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Tesla Will Install More Energy Storage With SolarCity In 2016 Than The US Installed In 2015 (electrek.co)
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla is scheduled to install more energy storage capacity in 2016 with SolarCity alone than all of the US installed in 2015. It was revealed in a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Tesla foresees an almost 10x increase in sales to SolarCity for behind the meter storage. [From the SEC filing: "We recognized approximately $4.9 million in revenue from SolarCity during fiscal year 2015 for sales of energy storage governed by this master supply agreement, and anticipate recognizing approximately $44.0 million in such revenues during fiscal year 2016."] This revenue projection means Tesla expects to install approximately 116 MWh of behind the meter storage. The U.S. for example installed about 76 MWh of behind the meter storage. SolarCity and Tesla Energy doubled their battery installation volume last year. What's particularly noteworthy is that the 116 MWh expectation does not include SolarCity's biggest project -- Kauai Island's coming 52 MWh system. Hawaii is aiming for 100% renewable energy by 2045 and has contracted with SolarCity to balance the two 12MW Solar Power plants with the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC). By 2020, there will be 70 GWh of Tesla battery storage on the road, and Straubel expects there to be 10 GWh of controllable load in those cars.
Battery storage is a waste of time, generates massive pollution, and will need replacing every 10 years. It is far better to feed the grid during peak times, and pump water to use hydro generation later in the day. We've know this for over a century!
This is all about PR for Telsa to sell batteries; batteries with obsolescence built in.
Sure. It's obvious to most people but it might as well be explained in case some folks haven't thought about it.
There you go, it's pretty simple and very sensible. It's also a good idea to add the following prediction to the above as well, as it's really a foregone conclusion and hence very safe to forecast:
Adding item (4) means that everyone will want the energy storage of (3) for recharging their cars when they get home. Paying the grid for that power when the sun can provide it for free during the day would be poor domestic economics. This pushes towards needing even more battery capacity.
Elon Musk is quite a visionary, but he's also a clever cookie when it comes to business. He knows where all this is going and is sewing up the future in EVs, mobile power storage, recharging stations, solar panels, and fixed power storage. He's got it all covered.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The gigafactory is in Nevada not Japan, the Solar cells are from New York not China, Musk is a US citizen....who has a Hebrew first name but isn't even a little Jewish.
Battery storage is a waste of time, generates massive pollution, and will need replacing every 10 years.
Utter nonsense.
First, it depends on the type of battery. Utility scale you use sodium sulphur, residential scale you use lithium. Both are highly recyclable and will last for more than 10 years. In the case of lithium, most batteries will already have been recycled from cars anyway, so are on at least their second stint.
Panasonic and Tesla are building the world's largest battery factory, with an output in excess of the current world output. They rightly expect that many of those batteries will be installed in cars that are scrapped long before the battery is dead, so plan to simply remove it and install it in homes with some extra control electronics. Beyond that, recycling lithium cells is going to be big business. You would be crazy to throw away cells that can be refreshed with fairly minimal effort.
So given that the batteries will be used for cars anyway, it makes sense to reduce the cost of the vehicle by planning to extract maximum value from the cells in it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sorry, I don't have time this morning to glean exact numbers. But there is a misconception that energy storage is free. I just went through these calculations for my off-grid dream home. (My cabin has been off-grid for 20+ years, so I am intimately familiar with wind+solar+storage.)
In reality, batteries don't last forever. The best of the best Rolls/Surette sealed lead acid batteries are good for 3,300 discharges to 50%. So, when you calculate the cost of those batteries against their total number of KWH that they will EVER store, it works out to approximately 10 cents per KWH. I've looked at every option available, and there are no other options close to flood lead acid storage amortized price.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... the Tesla powerwall has/had projected cycle life of 1000–1500 cycles. On a cost per KWH of new battery, they are about 3x the cost of flooded lead acid. So, for 3x the price, you get about half the energy storage over their lifespan. Again, apologies for not presenting the arithmetic. But the stored energy will cost somewhere between 30-50 cents per KWH. So, it is already not competitive with on-demand generation - even if the cost of generation is zero.
Welcome to Tesla Maths. They include the savings on your energy bill, any available subsidies and other random things they could think of.
It's like when Musk said you could own a Model S for $350/month. What he meant was, $350 if you put down a massive deposit, include all the fuel savings, include billing for the time to saved not pumping gasoline, took advantage of all tax breaks, free parking for EVs etc.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...The problem with coal is not the strip mining, but what happens thereafter.....
As if those were separate, unrelated things. It is precisely the mess left over that is the problem with "strip mining" (now typically "mountain top removal" which also completely buries watersheds). Mining operations are typically conducted by specially formed companies owned by shell companies that are the real mining operator. When the project is done, the company declares bankrupcy, disappears, and leaves an awful mess behind with no one to hold accountable or pay the bills for remediation.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
> Really? Because what I read is $44M in a multi trillion dollar energy industry suggests that behind the meter storage is a niche market at best, and a small one.
Yes and no. In the lower 48, it's largely confined to a small number of people living beyond the reach of the power grid, a few eccentrics, and victims of poorly thought out "green" policies. Hawaii, however is a special case being 4000km from any source of hydrocarbon fuels. Residential electricity rates on Oahu are over 25 cents per kw/hr and on the outlying islands are pushing 40 cents. https://www.hawaiianelectric.c...
Seems to me like a great testbed for rooftop solar with on-site storage and similar renewable based technologies.
Then there's California which seems to be determined to test renewables on a large scale. Nice of them to do so assuming that the rest of us are capable of learning from their experience -- good or bad. They may be able to make it work as they have a favorable situation for grid scale solar as well as hydro and a significant percentage (about 25%) of the world's actual up an running grid-scale geothermal generation.
Personally, I think Hawaii might do OK eventually although probably not 100% renewable. There's some stuff -- aircraft, emergency vehicles, etc that probably work best with liquid fuels.
California? Iffy, I think. But I don't live there. And they aren't all gonna die if their experiment founders.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey