Why Elon Musk's Batteries Scare the Hell Out of the Electric Company

[Zorro]

Here's why something as basic as a battery both thrills and terrifies the U.S. utility industry.

At a sagebrush-strewn industrial park outside of Reno, Nevada, bulldozers are clearing dirt for Tesla Motors Inc.'s battery factory, projected to be the world's largest.

Tesla's founder, Elon Musk, sees the $5 billion facility as a key step toward making electric cars more affordable, while ending reliance on oil and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At first blush, the push toward more electric cars looks to be positive for utilities struggling with stagnant sales from energy conservation and slow economic growth.

Yet Musk's so-called gigafactory may soon become an existential threat to the 100-year-old utility business model. The facility will also churn out stationary battery packs that can be paired with rooftop solar panels to store power. Already, a second company led by Musk, SolarCity Corp., is packaging solar panels and batteries to power California homes and companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-elon-musks-batteries-scare-050001220.html

[jwirr]

1. This industry needs protection. The electric companies are going to try to destroy them with

everything they have. Hopefully someone in the government is aware of this.

[lonestarnot]

2. Batteries, Batteries Batteries!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. The best combo is batteries charged by capacitors charged by solar....

The solar goes into the capacitor which discharges into the batteries. A capacitor charges VERY fast while a battery takes time. This means the system is grabbing every bit it can during relatively short peaks on a partly cloudy day.

Theoretically the same could be true for a car. You pull up to the charging station, load up the capacitor in a few seconds and drive away as the capacitor slowly discharges into the batteries thus charging them.

[lonestarnot]

17. Don't capacitors blow big when they do blow?

Sounds ugh nasty. Sorry

[Spitfire of ATJ]

22. They've improved. Remember when lithium batteries blew?

Not to mention lithium metal and water don't mix.

[Dreamer Tatum]

3. Meanwhile...

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hold-smugness-tesla-might-just-worse-environment-know/

[nationalize the fed]

5. You haven't had enough Musk Kool-Aide

Tesla Model S: The finest coal-powered car money can buy
By Jason Perlow for Tech Broiler | May 15, 2014

...However, what I think has been lost in all this positivism and blind futurism about EVs and Tesla is how unrealistic electric cars still are for the average family.

Not only that, but they do not fundamentally solve the problems of moving to more sustainable energy sources; nor are they particularly "greener" or less fossil-powered than their gasoline, diesel, or even hybrid cousins...

...A report released by the US EIA in May of 2014 forecasts an upward trend towards the use of coal for the next several years, with natural gas consumption outpacing coal by 2040...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/tesla-model-s-the-finest-coal-powered-car-money-can-buy/

Most people filling up their Tesla Batteries are filling them with electrons made from burning coal



These batteries don't last forever either- imagine tons and tons of lithium that need to be replaced and recycled every 7 years or so.

[Dreamer Tatum]

6. I think of Teslas as Easy Bake ovens

Cute, but not the do it en masse.

[whatthehey]

7. But Teslas, and all EVs, are not evenly distributed, so national energy sources are irrelevant

And frankly that "most people filling their Tesla..." line would be a flat out lie even were this not so.

CA WA and OR buy way way more than their population share of EVs, and are heavily driven by non-FF electricity generation. 40% of all US EVs sold are in CA alone. CA generates 15% of its power from coal, and far less in the SoCal megacities where EVs are predominantly sold.

In two separate surveys, over 30% of those EV owners have PV panels installed at home, further lessening fossil fuel dependence and manifold the normal rate of solar power installations.

It should also be remembered that while coal certainly has problems aplenty, it's almost all domestically sourced in the US and does not fund regressive Islamist dictatorships.

But feel free to drive ICEs and use dinosaur juice that perpetuates Wahabbi lunacy with no option at all of producing your own environmentally friendly motive power because,....well... some states that hardly buy any EVs at all use some coal.

[Blue State Bandit]

10. EV/PV/AC Coupled systems will be the end of the fossil fuel economy.

The biggest problem with traditional PV/Grid-Tied systems is that when the grid goes down, so does your solar. This is called "Anti-Islanding" and keeps PV systems from sending power down lines during an outage that can kill linemen effecting repairs. When you add a battery bank, and a small generator to an AC Coupled PV system, you are running the house off the batteries as the primary source, with the PV as the primary producer, and gennie providing the battery maintenance when the sun is down.

So, in case of a major disaster, with the flip of a switch (Unless you have an auto-trans-switch), you can change from grid-tied, to a self-generated "Island". The 3 major components required for this system is a battery bank, a small (3k) Generator (diesel that can run on waist oil prefered), and the AC coupling hardware. An EV car can become the bank and the genny. This drastically reduces the cost of the system. You get a car, and a PV/Battery back-up system with a generator tier three back-up.

This is the future of EV/PV, if we support it now.

[AtheistCrusader]

8. Gen 1 Prius battery packs are still on the road, and still working remarkably well.

Those projections are remarkably conservative, and batteries can be recycled.

Coal isn't a problem everywhere. We're down to one last plant here in WA state. It closes soon. 73% hydro, and the rest is a mix of NG, Wind, and Nuclear.

Unfortunately hydro isn't as viable everywhere, but solar and wind are.

Edit: And battery tech evolves.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112778525

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. "how unrealistic electric cars still are for the average family."

Oh sure. We're all still going to be driving gas guzzlers in 150 years because oil is king.

Oh, and that "shifting the pollution to coal fired power plants" argument can be solved by refusing to build coal fired power plants and don't renew the old ones as their boilers need rebuilding.

It's EMBARRASSING to be burning coal in the 21st century.

[zeemike]

14. That chart is a little misleading.

Because oil is not generally used to produce electricity so is show low on the chart.
But oil is used to make gas to power cars and is a far greater source of carbon pollution and a big waster of energy compared to an EV.

If you consider just one thing...the amount of energy wasted while you are at a stop light it is huge...and EV uses none at a stop light...then multiply that times a billion cars and you are talking some serious waste there.

[Darb]

23. Denialist-like rubbish.

There must be a constant movement forward with regard to alternative energy sources and alternatives with regard to consumption. Your pretty graph is just a bullshit example of the typical ploy used by denialists, muddy the waters.

EVs are a move in the right direction. Batteries at home will greatly increase the performance of solar. All these things are moves in the right direction. Pretending that anyone is saying "we can replace this, with this, overnight" is a bullshit starting point used by denialists.

Are you a denialist?

[NickB79]

29. As opposed to your oft-stated dream of hydrogen cars powered by fracking?

As others have pointed out in this thread, the states with the highest number of EV's are also the states with the highest amount of renewable electricity being generated.

On the other hand, it's telling that the most ardent proponents of hydrogen-fueled cars have ties to the natural gas and oil companies, because a widespread roll-out of hydrogen vehicles would make be a cash cow for reformulating natural gas to hydrogen.

[lonestarnot]

21. Hmmmf. Oilers. They like war and dirty air. Try to kill anything that provokes change in the

status quo. Good luck with that moving into the future.

[Dreamer Tatum]

25. Hmmmf. The Simpleminded. They like taking a lot of energy and turning it into a little energy. nt

[lonestarnot]

34. As is demonstrated with your responsive post.

[Scuba]

4. Meanwhile, our tax dollars go to subsidized the already obscenely profitable fossil fuel industry.

[airplaneman]

9. Here is another battery company worth paying attention to.

Saltwater batteries - non toxic. Cheaper than lead acid. Can deplete and recharge many more times than most conventional batteries. Will help make solar more affordable. I like the "S" line myself.

http://www.aquionenergy.com/energy-storage-systems

-Airplane

[Historic NY]

13. If I could buy a cheap enough battery...

to store the energy from my solar panels, WTF would I need the electric company other than fro them to buy excess from me. Thats exactly what I want a storage system thats affordable. I wouldn't need a generator or any other device if there wasn't electric.

[Johonny]

15. Why do libertarian *holes like Rand Paul and Elon Musk have so much support on the DU

when Musk's battery plant is unionized then talk to me. Until then F* him.

[Darb]

24. Baby, hop in the bathwater and get ready for a ride.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

[Jack Rabbit]

16. I don't give a two-bit damn about Elon Musk's political views

Any entrepreneur developing alternative energy has my support and best wishes.

Do you want to end the era of fossil fuels or don't you? Talk about I can't breathe, that's going to have another meaning if we don't do the right thing and soon.

[Cleita]

26. Don't know why the solar industry wasn't pairing marine batteries

with solar panels from the beginning. It's not like the technologies haven't been available for years.

[hunter]

27. They do. Fork lift batteries are even better.

But traditional lead-acid batteries are fussy and require careful observation and occasional maintenance to get the maximum life out of them.

Lead is also poisonous and the battery recycling industry is notorious, even in the U.S.A., for poisoning workers and entire communities. The problem is especially severe in less developed nations where used lead-acid batteries are broken apart by hand and the lead melted in open crucibles. Some NGO's refuse to support solar projects that use lead-acid batteries for this reason.

Lithium batteries will probably have their own unique problems in solar use, but increasing experience building longer lasting and more robust automobile battery packs, as Musk is doing, will certainly be very useful when applied to solar electric systems.

[jmowreader]

30. Elon Musk's batteries probably delight the electric company

The feds calculate 67 percent of all the electricity made in the US comes from fossil fuels. They further calculate 39 percent of all the electricity is from coal.

That 39 percent is anathema - we have GOT to shut off coal-generated electric plants, the sooner the better. Problem is, before we can shut down 39 percent of America's generating capacity we MUST have a reliable replacement for it.

The "grow your own electric" solution sounds neat, and IS neat, but it's expensive to do. You save money in the long run, but in the short run you gotta come up with tens of thousands, or tens of millions if you're running a large electrical consumer, to do it. As anyone here who's ever worked in business will tell you, Corporate America will let billions trickle through their fingers if the alternative is dropping millions on the table in one lump sum.

So try this: You are an electric company who is running a 150MW coal plant and selling its output for 7 cents per kWH. You want to shut it down, which requires replacing its capacity. Instead of building a 150MW plant that uses some other kind of fuel, you go to your customers and offer to sell them power for 6.25 cents per kWH if they'll let you install a solar array, a wind turbine or both on their roof and a battery storage system to hold the power generated until it's used, and construct a smaller renewable-energy plant to serve the customers who can't or won't allow solar arrays to be installed. Customers would be lined up around the block to get it, and it would require so many batteries to pull off that Musk would have to build three more Gigafactories.

Who this plan would most terrify isn't either the utilities or Elon Musk, but Caterpillar - the world's leading manufacturer of standby generators. If you're making all your own power you don't need protection against the grid failing, hence there's no need to buy a Cat generator for your factory. Caterpillar being one of the leading companies on Liberal America's Shit List for their sales of bulldozers to the Israeli Army (so they can use them to tear down Palestinian settlements), I don't think we actually care about butthurt in Peoria.

[Octafish]

31. Amazing.

Musk as the next Edison.

Gives me a smile to know there are still people using what they got for good, in addition to making a buck.

[olddots]

32. will the world have wars over lithium supplies ?

Please tell me no .

[DeSwiss]

33. Two Words: ''Hemp Supercapacitor''

Could hemp nanosheets topple graphene for making the ideal supercapacitor?

August 12, 2014

As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors. They're presenting their research, which a Canadian start-up company is working on scaling up, at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

David Mitlin, Ph.D., explains that supercapacitors are energy storage devices that have huge potential to transform the way future electronics are powered. Unlike today's rechargeable batteries, which sip up energy over several hours, supercapacitors can charge and discharge within seconds. But they normally can't store nearly as much energy as batteries, an important property known as energy density. One approach researchers are taking to boost supercapacitors' energy density is to design better electrodes. Mitlin's team has figured out how to make them from certain hemp fibers—and they can hold as much energy as the current top contender: graphene.

"Our device's electrochemical performance is on par with or better than graphene-based devices," Mitlin says. "The key advantage is that our electrodes are made from biowaste using a simple process, and therefore, are much cheaper than graphene."

The race toward the ideal supercapacitor has largely focused on graphene—a strong, light material made of atom-thick layers of carbon, which when stacked, can be made into electrodes. Scientists are investigating how they can take advantage of graphene's unique properties to build better solar cells, water filtration systems, touch-screen technology, as well as batteries and supercapacitors. The problem is it's expensive.

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