8 ms·

Tesla runs an entire island on solar power

166 points by marceee0901 10y ago

terravion 10y ago
"The future is here, just unevenly distributed... " and the cool thing for the rest of us is that the learning curves on solar, especially, and battery power are incredible, so some people adopting now hastens the day when it is here for the rest of us.
anilgulecha 10y ago
More and more use-cases will pop-up as the cost of solar tech slowly inches down. When you consider it, most of our roofs are unused, and would make an ideal location for tiny panels + battery packs. Similarly new blocks of city development can be planned around a central panel+pack with housing surrounding it.
- sv123 10y ago
  Elon agrees https://www.tesla.com/solar https://www.tesla.com/solar
  - anilgulecha 10y ago
    I did not know Tesla/SC is working on this. Thanks for the link!
- Tharkun 10y ago
  True, but mostly useful in suburban environments. Covering a sky-scraper's roof in PV probably wouldn't make much of a dent in its energy consumption.
  - vvvv 10y ago
    Next step is photovoltaic, sentient Paint you can apply anywhere as per the amazing Stephen Baxter: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q1FyDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1613&lpg=PT1613&dq=baxter+sentient+paint&source=bl&ots=TU9vBZ7XgG&sig=Ljy5aypfE561m6ZHhaYq_ON-y4c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj728qZzb7QAhVsLsAKHQR_A_QQ6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=baxter%20sentient%20paint&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q1FyDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1613&l...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
  In a foggy/dreary climate (think UK) it doesn't make sense Same with places prone to radical weather. Or just anywhere that doesn't get a lot of sun (the farther you get from the equator, really). Because even if we get solar panel cost down in the next few years, it is still going to be expensive and need a fair amount of maintenance. And if that doesn't offset the cost sufficiently, it isn't worth it Believe me, I want clean energy and do think solar should be exploited where it is reasonable (same with wind) and wish we would at least use cleaner sources where it isn't. But studies/experiments like this tend to rely on best case scenarios and corner cases and often just don't take economics into consideration. Are they good as proof of concepts and PR? Yeah. But they still aren't that representative.
  - cesis 10y ago
    PV doesn't have to be the best tech everywhere. Nuclear and coal has it's own drawbacks - hard to turn on/off and generating a lot of unneeded power during night.
    - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
      Which I think is where solar/wind/hydro (in places that aren't the hoover dam...) make the most sense. Topping off comparatively clean sources like nuclear (or, preferably, actually clean sources) either through only turning them on when needed or having them charge capacitors. Hell, the UK have even been doing it, to a lesser extent, through pumped storage (think of them like really big water-based capacitors that you charge during non-peak times) My point was more in balancing out the common misconception of "Let's just put a solar cell on every roof".
  - sarcas 10y ago
    Interestingly, Eigg, a small hebridean island off the west coast of Scotland has been operating 95% of their power on renewables since 2008: https://islandsgoinggreen.org/about/eigg-electric/ https://islandsgoinggreen.org/about/eigg-electric/ (they keep diesel to drive baseload backup) The initial reason for this was that to get electricity from the grid to them was going to cost _lots_ of money. Solar is an important part of their mix - the Hebrides get a a good chunk of sun in the summer (and long days too). They've been a case study for a number of similarly isolated communities - either islands or other locations far away from existing electricity infrastructure. Making batteries more efficient (and cheaper), and making each of the renewables mix more efficient and cheaper will make this possible for more and more communities.
- imgabe 10y ago
  For single family residences, yes this is true. The roofs of commercial buildings are often littered with HVAC equipment, antennas, patios, lots of other things. Plus the more stories you have in a building the smaller the ratio of roof area to building area, so you have less space to generate power for more people. There's definitely a lot of room for growth for solar, but it's not a panacea. I'm looking forward to what we can come up with.
Animats 10y ago
It's on the equator, the ideal case. Hawaii is at 6% solar power and climbing rapidly.
paulsutter 10y ago
