lithium batteries Archives -

Tesla Energy seems to be the next logical step for the Silicon Valley company

With its new energy storage division (called Tesla Energy), Tesla Motors continues to build on a strategy that’s working for other Silicon Valley neighbors such as Google and Apple. That would be: move into the next logical technology marketplace. Advanced batteries may produce more revenue and profit than electric cars for Tesla in the next few years – and they’ll contribute to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s vision of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and supporting growth in renewable energy.

Along with its electric drive system, Tesla’s greatest strength is batteries – making its $5 billion investment in the Gigafactory potentially more than worthwhile; the company expects the Nevada factory to reach full capacity by 2020 and make more lithium-ion batteries than were produced worldwide in 2013. Tesla Energy will be ready to bring Tesla batteries to homes, business, and utilities to store energy to better manage power demand, provide backup power, and increase grid resilience – with much of it coming from solar power.

Called the Tesla Powerwall, it includes Tesla’s lithium-ion battery pack, liquid thermal control system, and software that receives dispatch commands from a solar inverter. Tesla Powerwall will be built into a building’s wall and will be integrated with the local power grid so that customers can draw energy from their own reserve. Benefits will include cost savings through load shifting during low rate periods; storing surplus solar energy; increasing the capacity for using more solar; and providing backup energy during grid outages.

It’s available in 10kWh, optimized for backup applications, or 7kWh, optimized for daily use applications. Tesla’s selling price to installers is $3,500 for 10kWh and $3,000 for 7kWh. Those prices exclude inverters and installation costs. The company says that deliveries will begin in the late summer of 2015.

Tesla has been testing out energy storage projects with some big-name partners including Amazon and Target. Amazon’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has been working closely with Tesla for the past year on high-capacity battery technology in data center applications. Target has partnered with Tesla on a pilot test at select Target stores to incorporate Tesla Energy Storage as part of its energy strategy. Tesla has also been supplying batteries to Walmart through pilot projects and a supply agreement with SolarCity Corp. Jackson Family Wines is using Tesla’s stationary energy storage solution in four areas that account for the most consumption in its winemaking process: refrigeration/cooling, lighting, compressed air, and process water treatment.

Utilities and solar companies are also working with Tesla on energy storage systems for meeting the next wave of energy demands. Southern California Edison has developed the nation’s largest battery storage system and has contracts in place for an additional 264 megawatts of storage, including projects using Tesla batteries.

Tesla has “channel partners” in place for producing the Powerwall. TreeHouse, a sustainable home improvement store, is working with Tesla to sell the Powerwall home battery. SolarEdge, a leader in the global photovoltaic (PV) inverter market, has a deal with Tesla for joint development of a PV storage and backup power solution for the worldwide residential solar market. Vermont-based renewable energy company Green Mountain Power and Tesla will offer Vermont residents a way to use less energy and rely on the grid as a backup system.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk does have a few things in common with executives at neighboring Silicon Valley giants – with one of them being expanding into the next logical technology marketplace. He serves as chairman of SolarCity, the largest solar power company in the US (and one started up by Musk’s cousins); he leads innovative space travel company, SpaceX (and its Hyperloop high-speed rail project); the Gigafactory, which is still being developed in Nevada; and the Tesla Motors electric carmaking company, which holds the unique position of breaking into the tough auto manufacturing sector – and surviving.

The big question will be whether all of it will work. The massive investment in Tesla since startup has come from private equity shareholders, the stock market, corporate partners (such as Panasonic on the battery side and Daimler on the car manufacturing side), a US Department of Energy loan, and personal investments from Musk from his PayPal startup profits and from other Tesla executives. Tesla Energy will require significant investments in the next few years.

Competition in the energy storage market will be fierce. Coda Automotive may not be around anymore in the electric vehicle space, but Coda Energy does have several clients at commercial and industrial sites. Schneider Electric is known for its electric vehicle charging systems, but has a significant presence in the energy storage market. Major solar companies are entering the storage market, along with commercial building suppliers and large battery manufacturers. It may come together for Tesla, and it’s possible that advanced batteries and energy storage could make for the lion’s share of its revenue in the next 10 years.

