11 ms·
> PowerCo will use the prismatic unified cell architecture in its batteries which allows for use of different cell chemistries. The cells will be manufactured f
by jupp0r 4y ago
> PowerCo will use the prismatic unified cell architecture in its batteries which allows for use of different cell chemistries. The cells will be manufactured from 2025 with the factory planned capacity to be 40 GWh which is enough to supply 500,000 electric vehicles. By 2030 PowerCo plans to have all six European factories up and running with a combined capacity of 240 GWh. The unified prismatic cell harnesses synergy effects and can offer manufacturing savings of up to 50% when compared to current batteries.
Why can't journalists use units correctly? I'm assuming the above is per year (but who knows?).
Side remark: it's actually kind of cool that you can literally specify the battery output of these factories in Watts.
- atwood22 4y ago> Why can't journalists use units correctly? > Side remark: it's actually kind of cool that you can literally specify the battery output of these factories in Watts. The unit is Watt hour storage capacity.
- mh8h 4y agoI think he means the capacity will be 40 GWh / year = 4.56MW.
- atwood22 4y agoSorry I’m not sure I understand. Watt hour is a unit of energy. Energy can be stored. They’re making batteries that store energy. A Watt is a unit of power. They’re not making power. So after a year of making batteries, they will have produced exactly 0 Watts. I guess in that sense you can measure their (power) output in Watts: they produce 0 Watts. I think the confusion is that the unit of their product is not GWh. It’s (GWh of capacity) which is not the simple product of Watt and hour)
- jupp0r 4y agoHow much battery capacity are they producing per day? Impossible to tell from the article. I’m relatively sure that the period of time the specified capacity is produced in is one year. You can divide the hours in GWh by the year time span and the time units cross out. The unit is Watt, but the physical quantity it’s describing is arguably not power but energy capacity production rate or something similar. There’s no 1:1 mapping between units and physical quantities, just think about specific impulse in rocket engines being quantified in seconds.
- atwood22 4y agoThe unit is not GWh. It's "GWh of storage." It's ironic that this thread started with you lamenting that units are used incorrectly.
- jupp0r 4y agoThe unit is GWh, the physical quantity it describes is “energy storage capacity”. Those two are not the same. Take this example: Unit: second, physical quantity: could be things like “time”, “specific impulse”, “distance” (light-second), etc. Many physical quantities can be measured in seconds.
- adament 4y agoIs it really true that you can measure distance in seconds? I think light-seconds are different units from seconds hence why they measure distances, similar to how Watt-hours and Watts are not the same unit. If a second was a measure of distance then speed would be unit-less (second / second) as opposed to the speed of light which is light-second / second ≈ 3e8 m/s.
- jupp0r 4y agoYou are right, light seconds don't fit in well. My point still stands, you can't really know what physical quantity is measured just from looking at the unit alone, that's now what units are made for.
- yazaddaruvala 4y agoWe really need to rename these things to be based on Joules instead. A lot more intuitive. This battery stores X Joules. 1 J = 360 kWh This battery releases Y Joules per second. 1 J / s = 1 Watt
- parentheses 4y agoOP is right. GWh is the measure of a battery’s capacity. How often will that total battery capacity exit the manufacturing facility?
- csours 4y agoWatt is power, Watt hour is energy. 1 Watt hour is 3600 joules, which looks suspiciously like 1 joule = 1 Watt second. Most batteries now advertise energy capacity in kWh or thousand Watt hour(s). 1 kWh would be 3,600,000 joules or 3.6 megajoules, which does honestly sound more badass. In the past batteries would advertise capacity in Amp hours, but you have to know the voltage of the battery to convert Amp hours to energy.
- jupp0r 4y agoThe rate of production can’t be specified using energy, it needs to be the time derivative of it (unless the overall output of the factory from being opened to being closed is specified, which I don’t think is the case in the article). The unit needs to describe - power. Whether you use Joules or horse power weeks is beside the point as they can easily be converted into each other.
- csours 4y agoSure thing my dude. You also cannot express fuel consumption in miles per gallon. You must express it in square millimeters. https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/
- zdragnar 4y agoWe may occasionally write gallons per mile with a slash, but it is useful as a ratio, not an equation. It makes no sense to reduce a volume to a surface. On the other hand, knowing if a factory puts out 240 gigawatt hours worth of battery capacity every year, or only over the entire lifetime of the factory, really is an important distinction to make.
- themitigating 4y agoI wish people like you who make these intelligent,factual, and short comments could have a reputation value on HN. This value could give you some automatic upvotes or a more prominent location displayed.
- Retric 4y agoBattery production is measured in Wh per year because you care about capacity to store energy. 40GWh = 40,000,000 kWh / (80kWh per car) = 500,000 cars. 240 GWh = 3 million 80kWh cars.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- galangalalgol 4y agoIsn't Wh/yr just W/8766? The units are still W but with a divider.
- raverbashing 4y agoNo, units don't work in this way here You're not discharging the battery through a whole year
- Sniffnoy 4y agoThey are in fact equal as dimensioned quantities. Whether the comparison is useful or not, that doesn't make the rates unequal.
