Tesla quietly adding massive 100 megawatt battery to Texas' power grid

[RV_]

So first off, energy technological progress and backups are real, and a good thing. I know old folks afraid of failing that refuse to even try using computer, and that is their right. But all the rest of us won't stop using them. This isn't an argument. Change is inevitable. This move into battery storage in Texas is a battery farm like the one in Australia. It  is quietly being built. Why such a secret? 

I also learned this morning Space X is moving major operations to Texas. And even more amazing is that Musk himself is moving himself and much of his operations to build the Tesla Cyber truck to Texas! What is news is that he and much of his senior Space X and Tesla staff are moving there to live.

So for those interested here are excerpts from the article with the facts we know so far:

"Elon Musk is getting into the Texas power market, with previously unrevealed construction of a gigantic battery connected to an ailing electric grid that nearly collapsed last month. The move marks Tesla’s first major foray into the epicenter of the U.S. energy economy.

A Tesla subsidiary registered as Gambit Energy Storage is quietly building a more than 100 megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas, a town roughly 40 miles south of Houston. A battery that size could power about 20,000 homes on a hot summer day. Workers at the site kept equipment under cover and discouraged onlookers, but a Tesla logo could be seen on a worker’s hardhat, and public documents helped confirm the company’s role.

Property records on file with Brazoria County show Gambit shares the same address as a Tesla facility near the company’s auto plant in Fremont, California. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lists Gambit as a Tesla subsidiary. Executives from Tesla did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

As winter storms pummeled Texas in February and left millions without power for days, Musk took to Twitter to mock the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or Ercot, the nonprofit group that manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million customers. “Not earning that R,” he wrote. Musk, 49, recently moved to Texas, and his various companies are expanding operations in the state.

“I think long-term Tesla Energy will be roughly the same size as Tesla Automotive,” Musk said in July 2020. “The energy business is collectively bigger than the automotive business.”

The battery storage system being built by Tesla’s Gambit subsidiary is registered with Ercot. Warren Lasher, senior director of system planning at Ercot, said the project has a proposed commercial operation date of June 1. The site is adjacent to a Texas-New Mexico Power substation.

While Tesla is known for its sleek, battery-powered electric vehicles, it’s always been more than a car company: its official mission is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Utility-scale batteries are needed to store the electricity produced by wind and solar, but they can also become lucrative opportunities. By storing excess electricity when prices and demand are low, battery owners can sell it back to the grid when prices are high.

But the company’s product lineup already reaches beyond the home and into the electrical grid. The Tesla Powerpack and even larger Megapack were designed with utility customers in mind. Tesla’s battery project in South Australia, launched in 2017, is adjacent to a wind farm and can store surplus electricity generated on gusty nights for daytime demand. At 100 megawatts, it was the largest battery project in the world at its launch.Tesla has spent years expanding into residential energy technology.

Back in March 2015, Musk unveiled a home battery product, dubbed the Powerwall, with a splashy event at its design studio near Los Angeles. Scores of utility and energy executives attended. A year later Tesla acquired SolarCity, the solar-panel installer founded by Musk and his cousins. Musk then hawked a “solar roof” that has gone through several iterations without becoming a strong contender in the market.

While Tesla’s focus on energy often takes a back seat to the increasingly competitive business of manufacturing and selling electric cars, Musk and his executive team continue to highlight energy as a key part of their growth. “I think long-term Tesla Energy will be roughly the same size as Tesla Automotive,” Musk said during an earnings call in July 2020. “The energy business is collectively bigger than the automotive business.”

“Tesla’s energy storage business on a percentage basis is growing faster than their car business, and it’s only going to accelerate,” said Daniel Finn-Foley, head of energy storage at Wood MacKenzie Power and Renewables. “They are absolutely respected as a player, and they are competing aggressively on price.”

Tesla’s battery packs are connected to Southern California Edison’s Mira Loma substation, located east of Los Angeles. The 20 megawatt system, which has been online since December 2016, supports grid operation during peak hours and helps the utility make the most of its renewable resources. In the San Francisco Bay Area, PG&E Corp. and Tesla are constructing a 182.5 megawatt system at an electric substation in Moss Landing that should be operational by August.

