OT: Tesla's California Battery Storage

[Weatherlawyer]

Not me. So they finally sorted their non-returnables did they? Well done for them.

So who is their first customer? And will they be chargeable?

[charles]

because all the parallel paths are not equal. Either the path with the dud cell would get no charge or it would take all the charge - away from the good cells.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

0.08 GWh. Impressive, eh.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , newshound escribió:

You wouldn't have any neighbours, so it'd be a win-win.

[dennis]

How would that have any effect on the charger that is built in to the system? Look up balancing cells and then think about that being done for each set of cells. We are not talking about shoving a fixed voltage charger across all the cells here.

[Brian Gaff]

However, several things do come to mind here. 1 If they do not clean up the emissions from fossils, then the rest of the world will have their guts for garters, also on the other tack, has anyone made any calculations of the emissions made in making and eventually recycling these batteries? What is needed is a clean fuel which has no overheads. Renewable as we know is often only there when nobody wants it, hence the battery idea, but Hydrogen is supposedly the most abundant gas in the universe and that makes whater when oxygen is added.

Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

Do you really believe that, Brian? The rest of the world is only interested in getting money from the US for 'polluting' the world, whereas in fact they do a worse job.

No one who knows anything at all beklievs taht man made climate change is even a theta at all, let alone a serious one.

Its all games of moral posturing that's all, for sound reason of power and money.

Its called uranium.

Unfortunately that would simply deplete our oxygen, even if we could get at the hydrogen, which sadly is not in native form on this planet

[dennis]

Not the od hydrogen is a clean fuel argument again!

Where do we get hydrogen from as a gas to burn?

Answer, we put in energy to extract it from somewhere, like electricity into water, extract it from oil, etc. None of these is going to be no overheads and make hydrogen one of the biggest polluters the greens have ever come up with.

[Caecilius]

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but not on earth because earth's gravity is not strong enough to hold on to it. So elemental hydrogen is quite rare on earth. When we do find hydrogen, it's in compounds like water, where the energy required to extract the hydrogen would exceed the energy obtained by burning it.

[whisky-dave]

and they don't recharge the battries they've used of course.

[whisky-dave]

Gold hasn't got any cheaper due to 'mass' production niethe rhas other precious metals that are getting harder to find. But I don;t know what world staocks of lithuim are like now or in 10 years time.

But maybe we'll run out of copper wire to connect them all up first ;-)

[Chris Hogg]

According to Matt Ridley, who has a fairly jaundiced view of renewables and on this blog of batteries in particular, we're not going to run out of lithium, but where he gets his information from, he doesn't say

and scroll down about two-thirds.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I calculated there certainly wasn't enough known existing reserves to give even everyone in this country an electric car with a 100kWh battery, but 'known existing reserves' is a moveable feast.

There's about 15 million tonnes of known reserves.

Each car needs about 1/4 tonne, so that's 60 million cars....

there are more cars than that in the UK...

[Chris Hogg]

But even though they give the capacity (80MWh or 0.08GWh as you say) they don't say anything about how long that battery will run for before it goes flat, i.e. what sort of demand they expect to place on it, nor do they say how much it cost*, nor how long it'll be before it needs replacing. They do suggest that its based on Tesla Powerpacks, which are larger versions of Tesla's Powerwall, the domestic battery. There's a critical review of Powerwall here

*although the 'further reading' link-out in the little blue battery image near the top says "When fully charged, this system will hold enough energy to power more than 2,500 households for a day or charge 1,000 Tesla vehicles? and "a 2MW Powerpack system costs about $2.9 million" which suggests around $30 for a 20MW plant. 2,500 households doesn't sound that many, given it's California!

[harry]

Electric cars typically have a 20KWh battery. Hybrids much less. So you calculations are wrong

[Tim Streater]

Assuming that Winky is reliable on this, there are some 230 billion tons of it in the world's oceans. Easy enough to find out.

However, supply of lithium is but one of the issues related to batteries. Others are location and security of battery banks, maintenance, connection to other infrastructure, operational control, etc.

[tim...]

but that irrelevant if the energy used to "split" the water is free and unlimited

tim

[dennis]

That doesn't really stack up against the 3kg of lithium carbonate/kWhr figure in common use.

[Caecilius]

OK, so hydrogen is then an energy storage or transportation method rather than an energy production method. But yes, I can see how hydrogen could be useful in this situation. But I don't know how it compares with electrical storage methods.

As an amusing aside, an Indian restaurant down the road from me closed down a while ago. Some people found a free and unlimited source of energy (well, limited by the 100A fuse I guess) in the basement, but they chose cannabis instead of hydrogen for their energy storage method.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

this is the sort of snake oil we're used to from the proponents of renewable energy, whether it be wind, solar, tidal, or millions of hamsters pedalling their little furry guts out.

$30 for a 20MW plant? Cheap at the price.

:)

On a slightly related tangent, California is agitating to secede from the US and form its own state (state as in country) a la Catalunya, Scotland, etc. A law suit has been enacted. This should be entertaining to watch.