I found some price data on another island project, a Tesla battery installation on Kaui[1], $0.145/kwh for stored power. The end user price in Hawaii is around $0.33/kwh. While that's not a cheap price for storage, LiIon batteries are on a rapid price decline because of manufacturing learning curve. Net net, it looks like they're just breaking into the cost-effective zone and within a few years will be practical in many places. > The Tesla Energy batteries will supply a 52 MWh utility-scale energy storage system in order to help KIUC meet evening peak demand, which typically occurs between 5:00 pm and 10:00 pm... SolarCity said it would charge the utility 14.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for power from the batteries in a 20-year arrangement [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/19/solarcity-deploy-tesla-energy-batteries-52-mwh-evening-electricity-storage-kauai-hawai%CA%BBi/ https://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/19/solarcity-deploy-tesla-...
- kayoone 10y ago
  It's not cheap but also not unheard of either. In western Europe i pay ~$0.30/kWh
no1youknowz 10y ago
Now that Tesla is all in with solar. I hope they can pour money into technology which generates power from the rain[1]. As with everything the new technology starts out with low power. But my hope is that they increase that and you can generate energy all year round. Even at night! [1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/11/solar-cell-generates-power-from-raindrops/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/11/solar-cell-generates-pow...
- nsb1 10y ago
  At scale they call this hydroelectric, and it's pretty common :)
amelius 10y ago
> Ta'u previously had to run on diesel generators. That burns 300 gallons of fuel per day, which is neither eco-friendly nor cheap. Solar eliminates the pollution [...] I wonder about the ecological footprint of the batteries though.
- Anchor 10y ago
  Once built, you can use and reuse the materials that went to the battery almost indefinitely. The stuff inside the battery does not get consumed, it just changes form. And once you have used all the cycles, you can take the battery apart, leaving you with the stuff you began with, ready to be assembled into a new battery. So if you generate all your energy via solar, you only need sunlight to charge and recycle them all.
- yardie 10y ago
  Current Li-on packs are good for 2000 cycles, about 8 years. Even when you include mining and manufacturing the environmental impact is still negligible compared to running on diesel 24/7/365.
  - Cshelton 10y ago
    I believe Tesla is giving these pack a much longer life span. I know one of the chief engineers for their batteries said the old batteries that exist in the Model S and X today could last many more cycles with a 15-20 year life span. I think we're seeing good evidence of this too as Tesla's are reaching 100k+ miles, one got to 200k already and I believe only had ~11% battery degradation. Pretty impressive either way. As far as mining, I think the biggest issues as far as cost go are getting Cobalt, which is primarily only found in the DR Congos', and then in Tesla's case, finding more Lithium in North America. I'm sure in a ~5 years or so, Tesla will create a massive battery recycling program as well to start bringing in those Tesla batteries on cars from the early models.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      > I believe Tesla is giving these pack a much longer life span. Tesla's CTO is giving the battery packs a 10-15 year minimum service life. > I'm sure in a ~5 years or so, Tesla will create a massive battery recycling program as well to start bringing in those Tesla batteries on cars from the early models. Tesla plans a recycling line at the Gigafactory. Old batteries in, new packs out.
allan_ 10y ago
If you need 10kg Lithium for one Powerpack (100g Li for 1kWh), you need about 500 times more Li on planet earth to have enough Powerpacks for everyone? Nice solution for mankind. But we will go to Mars anyways.
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  It would take decennia to come to that point, by then we will probably be on to another anode.
- russdill 10y ago
  We are currently mining about 600,000 tones of lithium per year. That's enough for 60 million powerpacks per year. I really don't think that it's one powerpack per person, these are utility scale installations. If it's 1 powerpack per 10 people, it'd only take 10 years are current lithium extraction rates to build enough for 6 billion people. There is an estimated 2.55 × 10^10 kg potentially economically extractable lithium available on the Earth. At current extraction rates that's "gone" in 42 years. Fortunately, lithium is recyclable. But Earth itself, no, your figures are way off. There is 2.3 * 10^14 kg in seawater alone.
