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Tesla has recently agreed to merge with Solar City. To help publicise the merger, Solar City recently published this YouTube Video about a solar installation using Tesla’s ‘power pack’ batteries that now powers the island of Ta’u in American Samoa.

In Google Earth we can see the solar array under construction:

Ta’u is not the first island to be powered by solar. The nearby Island of Tokelau has been powered by solar since 2013. Sadly, the imagery is a bit old (a recurring theme in this post) and we cannot see the solar panels. The Danish island of Samso claims to be the first island in the world to go 100% renewable, but we could not find any imagery of their wind turbines.

A common complaint about renewables such as solar and wind, is what to do when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Tesla solves this problem with batteries. But another island, El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands, uses pumped water storage combined with wind turbines.

Moving away from islands, we had a look at this Wikipedia list of the largest photovoltaic power stations in the world (over 100 MW). Solar has really taken off around the world in the last few years, and Google Earth imagery can’t keep up. The second on the list, Kamuthi Solar Power Project, was built in just a few months between June and September 2016 and no sign of it can be seen in current Google Earth imagery. Top of the list is Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, China, which can be seen in Landsat imagery when zoomed out, but as you zoom in to higher resolution satellite imagery, it disappears, as the high resolution imagery was captured before it was built.

Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, China.

We have put together this KML file which includes the above mentioned islands as well as the list from Wikipedia where coordinates are given.

The post Tesla powers an island appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Tesla has started taking orders for the Model 3, its first electric car targeted at the mass market rather than the luxury car market. It was unveiled at a special even in California last night, March 31st, 2016. Tesla’s cars run on lithium-ion batteries. To make enough batteries for their cars, Tesla is building what will be the world’s largest lithium-ion battery factory, Gigafactory 1.

Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 under construction.

To make the batteries, they need large quantities of lithium. They are hoping to get a lot of it from a mine in Nevada, not far from Gigafactory 1. Read more about it here. They will, however, probably need lithium from all over the world.

Some lithium mines look pretty much like any other mine in Google Earth, but a number of the larger ones get the lithium from brine water pumped up from underground into large evaporation ponds. Evaporation ponds used for obtaining salt from seawater often turn red, as we have seen before but it seems lithium evaporation ponds tend to be turquoise, with occasionally some green.

Silver Peak, Nevada

Atacama salt flats, Chile

Atacama salt flats, Chile

Atacama salt flats, Chile

Lake Zabuye, China

To find the above locations in Google Earth, as well as a few other related locations, download this KML file.

While researching this story we came across an image in South America dated February 28th, 2015, which is not yet in ‘historical imagery’. This means that there has been at least one imagery update in Google Earth since the last one we reported. We will not be able to tell the extent of the update until the imagery is pushed into ‘historical imagery’.

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