Tesla Completes World's Largest Battery Project In Half the Time Promised (engadget.com) 150
Rei writes: Tesla announced the completion of the world's largest battery -- a 100 MW/129 MWh wind-power backup system for 30,000 homes in South Australia. Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth, the $50 million project had garnered press due to Elon Musk's Twitter boast that it would be completed within 100 days of the contract signing or it would be free. In the end, Tesla took it up a notch: the battery was finished 55 days from the date of contract signing and 99 days from the date of Musk's boast itself.
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I'm sorry, but you're full of crap!
ANY business can make electric cars and their customers can also take part in electric vehicle tax rebates.
How is that Musk looting from hardworking people. He's building a product that the government want, hence the tax rebates for the CONSUMER!
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That seems unlikely.
Isn't the tax subsidy a small percentage of the retail price? They surely are very good at taking tax money, but I can't imagine it's more than their retail dollars.
Re: Elon loves envelopes filled with stolen tax m (Score:2)
No, I think this guyâ(TM)s company lost the contract in the bid. And now he is pissed.
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Bet the AC is an African American. It'd explain a lot.
Those are definitely the things that happened (Score:5, Insightful)
The man said he would do the thing, and he did the thing.
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One can only hope his Big Fucking Rocket delivers comparable performance. I'll be truly impressed if he gets to Mars in half the time he promised!
Re:Those are definitely the things that happened (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is great, I just wish he would do the other things like make to auto wipers work and stop autopilot trying to kill you. He promised to demonstrate self diving coast to coast this year, and only has a month left to deliver in winter weather.
I have a lot too thank Musk for, but he's far from consistent.
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Musk is an amazing Entrepreneur/Physicists, and really is changing the world, BUT, the man's scheduling is RARELY met. I will say, that given the choice of his not meeting deadlines or his not meeting the project promises, I choose the former.
As it is, most of today's MBAs promise everything and than deliver nothing, but 'on-time'. Musk delivers nearly all of what he promises, but rarely on-time.
Re:Now the bad side (Score:4, Insightful)
Because of black-box economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it any story about Musk ends up dominated by trolls and assholes? Butt-hurt much that he can actually get things done?
Because when Tesla is viewed as a black box - considering only revenue, profit, and other information without considering the context or goal horizon - the economic forecast is very bad.
Almost all stock predictions made today are based on this sort of black-box calculation. Every month the analysts plug a bunch of companies' numbers into their spreadsheet algorithms, and those algorithms tell them how well the stock is doing. They then write an article noting what happened in the previous month as the "reason" they say the stock is doing whatever the algorithm said.
The analysts give the impression that they reviewed the information and are giving expert opinion. In reality, they are reporting events and claiming the algorithm outputs as their conclusion.
Also, the algorithm goal horizon is 6 months, and Tesla has been reinvesting lots of revenue into new production (ie - gigafactory). Tesla's goal horizon is a couple of years down the road, where they will be in a position to corner the market in battery production or supercharger network or home solar.
So a lot of people bought Tesla short, and are hoping it goes down so they can make some money. I don't know how many people are shorting Tesla right now, but 8 months ago it was something like 22% of all Tesla stock was short. Since Tesla has been doing well, that number has dropped considerably [seekingalpha.com], but there are still bunches of people holding out and hoping that Tesla crashes so that they can at least mitigate their loss.
It's a less right now, but we still hear "echoes" of all the nudging and convincing that people were doing to try to make the stock crash.
It'll fade over time.
As an investment, it's bad in context too (Score:5, Insightful)
Toyota's sold over 10 million cars every year, for many years. Toyota's stock is valued at $184 billion.
Tesla sells less than 100,000 cars a year, less than 1% of Toyota's sales, and doesn't have a track record of decades of consistent success that Toyota has. Tesla's stock is at $53 billion.
1% of Toyota's sales. If Tesla also had Toyota's proven track record, the company might be worth 1% of Toyota's price. It's overpriced by at least 30X.
"But Tesla sells ELECTRIC cars!", someone says. Toyota sells more ELECTRIC cars than Tesla does.
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As far as I can tell that's only true if you count even non-plugin hybrids. Telsa has delivered just over 200,000 vehicles world wide, all batter electric vehicles (BEVs).
Thought it's possible I've missed something
Toyota BEVs:total 5,100 vehicles
RAV 4 EV - total sales 5000 (over 2 generations)
i Road - prototyple; none sold
EQ EV / Scion EQ EV - 100
Toyota plug-in-hybrids ~106,000
PHEV Prius (gen 1) - 75,400
PHEV Pr
A little different numbers than I got, but good po (Score:3)
I was looking at Toyota's plug-in cars and got significantly larger numbers than you did, but anyway that's a good point that Toyota's plug-in cars also have a gas engine. Maybe that's part of the reason Toyota sells a hundred times as many cars as Tesla does.
> Telsa has delivered just over 200,000 vehicles world wide
I see Nissan sold nearly that many fully electric Leafs last year alone, and has sold over 350,000 total. Sales numbers for BYD are harder to find, but it looks like they may have sold more
Re: As an investment, it's bad in context too (Score:2)
Wow, somebody with actual facts and using an account!
Also note that some of Toyotaâ(TM)s EVs are using Tesla drivetrains:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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Toyota bet on the wrong technology. Hybrid and hydrogen are not going to last, and now they have to pivot hard to BEV. And they are behind other manufacturers.
But just Toyota. European manufacturers are buying in Chinese EV tech to catch up.
Tesla is a gamble, a bet that the future is EV and being an early mover will give them an advantage. That's why they are valued so highly. They might be the Google of cars, or they might not.
15 versus 1,500 (Apple vs Tesla PE ratio) (Score:2)
Apple's 2015 PE ratio was 19 - meaning basically investors made about 6%. Tesla's was negative 60 - the company lost a SHITLOAD of money.
For 2019, Apple predicts a PE ratio of 14 to 15. (About 6% profit). Tesla predicts 1,500 PE, a profit of 0.006%. They aren't comparable.
Re:Now the bad side (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody else wanted his batteries so they had plenty of stock.
Yeah, no one wanted his batteries so much that he was unable to fulfil the order using the existing contractual supplier (Panasonic) or from his existing factory and had to turn to Samsung SDI as an emergency second supplier.
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You're wasting your breath (and so am I but WTF). Facts and reason mean nothing to the anti-Musk constituency. Start quoting facts and they'll just claim you're spreading fake news.
The big three is no longer three and would be down to one if GM hadn't been given several times more money than the total received by Musk from the government over all time - not to mention the massive subsidies of the oil industry which includes the cost of multiple wars over the last few decades.
Just looking at Tesla's balance
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Maybe true - but I'll bet they want them now!
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The man sells more Li-ion cells/batteries than anybody else today.
I'm actually impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
I assumed when he made the boast that it would be 100 days from the signing of a contract, or that there'd be an allowance for shipping times to Australia and possibly other 'fudge factors'.
I'm now assuming instead that there was a huge loss involved here in order to move and install the required hardware in such a short time, just to prove the point it was possible and would actually work, and thus make future sales more likely.
Devil in the details (Score:3)
I assumed when he made the boast that it would be 100 days from the signing of a contract, or that there'd be an allowance for shipping times to Australia and possibly other 'fudge factors'.
I'm now assuming instead that there was a huge loss involved here in order to move and install the required hardware in such a short time, just to prove the point it was possible and would actually work, and thus make future sales more likely.
You never know - maybe he was so confident of the contract that he had parts shipped before the signing, possibly he had parts already in Australia during the signing.
As a PR move it was actually pretty good.
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Kinda. He bought the batteries "locally", reducing shipment time by weeks. They were made by Samsung, not Tesla.
Any sufficiently motivated municipal electrical engineering company could have bolted all the pieces together.
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Ultimately I think that is the point that they have proven: there system is simple, modular, pad mounted outdoors, and quick to deploy. Presumably economical and useful as well...
Re:I'm actually impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
Kinda. He bought the batteries "locally", reducing shipment time by weeks. They were made by Samsung, not Tesla.
Firstly it only takes a couple of "weeks" to ship from the USA in the first place. The difference between shipping from Korea vs USA to South Australia is 25 days vs 30 days (there's basic calculators you can use online for this).
Secondly he bought the batteries from Samsung SDI not because of shipping time to Australia, but because of lack of availability from his normal supplier: Panasonic, whose batteries are made right next to South Korea anyway. The gigafactory and "made in America" was never part of the equation, and neither was shipping time.
Any sufficiently motivated municipal electrical engineering company could have bolted all the pieces together.
Most sufficiently motivated people can do most things. The problem is very few consider it as an option due to preconceived ideas about what a solution looks like. This entire exercise was about demonstrating the viability of a solution, not showing off that Tesla has any kind of superior engineering capabilities. This has basically been Tesla's process all along with the vast majority of their stuff actually being incredibly off the shelf, down to the type of batteries they use.
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He DID use Samsung cells, but they were shipped from Korea to America,specifically the Nv Gigafactory, the powerpacks were built, and finally shipped to Australia. At worst, he simply delayed powerwall installations.
The fact is, that Tesla is using Korean-built Samsung cells for their powerpacks. Panasonic is supposedly good with it.
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I assumed when he made the boast that it would be 100 days from the signing of a contract, or that there'd be an allowance for shipping times to Australia and possibly other 'fudge factors'.
Okay, and all the evidence points to the idea that he simply built a large fudge factor in. If he thinks he can have it done in 50 days, but 100 days is still very impressive, why not commit to 100 days? Then he comes out looking like a genius, leaving people like you scratching your heads like confused chimpanzees and wondering how this was possible.
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So... a redundant post just to be insulting? Nice.
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So... a redundant post just to be insulting? Nice.
Your post was there only to talk shit. You got what you were asking for, and now you're complaining about it.
... but can they complete my model 3? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm waaaaaiting....
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I'm waaaaaiting....
I'm sure they can complete the battery pack and bolt an off the shelf inverter to it for you.
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So, what # are you in the line? Or are you just BSing us?
Tesla Battery Business v. Status Quo (Score:2)
Any time anyone challenges major economic interests, in this case the electric utilities equipment industries, big oil, big coal, or any other financer of the global warming denial PR biz, arseholes will come out of the woodwork. Big pharma has done it to small innovators that don't want to be bought out. And others too numerous to mention.
The batteries were sitting around (Score:3)
The batteries were sitting around waiting for cars to be built so why not put them to use instead. By the time that car production gets ramped up more batteries will have been made.
Re:The batteries were sitting around (Score:4, Informative)
Tesla uses different battery chemistry for the stationary storage units.
Re:The batteries were sitting around (Score:4, Interesting)
Tesla uses different battery chemistry for the stationary storage units.
Not quite. Tesla uses different battery chemistry for their stationary storage units designed specifically for daily cycling, e.g. the Powerwall which has nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry. Additionally this battery is much safer and less likely to burn your house down due to thermal runaway. Oh but it's more expensive.
The PowerPack (which is their grid storage solution) actually uses nickel-cobalt-aluminum, the same chemistry as their cars. This is mainly due to the load expectations being similar. The grid connected solution is not expected to be cycled on a daily basis and the chemistry favours high rates of charge and discharge which is precisely what is needed in order to stabilise a large grid, especially when the primary reason for the design is to avoid cascading failures due to a breaker opening somewhere.
Now that being said the Powerwall used to come in two different versions, a daily and a backup model, the latter having a larger capacity and also the same nickel-cobalt-aluminum batteries as used in the cars. Not sure if that is still the case though.
Now that ALSO being said, earlier this year Tesla's car division hired an expert who some people believe are the first step to the company shifting the Car / Powerpack chemistries to NMC as well.
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The batteries were sitting around waiting for cars to be built so why not put them to use instead. By the time that car production gets ramped up more batteries will have been made.
No they weren't. They specifically had to source them from a different supplier (Samsung SDI) due to a lack of batteries from both Panasonic and their own Gigafactory.
Mission Accomplished!! (Score:2)
Actually... (Score:2)
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no, one could make argument it's a generator
Hey Musky (Score:1)
What I find amazing (though a little disappointing, like a Wizard of Oz moment) is that these huge batteries are made of thousands and thousands of cells, in this case 6 million (by my calculation [reddit.com]) of Tesla's 2170 cells. The clever bit is the monitoring and control and presumably the design and manufacture as a series of repeatable modules.
It will take more than batteries (Score:2)
Big battery packs like this will not be enough to solve the problems with wind and solar.
Critics of solar and wind energy claim that unlike coal or nuclear, it's often not dependable -- sometimes, obviously, the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Lithium battery backup systems from companies like Tesla can charge up when such power plants are productive, however, and then provide backup energy when they're not.
Critics of coal and nuclear will point out that they cannot load follow. With a big battery pack like this to follow the peaks and valleys of power demands any energy source looks good. Nuclear produces less CO2 than solar, and about the same as wind, per energy produced. Nuclear is safer than any other energy source we have today. Nuclear power is cheaper than solar, cheaper than hydro, and cheaper than offshore wi
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I think Nuclear is great too, but with the amount of regulation, NIMBYism, cost of initial investment, time of construction, waste disposal, cost of eventual decommission, even though it makes sense in the long run, few are willing to make the investment.
What I find interesting about wind/solar/battery is they're modular.
If you have some land, some roof space, you can put up a certain amount of power generation, maybe add to it later, replace parts.
In less densely populated areas you could have a decentrali
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Oh, give a rest. Nuclear isn't cheaper than wind and solar in South Australia, not by a wide margin. And both wind and solar are falling year-by-year.
I don't think you're going to see lots of new nuclear plants in the US either. It's just too expensive.
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Nuclear isn't cheaper than wind and solar in South Australia, not by a wide margin.
That's because nuclear power costs in Australia is effectively infinite. There is no nuclear power in Australia. How can you even make such a statement with a straight face? I can look at the data and I see this, wind and solar takes ten times as much steel and concrete over nuclear for the same power capacity.
Where's the steel and concrete in wind power? That might not be completely obvious as the tower is a visible steel structure but the concrete anchor below the ground isn't obvious unless you've ha
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South Australia, home to 23% of the worlds uranium deposits, on one of the most geologically stable continents on the planet.
A better candidate for nuclear generation I could not think of.
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When a nuclear power plant spreads radioactive gases and particles into the environment that's considered a failure. When a coal power plant does that it's considered normal operation.
When a nuclear power plant kills birds flying overhead that's considered a failure. When wind and solar do that it's considered normal operation.
When a nuclear power plant kills fish that's considered a failure. When hydroelectric dams shred the fish into bits that's considered normal operation.
Instead of focusing on the ha
Good news everyone! (Score:3)
Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth,
They've finally created a battery for a smartphone with an AMD chip! ;)
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Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth,
They've finally created a battery for a smartphone with an AMD chip! ;)
Or an Intel one. Remember XScale? It scaled up, all right, but it didn't scale down. It had by far the largest minimum power consumption of any ARM core of its day.
AMD has traditionally been way, way better at ultra low-power parts than Intel. Remember GEODE? Intel didn't even have anything vaguely close to that.
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I agree completely. However, I cannot resist a good AMD joke.
expected lifetime? (Score:2)
Anyone know what are the expected lifetime of this battery?
Tesla project (Score:1)
Not so big (Score:2)
Three times more powerful than any other battery in the world??
NGK has a sodium-sulphur battery system backing a wind farm in Rokkasho, Japan which has a capacity of 245MWh compared to the headline 129MWh of the Australian Tesla battery.
https://www.ngk.co.jp/nas/case... [ngk.co.jp]
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The title said it was the "biggest" battery system which it isn't. Bait and switch at its best, poor reporting if I'm being charitable.
The NGK battery seems a better fit to the small windfarm it's attached to, it can supply 30MW for 8 hours or so from a full charge even if the turbines are becalmed. The Tesla battery will only provide its rated output of 100MW for an hour and a bit in similar circumstances, after that the lights go out.