  - russdill 10y ago
    My bad, I think the 600,000 tonnes figure is the total amount of lithium mined ever. Actual yearly production is closer to 35,000 tonnes. Here's an excellent discussion with sourced facts and figures http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/
    - allan_ 10y ago
      Thanks, interesting article. Just read it briefly yet, but it looks like it's author summs up with that there is not even enough Li for building batteries for some billion cars.
  - allan_ 10y ago
    Where did you find these numbers? There are 14,000,000 tonnes of mineable Li on earth (http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/ http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/).
masklinn 10y ago
The part I don't get is: why use batteries for large infrastructural power storage? Why not flywheels? edit: looks like Oʻahu is getting flywheels: http://amberkinetics.com/amber-kinetics-and-hawaiian-electric-sign-agreement-for-flywheel-energy-storage-pilot-project/ http://amberkinetics.com/amber-kinetics-and-hawaiian-electri... It's too bad Tesla seems all-in on batteries even for large-scale storage projects.
- sonium 10y ago
  I think this is because Tesla/SolarCity/SpaceX has this philosophy of versatility of components. They want to have one and only one energy storage technology and produce it at scale. This also one reason for the Tesla/SolarCity merger: you can use the same building block and scale it up. SpaceX is doing the same: use one rocket motor on booster and upper stage, and mass produce it. In contrast Ariane uses three different motors on one rocket.
  - michaelbuckbee 10y ago
    This is one of those really important business decisions that feels almost trivial but with profound positive results. It immediately reminded me of Southwest Air and how they credit some of their early success to _only_ flying 737s. Letting them standardize their maintenance and getting very good at keeping that one model of airplane flying.
    - giarc 10y ago
      This is currently happening with Canadian airline WestJet. For many years they only flew a single aircraft which made maintenance much easier (staff trained on a single aircraft, parts are easier to keep in stock). They since purchased a few larger aircraft to fly to London and Dublin and have been plagued with maintenance issues. Passengers are getting stuck in London while WestJet scrambles to fly in a mechanic and parts to fix the planes.
    - jdietrich 10y ago
      The computer industry is perhaps the most extreme example of this. From a dizzying array of different systems in the infancy of computing, the overwhelming majority of the market has consolidated to two instruction set architectures and a handful of operating systems. Magic things happen when your economies of scale are big enough.
jamiesonbecker 10y ago
Battery tech in general is really the limiting factor for environmental improvements of solar and wind over other common forms of energy. We need more advances here, and they shouldn't all come from Elon Musk. One of the toughest things to overcome is that lithium ion batteries have a limited lifespan (although it's improving) and the cost for that life span compared to alternatives is pretty high, so the economics aren't great. Yet. The environmental hazards, both in manufacturing and disposal, are not insignificant either[1]. With all that said, li-ion represents our best bet for future tech advances that have minimal environmental impact, especially for space travel. Eventually. (But if I was a VC, I'd be investing in cleaner and more efficient ways to utilize petrochemicals in the near/mid term.. maybe looking at non-burning tech; whatever happened to fuel cells?) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Environmental_concerns_and_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Environmen...
- bebop 10y ago
  > whatever happened to fuel cells? Toyota is actually coming out with a hydrogen fuel cell car: https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/ https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    It's already out. Toyota will only sell you one if you live near a hydrogen filling station, which are few and far between at the moment. Hydrogen is looking like a dead duck, at least as an automotive fuel. The Mirai costs about the same as a mid-range Tesla Model S. I know which I'd rather own.
- Retric 10y ago
  Fuel cells are low efficiency (<60%) and expensive so they are a poor fit for grid energy storage. One option is to just burn hydrogen in traditional gas turbines which can also have 60% efficiency ed: (62.22%), but are much cheaper to build. PS: This also simplifies the problem to: Can you make and store hydrogen for a lower cost than natural gas.
  - 10y ago

