Elon Musk's SolarCity Offering To Build Cities, Businesses Their Own Grids 185
Lucas123 writes Rooftop solar distributor SolarCity announced a new service where it will build a centrally-controllable power grid for cities, business campuses and even islands. Marketing its GridLogic service by calling attention to the recent uptick in natural disasters and the extended power outages that resulted from them, SolarCity said its "microgrids" are fully independent power infrastructures fed by solar panels with lithium-ion backup batteries (courtesy of Tesla). SolarCity claims its GridLogic program can provide electricity to communities and businesses for less than they pay for utility power and the facilities can still be connected to their area's utility power grid as an added backup.
Why Local storage? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not the far simpler and more beneficial Grid tie syncing systems? They work great and will let the power generated spread out to others that dont have the money for a solar installation. It causes the benefits to reach out further.
Eliminate the batteries, system is simpler, and benefits more. It's a win,win,win, anger republicans which is another win.
Re:Why Local storage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Eliminate the batteries, system is simpler, and benefits more.
Are you sure? A bank of batteries may very well be simpler than upgrading the entire grid to handle distributed generation.
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You dont have to upgrade the entire grid. These businesses are already using power, using solar to offset that and pipe some back to the surrounding users requires no upgrades to the current grid.
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Germany is really struggling with exactly the problem you dismiss. It is relatively simple to take one isolated pocket and only draw from the grid when the batteries start to run low. If you can give the utility an hour's notice, they can start spooling up generators. Give them notice again when you are going to disconnect and they can orderly shut generation down.
Requiring the smooth two-way transfer of power is a more complicated problem to solve, even if it eliminates the bank of batteries. It also requi
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1. Musk makes the batteries. He's finding a potentially huge market to build economies of scale into the battery production.
2. Some communities in the world don't have reliable grids or power generation facilities.
3. Less haggle with the utilities, less red tape to build a stand alone system.
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The more interesting tidbit in this release, to me, is that he's apparently planning to do larger-format Li cells in the new battery factory. I can't imagine doing grid-level storage in something like a billion 18650 cells (a million of them is roughly 10 mWh)... at some point you're going to need to produce something more like this (about the equivalent of 700 18650s):
http://www.ev-power.eu/Winston... [ev-power.eu]
Re:Why Local storage? (Score:4, Insightful)
Partly because a solar-powered city is gauranteed to still need power at night, and local storage eliminates loss inherent to transmission and distribution. But mainly because trying to tie into the grid means the big investor-owned utilities will screw you.
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The power day starts ramping up at about 5am. Your batteries will need to cover from about 5pm though 8am with little help, which means you will need a power capacity that approaches the peek demand and a storage capacity that covers at least half your daily consumption. This battery capacity will require that you double your collection capacity plus about 40% more to cover for conversion loss and battery losses.
Are we still talking about households, or about three-shift factories? Households do not have the same power consumption at night. Granted, if you live in an ancient structure with lousy thermal management and you're compensating for it with a AC without heat storage, then yeah, perhaps, but there's no reason in principle why you should be forced to be able to replicate your daylight power use with batteries at night.
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losses in transmission than the losses in a local storage system that uses batteries... You are going to loose nearly 40% on your convert to DC ...
How do you come to this nonsense numbers?
Grid losses are around 7%, obviously depending on your country.
Batteries including everything are between 10% and 15%
Why are there always idiots proclaiming idiotic numbers like 40% loss?
Transmission losses are usually under 10% and that level of loss is only really seen on peek load where the
That is complete nonsense.
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Solar panels are DC.
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Personally, I'd rather take the losses in transmission than the losses in a local storage system that uses batteries... You are going to loose nearly 40% on your convert to DC -> Charge Batteries during the day and the Discharge batteries -> convert to AC at night.
40% sounds bogus to me. On top of that since solar cells produce DC power in the first place why convert it at all before charging the batteries? That's got to reduce any loses.
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Because the companies who run the grids don't want to play the game. Certainly not unless the terms favor them.
The batteries means you can say "fuck you", and save power for when it's dark. You no longer have to worry about what time of day you generate power, just how much you can store.
I think little pockets being off the grid with their own battery storage is far more disruptive than you seem to. Because suddenly they aren't at the
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1. When the grid goes down, so does your little micro grid. If you have sensitive needs, say for example a server farm, climate control needs, or medical life support equipment you never want it to go down.
