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Opinion: Geothermal Energy is Reason Tesla Picked Nevada for Gigafactory (EV World)

Elon Musk has promised that the new Gigafactory to make batteries for the car maker Tesla will be powered by renewable energy. Maybe the deal clincher is geothermal.

Today, I received an email that included the graphic displayed below. It shows the size and location of geothermal energy plants in the US southwest. Notice where most of the projects are concentrated. They are inside the box near the California/Nevada border, right smack in the area where Tesla is building its Gigafactory.

As we all are aware, the sun only shines during the day and wind can be pretty variable. The beauty of geothermal, tapping the superheated brine below the ground is that it's dispatchable. According to SNL, the people who prepared the geothermal chart, "geothermal energy now provides 2,856 MW of operating generation in the U.S…." They noted, "Of the 415 MW in advanced development or under construction, roughly 66%, or 272 MW, is located in Nevada." And virtually all of that is in the Nevada elbow.

One of the more interesting aspects of geothermal is that it also may prove to be a reliable and cheap source of lithium salts. A startup firm called Simbol has developed a method to extract lithium from geothermal brine and are aiming to have their first facility in production by 2017, the same year Tesla is planning to commence battery production at its Gigafactory. While the Simbol facility is located in the Imperial Valley, the three dots at southern end of California on the chart, it should be relatively cost effective to ship the processed lithium carbonate up to Reno by truck or train. Presumably, the geothermal fields in central Nevada might also have the right chemistry for extracting lithium.

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