate only during select timeframes and can charge whatever they want. The article states that Tesla is cutting the costs in the area by 90%, which given some leeway on price averages could still be charging $500-$1000 per MWh. Those sky-high rates might only last for a few minutes at a time - Australia's pricing methodology sets a spot price for each five minute block. The theory goes that the price of spot power should be equal to the marginal cost of the most expensive plant on the system at the time. In an "emergency" where you manage demand by load shedding, you're effectively treating consumers not being supplied with power as offsetting the demand that they would have had. At this point, you therefore need an administered price of power that represents the "value" to the consumer that being supplied with that peak power would require. For the UK, this value has been £3,000/MWh, and will increase to £6,000/MWh next Thursday, based on the regulator commissioning a report on the value of lost load to retail customers, and then proceeding to pull some numbers out of their collective arses. The theory then goes that the free market will then proceed to capitalise on this ludicrous price of power, and invest in storage/peaking generation to prevent the lights going off, with suppliers paying a higher price for power to offset the risk that they'll have to pay a very high administered price if there is a shortfall.
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Oct 25, 2018 03:28
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RDevz posted:Those sky-high rates might only last for a few minutes at a time - Australia's pricing methodology sets a spot price for each five minute block. The theory goes that the price of spot power should be equal to the marginal cost of the most expensive plant on the system at the time. In an "emergency" where you manage demand by load shedding, you're effectively treating consumers not being supplied with power as offsetting the demand that they would have had. At this point, you therefore need an administered price of power that represents the "value" to the consumer that being supplied with that peak power would require. The US electric markets are similar, but I believe they have a different set of controls to account for emergencies. I don’t think there is a price cap to account for load shedding. When an emergency happens, the markets get disabled, and costs are settled after the fact. And there are some price throttles in effect, because when the load is ramping up faster than the online generation can pick up with their bid in ramp rate, the price spikes, but not to crazy amounts, just into the $100s for 5-10 minutes before settling back out. Also, even though these are “unregulated” markets, there is still some amount of regulation on how generators can set their price. They have to submit operating and fuel costs and are limited to how much higher than that that they can set their price. There are lots of spots on the US grid where generators are called on daily for voltage control or load management that are making good money, but not price gouging level of profits.
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Oct 25, 2018 03:57
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Phanatic posted:What's holding back lithium-sulfur? That was supposed to be the new hotness a few years ago. There are a million emerging battery technologies over the last two decades that all hit the news cycle and only 100% of them are pump-and-dump scams or exaggerations by university students that will never see the light of day. When it's in a box on a shelf, I'll believe it's a thing. If a battery truly exists better than the conventional lithium we have now, Apple will chuck a bajillion dollars to get it in the next iPhone. See also: lithium-air, gold nanowire, solid-state polymers, graphene supercapacitors, anything from EEstor, and so on
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Oct 25, 2018 05:25
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There's a beautiful synergy between scientists looking for funding and journalists needing to manufacture headlines that make any news article about emerging technology suspect by default. Stick to reputable science journals and dig into the numbers or follow someone you trust that does it for you.
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Oct 25, 2018 06:23
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Zero VGS posted:There are a million emerging battery technologies over the last two decades that all hit the news cycle and only 100% of them are pump-and-dump scams or exaggerations by university students that will never see the light of day. If graphene supercapacatiors even reach NiMH capacity, I'll goddamn strip naked and run down the streets screaming we solved the energy crisis. I mean, sure, they won't be for cars or for phones, but gently caress it, organized dirt is fundamentally the only thing I can think of to get electricity storage costs low enough to matter.
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Oct 25, 2018 13:49
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the more i think about it the more we're gonna dam the strait of gibraltar. one two punch of saving the worlds most important beachfront real estate while also creating the worlds largest battery.
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Oct 25, 2018 14:08
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Not unless we can make Roman concrete with modern mechanical properties.
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Oct 25, 2018 15:22
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The Dipshit posted:Not unless we can make Roman concrete with modern mechanical properties. You're aware the Romans didn't do anything special right? Modern formulas with the ability to accurately control the chemical components are much better.
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Oct 25, 2018 16:35
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fishmech posted:You're aware the Romans didn't do anything special right? Modern formulas with the ability to accurately control the chemical components are much better. Like I know we can make the same stuff with some modifications to fly ash, but we don't use it because all the neat parts of the mineralization in saltwater to heal small cracks doesn't have the same mechanical properties as the stuff we normally use. Fly away troll.
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Oct 25, 2018 16:46
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The Dipshit posted:Like I know we can make the same stuff with some modifications to fly ash, but we don't use it because all the neat parts of the mineralization in saltwater to heal small cracks doesn't have the same mechanical properties as the stuff we normally use. We don't use it because it's essentially coincidence that a small fraction of Roman concrete survived the millenia broham. Nice meltdown though.
