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Tesla's 5.8 million square foot "Gigafactory" to open in 2017

2016-07-27T13:38:00-04:00

Sixty-five hundred people and a sizable compliment of robots will work in the enormous, solar-panel topped, rail-adjacent Gigafactory when it opens in 2017, a structure which is described as a "joint venture" between Tesla, Panasonic and other supply partners. In this case, the drive to inexpensively produce lithium-ion batteries has created the need for the colossal structure.

As Wired notes:

The assembly lines will do everything from make the individual cells—cylinders a bit bigger than an AA battery—to assembling the immense packs that power a Model S or store energy in someone’s garage. Tesla doesn’t disclose its costs, but says doing it all in-house will drive down the cost of a battery by 30 percent.

Tesla in the news:

How this new gigafactory may popularize residential solar power technology

2016-03-04T21:24:00-05:00

When production begins, SolarCity, already the leading installer of residential solar panels in the [U.S.] will become a vertically integrated manufacturer and provider...At a time when conventional silicon-based solar panels from China have never been cheaper, investing in a new type of solar technology is a risky undertaking. However, the potential benefits are huge. The new factory...could transform both SolarCity’s business...and the economics of residential solar power.

The MIT Technology Review profiles the upcoming Buffalo-based SolarCity factory and their ambitious plans that could potentially make solar power technology more widely available to consumers.

More news about alternative energy:

Cloud-harvesting skyscraper: renderings of proposed new sustainable Tokyo development

Michigan State University researchers develop completely transparent solar panels

Could 'quantum dots' be the key to turning windows into photovoltaics?

Turning Japan's golfing greens into solar farms

New study suggests consumers, not producers, should bear responsibility for environmental impact

2016-02-29T19:14:00-05:00

We might think that most of the carbon emission come from the industrial sector and livestock, but a new study suggests that the real environmental problem is represented by the things we buy. [...] “We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses ... But between 60–80 per cent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well”.

You can read the full report, "Environmental Impact Assessment of Household Consumption", published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, here.

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