Tesla Energy Is About To Take Over Hawaii
In today’s post, Tesla Energy puts an end to coal power in Hawaii, good news and bad news at Giga Berlin, production line upgrades underway at Giga Shanghai and Tesla opens up new possibilities for American owners with Enhanced Autopilot. So let’s get going.
Tesla Megapack Replaces Hawaiian Coal Plant
The era of burning coal for energy will officially come to an end for the state of Hawaii, with their final coal fired power plant now being replaced by a giant installation of Tesla’s Megapack battery storage units.
The island state has been working for years now to phase out the incredibly dirty fuel source, with a goal to reach 100% green energy by 2045. Hawaiian Electric and other companies have been working with Tesla for years to install a network of battery storage systems that includes a Virtual Power Plant network of Tesla Powerwall batteries installed into private homes. All of this battery storage supports Hawaii’s massive solar power generation - currently the largest solar capacity per capita of any US state.
Now Tesla has been contracted to bring in their grid scale Megapack systems so Hawaii can create a battery power plant, much like the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, except even bigger.
The Kapolei Energy Storage facility will be one of the largest battery systems in the world, once completed, capable of storing 565 megawatt-hours of energy. 158 Megapack units are on their way to Hawaii’s Oahu Island to build the project.
For scale, the recently commissioned Moss Landing Megapack installation in California is a bit larger at 730 megawatt hours, while the original Tesla Big Battery in Australia is much smaller at 194 megawatt hours.
Major partners Hawaiian Electric and Plus Power are intending to have the KES up and running in time for the last remaining coal plant on the island to be shut down in September, 2022.
The old coal plant was used to ensure grid stability - keeping the lights on when the solar generation systems couldn’t. But Tesla’s Megapacks can accomplish the same task without spewing giant clouds of CO2 into the atmosphere; and that’s exactly what the KES is for - storing the excess solar energy made during the day, and pumping it back out at night, or when it’s too cloudy for solar to operate.
The KES should also operate as a way to jumpstart the island’s electrical grid should a disaster force the whole system down.
Similar Megapack farms have already done wonders for South Australia, and we’re starting to see wider adoption of the systems in US states like California and Texas. The stabilizing effect of a battery farm is an essential piece of the green energy puzzle; the thing that will allow us to make green energy just as reliable as traditional power sources and finally wean off of dangerously polluting energy sources like coal, oil, and gas.
Giga Berlin Encounters Bumps in Road to Ramp Up
Let’s start off with some less than good news from Germany - Tesla has encountered a critical production issue with the Model Y Performance at Giga Berlin that has halted customer deliveries.
According to sources in Germany, customers have had their deliveries canceled and pushed back by several months. Word on the street is that the high performance drive unit, that is actually still manufactured in China, is experiencing problems with the voltage converter that renders the car undrivable and can only be corrected with a part replacement.
Tesla rescheduled most of the canceled Model Y Performance deliveries for mid-July. However, some MYP reservation holders received new delivery dates that stretched out later into the year between August to November 2022.
Drive Tesla Canada has reported one case of a Model Y Performance delivered to Norway that suffers from the same problem, and the car cannot be driven.
So, obviously that’s not ideal. Though it is really good that the Tesla crew in Germany seems to have identified the problem and acted on it *before* too many of the products were delivered to customers - this is exactly the way this kind of issue should be handled. There are always going to be problems with the mass production of any product, it’s just the timing that is really unfortunate here as the factory is working hard to ramp up to volume, now they have a major setback that will bring down the momentum. It sucks.
But let’s just take a moment to remember that Ford recently recalled 50 thousand Mustang Mach E vehicles that have developed a tendency to lose power mid drive or just fail to even turn on. Then over at Toyota they’ve just had to recall every bZ4 because the wheels are falling off. So, literally no one has perfected the art of making cars at high volume, it’s fine.
Looking towards some positive rumors now, it’s being reported that starting July 4th, Giga berlin will move to working in 3 shifts per day that will allow them to build cars 24 hours a day. And we recently saw some drone footage from the factory that indicated Tesla is currently running two shifts on Saturdays. The factory continues to hire on between 500 and 600 new staff per month, and the workforce has grown to around 5 thousand people, expected to reach 12 thousand by the end of this year.
One other cool thing, we’ve also got some closeup photos of the double decker SuperCharger installation at Giga Berlin. The idea with this thing is that they can load up a two level, car hauler trailer, then charge all of the vehicles all at once while they are on the trailer, then drive them straight to the delivery location - pretty clever.
Giga Shanghai Upgrades Underway
Over at the GigaFactory in Shanghai China we are hearing a lot about an upgrade to the production line that is currently underway, and will push the factory output to as many as one million cars per year.
According to a Bloomberg report, citing individuals familiar with the matter, the upgrades to Gigafactory Shanghai are expected to improve Model Y production to about 14,000 units per week. Tesla Model 3 production is expected to increase to 7,700 vehicles per week. Prior to the recent round of city wide shutdowns, Giga Shanghai was reportedly producing 11,000 Model Y and 5,500 Model 3’s per week.
This will involve a brief period of shutdown on the individual production lines as they’re retooled - we’ve heard reports that it could last as little as 3 days or as long as two weeks - either way, we’re talking about a very small amount of time in the grand scale of production.
The upgrades will reportedly be performed in stages with the Model Y line being upgraded over the first two weeks of July. Then the Model 3 line’s upgrades are expected to take place for 20 days starting on July 18th.
So that means everything will be back up and running stronger than ever by mid August. I think that with this China upgrade and the minor production issue at Berlin, Tesla will likely continue to lag a bit in growth through Q3 this year - BUT I also think that it is pretty obvious this is all building towards a monstrous fourth quarter for deliveries that will blow some people’s minds.
Enhanced Autopilot Arrives in USA
Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot feature is now available in the United States and China for the first time in three years.
This is basically a halfway point between the standard Autopilot features that come with every Tesla vehicle, and the Full Self Driving package, which is currently up to 12 thousand US dollars.
The mid tier option for Enhanced Autopilot now comes in at 6 grand US and delivers all of the Full Self Driving capabilities *except* for Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control and it does not allow access to the FSD Beta feature for Autosteer on City Streets and will not receive that feature when it goes live to the public release.
So, Enhanced Autopilot will allow you to Navigate on Autopilot for highway driving from onramp to offramp with automated lane changes, it also includes Autopark and the Summon feature.
Just in case you’re not familiar, Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control is the feature that allows the car to recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs - so without this feature, your car will not stop at intersections, the driver has to be fully aware of those conditions and disengage when needed.
This American roll out comes following the release of Enhanced Autopilot in New Zealand and Australia, Elon Musk hinted that Tesla would consider re-releasing Enhanced Autopilot in other countries.
In early 2019, Tesla removed Enhanced Autopilot as it transitioned all vehicles to receive Basic Autopilot as a standard option with every vehicle purchase. The Enhanced option has stuck around in the European market and proven to be pretty popular among those who don’t want to go full send into an autonomous car, but just want to be able to go a little more ‘hands off’ while stuck on the highway.
