If Tesla Can Run Its Gigafactory On 100% Renewables, Why Can't Others? 444
Lucas123 writes Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said his company's Gigafactory battery plant, the world's largest, will be "self contained" and run on solar, wind and geothermal energy. The obvious problem with renewable sources is that they're intermittent at any given location, but on a larger scale they're quite predictable and reliable, according to Tom Lombardo, a professor of engineering and technology. Lombardo points out that Tesla isn't necessarily going off-grid, but using a strategy of "net metering" where the factory will produce more renewable energy than it needs, and receive credits in return from its utility when renewables aren't available. So why can't other manufacturing facilities do the same? Is what Tesla is doing not necessarily transferable to other industries? Sam Jaffe, principal research analyst with Navigant Research, believes Tesla's choice of locations — Reno — and its product is optimal for using renewable and not something that can be reproduced by every industry.
Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany is well on the way to doing this on the scale of a whole country. It just takes some political will.
I guess they used up all their political will on solar subsidies for one of the cloudiest places on the planet, and they had none left to stand up to the anti-nuke lobby. Which is why Germany is now burning record amounts of lignite (brown coal), one of the dirtiest fuels.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Insightful)
In environmentalist lala-land neither the end nor the means matters as long as your ideology is sitting in the drivers seat.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
In environmentalist lala-land neither the end nor the means matters as long as your ideology is sitting in the drivers seat.
And how does that make them different from lala-landers of the politically incorrect christian conservative and occasionally coal rolling [youtube.com] variety? There are two things that are almost always true about zealots no matter what their political or religious convictions, firstly they think they're always right and that that gives them the right to walk all over everybody else and secondly they are all stupid idiots.
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No, they're not burning coal. They just disable the emissions controls on their engines to make them burn Diesel fuel incompletely, and maybe bypass particulate filters.
It would be somewhat cool if they burned actual coal, but these guys are just douchebags.
dom
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
But yeah, people who build their identity around something which has as its core appeal that it upsets people, pretty douchy. Esp since many of the most popular videos involve blowing fumes on 'wrong' people like prius drivers or women who dare to not be impressed with catcalls.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Interesting)
No its just normal diesel fuel, which by the way is pretty much the same thing as coal oil, just slightly different levels of refinement, most vehicles could use them interchangeably.
What they do typically is put a switch in the o2 sensor lines, and dash mount it. When the sensor is disabled the engine management goes into its limp mode will keep the injectors open. The engine uses much more fuel this way so most only do it when they want to annoy someone. It will also as you might guess clog filters etc if they are not also removed and its done often.
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As I said it definitely will clog particulate filterers if they are not removed or bypassed. I don't know what other harm to the exhaust it could do (not a truck guy myself).
I suspect if used for extended periods it will damage (over heat) values along with their guides and seals. I suppose it could cause additional wear on rings as well.
Keep in mind though what it really does it produce an over rich condition something that would not have been uncommon at least for short periods on older engines that use
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Informative)
In environmentalist lala-land neither the end nor the means matters as long as your ideology is sitting in the drivers seat.
And how does that make them different from lala-landers of the politically incorrect christian conservative and occasionally coal rolling [youtube.com] variety?
The environmentalists are incorrectly lauded for their beliefs while the other groups are dismissed off hand?
Climate change is not a belief, there is no faith involved, it is not an opinion that claim that ejecting vast amounts of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere is going to have very bad effects on the lives of our descendants and that using renewable energy sources is preferable to that. Climate change and the benefits of using renewables in place of fossil fuels are observable, measurable and given the volume of data we now have it is an irrefutable fact that renewables are preferable to fossil fuels.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate change and the benefits of using renewables in place of fossil fuels are observable, measurable and given the volume of data we now have it is an irrefutable fact that renewables are preferable to fossil fuels.
Totally agree, but when people cite Germany as being well on their way to using 100% renewables they are missing the facts that Germany has increased its CO2 emissions in the last several years with its shift away from nuclear and they are increasing use of cheap dirty coal to balance the higher costs of renewables.
Renewables alone are going to be insufficient for the world's energy needs. And industrial scale renewables have their own very negative effects on habitats and the environment. Just as shifting food production to biofuels caused food shortages and food riots, there are going to be negative effects if we have to blanket large areas of the planet with solar panels and wind "farms". Just as we found that the downstream effects of hydro-electric dams are often very negative to fisheries, estuaries and sometimes to agriculture.
And I've said it once and I will say it a million times, nuclear is a far better option with far less negative consequences and with even far less risk than even renewables.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Interesting)
Climate change and the benefits of using renewables in place of fossil fuels are observable, measurable and given the volume of data we now have it is an irrefutable fact that renewables are preferable to fossil fuels.
