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Tesla To Power Gigafactory With World's Largest Solar Rooftop Installation (inhabitat.com)
Last week, Tesla announced that its Gigafactory has begun mass production of lithium-ion battery cells in Nevada. But the company failed to mention one thrilling detail in their January 4 announcement: the Gigafactory could be powered by the world's largest solar rooftop installation. According to an investor handout, a 70-megawatt (MW) solar array along with ground solar panels could let the factory operate entirely on clean energy. Inhabitat reports: The 70 MW solar array would be around seven times larger than any rooftop arrays currently installed, according to Tesla's exciting handout released by Electrek and confirmed as genuine by The Verge. The rooftop array currently boasting the title of world's largest is a 11.5 MW installation in India. The United States' biggest rooftop array is a 10 MW array atop a California Whirlpool distribution center. SolarCity will likely manufacture the solar panels, according to The Verge, as Tesla acquired the solar energy company in November. Powerpacks will store any excess energy generated by the vast solar installation. Tesla said in the handout the "all-electric" factory will be able to run with greater efficiency and will produce zero carbon emissions. Heating and water use at the Gigafactory will also be sustainable. In the handout, Tesla said a large part of heating for the building would come from waste heat obtained from production processes. Also, "Gigafactory's closed-loop water supply system uses six different treatment systems to efficiently re-circulate about 1.5 million liters (that's around 400,000 gallons) of water, representing an 80 percent reduction in fresh water usage compared with standard processes." Tesla even said they're building a recycling facility at the Gigafactory that will be able to "safely reprocess" battery cells, packs, and modules to obtain metal usable in new cells.
could make cars with rooftop solar cells...
Totally makes sense.
Don't know how much waste the recycle process produces, but not having to ship the material but across the street will save a bundle.
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fuck this stupid shit if sola wasn't subsidized so heavily by the guverment then it would be ecconomical to run the factory on oil. stupid leftist social justice warrior tree-hugging nazi germany muslim lovers.
The largest footprint building on the planet, with a roof (as per all the artists renditions of the factory) covered in solar panels would literally necessarily be the largest rooftop solar installation :) and they wouldnt put solar panels all over the roof to not use them :)
This is re-volting news for the anti solar PV crowd.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
At least they're not planning to drive cars over those solar cells.
Solar isn't baseload. They'd need some sort of crazy energy storage device.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
So those 70MW of solar panels were made with clean energy also? Not exactly powered entirely by "clean energy" then is it?
Solar panels in Nevada? A Heliostat would work as well and would not require such an unecological production process. Solar panels may be better than old tech power production but the chemicals used are pollutants. They are not as green as claimed but heliostat towers are far more green and in a area like Nevada. Why does a country like Morocco end up leading the world? https://www.revolvesolar.com/w...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It's much more load following. It peaks when the demand is highest and drops when the demand is lowest. Therefore you need less peak load capacity and can reduce the total power production you require for a grid.
Baseload (and night time rates) were created because nuclear power was expensive if you kept throttling the plant,so they produced 100% of what they could get out (sans accidents, maintenance and failures), but that was too much at night and too little at day, so they still needed expensive peaking plants whose capacity added to the grid was much higher than it needs to be if we replace most of the power production with solar and wind by their capacity. And because of the underproduction in the daytime, they couldn't close down nuke plants, and therefore they had to overproduce at night.
So to move demand about as much as possible, they introduced two different tarrifs.
And moving to renewables could therefore reduce the cost per installed watt, per capacity factor watt AND per watt delivered.
Because instead of being an immovable base load source, it's much more load following.
"...failed to mention one thrilling detail"
"...according to Tesla's exciting handout"
Is this what reporting has devolved to these days?
- ------ Go 'til ya know.
Don't get high on your own supply.
Stop pretending we will be back to 60's employment or taxation, just let the empire fall it will be better for everyone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A 2016 study estimated that global fossil fuel subsidies were $5.3 trillion in 2015, which represents 6.5% of global GDP.[3] The study found that "China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion)."[3] The authors estimated that the elimination of "subsidies would have reduced global carbon emissions in 2013 by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2%, of global GDP."[3] According to the International Energy Agency, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies worldwide would be the one of the most effective ways of reducing greenhouse gases and battling global warming.[4] In May 2016, the G7 nations set for the first time a deadline for ending most fossil fuel subsidies; saying government support for coal, oil and gas should end by 2025.[13]
Keep funding the middle east.
70 is only 6 times 'larger' than 10.
7 times larger than 10 is 80.
I wonder how much attention they are paying to how the closed recycling systems can be applied to the problem of sustained life in space or on Mars ...
They would need a massive battery to store all that power to make this work. They clearly haven't thought it through.
Closed-loop water usage; large scale solar; on-site recycling. This sounds like an R&D project for SpaceX. No doubt much of the information gained by building and running this will feed back into other Musk projects.
Of course, if they want to practice this in a place without an atmosphere, they could always build Gigafactory 2 in Boring, Oregon - or even it's twin town of Dull, Scotland ;-)
And, since on the flat there are two reasons for needing ANY power to keep moving (Newton's first law, remember!) is to offset losses moving like wind resistance, that is a very important limit for speed.
So your complaint here is both irrelevant and unsupported.
Its not an urban legend, it's reality.
Nice parroting of the fossil fuel industry's PR line, however.
Who said "air conditioning" until you brought it up? I brought up night time rates. Ask your local heavy industry business owner what that means. Even if nobody else knows what that means in your country, they will.
Using estimates from published research, the little coal-fired plant at the local university here in town, even though they use "clean" coal methods, still produces about $12 million in negative health impacts on people that live in the community. This primarily comes from fine particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrious oxide, and doesn't even include the cost of disposal of the coal ash. Major coal plants have a much larger impact on human health, particularly if they are located near population centers.
Guess that will be good for employee work/life balance.