166 points by marceee0901 10y ago

"The future is here, just unevenly distributed... " and the cool thing for the rest of us is that the learning curves on solar, especially, and battery power are incredible, so some people adopting now hastens the day when it is here for the rest of us.

anilgulecha 10y ago

More and more use-cases will pop-up as the cost of solar tech slowly inches down. When you consider it, most of our roofs are unused, and would make an ideal location for tiny panels + battery packs. Similarly new blocks of city development can be planned around a central panel+pack with housing surrounding it.

sv123 10y ago
Elon agrees https://www.tesla.com/solar https://www.tesla.com/solar
- anilgulecha 10y ago
  I did not know Tesla/SC is working on this. Thanks for the link!
Tharkun 10y ago
True, but mostly useful in suburban environments. Covering a sky-scraper's roof in PV probably wouldn't make much of a dent in its energy consumption.
- vvvv 10y ago
  Next step is photovoltaic, sentient Paint you can apply anywhere as per the amazing Stephen Baxter: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q1FyDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1613&lpg=PT1613&dq=baxter+sentient+paint&source=bl&ots=TU9vBZ7XgG&sig=Ljy5aypfE561m6ZHhaYq_ON-y4c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj728qZzb7QAhVsLsAKHQR_A_QQ6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=baxter%20sentient%20paint&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q1FyDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1613&l...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
In a foggy/dreary climate (think UK) it doesn't make sense Same with places prone to radical weather. Or just anywhere that doesn't get a lot of sun (the farther you get from the equator, really). Because even if we get solar panel cost down in the next few years, it is still going to be expensive and need a fair amount of maintenance. And if that doesn't offset the cost sufficiently, it isn't worth it Believe me, I want clean energy and do think solar should be exploited where it is reasonable (same with wind) and wish we would at least use cleaner sources where it isn't. But studies/experiments like this tend to rely on best case scenarios and corner cases and often just don't take economics into consideration. Are they good as proof of concepts and PR? Yeah. But they still aren't that representative.
- cesis 10y ago
  PV doesn't have to be the best tech everywhere. Nuclear and coal has it's own drawbacks - hard to turn on/off and generating a lot of unneeded power during night.
  - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
    Which I think is where solar/wind/hydro (in places that aren't the hoover dam...) make the most sense. Topping off comparatively clean sources like nuclear (or, preferably, actually clean sources) either through only turning them on when needed or having them charge capacitors. Hell, the UK have even been doing it, to a lesser extent, through pumped storage (think of them like really big water-based capacitors that you charge during non-peak times) My point was more in balancing out the common misconception of "Let's just put a solar cell on every roof".
- sarcas 10y ago
  Interestingly, Eigg, a small hebridean island off the west coast of Scotland has been operating 95% of their power on renewables since 2008: https://islandsgoinggreen.org/about/eigg-electric/ https://islandsgoinggreen.org/about/eigg-electric/ (they keep diesel to drive baseload backup) The initial reason for this was that to get electricity from the grid to them was going to cost _lots_ of money. Solar is an important part of their mix - the Hebrides get a a good chunk of sun in the summer (and long days too). They've been a case study for a number of similarly isolated communities - either islands or other locations far away from existing electricity infrastructure. Making batteries more efficient (and cheaper), and making each of the renewables mix more efficient and cheaper will make this possible for more and more communities.
imgabe 10y ago
For single family residences, yes this is true. The roofs of commercial buildings are often littered with HVAC equipment, antennas, patios, lots of other things. Plus the more stories you have in a building the smaller the ratio of roof area to building area, so you have less space to generate power for more people. There's definitely a lot of room for growth for solar, but it's not a panacea. I'm looking forward to what we can come up with.