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Oct 25, 2018 17:04
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One of the Koch brothers wants to Shut Down Tesla by Removing their Tax Cuts (TSLA)quote:The billionaire mega-donor Charles Koch, one of the two Koch brothers who are famous for helping conservative policymakers, has been lobbying against legislation that would benefit electric-car makers such as Tesla. How likely are these enemies of humanity able to pass such legislation through congress, pulling the plug on the electric vehicle industry? And how can that be stopped?
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Oct 27, 2018 21:21
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It's fair to say that electric vehicle tax credits primarily benefit the already-wealthy. The Kochs wouldn't genuinely try to get something shut down for that reason, but it is accurate. It would be better if we took all of the electric vehicle rebates and sunk them into other measures that combat climate change, like replacing a bunch of our coal power plant infrastructure with wind and solar. And while I have my magic wand out maybe we could pass some legislation requiring electricity companies to accept residential providers so we don't have any more situations where people put solar panels on their roof but basically can't use them without going off-grid e: And of course it would be even better to do all of the above while keeping the tax credits and just raising taxes on the mega-rich instead
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Oct 27, 2018 21:28
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just a pointless broke brain compulsion to frame things as opposing alternatives instead of parallel imperatives wind and solar solve the grid mix carbon problem but then you *need* ev's on top of that to solve the gasoline problem these things are not in opposition they are jointly necessary
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Oct 27, 2018 21:39
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StabbinHobo posted:just a pointless broke brain compulsion to frame things as opposing alternatives instead of parallel imperatives Oh I doubt that it's just a compulsion for Koch, this feels more deliberate
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Oct 27, 2018 21:41
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Sorry but from what I'm seeing, Heller's proposal abolishes all the electric vehicle tax incentives by 4 years from now, in exchange for lifting caps for 2019, 2020, and 2021? Isn't Heller's proposal massively against electric vehicles in the long term then?
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Oct 27, 2018 22:15
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Nope. In 4 years, all of the major manufacturers should hit WAY more than the 200,000 sold (where the current rebates start to phase out). The 2022 plan would likely be great for all of the majors, and the planet , but less good for smaller manufacturers.
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Oct 28, 2018 00:03
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Grouchio posted:One of the Koch brothers wants to Shut Down Tesla by Removing their Tax Cuts (TSLA) Don't the Kochs make millions in legal tax scams from constantly shuttling aluminium/stainless steel from one warehouse to another by forklift?
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Oct 28, 2018 03:54
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Megillah Gorilla posted:
That was one of the investment banks. The Kochs run mostly petrochemical businesses. Oil, gas, pet coke, coal, plastics, manufacturing, I think they own some rail lines too.
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Oct 28, 2018 04:40
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It's pointless for the Koch bros to try to shut down the tax credits for Tesla: a) They're phasing out as we speak anyway b) People are gonna buy the gently caress out of Model 3's with or without the $7500 tax credit, it's a really good car
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Oct 28, 2018 11:17
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The Dipshit posted:If graphene supercapacatiors even reach NiMH capacity, I'll goddamn strip naked and run down the streets screaming we solved the energy crisis. I mean, sure, they won't be for cars or for phones, but gently caress it, organized dirt is fundamentally the only thing I can think of to get electricity storage costs low enough to matter. Arent samsung going graphene for the s10s battery? Surprise Giraffe fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 12:12
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BrandorKP posted:That was one of the investment banks. Thanks. It's so hard to keep all the evil oligarchs straight.
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Oct 28, 2018 13:01
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Zero VGS posted:Model 3's ... a really good car Must...not...derail...thread...
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Oct 28, 2018 14:08
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Zero VGS posted:It's pointless for the Koch bros to try to shut down the tax credits for Tesla: Hi-capacity plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt and Honda Clarity are killing it in quality and on price, they're going to threaten Tesla way more than anything else.
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Oct 28, 2018 18:46
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Infinite Karma posted:It's also worth knowing that the best rates you can get from most utilities (in CA, at least) are the EV rates for owners of an electric vehicle. I've always found out very funny how there's a group of people out there who'll happily praise the (unavailable under a good $50k, interior design on quality with a Lada) Model 3 as the only viable low cost electric car; yet they'll moan that the Chevy Volt's interior is a mid quality GM car and so it's surely worthless at $35k.
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Oct 28, 2018 18:52
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fishmech posted:I've always found out very funny how there's a group of people out there who'll happily praise the (unavailable under a good $50k, interior design on quality with a Lada) Model 3 as the only viable low cost electric car; yet they'll moan that the Chevy Volt's interior is a mid quality GM car and so it's surely worthless at $35k. I've been in a volt once, and while a bit cramped, it wasn't bad at all.