2. The utilities charge you to have connections to the grid even if you do nothing but generate electricity. They charge ALOT to businesses. (Pissess off the crony capitalists aka Republicans and Democrats.)
3. Also if you have utilities coming onto your property you start getting i
Great Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Energy Security and Grid Reliability are two.
The American electrical grid, built decades ago and in need of major upgrades, is acknowledged to be a problem moving forward with renewable energy. Utilities complain that they can't handle the load. As utilities whine about what solar and wind will do to their grids(while simultaneously poopooing renewables and how much power they can generate) SolarCity will build microgrids that will allow localized power generation and distribution, so the tender and fragile utilities-of-old won't have to be bothered by pesky solar derived electricity.
The American megagrids serve a purpose, and they should be upgraded, however we should be simultaneously building infrastructure than is localized and more robust.
Someone should not lost power because a tree fell on a line hundreds of miles away.
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There is more than just a "green" reason to build local microgrids. Energy Security and Grid Reliability are two. The American electrical grid, built decades ago and in need of major upgrades, is acknowledged to be a problem moving forward with renewable energy. Utilities complain that they can't handle the load. As utilities whine about what solar and wind will do to their grids(while simultaneously poopooing renewables and how much power they can generate) SolarCity will build microgrids that will allow localized power generation and distribution, so the tender and fragile utilities-of-old won't have to be bothered by pesky solar derived electricity. The American megagrids serve a purpose, and they should be upgraded, however we should be simultaneously building infrastructure than is localized and more robust. Someone should not lost power because a tree fell on a line hundreds of miles away.
That's all well and good but what if you are producing power from your solar and your batteries are full? I just am not getting the no grid tie in.
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This. We need to take control of our local grids and make them work for us. Then the big utilities can either adapt to serve us or die as we cut them off.
Competing with government-sanctioned monopolies (Score:2, Troll)
For decades we were told over and over, how the utility power is a "natural monopoly" [stanford.edu] and how, therefor, it can not be subject to competition...
This nod does not seem like anything more than a fig-leaf. Because, if I my campus or block or town can connect to a utility's grid, it can
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Distribution is generally a monopoly, generation is not.
And "less than they pay for utility power" is a very, very high bar. Installation of a parallel grid, storage, and solar collection? Ignoring the grid, most solar companies I work with will contract to use your rooftop and install a solar system to tie into your grid-based power. You agree to pay $0.30(!) per kWh for all the generated power, they maintain the system. The cost of energy is fixed for the life of the contract (usu 20-30 years), and that's
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The main reason that distribution became a monopoly was due to the over crowding of spaces with dozens of companies running their lines - take a look at the following link for an example:
http://io9.com/photos-from-the... [io9.com]
To stop the over crowding, power companies were forced to merge and de-clutter the streets.
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That picture shows, how unpleasant it is to have cable running on poles instead of burying them underground. It is not about the ugliness of competition.
Nonsense. Where there is one cable (whether on a pole or underground), there may as well be four or five — from competing companies.
I'd go further and suggest, gas- and water-pipes can compete too. If Tokyo has competing subway lines certainly NYC (or LA or oth
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I'm not sure why you're assuming that a competing utility has to have separate lines. Here in New Zealand the power companies are not allowed to own lines - those are a highly regulated monopoly (The national grid is owned by the government, local grids by local lines companies.) Generating companies sell power wholesale via a trading system, Retailing companies buy the wholesale power (priced at grid-exit points) and deal with the consumer and local lines company. You can be a Generator and a Retailer,
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For decades, large-scale renewable power generation was a dream. Things change; doesn't make the old reality a myth.
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So you're proposing having two sets of wires running to each house and business? Don't conflate generation and distribution. Power generation is rarely a monopoly, except for areas that cannot connect to the national grid. Even national distribution has competition. But local power distribution can't switch who owns the wire underground or overhead so easy. Even if you go "off grid", all you've done is change monopolies. Just one you now own.
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Why not? When I signed up for FiOS, a Verizon technician came over and ran a fiber-cable to my house from the pole nearby. Comcast's coax cables are running from the same pole to my neighbors.
Why can't the same be done with power cables?
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There are some vestiges of regulated monopoly stuff, mostly in consumer electrical delivery(partially inertia, partially the fact that political influence over the price of consumer staple goods can be electorally popular, partly because it fits neatly with the usual state interest in not having people cut off for nonpayment and freezing to death, which generates a lot of bad PR per dollar in utility bills
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I would take a more nuanced approach to it. It's not that it cannot be subject to competition, it's more that it is unreasonable to expect competition to magically appear - as one would expect in other markets - due to the impracticalities (i.e., having two sets of power lines) and the high cost to entry.
