$1B Solar and Battery Storage Project Breaks Ground in Utah
electrek.co
electrek.co
As I understand it, battery storage isn't cheaper than just base load generation (nuclear, combined cycle). However, it sounds like natural gas peaker plants are significantly more expensive. Can that be quantified? ~80% more, or more than $.03kwh difference? Are the levelized costs of battery storage, including financing, now less than this? Are incentives a part of it?
I'm guessing the solar aspect plays into this as well, as a large plant like that likely produces at times when prices are relatively cheap. It'd be really to see it all quantified.
My only alternative is to try and reduce my use of the grid, which also means going solar.
I think there's more to it than that, though. TX has seen tremendous growth in renewables, and grid pricing is excellent there from the prices that I've seen.
Kansas and Iowa are 40-60% wind and have lower prices than the national average: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
For example requiring every new house to have enough rooftop solar.
Rooftop solar is one of the highest cost sources and we already have an excess of daytime solar.
It ignores basic economies of scale.
It adds a huge cost to every new house in a housing crisis.
I don't think it is cynical to think it was simply a handout to the rooftop solar installers.
The main advantage of rooftop solar panels is that the land can be used for both power and housing. Agrivoltaics and parking lot/garage rooftop solar are other examples of dual-use solar.
Rooftop Solar + batteries (correctly done) is a geographically dispersed virtual power plant. There are almost no regulatory hurdles for installation and expansion. RTS is more resilient. One node goes down, and the rest keeps running.
Economies of scale in solar only benefit utility companies. Utility-scale solar is more vulnerable to damage, and outages affect a larger area. Current utility-scale solar installations are too big and should be distributed among each community.
I think the crux of it is your point that Economies of scale in solar only benefit utility companies. I largely agree with that and think the other issues flow from this.
It doesnt matter if my power company is buying large scale solar for $0.03/kwh, they will figure out a way to charge me $0.50.
In California, power companies are not in competition, and the government sets price controls based on a ~10% corporate profit margin. Naturally, the power company drives their opex costs as high as possible every year.
The system is so broken, it is hard to see a way out. I want to try to mitigate costs by rooftop production, but the state is shifting costs from use to grid hookup fees. Hell, there has even been proposals for taxing residential rooftop production.
Having unmanaged power generation and usage is okay as long as large generators (and storage) are watching real-time prices and respond appropriately. This means that rooftop solar depends on utility-scale generation to offset it.
Maybe that could be changed, but we aren’t anywhere near ready, and nobody is planning on it.
Is there another way? A mini-grid has the ability to “island,” which allows it to run when the grid is down. It seems promising in countries with frequent power outages.
Also, homes with battery power (and optionally solar) can go off-grid for a while, which is attractive in rural areas.
You also see this with utility-scale solar, where the power consumed from the solar flat tops being the access is dumped. I take the position that if your solar array is constrained during the day, you need more batteries.
Vermont has a virtual power plant where solar panels are installed on residential housing, batteries are supplied, and the virtual power plant is managed. As far as I know, they have eliminated the need for a gas peaker. Tesla does the same thing as Sunrun.
As I often say, your objections are engineering problems that can be solved. :-) If you want to go further down this rabbit hole, check out https://www.youtube.com/@WillProwse. There is lots of good information, good testing, and a willingness to trigger circuit breakers at the 100amp+ range or let out magic smoke.
In some of his best videos, he cuts open battery packs for various manufacturers and evaluates manufacturing, sensor placement, BEM, and hot and cold temperature protection issues.
One thing we did not discuss is the need to have everyone connected to the grid contribute to the maintenance of the grid. I've lived in communities with municipal electric companies, and they generally have more reliable infrastructure and cheaper power than the big boys like National Grid and EverSource. Done right, we could use Agravoltaic to help secure the financial footing of local farms and improve many aspects of farming, including soil moisture retention, better yields, etc. With goats and sheep livestock, you don't need to mow, and you get a nicer local lamb source than you would get it by shipping it here from New Zealand.
Everything is a matter of engineering, but it’s also a matter of cost, who pays to build or upgrade the infrastructure, and what cheaper alternatives there might be. From what I remember reading about Vermont, it was less expensive to add battery backups controlled by the power company than to upgrade the grid in rural areas.
The combination of solar and wind and battery storage needs to be cheaper, and it is. The CSIRO, who factored in all costs on both sides, found that it's about 50% of the price of new nuclear in Australia. This conclusion may vary in places with less sun or an existing nuclear industry with a track record of building cheap plants quickly.
Note also that a nuclear grid will also need battery storage because demand itself is variable. Unless you overbuild nuclear and run at a low capacity factor, but that carries with it its own additional costs.
There are links provided there that may answer your questions in more detail.
[1] https://www.vox.com/climate/372852/solar-power-energy-growth...
So 4 hours worth of storage is apparently enough to make this sort of thing work.
This supports my theory that Elon has become a right wing warrior in order to gain credibility and political capital in right wing states, allowing him to obtain massive contracts for electricity storage (and production, too?). And I think it's worked extremely well. 5+ years ago Tesla was a California, tech-weenie company, and that in itself is gonna keep a lot of doors closed in red states.
In fact, a project more than 10 times this big was just announced in California.
https://www.intersectpower.com/tesla-provides-intersect-powe...
That’s probably the main reason, but it’s just got to be especially grating when that decision is couched in patriotic language, and your company is making cars that are much more “Made in America” than any of your competitors.
ETA: As I recall, Tesla had used up its $7500 credits from previous legislation (prior to the IRA) because they had sold so many cars. The new legislation restored the full $7500 and was basically a gift to Tesla in that sense. Turning this into a victim story for Tesla really does not make sense.
I was referring to the period when there was a piecemeal credit amount based on a few factors, one of which, iirc, was having final assembly conducted in a unionized factory.
They have of course been massive beneficiaries of federal subsidies, including a massive boost early on from the DOE Loan Programs Office, this isn’t to say they’ve been a victim overall, but it seems there’s been an attitude shift, and the legacy carmakers are getting more love from the current admin despite contributing only token efforts to the transition.
Tesla is facing securities and wire fraud charges by the DOJ and SEC over their FSD claims.
He would be looking at jail time given his previous run-ins with the SEC.
Trump can make all of that go away.
"Would he be facing those charges presently if he was the no. 1 public voice of democrat orthodoxy?"
Maybe he would.
Maybe we all suffer from Gell-Mann amnesia knowing how corrupt it all is when we turn the page and get concerned about maybe the tribe you dislike more will get power, which they always will in a 2 party system.
I don't care for Elon or his politics.
I am convinced that entrenched and accepted corruption is the biggest threat to continuing to have a democracy. Right there exists a cross-partisan rage that someone will tap and ride to power. Let's hope they're not genuinely evil.