Hawaii: Another Large Tesla Powerpack Build
March 9th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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One of my off grid solar power customers just had her system installed yesterday. She and her husband built their small home 16 years ago and dreamed of someday having a solar power system. (It would cost about $100,000 to bring grid power to the remote location.) Her husband died a few years back, so it was an emotional moment for her when we brought her system online.
She had been getting electricity with a generator all of these years. Needless to say, she’d had enough of the generator.
I was yammering with the electrician in technical lingo for an hour and she peaked in, looking a bit concerned. She’d been hearing a steady stream of volts, amps, watts, hertz, MPPTs, kilowatt hours, milliseconds, depth of discharge, blah blah…
“Do I need to know all of that stuff you guys are talking about?”
The electrician smiled and said, “Here’s all you need to know, Betty” and then he flipped a light switch and the lights came on in the room.
She smiled and brought her hands up to her face, almost in shock, “And there’s no generator noise!”
She was dropping hints from the start that she really didn’t want to deal with the generator anymore. When I designed the system, I suggested doubling the size of the AGM bank that we normally supply, as this would really minimize generator on time. For her use, which I calculated very carefully, she can run without sun for three days without having to worry about the generator. In real conditions, my guess is that it would take four or five days of heavy rain, with no daytime clearing, before the generator would be needed.
I asked the guy who installed the system (and believe me, this dude is the Delta Force of off grid installers in NZ) if he thought she’d need the genny. He said that I did the calculations right and that he doubts that the genny will ever be necessary, assuming the daily energy consumption I observed. We hooked up her generator to the charge controller and tested it out. It worked great and it’s there if she needs it.
I tell the story because the same idea applies, whether you’re dealing with a granny in the remote hills of New Zealand, or a power grid in Hawaii, or anywhere else. Do you want to minimize the use of gas or diesel generators or peaker plants when using power from intermittent sources like solar and wind?
Add batteries.
Via: Electrek:
Tesla recently brought online its massive Powerpack 2 project with Kaua?i Island Utility Cooperative in Hawaii and held an event today to inaugurate the facility.
We are talking about a 52 MWh Tesla Powerpack installation (272 units) with a 13 MW solar farm (~55,000 solar panels) built by SolarCity. The system will help the Island of Kauai get more out of its solar power and retire more diesel generators.
Tesla CTO JB Straubel was present for the inauguration today with KIUC President and CEO, David Bissell, Governor of Hawaii, David Ige, and the Mayor of Kauai, Bernard Carvalho.
KIUC serves just over 30,000 customers on the remote island and it already has significant solar power capacity, but they have to run diesel generators when the sun is not shining.
They can run 100% on renewables for short periods of times under the best conditions in mid-day if demand is low, but the new Tesla Powerpacks will enable them to achieve 100% renewables more frequently.
