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Do Supercharger sites have stationary battery storage?
- Thread starter Kwillscherer1026
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- Tesla Energy
Tesla is planning to "eventually" have all superchargers be energy independent, meaning they would all have battery storage and solar panels. I don't know of any sites actually having these, but I do think some places like Hawthorne (SpaceX) have solar panels. It may even have battery storage, but I have not heard anyone talk about batteries there.
Tejon Ranch has them. I believe that Barstow and Mojave do, too. There are probably more - Hawthorne probably has them, for example.
Not a SuperCharger, but the Del Lago Park and Ride with a Blink QC and 4 L2 stations also have a Tesla battery storage system.
Not a SuperCharger, but the Del Lago Park and Ride with a Blink QC and 4 L2 stations also have a Tesla battery storage system.
The solar panels and battery storage system at Del Lago were installed by SDG&E (I worked on the project).
My experience (after driving several thousand miles and visiting many superchargers) is that not very many sites have stationary storage and it doesn't look to be part of the standard design.
Wouldn't an ideal path setup be a large solar array Direct Current (DC) to high voltage DC battery packs to DC Super Chargers be all non-AC, simply with voltage regulation based on selecting number of panels in serial and batteries in serial, for lower losses?
Such a DC-DC-DC system would need to be specially designed, and even have e.g. AC-DC supercharger equipment doubling as battery chargers, and would need engineering before even being built. So I have a feeling most SuperChargers aren't really set up to be integrated with solar and batteries, except as an afterthought.
With claimed faster charging times by the competition (BMW & another company), it might be best to integrate such new designs into whatever faster SuperChargers Tesla comes up with in the future, for e.g. Model 3 and Y, model S & X version 2, and SuperChargers version 2. Old SuperChargers could be recycled both into that system and into destination chargers.
I've also been waiting for DC-DC-DC home and destination solar->battery->car all-DC solutions, and I haven't seen any.
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Electric Joe
Member
Exactly! Solar panels on the roof of your garage charging a PowerWall (or several) inside your garage, which connects directly to your car each evening. It's all DC, and without any home wiring integration at all.
bryand
Member
My records indicate that I was using, on average, 27 kWh a night to charge my 70D in April. It would take 5 Powerwalls to supply that, and all the solar panels to keep them charged every day. It's not going to happen.
You'd think so, but no, it doesn't work that way. The thing is, the maximum power output of a solar panel is at different voltages under different temperature and light conditions. Being tied straight into a DC battery pack would leave the panels operating at a single voltage that's based on the battery voltage - which might mean leaving a fair amount of energy on the table.
There's programming called maximum power point tracking (MPPT) that attempts to optimize this, present in most modern string inverters and certainly the micro inverters. Having that panel by panel flexibility maximizes the return from the panels, and I believe will generally exceed the losses from inversion.
There is a third option, though. There are some systems like Solar Edge that do DC-DC conversion on a panel by panel basis to do MPPT within the framework of a high voltage DC string. In principle, you could build your straight DC system with something like that and pay only the tiny losses in the optimizers...
JOEV1
*****joe
For Solar panels together with Powerwalls AND Tesla Cars to really make sense, if there is also a version of Powerwalls available which function like a (mini) Supercharger at home. Then the energy from the Solar Panels which is stored during a sunny day can be used at night as well as for charging an EV when one gets home from work.
Of course, one must install several units to sufficiently charge an MS, MX or M3
As for myself, I have a Grid-connected Solar array (18 kWp) am limited to charge my MS at weekends. Even then I have to wait in the morning for the sun to provide at least 5-6 kWp until it "pays". Similar situation in the afternoon: I must disconnect my MS before the power gets too low.
The conclution: Despite having enough power from the Sun, I can not use it during the day because my MS is with me. And when I get home from work, the sun is more or less gone. In this situation, I feed the grid each year with over 20 MW.... and that for a rate of 3 cent/kW.
Of course, one must install several units to sufficiently charge an MS, MX or M3
As for myself, I have a Grid-connected Solar array (18 kWp) am limited to charge my MS at weekends. Even then I have to wait in the morning for the sun to provide at least 5-6 kWp until it "pays". Similar situation in the afternoon: I must disconnect my MS before the power gets too low.
The conclution: Despite having enough power from the Sun, I can not use it during the day because my MS is with me. And when I get home from work, the sun is more or less gone. In this situation, I feed the grid each year with over 20 MW.... and that for a rate of 3 cent/kW.
