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Tesla Batteries Are Keeping Zimbabwe's Economy Running (bloomberg.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Zimbabweans are relying on Tesla to help them pay their bills. From a report: Amid power outages of as long as 18 hours a day, Econet Wireless, Zimbabwe's biggest mobile-phone operator, is turning to the Palo Alto, California-based automaker and storable-energy company for batteries that can keep its base stations running. The southern African country faces chronic shortages of physical cash, so almost all transactions are done digitally, and many via mobile phones. "Telecommunications have become the lifeblood of the economy," said Norman Moyo, the chief executive officer of Distributed Power Africa, which installs the batteries for Econet. "If the telecom network is down in Zimbabwe, you can't do any transactions."

The installation of 520 Powerwall batteries, with two going into each base station, is the largest telecommunications project in which Tesla has participated to date, Moyo said. With Econet having about 1,300 base stations in the country and two other mobile-phone companies operating there, Distributed Power intends to install more batteries and could eventually roll the project out to other power-starved countries in Africa, such as Zambia, Lesotho and the Democratic Republic of Congo, he said. Base stations in Zimbabwe often use diesel-fired generators as backup, but fuel is also scarce in the country. The Powerwalls, which cost $6,500 each, will step in when solar panels aren't generating enough electricity because it's night or when heavily overcast. The lithium-ion batteries can power a station for as long as 10 hours, according to Econet. They are charged by the sun.
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Tesla Batteries Are Keeping Zimbabwe's Economy Running More

Tesla Batteries Are Keeping Zimbabwe's Economy Running

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  • feasibility of operating a solar powered cell network continuously!
    • It's definitely feasible, that's not even a question. Batteries, generators, there are many options. The only question is, "how much does it cost?" If they can show that batteries are a cost-effective option, that's a huge win.
    • Telecommunications companies all over the world back up their equipment with batteries and generators. Zimbabwe finally does it and its news?
      • Thank you! They are probably only using Tesla now because it's willing to front them the money. Lets hope it doesn't catch on fire. Also let's hope it doesn't get stolen [iol.co.za] like what's happening in South Africa.

  • More like they have to (Score:3, Insightful)

    by weilawei ( 897823 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @03:40PM (#59153316)

    A country their size isn't ever getting nuclear reactors under the current status quo. So if we want the countries of the world too small to have nuclear to also be green, they'll need to do this (or buy electricity from someone else, which diminishes their real independence).

    • Exactly.
      We as a world, really haven't proved that we can use nuclear power responsibility and safely. For the countries that has a good track record in Nuclear Power, they have a lot of expensive oversight and regulations behind them to make sure they run cleanly. Which defiantly will not work for a poor country.

      While every form of power will have some sort of environmental and economic trade off. Solar with batteries is currently the best balance out there.

      • For, tiny, impoverished nations that will never move beyond that level, solar and batteries could work. For a more modern nation... I wonder if you realize it would take the entire annual capacity of the Gigafactory to produce enough batteries to store US energy needs for a whopping 3 minutes! Battery storage just is not feasible at scale beyond impoverished, 3rd world nation status.

        • Your hysterics aside, it will be fine.

          • Nationwide, the US is what, 9 hours (because of the width of the nation) of storage for the US? Assuming half power use (just all those cars and such being charged over that 9 hour night time) at night, the Gigafactory annual output would run for 6 minutes. We'd need 90 years of Gigafactory production to provide one night of energy. Is that really realistic? Is that fine?

            • Yes, because your argument is a complete fucking straw-man that assumes a flat planet where it is always night.

              • Didn't realize we had trans-oceanic power lines connecting North America with Europe or Asia! It's why I put in 9 hours for night, rather than 12 - to account for the curvature and time zones. Unlike your strawman attack that assumes it wasn't addressed (when it clearly was).

                So how about explaining how we'll get power from Eurasia when it's night in North America?

                • Just like you describe. Trans-atlantic lines sound fine. They're doing it already for internet. This is a completely solved problem. No need to turn to something fancy like bouncing masers off the face of the moon or anything. The continental US only covers 4 timezones btw, and there's not even close to a full draw in Alaska and Hawaii so your estimates there are fantastically overblown, too.

