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Tesla Completes World's Largest Battery Project In Half the Time Promised (engadget.com)
Rei writes: Tesla announced the completion of the world's largest battery -- a 100 MW/129 MWh wind-power backup system for 30,000 homes in South Australia. Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth, the $50 million project had garnered press due to Elon Musk's Twitter boast that it would be completed within 100 days of the contract signing or it would be free. In the end, Tesla took it up a notch: the battery was finished 55 days from the date of contract signing and 99 days from the date of Musk's boast itself.
The man said he would do the thing, and he did the thing.
I assumed when he made the boast that it would be 100 days from the signing of a contract, or that there'd be an allowance for shipping times to Australia and possibly other 'fudge factors'.
I'm now assuming instead that there was a huge loss involved here in order to move and install the required hardware in such a short time, just to prove the point it was possible and would actually work, and thus make future sales more likely.
Why is it any story about Musk ends up dominated by trolls and assholes? Butt-hurt much that he can actually get things done?
Wow, you made that comment disappear faster than Elon makes tax dollars disappear into his wallet!
Nobody else wanted his batteries so they had plenty of stock.
Yeah, no one wanted his batteries so much that he was unable to fulfil the order using the existing contractual supplier (Panasonic) or from his existing factory and had to turn to Samsung SDI as an emergency second supplier.
I'm waaaaaiting....
I read zerohedge too, and it's full of Musk-hate and fake news, or just spun so hard it'll fly apart. Yeah, Musk has gotten some subsidies. More than Boeing and the rest of the MIC who get their own ExIm bank to loan countries with bad credit the money to buy MIC stuff? Which has gone on longer than Elon's been alive?
Perhaps the haters can explain how the ULA drops out of bidding whenever SpaceX shows up, even though they got more subsidies for longer - and they say that they can't meet the bid price. Or how NASA crows about the huge savings they're now getting.
Oh, we're talking about cars. So, GM got no bailout or subsidy to make my Volt?
Haters gonna hate, but damn, check some facts, people.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Why is it any story about Musk ends up dominated by trolls and assholes? Butt-hurt much that he can actually get things done?
Because when Tesla is viewed as a black box - considering only revenue, profit, and other information without considering the context or goal horizon - the economic forecast is very bad.
Almost all stock predictions made today are based on this sort of black-box calculation. Every month the analysts plug a bunch of companies' numbers into their spreadsheet algorithms, and those algorithms tell them how well the stock is doing. They then write an article noting what happened in the previous month as the "reason" they say the stock is doing whatever the algorithm said.
The analysts give the impression that they reviewed the information and are giving expert opinion. In reality, they are reporting events and claiming the algorithm outputs as their conclusion.
Also, the algorithm goal horizon is 6 months, and Tesla has been reinvesting lots of revenue into new production (ie - gigafactory). Tesla's goal horizon is a couple of years down the road, where they will be in a position to corner the market in battery production or supercharger network or home solar.
So a lot of people bought Tesla short, and are hoping it goes down so they can make some money. I don't know how many people are shorting Tesla right now, but 8 months ago it was something like 22% of all Tesla stock was short. Since Tesla has been doing well, that number has dropped considerably, but there are still bunches of people holding out and hoping that Tesla crashes so that they can at least mitigate their loss.
It's a less right now, but we still hear "echoes" of all the nudging and convincing that people were doing to try to make the stock crash.
It'll fade over time.
You're wasting your breath (and so am I but WTF). Facts and reason mean nothing to the anti-Musk constituency. Start quoting facts and they'll just claim you're spreading fake news.
The big three is no longer three and would be down to one if GM hadn't been given several times more money than the total received by Musk from the government over all time - not to mention the massive subsidies of the oil industry which includes the cost of multiple wars over the last few decades.
Just looking at Tesla's balance sheet, the total revenue over the last five years (not including 2017) is nearly $17 billion. Even if he had sold the maximum 200,000 vehicles that can get the - up to - $7500 credit to date (he hasn't), the total subsidy would be less than $1.5 billion - so less than a tenth of the revenue they've generated.
To say that Tesla is financed by tax dollars is truly fake news but then "fake news" is also fake news.
I assumed when he made the boast that it would be 100 days from the signing of a contract, or that there'd be an allowance for shipping times to Australia and possibly other 'fudge factors'.
I'm now assuming instead that there was a huge loss involved here in order to move and install the required hardware in such a short time, just to prove the point it was possible and would actually work, and thus make future sales more likely.
You never know - maybe he was so confident of the contract that he had parts shipped before the signing, possibly he had parts already in Australia during the signing.
As a PR move it was actually pretty good.
