Tesla has activated a lithium-ion battery big enough to power 30,000 homes in South Australia.
Tesla, the US technology giant, has started up the world’s largest battery and plugged it into South Australia’s power grid.
Being one of the world’s biggest coal exporters, Australia has also long been seen as one of the world’s worst polluters.
South Australia is scrapping its coal-fired power stations and switching to renewable energy.
Al Jazeera’s Hannah Hoexter reports.
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What They Do not Speak: Batteries use such a rare earth that runs out soon (because it’s rare) and what about worn, broken batteries?
Any car in the world with battery? how? Where will it be so rare metal?
Elon just hopes that the developments will be solved because it just looks like …
You use the word “rare earth” but cant state the name? When you mean lithium… That is not freaking rare at all. If you want to discuss something, bring atleast ONE simple fact, not some bullshit.
Just a friendly reminder, Elon Musk is a businessman who sells himself and his company as the saviour of the world and this is not strictly true. I’m willing to bet that not only is most of what Elon does a PR stunt but also generates him money.
I don’t say this as a hater, I say this because it is important to not put people up on a pedestal and think they can do no wrong, it is also important to question all their actions and do your own research. If you have done this, and you do still believe he is the saviour of the world, more power to you.
exactly. he’s a graduate from wharton which creates hardcore business and marketing folks and that’s exactly what musk is – a glorified salesman who has identified a particular online active demographic eager to feel like they ‘make a difference’. musk has capitalized on that and mastered the art of manipulating them in order to accelerate the hype-train. unfortunately hype doesn’t always translate to real world outcome and that’s why you’ll notice when one of his ventures start to stall, he immediately creates another big hype about some new ‘breakthrough’ to distract the naive masses away. and this cycle is made worse by the media who also want to cash in on the action and keep repeating and accelerating the online hype-train further.
Yes hes part of the technocrats that wish to take control of society through technology. The climate change arguement is used to take control of the countrys energy source and with computers thet can monitor everyone at any given time.
The battery system has already prevented one black out for a part of the grid it’s not even supposed to be monitoring.
It beggins…
id love to see that on fire
“An example of Australia leading the world” with a battery built by an American company.
This is a good report well done, Tesla doing something good for once. .
to bad its being done on a isis supporting network
The batteries are lithium ion? _Really!?_
So tesla made this and south australia takes the credit for it lol. What a jackass
I’m assuming it was pre-built somewhere else and then just put together there in 60 days?!?
there’s way better battery technology then lithium ion that u can literally make yourself its not hard.
Ol’ Musky doing his thing. helping the world. Good Ol’ Musky 😀
Real life energon cubes
Interesting that they are opting for wind and not solar just a quarter of a mile of the Sun’s surface.
no downsides? where’s the lithium come from ?
you are now aware that australian the #1 producer of lithium
Nice he met deadline to get paid.
Too bad those batts didnt get used in cars first when weight was a big factor. Then as their output decreased they could be grounded in a substation where weight doesnt matter.
Storing energy chemically like this is not the solution of our problems.
But it is a step in the right direction.
Depending on what you define as the right direction. Batteries can of course store energy, which is good, but are not very durable and probably require intensive maintenance. Not to mention that lithium is a very limited resource. There already are better methods for storing energy, batteries are more useful in mobile applications.
Simon Andree I consider a step in the right direction as changing the way we currently think about electricity generation and use. Probably the largest issue with wind, wave and solar power is that they are only going to generate energy during the day or when there is wind and not necessarily when it is needed most. Energy storage is a solution to this problem. While I agree that lithium ion is not ideal, it does shift thinking into a new direction, and hopefully with that, advances in energy storage.
Yup, we can agree on that – but what I meant in my original comment is that we have to be careful not to push a technology that is not thought through to the end. Elon Musk is extremely hyped at the moment, for example here in the comments, while this is by far not the ideal solution for the problem of storing electrical energy. I think we would be better off promoting really scalable solutions like pumped storage hydro power stations or power-to-gas. Or we expand the use of constant renewable energy sources like hydros or tidal power plants.
Elon Musk <3
Yeah, but how many bombs can you fit into a Tesla to kill infidels with? Right, Al Jazeera?
No wonder he chose the name Tesla. I suppose Faraday was already taken 🙂
Does the Australian taxpayers have to subsidize Elon Musk like the American Taxpayers have to?
Hunter Jones
Elon saves tax payer money actually.
Nuclear power is far cleaner and effective.
Elon must play a lot in Factorio 😀
I heard a story about the line I work on at Tesla where Elon was yelling at everyone for not being efficient enough yelling them all to do better or they’re fired then everyone started clapping for him. Lmao
*suck thing about battery is they degrade over time like the battery on your phone. The battery on your phone and the battery on the power plant are no difference, they are both lithium ion battery.*
Will it finally be enough for my iPhone?
Elon musk
Well, It’s just “done the job” of picking up the power-shortage after one of he coal-fired plants failed.
We are the worse, an absolute monster polluter, how dare we. China, brilliant.
i bet tesla will make a new type of battery for smartphones
Elon is life
i live in south australia ill be paying for this battery for years
your 30 minutes or free $40 billion battery!
I worked on those. Literally saving the world is what Tesla is doing. Support Elon and his amazing ideas . He will be remembered for decades to come.
Car production has slowed because the precious metals required to build batteries is in short supply. There’s only so much material in the world.
On the other hand hydrogen vehicles have no such problems to worry about. Htdrogen is the most abundant form of energy in the entire universe.
Elon came to rescue of Australians when they needed him most to overcome electricity poverty! Great move indeed..
Imagine the world without Sir Elon Musk and His Guys..
what happens when the battery reaches its maximum cycles, how would we dispose of it, also, how much carbon emissions were emitted when mining the lithium. Lithium is toxic and unrenewable, we can’t cover the planet in this stuff, we’ll have cancer left and right and this will only increase carbon emissions.
