It should surprise no one to learn that Elon Musk, a master of promotion, is capturing worldwide media attention Friday for Tesla's selection as the winning bidder for a project to install "the world's largest grid-scale battery" in South Australia.
It also shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who pays attention to claims made by promoters that the details are not as exciting as the headlines and are substantially more difficult to discern.
Four months ago, during a crisis in which South Australia's wind-heavy power grid repeatedly failed to deliver, Lyndon Rive, the head of Tesla's energy products division, bragged that his company could provide a quick fix to the Australian state's power supply problems.
"We don't have 300MWh sitting there ready to go but I'll make sure there are," Mr. Rive said.
Rive's confidence in his company's ability to deliver was supported by the recent opening of Tesla's famous battery production facility, the massive GigaFactory 1, near Sparks, Nevada. It was reinforced by the fact that Tesla had recently installed a 20 MW, 80 MWhr battery in Southern California.
That project was completed in less than three months. It was part of Southern California Edison's response to electricity reliability concerns associated with the loss of local natural gas storage as a result of large, difficult to stop leak at the Aliso Canyon storage facility.
Unsurprisingly, there was some skepticism among observers about Tesla's ability to deliver a system with five times the power rating and more than three times the storage capacity in the same period of time to a location approximately 8,000 miles farther from the company's Nevada production facility than Southern California.
Rive has an established history of making visionary claims, but his record of delivery on those promises isn't spotless. Before Tesla purchased the financially struggling SolarCity in August 2016, Lyndon Rive had been its CEO for 10 years. He and his brother co-founded the company with financial backing from their cousin, Elon Musk.
Musk stoked intense interest in Tesla's desire to help South Australia – while generating publicity for its new line of grid-connected batteries – by publicly standing behind his cousin's offer. The real attention-getter was the payoff if their company fails to meet the deadline – Musk promised that the system will be free if it is not operational within 100 days after the contract has been signed.
As the initial flurry of excitement generated by Musk's offer began to dissipate, serious people attempted to determine exactly what Musk and Rive had promised to do and to estimate how much the project would cost.
Within the context of addressing South Australia's electric power system stability needs, a 300 MW-hr installation appears to have been unaffordable. Premier Jay Weatherill has a total of A$550 million available, and Tesla's massive battery is only a part of the necessary capability.
As Gizmodo has reported, the system that Tesla will be installing will provide 129 MW-hr of energy storage capacity, less than half of what Rive originally hinted could be delivered. At a discharge rate of 100 MW, the battery will be totally depleted in less than 80 minutes. As all cell phone, tablet or laptop computer owners should know, it isn't advisable to fully discharge a Li-ion battery. It can dramatically reduce battery lifetime.
The South Australian government and Tesla have declined requests to provide details about the total project cost for the "world's largest grid-connected battery." Musk admitted that Tesla could lose in excess of $50 million if it is unable to meet its promised deadline.