Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, report says

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by fencepost on Thursday December 06, 2018 @03:00PM (#18621554)

I don't have any specific wear numbers, but a system like this is going to be designed for maximum lifespan not for limited cases where you want every possible drop of energy that can be put into or out of the battery. I suspect that the cells are never charged above about 75-80% of capacity and probably are never discharged below 20-30% of capacity. Avoiding both extremes should greatly extend the number of available cycles from hundreds to thousands or more.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by Someone on Thursday December 06, 2018 @04:57PM (#18622708)

”but a system like this is going to be designed for maximum lifespan”

I don’t know what this system was designed for, but a product that costs $66M and saves $40M in its first year need not be designed for a long lifespan.

It seems scrapping this after 3 years still would net you a nice profit margin.

So, depending on how much designing for a long lifespan costs, that may be a thing of the past.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by blattimwind on Thursday December 06, 2018 @08:03PM (#18624195)

> It seems scrapping this after 3 years still would net you a nice profit margin.

110% eco.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by Tharkun on Friday December 07, 2018 @10:19AM (#18628329)

AFAIK these things can be recycled with relative ease. I wonder at which point it would make sense to include a small battery recycling plant with large installations like this. "Cell XYZ is damaged, remove, replace and recycle"

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by ksec on Thursday December 06, 2018 @03:41PM (#18621987)

But even 1000 cycles... assuming 0.5 cycles per day gives you ~6 years life span? Sounds a little too low.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by manicdee on Thursday December 06, 2018 @08:30PM (#18624347)

3000 cycles “lifespan” but most of the degradation happens in the first couple of years with the rate of degradation about 3% a year, capacity still remains and the product will still have significant capacity in 20 years.

As opposed to say a synchronous converter which requires annual downtime and continual replacement of parts, and (being limited by inertia) can’t provide the same stability and support that a battery can.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by Retric on Thursday December 06, 2018 @05:01PM (#18622755)

The payback period is ~18 months so lasting less than 10 years is mostly irrelevant.

On top of that these systems are still useful well below their original capacity, so they can rather than a sudden huge bill you simply add more capacity as the original battery’s degrade in a fairly predictable fashion. Over time you end up with a much smaller annual investment than your saving every year.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by agumonkey on Thursday December 06, 2018 @05:11PM (#18622844)

payback is not the goal though, it's about avoiding sucking earth resources

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by tankenmate on Thursday December 06, 2018 @05:21PM (#18622952)

You can always recycle the batteries and use it to create new batteries.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by adrianN on Friday December 07, 2018 @12:34AM (#18625388)

Recycling uses resources too.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by Retric on Friday December 07, 2018 @04:05AM (#18626118)

But grid batteries directly save resources, in this case money saved is a good proxy for less resources used.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by dsfyu404ed on Friday December 07, 2018 @08:13AM (#18627357)

Payback is a prerequisite to people to actually buying your less earth sucking technology so while it might not be the end goal it's a goal nonetheless.

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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by agumonkey on Thursday December 06, 2018 @03:43PM (#18622019)

yeah indeed

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