Tesla Energy could represent up to 30% of the company’s total revenue by the 2030s, up from roughly 6% today, according to analyst Alexander Potter of Piper Sandler. His research has highlighted the potential for Autobidder, a software platform Tesla designed for utilities. Tesla Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn has described Autobidder as an “autonomous energy market participation system that does high-frequency trading.” Potter has a $1,200 price target on Tesla stock, the highest on Wall Street.

“Tesla’s energy storage business on a percentage basis is growing faster than their car business, and it’s only going to accelerate,” said Daniel Finn-Foley, head of energy storage at Wood MacKenzie Power and Renewables. “They are absolutely respected as a player, and they are competing aggressively on price.”

Musk’s empire has numerous branches in Texas, and with the billionaire’s recent relocation from California, the Lone Star state now appears set to become the center of his universe. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, is building and testing Starship, a new rocket and spacecraft designed to take humans to Mars, at a facility in Boca Chica on the southern tip of the Gulf Coast. Another rocket-testing facility is located in McGregor, near Waco.

SpaceX has posted engineering positions in Austin for a “new, state of the art manufacturing facility” for Starlink, a space-based high speed Internet service. Tesla is also building a new factory in East Austin for its forthcoming Cybertruck, an electric pickup. Gigafactory Texas, as the facility is known, will create 5,000 mid-level manufacturing jobs and is supposed to produce the first vehicles by the end of this year.

Musk’s focus on Texas comes as the dominant U.S. energy hub — with its abundant natural gas, oil, solar and wind resources — is being transformed by the surging growth of renewables. For more than a century the Texas grid has transported power from large plants to customers over miles of transmission lines. The recent storms have highlighted just how fragile that legacy system is in the era of climate change. With the build out of giant batteries like those made by Tesla’s Gambit project and others, the state’s power grid could be remade around distributed generation that may prove more resilient.

About 2,100 megawatts of battery storage and 37,000 megawatts of solar and wind are in advanced stages of connecting to Ercot’s grid. “It’s not only stunning but the financing is already in place,” Jigar Shah said on March 2, a day before the clean-energy pioneer was named as director of the U.S. Energy Department’s loan finance office.

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/now/tesla-quietly-adding-massive-100-133500908.html?bcmt=1

[agesilaus]

That's about 6 minutes output from a average sized nuke plant.

[hemsteadc]

Cool.  The stock has been struggling lately.  It should be a good long-term bet.

[mptjelgin]

I am confused about the units being used in this discussion.  The Megawatt rating on a powerplant is a continuous output, but a battery is being drawn down and runs out of power at a certain point. 

For instance, the Tesla Powerwall is rated at 5 kW max output, but has a capacity of 13.5 kWh.  So at 5 kW it is dead in 2 hours and 42 minutes. 

So this "100 Megawatt battery" can output 100 megawatts for 10 minutes, for 1 hour, for 1 day???

 

[Lou Schneider]

1 hour ago, mptjelgin said:

I am confused about the units being used in this discussion.  The Megawatt rating on a powerplant is a continuous output, but a battery is being drawn down and runs out of power at a certain point. 

For instance, the Tesla Powerwall is rated at 5 kW max output, but has a capacity of 13.5 kWh.  So at 5 kW it is dead in 2 hours and 42 minutes. 

So this "100 Megawatt battery" can output 100 megawatts for 10 minutes, for 1 hour, for 1 day???

 

It's not just here.  Such (deliberate?) confusion is rampant in the renewable power market.  As but one example, we RVers know the difference between a generator that can produce 1800 watts continuously compared to a 1800 watt battery-inverter setup that only lasts as long as it's battery.  Most people don't.