Totally agree, but when people cite Germany as being well on their way to using 100% renewables they are missing the facts that Germany has increased its CO2 emissions in the last several years with its shift away from nuclear and they are increasing use of cheap dirty coal to balance the higher costs of renewables.
That is a much repeated statistic and in the short term ... yes, that is true. What is less often pointed out, probably because it does not serve the propaganda purpose of the fossil fuel industry as well as the previous fact, is that their long term goal is 80% renewables by 2050.
Renewables alone are going to be insufficient for the world's energy needs. And industrial scale renewables have their own very negative effects on habitats and the environment. Just as shifting food production to biofuels caused food shortages and food riots, there are going to be negative effects if we have to blanket large areas of the planet with solar panels and wind "farms". Just as we found that the downstream effects of hydro-electric dams are often very negative to fisheries, estuaries and sometimes to agriculture.
And I've said it once and I will say it a million times, nuclear is a far better option with far less negative consequences and with even far less risk than even renewables.
I keep hearing people say this and never backing it up with facts. I know renewables have their own environmental issues but why should they be a show stopper? .... soooo: [Citation needed] [google.com]
Re: (Score:3)
people don't understand until you tell them nuclear fuel is a million times more energy dense than chemical fuel.
Could have just left it at "people don't understand"... The PR problem is that nuclear is economically disruptive to the fossil fuel industry so there is a lot of money at stake in spreading fear uncertainty and doubt about nuclear. The industry doesn't really fear solar or wind, because it isn't a large scale or near term threat for fossil fuel dominance. Compared with even a single new nuclear power plant which can power a large part of an entire region with consistent electricity and combined with an
Re: (Score:3)
But Tesla is not going to be using renewables for its new factory. It's going to be using a grid connection, because renewables aren't reliable enough to run a factory with. What it's going to do with renewables is vary its load wildly as wind comes and goes to lower and possibly completely cancel its electric bill. Good for Tesla, bad for the power company and other customers, and utterly useless for the environment, since almost all po
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The enviro-fascists who want to enact change through government fiat are going to enrich the elite at the expense of the rest of us.
And guess what the status quo is doing?
This is an economic problem, not an environmental policy problem. The only difference is that you'll be enriching a different set of fatcats and you'll get a cleaner environment out of it, instead of subsidizing the usual set of fatcats with the planet itself.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Interesting)
Current version of German environmentalism unfortunately causes mass poverty and functions as a significant wealth transfer mechanism from poor to the rich at the moment. That's why more and more people get disillusioned with it even in Germany, where massive PR effort was used to hide the fact that Energiewende caused Germany to start increasing it's CO2 emissions for first time in over a decade and breach it's Kyoto targets.
Essentially it's a failure when it came to reducing emissions, which increased, it's a failure when it comes to providing affordable energy to people, as there are now people who suffer from "energy poverty", state where they cannot afford electricity and have to go without.
And finally it's a failure upon itself, because Germany has trouble adding more renewables for last couple of years, because subsidies make it really cheap to build renewables, but no one wants to operate coal plants needed to be their spinning reserve because they cannot sell their electricity due to "renewables first" rule at electricity sale exchanges.
It's a clusterfuck. Tyranny, not so much. Just a massive amount of incompetence on political level about real issues with energy production coupled with environmentalist beliefs pushed onto politiicans by people who are straight up scammers. And both people of Germany, as well as people around the world are paying for it. Germans pay for it with massive subsidies that make poorer people being unable to afford electricity at all, while the rest of us are paying for it through the fact that Germany produces more and more CO2 as more and more brown coal plants have to be fired up to provide spinning reserve for more and more renewables.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't blame the fallout of Germany's reduction in nuclear energy on an increase in renewable energy.
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You don't have a clue. In Germany, most renewables are an investment by various corporate entities, with remaining few investment by wealthy people.
... 10%? 20%? 50%? 80%?
Nonsense, except you want to talk about the future off shore wind farms.
The majority of renewables are either built buy the power companies themselves or buy house owners or small consortiums of private people.
All of which are subsidized extensively through massive additional taxation of electric bill of everyone else.
Define "massive"
Ne
It's not horseshit. It's happening. (Score:5, Insightful)
I teach physics. The most depressing part of my job is teaching a general-education class where I have to explain global warming.
Scientists don't have a private agenda. We would LOVE to be wrong about this, but:
- Temperatures are going up worldwide
- Global temperatures are historically very well correlated to CO2 concentrations
- CO2 concentrations have a straightforward and well-understood effect on infrared light produced by
earth's blackbody radiation
- Even small changes to global temperature will create big changes to local climates
- We can stop this, but only if radical action is taken right now
so
- We're all fucked.