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Oct 28, 2018 19:18
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fishmech posted:I've always found out very funny how there's a group of people out there who'll happily praise the (unavailable under a good $50k, interior design on quality with a Lada) Model 3 as the only viable low cost electric car; yet they'll moan that the Chevy Volt's interior is a mid quality GM car and so it's surely worthless at $35k. The Chevy Volt is not a "real" electric car, it's closer to a plug-in hybrid Prius. The main problem is, internal combustion engine means about 8000 more parts that will break, and since it's not emissionless then us treehuggers don't want it. Pollution/maintenance anxiety trumps range anxiety. The Chevy Bolt with a B on the other hand, I've test driven and it is easily the most solid EV for the price on the market today... the interior is also pretty cheap like the M3 though. But no one is gonna touch it with a 10-foot pole because it has none of the appeal or potential of a Model 3, such as the adaptive cruise-control, lane-keeping, aerodynamics (Bolt brute-forces the range with a shitton of KWH on the battery). Model 3 gets you an actually incredible nation-wide fast-charging infrastructure, Chevy has also done gently caress-all to invest in anything like that, though putting a SAE Combo charge port on the Bolt is a start. Incidentally, if you want a nicer exterior than a Model 3, used Model S starts at $30 flat: https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/vehicledetails.xhtml?listingId=495119471 Surprise Giraffe posted:Arent samsung going graphene for the s10s battery? The clickbait speculation and the pipe-dreams Samsung is commenting on regarding the S10 are all frankly absurd... Samsung did a powerpoint presentation where they themselves suggested it was going to have sound conducted through the screen, fingerprint-though-screen, and a loving camera-though-screen (they turn off the OLED pixels and I guess it's transparent enough that the front-facing camera can take a picture through it). Put it this way, LG said they were ready to introduce flexible screens into their phones this year... this year being loving 2013: https://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/lg-to-release-flexible-oled-phone-this-year-1146897 If Samsung pulls off fingerprint/camera/sound through screen and a graphene battery, hell, if they manage even ONE of them in the production S10, I'll hail them as my new technology overlord and toss my Pixel in the toilet. Edit: Found an article that actually elaborated on the Graphene: https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/29/samsung-graphene-ball-battery-fast-charging/ quote:What's more, they hit energy densities of nearly 800 Wh/L, around the same as Li-ion batteries today used by Tesla (below) and others. So, it's just a lithium-ion battery, but they coat the cathode/anode in graphene to improve conductivity. It only gets the small phone prismatic batteries to perform like Tesla's cylindrical cells. I'd be interested to see if they can be used to improve capacity on Tesla's cells, but I doubt it, it seems like it's more about improving charge speed, and Tesla superchargers can't really go any faster than the already stupid-fast rates they have, the liquid-cooled charging cables become the limiting factor then I believe. Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 19:31
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Surprise Giraffe posted:Arent samsung going graphene for the s10s battery? I'm guessing it's a graphene cathode for a standard lithium battery instead of a graphite cathode. Still good, but it's still a battery with a limited number of charges and discharges. Like 1000-2000 before it degrades a bunch. A supercapacitor would be a bit different. Instead of one side graphene and the other lithium(carbonate?) It'd be graphene/graphene for both sides and an acids or a molten salt for the electrolyte. The big advantage is that a good supercapacitor can do north of 100,000 charges and discharges before it goes bad.
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Oct 28, 2018 19:36
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Bolt Volt whatever it's a confusing name convention. The point is the Model 3 is objective garbage and you conveniently presented yourself as the kind of moron who defends it. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 28, 2018 19:37
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Zero VGS posted:b) People are gonna buy the gently caress out of Model 3's with or without the $7500 tax credit, it's a really good car Sir this is the Energy Generation Megathread, the Hot Takes thread is over that way
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Oct 28, 2018 19:37
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fishmech posted:Bolt Volt whatever it's a confusing name convention. The point is the Model 3 is objective garbage and you conveniently presented yourself as the kind of moron who defends it. The point is 150,000 Volts have been sold in the whole 9 years of their existence. If only half of the people who've put down $1000 on the Model 3 actually buy it, then Volt has already been outsold. None of Tesla's millennial market cares about how 1-percenter the loving interior looks, they care about being able to drive around on the highway by tapping on an iPad: https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-navigate-autopilot Maybe ease up on the ad hominems; you post like you're going for a world record in probations. Crazycryodude posted:Sir this is the Energy Generation Megathread, the Hot Takes thread is over that way I was responding to a post about Koch's apparent attempts to stymie Tesla... don't know if you noticed but everyone in here plays a bit loose with the thread topic.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:18
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Zero VGS posted:The point is 150,000 Volts have been sold in the whole 9 years of their existence. If only half of the people who've put down $1000 on the Model 3 actually buy it, then Volt has already been outsold. None of Tesla's millennial market cares about how 1-percenter the loving interior looks, they care about being able to drive around on the highway by tapping on an iPad: https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-navigate-autopilot We have like at least 3 threads for Tesla chat, you should post this exact post in one of them.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:28
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