Batteries and the use of solar energy have been around in one form or another for centuries, but it wasn’t until 2016 that these technologies arguably became world-changing. It was when Elon Musk, before his controversial political career began, opened the first “gigafactory” in Nevadaproducing advanced battery technology, electric motors and solar cells on a massive scale – giga means 1 billion, or “giant”.
You could also describe the amount of renewable energy – in the form of solar, wind and hydropower – available to mine on Earth as gigantic. In a matter of days, the sun will supply our planet with more energy than there is in all the reserves of fossil fuels we have ever discovered.
Harnessing that power reliably is another matter. Although the photovoltaic effect, where light energy produces an electric current, was discovered in 1839 by Edmond Becquerel and the first practical solar panels were manufactured in the 1950s, it was not until 2010 that the technology advanced enough to make solar electricity competitive with fossil fuels. At the same time, the invention of lithium-ion batteries in the 1980s made it possible to store this energy somewhere.
The Gigafactory has also certainly helped improve these solar cell and battery technologies. However, its impact was less dependent on any particular invention and more on how it brought all parts of electric car manufacturing under one roof. This supply chain integration echoes what Henry Ford did a century earlier—just populating the planet with Teslas instead of fossil fuel-powered Model Ts. “Batteries gave us solar power and gave us electric vehicles,” he says Dave Jones at Ember, an energy think tank in the UK.
The economies of scale unleashed by the gigafactory had a ripple effect beyond electric cars. “This battery unlocks all kinds of new things: the phone, the computer, and the ability to have relatively cheap and large amounts of power that you carry,” he says. Sara Hastings-Simon at the University of Calgary in Canada.
In fact, the cost of these technologies has fallen so much in recent years that many experts say the electrification of our energy systems is inevitable. In California and Australia, solar power is so abundant that grid operators give it to people for free. Accordingly, batteries are coming close to storing energy as densely as fossil fuels, so we can start building solar-powered airplanes, ships, and long-range trucks—and completely decouple our transportation and energy systems from their centuries-long dependence on fossil fuels.
topics:
- electric vehicles/
- Renewable energy
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