Nice idea but (Score:2, Informative)
I think more solar with better tech is the future and worth investing in under many circumstances. But due to no grid tie in and the batteries i can't help but think it smacks of a crappy bundling
Re:Nice idea but (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are they using lithium batteries?
Because EVs use them, but when the EVs are done with the packs, the packs are still good for something.
The plan for Leaf packs was to use them for this purpose from day one. Why not Tesla? Hell, they might be able to get their hands on the Leaf packs cheap.
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Re: Nice idea but (Score:2)
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Do you have a source?
Battery packs are made of multiple cells, not all the cells go bad at once. Break down a laptop battery sometime. You can find perfectly working cells which are actually fully charged, completely hosed cells which won't take a charge, and cells which appear to work but whose lifetime is very short. The problem is that all of these cells are wired into one pack which has a limited ability to bypass cells. In most cases the pack is only capable of ignoring groups of cells, sometimes as few as two — but
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I'm very suspicious of the idea of used battery packs being used for grid storage.
However, lithium is cheap and is well understood. I think Tesla could devote some of their production into non-cobalt based cells, and possibly non-nickel too, and use them for stationary storage.
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Lithium batteries will be available to them in large quantities, assuming they take back the old batteries from their cars. Lithium batteries that are too old to be used in a car can be used in this way.
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Grid batteries have to be flexible. That means discharging rates from slow to fast. Lithium batteries offer that sort of performance and they offer good storage performance for their size. Typically batteries described here come in a normal shipping container. The electronics are built in and one only needs to connect them to their own management system. The batteries can be used to augment the grid during high load times or they may be called upon to discharge in seconds during a planned switch from one po
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Because Tesla, not coincidentally also owned by Musk, uses lithium batteries.
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Yah, that was implicit in your post, I thought I'd state it explicitly for the slower and Musk worshipers among us.
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Indeed, the raw materials for li-ion batteries are cheap, especially if it's a non-cobalt-based chemistry. It's all about optimizing mass production. Which is precisely what the gigafactory is all about.
Slashdotters miss the point, as usual (Score:2)
Musk is promoting the use of LiOn batteries because the more they make, the cheaper they get (to a point). It's about scaling up the industry as fast and as much as possible.
Flywheel systems make more sense for power grid applications, but only marginally, and only for the specific engineering. In other words, it makes tactical sense, but Musk is in this for the long run, which requires strategic planning. These microgrids provide the quickest way to sell a lot of batteries, far more than he's selling in Te
And the "bonus" (Score:2)
Oh, those batteries - they'll happen to be in swappable modules that just happen to fit Tesla automobiles. You pay for the infrastructure, Musk magically creates the 1 minute electric car fill-up.
Dammit Musk (Score:5, Funny)
Will you please stop with these mundane, low-hanging fruit goals and try something lofty and ambitious for once? It's always the same-old, same-old, doing-what-everyone-else is doing with you, isn't it?
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And another thing: it's the 2010s. Where's my flying car?
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Wouldnt NiFe be a better battery chemistry here? (Score:4, Interesting)
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And why would they be doing that?
Let's say it all together now: "Li-ion != Cell phone batteries". Li-ion is a whole broad range of chemistries that follow a basic mechanism of action involving the intercalation of lithium ions on either side of a membrane. There are an incredibly wide range of anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, and membranes, and these offer widely varying performance in terms of power density, energy density,
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And why would they be doing that?
Let's say it all together now: "Li-ion != Cell phone batteries". Li-ion is a whole broad range of chemistries that follow a basic mechanism of action involving the intercalation of lithium ions on either side of a membrane. There are an incredibly wide range of anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, and membranes, and these offer widely varying performance in terms of power density, energy density, cost, cycle life, and shelf life. Cell phone and laptop batteries are li-ion batteries specifically engineered with design life deemphasized in favor of high energy density in order to keep their products small and light. They're not climate controlled and they're generally run at high depths of discharge. This is not what you do with all li-ion battery types. Where longevity is of concern, you more carefully control temperature, control charging more carefully, you have many cells in parallel that can allow for individual cell failures, you use a lower DoD, and you use a chemistry that sacrifices some energy density for greatly improved cycle life.
