Tesla

I hope he crashes sooner rather than later. Like before too much is wasted on his "solar city" plant here in Buffalo. The Sunday paper (Buffalo News) had an article (mostly) praising his battery storage... $3k for 10kWhr. (inverter not included)

How does that make any sense at all? $3k for a few dollars worth of juice.

George H.

On Mon, 10 Aug 2015 13:11:47 -0700 (PDT), George Herold Gave us:

Look at the prices of replacement battery packs for electric bikes.

If it lets you *store* the surplus power you've generated on site -- instead of selling it to the utility for "storage in the grid" for a reduced rate (AND having to PAY for that privilege) -- then you can continue to run your ACbrrr after hours (instead of having to repurchase the energy that you sold the utility "earlier that day" at a HIGHER rate).

[E.g., if you could recover even $1 of "lost opportunity" each day and repeat that 365 days/year, $3K doesn't take long to pay for itself! Given that it is often 90+ degrees, here, at MIDNIGHT -- long after the Sun has set -- it's easy to see how a few KWHr can be consumed "after dark"]

The silliness is all the heavy metals, etc. that you *know* will end up in someone's "back yard" from the manufacturing! Ooops!

Sorry, the point is that 10 kWHr is so little electricity that it would take well over 100 years to pay for the capital investment. Not practical by anyone's book.

I don't see how this one product means the company will never be profitable. I expect there is a plan to achieve profitability in some 5 or 10 years.

--

Rick

sure, ac in the evening, hot water in the morning

but there is something else wrong with the math, google says electricity is ~$0.15 in California: $3000/(10KWh*0.15$/KWh) ~= 2000 cycles

I think it would be optimistic to hope for 1000 cycles before the battery is scrap

yeh, rare earth metals aren't rare, you just have to go through a lot of other stuff to get it, but I'm sure there will be system for recycling

-Lasse

This months bill shows our marginal cost per *delivered* KWHr to be ~$0.1242 (of that, more than 2/3 is "delivery charges"; said another way, the utility will not *pay* you $0.1242 for each KWHr that *you* dump into the grid.)

So, if you could recover (i.e., not *sell*) 10KWHr of generated power each day, you've recovered $1.24/day or $452/yr. At $3K, that's a payback of less than 7 years.

Which California are you talking about? One of my customer in San Francisco is paying 0.22 to 0.26. So, running a server costs more than $50 a month in electricity. We might need to move it to your California.

Which California are you talking about? One of my customer in San Francisco is paying 0.22 to 0.26. So, running a server costs more than $50 a month in electricity. We might need to move it to your California.

It's not quite that simple. There has been a move by utilities to charge solar customers "extra" for the "privilege" of having The Grid available as a backup supply (as well as a storage device).

The fact that the utilities are scrambling to get new tariffs into place suggests they'd much rather build power plants (and pass the costs on to their customers) than let their *customers* make those investments (and reap those rewards?).

The local utility will contract with you to install solar on YOUR property (taking any tax incentives for themselves but leaving you with the maintenance issues -- try putting a new roof on your residence when it's covered with collectors!).

I'd be tickled to have ~300KWHr trimmed off my monthly bill! I think the utilities expect most sites to easily generate 150KWHr of surplus per month (you contract with them in 150KWHr blocks)

That assumes a battery has no recoverable value. How long do batteries in electric vehicles last? E.g., I think Toyota warrants theirs for

8 years (so, Toyota is content to take the "8 year risk")

The problem is that of contaminants from their manufacture, etc. And, the fact that the supply isn't limitless if everyone is using them!

Need a better way to store that power...

[Frankly, I'm more concerned with *water* than electricity]

Your numbers do not count the price you *would* get if you sold it back to the utility. No, it won't include distribution charges, but it will be enough to be worth counting and makes the payback longer.

--

Rick

I just used google found some EIA website, average electricity price residential may 2015

-Lasse

Why would you want to host a server in CA at all if the electricity is a significant portion of the cost? An aluminum smelting plant moved from Maryland to Canada because the electric company was not going to continue the large discount on electricity they were getting. Why not locate the server in Nevada where the electricity can be obtained from the sun or in the Appalachian mountains where you can generate cheap electricity from the local coal or frackin' natural gas?

--

Rick

Yes, it's just a temporary location. We will probably move it to Las Vegas and power it off Hover Dam. But the people who control the budget are here in SF; so, we have to show them stuff here first. Production server would definitely be somewhere else.

and electricity price isn't everything

Apple is building a big datacenter in Denmark, parts of electricity cost will be offset by selling heat recovered from cooling the servers to the district heating system

The local cement factory does the same thing

-Lasse

IMHO Musk is building a lifeboat for Tesla with those stationary battery storage units for solar panels. It makes a lot of sense because most people are not at home during the day and need the electricity in the early morning and evening.

And that's not the reason they are building in Denmark. They cut a deal with the danish tax office, AFAIR they only have to pay 2% corporate tax

Cheers

Klaus

afaiu 2% is what Apple pays in Ireland,

I'm not sure they have any special tax deal with Denmark, a datacenter used only by Apple doesn't directly make any money it is just expense so one could argue they shouldn't pay tax at all

They may have some special deal regarding regarding the rules on heat made with electricity

-Lasse

It makes sense to come up with other markets for a component (battery) that is a *huge* portion of your *other* product line (cars)!

But, the business realities in the solar market make it even more effective. E.g., if a solar site can disconnect TOTALLY from the grid, that's probably worth an additional $50/month:

- the "solar surcharge" ($5-$20/month) for the privilege of using the grid

- state sales taxes ($12 this month)

- city sales tax ($4)

- city utility tax ($4)

- city franchise fee ($4)

- "clean energy" surcharge ($4)

- customer charge ($10)

And, that's in addition to the "per KWHr" *losses* you incur for each KWHr you cogenerate but can't use "on site".

[I.e., $65 of this month's bill represented "cost of electricity". The other $150 are taxes, delivery charges, charges for the privilege of being a customer, etc. If you can "cut the cord", at $150/month, it doesn't take long at all to pay for all sorts of equipment! The *battery* lets you cut the cord -- otherwise, you're still tethered to "The System" and whatever the regulators want to impose on you. $2K/year buys a lot of kit over a 10-20 year period -- in addition to the $1K of electricity you're using!]

On Mon, 10 Aug 2015 16:51:12 -0400, rickman Gave us:

snip

Except that now they have been hacked too.

The cars, that is.