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Tesla South Australia

Hornsdale Power Reserve saves $8.9m in 6months

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Hornsdale Power Reserve – also known as the Tesla South Australia battery, the 129MWh solar/energy storage battery has saved the state $8.9m in six months, according to Renew Economy and their analysis of spot market pricing in 2018.

Hornsdale Power Reserve

Hornsdale Power Reserve
Hornsdale Power Reserve (source: hornsdalepowereserve.com.au)

The cost of the Hornsdale Power Reserve hasn’t been made public, but at ~$800 per installed kWh the cost comes out to around $100m (with around $50m paid by the government), which fits the whispers we’re hearing around the traps.

The partnership between Tesla and South Australia was inked in July last year as Elon Musk and then-Premier Jay Weatherill decided on Neoen’s Hornsdale wind farm as an installation spot. The Tesla Battery was then completed on November 24, ahead of its December 1 operation deadline (Musk made a bet with Weatherill/South Australia that Tesla would install the Powerpack batteries by December 1 or the project would be free).

According to an analysis undertaken by RenewEconomy and investigated further by Clean Technica, The battery saved $5.7m in its second quarter of operation. It bought power at an average price of $79/MWh and sells it at $191/MWh (a figure somewhat distorted by a very power-hungry January – with that month removed the price goes down to $141/MWh). The estimated savings for the full 2018 are expected to be around $18m. 

It’s important to note that the battery is still trading 30MW (of its total 100MW) of capacity so there is space to expand operations should the government be so inclined. 

If you’d like to read a more detailed account of how much money the Hornsdale Power Reserve has saved South Australia in 2018 click here to read Stephen Parker and Bruce Mountain of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre investigate the economics of energy generation/storage.

If you’d like to see more stats on how the HPR is going, price-wise – there’s a rolling 72 hour graph of each battery charge/discharge with spot price data available via this link.

 

 

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SA Tesla Battery Plan – Election Fallout

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The future of the SA Tesla Battery plan brokered between Elon Musk’s Tesla and Jay Weatherill’s is on unstable footing after the results of Saturday’s state election in South Australia, seeing Weatherill’s party defeated by the Liberals. But will it make much of a difference? How will the new party serve SA’s rapidly growing renewable energy industry?

SA Tesla Battery Plan
SA Tesla Battery Plan Future? Jay Weatherill and Elon Musk in happier times (source: SA Labor Facebook)

SA Tesla Battery Plan – What Now?

The incumbent Labor party, headed up by Jay Weatherill, lost to the Liberal party on Saturday night after 16 years of rule in South Australia. The new premier is Steven Marshall who seems quite keen on continuing the Labor party’s work on growing renewable energy in the state.

ABC Radio National Breakfast’s Fran Kelly asked Marshall about the plan to equip housing trust properties with Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries, and Mr Marshall said: “That’s not part of our agenda. Our agenda is 40,000 homes.” However, when pressed about the specifics at a later date, Marshall was a (little) more clear on the Liberals’ plans:

“We don’t know where that is but any contracts the [previous] government’s entered into — we’ll be honouring them, there’s no doubt about that. Any other items that they flagged during the election, we’re happy to look at it but we’ve got our own energy policy agenda and we’ll be rolling that out as a priority.”

We wrote earlier this year about the South Australian solar loan program which both parties had different versions of a renewable energy push for the state – Labor were offering $100m for solar loans in South Australia. Up to 10,000 South Australian homeowners could access up to $10,000 for loans for solar panels, batteries, or both – with the loans interest free for the first 7  years. There was talk of the solar batteries offered in this scheme to be 100% manufactured by Tesla. 

In contrast Steve Marshall’s Liberals had the same amount of expenditure – on a bigger scale, with a smaller amount per household – their $100m plan was to provide grants of $2,500 per household for 40,000 dwellings. Mr Marshall argued at the time that 10,000 households was not enough to ‘shift the dial’, speaking about the rapidly increasing cost of electricity. The Liberals haven’t mentioned Tesla specifically and Marshall doesn’t have the same close relationship as Weatherill had with the enigmatic Elon Musk – but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Marshall is clearly keen to move forwards on renewable energy and whether he chooses Tesla or one of the Powerwall 2 alternatives as their energy storage battery of choice may not matter so much.

We’ll keep a close eye on how the Marshall government moves forwards with the SA renewable energy initiatives and keep reporting in! 

 

 

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Victoria solar feed in tariffs to vary based on time.

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Victoria solar feed in tariffs – the state’s Essential Services Commission has this week released the details of a brand new feed in tariff (FiT) which changes depending on the hour of the day. It will be introduced to Victoria on July 1. Whilst not compulsory to begin with due to their complicated nature, the tariffs will likely be enforced in 2019/20.

