Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

Martyn1981

michaels said:

But as the analyst at MHS Ltd I would point out to the boss that come November the battery store will be empty and the market will spike to 150 so any energy we can purchase at less than 40 and store will make us profit in the end

Nope. Whilst longer term storage will expect to 'turn over' less often than batteries, it still can't be built until both profit and cycling rates will be high enough to cover CAPEX and OPEX. A full cycle once a year won't be enough, nor twice a year, and so on. So H2 with large initial CAPEX (batts can be modular) can be expected when large and consistent excess above and beyond batts and other short term storage is regularly higher than the breakeven point for said H2 rollout.

Also, don't get misled, buying at less than £40 and selling at more than £100 is nowhere near profitable for a 30% efficient cycle. As I set out, it will need a far, far greater margin, to cover all fixed and variable costs, ideally purchase prices closer to zero. Let's say the purchase cost is £10/MWh and the sale price £150/MWh, then the gross profit for H2 would be £35/MWh, and that probably wouldn't cover costs. Perhaps buy at zero and sell at £200, then that would generate £60/MWh (gross) which might provide a net profit ...... I don't know.
But most days intra-day storage will prevent prices going to such extremes, so less opportunities to cycle each year, less cycles, less profits.

Martyn1981

Solarchaser said:

As the future CEO of SBBS enterprises,  I concur. 

Side note , I laughed out loud.

I think.. and I may be wrong, that Joe is looking at Hydrogen as a replacement for natural gas rather than leccy, and so his view is gas may be needed when leccy isn't.

And so i guess if you had 75% leccy storage full, but only 5% gas, then from a customer comfort point of view, you would divert leccy to making Hydrogen rather than fill the last 25% of leccy.

But that's just my guess.
I'd certainly never view them on parity personally 

Glad you enjoyed it, I was in a silly mood. And yes I think he's also trying to inject an element of gas replacement, but, back to that profit issue, whilst efficiencies will be better, could even be 80% for leccy to H2, the value of that H2 is now down towards FF gas prices (not leccy prices).
Sorry to waffle on so much about prices and profits, but obviously without income/profits these storage solutions won't roll out, so we have to look at them realistically.
H2 will be a great source of large capacity long term storage, but it will naturally expand behind short term storage, which is not a negative, just 'purely logical' as you so succinctly put it.

Edit - Another turd in the punchbowl for H2 is V2G. This will allow companies to make a profit on batt storage without incurring any CAPEX costs, just a 'fair and reasonable' payment/deal to the BEV owner. This should allow profitable arbitrage at lower differentials, it may even include buying the leccy at high prices (during peaks) from BEV owners, given they will be able to sell it instantly at even higher prices when the market is peaking.

ABrass

Here at ABPG (ABrass Power and Gas) we have reviewed the plans from MHS limited and have found them wanting. The amount of storage we expect to see on the grid will cover daily fluctuations from solar, allowing time shifting and smoothing the traditional peak power prices to a much slower changing model based on current RE generation rate.

ABPG is planning to build our own dedicated resources for Electricity generation to split hydrogen. We've worked out that we can split it, store it and sell it for industrial and off season power generation and make a profit. As a bonus we also know that we can turn off our splitters and sell the power at £80 a MWH, turning even more profit and undercutting SBBS when supply is low. As the hardware to split hydrogen is cheap but the bottling and storage Infrastructure is a significant investment we'll be over building our splitters and buy up cheap excess wind from the grid overnight and during sunny summers days.

ABPG: Powering the future today.

Martyn1981

ABrass said:

Here at ABPG (ABrass Power and Gas) we have reviewed the plans from MHS limited and have found them wanting. The amount of storage we expect to see on the grid will cover daily fluctuations from solar, allowing time shifting and smoothing the traditional peak power prices to a much slower changing model based on current RE generation rate.

ABPG is planning to build our own dedicated resources for Electricity generation to split hydrogen. We've worked out that we can split it, store it and sell it for industrial and off season power generation and make a profit. As a bonus we also know that we can turn off our splitters and sell the power at £80 a MWH, turning even more profit and undercutting SBBS when supply is low. As the hardware to split hydrogen is cheap but the bottling and storage Infrastructure is a significant investment we'll be over building our splitters and buy up cheap excess wind from the grid overnight and during sunny summers days.