              • Re:More like they have to (Score:4, Interesting)

                by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @09:42PM (#59154954) Journal

                That's not where the strawman lies.

                First of... He's coming up with this bogus value of 3 minutes of battery electricity per year...
                Completely ignoring hydro or wind - which both still work during the night.

                Second, he presumes switching to all-battery right now. Or never. Which is a false dichotomy.

                Third... He assumes no increase in production capacity, ever.
                Which is particularly retarded. Like... really, really, REALLY FUCKING RETARDED.

                He's literally describing a MARKET FOR A PRODUCT which once bought gives you free electricity for at least a couple of decades.
                And free fuel for your car.
                And free heating and cooling.

                And his argument is that the market for that product does not grow, will not grow, and so there will be no increase in production capacity - cause no one will ever want to buy that product which allows creation of free electricity from thin air.
                Just like how no one is buying that product now, will never buy it, and so there will never be a need for a factory producing those 3 minutes of electricity for the largest economy in the world and third largest country by population on the planet.

                To believe his strawman, one would have to accept that the Gigafactory was some strange self-creating natural growth in the Nevada desert.
                Not a commercial enterprise to meet a growing demand. [unfccc.int]

                He's saying that though there's a $14 billion spent annually on electricity by US households - no one would want to sell those people electricity that they only have to pay for once.
                Despite, like, evidence to the contrary. [tesla.com]

                The best part is where when you multiply the price of Tesla walls for an average household with all the trimmings with number of households in USA... it comes down to about $2.6 trillion.
                Meaning that reversing that Dumpy's tax cut [washingtonpost.com] no household actually benefited from, then adding the same amount of taxes on top of that (with no household actually being worse off for it) - every household could get 100% battery powered backup for 7+ days.
                And it would actually stimulate the economy - unlike Dumpy's tax cut for the 0.01%.

            • If we're talking about eliminating fossil fuel electrical generation in the US, building about 30 Gigafactories and running them for a few years would certainly be easier and cheaper than building several hundred new nuclear power plants.

              • Diablo Canyon alone [wikipedia.org] provides 10% of California's energy needs. We'd need about 100 of those stations, nationwide. And we'd be set. You need the battery plants, AND the solar cell plants, AND the solar farms to do the same.

                • Nope. Wikipedia says that Diablo Canyon generates 2.2GW (2.0 GW considering capacity factor). The US uses an average of 445 GW of electricity, and peak would be significantly higher. That's at least 200 new plants, and even more once the current worn-out reactors are finally retired.

                  Now, you go looking for the political will to open up 200 new nuke sites all over this country. You're going find out that even the biggest Trumptards will become instant NIMBYs.

                  It simply isn't going to fucking happen. Give it u

                  • It's not going to happen because people like you refuse to see reality. Solar and batteries are a non-starter. Nuclear provides more power today - and we'd have all we would need, if luddites like you would get out of the way.

                    • Unfortunately for you, about 95% of the population are "luddites like me" (even if they won't admit it until a nuke plant is proposed for their neighborhood), whereas only a small fraction of 1% of the population are fanatical nuclear fanboys such as yourself.

                      That's just reality. You are not going to change peoples' minds about this in the near, short or long term. Any proposal to move forward with a massive buildout of new nukes WILL be blocked.

                      Nuclear is the non-starter. Solar and batteries do not have t

                    • The future of nuclear (fission) is small micro-reactors, not the large behemoths that core-melt or blow up every time a powerplant operator or earthquake pops the fuse to the coolant pumps. Small nuclear reactors not much larger than a 1000 gallon propane tank could supply power to entire suburbs, and are entirely self-cooling in the event of failure. The only thing stopping the micro-reactor industry from taking off is that fracking shale oil is now economically viable.

                      Of course there's also nuclear fusion

                    • Tens of thousands of micro-reactors scattered throughout our environs are the stupidest idea ever. Their biggest contribution would be to dramatically increase the attack surface for terrorists and saboteurs.