Victoria solar feed in tariffs overview

Victoria solar feed in tariffs - Essential Services Commission
Victoria solar feed in tariffs – Essential Services Commission (source: esc.vic.gov.au)

Changing from a flat FiT to one that is more in life with electricity demand makes sense given that a major problem for solar energy is dealing with supplying power in peak times and during heatwaves. Previously solar feed-in tariffs were calculated on a flat basis, and, although they’ve been raised recently, it’s been neglecting the idea that offering more money for people to feed power back into the grid via a ‘virtual power station’ is likely to help mitigate periods where electricity is unavailable or at a ridiculously high price. 

The idea of a ‘virtual power plant‘ is something being worked at via a supplier level (The AGL Virtual Power Plant‘), a state level (ACT’s Next Generation Energy Storage Program) and a combination of the two (Tesla’s virtual power plant in South Australia). This marks the first time they’ve tried to do this via varying FiTs, however., 

According to RenewEconomy, the regulations will require retailers pay a minimum of 29c per kWh for those who exporting power between 3pm and 9pm, a minimum rate of 10.3c per kWh those feeding power back into the grid between 7am and 3pm, and a minimum rate of 7.1c/kWh (which is actually less than the current price of 7.2c) for those exporting energy during off-peak hours – during 10pm and 7am. So, if people want, for 2018 they can pay an alternative flat rate of 9.9c/kWh, down 1.3c/kWh from the previous flat rate. 

The ESC said that the lower cost for the flat rate from modelling from ACIL Allen. This modelling showed that the “any-time price”of electricity has fallen, but the evening peak price is now higher, and that the constant addition of solar connections will lead to even lower day time prices.

 

 

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Tesla Battery in SA Earns $1m in a few days.

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The Tesla Battery in SA has earned an estimated $1m in the last few days due to warm temperatures and a very volatile electricity market. Since being announced in July of last year and completed in November, the battery has already withstood a test last December when the Loy Yang Power Station (sector A3) tripped and went offline – the battery was able to send 100MW to the grid in 140ms, despite being almost 1000km away. It’s now proving its value again during a hot Australian summer where it was paid up to $1000/MWh to charge itself last week, according to Electrek and RenewEconomy.

Tesla Battery in SA Earnings

Tesla Battery in SA Earns $1m in a few days
Tesla Battery in SA Earns $1m in a few days (source: reneweconomy.com.au)

The 100MW/129MWh Tesla Powerpack system installed in South Australia (which is known to the grid as the Hornsdale Power Reserve) was built by Tesla and is operated by Neoen -who have access to about 30MW/90MWh of the battery’s capacity to trade on the wholesale market. The South Australian government have access to the remaining electricity to help stabilise the grid. 

As we saw with its 140ms response time, the Powerpack is able to offer energy to the wholesale market a lot faster than its rivals – allowing Neoen to profit from the large swings in energy prices in Australia (which become even more intense when we have a heatwave or there’s an outage at any of our major plants). 

Elektrek are reporting that during certain peak periods, Neoen were able to sell energy at up to $14,000 per MWh, according to forecasts from RenewEconomy on the 23rd. 

A couple of weeks ago Tesla was chosen to build another Powerpack battery in Bulgana, and the company fronted by the charismatic Elon Musk is also working in conjunction with Neoen to bid for even larger battery projects – so hopefully the good results the battery in SA has been delivering will bode well for the future. 

 

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Loy Yang Power Station & Tesla’s Battery

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South Australia’s Tesla solar battery was put to the test yesterday and it performed admirably – delivering its full 100MW of power to the grid in 140 milliseconds as the Loy Yang Power station tripped and went offline late last week. 

According to Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis, the battery, which has only been live for less than a month, tripped 140ms after the Loy Yang A3 went offline. This resulted in an immediate loss of 560MW and the Tesla battery (also known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve), reacted immediately, despite being almost 1000km away. 

The AFR quoted Koutsantonis via an interview on 5AA radio last Wednesday: 

“That’s a record and the national operators were shocked at how quickly and efficiently the battery was able to deliver this type of energy into the market,” Mr Koutsantonis said. 

He also noted the rapid speed in comparison to the existing emergency generators:

“Now if we got a call to turn on our emergency generators it would take us 10 to 15 minutes to get them fired up and operating which is a record time compared to other generators,” 

Loy Yang Power Station

Loy Yang Power Station
Loy Yang Power Station (source:tripadvisor.com.au)

With the closure of the 1600MW Hazelwood dirty coal power station earlier this year, the Loy Yang Power station in Traralgon has been doing some heavy lifting. 

Technically it’s split into to sections, Loy Yang A and Loy Yang B. If you count them as one station it’s the largest power station in Australia, generating over 3000MW of power.

Loy Yang A was bought by AGL Energy in 2012, and Loy Yang B was sold by Engie and Mitsui to Alinta for $1 billion last month. 

It’s a base load supply station and produces about a third of Victoria’s energy requirements. 

As such the 100MW the Tesla was able to provide is a drop in the bucket if there was to be a major issue affecting the whole station, but it’s a step in the right direction and amazing to see how well the solution works in a ‘real-world’ situation.

Bring on another 500MW of lithium-ion baseload power! 

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