Posted on 04/28/2015 10:13:13 AM PDT by bananaman22
Tesla’s announcement last week about creating a new line of batteries for use by businesses, consumers, and the electrical grid at large is a game-changer for the industry. Currently, when individuals or companies need back-up power, they usually rely on generators. Effective battery storage for large amounts of energy would be a game changer in that it would enable a separation of generation and use of energy produced through clean fuels like solar and wind power.
The big problem with solar and wind right now is that the energy is only useful when it is actually produced and, because a company cannot modify generation to correspond with demand needs, any excess power has to be sold back to the market for immediate use. Tesla’s new batteries could go a long way towards solving this problem. It is likely that Solar City, for example, would be very interested in any home application for large scale battery technology.
The unique differentiator here is not necessarily Tesla’s technology. The company certainly has state of the art tech, but what might make battery production feasible is the economies of scale that Tesla is looking to capture in battery production. Tesla’s new gigafactory will be an enormous production facility when it is completed and the facility should be able to produce 50 GWh of annual battery production eventually. This level of production should enable mass production of batteries at a fraction of the current cost.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
What? That is what utilities have been doing for over a century.
Some forms of generation do it easier than others.
The cars are not the big deal. The batteries are.
Anyone can throw electric motors and batteries in a car and make an electric car. But “new” battery technology could make electric cars practical. Likewise new motor tech.
When I heard that they literally used a few thousand PC batteries I knew we were not there yet.
What I’d really like to see is a graphene based super-capacitor.
We have *got* to get rid of, or at least reduce our dependence on, this “grid” thing.
The batteries aren’t the big deal.
The subsidies are.
The point is that it’s hard to store the power. Imagine excess electricity from a hydro plant used to pump the water back into a high elevation water storage facility and then, when extra power is needed, that water drops back through turbine generators of its own.
In this context, we are talking about global power production, which indeed would be extremely hard to influence by just one company
Well, there is THAT. ;-)
They do this already, that is, pump water uphill at night and release it for peak use during day.
Finding a way to store renewable energy is actually important, because due to the intermittant nature of solar and especially wind, backup power generators must be available. Germany has spent hundred of billions of dollars on renewables energy production, but hasn’t removed any fossil fuel capacity. So batteries would be a competitor to using a backup generator.
It is expensive to store power. But the claim that generation is not varied because of demand is false. We do it every single day, every hour. It can also be expensive depending of the size of the high and low peaks.
I don't see that. They are talking about multiple "small" batteries systems, individually placed in many different locations. It doesn't solve a global issue, only a local.
If, if, if... have they really come out with a revolutionary battery design or is it mostly all talk. BTW, they ought to talk to whomever supplied batteries to Mercedes back in the 1980s. When I went to replace the battery on my 1984 300D circa 2007 or so, the mechanic informed me that that was the original battery!
The batteries aren’t the big deal.
The subsidies are.
And press releases like this will keep the subsidies coming.
They do this already, that is, pump water uphill at night and release it for peak use during day.
They do that at some nuke plants.
It’s a good thing liberals love Tesla. If this were a conservative company there is no way in hell they would be allowed to mind for the battery’s raw materials.
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