This is not the time for the debate about whether the effect is real. This is the time for debate about just how MUCH we should be panicking. We're in the deep shit here. We're talking about large proportions of humanity not having enough food to eat. The resulting warfare and hardship will be devastating.
Re:It's not horseshit. It's happening. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's not horseshit. It's happening. (Score:4, Funny)
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We don't have time for rational solutions!
Okay then... I propose a tax on solar panels which can be used to subsidize solar panels.
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Dont worry, those coal plants are GREEN, because a percentage of burned fuel is biomass/renewables. When they say biomass they actually mean freshly cut trees.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Informative)
They are 'green plants' because they clean the exhaust.
And no they don't burn biomass. How retarded can you be that you believe anyone is burning freshly cut trees, anyway?
Biomas is fermented to CH4, in a lesser extend plant oils and ethanol are produced, but they don't count as biomass.
The CH4 is either fed into the natural gas grid or more commonly used in decentralized small plants.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They are 'green plants' because they clean the exhaust.
And no they don't burn biomass. How retarded can you be that you believe anyone is burning freshly cut trees, anyway?
The real question is "How retarded can you be that you make a statement like that without researching reality first?"
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/bl... [nrdc.org]
"First, just like fossil fuels, when trees are burned in power plants, the carbon they have accumulated is released into the atmosphere. However, because freshly cut wood is nearly half water by weight, a lot of energy is required to boil off this water before useful energy can be generated. This makes biomass facilities far less efficient than fossil fuel."
Th
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Insightful)
The parent claimed german brown coal plants would burn freshly cut trees.
Neither is true. Burning freshly cut wood does not make sense anyway.
Both links you gave are about the USA, not Germany.
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He says "How retarded can you be that you believe anyone is burning freshly cut trees, anyway?"
Did you catch the word "anyone" in there? Right in the middle?
He's calling the guy above him retarded for believing that *anyone* would want to burn freshly cut trees, yet there definitely is talk of doing just that and it's easy to find with Google.
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Solar energy isn't the only form of renewable energy.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Insightful)
True we could burn babies and puppies... Those are renewable!
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Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Informative)
Stop spreading lies.
http://www.energycomment.de/wp... [energycomment.de]
These "record amounts" of yours amount to half of what was burned in 1990 and in fact the amount of brown coal burned has been basically more or less the same since 1996.
As one can clearly see from the graph, nuclear power has been displaced by renewables and only by them. Fossil fuels use either remains stable or goes down in the case of oil.
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Well, the smart thing would have been to replace the fossil with renewables and keep nuclear ... but I guess environmentalists know better than scientists, as usual (or maybe coal is less expensive than nuclear and it all makes sense economically ?)
Re: Not just Reno (Score:3, Insightful)
Chernobyl doesn't discredit nuclear energy. It discredits the Soviet system and the environmental recklessness that results from centrally controlled planned economies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fukushima discredits Tokyo Electric Power Company, and their half-assed management of what was a completely containable and manageable problem.
Re:Fukushima too (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fukushima too (Score:5, Insightful)
Lackadaisical safety management is dangerous.
Re:Fukushima too (Score:5, Informative)
Coal 170,000
Oil 36,000
Biofuel 24,000
Natural Gas 4,000
Hydro 1,400
Solar 440
Wind 150
Nuclear 90
Tell me again how Nuclear is the most dangerous choice?
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Well, it sure as hell is crazy unsafe when they *are* lazy bastards, and it sure is a hell of a lot safer when they are painstaking. Look at the US Navy nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Perfect nuclear safety record with respect to the nuclear power plants. Hell, look at the US Nuclear electricity industry, even though I wouldn't put it close to being good enough. Zero uncontained meltdowns. Zero hydrogen explosions.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Informative)
Also a bit of a lie yourself. 1990 = reunification. Any country can do better than when it just absorbed an entire other country that might as well have been burning forests in terms of efficiency.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, no progress has been made. At a huge cost, reasonably clean ways of generating power have displaced another reasonably clean way of generating power while the percentage of dirty power has remained equal.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the older coal plants are being closed, to be replaced by 6 fewer new ones: http://energytransition.de/201... [energytransition.de]
So there is a decrease, and the newer ones are cleaner anyway. Germany is aiming to make the transition around 2024, so is only 1/3rd the way in. It will take time for the grid to adjust to make bigger impacts on coal, but as you can see the energy companies clearly believe it will happen so are already reducing their capacity.
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Stop spreading lies.
Maybe you should start with your own advice. The poster was referring to electrical generation here, not overall energy use. Your graph is for overall energy use (and I'm not sure about the proportions there either, they seem a bit off). You might have been clued into that by the units being petajoules (customarily used for overall energy production) not watthours (customarily used for electrical generation). Another thing that might have ticked you off is that mineral oil is a good 1/3 the energy share the
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Informative)
Actually you and Dunkelfalke made similar mistakes.
