
Tesla runs an entire island on solar power - marceee0901
https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/22/tesla-runs-island-on-solar-power/
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jamiesonbecker
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#Environmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-
ion_battery#Environmental_concerns_and_recycling)

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
Retric
Someone under shadow ban mentioned the inefficiency of electrolysis. Which is
also around 60% at best.

That is an important consideration, but on a national level it may still be
useful as redundant capacity. If your hydrogen tanks are fill up over months
when production is vastly above demand, and only used in very rare situations
then it might still be viable. At that point it's more a question of economics
then thermodynamics.

However, the standby generators which use this hydrogen are a more direct
comparison in cost and efficiency terms.

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paulsutter
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-...](https://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/19/solarcity-deploy-tesla-energy-
batteries-52-mwh-evening-electricity-storage-kauai-hawai%CA%BBi/)

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

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masklinn
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-electri...](http://amberkinetics.com/amber-kinetics-and-
hawaiian-electric-sign-agreement-for-flywheel-energy-storage-pilot-project/)

It's too bad Tesla seems all-in on batteries even for large-scale storage
projects.

~~~
sonium
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
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.

~~~
jdietrich
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.

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anilgulecha
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.

~~~
CmdrSprinkles
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.

~~~
sarcas
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.

~~~
masklinn
> Interestingly, Eigg, a small hebridean island off the west coast of Scotland
> has been operating 95% of their power on renewables

Renewable, but mostly as hydro.

Things are easier when you have large hydro (relative to your needs),
Iceland's electrical production has been 100% renewable since 2008 (and was
99.9% renewable before that) because they have a ton of hydro (80% of total
capacity), and a fair amount (and growing) of geothermal (geothermal is 2/3rd
of their energy consumption but the vast majority is direct use for heating,
not electricity generation). And note that ~70% of Icelandic electricity
generation is solely for aluminum production.

~~~
oblio
Could Iceland export power?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I believe links connection the UK to Iceland and Norway are at the planning
stage and generally interconnecting over lager areas is part of using
renewable energy more efficiently.

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terravion
"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.

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amelius
> 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.

~~~
yardie
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
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
> 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.

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no1youknowz
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-
pow...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/11/solar-cell-generates-power-from-
raindrops/)

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

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Animats
It's on the equator, the ideal case.

Hawaii is at 6% solar power and climbing rapidly.

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allan_
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.

~~~
russdill
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
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_
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.

