A US$ 5 billion “gigafactory” announced by Tesla at the end of February and capable of providing batteries for 500,000 of the company’s Gen-3 electric vehicles, will include some manufacturing capacity for stationary, grid-servicing batteries as well.
As reported March 3 in Renewable Energy World, the manufacturing plant is to occupy 10 million square feet, and crank out 35 GWh/year of battery cells and 50 GWh/year of battery packs by 2020. As the publication points out, Tesla is preparing for a slower than expected market uptake of its electric vehicles by allocating some manufacturing capacity for stationary energy storage applications such as backup power, peak demand reduction, demand response, and ancillary services like voltage support.
Tesla has said it wants to derive a substantial amount of the power for its plant from renewable sources, including wind and solar. As the article points out, battery manufacturing is very energy-intensive, running ovens and manufacturing equipment and charging the batteries at least one cycle as a final step.
A location for the factory is still to be decided, but sites have been shortlisted in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada.