Panasonic To Invest Over $256 Million In Tesla's US Plant For Solar Cells (reuters.com)

According to Reuters, Panasonic will invest more than $256 million (30 billion yen) in a New York production facility of Elon Musk's Tesla Motors to make photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules. Reuters reports: Japan's Panasonic, which has been retreating from low-margin consumer electronics to focus more on automotive components and other businesses targeting corporate clients, will make the investment in Tesla's factory in Buffalo, New York. The U.S. electric car maker is making a long-term purchase commitment from Panasonic as part of the deal, besides providing factory buildings and infrastructure. In a statement on Tuesday, the two companies said they plan to start production of PV modules in the summer of 2017 and increase to one gigawatt of module production by 2019. The plan is part of the solar partnership that the two companies first announced in October, but which did not disclose investment details. Tesla is working exclusively with longtime partner Panasonic to supply batteries for its upcoming Model 3, the company's first mass-market car. Panasonic is also the exclusive supplier of batteries to Tesla's Model S and Model X.

Comments

Re:saturation

[Ol Olsoc]

is there such a thing as a possible saturation of the PV market? could there be a day in near future (10 years) that there are PV on all the roofs that can handle it?

This is probably just a normal exercise of companies getting into a market where they figure they can make some coin.

And the interesting part is, when the cost and mental acceptance hits a certain point, this is going to take off like flat screens killed CRT's.

Because while so many people believe that it is pointless not to have the most efficient solar cells and only then located in the optimum places, we will be able to carpet areas with these panels.

"long-term purchase commitment from Panasonic"

[haruchai]

I'm really curious about the details of that commitment.
Something tells me it'll be Tesla getting the pointy end if this relationship sours or if much better tech comes along.
Tesla helped Panasonic become or remain the market leader but it seems they're more welded than wedded and a breakup wouldn't be in Tesla's favor except in the very unlikely event that they develop their very own superior battery tech.

Jobs

[rsilvergun]

How many jobs? I keep hearing big numbers like this thrown around but never any job figures. It's starting to make me nervous...

Re:Jobs

[OrangeTide]

$256m? Give every American about 80 cents. They'll need it since these factories will likely be automated with robots.

If you're in the business of designing and making robots you'll be doing well in the economy of the future. Assuming you can get home without being mobbed by the starving proletariat.

Re:Jobs

[MountainLogic]

This is a key point about lost manufacturing jobs. For a short time China had dirt cheap labor. That time has past. Still chirp, but no longer dirt cheap. In the steel industry perhaps half the jobs were lost to automation with the reset to strong competition and indeed some dumping for China. I would argue that the miss-west jobs did not go to China, they went to Everett (Boeing), Redmond (MS), LA (Hollywood), NY (wall street), etc. There are always winers and losers in these deals. Traditional manufacturing lost their protection so other US exports (aircraft, tech, media, finance, etc) could gain access to foreign markets. The promise by BOTH parties was that those workers who got screwed in the deal would be taken care of. Some were give retraining that did benefit them, most got nothing. These sorts of disruptions destroy business ecosystems in a locations so new business don't just jump in and fill a factory as a business closes. It took decades to build the manufacturing centers and silicon valley for that matter. Cut the heart out of a sector and it will not rebound on its own for decades.
No matter what anybody says these jobs are not coming back. Manufacturing will come back as a technology and capital intensive highly automated operations, but not with high school education jobs. We must find a solution for angry guys who saw their fathers make $40/.hour who themselves made $20/hour and they see their kids make $10/hour. Perhaps we need to parachute in some of our best entrepreneurs to turn the place around. Perhaps we need to provide incentive to get them to move where the jobs are? I remember in my native Oregon in the '80s as logging wound down there was massive discontent as these folks who for generations made good, if dangerous, living in the woods see their way of life come crashing down. The one gotcha for these logging communities was that they had to move to a new area every few years as the timber was cut. In the 70's the region was over cut and there was no where else to go. These communities lost their economic base and had no way to recover and their kids moved away to make lives of themselves (e.g., Kurt Cobain from Aberdeen, WA moved to Olympia homeless and nearly starving and started sining to make a living). I fear that that may be the fate of many of these rust belt communities.

Re:Jobs

[Cytotoxic]

$256 Million! Hey, that's about 1/3 of the amount the state of New York is investing in this project!

New York state has committed $750 million to build and outfit the plant at Buffalo's RiverBend site, the centerpiece of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's "Buffalo Billion" program to revitalize the upstate region's largest city.

To put that in perspective, they could have simply given each of the 1,400 people expected to be employed in this operation a half million dollars and still come out ahead on the deal.

Not that it is necessarily a bad investment long term, but a half million per job up front for something in this tough and competitive of a market is risky, to say the least.

Re:Jobs

[OrangeTide]

Well if you wanted to employ me for 10 years, you'd need more than half a million dollars. I say 10 years because I don't think this will be pulling in revenue and breaking even in something small like 2 years.

It's a problem to be solved, right?

[Okian Warrior]

$256m? Give every American about 80 cents. They'll need it since these factories will likely be automated with robots.

If you're in the business of designing and making robots you'll be doing well in the economy of the future. Assuming you can get home without being mobbed by the starving proletariat.

I assume you're not suggesting that being mobbed by the starving public is inevitable, or even desired.

So what you're saying is, there is a problem on the horizon that needs to be addressed. Yes?

And you mention being mobbed by hordes of starving people as a rhetorical point, to give people a visceral image of what will happen if the problem isn't solved.

But it's not inevitable, and you're trying to encourage people to think about and implement solutions, rather than painting a dour and depressing prediction of the future for no good reason whatsoever.

That's what you intended, right?

Re:It's a problem to be solved, right?

[OrangeTide]

I have a dry sense of humor.

Our solar future

[Okian Warrior]

How many jobs? I keep hearing big numbers like this thrown around but never any job figures. It's starting to make me nervous...

Another useless number is the production estimate: a gigawatt of production? Is that per month? Per year? Total?

I assume it's annual production.

The US consumes/produces roughly 4000 terawatt hours annually. Assuming the article refers to gigawatt production and not something else (like gigawatt-hours equivalent), and assuming 4 hours of production for 250 days per year (average), that's 1/4,000 of the US electricity demand produced each year.

Of course that's additive. After 20 years there will be 20 TWh of solar panels installed from this factory alone, at which time they can begin replacing the older units.

So we would need roughly 200 of these factories to ramp up to producing all of our electricity using solar panels.

Of course, there's lots of installed generation that we won't need or want to replace (hydro, such as Niagra Mohawk), so the actual number needed will be a lot less. Also, installed solar will displace gasoline instead of other electricity generation.

Overall I think this is excellent news.

On the subject of automation, it seems reasonable that a largely automated factory could be paired with automated deployment in remote, uninhabited areas such as Western Utah or the Great Basin area. Robots building support structures and installing solar cells seems like something a DARPA challenge could solve.

The only obstacle of doing this is the financing under our current economic model. It's something that could be done under the government model, such as was done with the interstate highway project.

I eagerly await our solar future.

Re:saturation

[aXis100]

In Australia it's because of two main issues:

1) Electricity providers charge both flat rate access fees, and per kWH usage, but the access fees don't truly cover the cost of the network. When usage goes down they are left short.

2) Many electricity providers took advantage of a government scheme to build excess capacity in to the network, and charge users for it. In some cases whole substations were built and sat around unused. Now that people are using less or going off grid, they are left with expensive underutilised capital.

The funny thing is, the more they try to claw back and/or raise fees, the easier it is to economically justify going off grid. They are shooting themselves in the foot.

Re:saturation

[Ol Olsoc]

Already happening in Australia, to the point where power companies are trying to get legislation allowing them to bill for expected usage instead of actual usage, where actual is lower (due to PV).

The problem is they've got immense long-term loans to build and maintain the power networks, based on their captive markets. Suddenly, a small but sufficient percentage have gone off-grid.

I think I'm reading that as charging PV people more, at least short term.

Sounds like they are giving them a fine incentive to go PV.

Interesting

[Okian Warrior]

I think Elon said something about scaling the factory up to 10+ GW per year when they acquire the solar panel manufacture Silveo, and I'm sure the capital costs per additional GW is much lower. Tesla only produces 100k cars in the Fremont plant now; however, the same plant was producing 500k cars a year when it was run by Toyota and GM. The energy market is enormous.

That's interesting - thanks. 10GW/yr with a 20-year lifespan translates to 200 TWh per year by the previous calculation. That's a significant portion (5%) of the US electrical needs, and from a single factory.

So it looks like in 20 years or so we should be rapidly reducing our carbon footprint, without having to reduce our lifestyle or hobble businesses with regulation.

In 40 years (certainly by 100 years) we might have leftover capacity and start sequestering carbon from the atmosphere in various ways. Also, world population should have peaked and started decreasing by then (estimates vary, from 2050 to 2090), and we will also be exporting the technology to other countries. Food production is stable and sufficient to feed everyone, and we're eliminating diseases at a rate of about one per decade.

It's starting to look like future problems will all be political.

Re: Interesting

[WindBourne]

Except that you have many things wrong. For example, your calculations are way off. First off, light is 50% of the time. IOW, the sun is seen for 50%. Secondly, the sun is blocked due to weather for about 1 day / week, or 14%. IOW, daylight the loses 7%, so the (panels will produce for 43%. There is about 10,000 hours / year or 4,300 hours or about 4000 hours .

Re: Interesting

[WindBourne]

insolation is mostly done by clouds and on average, any one part of America is covered by enough clouds to fully block the sun 1 day / week or 1/7.

Re:saturation

[DanielRavenNest]

> is there such a thing as a possible saturation of the PV market?

Yes, in the near term when it supplies all the daytime electricity a grid can handle without becoming unstable. It's not always sunny, so the grid needs enough other power sources to compensate for bad weather. Estimates when this point would be reached with the current grid range around 20-30%. US electric production is between 1 and 2% solar at the moment. I say daytime because power demand is lower at night, and the sun doesn't shine then.

In the long term, with better transmission infrastructure (to overcome local weather), and storage solutions (solar thermal, or batteries), total solar could go higher

> could there be a day in near future (10 years) that there are PV on all the roofs that can handle it?

Only a minority of solar installations are on home rooftops. In the US, the majority are "utility" systems, with many thousands of panels installed at ground level. Most of these today are "tracking systems", that tilt rows of panels to follow the sun, and get more output. Because it's installed at ground level by specialized work crews, and needs fewer support systems per panel, it is 60% cheaper than residential. There is no shortage of open land. Commercial rooftops fall in between residential and utility. For example, WalMart and Target have each installed 300 MW of solar panels on their store roofs. It offsets some of the power used by the stores.