Tesla Austin

Creating jobs and helping with things that orhers can't or won't.
Elon is whack but he gets things done.
Austin made a smart move to bring in Tesla.
The Great State of Texas is lucky to have him.
 
Many people think that Mexico is a cheap place to do business. Simply put it is not. First as we all know the government is increadibly corrupt and very unstable. A company may make a deal and in a few years a new political party comes in and renigs on all the contracts. Mexico has socialized medicine and companies must pay for for it. While salaries may be low, companies must deal with unions and these are just as if not more corrupt. The base ad valorem tax is 16% that means EVERYTHING is taxed at that rate including all utilities. Crime plays a significant part too Mexico is a very insecure placeon top af governmental corruption you get organized extortion that makes the Italian mafia look like the boy scouts. I could go on and on about this subject but I dont want to get political, I was born in Mexico, I lived there in the 70 and 80's and from 2014 until 2019. Ive worked there and have done business there, but I will tell it is not a good place to do business. Yes some companies have done well there but I can gurantee that they have paid for it dearly.
What you say may very well be true however, then how do you explain all the companies moving down there and after that first plant.....adding more. Doesn't add up that having plants in Mexico is not a win for the corporations that have done it.
 
Car factories require huge amounts of electricity to run, so it's not surprising that the infrastructure poor Mexican state of Jalisco can't come up with an extra 400 MW of power in the short term.
I do agree w/ your comment. Mexico's electrical grid needs to improved a lot!
 
In addition to the aforementioned Tesla storage facility …
Wartsila is to supply two major storage facilities in Texas - Madero and Ignacio



They REALLY need to stop calling these batteries "huge" and "giant" when they are a fraction of the output of the smallest operating nuclear units, which are considered small, though I expect nothing less from the likes of "Reneweconomy" and "Cleantechnica".

The latter project there, 1 hour (complete discharge) of 200MW would have done what exactly to prevent the blackouts? NOTHING! They lost a 1,200MW nuclear unit for a stint and even that was almost negligible.

I have a strong suspicion that these storage projects are pitched as solutions to politicians who have absolutely zero understanding as to the system being discussed and the scale of resources required.

Just a quick example:
Screen Shot 2021-02-21 at 10.09.49 AM.jpg


That's wind failing to meet projections by almost 10,000MW. Tell me what a 200MW battery that can fart into the grid for less than an hour is going to do to help with that?
 
C’mon man … back in 2019 this was the coming savior 😳


In all fairness … companies can experiment in Texas … win or lose - here there is hope it was not red tape that killed those who failed. I’d be glad to see batteries advance to backup wind or solar and therefore give nuke and GTG a more steady state role in the biggaWatts theater of operations … You certainly don‘t want things that are so vital - perceived as necessary evils. We have to have that debate and you can here and now. No better time.
But … why not have a large scale yet short duration UPS (panic buffer)* … and I don’t have bigger aspirations than that in the near term … Dynamically positioned ships do have UPS long enough to verify the widespread protection was not needed - ie; one of many phase modules went on the blink and remains isolated while others are quickly returned to service.
*gas supply infrastructure got dumped in the panic … Is that a battery customer ?

Anyway, if certain large experiments fail … I’m hoping we level the playing field to give South Texas Project “stimulus money” to do that 3 and 4 upgrades with money that would have gone to another repeat failure …
 
Going to Mexico is not so bad as going to China. The USA is one nation, indivisible, I wonder when we will get back to that. CA or TX it is in the USA. Isn't the Fremont plant still open? So where is the "moving to Texas?" Isn't it expanding to Texas? What's wrong with that? Same country. Maybe the Fremont plant is closing yet again, I don't know. It has closed and opened so many times already.
 
What you say may very well be true however, then how do you explain all the companies moving down there and after that first plant.....adding more. Doesn't add up that having plants in Mexico is not a win for the corporations that have done it.

Of course its a win for them, they get to undercut the wages and healthcare costs they would normally pay American workers, the fees, taxes, and EPA rules they would pay in California, while enjoying the ability to reimport the product thanks to the benefit of NAFTA.

California is one of the worst places in country to run a manufacturing business.

As for China if you want to sell there you pretty much have to manufacture there - thats more about capturing the market than dodging fees.
 
They REALLY need to stop calling these batteries "huge" and "giant" when they are a fraction of the output of the smallest operating nuclear units, which are considered small, though I expect nothing less from the likes of "Reneweconomy" and "Cleantechnica".

The latter project there, 1 hour (complete discharge) of 200MW would have done what exactly to prevent the blackouts? NOTHING! They lost a 1,200MW nuclear unit for a stint and even that was almost negligible.

I have a strong suspicion that these storage projects are pitched as solutions to politicians who have absolutely zero understanding as to the system being discussed and the scale of resources required.

Just a quick example:
View attachment 50355

That's wind failing to meet projections by almost 10,000MW. Tell me what a 200MW battery that can fart into the grid for less than an hour is going to do to help with that?

It seems to me with the short duration these are like a large UPS. Of course if they only feed a select group of essential services … they could last a bit longer.

 
It seems to me with the short duration these are like a large UPS. Of course if they only feed a select group of essential services … they could last a bit longer.



There was a discussion with Shannow some time back about the Tesla battery system that was installed in Australia. It fell along the same lines.
 
It seems to me with the short duration these are like a large UPS. Of course if they only feed a select group of essential services … they could last a bit longer.


Yes, but unfortunately that's not how they are being pitched. They are sold as being "grid scale storage" to firm wind and solar, which they are clearly incapable of doing. All they'll do is ease the strain of aggressively having to ramp gas capacity and snipe FCAS, which is what Hornsdale in Oz does, despite the renewable pluggers in SA claiming that it does far more than that.

Your likening of it to a UPS is solid. My UPS is used to keep my computer on for a stint and, if I'm not home, will gracefully shut it down. A 200MW battery could provide that same capability to a municipality that suddenly lost its grid link or had a sudden loss of sun or wind while gas is ramped up to replace that capacity. Perhaps acting as backup power supply for things like gas pumps might be a more prudent use, given the scale otherwise required to fill for wind/solar at true grid levels of capacity.
 
Yes, but unfortunately that's not how they are being pitched. They are sold as being "grid scale storage" to firm wind and solar, which they are clearly incapable of doing. All they'll do is ease the strain of aggressively having to ramp gas capacity and snipe FCAS, which is what Hornsdale in Oz does, despite the renewable pluggers in SA claiming that it does far more than that.

Your likening of it to a UPS is solid. My UPS is used to keep my computer on for a stint and, if I'm not home, will gracefully shut it down. A 200MW battery could provide that same capability to a municipality that suddenly lost its grid link or had a sudden loss of sun or wind while gas is ramped up to replace that capacity. Perhaps acting as backup power supply for things like gas pumps might be a more prudent use, given the scale otherwise required to fill for wind/solar at true grid levels of capacity.
Exactly … I can see niche applications in the hands of electrical engineers …
(and out of the filthy hands we can’t talk about here 😷)
 
There was a discussion with Shannow some time back about the Tesla battery system that was installed in Australia. It fell along the same lines.

The reality of the "big Tesla battery" is that it primarily fills for a lack of inertia, caused by the elimination of "big spinny things" which I mentioned in my thread on powergen. This is a response to a side effect caused by high levels of wind/solar, which is a lack of stability; increased grid fragility.

These two pics show it well. This is what the renewable pluggers would have you believe happened when a large ~550MW generator tripped:
55574D88-3DE0-4C99-9A55-0E7FAB96AF88_1_105_c.jpeg


Here is what actually happened:
1866D756-A22C-483D-ADA4-F9645045E27F_1_105_c.jpeg


Why, when the "Tesla Big Battery" is "150MW" did it hit the trip at less than 50MW? Wellllllll that's where the details matter ;)

Hornsdale is split into two sections, the original split (which was all the capacity that was online at the time of this trip) was 70MW @ 10 minutes for FCAS and 30MW for load management (arbitrage, ~3hrs worth, to buy when power prices are super cheap and sell back when the prices peak). The battery popped in for a couple of minutes to provide some FCAS augmentation while the reserve capacity that actually took up the 550MW ramped up.

What would have happened if the battery wasn't there? Nothing. But it made for a great sound bite!
 
Article about the Tesla Mega Battery in Australia.


The article really says a whole lot of nothing unfortunately. As I noted, the reason for the battery is because of the increasing fragility of the SA grid due to high penetrations of wind and solar, which provide little to no inertia. The battery provides synthetic inertia to help smooth things out. If the big interconnect to the mainland trips and it isn't windy, SA is going black again, the battery in no way is going to prevent that from happening.
 
The Open NEM site is better than ElectricityMap for SA data, since SA solar isn't showing up on ElectricityMap now, and hasn't been for a while:

Screen Shot 2021-03-22 at 1.56.23 PM.png


You can see the battery sniping at the peaks (discharging) when prices peak and you can see that it is gas and imports that fill for wind and solar. If that import link goes down and there isn't sufficient gas, things are collapsing in a hurry, battery or not.
 
The article really says a whole lot of nothing unfortunately. As I noted, the reason for the battery is because of the increasing fragility of the SA grid due to high penetrations of wind and solar, which provide little to no inertia. The battery provides synthetic inertia to help smooth things out. If the big interconnect to the mainland trips and it isn't windy, SA is going black again, the battery in no way is going to prevent that from happening.


Perhaps but it was pushed as a solution to the power issues they have down there.

Quotes from the article:

"This is history in the making," South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said on Friday.
The battery would prevent a repeat of a notorious incident last year where the entire state lost power, Mr Weatherill said.”

But, a couple of paragraphs later, the truth emerges:


“When fully charged, the battery can power up to 30,000 homes for an hour. However, it will mostly be used to support and stabilise existing electricity supplies.”
 
Perhaps but it was pushed as a solution to the power issues they have down there.

Quotes from the article:

"This is history in the making," South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said on Friday.
The battery would prevent a repeat of a notorious incident last year where the entire state lost power, Mr Weatherill said.”

But, a couple of paragraphs later, the truth emerges:


“When fully charged, the battery can power up to 30,000 homes for an hour. However, it will mostly be used to support and stabilise existing electricity supplies.”

Exactly my point. It was pitched as being one thing, but in reality is quite another. Seems to be the case for all of these "storage" projects unfortunately.
 
Giga Austin might be ahead of Giga Berlin.
I hear it is going that well. We will probably see production in Q4.

@4WD have you put down your reservation for the SEMI?
 
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