ABPG: Powering the future today.

Why is everyone picking on MHS, even my lenders are pulling out now claiming everyone else has a better model.

It also doesn't help that RE is getting so cheap, that excess/spill/waste might actually be cheaper than larger/longer term storage (as posted recently on the G&E Energy thread):

Overbuilding solar at up to 4 times peak load yields a least-cost all-renewables grid

The global energy firm Wartsila found a least-cost renewables mix for the U.S. that involves overbuilding renewable capacity, but requires no seasonal storage, and needs only four to ten days of multi-day storage capacity. The analysis modeled meeting current uses of electricity, based on projected technology costs for 2030.

So not only does the cost of longer term storage need to fall, but it needs to fall faster than the cost of RE generation. Though to be fair that's a race where we all win, regardless of which technology succeeds.   

PS Is it just me, or has the thanks button disappeared? Just don't want anyone to think I'm being rude.

Solarchaser

I think Mr Brass is correct, and a diverged portfolio may be the best of both worlds.

And fair point Martyn, I hadn't attributed sale price to the Hydrogen as gas conversion, making the Hydrogen even more costly /less profitable. 

Yep thanks button gone for me too, i thought I had a login issue until you mentioned it

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

ABrass said:

Here at ABPG (ABrass Power and Gas) we have reviewed the plans from MHS limited and have found them wanting. The amount of storage we expect to see on the grid will cover daily fluctuations from solar, allowing time shifting and smoothing the traditional peak power prices to a much slower changing model based on current RE generation rate.

ABPG is planning to build our own dedicated resources for Electricity generation to split hydrogen. We've worked out that we can split it, store it and sell it for industrial and off season power generation and make a profit. As a bonus we also know that we can turn off our splitters and sell the power at £80 a MWH, turning even more profit and undercutting SBBS when supply is low. As the hardware to split hydrogen is cheap but the bottling and storage Infrastructure is a significant investment we'll be over building our splitters and buy up cheap excess wind from the grid overnight and during sunny summers days.

ABPG: Powering the future today.

Why is everyone picking on MHS, even my lenders are pulling out now claiming everyone else has a better model.

It also doesn't help that RE is getting so cheap, that excess/spill/waste might actually be cheaper than larger/longer term storage (as posted recently on the G&E Energy thread):

Overbuilding solar at up to 4 times peak load yields a least-cost all-renewables grid

The global energy firm Wartsila found a least-cost renewables mix for the U.S. that involves overbuilding renewable capacity, but requires no seasonal storage, and needs only four to ten days of multi-day storage capacity. The analysis modeled meeting current uses of electricity, based on projected technology costs for 2030.

So not only does the cost of longer term storage need to fall, but it needs to fall faster than the cost of RE generation. Though to be fair that's a race where we all win, regardless of which technology succeeds.   

PS Is it just me, or has the thanks button disappeared? Just don't want anyone to think I'm being rude.

So this may make sense because as mentioned, intra-day storage may 'eat its own lunch', the more it smooths out daily pricing variation the less profit there is in intraday arbitrage.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

michaels said:

But as the analyst at MHS Ltd I would point out to the boss that come November the battery store will be empty and the market will spike to 150 so any energy we can purchase at less than 40 and store will make us profit in the end

Nope. Whilst longer term storage will expect to 'turn over' less often than batteries, it still can't be built until both profit and cycling rates will be high enough to cover CAPEX and OPEX. A full cycle once a year won't be enough, nor twice a year, and so on. So H2 with large initial CAPEX (batts can be modular) can be expected when large and consistent excess above and beyond batts and other short term storage is regularly higher than the breakeven point for said H2 rollout.

Also, don't get misled, buying at less than £40 and selling at more than £100 is nowhere near profitable for a 30% efficient cycle. As I set out, it will need a far, far greater margin, to cover all fixed and variable costs, ideally purchase prices closer to zero. Let's say the purchase cost is £10/MWh and the sale price £150/MWh, then the gross profit for H2 would be £35/MWh, and that probably wouldn't cover costs. Perhaps buy at zero and sell at £200, then that would generate £60/MWh (gross) which might provide a net profit ...... I don't know.
But most days intra-day storage will prevent prices going to such extremes, so less opportunities to cycle each year, less cycles, less profits.