Take this "solar powered generator" for example.  It's typical of many such battery-inverter setups being touted as replacements for traditional fuel powered portable generators   It's rated at 1800 watts continuous power so at first glance it's an attractive alternative to a 1800 watt gasoline generator, right?   But unlike a real portable generator that can run 6-8 hours before needing to refuel (10,800 to 14,400 watt-hours) this "solar generator" only has 768 watt-hours of storage.  This fact is buried way down deep on the web page.  That's less than 30 minutes at it's rated output.  But wait, it comes with a solar panel to recharge the battery ... a single 100 watt panel.  So increase that runtime by 6% under full sunlight.

https://4patriots.com/products/patriot-power-generator-1800

Edited March 8, 2021 by Lou Schneider

[RV_]

So Lou why not explain it to him, instead of switching to another you say is an example.

[Lou Schneider]

2 minutes ago, RV_ said:

So Lou why not explain it to him, instead of switching to another you say is an example.

Explain it to who? 

[RV_]

Hey guys, read the post and the full long article or you are just not on topic. Some additional comments. When the grid is about to fail the old way was to fire up coal or Natural gas backup power production. The problem with that is that the cost is really high and it takes about ten minutes to bring it up. Then when the normal power plants are back up it is turned off. The Tesla battery systems are only to act like the UPS' we have under our computers. they a take a thousandth or so of a second to take over until we can shut down gracefully and wait for the power to come back up.

[mptjelgin]

3 hours ago, RV_ said:

Hey guys, read the post and the full long article or you are just not on topic. Some additional comments. When the grid is about to fail the old way was to fire up coal or Natural gas backup power production. The problem with that is that the cost is really high and it takes about ten minutes to bring it up. Then when the normal power plants are back up it is turned off. The Tesla battery systems are only to act like the UPS' we have under our computers. they a take a thousandth or so of a second to take over until we can shut down gracefully and wait for the power to come back up.

I DID read the entire article, and whether it is done deliberately or not, they are only discussing one aspect of the battery (maximum output) without discussing the other (how long it will last).  I have a large UPS on my computer, not because I need the max output, but rather because I want a lower output for a longer period of time. 

Presenting only max output without discussing length of time it can be utilized is only part of the story. 

[agesilaus]

Quote

Presenting only max output without discussing length of time it can be utilized is only part of the story

Texas used 730 TW, that is 430,000,000,000,000 Watt/hr per year. That is 48,000,000,000 watt/hr per day. Over 2,000,000,000 watt/hours every hour. No matter how you slice it 100 MW doesn't even make a tiny scratch in that.

It could probably supply Terlingua for awhile.

I saw an article where they calculated how much battery backup was needed for 10 days of power for the country of Germany would need, their answer 5 times the annual production of batteries worldwide. If the raw materials could be found.

The US used 4222 TW/hr Germany 622 GW/hr do the math.

[Dutch_12078]

It looks to me like the mega-battery is the modern version of the "pumped storage" concept. Both are drawn down as needed during peak times, and recharged during off -peak times. The mega-battery doesn't need the big hill and water source though...

[Pappy Yokum]

7 hours ago, agesilaus said:

That's about 6 minutes output from a average sized nuke plant.

 

.....and maybe 2-3 replies "accepted" by agesilly before *he* melts down!!

😉

 

 

[Danandfreda]

I worked at a coal fired power plant and it takes a lot more that ten minutes to fire one up if nothing goes wrong. The boiler has temps and times it has to go through as well as the turbine at different speeds. You don’t just flip the switch and it starts. Turning them off and on and changing loads on a turbine and a boiler are not good for it. They need to run not be shut off and brought back on over and over

[agesilaus]

50 minutes ago, Danandfreda said:

I worked at a coal fired power plant and it takes a lot more that ten minutes to fire one up if nothing goes wrong. The boiler has temps and times it has to go through as well as the turbine at different speeds. You don’t just flip the switch and it starts. Turning them off and on and changing loads on a turbine and a boiler are not good for it. They need to run not be shut off and brought back on over and over

That's for sure, unless it is in hot standby. Otherwise hours for a cold start.

[D&J]

Most don't realize that 100 MW when it comes power generation isn't all that much especially when your taking about batteries that can't generate their own power, but it would work to peak the line during times of high load giving a gas powered plant to come online because they will come online faster than coal steam plants. 

