Satellite Pictures Revealed Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in Nevada Desert

Tesla’s gigafactory construction has been underway since last July. It is located in the middle of Nevada desert which is difficult to access to public. As Elon Musk mentioned in the interview with Forbes in 2013, the gigafactory will be a giant facility which is capable of producing all the lithium-ion battery production in the world in one factory. Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors.

When the gigafactory has finished, it will be measured at a total of 5 million square feet which are comparable to the size of a football field and Boeing 747. It is also worth about $5 billion.

Tesla is planning to manufacture its lithium-ion battery from renewable energy from a variety of sources like solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric plants which aims to power about 500,000 electric cars by the year of 2020. Electric cars are another project by Tesla Motors.

Based on satellite image provided by Mashable by CartoDB in February, it is hinted that the site will be blocked off by a security gate and the roof is covered by solar panels. This is consistent with Tesla’s preliminary mockups image which is released beforehand.

The visualization is made possible due to collaboration of map-editing software CartoDB and satellite imager DigitalGlobe.

Satellite Pictures Revealed Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in Nevada Desert

Costa Rica Powered by Renewable Energy for 75 Days!

Heavy rainfall in Costa Rica turns out to have a good effect to the environment.  Instead of using fossil fuel to run the electricity, the country relied almost entirely on four hydropower plants to generate electricity where the remaining power comes from wind, solar and geothermal plants.

Costa Rica is included in one of the country which has excellent track record in using renewable energy to generate electricity and therefore saving the environment. Last year itself, 80% of the electricity is generated from hydropower plants and as of 2010, 13% of the country’s power comes from geothermal plants.

What happened when there is not enough rainfall? Last year, Costa Rica experienced drought conditions and needed to rely on diesel fuel for backup. To solve this issue, ICE (Costa Rican Electricity Institute) is planning to build a geothermal plant which will tap into the country’s rich volcano resources as one of the power source. The plant costs up to $958 million and it has been already approved.

For the electricity coverage, Costa Rica supplied power to 99.4 percent of all households, taking the second place with Uruguay taking the first place. As for energy performance architecture, the country is second to Colombia, according to World Economic Forum.

The Costa Rican geothermal project consists of three plants, the first plant will generate 55 MW whereas the other 2 plants will generate 50 MW per plant. This kind of energy is estimated to cost about five cents per kilowatt hour which in the end, it will help the country achieve its carbon neutrality long term project by 2021.

Costa Rica Powered by Renewable Energy for 75 Days!

Google to bring balloon-powered internet and Kite-powered energy to India

India will soon be one of the countries where Google plans to set up infrastructure to provide internet connectivity and power to people in remote areas. The Mountain View giant is reportedly in talks with the Indian Government to set up projects to provide balloon-powered internet and Kite-powered energy in the country.

Google’s “Project Loon” is an internet project under which Google plans to use balloons set up at a high altitude to provide low-cost internet to about 5 billion people across the globe who have currently no access to it.

Mohammad Gawdat, VP of business Innovation at Google X told The Times of India:

“By 2016, we believe we can start to launch a commercial format that allows us to have coverage on every square inch of planet Earth. We are working very closely with telecom providers and governments across the world including India to see how we bring this innovation here”.

The balloons are sent up about 20 km high in the air. Its position is determined by software algorithms in the instruments based on wind direction. In a pilot project, about 30 such balloons were sent high up in the air in New Zealand’s South Island. These balloons were able to beam internet to a small group of people.

Google is also working on another project that uses kites sent up in the air to harness wind energy. Here, aeroplane-like kites tethered to cables are sent up in the sky up to 300 meters high. These kites fly in the air where the wind is the strongest. Wind moving across kite’s rotors rotates them with force, causing the generator to produce electricity. The electricity is then transmitted through the tether onto the grid.

“We believe through this we should be able to get a 100% improvement on the current renewable technology out there. It will be available at a much cheaper cost,” said Gawdat.

He also said that looking to India’s interest in renewable energy, they are in talks with the Indian Government to deploy this technology in India. Google hopes to begin the wind power generation by 2016.

 

Source The Times of India

Google to bring balloon-powered internet and Kite-powered energy to India