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If Tesla Can Run Its Gigafactory On 100% Renewables, Why Can't Others?
Lucas123 writes Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said his company's Gigafactory battery plant, the world's largest, will be "self contained" and run on solar, wind and geothermal energy. The obvious problem with renewable sources is that they're intermittent at any given location, but on a larger scale they're quite predictable and reliable, according to Tom Lombardo, a professor of engineering and technology. Lombardo points out that Tesla isn't necessarily going off-grid, but using a strategy of "net metering" where the factory will produce more renewable energy than it needs, and receive credits in return from its utility when renewables aren't available. So why can't other manufacturing facilities do the same? Is what Tesla is doing not necessarily transferable to other industries? Sam Jaffe, principal research analyst with Navigant Research, believes Tesla's choice of locations — Reno — and its product is optimal for using renewable and not something that can be reproduced by every industry.
Germany is well on the way to doing this on the scale of a whole country. It just takes some political will.
Korma: Good
Tesla is selling $100k cars, while other battery factories make batteries for $100 phones and $500 laptops. Maybe it is too expensive for them to set up a fully renewable process.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
It's because people like you want a $600 smartphone device every 2 years made by a Chinese worker getting $1 an hour using 100s of toxic, cancerous materials, all processed by coal power.
In the race to the top in the present it's the future generations that come in last.
The issue can be a complex one, but I think it boils down fairly easily:
1. Most companies can go completely to renewable power, excepting some where they need the byproducts for other uses. Concrete manufacturing, refining iron and making steel, etc... However, this doesn't mean that it's economic to do so.
2. There is however a limit - if the manufacturer uses more energy than their roof/property collects, they obviously can't go 100% renewable without obtaining more property.
3. I figure that it's probably easier to go 100% renewable if you plan to do so before even breaking ground on the factory. Such as selecting a location with nearly ideal solar patterns.
4. Net metering only works so long as there are other customers looking to buy the power when it's being produced, and generators producing when it isn't. If 'everybody' tries to do it, the system would break down.
5. To go along with this, even if they can't net meter, they're a battery factory. They can create a lot of backup storage even if they only drain/refill all their produced batteries once as a 'test', cleverly arranged to provide back up power. Or produce some batteries at cost, use degraded but still functional batteries returned under warranty/core charge, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
The fiction of net metering is that you will not be paid the same amount for the electricity you generate as for the electricity you consume.
On of the purposes of "Smart Meters" is to permit differential pricing on electricity produced vs. consumed; it's not just to provide a temporal demand market. There are already tariffs in place in California where PG&E only has to buy as much electricity as you consume for a net 0 energy usage, rather than being required to purchase everything you generate over what you consume.
The idea of a large grid only works if someone pays to maintain that grid, and that pricing comes in as a differential.
Everyone can't do what Tesla is doing because not everyone is going to have the storage capacity to make it economical; Tesla can just rota the batteries it manufactures in service to the manufacturing plant itself, as part of "burn in testing", so that it'll get local off-grid storage as a side effect of the manufacturing process itself.
I suppose that "every rechargeable battery manufacturer can do what Tesla does" would be a fair statement, but that's a tiny subset of "everyone"
The obvious problem with renewable sources is that they're intermittent at any given location
Yeah. How are they going to store intermittent power for when they need it later? At a battery factory?
This is a tough problem.
You cannot base any real analysis on figures take by looking at an artists rendering of the site.
The article says that they will have 85 windmills because there are 85 windmills in the picture. This is garbage. It is an artists rendering!
If you want to have a serious discussion, you have to wait until there is some actual real info to discuss.
Note that net metering is not running your plant completely off renewables. It's running it off renewables some of the time.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It's generally called "co-generation", and although that applies to energy generated by a wide variety of means many are renewable. Burning methane from sewerage treatment plants to run generators is one with quite a few decades of history, another is burning plant waste such as "bagasse" from sugar cane.
How does Tesla renew the lithium?
The standard way: nuclear fusion, with peaking capacity provided by supernovas.
yeah but that doesn't count since the dam isn't on the factory premises ;D. that's what the article is wanting factories to do.. it doesn't care if you do it like sensible being and put the power generation outside the plant premises..
btw the usual way to run factories a 100 years ago was on "100%" (or over 100% if you count out the extra..). the papermills etc were usually built so that they had an included hydro plant. last time i got an update the old, old hydro dam at my hometowns powerplant was only providing for lightning though. the old textile plant in the bigger city near my hometown was the first place to have electric lights(iirc in all of nordic).. and those were from hydro. to run the textile mill when it was dark with smaller risk of fires..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The Energy and Motor industries get far more in subsidies, tax breaks and bailouts.
So much so that dwindling fossil fuels can still compete economically with kinetic energy that costs nothing.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
If only the Gigafactory could figure out some way to store electrical energy until its needed. That'd be awesome! Not really something they're equipped for though, I guess...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
When I go to a high point in this city and look down, I see countless flat roofs that could easily host solar panels. Even with all the fog this city gets, that would make a significant impact on our use of non-renewable energy. But it is not to be. Homeowners tend not to like the upfront expense, they tend not to know about SolarCity, and a bunch of the homes are rented. Absent some regulation, they aren't going to install renewable energy.
I think the neatest time to add renewable energy to a building is during construction. Absent that regulation, unless the owner makes it a priority, then the architects are not going to add it to the plan. For example, my work place recently commissioned and moved into a new building. It has an unobstructed, south-facing, 2-story-high, 10-foot-wide window that we have to cover up on the inside to maintain the climate. My immediate thought was: Solar energy. But I had no authority; the people in charge just put a poorly designed curtain on it. It just doesn't occur to them that we could put renewables in this building.
Actually, in the current political climate, I think renewable energy gets negative publicity from these deployments. Conservatives under the thrall of Koch money see renewables as an admission of AGW, and reject it. No! That reason is stupid! And regardless of AGW, renewables will help us survive the depletion of the oil reserves! The Koch-funded people claim that there is no depletion. I live in a state of extreme pessimism.
Have a nice time.
Tesla is doing this
Uhm. They haven't even broken ground yet. So no, they're NOT.
Until the site is up and 100% operational, this is all smoke being blown out someone's ass.
Why don't others do this?
Because this sort of solution isn't suitable everywhere.
Reno sees about 250 sunny or partly sunny days a year, with roughly 60% of those being totally sunny.
A place like Chicago sees 189 sunny or partly sunny days a year with roughly 40% of those being totally sunny.
Places like Reno don't have to deal with long stretches of extreme low temperatures and snow measured in feet.
Also, there's the land use to consider. Farmland is a LOT more valuable for what it can produce than a big stretch of desert land. So converting it to a wind/solar farm from food production is idiotic.
There's also issues of space availability. If you have a factory in someplace like Los Angeles, you simply aren't going to have the land area to build a totally renewable setup.
On top of this, what other environmental impacts does building in this manner, on a wide-scale basis (not just one factory, but dozens/hundreds/thousands of businesses and their facilities) have?
There's also the issue that the local utility needs to be set up to accept power back into the system.
And finally, if everyone's doing this, how do you maintain a stable power production industry? And how does the industry finance maintenance, expansion and construction of new facilities to replace old/obsoleted facilities that have met/exceeded their productive lifetimes?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Banks of batteries are expensive and take up a lot of space. You'd need to provide several megawatts for several hours. That would require hundreds of 85kWh car battery packs.
And they'll be producing several hundred thousand such packs annually once the factory is operational.
Also, it's going to be a 10 million square-foot facility, with a few hundred more empty acres around it. I don't think they'll be pressed for space.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
And here in Grand Rapids Michigan we have several places that do it. The Van Andel Institute for example is covered in solar on their roofs and their solar program is very successful even through last winter when we saw more snow than Minnesota saw.
How about instead of wild speculation you actually look up the places that ACTUALLY have done it and have been running that way for years successfully?