                    • I wonder how you imagine these machines are immune to the ills of traditional large thermal plants. There's not enough qualitative difference here. All you're doing with making them smaller and more numerous is increasing the total count of mechanical parts that could possibly fail.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

                      Basically the increased surface area to power ratio means that the safety containment vessel will not melt in the even of loss of cooling because the natural heat loss will stop the temperature reaching melting point.

                      It's the same reason my atom powered home server is fanless, but the 64 compute node in the HPC racks need a water cooled back door and if the chillers on the cooling loop go down for any length of time I have to shut them down before the room fries. Just opening the back door of the rack when

                    • You'd need ridiculously smaller core for that, and a huge passive coolant volume. Like in a zero-power reactor. Large passive heat losses and using high-grade heat efficiently for power generation without losses are mutually exclusive. And you want the latter for your power reactor, not the former. How come you never thought of such obvious things?

                    • A micro-nuclear reactor is not a scaled down Three Mile Island. It's a different technology:

                      https://www.energy.gov/ne/arti... [energy.gov]

                    • Sure, if you significantly sacrifice efficiency and economy of operation, anything can be done. But nobody is that stupid to suggest to do this in large volumes. Nobody has that amount of money to throw around, regardless of opportunity costs.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ras ( 84108 )

              I guess they will have to use pumped storage instead of batteries, just like the rest of us. Like most countries Zimbabwe has a lot of 150 GWh sites available: World Renewable Energy Maps [nationalmap.gov.au].

              • Agreed on that. Pumped storage would be much better than batteries. Batteries simply won't work - not enough capacity.

            • We'd need 90 years of Gigafactory production to provide one night of energy.

              Also they'd need nearly 6 months of Tesla factory production to provide enough cars for one day of sales.

              Is that really realistic? Is that fine?

              No. You will need other factories. Perhaps other companies should produce cars too, to meet the demand.

            • Of course it's not at all realistic, for a number of reasons. First, you're assuming that battery plant manufacturing output over time will be the same. Second, there's absolutely no need for all storage to be provided using batteries - indeed, at the very least combined hydro+wind power is going to provide a significant fraction of power in the US lessening the remaining need for night-time storage. Third, generation curtailment is often an important factor in lessening required storage, considering cost o

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by danskal ( 878841 )

          ... and how many years will the Gigafactory be operating for? Not just 1.

          And how long will the batteries last? (considerably more than 20 years).

          Plus there will be more Gigafactories.

          Besides, we won't need to cover all energy needs all of the time with batteries. We use most energy when the sun is shining, and that extra will be covered by solar. There will still be nuclear, pumped hydro, ordinary hydro, geothermal, solar thermal with storage, other forms of energy storage like storing energy in concrete

          • Assuming half the power needed for night, and 9 hours of night across the US (it's a wide country), we'd need about 90 years of its output to create batteries to run for that 9 hour period. Will the batteries last for 90 years? No? Then battery storage really ISN'T the solution. Nuclear and hydro (which is a great source and way to store) work a lot better. The fantasy of "solar and battery" simply doesn't scale beyond impoverished nation or sole individual either living minimally (camper) or independe

          • The USA consumes double because USA houses are twice the size of European houses (https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a7654/house-sizes-around-the-world/). Presumably mostly because Europe is more urban. Good luck changing that, it'd take generations at the very best and likely require a dictatorial government.

            • Even a house twice the size can have low energy consumption if built for that purpose. Future European houses are going to have even lower consumption after 2020 thanks to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive because they will be required to be built that way.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          The entire output of Standard Oil in 1890 would not power the modern American economy very long either.

          It's a pointless comparison. We don't need the output of the Gigafactory to power the US economy. We don't even need the entire battery industry to power the US economy. We need the battery industry to supply what we need for the uses we have *now*.

          • We don't need the output of the Gigafactory to power the US economy.

            Need is immaterial; the harsh reality is that it can't. Full stop.

            We need the battery industry to supply what we need for the uses we have *now*.

