Some comments on that recording
@ChippyDude - thanks for directing me there. I'm writing mainly to help myself understand here so apologies if I'm wasting column space - just putting it in the hope of any misunderstandings and/or miscalculations being corrected by some good online samaritan! (Or just to launch more discussion
- So understandably that $70k/MWh is a "cost target" still to be demonstrated. If achieved, it is indeed a _very_ low cost of storage.
- It is important to note that is _cost of storage_ only, meaning, cost per MWh with no ability to deliver power (in Kevin's words, "not including the turbines").
eg When comparing with the Big Battery (Tesla in SA) - not an apples-apples comparison but gives an idea of orders of magnitude:
Wikipedia says US$50m cost to Tesla for 130 MWh => ~US$380/kWh for the big Li battery
Kevin's $70k/MWh is ~US$50/kWh, nearly 8x cheaper BUT
The battery comes with the _power generation included_ ie no additional cost; the 1414 needs a steam turbine to discharge the power (I'm ignoring for now the cost of electrical heating, ie "charging equipment" which is also included in the Li battery).
A quick google search reveals estimated best case ~USD $670/kW for a steam turbine [US Dept. of Energy]
Again not apples-to-apples but the Li battery does 100MW, which if delivered by steam would add US$67m to the device. If price the whole thing by storage capacity, the 1414 device would thus be the original $50/kWh + ($67m / 130,000 kWh) = ~ 50 + 520 = $570/kWh
That's actually very competitive considering its the "home ground advantage" for the battery!
The 1414D would really shine in a low power requirement relative to the amount of storage. The battery cost is all in the storage capacity, you can't save money by providing the same storage capacity at lower power. Conversely, 1414 could do, eg, the same 130MWh at 10 MW, and the price then goes from $570 to ~$100/kWh.
Getting back to what
@kiwinigma was saying re power:
0.0056C (kiwi's number) is putting the turbine cost down to a couple of $/kW making the storage cost approximately the total cost. (0.0056 * 130MW --> ~0.73MW x $670/kW --> $490k total turbine cost --> $3.7/kWh)
ie total cost of a 1414 system at 0.0056C of power from kevin's US$50/kWh cost of storage --> $53.7 system cost per kWh of storage. Incidentally the cost of 5.1billion (AUD) for snowy 2, if i understood correctly, is also the cost only for the power, and is about 2.7x more than the DOE number i used above. ie if the snowy turbines cost is used in the calculation, we get about $10/kWh at 0.0056C, or $60/kWh for the power+storage
Any way you slice it, this is very cheap. Comparisons directly with snowy and/or tesla battery are unfair to both sides however. The key is to find the right customers - time shifting of grid storage looks fantastic especially since you can place the system anywhere and even slice it up to a number of sites.
Making use of the high value heat as well makes it look even better of course, assuming heat exchangers are much cheaper than steam turbines
Bottom line though: we still need some indication that the $70/kWh storage coast can be met (or something close to that...). Kevin claimed $3m for a 10MWh system has already been achieved, that translates to $300/kWh. If that has indeed been done, achieving about 4x reduction should indeed be possible without too much trouble! (My reasonably educated opinion only) Question then is really, how much time, blood and treasure will it take...