This whole deal in Texas exposes just what can happen to our national under heavy load and at this point in time solar and wind is not reliable enough to replace coal and gas plants. And with the big push for electric vehicles it will put even more strain on our electrical grid, electric vehicles are the future but it will take years to expand the grid to take the new demand they will bring, anyone thinking of buying one I suggest you calculate what the cost is to recharge one because it isn't free.

Denny

[Kirk W]

From Bloomberg, dateline March 8:

Tesla Is Plugging a Secret Mega-Battery Into the Texas Grid

[ms60ocb]

Battery plants have a purpose but limited application. They can shave the peak or be used quick take over of a matched size load for a short time to allow rapid start generation to come on line up to speed (typically 10-15 minutes) This is used in Alaska where often village can be easily isolated from the larger power source by a single power line.

It has has been a few years since I involved with generator/power source rating. Then most rating was based on the ability to generate for 4 continuous hours . If you had a 100 Mwatt plant it would be require to have a net generation of least 100 MwHours each hours or be de-rated to a practical number.

How much Energy (Mwhr) would the Tesla Battery plant put out continuously for 15 minute, one hour or 4 hours? Thus these are special application generators and difference rating apply

Going on, wind/solar generator, Man is not control of their output, Nature is. As a result the generation output was acknowledged until connected to the grid for X minutes (10?) and then only counted as X% (5-7) actual output. An Example would be a 100 MW wind farm generating 50 Mw per hour (50 Mwhr's) may be only be given 3 Mw towards their on line generator and the other 47 Mw would be have be spinning on other prime generators or backed up with quick start generation (Jet engine or the like of Tesla Battery Plant.)

The most secure Generation is where the Fuel is stored at the power plant. Nuclear is the most reliable in that category. Coal is next best but dealing with frozen coal can be a problem. Can Natural Gas supply be guaranteed, the utility I worked for had dual fuel Jet engines generators for backup and peaking, Quick start was always on oil as it was required, the gas company would have be called to increase the gas pressure and give the OK to continue generation with a cheaper fuel.

Weatherization is not the whole answer but having real generation to back-up the the lost of renewables is a must or lights out.

Clay having worked in both WSCC and MAIN regions.

 

 

[GlennWest]

I am glad to see this. I work in those plants and they tend to run them till they quit. Plants are not doing the normal maintenance needed. They go down and won't start back up till maintenance done. This will make a good backup

[jcussen]

Looks like a the 100 megawatt battery is actually 100 megawatt hours. So will empty in one hour at that rate, but for lesser draws, could last long enough to get some other power sources online. eg 250 megawatt hours for 4 hours. And if it has its own solar panel farm feed, even longer. Appears to be well worth it. 

https://www.cnet.com/news/worlds-biggest-solar-and-battery-storage-farm-coming-to-south-australia/

[RV_]

Kirk,

Great article/info, thanks.  Here's some more with profit figures and explanation of how that happens. This next article should clear up questions. And it is from 2018 about the 2015 installation of the then largest battery in the world.

"1st Year Income From @Tesla Battery In South Australia Equals ⅓ Of Its Cost

The Tesla Powerpack installation in South Australia is poised to generate enough income in its first year of operation to pay for one third of its cost. [Take] that, anti-renewable ideologues.

Lots of opponents of battery storage for electricity that has been generated by wind, solar, and other renewables like to focus on how much those systems cost. Take the Hornsdale battery installed by Tesla last year in South Australia. It cost $66 million, and to hear some folks in Australia tell it, that money will place a huge burden on local utility customers forever. They conveniently forget to mention that the battery is a source of income to Neoen, the French company that owns it and the adjacent wind farm.

Neoen is about to go public. Buried in the 400 page submission to authorities in advance of its IPO is information about just how much income that battery has generated so far and what it is expected to generate in the future.

According to The Guardian, Neoen will recover more than one third of the $66 million cost of the Hornsdale battery in its first year of operation. A return on investment of three years is remarkable and something that should make other utility companies sit up and take notice. The payback time for most of their generating plants and infrastructure is usually measured in decades, not a few years.