A good point, well made, the overall cost per cycle will depend on the number of cycles for a fixed capital investment which makes inter-season storage potentially very expensive.  I'm not sure how even a massive overbuild of wind and solar can solve this issue, the problem being we need 100% reliability of supply not just 99.95% and not to worry about that tail case of an unusually long foggy spell one November.

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

michaels said:

But as the analyst at MHS Ltd I would point out to the boss that come November the battery store will be empty and the market will spike to 150 so any energy we can purchase at less than 40 and store will make us profit in the end

Nope. Whilst longer term storage will expect to 'turn over' less often than batteries, it still can't be built until both profit and cycling rates will be high enough to cover CAPEX and OPEX. A full cycle once a year won't be enough, nor twice a year, and so on. So H2 with large initial CAPEX (batts can be modular) can be expected when large and consistent excess above and beyond batts and other short term storage is regularly higher than the breakeven point for said H2 rollout.

Also, don't get misled, buying at less than £40 and selling at more than £100 is nowhere near profitable for a 30% efficient cycle. As I set out, it will need a far, far greater margin, to cover all fixed and variable costs, ideally purchase prices closer to zero. Let's say the purchase cost is £10/MWh and the sale price £150/MWh, then the gross profit for H2 would be £35/MWh, and that probably wouldn't cover costs. Perhaps buy at zero and sell at £200, then that would generate £60/MWh (gross) which might provide a net profit ...... I don't know.
But most days intra-day storage will prevent prices going to such extremes, so less opportunities to cycle each year, less cycles, less profits.

A good point, well made, the overall cost per cycle will depend on the number of cycles for a fixed capital investment which makes inter-season storage potentially very expensive.  I'm not sure how even a massive overbuild of wind and solar can solve this issue, the problem being we need 100% reliability of supply not just 99.95% and not to worry about that tail case of an unusually long foggy spell one November.

I think you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction. We don't need to build nor launch a 100% RE based reliable grid, instead we 'only' have to convert what we have over time. So we will see a steady reduction in gas, and a steady rise in RE. That means we can learn as we go, there is no risk to reliability of supply as that already exists.

With massive oversupply, if that's the route we go down (though of course a mix of overcapacity, short term storage and almost certainly some longer term storage is a truer reality) then some years we will have 100%+ supply 100% of the time, and other years it will dip below a bit on a number of occasions. So we can still fall back on gas, perhaps FF gas, perhaps bio-gas (maybe methane from RE H2 + captured CO2) or others, but we'll then need to net off those emissions, which will be tricky, but with an annual overproduction of RE leccy, at least we'll have the energy to power/run solutions such as direct air CCS, or RE powered vehicles and processing for a bio-mass powerstation with BECCS. In fact, rather than gas, perhaps we will build up sustainable volumes of bio-mass for use when generation is just too low.

Loads of solutions, loads of potential, and ever more viable as costs fall and economics shift in favour of RE.

zeupater

ABrass said:

It'll be interesting to see if Xpeng can produce them in significant numbers. So far they seem to be a very small manufacturer.

The FSD hardware isn't that important, it's the software that is still lacking. For that Tesla, with nearly a million units in the road, most of which are able to contribute to training the software, is in a pretty good and unique position.

Hi

... and even more importantly, the level of 'exposure' & 'experience' the AI has had to adequately tune the internal decision making process. That's the really big advantage that Tesla has & it'll take plenty of time for any on the competition to play catch-up ... by the time they've built enough cars (a million ??) to have access to around a billion miles of autonomous driving data they may be in a similar position to where Tesla are today, by which time there'll almost certainly be millions more Teslas on the road adding billions of additional experiences to the autonomous driving 'learning' ....

... catch up can be pretty hard if you're still on the start line & the competition is already miles down the road & still accelerating as hard (or faster!) as (/than) you're likely to be able to ....

If, as widely reported, Tesla currently have a 10 year development & technology advantage over any serious competition why would we expect everyone to have caught up in 10 years time? ... wouldn't it be more likely that at the end of 10 years the very concepts of continuous improvement & growing economies of scale will have extended the gap further? ... for example, maybe in 10 years time the gap will still be 2 years, or 5 years, or 10 years ... or more! ... without a crystal ball who knows (?), but as long as Tesla continue to innovate in line with their historical trend and the competition continue to respond to the market & technology situation that existed at a point almost a decade ago things will certainly remain interesting!!

HTH - Z

JKenH

zeupater said:

ABrass said:

It'll be interesting to see if Xpeng can produce them in significant numbers. So far they seem to be a very small manufacturer.

The FSD hardware isn't that important, it's the software that is still lacking. For that Tesla, with nearly a million units in the road, most of which are able to contribute to training the software, is in a pretty good and unique position.

Hi

... and even more importantly, the level of 'exposure' & 'experience' the AI has had to adequately tune the internal decision making process. That's the really big advantage that Tesla has & it'll take plenty of time for any on the competition to play catch-up ... by the time they've built enough cars (a million ??) to have access to around a billion miles of autonomous driving data they may be in a similar position to where Tesla are today, by which time there'll almost certainly be millions more Teslas on the road adding billions of additional experiences to the autonomous driving 'learning' ....

... catch up can be pretty hard if you're still on the start line & the competition is already miles down the road & still accelerating as hard (or faster!) as (/than) you're likely to be able to ....

If, as widely reported, Tesla currently have a 10 year development & technology advantage over any serious competition why would we expect everyone to have caught up in 10 years time? ... wouldn't it be more likely that at the end of 10 years the very concepts of continuous improvement & growing economies of scale will have extended the gap further? ... for example, maybe in 10 years time the gap will still be 2 years, or 5 years, or 10 years ... or more! ... without a crystal ball who knows (?), but as long as Tesla continue to innovate in line with their historical trend and the competition continue to respond to the market & technology situation that existed at a point almost a decade ago things will certainly remain interesting!!

HTH - Z

Much of what you say is true about other manufacturers playing catch up in relation to gathering data but the real breakthrough in FSD may not necessarily come from an existing auto manufacturer. Just as Tesla has transformed the electric car industry it may be a new player who transforms FSD. As we have seen it tends to be new players who disrupt the market. Technology takes no prisoners - just look at the list of household names who have disappeared; Amstrad, Atari, BlackBerry ... need I go on?

Tesla presumably are limited to data from their own vehicles but if the car market chooses to team up with an outside player such as Google’s Waymo then the quantity of data Tesla have taken a decade to collect may be available in months. Do Tesla have the computing power that is available to the likes of Google or an Apple to process the information? While it has been said on here that hardware is not the issue, is Tesla’s hardware as good as, say, 
Nvidia’s and will it keep pace? 

We mustn’t forget that some auto makers such as Toyota have been developing FSD for several years but have not rolled it out. Why is that? Tesla seem to get as much bad press from their FSD as they do good. Others such as VW suggest Full Autonomous Driving may never be rolled out.

It seems that as yet the world is not quite ready for FSD in terms of either road infrastructure or public demand so are Tesla spending billions on a product no one is actually going to want? Lane detection and other driving aids have been around for many years but do they make a significant difference to our daily driving? If anything from following several EV forums it appears that one of the most frequently asked questions is “how do I turn the darn thing off”? It tends to be the type of tech that you use once when you get a new car to impress your mates then forget about. 

I think however it will be a long while before Tesla, or indeed any other manufacturer, has the software to cope with Lincolnshire’s single track roads (or Devon lanes) where there simply isn’t the room for two vehicles to pass without some eye contact negotiations between the two drivers. I followed some cyclists for half a mile this week before I deemed it safe to overtake based on my assessment of the condition of the grass verge which I was obliged to use. How long would an FSD car have sat there?

Highway (motorway) driving is where FSD is most useful and I really don’t see competitors taking that long to catch up there. Xpeng’s Nvidia based system is already reported to be as good as Tesla’s. Will there ever be a need or demand for anything more than a sophisticated adaptive cruise system with autonomous braking and the facility to change lanes to overtake slower vehicles? That technology already exists (if not implemented) so perhaps no catch up is needed.

I can’t see it being too long before autonomous driving becomes accepted (legal) on motorways, and eventually is highway authority controlled by mandate (so let’s be careful what we wish for),  but once off the motorway it may be a long time coming. (Famous last words )