Animats 10y ago

It's on the equator, the ideal case. Hawaii is at 6% solar power and climbing rapidly.

paulsutter 10y ago

I found some price data on another island project, a Tesla battery installation on Kaui[1], $0.145/kwh for stored power. The end user price in Hawaii is around $0.33/kwh. While that's not a cheap price for storage, LiIon batteries are on a rapid price decline because of manufacturing learning curve. Net net, it looks like they're just breaking into the cost-effective zone and within a few years will be practical in many places. > The Tesla Energy batteries will supply a 52 MWh utility-scale energy storage system in order to help KIUC meet evening peak demand, which typically occurs between 5:00 pm and 10:00 pm... SolarCity said it would charge the utility 14.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for power from the batteries in a 20-year arrangement [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/19/solarcity-deploy-tesla-energy-batteries-52-mwh-evening-electricity-storage-kauai-hawai%CA%BBi/ https://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/19/solarcity-deploy-tesla-...

kayoone 10y ago
It's not cheap but also not unheard of either. In western Europe i pay ~$0.30/kWh

no1youknowz 10y ago

Now that Tesla is all in with solar. I hope they can pour money into technology which generates power from the rain[1]. As with everything the new technology starts out with low power. But my hope is that they increase that and you can generate energy all year round. Even at night! [1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/11/solar-cell-generates-power-from-raindrops/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/11/solar-cell-generates-pow...

nsb1 10y ago
At scale they call this hydroelectric, and it's pretty common :)

amelius 10y ago

> Ta'u previously had to run on diesel generators. That burns 300 gallons of fuel per day, which is neither eco-friendly nor cheap. Solar eliminates the pollution [...] I wonder about the ecological footprint of the batteries though.

Anchor 10y ago
Once built, you can use and reuse the materials that went to the battery almost indefinitely. The stuff inside the battery does not get consumed, it just changes form. And once you have used all the cycles, you can take the battery apart, leaving you with the stuff you began with, ready to be assembled into a new battery. So if you generate all your energy via solar, you only need sunlight to charge and recycle them all.
yardie 10y ago
Current Li-on packs are good for 2000 cycles, about 8 years. Even when you include mining and manufacturing the environmental impact is still negligible compared to running on diesel 24/7/365.
- Cshelton 10y ago
  I believe Tesla is giving these pack a much longer life span. I know one of the chief engineers for their batteries said the old batteries that exist in the Model S and X today could last many more cycles with a 15-20 year life span. I think we're seeing good evidence of this too as Tesla's are reaching 100k+ miles, one got to 200k already and I believe only had ~11% battery degradation. Pretty impressive either way. As far as mining, I think the biggest issues as far as cost go are getting Cobalt, which is primarily only found in the DR Congos', and then in Tesla's case, finding more Lithium in North America. I'm sure in a ~5 years or so, Tesla will create a massive battery recycling program as well to start bringing in those Tesla batteries on cars from the early models.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    > I believe Tesla is giving these pack a much longer life span. Tesla's CTO is giving the battery packs a 10-15 year minimum service life. > I'm sure in a ~5 years or so, Tesla will create a massive battery recycling program as well to start bringing in those Tesla batteries on cars from the early models. Tesla plans a recycling line at the Gigafactory. Old batteries in, new packs out.

allan_ 10y ago

If you need 10kg Lithium for one Powerpack (100g Li for 1kWh), you need about 500 times more Li on planet earth to have enough Powerpacks for everyone? Nice solution for mankind. But we will go to Mars anyways.

