“We expect to start building the Megafactory for energy storage products in the near future, and the products will be mainly used for export,” Xinhua quoted Tesla China president Allan Wang (Wang Hao) as saying in a report today.
The Megafactory will be Tesla’s first energy storage system factory outside of the US market, with an initial planned annual production capacity of up to 10,000 commercial energy storage batteries and nearly 40 GWh of energy storage, with products to be offered to the global market.
The factory is scheduled to begin construction in the third quarter of this year and go into production in the second quarter of 2024, according to an announcement by Lingang special area administration in April. If the Lingang officials are correct, the construction of the factory should start in weeks. The US Tesla Megapack factory in Lathrop is the size of a Target Department store. Lathrop is actually a converted Target. Tesla China should be able to complete the structure of such a small building in less than two months.
Tesla is preparing to start construction of the Megafactory for Megapack production in China. According to the plan, the construction of the 40 GWh factory should start inQ3 of this year, and production will begin in Q2 of 2024https://t.co/uCKXWcqxSZ
— Eva Fo𝕏 🦊 Claudius Nero's Legion 𝕏 (@EvaFoxU) September 4, 2023
Tesla Lathrop megapack factories cost about $400 million each and produce about $20-25 billion each year in revenue according to the Tesla Master Plan 3.
China is expected to add 95 to 120 gigawatts (GW) of solar power in 2023. China added 87 GW of new solar power into operation in 2022 making the total installed capacity to 392.6 GW at the end of 2022. China probably already added 30-40 GW in 2023 to bring its total installed solar to 420 GW and 520 GW at the end of 2023. The world installed 268 GW of new solar capacity in 2022, with annual installations expected to hit 315-350 GW in 2023.
Global installed solar generation capacity reached about 1.1 TW in 2022. Total global wind power capacity is up to 837 GW at the end of 2022 with 78 GW added in 2022. This is one fifteenth of Tesla projection of a final total of 30 TW of solar and wind. There should be about 6-8 TW of solar and wind by 2030 and 16-18 TW of solar and wind by 2040.
We are adding solar at about half of where Tesla expects the world to plateau at adding 610 GW/year of solar and 402 GW/year of wind.
Tesla projects the world will need 2.3 TWh per year of megapack fixed storage or 60 Lathrop-sized megapack factories. The world needs about 6 Megapack fixed storage factories to supply the conversion of the global electrical grid. We will need these six Megapack for grid factories by 2028-2032.
As the electric truck and car market (cybertruck and Semi get up to full scale) get up scale there will be a need for another 30 or so Megapack factories. We are at 10% of that final level of annual EVs currently and will get to 20-40% of annual EVs in the next 3-6 years. This will mean the Vehicle driven demand for Megapacks will scale to 10-15 Lathrop Megapack factories over the next 3-6 years. This will mean adding 2-3 Tesla Megapack factories each year starting in 2025 through 2040.
Tesla and its competitors will need to have 30 Megapack equivalent factories by around 2030-2032. If Tesla makes 20 of those Megapack factories it will cost $8 billion in Capex for initial construction and Tesla would be making about $400-500 billion per year in revenue from those factories around 2030. This will scale to $1 trillion per year by 2040.
If there is a surge in global energy usage because of AI data centers, then the demand for electricity and megapacks could increase by ten times.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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