Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that a bit of an overreaction? You might want to reevaluate any moral position you have where a significant basis of your values is the ability to brag about them. I would be fairly disgusted if someone said a significant amount of the reason they're so devout in their religion was so they could boast about it with their peers.
I didn't read the GP comment as "bragging" so much as wanting to be an existence proof that it's possible to live a modern life without (directly) burning any dinosaurs.
Tesla Energy
501–510 of 590 posts
Re: Tesla Energy
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess for most people it would show an ROI number that is not conducive to sales. Also, what is the environmental impact of the manufacture of LI batteries at this scale? Lithium mining, processing, assembly, delivery... we can't just ignore that.
I agree. Strangely, all of these issues were conveniently left out of the article. Not sure everybody knows this, but its not economically feasible to recycle these batteries: "Recycled lithium is as much as five times the cost of lithium produced from the least costly brine based process. It is not competitive for recycling companies to extract lithium from slag, or competitive for the OEMs to buy at higher price po…
Re: Tesla Energy
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Strangely, all of these issues were conveniently left out of the article. Not sure everybody knows this, but its not economically feasible to recycle these batteries: "Recycled lithium is as much as five times the cost of lithium produced from the least costly brine based process. It is not competitive for recycling companies to extract lithium from slag, or competitive for the OEMs to buy at higher price po…
So I recently needed a special cable to make some old gear work. It was only available from a single source and they charged me an arm and a half for it. Why am I telling you all of this? Because the price of something has very, very, very, very, very little to do with how feasible something is, how much work is required on a fundamental level. So what? Recycling lithium isn't profitable right now this very instant ?…
Re: Tesla Energy
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how it's immediately beneficial for just about everyone. I currently have a flat rate for kWh and no solar panel... and moving soon. It's not worth the $. In 6 months I'll be renting for a year, still not beneficial. Perhaps in a couple years I can purchase solar, a battery, and an energy system that can automate some demand shedding but we're talking about 1%ers here. In fact, I'd say it's only immediate…
As someone who rents an apartment with no garage and has a traditional gas-powered car, I can echo your sentiment and claim that Tesla has had zero impact on my life and that this announcement doesn't change that. I sincerely hope that Tesla's many innovative business efforts improve society in some major way, but right now they're still just a high-end automative company that's exploring the renewable energy space.…
Replacing pouluting cars has had and impact, if infinitesimal at this moment. Point is you don't have to physically own/use any of their products to benefit from the better world their products create.
Re: Tesla Energy
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are easy to use meters such as the Kill-A-Watt for 120V appliances to measure usage directly.
This is good for monitoring single appliances, but it's a pain in the neck to keep moving it from appliance to appliance. Do you know of one that I can attach to my power meter and it'll give me realtime usage, tracking, reports so that I can see my peak, minimum and average draw for the whole house?
Re: Tesla Energy
#506This is very clever! They're trying to increase demand for batteries independent of sales of vehicles, thus driving the economics of battery cost down and driving their vehicle prices down as a result. Get more batteries out there in different forms and use that demand to make the rest of their portfolio more affordable. Very rational strategy! Let's see what demand is like for their battery products.
Re: Tesla Energy
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe a solar oven? Unlike Li-ion batteries and solar cells, you can make a solar oven without mass production and using materials fabrication technologies available 2000 years ago. (You can make it cheaper if you use modern mirrors instead of polished bronze.) Typical solar cells are 16% efficient; your pre-medieval-materials solar oven will be about 50% efficient.
Have you ever tried to bake in a solar oven? In anything less than ideal solar conditions baking either fails completely or takes a long time.
Larger solar ovens (usually known as “solar furnaces”) can reach 4000°, adequate not just for cooking or even cremation but also for firing terra-cotta, blowing glass, calcining lime, firing earthenware, making glass, firing porcelain, calcining portland cement, making borosilicate glass, casting aluminum, melting porcelain, purifying metals by zone melting, casting iron, smelting iron, casting steel, melting lime refractory, making quartz glass, casting basalt, boiling aluminum, vaporizing steel, vaporizing quartz, vaporizing lime refractory, melting tungsten, and sublimating graphite. Although people have been doing most of these with solar ovens for a while, especially the famous solar furnace at Odeillo, you can’t do all of these with Iron Age materials; apparently if you want to do anything useful with melted tungsten, you have to use Ta₄HfC₅ or similar.
Of course none of this works when it’s cloudy or dark, although molten-salt heat storage might be a usable solution to that even at a household scale.
Re: Tesla Energy
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most of the power in the US comes from coal No, that's not true. Most power comes from sources other than coal. Yes, coal is the largest single source but it is < 50% and decreasing every year.
Decreasing perhaps, but it's being offset by natural gas, which is yet another hydrocarbon and comes with its own slew of hazards and problems.
Re: Tesla Energy
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
We spend over $2,000 per year and it's just me and my girlfriend. From the sounds of it you have either very good rates or perhaps a frugal lifestyle? Either way it's impressive.
I think it depends on local weather. We spend about $600 on electricity and $600 is gas per year for 4 people in the Bay Area. And this is with an older water heater and furnace in an old house with moderate insulation. We would replace the heater, furnace and improve the insulation before even considering solar ourselves.
Re: Tesla Energy
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's about $10,000 worth of work in a battery. It's not just a hunk of metal, it goes through a very complicated and energy intensive creation process. The cost of the raw lithium is about 1% of the cost of the battery. It's engineering it in a very precise way that's expensive.
The battery costs $3000 - that is likely a cap on the cost of the work involved in producing it.