The exact same rules apply to NiMh. You can get NiMH with high energy density by sacrificing cycle life. A typical NiMh hybrid battery pack only achieves its lifespan by running at a tiny 20-40% DoD range.
Yes but there is a reason few if any large power backups use lithium technologies of any type. Typically it is lead acids. Using a radically different lithium battery from the tesla wont reduce the cost of tesla packs much and further consumers wont like paying more money up front for less reliable and more expensive solutions just to improve Musks bottom line. Pretty much all lithium batteries are a pain in the ass to work with their main selling point is the power and energy density, both of which are
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That's not true. PbA is used in the small scale but there is no standard for the large scale. Among the largest battery backups out there today are the NiCd battery backup for Fairbanks, Duke Energy's lead-acid Notrees battery, and AES's li-ion Laurel Mountain battery. Vanadium-redox is fairly common. Sodium-sulfur has some use too. There is no single standard.
And it's simply not true that "power is useless for backup". Quite to the contrary, high power output battery backups are incredibly valuable for p
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NiFe batteries have great longevity, but very poor performance compared to Li-ion. Lithium Ion batteries can store ten times as many watt hours per kilogram, and twenty times as many watt hours per litre. NiFe is also not any cheaper than lithium ion, and when you consider that Tesla is going to be producing a large number of "worn out" battery packs that are still perfectly usable for grid applications, NiFe will end up a bunch more expensive too.
Also, weight and size definitely do matter. Shipping stuff a
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Cost is one reason, although NiFe is already more expensive than Li-Ion, and rapidly becoming more and more so. Particularly when EV batteries are available so cheap. They also ought to last more than a year or three. NiFe's cost also needs to take into account the fact that they require a massive increase in infrastructure compared to lithium ion. What you can do with a single building worth of lithium ion batteries would require twenty buildings of NiFe batteries. That's not an insubstantial difference!
It
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Because Elon Musk owns Tesla - and a giga factory designed to turn out LiOn batteries like Carter's churns out little pills.
Screw SolarCity, king of ecoscam (Score:3)
Ok now that you are back you probably know how solarcity works right? No? Weird because you'd think it is pretty simple.
Here is how it works, once you TALK TO THEM ON THE PHONE they will send you "do not disclose" paperwork that amounts to: You pay to install solar cells on your roof, then you pay to keep them clear of tree branches etc, then you buy electricity from the solar cells at slightly higher than municipal power rates, then you buy the rest of your power from the municipality or other provider at the normal price. Then they uninstall them 20 years later for free.
100% of tax credits go to Solar City.
I really don't understand why you would do this over green mountain or some other "renewable at a slightly higher price to make you feel better" kind of place. SolarCity is a complete rip, offering all of the disadvantages of a grid-tied solar install, with none of the advantages. For my particular area, the more power their solar cells would generate, the higher my electric bill would be.
Re:Screw SolarCity, king of ecoscam (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got Solar City...
You do not pay to install anything.
You do not pay to keep them clear of branches.
You *do* buy electricity from the solar cells, but at a much *lower* rate than municipal power. You do buy the rest of your power from your normal provider at the normal price.
Yes, 100% of the tax credits and rebates go to Solar City.
In other words, you pay nothing and get cheaper electricity. All you have to do is let them put solar cells on your roof, which they then maintain. It's a pretty nice win-win situation as far as I am concerned. I have a much lower electric bill, and I know that I'm helping the environment, and I had no out-of-pocket expense at all.
Security (Score:2)
SolarCity Are a bunch of hucksters (Score:4, Interesting)
I contacted them because of Musk's association with the company. I have since decided to go DIY, and now I don't really see why "solar companies" are even necessary. Any electrician worth his salt should be able to wire and setup a solar system. The panel, inverter, and battery manufacturers are what matter.
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A lot of this depends on price really. (Score:2)
Currently a LiON system is about 3x the price of a Lead Acid installation. Granted, the LiON has a smaller physical footprint and power spec due to efficiencies in LiON tech. But 3x the cost is 3x the cost. Maybe Tesla can bring that cost down some. Otherwise doing an solar install in locations other than sunny places like Nevada/Arizona don't make economic sense.
There's also the issue of thermal runaway.
Granted, current lead-acid batteries have a thermal runaway problem, but LiON is more prone to it du
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I don't think "toxic" is the word you are looking for. Maybe you are thinking of lead-acid batteries?
Re:Stop using lithium! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop using lithium! (Score:4, Insightful)
And no-one should be disposing of them anyway, they can be recycled. In fact, nothing should be going into landfill these days.