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Re: Musk completes largest tax drain on Earth (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps the haters can explain how the ULA drops out of bidding whenever SpaceX shows up, even though they got more subsidies for longer - and they say that they can't meet the bid price. Or how NASA crows about the huge savings they're now getting.
Oh, we're talking about cars. So, GM got no bailout or subsidy to make my Volt?
Haters gonna hate, but damn, check some facts, people.
Re: Musk completes largest tax drain on Earth (Score:2)
People just donâ(TM)t realized how many industries are subsidized. Steel industry, weapons, airplanes, truck transportation, energy production, corn, soybean, nuclear, healthcare, banks, domestic car makers, some foreign car makers, movies, R&D in general, homes, Alaska, etc.
Musk is more or less in the middle when it comes to subs. Nothing to complain about but also not clean. But I donâ(TM)t get all the hate either. There are a lot of players with similar if not in better positions to take a
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As everyone knows, Zerohedge is the scum that floats to the top of the internet.
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Elon is incapable of building a real business without stealing money from taxpayer subsidies. When he can pull off an actual project where sales exceeds costs, that will be an achievement.
And you are incapable of an original thought. Now I'm going to slide that little bar above to teh left and make you disappear. Bye Coward!
Re: Musk completes largest tax drain on Earth (Score:1)
Wow, you made that comment disappear faster than Elon makes tax dollars disappear into his wallet!
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>Bye Coward!
I've set my minimum threshold to filter most ACs, but really it's so rare I see an AC post that has anything of value - usually it's racist, homophobic, 'first', or someone being vitriolic and not wanting the backlash attached to their account - that I'd be happy to see Slashdot eliminate AC posts.
It's not like we're posting anything here we should be afraid of bringing the cops to our doors with a warrant, or that if we were posting as 'AC' would really help anyway.
Re: Musk completes largest tax drain on Earth (Score:2)
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Then we'd just have dupe accounts.
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>Bye Coward!
I've set my minimum threshold to filter most ACs, but really it's so rare I see an AC post that has anything of value - usually it's racist, homophobic, 'first', or someone being vitriolic and not wanting the backlash attached to their account - that I'd be happy to see Slashdot eliminate AC posts.
It's not like we're posting anything here we should be afraid of bringing the cops to our doors with a warrant, or that if we were posting as 'AC' would really help anyway.
So rarey occasionally there is something of worth. But it's seldom worth the crap you have ot wade through. If an AC replies to me and it's reasonably civil, yeah I'll chat back. But right after using my mod points it goes back to reading ar 2 or above.
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Thank you for proving my point and posting as AC to avoid your vitriolic post from being associated to your Slashdot account.
Re:Musk completes largest tax drain on Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I'll give you that Musk is a tax soak. But unlike most tax soaks, he actually delivers some cool and useful things for the taxpayers dime. In this case, I'm willing to look the other way. When it comes to cutting waste of taxpayer funds, there are a lot of other candidates I'd cut before I got around to Musk.
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Ok, I'll give you that Musk is a tax soak. But unlike most tax soaks, he actually delivers some cool and useful things for the taxpayers dime. In this case, I'm willing to look the other way. When it comes to cutting waste of taxpayer funds, there are a lot of other candidates I'd cut before I got around to Musk.
*Looks at JSF program...*
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Even if the businesses he has run benefit from subsidies you cannot logically conclude that he is incapable of building a business otherwise.
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It doesn't prove it in a rigorous mathematical sense. But if there was a team who lost eight straight games which way would you bet on the ninth?
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without stealing money from taxpayer subsidies
Maybe you should google what a subsidy is and how governments work. Or read it in a book. The "Complete Idiots Guide To Subsidies" may be too complicated for you so I suggest you start with "The Holy Shit You Really Know Nothing At All About Anything Guide To Subsidies". I've prepared you a link [nocookie.net].
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Musk does not get a PENNY of Federal money on the cars.
The EV owners get 7500 worth of tax breaks, but, that is if they have 7500 in taxes. And if not, then nope.
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The darkness is all there is. Our civilization is just a thin crust on an unending void. No heaven, no hell, nothing waiting for us but the sweet embrace of death and nothingness.
Enjoy Arbys.