
Tesla's 'Dangerously Ambitious' Gigafactory Could Save U.S. Battery Business - cryptoz
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2014/02/28/after-taxpayer-funded-flops-elon-musks-dangerously-ambitious-gigafactory-could-save-the-battery-business-in-america/
======
just2n
What kind of draw can you put on these batteries?

An 85kWh battery may be more useful in every garage than this article claims.
The added expense is claimed to "keep consumers away", but really it means
things like solar panels become more useful.

If you are able to charge your car via power you generate and it can supply
enough power back to run your home, you can get some huge benefits. You can
have power at night that you generated during the day. No need to suck power
from the grid. During outages, you would likely still have a few days of
power. And finally, if we actually take full advantage of this, our power
infrastructure could directly use these cars to distribute and store energy
and route around outages, increasing stability in a huge way.

All in all, this could usher in an era of crowd-sourced power generation. One
of the primary reasons that hasn't been feasible was the ephemerality of power
on the grid. You consume it just after it's produced. We have no good way to
store it. But with hundreds of thousands of 85kWh capacity batteries plugged
into the grid, we suddenly have a start.

I think paying an extra $20,000+ for a car if that's a potential outcome is
worth every penny.

~~~
derekp7
So how would this work? During the daytime, you have your car with you at
work, away from your solar panels at home. When your car is at home, it is
night, so it is not charging then. During a power outage, are you really going
to drain your source of transportation to power your house? Especially if you
don't know when the power is coming back on to refresh your car batteries? I
know I wouldn't -- I'd just fire up a gas generator when the power goes out
for an extended time, and use that to also recharge the electric car.

~~~
just2n
During the daytime, your solar panels are dumping power onto the live grid.
The same grid your car at work is plugged into. And all your neighbors'. And
every other car in the garage or parking lot.

During an outage, unless it's a weather-critical incident or a disaster, the
convenience of not needing to go and power a generator (and thus mess with
needing to refuel it, and depleting your supplies which will be more useful in
a real disaster) would likely be better. If it makes sense to power up a
generator, then do that. It would also be charging your car.

~~~
frik
We have this situation already in Austria.

Solar panels dump power onto the grid and you get paid by industry electricity
price. But at night solar panels don't produce and one has to pay "consumer"
electricity price that is 7 times higher!

So a battery system that covers nights and that has a durability of at least
10 years and with a price tag that allow for a amortisation within 8 years
would be the way to go.

------
thrill
The statement at the end of the article that "[e]ven if the company fails to
sell 500,000 vehicles a year, some of the gigafactory’s batteries could be
used in the stationary storage market (which helps explain why he wants to
build in the southwest, where solar and wind power farms can be
incorporated.)" doesn't make sense to me as a reason even worth consideration,
especially given in the same article is the statement that "it would exceed
production of every other battery factory in the world – combined". The
importance of location in the southwest US for the fledgling alternative
energy market seems completely irrelevant if one is striving to become the
worldwide majority supplier of a multi-billion dollar market. The access to
the port of Galveston would certainly be valuable in shipping that product to
the likely majority market offshore, but many other states with ports would
likely be interested in a multi-thousand job plant.

~~~
tlb
The value of a finished battery pack is about $20 / lb. Truck transport across
the US costs about $0.35 / lb. So indeed, proximity to installation locations
makes less than 2% difference.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Reno is ~235 miles from the Fremont factory, or about 4 hours.

The gigaplant is going to be a critical part of Tesla's supply chain, and
distance is critical. Better to have your main component within a short drive,
and let cells/packs destined for others make the long slog via rail or ship.

------
analyst74
Interesting fact presented in the beginning of the article: all the government
funded research/companies went belly up.

Food for thought: Is it because of the sheer difficulty of such ventures? Or
is it because the money went to the wrong hands?

~~~
DaniFong
I'm a founder of an energy storage company, Lightsail Energy.

To say _all_ government funded energy storage companies went belly up is an
exaggeration. Many still survive, although you will note a strange anti-
correlation between government funding and survival. In my opinion a lot of
money did go in the wrong hands. The main problem is that the government is
totally confused as to its actual funding strategy -- you need significant,
continuous supplies of capital to develop and commercialize hard technology --
every time it fluctuates you impose major stresses and delays.

In at least a few cases, the problem was that the government provided support,
and thereafter withdrew it. This was most problematic for the DOE Government
Loan Guarantee program -- after Solyndra (a major recipient) went belly up,
the government called on their debt in a series of energy storage companies,
particularly A123 and Beacon Power. That was the bankruptcy trigger.

On the other hand, it is not exactly like those companies were doing so well
anyway. They were fragile, though they might have had a bright future.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> This was most problematic for the DOE Government Loan Guarantee program --
> after Solyndra (a major recipient) went belly up, the government called on
> their debt in a series of energy storage companies, particularly A123 and
> Beacon Power. That was the bankruptcy trigger.

Is it possible Tesla paid their DOE loan back early to prevent any volatility
from that liability hanging out there?

~~~
DaniFong
Hard to speculate, but it probably gave them a lot of leverage.

------
gilgoomesh
This $5 billion battery factory is intended to enable production of half a
million EV cars per year by 2020.

It's more amazing to me to think of the scale required in the mid 2020's when
EV cars could be 10's of millions per year.

------
shaunrussell
"Dangerously Ambitious" really? Fuck their rhetoric.

~~~
jotm
Lol, yeah, it's more like Smartly Ambitious...

------
jamdavswim
Really forbes? One line on the second page..

