New Tesla Battery 100MW

https://arstechnica.com/science/202...uilding-a-giant-100-mw-battery-in-texas/

Hmm. The 100 Mw rating is only part of the story. The more pertinent figure is the capacity, something similar to the ampere/hour rating on a car battery. The Australian version is 129MWh and acts just like any other battery. One Mw for 129 hours or 100 Mw for 1.29 hours. People have to realize this is not a power plant that can generate power indefinitely. It will be interesting to see how the Texas version pans out.

If it's anything like the battery in Australia, it will both save customers money, and make a boatload of money.

For smaller-ish batteries, a good chunk of what they do is in the FCAS market. Very important, and not many people know it exists. Time-shifting and/or price arbitrage is another function.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/...-reduced-grid-service-cost-by-90-percent
https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-b...elivers-stunning-windfall-profits-77644/

So everybody's making money.....what have the consumer's rates fallen by?

Retail electricity rates are a weird thing. Kinda like gas prices, quick to rise, and slow to fall.

In South Australia, it looks like initially the price savings were offset by the increases in the natural gas costs after they opened an export terminal, and their NG prices went up a few hundred percent. Right now though, SA has among the lowest wholesale electricity prices in Australia, thanks to renewables.

But anyways, batteries are very good at what they can do, grid stabilization and time-shifting. Another huge one just started operation in California. For an hour this evening, (all) batteries in CA output 240MW (for the entire hour).

https://www.powermag.com/vistra-energizes-massive-1-2-gwh-battery-system-at-california-gas-plant/

Edit: retail prices have been trending down in Australia https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/defau...ice%20Trends%20report%20-%2015122020.pdf