            Which it can barely do, today. Expecting battery backup for the power grid is beyond what it can supply. That's the point.

            If you're a tiny, impoverished nation or have a small cabin in the woods, battery backup MAY work for you. For anything 2nd or 1st world? Nope, not gonna be realistic for any appreciable duration of time (more than a handful of minutes).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hey! ( 33014 )

              Barely will do for now. Anyhow it's not Tesla I'm worried about, it's other applications that are dependent upon China.

              As for your idea that battery backup has no application in advanced nations, that's a straw man. Advanced nations have reliable power grids. And those power grids actually *do* have applications for battery backup. Look up the "Horsdale Power Reserve", which is the largest lithium ion battery in the world at 129 MWH, which successfully solved a blackout problem in South Australia, and h

              • South Australia's generation and imports [aemo.com.au] amount to around 13,000 GWh. That 129 MWh battery doesn't go very far at all... It's not even close to a backup, it's a quick-smooth filter for switchover of sources. It'll provide a minute or two of power - that's it.

        • For, tiny, impoverished nations that will never move beyond that level, solar and batteries could work.

          The solution scales approximately linearly. Two batteries store twice as much energy as one, and the technology required is the same as you add more sites.

          For a more modern nation... I wonder if you realize it would take the entire annual capacity of the Gigafactory to produce enough batteries to store US energy needs for a whopping 3 minutes!

          4 mins 40 seconds, at 2018 end use consumption [statista.com] and production rates as at may [wikipedia.org]. But 11 minutes 19 seconds at 2020 projected capacity [google.com], including both cells and battery packs.

          Battery storage just is not feasible at scale beyond impoverished, 3rd world nation status.

          One factory won't meet global requirements, but it is scalable.

        • The US has a wide sets of resources. Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geothermal... Also for energy storage, there are alternatives towards just batteries. Such as Flywheels,
          A good energy policy isn't about one magical source that works everywhere, But picking the best option for the area where you live.

      • Re:More like they have to (Score:4, Informative)

        by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @07:33PM (#59154442)

        We as a world, really haven't proved that we can use nuclear power responsibility and safely.

        We haven't? Since its invention 75+ years ago, nuclear power has killed fewer people than died in traffic today worldwide.

        Do remember that traffic does in an average of 20K+ people DAILY. Unlike nuclear power's fewer than 100 (note the lack of "K") since its invention....

        If you include Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "nuclear power accidents", then you put total fatalities of nuclear power at about a month's worth of automobile fatalities. In 75+ years....

    • A country their size isn't ever getting nuclear reactors under the current status quo. So if we want the countries of the world too small to have nuclear to also be green, they'll need to do this (or buy electricity from someone else, which diminishes their real independence).

      How large must a nation be to be trusted with a nuclear power plant? Zimbabwe has about 15 million people. For comparison to a US centered audience I'll point out that the state of New York has about 20 million people, and Pennsylvania has about 13 million.

      We trust Canada with nuclear power, and they have a population about the same as California, both being about 38 million. We trust Finland with nuclear power, they have four nuclear power reactors and less than 6 million people. The Swiss and Swedes h

  • Cash vs Digital aside, Zimbabwe's money is worthless...
    who in their right mind accepted the Zimbabwean dollar?
    A 100 trillian dollar ZWD is worth 0.40cents US (my numbers may be out of date, but the fact remains their currency is worthless)

    • Re:So how did they buy them? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by GrumpySteen ( 1250194 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @04:04PM (#59153502)

      Your numbers are incredibly out of date. Zimbabwe no longer has a national currency.

      In 2015, Zimbabwe demonetized the national currency, effectively zeroing out all value, and exchanged balances in bank accounts at a rate of $1 US for every 35 quadrillion Zimbabwe dollars.

      At this point, a 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar note is worth whatever novelty value you can auction it off for on eBay (which, to be fair, is more than they were worth when they were valid currency).

      • You are also out of date. Zimbabwe made the RTGS dollar the only legal currency for domestic transactions as of June 24, 2019.

