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The first factory is not complete yet. According to Wikipedia: Tesla held a grand opening on July 29, 2016 of the operational facility, having only three of th
by ogrisel 9y ago
The first factory is not complete yet. According to Wikipedia:
Tesla held a grand opening on July 29, 2016 of the operational facility, having only three of the final 21 "blocks" of the gigafactory built out, or approximately 14 percent of the final factory size expected by 2020. By September 2016 Tesla had spent $608 million on Gigafactory.
- Jweb_Guru 9y agoBy those numbers it would take only about $425.6 billion to manufacture all 100 factories, which I think is probably an estimate that's off by orders of magnitude in the wrong direction. And of course time and materials are a large factor as well. I still feel like the reluctance to invest in pumped storage is ultimately going to be what does us in.
- Robotbeat 9y agoPumped storage at ~$150/kWh (for a large installation) is about half the Musk price of large scale battery storage ($250/kWh). I think there's room for both, as you can put batteries just about anywhere and at nearly any scale, while pumped hydro works best for large scale. Gigawatt-level for ~10 hours at a time potentially... Largest facility is 3GW for about 10-12 hours, about the same as the yearly battery production the completed Gigafactory will have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... I do think the difference between pumped and battery storage will get closer, however. And battery power has the advantage of option value since you can build it much faster (about 10 times faster) than a big pumped hydro station.
- Diederich 9y agoYes! I've been following various storage technologies for a while and Pumped storage has always been fascinating. Indeed, we will likely end up using a wide variety of technologies for storage.