HankLloydRight
No Roads
Ok, that seems like a different system than I have. I also have a grid-tied solar system (albeit much smaller than yours), but the electrons are fungible. So any energy generated during the day is just credited against my account in kWh, which I can then draw out at night. So it doesn't matter when I charge my car, it's all the same price (6.6cents/kWh for solar). Anything above and beyond what the panels produce each month, I pull from the grid at 16c/kWh. It's called net-metering here.
So are you saying any "credit" you get for solar to the grid during the day is credited only at 3c/kWh, but when you pull it back out, it's at a much higher price? That's not right.
cdhowe
Member
Ok, that seems like a different system than I have. I also have a grid-tied solar system (albeit much smaller than yours), but the electrons are fungible. So any energy generated during the day is just credited against my account in kWh, which I can then draw out at night. So it doesn't matter when I charge my car, it's all the same price (6.6cents/kWh for solar). Anything above and beyond what the panels produce each month, I pull from the grid at 16c/kWh. It's called net-metering here.
So are you saying any "credit" you get for solar to the grid during the day is credited only at 3c/kWh, but when you pull it back out, it's at a much higher price? That's not right.
This system is quite common in areas where you don't have net metering available. Even here in Massachusetts (a very liberal state), because our local power company is municipally-owned, it is exempt from state net metering requirements. Therefore, we sell power to the grid at an average of $0.038 per kWh and we buy power at $0.12 per kWh. Even if we supply as much power as we consume, we owe the utility money. We eagerly await Powerwall batteries that will allow us to change this equation.
Nope -- it's not right or fair, but it is the current situation in many places.
doofenshmirtz
Member
More likely that they will repurpose old tesla (trade-in) batteries when they start becoming unfit for automotive - still a lot of life left for storage
HankLloydRight
No Roads
Inconceivable!
In Mass, do you get to "use" your own solar power first before pulling from the grid, like @JOEV1 described?
cdhowe
Member
Yes, any power we use before it leaves the house doesn't get billed at all. Because that offsets our need to buy power, I value that power at our retail rate of $0.12 to $0.19 per kWh (our rates vary through the year). And like JOEV1, I try to charge during the day when the sun is shining and the solar panels are producing power, but I don't stress a lot about it if it doesn't happen. After all, even retail electricity is a lot cheaper than gas.
When the solar panels are operating and I have a lot of charging to do, I do try to adjust the Tesla charging rate to match that of the panel output. Because we have a 9 kWh array and max power is only at noon, I usually set the Tesla to charge at 10-20 amps instead of the max 40 amps available on my NEMA 14-50 circuit. 20 amps just consumes about 1/2 of our solar array power and we make 50% power about 6 hours a day during the summer. Of course, at night or on cloudy days, we have to use the grid.
When the solar panels are operating and I have a lot of charging to do, I do try to adjust the Tesla charging rate to match that of the panel output. Because we have a 9 kWh array and max power is only at noon, I usually set the Tesla to charge at 10-20 amps instead of the max 40 amps available on my NEMA 14-50 circuit. 20 amps just consumes about 1/2 of our solar array power and we make 50% power about 6 hours a day during the summer. Of course, at night or on cloudy days, we have to use the grid.
JOEV1
*****joe
If I have to pull power from the grid it is 20 cent / kWh. This is because of a number of reasons (using the Grid etc.) So it is nearly 10x of what I get. I try to use as much power from the roof as I possible can because when it does not "leave the house" as cdhowe puts it, it is not billed in any way because it is not metered.
Some of the exess power is now used for a heat pump in winter for heating, for lighting, freezer and hot water etc. in the house.
(On a sunny day the solar panels produce about 130 kWh / Day) So there is plenty of power left to charge several Powerwall units.
Would be great if these units were able to charge a MS in much the same fashion as a Supercharger or Chademo does. Namely DC-DC.
Just think, one gets home from work with a low SOC, and while getting ready to go out for dinner etc. the MS is ready again within 20 min. or so.
Some of the exess power is now used for a heat pump in winter for heating, for lighting, freezer and hot water etc. in the house.
(On a sunny day the solar panels produce about 130 kWh / Day) So there is plenty of power left to charge several Powerwall units.
Would be great if these units were able to charge a MS in much the same fashion as a Supercharger or Chademo does. Namely DC-DC.
Just think, one gets home from work with a low SOC, and while getting ready to go out for dinner etc. the MS is ready again within 20 min. or so.
If you are in Austria, why not invest in a storage system like E3DC or Sonnen? They would be perfect for your application.