Cheaper, lighter, high-density lithium batteries: How close are we?

Lithium ion batteries are coming down in cost, but it’s all relative. Here’s a clear example…… The starting price on the Tesla Model S with a 60 kilowatt hours (60 kWh) lithium battery is $68,710; and the price goes up to $83,760 for the Model S with the 85 kWh option. The battery pack in a Model S costs about $30,000.

Analysts carefully watch what’s happening to the cost of lithium batteries, their weight, size, and storage capacity. Building a smaller, lighter and cheaper battery for Tesla’s upcoming lower-cost sedan has been at the heart of its $5 billion “Gigafactory” in Reno, Nev.

It’s going to take a few model years to see the price drop substantially. Here are some of the latest developments in electric vehicle batteries……….

Sakti3 says that its solid-state cell is close to doubling the energy density of today’s lithium-ion cell chemistries, at only one-fifth of their current cost. That technology will support a battery cost of just $100 per kWh – but that won’t be happening until the end of this decade. Satki3, led by University of Michigan engineering professor Ann Marie Sastry, has received investment capital from GM Ventures. That goes back to 2010, when Sakti3 received a lot of media coverage and exposure (such as Sastry speaking at the Bloomberg symposium in Los Angeles during the time the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt were first being delivered to dealers in December 2010). The company went under the radar for a few years and has reemerged, with a recent article coming out in Fortune on the company.
Panasonic has created a new company to oversee its operations at the Gigafactory as it goes online over the next two years. Panasonic has made an initial investment of $92 million, and that payment is expected to be the first of many cash infusions. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk says that as many as 500,000 battery packs per year could be built there by 2020. Tesla management will be in charge of the factory; Panasonic will provide the necessary manufacturing equipment and lithium-ion battery components.
Nissan has been building its own proprietary lithium-ion battery pack for the Leaf sedan. It’s been seven years since that battery technology started up, and it doesn’t look like Nissan will be bringing in LG Chem, Panasonic, Sakti3, or A123 Systems for its electric vehicles. At the Paris Motor Show, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn shed more light on the topic. “With electric cars, we consider that the reason for which we got involved with batteries, at the beginning, is we couldn’t find batteries good enough for our cars—so we decided to assemble our own batteries,” Ghosn said. “And we will continue to do that as long as we don’t think there are enough good batteries on the market, or we don’t think there is competition to sustain the move on batteries.”
Bill Reinert, the recently retired national manager of Toyota’s advanced technology group – and a very outspoken, brutally honest speaker at industry conferences – is still more impressed with hybrids than electric vehicles. Here’s what he said to a Yale University journal, Yale Environment 360….. “There’s nothing promising beyond the lithium battery on the battery horizon. And the lithium battery has tremendous shortcomings for cars – for example, it doesn’t maintain a full charge in hot weather, which creates a battery degradation cycle. Even the Tesla’s Model S, with its biggest battery, when driven like a normal car can’t always deliver 200 miles of range, and the [company’s charging stations] are currently 200 miles away from each other. To give a Tesla much extra driving range, the battery weight required would greatly decrease the distance it could travel per kilowatt and also greatly increase its cost.”

This Week’s Top 10: The mystery of Tesla’s Gigafactory may be unfolding, Wanxiang Group announces a second Fisker model

by Jon LeSage, editor and publisher, Green Auto Market

Here’s my take on the 10 most significant and interesting occurrences during the past week…….