Any time anyone challenges major economic interests, in this case the electric utilities equipment industries, big oil, big coal, or any other financer of the global warming denial PR biz, arseholes will come out of the woodwork. Big pharma has done it to small innovators that don't want to be bought out. And others too numerous to mention.
The batteries were sitting around waiting for cars to be built so why not put them to use instead. By the time that car production gets ramped up more batteries will have been made.
What they should do is allow only AC posts from a logged in account and have all mods still apply to the account. The purpose of AC was not originally to allow people to post without logging in. It is supposed to be so that you can post juicy / inside info without people who know your login from seeing it and tying it to you.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
>Bye Coward!
I've set my minimum threshold to filter most ACs, but really it's so rare I see an AC post that has anything of value - usually it's racist, homophobic, 'first', or someone being vitriolic and not wanting the backlash attached to their account - that I'd be happy to see Slashdot eliminate AC posts.
It's not like we're posting anything here we should be afraid of bringing the cops to our doors with a warrant, or that if we were posting as 'AC' would really help anyway.
So rarey occasionally there is something of worth. But it's seldom worth the crap you have ot wade through. If an AC replies to me and it's reasonably civil, yeah I'll chat back. But right after using my mod points it goes back to reading ar 2 or above.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm sorry, but you're full of crap!
ANY business can make electric cars and their customers can also take part in electric vehicle tax rebates.
How is that Musk looting from hardworking people. He's building a product that the government want, hence the tax rebates for the CONSUMER!
Ok, I'll give you that Musk is a tax soak. But unlike most tax soaks, he actually delivers some cool and useful things for the taxpayers dime. In this case, I'm willing to look the other way. When it comes to cutting waste of taxpayer funds, there are a lot of other candidates I'd cut before I got around to Musk.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Maybe true - but I'll bet they want them now!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Thank you for proving my point and posting as AC to avoid your vitriolic post from being associated to your Slashdot account.
Two weeks later it blew up like a freaking Galaxy S7.
so, no legitimate sources then.
No it isn't because technically the Earth is one giant battery.
Even if the businesses he has run benefit from subsidies you cannot logically conclude that he is incapable of building a business otherwise.
That seems unlikely.
Isn't the tax subsidy a small percentage of the retail price? They surely are very good at taking tax money, but I can't imagine it's more than their retail dollars.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Toyota's sold over 10 million cars every year, for many years. Toyota's stock is valued at $184 billion.
Tesla sells less than 100,000 cars a year, less than 1% of Toyota's sales, and doesn't have a track record of decades of consistent success that Toyota has. Tesla's stock is at $53 billion.
1% of Toyota's sales. If Tesla also had Toyota's proven track record, the company might be worth 1% of Toyota's price. It's overpriced by at least 30X.
"But Tesla sells ELECTRIC cars!", someone says. Toyota sells more ELECTRIC cars than Tesla does.
People just donâ(TM)t realized how many industries are subsidized. Steel industry, weapons, airplanes, truck transportation, energy production, corn, soybean, nuclear, healthcare, banks, domestic car makers, some foreign car makers, movies, R&D in general, homes, Alaska, etc.
Musk is more or less in the middle when it comes to subs. Nothing to complain about but also not clean. But I donâ(TM)t get all the hate either. There are a lot of players with similar if not in better positions to take advantage of the same subsidies. Itâ(TM)s not like the sub has his name on it. Yet Musk is the one staying in front. Clearly itâ(TM)s not a simple field and there are great risks of failure.
No, I think this guyâ(TM)s company lost the contract in the bid. And now he is pissed.
What I find amazing (though a little disappointing, like a Wizard of Oz moment) is that these huge batteries are made of thousands and thousands of cells, in this case 6 million (by my calculation) of Tesla's 2170 cells. The clever bit is the monitoring and control and presumably the design and manufacture as a series of repeatable modules.
Big battery packs like this will not be enough to solve the problems with wind and solar.
Critics of solar and wind energy claim that unlike coal or nuclear, it's often not dependable -- sometimes, obviously, the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Lithium battery backup systems from companies like Tesla can charge up when such power plants are productive, however, and then provide backup energy when they're not.
Critics of coal and nuclear will point out that they cannot load follow. With a big battery pack like this to follow the peaks and valleys of power demands any energy source looks good. Nuclear produces less CO2 than solar, and about the same as wind, per energy produced. Nuclear is safer than any other energy source we have today. Nuclear power is cheaper than solar, cheaper than hydro, and cheaper than offshore wind.
This is a backup system for onshore wind so it's making something as cheap as nuclear, and with as low of CO2 output as nuclear, as reliable as nuclear. But then if you have to add the cost of a 50 million dollar battery pack to make wind as reliable as nuclear then is wind really as cheap as nuclear any more? What of the CO2 output of building a 50 million dollar battery pack?
