Silicon Valley wants to solve world energy problems

Stan Beer
Sunday, 27 August 2006 12:47

Opinion and Analysis

The big question of course is the Lithium battery system itself. Eberhard and his team looked far wide to find the best battery system design possible. Even before the current notebook recalls involving Sony Lithium Ion battery packs, the Tesla team were aware of the potential fragility, heating and charging issues of the technology.

However, Tesla insists that the issues have been solved. There's a liquid cooling system and all the issues with charging and discharging are computer controlled. Batteries are arranged in blades, so that if one fails it doesn't degrade the system.

According to Tesla, Lithium Ion technology is already powerful enough now to be used for transport in a practical sense but it is continually improving and will one day completely outstrip fossil fuels for storage capacity. In fact, in an interview with green motoring site AutoBlogGreen, Tesla chairman Elon Musk says the battery pack in the Tesla Roadster stores so much energy that it could used to power an entire house during a power outage. What's more, you can leave your car parked on a hot or cold day with the climate control on without any problems

Most renewable energy advocates agree that a key weakness with their favoured solar and wind power electricity generation solutions is energy storage. However, as far as at least one company in Silicon Valley is concerned, the energy storage problem has been solved - at least as far as transport is concerned.