Even Michigan Tech way the hell up against Lake Superior has a successful Solar power generation system in a place where they get on average 6 feet of snow falling per winter storm and over 30 feet of snow fall for the winter.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Fukushima discredits Tokyo Electric Power Company, and their half-assed management of what was a completely containable and manageable problem.
http://www.businessweek.com/ne...
RWE AG said Aug. 12 it will halt an extra 1,005 megawatts of coal and lignite capacity by the first quarter of 2017, taking the total planned capacity cuts to 8,940 megawatts. Old lignite plants are candidates for closing, according to New York-based Pira, whose clients include oil companies, utilities and governments. A thousand megawatts is enough to power 2 million European homes.
They are shutting down the old coal plants, replacing them with new, more efficient and cleaner ones... and now they have to shut down and reduce production of those too.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Wind and solarâ(TM)s share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42 percent by next year from 30 percent in 2010, according to European Union data compiled by Citigroup Inc. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28 percent from 32 percent, the data show.
German utilities plan to start new hard-coal plants with 5,606 megawatts of capacity this year and next, data from Bonn-based national grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur show. That compares with a target of at least 10,000 megawatts from new solar and wind installations in 2014 and 2015 under Germanyâ(TM)s renewable energy act, which takes effect Aug. 1. Solar output reached a record 24,244 megawatts on June 6, according to EEX.
Because... They are getting more out of all the solar and wind than expected. They are getting negative electricity prices in January and May.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That is kinda the problem. There will always be poorly maintained and half-ass managed facilities, it is simply the nature of humans. If a solution can not cope with this class of problem then it is not a good solution, human nature is one of the variables you have to take into account.
Lackadaisical safety management is dangerous.
Ah, so nuclear power is safe only where people never get lazy?
Well, it sure as hell is crazy unsafe when they *are* lazy bastards, and it sure is a hell of a lot safer when they are painstaking. Look at the US Navy nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Perfect nuclear safety record with respect to the nuclear power plants. Hell, look at the US Nuclear electricity industry, even though I wouldn't put it close to being good enough. Zero uncontained meltdowns. Zero hydrogen explosions.
One of our production facilities installed two large windmills that supply roughly 10-15% of the power the plant uses. You would think this would lower the cost for purchased electricity, but it didn't.
The electric company raised the rates for our plant because the usage dropped enough that they entered a lower usage bracket which has a higher cost per KW/h. We actually pay MORE each month in electricity costs even though the plant purchases 10-15% less electricity..
Obviously they are negotiating the contract terms now (it may be done) but this is just one example of how the utilities have everyone by the balls. They are going to get their money, one way or another.
I'm sure for Tesla, it will be easier since they are starting from the beginning instead of doing a retrofit. However I hear similar stories from residential users. Most times people want to make the choice to use returnables but outside factors make it monetarily difficult to pursue.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Alternatively, there will always be some number of batteries that are functional but don't meet the stated specs for whatever reason. Producing 10s of thousands of batteries a year, that could easily leave you with several hundred mostly functional batteries that are otherwise worthless to you.
I teach physics. The most depressing part of my job is teaching a general-education class where I have to explain global warming.
Scientists don't have a private agenda. We would LOVE to be wrong about this, but:
- Temperatures are going up worldwide
- Global temperatures are historically very well correlated to CO2 concentrations
- CO2 concentrations have a straightforward and well-understood effect on infrared light produced by
earth's blackbody radiation
- Even small changes to global temperature will create big changes to local climates
- We can stop this, but only if radical action is taken right now
so
- We're all fucked.
This is not the time for the debate about whether the effect is real. This is the time for debate about just how MUCH we should be panicking. We're in the deep shit here. We're talking about large proportions of humanity not having enough food to eat. The resulting warfare and hardship will be devastating.
Wood burning trucks in North Korea. Renewable Juche!
Here's a list from Forbes on deaths per trillion kWhr:
Coal 170,000
Oil 36,000
Biofuel 24,000
Natural Gas 4,000
Hydro 1,400
Solar 440
Wind 150
Nuclear 90
Tell me again how Nuclear is the most dangerous choice?