We'll likely need battery packs like this Tesla project regardless of the energy source we choose to replace coal and natural gas. I suspect that if we replace coal and natural gas with nuclear these battery packs would not have to be as large as if used with wind and solar.
People can claim that new battery technologies will help make wind and solar more reliable but that applies to any energy source. If wind and solar want to be the means by which we save the world from global warming then they still have to compete with nuclear power. Nuclear power has a 50 year history of safe and reliable power without batteries from Tesla, and the addition of batteries from Tesla can make them even cheaper, safer, and more reliable.
Wind is a great energy source, let's keep doing that. Solar works too but it's ability to compete is quite limited geographically. Can't we have more nuclear too? We used to be able to build a dozen nuclear power plants every year in the USA, I think we can and should do that again. We should keep building a dozen new nuclear power plants every year until something better comes along. If we want to just keep up with the rate of expected shut downs of coal and nuclear then we'd have to build a dozen new nuclear power plants per year for a long time, and not even add new electrical capacity. If we expect to grow in electrical generation capacity then we'd need more than one new gigawatt nuclear power plant every month in the USA. 12 gigawatt power plants is just breaking even with those being shut down, we'll need the wind and solar capacity for growth on top of that.
Oh, and we'll need some big battery packs too.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I was looking at Toyota's plug-in cars and got significantly larger numbers than you did, but anyway that's a good point that Toyota's plug-in cars also have a gas engine. Maybe that's part of the reason Toyota sells a hundred times as many cars as Tesla does.
> Telsa has delivered just over 200,000 vehicles world wide
I see Nissan sold nearly that many fully electric Leafs last year alone, and has sold over 350,000 total. Sales numbers for BYD are harder to find, but it looks like they may have sold more than Tesla and Nissan combined. If I were betting on BEVs being the future, Nissan, BYD, or even Renault seem more likely to become the world's largest car maker than Tesla does - both Nissan and Renault have the dealer and service infrastructure and everything that Tesla lacks. Make no mistake, the current pricing of Tesla's stock assumes they'll be the world's biggest car maker within a few years.
Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth,
They've finally created a battery for a smartphone with an AMD chip! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
without stealing money from taxpayer subsidies
Maybe you should google what a subsidy is and how governments work. Or read it in a book. The "Complete Idiots Guide To Subsidies" may be too complicated for you so I suggest you start with "The Holy Shit You Really Know Nothing At All About Anything Guide To Subsidies". I've prepared you a link.
Then we'd just have dupe accounts.
Bet the AC is an African American. It'd explain a lot.
You do realize that batteries can be used over and over. It's kind of their feature...
Not really. Trolls are lazy. It wouldn't eliminate the problem but it would do quite a bit. They would have to make dupe accounts daily or more often. Also, when creating an account it is tied to an email address (IIRC, or could be if it isn't), so they wouldn't be able to do it for long.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It doesn't prove it in a rigorous mathematical sense. But if there was a team who lost eight straight games which way would you bet on the ninth?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Anyone know what are the expected lifetime of this battery?
This is some pretty cool stuff. Think we'll all have Tesla batteries installed in our homes and offices in ten years? Probably not... but a man can dream.
Nathaniel Fogel, DDS Owner, Pineview Dental 8815 Centre Park Dr., Suite 310 Columbia, Maryland 21045 http://pineview
Apple's 2015 PE ratio was 19 - meaning basically investors made about 6%. Tesla's was negative 60 - the company lost a SHITLOAD of money.
For 2019, Apple predicts a PE ratio of 14 to 15. (About 6% profit). Tesla predicts 1,500 PE, a profit of 0.006%. They aren't comparable.
Three times more powerful than any other battery in the world??
NGK has a sodium-sulphur battery system backing a wind farm in Rokkasho, Japan which has a capacity of 245MWh compared to the headline 129MWh of the Australian Tesla battery.
https://www.ngk.co.jp/nas/case...
Coming from someone without the integrity to stand being your BS, your opinions mean less than nothing.
LOL.
The man sells more Li-ion cells/batteries than anybody else today.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, you do not.
Musk does not get a PENNY of Federal money on the cars.
The EV owners get 7500 worth of tax breaks, but, that is if they have 7500 in taxes. And if not, then nope.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is that what happened? Did Musk fail at eight non-subsided businesses before? If not eight, then how many?
As everyone knows, Zerohedge is the scum that floats to the top of the internet.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Ok, I'll give you that Musk is a tax soak. But unlike most tax soaks, he actually delivers some cool and useful things for the taxpayers dime. In this case, I'm willing to look the other way. When it comes to cutting waste of taxpayer funds, there are a lot of other candidates I'd cut before I got around to Musk.
*Looks at JSF program...*