He focused on energy sources, and his point that the increase in usage of brown coal is neglegtible, is correct.
You focus on TWh production of elictricity, where you clearly see there is a noticeable increase in terra watt hours of electricity produced ... however no one can deduce how much more brown coal was used for that.
In fact the amount is indeed neglible, because the "more terrawatts" come from the new more efficient coal plants, that replaced older less efficient ones ... so bottom line the "record usage" of brown coal is still nearly 20% below the 1990 level (in primary energy) and roughly 10% below 1990 level in electric power production.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Interesting)
He focused on energy sources, and his point that the increase in usage of brown coal is neglegtible, is correct.
In that respect, that is correct, the increase might indeed be just noise.
You focus on TWh production of elictricity, where you clearly see there is a noticeable increase in terra watt hours of electricity produced ... however no one can deduce how much more brown coal was used for that.
This data is pretty hard to come by, I agree, so I had to make some assumptions (elaborated below). Can you cite your sources?
so bottom line the "record usage" of brown coal is still nearly 20% below the 1990 level (in primary energy) and roughly 10% below 1990 level in electric power production
While it is true that some efficiency offsets might be made, your numbers simply do not add up to the graph Dunkelfalke linked. It lists lignite at 3201 TJ in 1990 and 1645 TJ in 2012. That is not "[usage] of brown coal is still nearly 20% below the 1990 level (in primary energy)", that is a 50% reduction in primary energy. All of that also happened before the year 2000 - since then, pretty much no reduction in lignite use has occurred. If powerplant efficiency were indeed rising while electrical generation remained mostly flat during the 2000-2011 period, that would imply that a rising proportion of that input lignite energy (which flatlined during that time period too) is being used for heating and other uses. However that doesn't appear to be the case either (coal use outside of electricity is falling rapidly) - this leads me to believe that there hasn't been such a dramatic increase in efficiency as to be able to confidently say that the recent increase in generation is due to an increase in powerplant efficiency. Also, how can you claim use in electrical generation is 10% below 1990, when even you said yourself just a few moments before that "no one can deduce how much more brown coal was used for that". I'd really appreciate if you could cite your sources, that would allow us to clear up the situation. If you have access to figures on lignite consumption by coal fired power plants, that would be great. Otherwise, the only reliable thing we can say is that electrical generation from lignite is at an all time high since 1990.
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As of this moment, half of Germany's nuclear plants are still in operation. Merkel plans to phase them out by 2022. The phased-out plants have been replaced by the world's largest strip mine, Tagebau Garzweiler. The full phase-out will require a new, much larger lignite pit, Tagebau Hambach. When fully developed, it will cover 85 sq km.
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So the solar program has not reduced the amount of the coal used at all? Instead it replaced the super low carbon nuclear plants?
That is about the most useless thing I have ever heard.
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The fuel is only dirty if you don't scrub the exhaust :)
Perhaps you should get a clue first, before posting missleading comments? Especially if you call it a 'record amount'?
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Except that they aren't burning "record amounts" of brown coal, and total coal burning is down quite significantly.
http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.... [ag-energiebilanzen.de] (PDF)
=Smidge=
No they're not. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.businessweek.com/ne... [businessweek.com]
RWE AG said Aug. 12 it will halt an extra 1,005 megawatts of coal and lignite capacity by the first quarter of 2017, taking the total planned capacity cuts to 8,940 megawatts. Old lignite plants are candidates for closing, according to New York-based Pira, whose clients include oil companies, utilities and governments. A thousand megawatts is enough to power 2 million European homes.
They are shutting down the old coal plants, replacing them with new, more efficient and cleaner ones... and now they have to shut down and reduce production of those too.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
Wind and solarâ(TM)s share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42 percent by next year from 30 percent in 2010, according to European Union data compiled by Citigroup Inc. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28 percent from 32 percent, the data show.
German utilities plan to start new hard-coal plants with 5,606 megawatts of capacity this year and next, data from Bonn-based national grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur show. That compares with a target of at least 10,000 megawatts from new solar and wind installations in 2014 and 2015 under Germanyâ(TM)s renewable energy act, which takes effect Aug. 1. Solar output reached a record 24,244 megawatts on June 6, according to EEX.
Because... They are getting more out of all the solar and wind than expected. They are getting negative electricity prices in January and May.
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's really not, and neither is the Tesla plant. Self contained != net metering positive. Especially for Germany, which has invested a crapload into solar power that does absolutely nothing for a "net average" of almost 1/2 of the year.
Not saying it's not a good initiative, but it's definitely not 100% renewable energy without very "creative math".