Lots of opponents of battery storage for electricity that has been generated by wind, solar, and other renewables like to focus on how much those systems cost. Take the Hornsdale battery installed by Tesla last year in South Australia. It cost $66 million, and to hear some folks in Australia tell it, that money will place a huge burden on local utility customers forever. They conveniently forget to mention that the battery is a source of income to Neoen, the French company that owns it and the adjacent wind farm.

Neoen is about to go public. Buried in the 400 page submission to authorities in advance of its IPO is information about just how much income that battery has generated so far and what it is expected to generate in the future.

According to The Guardian, Neoen will recover more than one third of the $66 million cost of the Hornsdale battery in its first year of operation. A return on investment of three years is remarkable and something that should make other utility companies sit up and take notice. The payback time for most of their generating plants and infrastructure is usually measured in decades, not a few years.

Neoen says the Hornsdale installation had $9 million in income from network services — mostly frequency stabilization — during the first 6 months of operation. Almost $2.5 million of that sum comes from a 10 year agreement with the South Australian government to provide reserve capacity to the local grid. Doubling that sum for the first 12 months of operation results in $18 million in income.

In addition, Neoen can expect to receive another $7.5 million in the first year from selling stored electricity back to the grid, bringing the total income for the year to more than $25 million. Neoen has not released figures about its operating expenses, but the numbers it has made public suggest the Hornsdale battery is more than paying for itself and will continue to do so for decades to come.

"Neoen hopes to use the proceeds from its IPO to increase its battery storage power capacity in Australia from 2 GW to 5 GW, according to The Guardian. Already, a 20MW battery installation is going forward as part of a 194MW wind farm at the Bulgana green power hub in Victoria, and Neoen has proposed building a 50MW storage facility near Kaban in Queensland. [Note: The Guardian is reporting all of these figures as gigawatts, not gigawatt-hours, so we presume they are referencing power capacity rather than energy capacity of these storage projects.]"

Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/27/1st-year-income-from-tesla-battery-in-south-australia-equals-⅓-of-its-cost/

Here is another myth buster. There was an uproar published by fossil fuel types who tried to make an issue of birds being killed by Wind Turbine blades. Those numbers are a drop in the bucket compared to the birds killed colliding with power lines. This excerpt is from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service migratory birds program:

"

Distribution poles are the most numerous component of the electrical system, and are spaced approximately 200 feet apart for an average of 26 poles/mile of line. There are an estimated 116 million to 185 million distribution poles in the U.S.

It is currently estimated that between 8 million and 57 million birds are killed in the United States annually from collisions with electric utility lines. Combined with bird impacts from electrocutions, bird mortalities resulting from electric utility lines have been a long-standing bird conservation issue. Electric utility infrastructure continues to increase; resolving conflicts between birds and power lines continues to be an important focus of bird conservation efforts both in the U.S. and around the globe.

Why does this happen?
Electric lines are obstructions typically placed within the range of average bird flight level and are difficult for birds to see. Birds can be injured or killed with they collide with electric lines in mid-flight. Electric lines are a particular risk in locations frequently traveled by birds and in areas where poor weather or darkness could further decrease visibility.

Although birds of all sizes and types collide with wires, their behavior and body type put them more at risk for line collisions. For instance, herons, egrets, raptors, and storks breed and roost in elevated areas such as trees and poles, which makes their daily exposure to these areas much higher than other ground roosting and nesting birds. In addition, herons, egrets, and storks, as well as many species of waterfowl and cranes, travel between breeding, feeding, and roosting sites in flocks.

All these behaviors increase the possibility of a bird’s exposure to electric lines. In fact, it was an incident involving collisions of Whooping Cranes with transmission lines in the 1980s that spurred important advances in the work being done to reduce bird collisions with electric utility lines."

Source:

https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/collisions/electric-utility-lines.php

 

[hemsteadc]

Nice uptick on the stock today.

[agesilaus]

How much did they pay for the electricity that went to charge the battery, and how much in government subsidies.

 

[RV_]

3 hours ago, ms60ocb said:

Battery plants have a purpose but limited application. They can shave the peak or be used quick take over of a matched size load for a short time to allow rapid start generation to come on line up to speed (typically 10-15 minutes) This is used in Alaska where often village can be easily isolated from the larger power source by a single power line.

