The company stated in its 2020 impact report that by the end of 2022, Tesla will fully cover its solar panel super factory in Nevada.
In the past few years, the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada has remained obscured and has not received the attention that the facility really deserves. Understandably, Tesla investors and enthusiasts have been paying attention to the expansion of Tesla’s other assembly plants, such as the Texas Gigafactory and the Berlin Gigafactory. However, the Nevada Gigafactory is still a powerful facility that provides batteries and electric power systems for the company’s all-electric vehicles and energy storage products. In 2018, it became the world’s most productive battery factory, with an annual output of about 20 GWh.
However, this factory with 5.3 million square feet of operating space still hasn’t achieved what Tesla wanted. One of Tesla’s largest projects in the factory is to deploy solar panels on the roof of the building to completely cover the top of the factory and provide sustainable energy to provide fuel for the factory’s power system and battery production.
Tesla plans to complete the project by the end of next year, it said in its 2020 impact report released earlier today. The company stated:
“The Nevada Gigafactory is designed to be covered with solar panels. So far, we have installed solar panels with a capacity of 3,200 kilowatts. By the end of next year, this installation will grow to approximately 24,000 kilowatts-the entire roof of the current building structure. This will make it the largest rooftop solar installation in the United States”
The project has been going on for several years, but it has not accelerated as the company or its investors expected. Teslarati regularly tracks and reports the batches of solar panels installed in the factory. However, this is a very deliberate process. When the latest solar panels are installed in April 2021, only about 20-30% of the roof will be covered. The project has been ongoing since February 2018.
Adding solar panels to the entire Gigafactory roof will make the facility one of the most sustainable buildings on the planet, eliminating any concerns about the use of fossil fuels to create sustainable energy products. However, Tesla may not stay at the current factory because it hints that solar panels will also be installed on other facilities in the future.
“We are also installing solar panels in other places, such as our Fremont factory, Lathrop factory and New York Gigafactory.”
what do you think? Tell us in the comments below, or be sure to email me via [email protected] or Twitter @KlenderJoey.
