Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Well, my definition is that "Critical Mass" means enough market share and sales for a company/product to have consumer acceptance and brand recognition. Plus, there is a component where it has been scaled to the point where manufacturing costs have been optimized. Given that the plants have just gone online and the products have yet to reach the market at any level of market share and that there hasn't been enough time to optimize the manufacturing process, I think that its a bit premature to be talking about "Critical Mass".
Perhaps a better phrase would be "Critical Capacity". There is finally have enough manufacturing capacity to meet Tesla's needs so that they can start rolling out their home/corporate products and the more affordable versions of their cars.
Adiabatic compressed air energy moves the heat from compression into an insulated thermal mass chamber, and uses that to heat the expansion vessel. It recouperates that loss and has 70% total effective energy storage--higher is possible, up to 90%.
Batteries can store and discharge about 6-10 times the energy required to create them in their lifetimes. Adiabatic compressed air energy storage plants can cycle 240 times their energy cost. Batteries are pathetic technology at power grid scale and will never catch up to modern methods of grid-scale energy storage.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
It would be nice to be able to buy 18650's directly from Tesla so we know for sure they're not fake ones.
#DeleteFacebook
No. But I remember when the media and congressmen were saying that we would never see sub $2.00 gas again.
Oops. I guess increasing supply ruined that foolish prediction.
We do have a "glut". Good. Let's keep crude oil prices to screw Saudi Arabia. How about we drill here, have refineries buy at the reduced price (due to increased supply) and we place a use tax on the gas. Then we use the tax dollars to increase wind and solar production, energy storage (battery, flywheels, whatever).
End result is we don't send money to fanatics; we have blue-collar jobs; we fund solar and wind.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I often wonder why people think engineers are too stupid to see obvious engineering problems. I'd assume the Tesla engineers would reckon on capacity losses and simply size the installation large enough to deliver the required performance over the planned service lifetime. It's not like they don't understand battery technology.
Li-ion batteries are not nearly so bad as you paint them to be -- although obviously you can abuse them into early failure. Tests of electric cars shows battery aging to be less of a problem than anticipated. Tesla Roadsters retain over 80% of their range after 100,000 miles, for example, and data suggests the batteries in the Model S are aging even better on average -- almost negligible after 100,000 miles.
If you're extrapolating from your experience with your phone, phones probably represent the worst case. They often have barely adequate batteries so users deep-discharge them then top them off to 100%, every single day. That's the worst thing you can do to Li-ion batteries.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.