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In terms of net emissions at the exhaust? Beneficial. You don't have full load on the turbine, which means that you need to burn less coal until the plant has to pick up the load.
Problem rises from the sum of all things, not just the fact that renewables need nearly 100% spinning reserve backing them up because of their inherent unreliability. In example I list, the problem lies in the method of financing renewables, which basically ignores their real cost, both in terms of real CO2 emissions cost of having
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Interesting)
Electricity costs consumers three times what it costs in the US:
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com... [shrinkthatfootprint.com]
German consumers pay a lot of money to subsidize big corporations and manufacturers of solar and energy-intensive manufacturing is being outsourced from Germany. Is that what you want for the US?
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Also note that energy hungry factories are exempt from our eco tax on energy.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Informative)
How much of that comes from their invesment in renewable energy, though? Other neighboring European countries that have not invested in renewables have comparable prices, as shown on this map [moneyweek.com]. Denmark is 13% more expensive and Italy is 15% less expensive and the UK is 36% less expensive. Germany is towards the top there, but it is not an outlier. There are a few countries with prices comparable to the USA in the EU, such as Estonia which is 2.4 times chepear than Germany. But it seems strange to claim that the main difference between Germany and Estonia is the amount of renewables. And as this image [photobucket.com] shows, the price of electricity in Germany has been following the average in the European Union for some time now, which again doesn't match with the hypothesis that power in Germany is more expensive than in the USA because of all the solar power.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:5, Informative)
You have misinterpreted what is happening. The German public is buying back electricity generation and distribution. It's becoming nationalised as companies give up trying to make a profit and sell off infrastructure.
The outlay is high, although not that high compared to similar European countries. The end result will be much cheaper and very much worth it, not to mention putting Germany at the forefront of this lucrative global market for green technology.
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In other words, they're doing exactly the inverse of the occasional U.S. states' so-called "deregulation", which in practice amounted to "sell off all our infrastructure to foreign investors, then buy back the product at an inflated price." Guess Germany figured out this doesn't work so well after all.
As I say above, that "green" energy might not be so expensive in a market that's not been "deregulated" in this fashion.
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Considering how much gas Germany buys from Russia (38% of gas imports), the true cost is even higher.
Re:Not just Reno (Score:4, Interesting)
So some simple maths means that if every domestic house installed a 3kw system, and govt funded a scheme to distribute that energy where it's needed, then we can all live on free energy (ie at home at least).
Obviously there's more to it than that (baseloading, time of usage etc), but it passes the back of the napkin test, and the free energy is there to be taken. The only issue now it purely political.
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How is the energy free when you need a 3kW solar system on every house for it to work? Also, they cost more than $3k.
Also, if each house needs 3kW to sustain itself, what's left to distribute? Also, homes use what on average? 30% of the total electricity?
Also, trying to load balance over long distances doesn't work because we don't have superconducting electricity grids yet. Also, intermittency means you still need classic power at approximately the same extent as now to fill in the gaps.
I can prove that an
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Yes, back when Solar was still hot in Australia, a 3kwH system would set you back $8000-$12,000 and that was with heavy subsidies.
They're going dirt cheap now because of installers trying to offload stock.
I have a 1.5KwH system in Brisbane, wish I could justify a 3KwH system, but without the FIT it doesn't add up now.
If we had cheap overnight storage of power I'd go offgrid.
Re: Not just Reno (Score:2)
You should consider a pump that pushes water up and then a pelton wheel for the release of pressure on the way down. It's not the most efficient but it's smart.
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I can prove that an underground solar farm would be a great idea with a back of the napkin calculation, reality however is not so easily simplified.
Reality is that I put a 3kW system on my roof a few months ago for about $3,100 (in Western Australia). I sell excess power back to the grid on days when I'm not using much, and buy from the grid when I am. My power bills have been close to zero most months, and I even had a rebate in May when I was on holiday. In the near future, I'll invest in batteries and additional panels to store enough power to run my house overnight.
There are so many of us in WA switching to rooftop solar that the local electrici
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If you can finance it yourself and find it profitable or sensible to do so, then feel free to do it yourself, but don't call for government intervention based on some simple napkin calculations.
Also, the WA situation doesn't sound very stable, utilities failing could mean some price spikes and other problems.
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Sure... if you squint hard enough and tilt your head at the right angle and ignore the 75% of their energy that doesn't come from renewables. Otherwise, not so much. It remains to be seen how far that number can be pushed.
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...and a shitload of money...up front.
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Country wide is obviously much easier than doing it for a single factory.
In a country we have a large grid (interconnected with the rest of europe even), so fluctuations in production and demand are spread over all power plants.