More details revealed on Gigafactory – Was it Col. Mustard with a dagger in the billiard room? The mystery of the Tesla “Gigafactory” is beginning to be solved. Panasonic Corp. has reached a basic agreement with Tesla Motors to supply machinery to make lithium battery cells; and an investment of about 20 billion yen to 30 billion yen ($196.4 million to $294.7 million) initially, according to the Nikkei newspaper. Details are being worked out, with an official announcement expected by the end of this month. In May, Panasonic said it wanted to be the sole battery partner in this factory. Analysts expect the factory to need about $5 billion to get up to speed, and that Panasonic may put in $1 billion of it. And while Tesla has officially looked at three sites in the US to build the plants, the decision might have already happened. Greentech Media reported that the world’s largest lithium-ion battery factory will be built near Reno, Nev. One unnamed source took pictures of about 50 earthmovers clearing a site estimated to be large enough to house the proposed 10 million-square-foot Gigafactory. This source has also heard whispers about the secret project from construction industry folks and locals. There are still permitting and licensing issues to be worked out, and Tesla says it’s potentially the site of a pizza factory…… We shall see……….
Fisker’s new owner announced second model – Fisker Automotive may launch its second model in 2017, though no details have yet been released. Lu Guanqiu, the billionaire chairman and founder of Fisker’s owner, Wanxiang Group, Inc., thinks that this can happen in the next three years with the Karma luxury sports car returning to market well before then. The Karma will be built once again in Finland, and Wanxiang hopes to bring production to the US.
Los Angeles will be added to Nissan’s “No Charge to Charge” promotional campaign on Aug. 15 for its Leaf electric vehicle charging program. Leaf drivers get an EZ-Charge card for public charging stations for two years. The program was launched in Dallas-Ft. Worth and Houston in Sept. 2013; since then, it’s been expanded to San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Nashville, Phoenix, Washington, Portland, Ore.; and Sacramento, Calif. Nissan plans to add 14 more markets in the next year.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is late on creating rules governing electric vehicles (EVs) making noises to warn pedestrians as EVs pass by, and automakers say they’ll need more time to adopt the rules to vehicles. That rule was supposed to be released in January, so automakers are urging a delay in the schedule that requires them to start phasing it until 2016. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Association of Global Automakers jointly issued a letter asking NHTSA to postpone full compliance until Sept. 1, 2018.
General Motors Opel subsidiary won’t be offering the Ampera (the European version of the Chevy Volt) after the Volt is redesigned for the US market for the 2016 model year. Opel will launch its own successor, an electric vehicle, sometime between 2014 and 2018.
Samsung isn’t just rolling out new Android smartphones – the South Korean technology supplier has expanded its partnership with BMW to produce lithium-ion battery cells for the BMW i3, BMW i8, and additional hybrid models that will come out later. That partnership started in 2009 and now Samsung has agreed to enhance developments of its battery cells.
Natural gas vehicle supporters were unable to gain necessary support for a diesel gallon equivalent that would govern the sale and pricing of natural gas for heavy duty vehicles. NGVAmerica says that they were unable to get the votes necessary to move it forward at the National Conference on Weights and Measures in Detroit. The gasoline gallon equivalent was adopted in 1994, but the industry needs the diesel equivalent standard for realistic comparisons.
Renewable energy saw more gains in the first half of 2014. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects reported that wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and hydropower made up 55.7% of newly installed electricity generating capacity in the first half of this year. Natural gas provided most of the balance of new generating capacity.
Stop-start technology yields a 5% to 7% improvement in fuel economy and C02 reduction, according to a AAA study. The AAA tested three vehicles equipped with automatic stop-start systems using the US Environmental Protection Agency’s “urban” driving cycle.
Nissan has been able to save $938,000 per year at its Smyrna, Tenn., plant using the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Superior Energy Performance program. Savings at the plant that assembles the Leaf and other Nissan vehicles comes through using the ISO 50001 energy management standard. Nissan made changes at its plant such as rescheduling work shifts, reducing motor spends in industrial hardware, and improving startup and shutdown procedures. The $331,000 investment was paid back in four months and led to annual savings; it was much less capital intensive than buying new hardware or doing expensive retrofits, according to the DOE.