The most secure Generation is where the Fuel is stored at the power plant. Nuclear is the most reliable in that category. Coal is next best but dealing with frozen coal can be a problem. Can Natural Gas supply be guaranteed, the utility I worked for had dual fuel Jet engines generators for backup and peaking, Quick start was always on oil as it was required, the gas company would have be called to increase the gas pressure and give the OK to continue generation with a cheaper fuel.

Weatherization is not the whole answer but having real generation to back-up the the lost of renewables is a must or lights out.

Clay

Hi Clay! It is good to see some hands on experience with fossil fuel and nuclear power production. I agree with all of the above except saying real generation, renewable energy isn't real power production?

You left out two very reliable, more so than others, methods of power production, no pollution from power generation, and uses the same types of generator units as many fossil plants. I have a great article that explains power generation to the uninformed and I learned some things about power losses and birds killed by power lines.

Excerpt:

"Hydro

While all these types of power plants are essentially thermal (generating and releasing heat to drive a steam or gas turbine), two other very common types don't use any heat whatsoever. Hydroelectric and pumped storage plants are designed to funnel vast amounts of water past enormous water turbines (think of them as very efficient water wheels), which drive generators directly. In a hydroelectric plant, a river is made to back up behind a huge concrete dam. The water can escape through a relatively small opening in the dam called a penstock and, as it does so, it makes one or more turbines spin around. For as long as the river flows, the turbines spin and the dam generates hydroelectric power. Although they produce no pollution or emissions, hydroelectric stations are very damaging in other ways: they degrade rivers by blocking their flow and they flood huge areas, forcing many people from their homes (the Three Gorges Dam in China displaced an estimated 1.2 million people).

Pumped storage generates electricity in a similar way to a hydroelectric plant, but shuttles the same water back and forth between a high-level lake and a lower one. At times of peak demand, the water is allowed to escape from the high lake to the lower one, generating electricity at a high price. When demand is lower, in the middle of the night, the water is pumped back up again from the low lake to the high one using low-rate electricity. So pumped storage is really a way of taking advantage of how electricity is worth more at some times than at others."

Source: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/powerplants.html

And you are talking centralized power production as opposed to distributed power production. If you have 10,000 houses in a small town and all have solar they can be utilized by the centralized power plants on a grid, but residential solar while increasing is still rare when taken overall. Distributed power production is also less susceptible to hacking. Oh sure one residential or small town renewables could be hacked but it would be much harder to hack a million distributed power plants however large or small. That is way oversimplified but eliminates the drawbacks of current power production.

Being noisy and smelly they are situated away from residential areas so require power lines over vast distances. With tremendous losses.

Excerpt:

"The magical science of power plants

A single large power plant can generate enough electricity (about 2 gigawatts, 2,000 megawatts, or 2,000,000,000 watts) to supply a couple of hundred thousand homes, and that's the same amount of power you could make with about 1000 large wind turbines working flat out. But the splendid science behind this amazing trick has less to do with the power plant than with the fuel it burns. The real magic isn't that power plants turn fuel into electricity: it's that even small amounts of fossil fuels contain large amounts of energy. A kilogram of coal or a liter of oil contains about 30MJ of energy—a massive amount, equivalent to a good few thousand 1.5-volt batteries! A power plant's job is to release this chemical energy as heat, use the heat to drive a spinning machine called a turbine, and then use the turbine to power a generator (electricity making machine). Power plants can make so much energy because they burn huge amounts of fuel—and every single bit of that fuel is packed full of power.

Unfortunately, most power plants are not very efficient: in a typical old plant running on coal, only about a third of the energy locked inside the fuel is converted to electricity and the rest is wasted. Newer designs, such as combined cycle power stations (which we'll explore in a minute) may be up to 50 percent efficient. As the chart here shows, even more electricity is squandered on the journey from the power plant to your home. Adding all the losses together, only about a fifth of the energy in the fuel is available as useful energy in your home.

