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Tesla Plans To Disconnect 'Almost All' Superchargers From the Grid In Favor of Solar and Battery Power (electrek.co)
Only half a dozen Supercharger stations or so out of the over 800 stations have solar arrays and batteries, but that may be about to change. Elon Musk said Tesla plans to deploy more battery and solar systems with the upcoming "Version 3" of the Supercharger, adding that "almost all Superchargers will disconnect from the electricity grid." Electrek reports: Previously, Musk said that Tesla's new Powerpack and solar arrays will power some Supercharger stations in sunny regions to go off-grid -- adding that "the grid won't be needed for moderate use Superchargers in non-snowy regions." While it makes sense to add solar arrays and battery packs, it's not clear why there would be a need to completely disconnect from the grid, which is often still useful -- especially if net metering is available. Even in regions where coal dominates electricity generation, electric cars are still more efficient than some of the most efficient gas-powered cars. Therefore, the argument could have ended here, but Musk apparently wants to take Tesla's Supercharger network off-grid as part of the company's mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Depending on the size and popularity of a Supercharger station, which generally varies from 6 partly used stalls to 20 stalls in almost constant use, Tesla would need some significantly large solar arrays at some stations -- almost football field in size. Unless there are some impressive advancements in efficiency, it's not clear how they would make it happen.
This is already a solved problem.
You clearly don't believe we're industrious enough to use an "unpredictable" energy source, so you're suggesting we should just call it quits instead.
It is NOT a solved problem and as industrious as Americans are they cannot break the laws of physics.
The problem with batteries, flywheels, and such is that they use materials to produce. This means that they take up space, cost money, and must come from something. This is mostly about cost since the way we measure space and materials is on how much it costs. The cost of solar and wind power will always cost more than coal and nuclear power because it takes more material and space to get the same output. This is especially true since the storage systems and redundant power also take more space and material.
We can add in labor costs too. People make a big deal on how wind and solar now employs as much people as coal now, or whatever the claim is. This not good, it is very bad. Coal, nuclear, and natural gas each produces about 1/3rd of the electricity in the USA, while wind and solar combined produces about 1/20th. If you translate that manpower into dollars then you have another cost problem above the space and material costs.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That's roughly what I came up with. But I don't have a lot of faith in my math. And we're being rather generous I think. Remember that this needs to work on a cloudy week near the Winter Solstice with short days and low sun angles.
Not that the concept is necessarily unworkable. But maybe we need 2067 technology and costs not 2017 technology.and costs, for it to work.well.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The problem is that this is not feasible with current technology going forward, not unless you fill up just a handful of cars per day.
I did a study recently for an company looking at the capability of converting a few petrol stations to fast chargers. We took some simple assumptions: Take the average city edge fuel station (not country station, and not a heavily loaded inner city one). Assume 5% of the amount of cars end up wanting to charge up. Assume out of those that 40% will be charging during peak travel time and 10% at night time (that last bit works in our favour here). And a nastier one: Assume that anyone charging will be doing a 75% charge (incapable of charging at home, or doing a long distance route). What we came up with:
a) 10MVA grid connection (24x larger than the largest petrol station) without storage.
b) 1.5MVA grid connection + local battery storage. The local battery storage in this case ended up being grid scale sized storage and looking at suppliers of vanadium redox batteries we were looking at a 5 shipping container batteryfarm at every servo.
c) Local microturbine system + battery storage (rejected because the idea of people visibly seeing that their green cars are being filled by burning hydrocarbons was a mental hurdle that would affect people using the service).
Personally I like Elon Musk's idea of swapping batteries better. But this to me looks like little more than marketing. It is something that is feasible now but ONLY now. It won't work going forward without a massive leap in battery performance. If you're filling up a handful of cars a day, no problem providing it's sunny. If Tesla is successful in making the world switch to electric cars, it will fail in keeping it's service stations off the grid.
Rule of thumb: If you need a MV or HV grid connection, chances are you're not going off the grid with solar. Tesla should focus on houses, commercial properties, schools, etc. Don't distract from where they can make a real difference in the world.
I see a fair number of solar arrays cluttering the landscape in Vermont and Northern New York. I'm a bit skeptical of their effectiveness in Winter due to ice, snow, short days, abundant clouds, low sun angle, etc, etc, etc. But vandalism doesn't seem to be an issue.
Like a Canadian comedian once pointed out -- drive by shootings aren't all that big a problem in places where rolling down the car window risks frostbite and no one hangs out on street corners anyway. Sort of applies to busting up/spray painting solar panels as well.
No skepticism needed, we know what the facts are. Germany's solar averages about 10% capacity factor annually. So if you have a similar northerly climate with cloudy and snowy days, you'll have a similar result. Germany's panels produce very little energy Dec through February on average.