Some interesting info from Worm Capital:
Gigafactory 1 is 2nd largest building in U.S. - after expansion it will be largest in world (2020)
Have ordered 3 new Grohmann machines - 1st will increase Model 3 battery production to 8,000/week
Currently produces more battery capacity than all other car mfg combined (including China) - will soon hit a BILLION/year.
https://www.wormcapital.com/insights/tesla-gigafactory-visit
And yet no one was thinking that. It was an article about Tesla and their batteries. It wasn't an article about fossil fuels or the overall RE market. But thanks for once again pretending to like RE while simultaneously shitting all over every positive RE news or post.Impressive. But let me put that in perspective for people thinking we can replace fossil easily with RE and battery storage.
What do you think if Apple buys TSLA? Lets Elon out with a payday and puts management in place to run an actual company. Clark Howard brought this up recently. Sounds intriguing. Allows Apple to kick start the autonomous car program
Apple buys Tesla? Nope. We would have nothing but $150,000+ EVs within Five years.
Apple buys Tesla? Nope. We would have nothing but $150,000+ EVs within Five years.
... let me put that in perspective for people thinking we can replace fossil easily with RE and battery storage. I read in a related article that "When complete, the Gigafactory is expected to be .... reaching a battery production rate of 35 gigawatt-hours per year,"
If we took an entire years production from that largest building in the world, and used it to store lulls in solar/wind, and wanted to eliminate a single 800 MW coal plant - that entire year's worth of battery production could supply 800 MW for less than 2 days. It sure would take a long time to provide weeks of partial backup for a significant percent of our fossil fuel, nation-wide...
... I'm not sure, but I think the efficient co-gen turbines are more for base load, not so much for peaker (I'll try to look that up later).
-ERD50
If we imagine a world where oil sells for $500/bbl and solar energy can be made for 0.25 cents per watt, a lot of things become economically feasible. We can make liquid fuels (alcohol and hydrocarbons) from air and water using chemical processes and cheap solar electricity (or let algae do it in bioreactors). It is always sunny or windy somewhere, so at some price very long range power grids become feasible. Breeder reactors become politically acceptable.The 1-day giga battery for the US would cost $1 trillion dollars!
What are we going to do when fossil fuel runs out? We will all live in tiny homes, sweating bullets in the summer, and freezing our buns off in the winter. I am glad I will be already dead when it comes to that point. My great grandchildren will be living in caves to have moderate temperatures.
The thread touches on both.
Musk says we have plenty of electricity for his cars if we stop refining oil.
When you said " will soon hit a BILLION/year." A Billion what?
OK, so Tesla will have a big building. What does this really mean for the company? I have no idea. They have lots of competition, their credits are running out (not just customer credits, but credits from other car companies that need to meet 'zero pollution' quotas in some states). I think Tesla the car company will have a tough time of it.
Maybe their batteries will find a place in load leveling on the grid (the seconds/minutes/hours I spoke of)? We will see.
A little delayed, but here's a quick video on the newer co-gen plant design. It basically uses a steam turbine to recover waste heat from the gas turbine exhaust. They do bump up the efficiency a good bit. But steamers do not like to stop and start. Proper start up procedure on a large steamer is not measured in minutes. You need many hours to do it right.
https://youtu.be/eeiu-wcyEbs
You got me interested, so I looked for some additional numbers.
The US used 3.83 trillion kWh in 2017. That's an average of about 10.5 billion kWh per day.
A battery large enough to store one day of usage for the US would take Tesla 300 years to produce.
The article on Tesla Gigafactory said that the battery price was expected to get down to $100/kWh, which is pretty good by today's standard.
The 1-day giga battery for the US would cost $1 trillion dollars! ...
....
What are we going to do when fossil fuel runs out? We will all live in tiny homes, sweating bullets in the summer, and freezing our buns off in the winter. I am glad I will be already dead when it comes to that point. My great grandchildren will be living in caves to have moderate temperatures.
If we imagine a world where oil sells for $500/bbl and solar energy can be made for 0.25 cents per watt, a lot of things become economically feasible. We can make liquid fuels (alcohol and hydrocarbons) from air and water using chemical processes and cheap solar electricity (or let algae do it in bioreactors). It is always sunny or windy somewhere, so at some price very long range power grids become feasible. Breeder reactors become politically acceptable.
The bigger problem is that all of this makes energy cost more than it does today (or else we'd already be doing them). That means lower economic productivity and a lower standard of living. Places with dirt streets and unsafe water today might stay that way.
But the article I posted did not, unless you count their take on Tesla's broad mission statement. The rest of the article focused narrowly on battery production, automation, etc.
Again, not mentioned in the article I posted, which you were responding to?
The answer to your question is both in the article AND specifically in my post - "BATTERY CAPACITY" - using caps to help it stand out...
Fine, but the factory will be producing the Power products as well (unless you have info to the contrary), so why not make it part of the discussion?...
And before you jump back to the bigger picture of world-wide renewable energy, that's battery capacity for Tesla products produced from a Tesla factory. The thrust of the article, for those who haven't read it, was for cars and Model 3 specifically. ...
...
You seem to have missed it, but I did not introduce the Gigafactory building size with the phrase "Proof of success!" - instead, I labeled it as merely 'interesting' - yet you focus on it. I'm puzzled by that. ...
... Again you seem intent on broadening the discussion to the world's entire energy needs. Who looks at any one company and then dismisses them because they can't possibly supply more than a small percent of the world's demand?
I'm not doing that, I'm only trying to put it in perspective. If the largest battery factory in the world couldn't ever produce enough backup for even 10% of the US grid before they need to start over again to replace the first batteries they produced, it gives some perspective on how hard a nut this RE thing is to crack. I wish if weren't so, but "if wishes were fishes...". I think it is far more productive to plan for a future based on reality, not wishes.
So the Gigafactory is interesting, thanks for posting. What are your thoughts on Tesla?-ERD50
There was an interesting article in the WSJ (last week?) about all the natural gas from fracking that is being flared off because they have no way of storing or transporting it to where it can be used. Perhaps we should fix stupid things like that first, then get on with EVs later? Just a thought.
There are battery factories being built around the world, with the Chinese being most active.
BYD expects to raise its total output to 60 GWh/year by 2020, compared to Tesla planned 38 GWh/year.
CATL is building a battery factory in Germany. Volkswagen has a deal to buy $25 billion worth of battery from Samsung, LG Chem, as well as CATL.
In the context of humanity, EV vs. ICE will be non-sequitur. I want someone to invent a transporter and warp drive so I can vacation on Saturn. My wife likes rings.
(note: I don't really know what non-sequitur means but thought it sounded cool in that sentence).