201–210 of 257 posts
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Revolutionary idea ... make batteries replaceable. We had it back in the days. You could just remove the old batteries and put the new ones.
Tesla cars can do this in less than 2 minutes - faster than it takes to fill up a tank of gas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY
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They say that battery tech has been improving at 2% a year. That would mean we should see a ~37% improvement between 2008 and 2016. Seems about right.
That's not a "fivefold improvement". A fivefold improvement is 400% more.
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Car applications care about kilograms per kWh stored, and cubic volume per kWh stored. Stationary batteries, not so much.
Not as much, yes, but it's still important. Space is quite valuable even in a normal household.
The real question is "how much space are you willing to sacrifice for energy self-sufficiency?"
In the UK, electric bills hover around $1200 a year for electric/gas households and $2000 a year for full electric.
Renewable households will have a HUGE potential market.
U.K. Residential market is 26 million houses. Theoretical price point of $1500 dollars (one years energy cost) = 39 billion dollar market not including the massive combined secondary services in maintenance, installation training providers, parts, etc.
USA residential would be 6 times that and the provision of renewables to corporates is almost incalculable.
It's an entirely new economic ecosystem divorced from petrochemical.
It a price point higher than $3000 dollars we are getting into a market cap of many trillions worldwide.
caution. 1. a tesla accessory site. 2. the report is full of projections and hard to understand what is wishful and what is not. 3. GM: $145/kw Oct 2015 - Tesla $100/kw in 2020, how is Tesla killing it?
Purely speculating here, but once the gigafactory is operational they'll unveil the massive trick up their sleeve - Musk will announce new custom cells based on high density sodium-ion technology. Tesla will become a world leader as an energy company rather than an automative one.
Can Lithium battery supply even meet the demand if a significant portion of the auto market switches to electric?
We'll find out! The lesson from oil and gas is that people find ways once the price goes up and the demand is there. Lithium is very abundant. Do we know what percentage of the cost of the battery comes from material costs?
$35/kg X 12kg -> $420
On the other hand the Nissan Leaf contains 4kg or $140 worth.
I'm pretty sure a sustainable increase demand will bring more lithium onto the market.
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Unless we already happened to go through that when life magically transitioned from monocellular, simple competitive organisms to multicellular, complex cooperative organisms...
That seems unlikely, since that transition happened multiple time along multiple pathways, and we observe that just on the single planet we know to have life.
Tesla is going to be a gigantic company one day. Disclaimer: I own one (Model S P85+, about 2 years old). And everyone I let drive it (yes, I am crazy enough to do that... As a fan who pushes the bleeding edge, it's important to share the experience in order to change minds... Anyway, my insurance covers me even when I'm a passenger!) cannot stop talking about it afterwards. I actually think Tesla's market is limited…
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Energy STORAGE is a huge bottleneck issue for anyone that follows renewable energy news as well... Solar power itself has been cheap enough to be viable for a long time, 330W 72-cell panels for roofs have been $0.64/watt for several years now. You can quite economically cover the roof of a building in enough high-efficiency 60 or 72-cell panels to generate far more kWh in a year than the building will consume in the…
Flow Batteries[1]! They work (as in: are being used in Africa & South America to power mobile networks). Also my (office) building is powered by one. They don't cost much more than lead-acid They last much, much longer than lead-acid or lithium* There is no limit to the number of power cycles(!!) and they can be deep-discharged. They do have disadvantages - they aren't suitable for cars, and are currently fairly nois…
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JB Straubel just mentioned at the annual Tesla shareholder meeting they're now expecting to produce 150GW of storage capacity a year at the Gigafactory, split between vehicles and energy storage based on demand for both.
Just for clarification, Tesla's initial estimates for Gigafactory production was 35GW/year at the cell level and 50GW/year at the pack level (with some cells produced by other suppliers). At the shareholder meeting they speculated they could 3x those numbers with the current Gigafactory. This is at full production, which is years away.
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Energy STORAGE is a huge bottleneck issue for anyone that follows renewable energy news as well... Solar power itself has been cheap enough to be viable for a long time, 330W 72-cell panels for roofs have been $0.64/watt for several years now. You can quite economically cover the roof of a building in enough high-efficiency 60 or 72-cell panels to generate far more kWh in a year than the building will consume in the…
Flow Batteries[1]! They work (as in: are being used in Africa & South America to power mobile networks). Also my (office) building is powered by one. They don't cost much more than lead-acid They last much, much longer than lead-acid or lithium* There is no limit to the number of power cycles(!!) and they can be deep-discharged. They do have disadvantages - they aren't suitable for cars, and are currently fairly nois…