Tesla's New Gigafactory Will Have the World's Largest Rooftop Solar Farm
Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory will feature a giant 70-megawatt solar farm on the factory's roof, the largest rooftop solar installation in the world. This information comes from a report presented to Tesla investors during a recent tour of the facility that was obtained by Electrek.
Tesla's goal is that the Gigafactory, which will make battery cells for the company's Model 3 cars, will be powered entirely with renewable energy. To meet that goal, most of the factory's electricity will be produced by the big solar farm on the roof. This installation will be more than seven times larger than the world's next largest rooftop solar farm.
Any additional power the Gigafactory requires will be generated by additional solar panels located on the ground near the facility. Tesla seems committed to not directly consuming any fossil fuels to power the factory. According to the investor release:
"[The Gigafactory] is an all-electric factory with no fossil fuels (natural gas or petroleum) directly consumed. We will be using 100% sustainable energy through a combination of a 70 MW solar rooftop array and solar ground installations. The solar rooftop array is ~7x larger than the largest rooftop solar system installed today."
In addition to powering the factory with renewable energy, Tesla is also implementing a number of technologies to reduce its energy usage. These include water reclamation and repurposing waste heat from the manufacturing process to heat the building.
Once the factory is fully operational in 2018, it will produce 35 gigawatt-hours worth of batteries per year, enough to power 500,000 Model 3 cars.
Source: Electrek
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