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Well, human bodies. burying in a rotting landfill is still the most efficient way to break down evidence.
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How about the old nickel iron (Edison) battery? No toxic heavy metals at all. Sure, may not be ideal for EV use, but localized solar energy storage may be in its wheelhouse.
http://www.nickel-iron-battery... [nickel-iron-battery.com]
Re:Stop using lithium! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, lithium-6 deuteride tends to make much boom in thermonuclear weapons. So that is a concern.
Gosh darn it, you're right! I'm afraid, uncertain, and doubtful about lithium and its uses now. Maybe we should ban that "hydrogen" stuff they use in the bombs too?
</sarcasm>
I really can't believe I'm having to deal with comments like these on Slashdot, AC or otherwise. Just because something can be used in bombs does not mean that it is of any particular concern (did you know that they use steel too?!). But if you really feel like wasting your life by worrying about lithium, then maybe you should do everything in your power to prop up the lithium battery industry (e.g. buy more batteries), since you can think of each of those batteries as a little, tiny sequestration of lithium that won't make it back into bomb production as long as it's in your possession.
Do your part for the anti-nuke effort: buy more lithium (batteries).
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In order to save my hope for humanity, I assume they do not actually believe what the oil companies pay them to say.
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The reason lithium-6 deuteride is used in thermonuclear weapons is because it creates tritium and deuterium once bombarded with X-rays produced by the detonation of a fission device, which can then fuse due to the heat and pressure of said detonation to make an even bigger bang; and it's a more maintainable device due to not having to deal with refreshing the tritium all the time because it tends to half-life away, unlike the stable lithium-6 deuteride.
Also, lithium-6 is separated from the >92% of lithiu
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* not sure how X-Rays convert lithium to tritium...
And this is why you're a know-nothing AC on Slashdot and not a nuclear scientist!
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Lead batteries are 100% recyclable. So what is your point? You just toss money into a dump?
All batteries are recyclable in theory. The problem with distributed consumer batteries (less for commercial installations) is bad practices. Few if any places pay for lead acid batteries, in the USA - most are required to take the same type for free to stop polluting.
For example i have a rental property bordering on a small lake/pond. I went to clean up after buying the place and found the remains of three car batteries and one SUV/truck battery. Two of them were so badly decomposed the plates would
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In the US, all places that sell car batteries actually give money for the old dead batteries. It is called the "core charge" and is because there is serious money in recycling the lead acid car batteries to be used on the next generation of batteries.
http://shop.advanceautoparts.c... [advanceautoparts.com]
Apparently, according to this site, it is mandated by state, but I would expect it to occur in most states as there is good money in the recycling.
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In the US, all places that sell car batteries actually give money for the old dead batteries. It is called the "core charge" and is because there is serious money in recycling the lead acid car batteries to be used on the next generation of batteries.
http://shop.advanceautoparts.c... [advanceautoparts.com]
Apparently, according to this site, it is mandated by state, but I would expect it to occur in most states as there is good money in the recycling.
Lololololol. They CHARGE you the core charge up front. It's not like they pay for defunct batteries. Unless you plan on buying a new battery the old ones can only be turned in for free at a few select government run locations. People are often faced with paying to dispose of them properly or simply crating a mini environmental disaster. Guess which many choose?
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hint: melting salt makes it no more toxic than freezing it. You don't want to stick your hand in it, just like you would not want to stick it in molten iron. but in neither case has the toxicity of the substance been altered in any way.
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Li Ion batteries can be recycled into new batteries once worn off.
Plus the raw materials in pure form inside batteries are very valuable (lithium, cobalt, and a majority of nickel).
So, the only reason there would be pollution is if the owners of the batteries trash them on purpose, discarding any recycling credits.
Its so much easier to separate the Lithium, Cobalt and Nickel from each other on a battery than purifying those for their respective raw ores. Everybody wins !
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Unobtainium?
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Mooseberries.
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Don't make things worse, they're Badenov.
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That would be, from the gigantic factory he's building along side Panasonic ;)
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Sub-saharan Africa.
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Chile, Atacama Desert..
Whoosh, I ducked and your joke missed.
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Kind of like say building disaster proof micro grids that are not under control by government sanctioned utility monopolies? I never understood the whole low IQ concept of "we have to save it for something more important, so we shouldn't use it logic because it might get expensive".