Chart: Large, centralized fossil-fueled power plants are very inefficient, wasting about two thirds of the energy in the fuel. Here's a typical scenario: About 62 percent is lost in the plant itself as waste heat. A further 4 percent disappears in the power lines and transformers that carry electricity from a power plant to your home. Once the electricity has arrived, your home appliances waste a further 13 percent. All told, only 22 percent of the original energy in the fuel (green slice) turns into energy you can actually use. Source: Figures from "Decentralizing Power: An Energy Revolution for the 21st Century," Greenpeace, 2005."

Source:  https://www.explainthatstuff.com/powerplants.html

[RV_]

16 hours ago, D&J said:

Most don't realize that 100 MW when it comes power generation isn't all that much especially when your taking about batteries that can't generate their own power, but it would work to peak the line during times of high load giving a gas powered plant to come online because they will come online faster than coal steam plants. 

This whole deal in Texas exposes just what can happen to our national under heavy load and at this point in time solar and wind is not reliable enough to replace coal and gas plants.

Denny

Good points Denny. (The following is not just to you, but some basic links for beginner) However let's change that to "we don't have the storage perfected, nor enough distributed plants/storage for it now. See the Battery plants ARE distributed power in that they can be located in town! They make no noise at all. So no long power lines needed. I am not sure how residential solar plays into that distributed grid yet as I haven't worried about that, save to power our homes using a Tesla PowerWall battery which will power everything we need for the short term. Last I checked we could solarize our home easily for about $10k after incentives and it may be less later, with tech improvements, which I'm counting on in the next few years. See I am like Gary (Chalkie) - I get out of breath at this altitude. I started workouts and I'm giving it a year of working out on my Total gym in the basement. We moved here because we loved it from teaching at the AF Academy '78-81, and our grandkids were here. We hated the climate in the South. (It is getting hotter every year and humid as hell).

If I had acclimated already I would have put solar in a year ago despite the pandemic. The lack of outside activity shopping and eating out and cultural activities here and in Denver (awesome pre-pandemic) may be at fault and I haven't gotten anywhere near the exercise I need. My bad. We had a 25kw Natural Gas generator installed in Louisiana because of all the power outages there in our rural area until they replaced the relay station in our area. Our power lines were overhead so we had half as many outages. Here tha are underground. I do not need to run A/C with outages here even in summer. A solar/Powerwall system will run the house and the furnace for several days and the worst we have had three since coming here, a 15 minute, a half our, and an hour was the longest. Inconvenient not life threatening even in winter.

But I still want a solar/battery residential system because it can do all we need here except A/C for long periods which is not a necessity here like where we were. If we decide to sell and move it may just be Bogota Colombia. My parents moved there when I was five and six and I had to go to school K and 1st grade in Spanish which I'd never spoken before. They start a year earlier than we do. https://en.climate-data.org/south-america/colombia/bogota/bogota-5115/ I expect it to warm up some too, as it is chilly to just warm enough year-round. Being on the equator in the Andes mountains the sun is very strong. But I will have to do that year of workouts and weight loss before I can go there. We are at from 6000 to 6500 feet here in the Springs.

About Bogotá’s High Altitude

Bogotá’s altitude is 8,675 feet (2,644 meters) above sea level and is one of the highest in South America." 

It is ideal for solar and the humidity there is delightful at 60-69 degrees Fahrenheit. But if I can't adapt here it is ruled out. I like high humidity at those temps. It is like a day in Florida at those temps. The perfect spring or fall day. Bogota's altitude

Also my skin is very dry here and itchy. There are place in the US at lower altitudes at great prices so if I can't adapt enough here, then altitude, especially higher is out.

I walk the walk like buying a Tesla for the fun of it. (And it is!) So I'm starting to research places to move to before we get too old to do the unpacking and mods we always do to houses we did not have built ourselves or built for our building customers. We have more than a few good years left barring accident/sudden health issues.

[RV_]

3 hours ago, hemsteadc said:

Nice uptick on the stock today.

Yeah man! It gained $110.58 per share to $673 last I checked. That after losing ~ $300 in the last month or two. I just need it to stay at >$700 because that is exactly double my investment. I am also hearing rumors that Musk may be doing another stock split in the next year or so.