        (This was one week before I traveled to Zimbabwe with a fistful of American pesos thinking I would be well covered for cash transactions. Note that foreign card transactions were also difficult for certain business depending on what equipment they have.)

    • Often when a countries currency crashes, the country will switch to a more stable currency, often the USD or the Euro. I expect Tesla is getting paid in USD.

      Money and its value is an artificial construct. Mainly due to the fact that bartering makes it difficult for appropriate small transactions.

      I Fix your Farm tractor, then I get a Ton of Corn, I can't eat a ton of corn. And I am really good at fixing tractors. But because I have excess inventory, I need to waste my time which I could use towards fixing

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Often when a countries currency crashes, the country will switch to a more stable currency, often the USD or the Euro. I expect Tesla is getting paid in USD.

        Unofficially, the only currency accepted at most places is USD in Zimbabwe. The only one using the official currency is government and government run businesses, including the airline. The good thing is if you do want to fly Zimbabwe Air, you use the unofficial currency converter who wants USD who will get you a good rate, so the amount you pay is disco

    • That was before they dropped 12 zeros from the ZWD's official exchange rate (twice - once they reached > 10 trillion ZWD to 1 USD, they would drop 12 zeros, and watch it plummet again).

      They have a new currency now, the RTGS Dollar (ZWL), and it's official rate is 1 USD = 2.5 ZWL, but the actual street/trade value is 1 USD = 12 ZWL. And this is for a currency just introduced in February of this year. Meaning it's already devalued ~500% in just 7 months.

      I typically carry a $1 trillion ZWD note with me,

    • You cab buy up all the trilliOns of ZWD now, and cash in when the currency recovers - one the government gets replaced!

  • More advanced than Sprint (Score:3)

    by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @03:52PM (#59153398)
    Sprint's cell towers near where I lived in the Colorado foothillls would cease functioning after a few hours whenever there was an extended regional blackout. Keep knocking those rocks together, eventually you catch up with Africa guys.

  • A nation that has a fully digital cashless economy, run on a Nationwide high speed wireless network... ...but generally doesn't have running water or sanitation facilities.

    • A nation that has a fully digital cashless economy, run on a Nationwide high speed wireless network... ...but generally doesn't have running water or sanitation facilities.

      Wireless networks make a whole lot of sense in third-world countries. They are far easier and quicker to deploy than wired networks.

      Similarly, digital currency makes a lot of sense if printing cash or minting coins is cost-prohibitive.

      One might hope that the consequent transactional fluidity will enable an economy that can deliver running water and sanitation more quickly.

    • It's a lot cheaper to install and maintain a single wireless node that can provide service to hundreds of houses than to lay and then maintain the pipes needed to provide water and sewage service to hundreds of houses. Not to mention the construction and operation of both water and sewage treatment plants to service such a system as opposed to the network access point and router for your wireless network.

      Sewage and water may be more important to the quality of life but if you can't afford them you go wit

    • You will find that a lot of African countries are the same - banking largely done via mobile phone and microtransactions (by our western terms - last time I was in Uganda a few years back, you could buy 25c of cellphone airtime and transfer money via text message). At the same time, there were booths by the side of roads in villages where you could have your phone charged - either by diesel generator, by solar, or by a child cranking a handle.

  • Telecom infrastructure has UPS protection pretty much everywhere. Where they get their regular power from is irrelevant, unless you want to be famous for running on backup a lot.

  • The Powerwalls, which cost $6,500 each, will step in when solar panels aren't generating enough electricity because it's night or when heavily overcast.

    Are those solar panels the Solar Roof that Musk showed off in late 2016 after Tesla bailed out SolarCity?

    “He’s Full of Shit”: How Elon Musk Fooled Investors, Bilked Taxpayers, and Gambled Tesla to Save SolarCity [vanityfair.com]?

  • Zimbabwe and local resources (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fivethreeo ( 1421165 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @06:41PM (#59154286)
    Zimbabwe has one of the largest occurrences of lithium in the world. Quid pro quo? But really I am a Musk fanboy. Space or bust!

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