- Retric 4y agoNot quite. Watts are an instantaneous measurement, but the factory needs a higher output most of the time to cover downtime. Much like power plants you would say it’s capacity is X watts with an expected capacity factor of Y%. You could say the output is expected to average X watts over a year, but to then use it for anything would mean converting that to Wh.
- Sniffnoy 4y agoI mean, Watts are a unit. All of the things you are saying are important considerations when discussing the factory's pattern of output, but ultimately, as you point out, it is still valid to measure the average output in Watts, which is the point that is being made, that that's the dimension that quantity has; you can still write down an equation of dimensioned quantities even if real-world complications mean that the equation is not as meaningful as one would like!
- SnowHill9902 4y agoIt’s not really watts as there is no real power output. It’s an accident that the units are homogeneous but the output is in Wh/y, where Wh is a convenient way of describing the capacity of a battery (under standardized conditions) and not real energy outputted.
- osrec 4y agoCould you elaborate please? Why is there no real power output?
- SnowHill9902 4y agoWhen you purchase a battery are you interested in the energy that they contain or in their capacity to store and output energy repetitively?
- osrec 4y agoInteresting. I think I would still be interested in the total energy held by the battery, plus the amount it is expected to degrade year on year. I'm still not sure why you say Wh/y would be a more appropriate unit, given that it would change as the battery degrades.
- atwood22 4y agoWatt hour is a unit of energy. Energy is the capacity to do work. When the batter leaves the factory, it is empty. It has no energy, but it can hold energy if you give it some. It's like if you produced gallon-sized plastic water jugs. Let's say you made 1000 a day. Would it be accurate to say you produced 1000 gallons of water a day? No, you produced 1000 empty jugs.
- jupp0r 4y agoBatteries are charged when they leave the factory. Besides that 1000 gal/d of storage capacity in your example is a valid unit for specifying factory output, is it not?
- BurningFrog 4y ago> Why can't journalists use units correctly? If they could, they would have better paying jobs. I don't mean to say journalists are stupid. They're generally not at all. But their required talents are verbal and social.
- epistasis 4y agoRough rules of thumb for battery production that I heard in 2021: 10x increase in world production capacity every five years. Currently at about 200-300GWh/year. Expect 2-3TWh/year by 2026, and 20-30TWh/year by 2031. Volkswagen had better pick up the pace quite a bit.
- benj111 4y agoThis is one of the reasons I'm not sure why car companies are getting directly in to batteries. Plus they are locking themselves into a technology which may well be superseded. It seems to me equivalent to pc manufacturers making their own chips.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- epistasis 4y agoWith the coming shortages of production and massive demand, guaranteeing supply is table stakes for the game of game manufacturing. There is no alternative around the corners IMHO car companies are not thinking big enough with their investments.
- epistasis 4y agoTable stakes for *car manufacturing
- neuronic 4y agoYes but this assumes infinite availability of the resources required for battery production. Given they are in Africa and Asia, this is gonna be way more difficult in the rising new world order with the shrinking influence of the US and EU as the Pax Americana is dying a slow death. BRICS nations and friends will make the near future very uncomfortable for Westerners used to affluence.
- mschuster91 4y ago
- ojbyrne 4y ago> Why can't journalists use units correctly? I’m pretty sure the answer is - they took physics in high school, they’ve been (on average) at least ten years out of high school, and it never came up, even once.
- galangalalgol 4y agoDo people outside of stem fields have this issue with us? It is really strange to think that most people don't remember any calculus or statistics, or chemistry or physics. While my social intelligence is certainly lacking, I do at least feel like I understand what my friends in non-stem careers are talking about, and the opposite is definitely not true.
- oblio 4y agoSTEM knowledge is non intuitive and highly perishable. Plus, they never liked studying it. It's amazing how much you can cram in short term memory that gets erases within day or weeks.
- galangalalgol 4y agoOutside of the relatively narrow niche of web related tech, is any other STEM perishable? Physics, chemistry and calculus haven't changed that much right?
- oblio 4y agoMy bad, I meant it more in the sense that your memory of it decays quickly :-)
- rat9988 4y agoIt is usually accepted per year when not specified. For example when you talk about GDP, it is yearly. Salary? Yearly usually yearly unless specified. Factory production? Yearly. And no, you cannot use watts, unless you invent a new unit, watts of capacity? The units used are correct.
- Sniffnoy 4y agoIt's energy over time, that makes power. 240 GWh / 1 Year = 27,379,093 W.
- gambiting 4y ago>>Salary? Yearly usually yearly unless specified. That's a very uniquely English thing. Where I'm from(Poland) you always list the salary per month and that's how people talk about it. I've never seen anyone refer to a salary on an annual basis.
- frant-hartm 4y agoIt's US thing, not English. English would be weekly :-).
- throwawayben 4y agonobody I know (here in England) would say their salary is their weekly earnings. Salary is always per year
- nicklovescode 4y agoI find the watt thing cool too, and I'm glad you pointed it out