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Tesla's Battery Revolution Just Reached Critical Mass (bloomberg.com)
Tesla is all set to cut the ribbon on a massive battery storage facility in the California desert -- the biggest of its kind on earth. It joins similarly huge facilities built by AES and Altagas, which are both set to launch around the same time. Combined, the plants constitute 15% of the battery storage installed globally last year. From a report: Tesla Motors is making a huge bet that millions of small batteries can be strung together to help kick fossil fuels off the grid. The idea is a powerful one -- one that's been used to help justify the company's $5 billion factory near Reno, Nev. -- but batteries have so far only appeared in a handful of true, grid-scale pilot projects. That changes this week. Ribbons will be cut and executives will take their bows. But this is a revolution that's just getting started, Tesla Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said in an interview on Friday. "It's sort of hard to comprehend sometimes the speed all this is going at," he said. "Our storage is growing as fast as we can humanly scale it."
This is a stationary setup. Weight and size shouldn't matter. They should use nickel-iron for longer durability, a hundred years or more.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Good article, but...
"Critical Mass" indicates that there are more facilities coming online, or at least publicly planning to. No indication of that in TFA... in fact, the closest they got is this:
"...may change in the next five years..." is nowhere near actual activity that would indicate a "critical mass" in industry.
How about they call us when it actually gets in motion - regionally, if not nationally or globally.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
He got a royalties from books, his money will have been in the hands of some kind of fund manager who was investing it in a blind trust. It doesn't sound implausible, mostly due to the book royalties. At least he is publishing this, unlike some other presidents...
Without a new breakthrough technology in our pocket, batteries technology should be determined by the real use case. Lithium ion is a good technology when weight is very important, but a lousy technology when does not matter. Why use a bad technology when a pretty good on is on hand?
Several reasons, all economic.
1) Economies of scale. Producing two types of batteries is more expensive than producing the same number of a single type of battery.
2) Standardization. Picking the exact optimal battery type for every application instead of using a standard battery actually results in product fragmentation and added cost. It's actually cheaper in many cases to use a standardized product instead of an optimized one.
3) Excess capacity. If you already are producing a product it's often cheaper to make extras and use those than to build a whole new production system for another product for marginal efficiency gains.
Still better than buying fuel every week.
#DeleteFacebook
It shouldn't really be up to Trump to make ethical decisions. They should be forced upon him. Why isn't this happening ?
You don't need to use the exact same packs for cars and fixed storage. I'm sure that a bunch of smart engineers can come up with a solution that shares a lot of the key technology, especially in the production of individual cells and small packs, but find two different ways of putting the different parts together to get optimized solutions for the two different applications. Also, compactness and weight are still useful properties for a fixed installation.
So long as the glut continues, you're not going to be making a lot of people rich, and where the oil is more expensive to get at, like oil sands in Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Dakotas, or even North Sea oil, you're finding production falling off because the lower prices reduces the economic argument for grabbing the oil. That's the real problem here. Cheap oil is great if you're a consumer, it's probably pretty damned good if you're a refiner as well, but if you're a producer it sucks really bad, and while technology has indeed allowed cheaper access to some sources like shale oil, all in all low oil prices have actually had a pretty shitty effect, to the point where Shell is selling its North Sea assets.
It's the great irony of oil production that it seems it is low prices, rather than high prices, that are causing the industry problems, and may in the medium term lead to more development of renewables. The Saudis, at least, seem to know this, which is why they've set up their massive sovereign wealth fund. They're going to grab the money while they can, because they know in the long term, fossil fuels are a dead end.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Trump did not even have control over the countries on the travel ban list, they were put there years ago,
He had full control. He decided to use that particular list. He could have used another list, he could have written a brand new list. Instead he picked a list that conveniently did not impact any of his business partners.
There are liberals, and then there are leftist lunatics.
This would be the latter.
Please explain what is so lunatic about the point he's making. This but Obama made me do it argument is so staggeringly dumb that nobody with a mental age above 5 takes it serious. I mean, Trump? Accepting recommendations from Obama? That's almost as dumb as the whole spiel about the `huge' inauguration attendance.
That leaves the adults wondering what the real reason is. The business interests explanation is not very convincing to me, but it is miles ahead of the but Obama made me the list explanation.
And that's ignoring the blatant insinuation that the Obama administration made that list for the kind of asshole measures that Trump has now ordered.