A single factory always would either need a grid connection or need to make sure it always can produce enough energy for its peak needs, that would greatly increase the necessary investment.
Expense (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla is selling $100k cars, while other battery factories make batteries for $100 phones and $500 laptops. Maybe it is too expensive for them to set up a fully renewable process.
Re:Expense (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla is selling $100k cars
Tesla is selling a luxury product to environmentalists. Most people buy their cars because they want to help the environment, and they want to drive a status symbol showing their green cred. Tesla's customer base is likely to be influenced by their "fully renewable process". So it is good marketing. Other companies are selling to different customers that are buying their products for reasons other than ostentatious environmentalism.
Re:Expense (Score:5, Insightful)
What if someone really just wants a car that polutes less, made by an industry that polutes less? That automatically make him an ostentatious environmentalist? Is it only possible to want this car only as a status symbol?
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How do you know that that person hasn't already his attic insulated, his lighting LEDed, and his African and South Asian women... wait, forget the last part.
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They do? In that case, we apologize.
Signed,
Everyone in Canada.
Re: Expense (Score:4, Informative)
The average price of a new car in the US is $30K nowadays. A BMW 3-series starts at $32K, and given that Tesla started out going after the market dominated by things like the BMW 7 series, S-Class Mercedes, Audi A8 and Lexus LS, it's not surprising that the next market(s) they would go after would be similar -- the SUV will compete against things like the BMW, Mercedes and Lexus models and the smaller car will compete against the 3-Series, Audi A4 and Lexus models. The luxury auto business has higher margins and people who can afford those higher margins tend to want more of the latest anything -- phone, computer, tablet, clothes, thermostat, food/drink, etc. It would probably not be unreasonable to assume that the buyer Tesla is targeting is someone who likely has a fairly recent smartphone, luxury car less than five years old, owns a home, is married, and is in their late 30's to early 50's. They likely have a fairly established career, a family, and an income around $150K before taxes. They aren't going after the people who are shopping the Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit, or recent college grads, or people with their first job. They are pretty much going after the same people Audi did when they were rebuilding themselves.
As someone who is shopping in the $15K range for my next car, and who is very close to hitting 200K miles on the current one, I largely agree with you. I have come around to the point where I'm aggressively eliminating all debt that I possibly can, with the eventual goal of being debt free. Pouring 40K into something that's going to be regularly doused with road salt, snow, rain, mud and will eventually wear out entirely seems like a waste of money. I need a car to get around, get to work, visit family and friends -- for my lifestyle there is definite value which owning an automobile provides, there is no denying that. But at this point in my life I can say that I'd rather spend $15K on a compact sedan that will accomplish all I need it to do than spend $40K on something that largely does the same thing. That extra $25K can go towards retiring debt, funding college for the kids, paying down the mortgage, etc.
Sources on the 30K price:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo... [forbes.com]
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/0... [autoblog.com]
Sources on Audi:
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/... [npr.org]
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money... [npr.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
In Japan more and more factories have the roofs covered with solar, and maybe a wind turbine too. Many of the companies that make the batteries have solar and wind businesses as well. The problem is a lack of space to install sufficient capacity, but I'm sure they would if they could. They are always pushing the limits, e.g. with Panasonic being one the the first to have a completely "lights out" television factory.
In China the cost is probably an issue, as margins are very thin and they can get away with p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exec bonuses for most companies are a pittance when stacked against the major costs of doing business. People like to whinge about exec salaries, but at the end of the day you get what you pay for. Don't pay what the market demands, and those people jump ship to somewhere else. And as much as the typical slashdotter would like to think that any muppet can run a multi billion dollar company, truth is, there aren't many competent people out there that can.
Re:Expense (Score:5, Insightful)
Where would they run to, if no one was handing out multimillion dollar salaries & bonuses, especially when it's not tied to company performance?
Look in the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because people like you want a $600 smartphone device every 2 years made by a Chinese worker getting $1 an hour using 100s of toxic, cancerous materials, all processed by coal power.
In the race to the top in the present it's the future generations that come in last.
Answer: They mostly can, but is it economical? (Score:5, Informative)
The issue can be a complex one, but I think it boils down fairly easily:
1. Most companies can go completely to renewable power, excepting some where they need the byproducts for other uses. Concrete manufacturing, refining iron and making steel, etc... However, this doesn't mean that it's economic to do so.
2. There is however a limit - if the manufacturer uses more energy than their roof/property collects, they obviously can't go 100% renewable without obtaining more property.
3. I figure that it's probably easier to go 100% renewable if you plan to do so before even breaking ground on the factory. Such as selecting a location with nearly ideal solar patterns.
4. Net metering only works so long as there are other customers looking to buy the power when it's being produced, and generators producing when it isn't. If 'everybody' tries to do it, the system would break down.
