Did Tesla Just Kill Nuclear Power?
Did Tesla Just Kill Nuclear Power?
Jeff McMahon
5/01/2015 @ 8:13AM
It would be almost three hours until Teslas big announcement, but inside a Northwestern University classroom near Chicago Thursday night, the famed nuclear critic Arnie Gunderson had the inside scoop:
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk was about to announce an industrial-scale battery, Gunderson said, that would cost about 2¢ per kilowatt hour, putting the final nail in the coffin of nuclear power.
Thus Teslas big news broke first not amongst the throng of reporters gathered under swirling colored lights at the carmakers Hawthorne, Calif. headquarters, but in the middle of a debate on the future of nuclear power sponsored by students agitating for a Fossil Free NU. It was Gunderson vs. Jordi Roglans-Ribas, the director of the Nuclear Engineering Division of Argonne National Laboratory.
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Then Gunderson told the audience of about 80 students and visitors that it was a momentous day in historybecause of something that was about to happen in California.
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Tesla will sell the home battery, the Tesla Powerall, for $3,500, a fraction of the $13,000 price observers had expected, and perhaps more importantly, a fraction of the cost of the $10,000 battery announced earlier this week by European competitors Sungevity and Sonnenbatterie.
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Bernie Sanders and Elon Musk changed history yesterday.
Expect the fossil and nuclear industries to ramp up their sleazy PR tactics.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I've never heard the term used before but just as distributed generation is the opposite of centralized generation (the model of the past and of nukes in particular), distributed storage is the alternative to large centralized storage schemes like the Helms Pumped Hydro Storage project, which interestingly was built to store overproduction from Diablo.
That we don't need to wait for PUCs and utilities to build out storage and can deploy distributed home and individual customer storage systems like this is really a game changer.
It puts the power in our hands.
Ha ha ha!
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)The cost of the vehicle needs to come down more....it will. The charger needs to get smaller cuz even in my two car garage, it would take up too much room...it will and although 3500 is reasonable that is without installation costs.
It is a great start though.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I'm in a Volt, myself, but look for longer range and lower up front costs.
More than a dozen makers now have an EV or PHEV in their stable, maybe two dozen, I lose count.
Ford, Chevy, Nissan all have very nice pure electrics at reasonable prices but range is still a problem.
Perfect second car for a two car family just the same.
hedda_foil
(16,373 posts)Elon Musk may just possibly save the world.
jschurchin
(1,456 posts)Stryst
(714 posts)Right now panels are running about $0.73/Watt. In the early 80's, panels ran about $5-6/Watt. The battery cost was a real bottleneck. This is starting to approach a cost where people on social security could really think about converting. At the $200/month my family and I pay to our local power company, this is very attractive.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)IMO Musks' factory is just a cog in the evolving distributed energy system. There are a lot of other things that are going to be part of the whole picture. For example, without efficiency improvements to homes these batteries don't accomplish much on their own. But, combined with the net-zero home building concept and properly designed heating and cooling systems that also serve as energy storage the battery packs become an integral part of the whole.
What I think they'll do more than anything else is bring attention to the path that is open to us and show that it's an affordable realistic course to take. Once the possibility of a different way of meeting energy needs becomes real in people's minds, they will then begin to appreciate the massive cultural advantages that go along with energy freedom.
Stuart G
(38,420 posts)Lots of vested interests in NP. Time will tell..