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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.
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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Sure you could but you don't have enough surface area to charge an electric car in a reasonable time.
Although it's plenty to run the stereo indefinitely.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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.
This is a problem why? Would you rather someone build a coal plant next to your house to supply the power instead?
The electricity has to come from somewhere.
Lowering air pollution benefits all.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Duh. FTS: "Powerpacks will store any excess energy generated by the vast solar installation."
The real question is where on earth they're going to find such a number of "powerpacks". I mean, can you imagine the size of the factory you'd need just to make the batteries to support this, and how would they ever power such a place?!!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
You still think a "coal plant" belches out black soot and smoke don't you?
Educate yourself. Fossil plants use baghouses, dry sorbent injection, activated carbon, flue gas desulfurization, selective catalytic reduction, among other technologies to clean up emissions. Mostly what you see today is water vapor.
Yeah no one wants a power plant near them, but happy to use the electricity it generates. Ignorance is bliss.
The only reason that coal plants use *any* of those technologies is because they were FORCED. And they spent DECADES resisting any attempts to curb their pollution. Yes, they're cleaner than ever but they were fucking nasty for the better part of my life.
If Trump disbands the EPA, they'll happily go back to spewing their shite directly into your air & water with a hearty fuck-u-and-blow-me
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Coal is dead, forget about it. Coal fuel costs more then you can make off the electricity you sell. Power prices keep heading down. Nobody is building coal plants anymore,
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.
I happen to have not only one, but two natural gas power plants within a mile or so (along with a refinery). While I know enough to not be too worried about what comes off the cooling towers, stand around the fence for a while... ask yourself why you now have a bloody nose, itchy eyes, and shortness of breath. The joy of NOx.
Yes, things get diluted pretty quickly as long as wind is blowing things away from you, but I am only talking about short-term effects. The level of adult-onset asthma in the community is also very high. Treatment is only done to get levels down to be reliably at the regulatory threshold... otherwise you are wasting money.
Bottom line is we are better off with nothing going up the smokestack.
From SolarCity's 2015 impact report it seems that 70MW of installed power produced 28,630 metric tons of CO2. It's 2017 (which should have yielded further emissions savings over 2015), plus installing bulk might yield yet further savings.
But I'm a firm believe in the energy trap, so I think that's 28,630 tons of CO2 well invested.
The plant will be powered by Elon's love. Also, you have to wind it.
#DeleteChrome
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.
WRONG!
Medupi power station
Kusile power station
Both still under construction (and running behind schedule and over budget)
I grew up next to this monstrosity
Hendrina power station
When you woke up in the morning you had to wash the coal dust off the car, it would eat the galvanizing off fences because of the high sulpher content.
Sure it's a bit better now, but not by much. ZA has a fvckton of coal, it will be burning it for some time.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
But still, they are subsidies. You get subsidies to build solar. You get subsidies to build a coal plant. So if we are talking about a free market, you have to remove the subsidies for building the coal plant, because construction cost is part of the cost of a coal plant.
The Dutch Railways are now completely wind powered as of Jan 1 2017. Apparently they don't need baseload power plants.
>Sure it's a bit better now, but not by much. ZA has a fvckton of coal, it will be burning it for some time.
Don't be so sure of this. Coal comes in different varieties and a coal plant must be designed for a specific variety. And we have a problem here in ZA. Until around 2010 the coal we used in our plants had little export value, while the coal Europe used was exactly the coal we didn't need. So Eskom could get very low rates on the coal they needed - because the mines could make lovely profits selling the rest to Europe.
Since 2010 the European market has been shrinking fast, it's not a viable export market anymore. China on the other hand is growing rapidly and is now our major coal export market. Only problem: China's plants use the same coal variety we do. So suddenly the mines are very unhappy about selling coal at R5 a tonne to Eskom when they SAME coal can get R50 a tonne from China.
Part of why Eskom helped the Guptas to buy that coal mine is because the mine was about to go bankrupt. The owners are in a long-term cheap coal supply with Eskom and had decided they would rather close that mine and focus on the others (from where they could export the coal to China) than keep operating the one they had to sell so cheaply it was making a loss.
Helping the Guptas buy it was partly motivated by the risk that if the mine closes Eskom would face a critical shortage. That nobody was willing to buy it without kickbacks and help tells you a lot.
Either way, none of this is relevant to American coal-miners, we've never imported coal from them and we never will - since their coal won't work in our power plants and, like you said, we have plenty of coal anyway.
It's definitely in ZA's best interest to move away from coal - not least because the economics around mining and burning have changed and it's now a lot harder to do it economically. The answer isn't the ridiculous nuclear plan either.
The problem with nuclear is that it is extremely expensive and takes a long time to get online. A minimum of a decade - and nuclear plants are notorious for going extremely over budget and over time - look how late Kusile and Medupi already are, there's no practical way a nuclear project will produce a single KW/H of power in South Africa in under 30 years. We can't afford to wait that long.
Our answer must be solar - we can bring the same power as the nuclear project online with solar in 2 years for 10% of the capital costs. And the cost of the power is far cheaper as well. Even with storage factored in it remains the cheapest power source of all, and we are particularly suited to it what with being such a high sunshine country.
The best studies right now pegs the total cost per kw/h of coal at about R120, nuclear is at about R1.05. Wind is around 85c - solar is 55c.
Less than half the cost of coal.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
They would need a massive battery to store all that power to make this work. They clearly haven't thought it through.