5. To go along with this, even if they can't net meter, they're a battery factory. They can create a lot of backup storage even if they only drain/refill all their produced batteries once as a 'test', cleverly arranged to provide back up power. Or produce some batteries at cost, use degraded but still functional batteries returned under warranty/core charge, etc...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a lot more economical when you get a couple billion in grants and tax breaks from the government!
But anyway - net metering is the "creative accounting" of the green energy industry. It lets companies like Tesla pretend they are "100% renewable energy" when in reality they are using electricity from the same non-renewable plants after dark as anyone else.
Now, if they did actually STORE that solar energy produced in the day time to use later that would be impressive, and they should receive proper credi
Re:Answer: They mostly can, but is it economical? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, the answer is specialization and marketing.
Tesla's customers are largely environmentalists, who will be that much more eager to buy due to the factory being greener. For comparison, someone buying a can of pasta sauce won't care about the specifics of the canning factory, so price is the only factor.
The other reason is specialization: most factories do one thing and do it well, and trade for whatever else. While it's entirely possibly for a company to generate its own power, grow the food its employees will eat, make its own tools, etc. that all adds unnecessary complexity and gets in the way of specialization. Instead, do the thing you're good at and buy the rest. In the case of power, I could see more and more companies adding solar panels, since so much of their cost is installation. But for now going full renewable is only for marketing purposes.
Re:Answer: They mostly can, but is it economical? (Score:5, Interesting)
The fiction of net metering... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fiction of net metering is that you will not be paid the same amount for the electricity you generate as for the electricity you consume.
On of the purposes of "Smart Meters" is to permit differential pricing on electricity produced vs. consumed; it's not just to provide a temporal demand market. There are already tariffs in place in California where PG&E only has to buy as much electricity as you consume for a net 0 energy usage, rather than being required to purchase everything you generate over what you consume.
The idea of a large grid only works if someone pays to maintain that grid, and that pricing comes in as a differential.
Everyone can't do what Tesla is doing because not everyone is going to have the storage capacity to make it economical; Tesla can just rota the batteries it manufactures in service to the manufacturing plant itself, as part of "burn in testing", so that it'll get local off-grid storage as a side effect of the manufacturing process itself.
I suppose that "every rechargeable battery manufacturer can do what Tesla does" would be a fair statement, but that's a tiny subset of "everyone"
Tough problem (Score:5, Funny)
The obvious problem with renewable sources is that they're intermittent at any given location
Yeah. How are they going to store intermittent power for when they need it later? At a battery factory?
This is a tough problem.
same junk as last time (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot base any real analysis on figures take by looking at an artists rendering of the site.
The article says that they will have 85 windmills because there are 85 windmills in the picture. This is garbage. It is an artists rendering!
If you want to have a serious discussion, you have to wait until there is some actual real info to discuss.
Note that net metering is not running your plant completely off renewables. It's running it off renewables some of the time.
They do and have (Score:3)
It's generally called "co-generation", and although that applies to energy generated by a wide variety of means many are renewable. Burning methane from sewerage treatment plants to run generators is one with quite a few decades of history, another is burning plant waste such as "bagasse" from sugar cane.
Re: (Score:2)
In addition it kinda depends on what it is that you are doing. If we take this facility what is it actually doing? Is it assembly, which takes a relatively small amount of energy, or is it full fabrication, which obviously uses a lot more.
I have no idea what is in these batteries but lets say they look like lead acid batteries internally for the sake of this. Are they taking in lumps of lead, heating them, moulding them and then placing them into plastic containers which were shaped and formed in a diffe
Re: (Score:2)
Let's not, that's getting as irrelevant to comparing manufacture of welding rods to sex toys.
I'm confused (Score:2)
How is the product relevant? Isn't it more about location? If you build a gigantic factory building, you can put all kinds of things on the roof. If you built in a location that has sun, wind and geothermal capabilities, how would your product influence whether you could go renewable?
Isn't it still about whether you can get your investment back and in what time-frame?
It's just not in the plans (Score:4, Insightful)
When I go to a high point in this city and look down, I see countless flat roofs that could easily host solar panels. Even with all the fog this city gets, that would make a significant impact on our use of non-renewable energy. But it is not to be. Homeowners tend not to like the upfront expense, they tend not to know about SolarCity, [solarcity.com] and a bunch of the homes are rented. Absent some regulation, they aren't going to install renewable energy.
I think the neatest time to add renewable energy to a building is during construction. Absent that regulation, unless the owner makes it a priority, then the architects are not going to add it to the plan. For example, my work place recently commissioned and moved into a new building. It has an unobstructed, south-facing, 2-story-high, 10-foot-wide window that we have to cover up on the inside to maintain the climate. My immediate thought was: Solar energy. But I had no authority; the people in charge just put a poorly designed curtain on it. It just doesn't occur to them that we could put renewables in this building.
