> 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.
I wonder about the ecological footprint of the batteries though.
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.
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.
In reality, with somewhat deep discharges, the number is actually closer to 600-700, before experiencing significant capacity losses of ~15-20%.
At 2000 cycles, I'd imagine the capacity to be somewhere in the range of 50% of initial. Now that doesn't matter for utility scale, because you can easily keep that 50% pack in operation, as long as your total capacity stays the same (adding new packs), but for smaller scale, it's quite significant.
Look up Nissan Leaf range degradation and you'll see what I mean.
Neither of these assumptions is apply to grid-scale storage. For (2), you can install 30% new capacity and keep the old batteries in service. And for (1), the size of the battery storage is dictated by wanting to last 3 cloudy days... which rarely happens. So you might only cycle 1/3 of the batteries on an average day.