No we should use the shit out of it to drive the price up to the stratosphere so that the market comes up with either a cheaper way to pro
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If LiOn supplies are already tight
Lithium supplies are very price elastic. When prices are low, it comes from salt deposits in Bolivia, and Chile. When the prices go up, we can extract it from brine wells. If the prices go up even more, it becomes cost effective to extract it from sea water as a byproduct of desalinating water. The oceans contain 230 billion tonnes of lithium. Extraction costs will go down as technology improves. The world is not running out of lithium.
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It isn't like it is exactly uncommon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Okay, we're clear on what you're promising (Score:5, Insightful)
Has he ever given any reason to doubt him?
Says he can build an electric car, ends up producing the safest, best engineered, and fantastic car ever made, for under $100k. And now they're working on making it drive itself.
Says he can build rockets for a fraction of the cost everyone else is charging. Ends up producing the most successful and economical lift vehicles in existence. Also working on a way for it to land itself on a platform in the ocean.
I'd say he has a history of under-promising and over-delivering.
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Yes, right in the summary: "SolarCity claims its GridLogic program can provide electricity to communities and businesses for less than they pay for utility power and the facilities can still be connected to their area's utility power grid as an added backup."
For the utility grid to provide backup power, it has to have spare capacity. Upkeeping that capacity is not free. This plan is trying to make the electric company effectively subsidize SolarCity customers.
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You find it improbable that the electric company will have the capacity they currently do, in a timeframe that would prevent these minigrids from finding other backup methods (like connecting to other minigrids far enough away to avoid being in the same storm pattern)?
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Companies like Exxon and Chevron spend billions drilling the ground to find oil. They then build collection systems on numerous wells, tanks to hold the oil and shipping facilities to load the oil into tankers. Then the transport oil around the world (with the immense logistics that requires), unload the oil into more tanks, process the oil through a distillation process to separate the different hydrocarbons (and keep in mind how hard it is to distill something that has more energy than thousands of tons o
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which didn't do a thing about range or the anxiety drivers feel about how limited their Tesla's range is
The anxiety is not about the range, but about running out of charge with no idea where the next charge point is.
You know the rough range and you know how long your journey is. There's no reason before you leave you should feel anxiety because you know you need to recharge en-route.
Knowing the remaining range isn't enough when you have no idea where the next charge point is, unlike petrol vehicles you can't just pull into any petrol station - you need to pull into one that's got a charging point added. It's
Re:Okay, we're clear on what you're promising (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah this guy is always promising us the moon. How the hell is he gonna get there? With his own personal rocket factory?! Why doesn't he start with something more down to earth...like a car or something. If his companies can somehow gain a lot of experience with these solar panels and batteries he plans to use then maybe we don't need to brush off this natural innovation as complete hype. Then maybe, just maybe I can stop typing exclusively in sarcasm. Only time will tell.
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I was getting worried (my sarcasm detector has been offline since 1987). I thought there for a minute you might be the one of 9 people in the US that has managed to miss every single article about Tesla/SpaceX and did not know who Musk was.
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(my sarcasm detector has been offline since 1987)
Uhh....you're not going to last long here on the internet....
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Yeah this guy is always promising us the moon.
Actually, he's been promising Mars, not the Moon. ;-)
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That is even better, as Mars has two moons!
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For a utility yes solar generated electricity makes little sense, but for the home or business owner it mak
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For a utility yes solar generated electricity makes little sense
Not for long, perhaps. In twenty-thirty years, I could totally see utility-scale solar redirecting production peaks into hydrogen production. You even save on inverters if you overprovision for that purpose (since you need low-voltage DC anyway).
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Are you aware that the prices of solar panels and batteries are falling constantly and that is widely forecast to continue. modern solar panels do degrade slowly - good ones at about 0.5% per year, that means they'll still be pumping out plenty of energy in 50 years time.
Solar panels will very soon be the cheapest option without subsidy even against fossil fuels that are subsidised.
Re:Okay, we're clear on what you're promising (Score:5, Interesting)
1973 called, they want their solar power cost benefit analysis back.
Obviously there are still situations where solar is not ideal but there is a reason its one of the fastest growing energy sources. Things everyone should know:
-Solar panels collect back the power used to manufacture them in 1-4 years.
-Their useful lifespan is over 30 (approaching 50).
-If your roof gets sun more than half the days of the year, a solar array will pay itself back in under 15 years WITHOUT SUBSIDIES (I'm looking at about 12 for my array not including subsidies).
-Storage is indeed an issue, but that is the very issue that this plan is addressing!