Tesla Gigafactory

[Fanatic]

Here is your update report Elon.

Concrete work.

The concrete work is proceeding rapidly, the to middle sections are complete on second floor and roof, On the ground floor they have made some of the base fundament surroundings 1st pour, i think they will be complete soon. The section most north is the roof pouring has started

Steel work.
Most wall mounts is complete. I think the y will wait until they have poured some more concrete before they install walls.

Substation.
Substation has grown in height since last time. The poles has ben erected. Lots of material has arrived laying next to it.

Groundwork
A long trench has been dug down to the next factory for water and sewage (i think).

With more insight I could make a more detailed progress report..
Weekly Tesla commissioned drone flyby would be very helpful.

 

[bwa]

Ummm, they're pouring concrete on the roof?

Pretty much every multifloor large building going up in SF Bay Area that I've been on or seen in the last few years has a concrete roof. It's basically standard.

Kaiser (many sites), Stanford LPCH, Facebook, Irvine r.e. offices (Ericsson), 49ers stadium (Levi's), many residential high rises (mostly SF), all come to mind. The ones I've been on all have metal skeleton, metal pans, then all cutouts hangars rebar & wall embedments applied & concrete poured, this for almost every level, including roof level, with exceptions mostly being naked concrete for lower parking garages, and some concrete skeleton areas such as parking and residential. On top (roofish area) goes mechanical equipment rooms (often with their own concrete pan roofs), water proof (tar, carpet), equipment that isn't housed in rooms (increasingly uncommon), and gardens and/or solar panels (gardens being a currently common fad (majority of places I've been), which I think will have stiff competition from solar panels which I believe will be more frequently applied on and over every area the sun could reach).

Of course, whatever the customer, architect, engineer and jurisdiction will pay for, come up with and approve can happen. So by no means are concrete roofs mandatory, but they are pretty common. But I have a feeling Musk wants to use Gigafactory as an example of what can be done and wants to relate it to current practices. Plus I bet the current thinking is that the versatility of a concrete roof is high. Not to mention inertial efficiency: architects, engineers, jurisdictions, financiers, estimators (bidders), supply chains and occupants can just basically copy all the other projects they have.

I've seen other posters talk about hurricane areas that use concrete roofs. True: when I lived in Puerto Rico, pretty much every building had a concrete roof, especially all the cheap residences. (Except of course for the Dominican shantytowns near Bahia bay (pew)). Especially in that environment, there was nothing else on top of the roof like equipment, at least for all the single-story residences I was in; you don't want any more food for the hurricanes. This had the effect of storing the radiant energy of the sun in the concrete, and then microwaving the occupants. Most of the roofs are painted silver or white, but then they would eventually turn black with grime and dirt. And the problem of the microwaving of the occupants never seemed to be solved to me. For this environment, I'd like to see a concrete integrated solar material so that it wouldn't go flying away in a hurricane (lost investment and creation of lethal projectiles, meaning solar projects would be strictly forbidden in such zones for a long time after the first decapitation).

 

[roblab]

Here is your update report Elon.

Weekly Tesla commissioned drone flyby would be very helpful.

Great work. You use a GoPro with the DJI, or is it a Phantom camera? And it looks like you're battling headwinds. Every time you tip level, it looks like the drone starts drifting back. At least the DJI has a big battery and more range than most others.

Wish I lived closer! Would be a fun outing.

 

[ecarfan]

Thanks for posting that video. I'm still trying to figure out what fraction of the total ground area of the complete building has been covered so far. Is the rectangular building shown the entire building except for the two pentagonal end sections, or is it just one of the three central sections?

 

[roblab]

Thanks for posting that video. I'm still trying to figure out what fraction of the total ground area of the complete building has been covered so far. Is the rectangular building shown the entire building except for the two pentagonal end sections, or is it just one of the three central sections?

Elon has said that the building is about 1/4 of final. I would guess that that means it is about equal to one of the center rectangles, and the end sections would equal the other fourth.

 

[purplewalt]

eventually the roof will have a bunch of air handling equipment (HVAC, purifiers, heat exchangers, whatever is needed for the clean rooms to function and the staff to be comfortable) plus thousands of solar panels and racking. You need some sort of solid base to keep the equipment from falling through the roof.

There will be facilities and maintenance crews servicing the myriads of equipment on the roof post-installation.
And there may also be davits and tie-downs for exterior building maintenance (not just window washing) from the roof.

The safest footing is secure, solid, slip-resistant and immobile.

 

[[email protected]]

Gigafactory on 6/20/15: Yahoo - login

 

[Model 3]

Thanks for posting that video. I'm still trying to figure out what fraction of the total ground area of the complete building has been covered so far. Is the rectangular building shown the entire building except for the two pentagonal end sections, or is it just one of the three central sections?

To me it looks like it half-width of 2 of the central sections, north-east part of the building.

 

[doctoxics]

Somewhere way back in this thread, the partially completed sections of the Gigafactory were superimposed on Tesla's schematic of the fully completed Gigafactory. Something like my version below.

 

[hobbes]

Somewhere way back in this thread, the partially completed sections of the Gigafactory were superimposed on Tesla's schematic of the fully completed Gigafactory. Something like my version below.
View attachment 84944

That makes sense - I was thinking what we are seeing now must be one of the three main sections, but the proportions just don´t match (the current building is too long and too narrow). The way you drew it woud also explain why it looks they will build it even longer (ground foundations). Did you check the orientation of the actual building vs. the schematic´s?

 

[AudubonB]

An interesting article just out (6/22) on Bloomberg about how the Gigafactory is changing the shape of and attitudes toward Reno:

Reno Bets Tesla Gigafactory Will Erase Image as Downmarket Vegas - Bloomberg Business

 

[doctoxics]

The orientation is consistent with Electric Avenue coming in from the left. One can see the entire length of the current structure from Electric Avenue near the Security Gate.

 

[ggies07]

An interesting article just out (6/22) on Bloomberg about how the Gigafactory is changing the shape of and attitudes toward Reno:

Reno Bets Tesla Gigafactory Will Erase Image as Downmarket Vegas - Bloomberg Business

Thanks for the article! Nice to see the local businesses get help already.

 

[MassModel3]

An interesting article just out (6/22) on Bloomberg about how the Gigafactory is changing the shape of and attitudes toward Reno:

Reno Bets Tesla Gigafactory Will Erase Image as Downmarket Vegas - Bloomberg Business

Thanks for posting this link. Good reading! I think my favorite stand-out line from the article was this: This fall the engineering school at University of Nevada at Reno will start offering a minor in Batteries and Energy Storage Technologies.

That's pretty cool.

 

[RobinF]

The Bloomberg article is good but there's another article at energy&capital which sports a nice overhead photo rendering of the construction site with an overlay showing 5 phases of construction.

 

[brandude87]

The Bloomberg article is good but there's another article at energy&capital which sports a nice overhead photo rendering of the construction site with an overlay showing 5 phases of construction.
View attachment 85066

FYI, the rendering that you are referencing was actually created by my brother (ajax) in Photoshop back in January by overlaying a Gigafactory rendering from Tesla, a distorted construction site photo, and Google Earth satellite imagery, which he posted on the forums here: Tesla Gigafactory Investor Thread - Page 189. The proportions should be accurate as he used a pickup truck in another construction photo to determine beam spacing. Another forum member (chickensevil) added in the 5 sections that you see as his best guess as to the 5 phases of construction. Also, the bottom fifth (let's call it subsection 5) of section 1 is still not complete as I explained in a previous post: Tesla Gigafactory Investor Thread - Page 206. That section was actually cannibalized to finish the steel work on subsections 1 - 4 of section 1. This would indicate that the Gigafactory (not counting foundation) is actually 20% complete, not 25% as Elon stated. If you include the foundation, then it is 25% complete.

 

[mrdoubleb]

To be fair, i believe Elon said, that what we see now is only 25% of the factory under construction, not "ready". i think this unit is expected to go-live q2-q3 next year.

 

[hobbes]

FYI, the rendering that you are referencing was actually created by my brother (ajax) in Photoshop back in January by overlaying a Gigafactory rendering from Tesla, a distorted construction site photo, and Google Earth satellite imagery, which he posted on the forums here: Tesla Gigafactory Investor Thread - Page 189. The proportions should be accurate as he used a pickup truck in another construction photo to determine beam spacing. Another forum member (chickensevil) added in the 5 sections that you see as his best guess as to the 5 phases of construction. Also, the bottom fifth (let's call it subsection 5) of section 1 is still not complete as I explained in a previous post: Tesla Gigafactory Investor Thread - Page 206. That section was actually cannibalized to finish the steel work on subsections 1 - 4 of section 1. This would indicate that the Gigafactory (not counting foundation) is actually 20% complete, not 25% as Elon stated. If you include the foundation, then it is 25% complete.

I was thinking I had seen this overlay before, now I know why . Fits the current status really well and that even though it was made almost half a year ago. Good job by ajax and chickensevil!

 

[krla]

- The first building phase of Tesla’s massive battery factory being constructed in Northern Nevada is nearly complete
- “They built the building,” Hill said. “They will be starting to move machinery into that building in order to make batteries relatively soon.”
- project is progressing at a speed even faster than anticipated by Tesla and Panasonic

Tesla’s first building phase nearly complete | Las Vegas Review-Journal

"Certainly by one year from now, that factory will be producing batteries," he said to lawmakers. "We're certainly satisfied and frankly excited about the progress that is being made."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/economic-officials-tesla-factory-open-235251532.html

 

[YoungStranger]

I've been following the Gigafactory for ages.. But can I ask a couple of naive questions?

First why does it have to be so big (and it has two stories as well!)? I get that there is a big demand, but surely they are processing and then shipping battery packs that a a fraction of size of cars, yet plant is bigger than NUMMI orboeings! Building 747s I can see requires a large space, but don't see the need here. Assuming that it is not a 'spruce goose' style ego trip, is there some undisclosed reason for its size?
Second, where are the raw materials coming from?. Again granted that lithium is a relatively small component of battery, but perhaps there are undisclosed reasons for size and location.

I've been through threads but haven't seen a full answer to these questions