Andrew Crossland has a dream, and it involves beating Elon Musk by a day, Stuff.co.nz reports.
Musk – co-founder and CEO of Tesla – made a bet that he could build the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery in 100 days.
Two years later, the people of South Australia are reaping the benefits.
Musk delivered on his bet, and now the 150-megawatt battery acts as a shock absorber, sucking in electricity when the sunny state’s solar panels are generating more than the grid can handle, and feeding it back when electricity is scarce.
Now, a New Zealand company wants to build its own battery on this side of the Tasman and beat Musk’s time by completing construction in 99 days.
Crossland, an energy consultant at solar and battery specialist Infratec, Wellington, New Zealand, reckons a 200MW battery would be big enough to bring stability to the North Island power supply. For scale, that’s big enough to boil 66,000 kettles, enabling the whole city of Napier to have a cup of tea at once.
Infratec has been trialling its control systems on a much smaller battery in Timaru, owned by South Canterbury network operator Alpine Energy Group Limited.
Timaru’s shipping container-sized battery is just 30 kilowatts – enough to boil just 10 kettles, says Crossland.
But, while small, it’s constructed in much the same way as a big battery would be, says Crossland, and has shown it can communicate with the Transpower New Zealand grid to sense when there’s a problem.
“What’s really cool is, we don’t need to be told when there’s something wrong. We can detect that automatically … and we respond within less than a second,” he says.
Currently, fossil-fuelled plants, such as the Huntly power station, provide back-up generation and stability. Much of New Zealand’s hydro generation is in the South Island, whereas most people live in the North Island, meaning electricity must travel long distances by cable.
The risk of an undersea cable being cut, or a major power station failing, is a major concern for grid operators, says Crossland – and a major reason why we still use coal and gas.
“We could put this [bigger] battery in Hamilton. And we could detect that a boat has put an anchor through the cables under Cook Strait, and we would, within a second, throw loads of energy into the grid to replace that,” he says.
As New Zealand boosts renewable energy, it will increase its reliance on intermittent energy sources, such as wind and solar, so the need for a stabilising force could become even greater.
The Government’s big, bold long-term idea is building a pumped hydro system at Lake Onslow, which would use surplus electricity generated during boom times to pump water uphill, from where it could flow back down again, through hydro turbines, during times of scarcity.
But such a massive scheme could be decades in the planning, if it eventuates.
In the meantime, says Crossland, a battery is a cheaper, faster option.
The idea still faces hurdles, both financial and regulatory.
“The risk for anyone trying to build a big battery or a big solar farm is you’re looking for a huge amount of cash upfront and that risk is what’s expensive,” Crossland says.
However, he believes two other barriers are shrinking: short battery lives, and access to critical minerals.
Spurred by a booming demand for cobalt and criticism over child labour in mines, battery-makers have succeeded in slashing the amount of cobalt needed per battery, though they haven’t yet come through on another of Musk’s promises – to eliminate cobalt from Tesla cars.
“What we’re seeing in the market is warranties of 10 to 15 years now, which is all coming out of the electric car industry,” Crossland says.
As for where he’d like to put this massive battery, at just half a hectare in size, there are plenty of options.
“In principle, you can put it literally anywhere in the North Island … [but] you’d probably want it somewhere near Hamilton or Auckland,” Crossland says.
“Wouldn’t it be great to put down an old coal mine, or put it at Huntly, and make a real statement?”