Why can’t they use dams as energy storage? Pump water up into the lake to store energy, let the water down into a lower reservoir to power turbines and get the energy back. Pretty sure dams are already used in this way anyway.
I would be interested in the net cost per KWH
*battery switches on*
Elon Musk: Yay!!!
*next moment*
*battery catches fire*
Elon Musk: Noo!!!
Mining the lithium sucks too tho. But I love elan musk, he’s truly changing the world . History in the making
haha once again Australia leading the world in technology… I heard the internet is still worse than Ethiopia 😛 hahahahah
Elon, I say rip the money out of those Aussies 😈
P.S. I will take all your dislikes and haterade only as likes 😝👍
Wasnt it this that would be “free of charge” if it wasnt built within 90 days? Done in 60… Mad.
no point unless China started caring about renewable energy.. or other high pollution countries.
example of south Australia leading the world cough cough
Why is it just coming now, it should’ve been in place decades ago by the governments! Good thing Elon’s there !
battery to power 30,000 homes for how long if the main power supply goes out??? is it 15 minutes or 4 hours???A giant UPS for a city for 40 mil??Curb your enthusiasm? Elon musk sold a lot of batteries…good for him.
I Phones have been under fire recently because their batteries degrade over time and hold less charge as the years go on. Just remmeber that before thinking bigger batteries are a permanaent fix. Tesla is just putting A bandage over a gaping wound, not stitching it up. Its only temporary till we can find a permanent alternative to Coal, oil and gas.
I live in SA and I believe in Elon!
Dafuq do they mean “lucky for him” .
good on you S.A.
“Leading the world.” What? A battery = leading the world….? I think my country is dumber than I thought.
SO how to store solar and wind energy for later use without need of batteries that degrade over time????
Lithium mined by child slaves…. BUT WHO CARES EVERYTHING ELON MUSK DOES IS RIGHT!
good job aussies. modernize your country just a little bit more so it will be ready for the globalist moneymens unrestrained armies of imported western emulating foreigners now destroying the rest of the millenia civilized european world
And in a couple of years they’ll replace this one with a Graphene battery
Imagine if they pulled a Samsung and it caught on fire and exploded.
Please make a new battery technology
Lithium ion degrade overtime
DONT YOU JUST LOVE a guy who says “We’ll do it on time – or its FREE!” – Compair and contrast Trump “It was his fault!! No his – no his – ANYONE except me!!! Im BIGLY wonderful!!!!”
You mean Elon Musk powering the world
it’s not luck, it’s diligence.
and no thanks to j.p morgan and roccafella we are 100 years behind on this technology.
think where we would be now…
is that dude taking all the credit from Tesla and Elon musk or did i misunderstand
Spend 40 mil and become a national hero. Only in America opps i mean in Australia.
That moment when you find the ditsiest people in Jamestown. sweet god..
Probably one of the biggest explosiom in human history.
That will fit neatly in your car trunk.
China is buying more and more Australia coal. It will not stop. It will continue!!
Wind power? Why not solar, it’s Australia
But can it charge my phone?
Just learn from us this is technology nothing match yet least 100 years ‘Elon Musk’
Can power a galaxy s9 for over 5 hours!!!
It’s all about investments and US is not leading the way, but they should be but too arrogant to evolve.
How much did this monstrosity cost the poor old tax payers????????
50 million
This is the way to go.
Elon musk’s only one that will change the world
Why wind when Australia has 30% of the world Uranium ?
دول متقدم طبعا يسوها
Elon is the man!!!
So no info on how any of it works? Probably hiding any possible downsides or how many years it will take to be carbon neutral 🙂
So little power in this battery . Only can hold { 2 hours } worth of power for 1 tenth of South Australia’s need private homes . Nothing for businesses By my calculation , we need at least 10,000 of these just to store 1 days worth of power for all industry commerce and households use in Australia . 10,000 multiplied by the cost of the Adelaide experiment , 50 million dollars . Are , that equals . 500 billion dollars . That is so expensive Australia would be broke and collapse into ruin . No-one with any sense can tolerate that absurd scenario . But the Greens who are ignorant of mathematics . Cause and effect . The Greens are inept .
Not so much Australia leading the world but Elon Musk saving it…
Y not uesd that battery in a boat all electric boat electric ships electric yachts into the feature lefamulin berries with oversized trolling motors
40lbs trolling motor 950cca go 41/2hr long run 365time max uesd than buy a new battery but cheaper and environment and more power I just think boat need to update to Electric
Ships need to be Electric power
Why not put up with a higher horsepower electric motor in a ship and the biggest battery in the world
👍
If that battery explodes, then uh oh
And then connect that to a phone.
هل يمكن تصميم بطارية لتغذيه المنزل بالتيار
I wonder how many children died in the Congo’s cobalt mines in the production of this unnecessary, make me feel good, waste of money?
Man made climate change is the last widely accepted superstition. You should hear yourselves when you blame a freak storm on coal power plants. Smh.
We live in SA and our power bills still suck nuts. Never even heard of this thing till today. If the Australian government wanted us to pay less for power then im sure the dozens of wind farms and now apparently this battery would have started passing on the price benefits by now. But they dont want us affording a good life because then we wouldnt have to work for them as much.
When the prime minister’s response, was to compare the worlds biggest battery to the world’s biggest prawn or banana. All I can do is thank Elon for solutions in the face of ineptitude
Elon mask is futurestic business man he is doing this to earn money in simply good way
Amazing!
I wonder how it’s going now!
Well good luck with emps…
Was egypts pyramid was ancient battery or power house
I don’t think its big enough to power a good home computer for over eight hours.
More lithium yeah destroy our world