spiderfarmer 10y ago
It would take decennia to come to that point, by then we will probably be on to another anode.
russdill 10y ago
We are currently mining about 600,000 tones of lithium per year. That's enough for 60 million powerpacks per year. I really don't think that it's one powerpack per person, these are utility scale installations. If it's 1 powerpack per 10 people, it'd only take 10 years are current lithium extraction rates to build enough for 6 billion people. There is an estimated 2.55 × 10^10 kg potentially economically extractable lithium available on the Earth. At current extraction rates that's "gone" in 42 years. Fortunately, lithium is recyclable. But Earth itself, no, your figures are way off. There is 2.3 * 10^14 kg in seawater alone.
- russdill 10y ago
  My bad, I think the 600,000 tonnes figure is the total amount of lithium mined ever. Actual yearly production is closer to 35,000 tonnes. Here's an excellent discussion with sourced facts and figures http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/
  - allan_ 10y ago
    Thanks, interesting article. Just read it briefly yet, but it looks like it's author summs up with that there is not even enough Li for building batteries for some billion cars.
- allan_ 10y ago
  Where did you find these numbers? There are 14,000,000 tonnes of mineable Li on earth (http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/ http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/).

masklinn 10y ago

The part I don't get is: why use batteries for large infrastructural power storage? Why not flywheels? edit: looks like Oʻahu is getting flywheels: http://amberkinetics.com/amber-kinetics-and-hawaiian-electric-sign-agreement-for-flywheel-energy-storage-pilot-project/ http://amberkinetics.com/amber-kinetics-and-hawaiian-electri... It's too bad Tesla seems all-in on batteries even for large-scale storage projects.

sonium 10y ago
I think this is because Tesla/SolarCity/SpaceX has this philosophy of versatility of components. They want to have one and only one energy storage technology and produce it at scale. This also one reason for the Tesla/SolarCity merger: you can use the same building block and scale it up. SpaceX is doing the same: use one rocket motor on booster and upper stage, and mass produce it. In contrast Ariane uses three different motors on one rocket.
- michaelbuckbee 10y ago
  This is one of those really important business decisions that feels almost trivial but with profound positive results. It immediately reminded me of Southwest Air and how they credit some of their early success to _only_ flying 737s. Letting them standardize their maintenance and getting very good at keeping that one model of airplane flying.
  - giarc 10y ago
    This is currently happening with Canadian airline WestJet. For many years they only flew a single aircraft which made maintenance much easier (staff trained on a single aircraft, parts are easier to keep in stock). They since purchased a few larger aircraft to fly to London and Dublin and have been plagued with maintenance issues. Passengers are getting stuck in London while WestJet scrambles to fly in a mechanic and parts to fix the planes.
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    The computer industry is perhaps the most extreme example of this. From a dizzying array of different systems in the infancy of computing, the overwhelming majority of the market has consolidated to two instruction set architectures and a handful of operating systems. Magic things happen when your economies of scale are big enough.

jamiesonbecker 10y ago

Battery tech in general is really the limiting factor for environmental improvements of solar and wind over other common forms of energy. We need more advances here, and they shouldn't all come from Elon Musk. One of the toughest things to overcome is that lithium ion batteries have a limited lifespan (although it's improving) and the cost for that life span compared to alternatives is pretty high, so the economics aren't great. Yet. The environmental hazards, both in manufacturing and disposal, are not insignificant either[1]. With all that said, li-ion represents our best bet for future tech advances that have minimal environmental impact, especially for space travel. Eventually. (But if I was a VC, I'd be investing in cleaner and more efficient ways to utilize petrochemicals in the near/mid term.. maybe looking at non-burning tech; whatever happened to fuel cells?) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Environmental_concerns_and_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Environmen...

bebop 10y ago
> whatever happened to fuel cells? Toyota is actually coming out with a hydrogen fuel cell car: https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/ https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/
- jdietrich 10y ago
  It's already out. Toyota will only sell you one if you live near a hydrogen filling station, which are few and far between at the moment. Hydrogen is looking like a dead duck, at least as an automotive fuel. The Mirai costs about the same as a mid-range Tesla Model S. I know which I'd rather own.
Retric 10y ago
Fuel cells are low efficiency (<60%) and expensive so they are a poor fit for grid energy storage. One option is to just burn hydrogen in traditional gas turbines which can also have 60% efficiency ed: (62.22%), but are much cheaper to build. PS: This also simplifies the problem to: Can you make and store hydrogen for a lower cost than natural gas.
- 10y ago