Actually, in the current political climate, I think renewable energy gets negative publicity from these deployments. Conservatives under the thrall of Koch money see renewables as an admission of AGW, and reject it. No! That reason is stupid! And regardless of AGW, renewables will help us survive the depletion of the oil reserves! The Koch-funded people claim that there is no depletion. I live in a state of extreme pessimism.
Cart FIRMLY in front of horse! CHECK! (Score:3, Insightful)
Tesla is doing this
Uhm. They haven't even broken ground yet. So no, they're NOT.
Until the site is up and 100% operational, this is all smoke being blown out someone's ass.
Why don't others do this?
Because this sort of solution isn't suitable everywhere.
Reno sees about 250 sunny or partly sunny days a year, with roughly 60% of those being totally sunny.
A place like Chicago sees 189 sunny or partly sunny days a year with roughly 40% of those being totally sunny.
Places like Reno don't have to deal with long stretches of extreme low temperatures and snow measured in feet.
Also, there's the land use to consider. Farmland is a LOT more valuable for what it can produce than a big stretch of desert land. So converting it to a wind/solar farm from food production is idiotic.
There's also issues of space availability. If you have a factory in someplace like Los Angeles, you simply aren't going to have the land area to build a totally renewable setup.
On top of this, what other environmental impacts does building in this manner, on a wide-scale basis (not just one factory, but dozens/hundreds/thousands of businesses and their facilities) have?
There's also the issue that the local utility needs to be set up to accept power back into the system.
And finally, if everyone's doing this, how do you maintain a stable power production industry? And how does the industry finance maintenance, expansion and construction of new facilities to replace old/obsoleted facilities that have met/exceeded their productive lifetimes?
Re:Cart FIRMLY in front of horse! CHECK! (Score:5, Informative)
And here in Grand Rapids Michigan we have several places that do it. The Van Andel Institute for example is covered in solar on their roofs and their solar program is very successful even through last winter when we saw more snow than Minnesota saw.
How about instead of wild speculation you actually look up the places that ACTUALLY have done it and have been running that way for years successfully?
Even Michigan Tech way the hell up against Lake Superior has a successful Solar power generation system in a place where they get on average 6 feet of snow falling per winter storm and over 30 feet of snow fall for the winter.
Cost analysis (Score:5, Informative)
The electric company raised the rates for our plant because the usage dropped enough that they entered a lower usage bracket which has a higher cost per KW/h. We actually pay MORE each month in electricity costs even though the plant purchases 10-15% less electricity..
Obviously they are negotiating the contract terms now (it may be done) but this is just one example of how the utilities have everyone by the balls. They are going to get their money, one way or another.
I'm sure for Tesla, it will be easier since they are starting from the beginning instead of doing a retrofit. However I hear similar stories from residential users. Most times people want to make the choice to use returnables but outside factors make it monetarily difficult to pursue.
Re:Renew this! (Score:4, Funny)
How does Tesla renew the lithium?
The standard way: nuclear fusion, with peaking capacity provided by supernovas.
Re:Not a first (Score:4, Interesting)
yeah but that doesn't count since the dam isn't on the factory premises ;D. that's what the article is wanting factories to do.. it doesn't care if you do it like sensible being and put the power generation outside the plant premises..
btw the usual way to run factories a 100 years ago was on "100%" (or over 100% if you count out the extra..). the papermills etc were usually built so that they had an included hydro plant. last time i got an update the old, old hydro dam at my hometowns powerplant was only providing for lightning though. the old textile plant in the bigger city near my hometown was the first place to have electric lights(iirc in all of nordic).. and those were from hydro. to run the textile mill when it was dark with smaller risk of fires..
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So much so that dwindling fossil fuels can still compete economically with kinetic energy that costs nothing.
Re:Credit System (Score:5, Funny)
If only the Gigafactory could figure out some way to store electrical energy until its needed. That'd be awesome! Not really something they're equipped for though, I guess...
Re: (Score:3)
Banks of batteries are expensive and take up a lot of space. You'd need to provide several megawatts for several hours. That would require hundreds of 85kWh car battery packs.
And they'll be producing several hundred thousand such packs annually once the factory is operational.
Also, it's going to be a 10 million square-foot facility, with a few hundred more empty acres around it. I don't think they'll be pressed for space.
Re: (Score:3)
Alternatively, there will always be some number of batteries that are functional but don't meet the stated specs for whatever reason. Producing 10s of thousands of batteries a year, that could easily leave you with several hundred mostly functional batteries that are otherwise worthless to you.