Blog Musk Says All Superchargers Being Coverted to Battery/Solar Power

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says “almost all” Supercharger stations will eventually disconnect from the grid.

Musk made the comment on Twitter in response to a tweet pointing out that Superchargers utilize energy from traditional fossil fuels like coal.

https://twitter.com/x/status/873131202663690240

Musk notes that all Superchargers are being converted to solar/battery power. Images released earlier this year alongside the announcement of a major Supercharger network expansion featured large solar carports, a glimpse of what to expect.

While Supercharger expansion is currently in full swing, Musk did not offer a timeline for those stations to disconnect from the grid.

 

[skitch23]

Question for those who are way smarter than me.... will the solar supercharger stations still require that giant transformer thing? I don't know how to describe it other than whatever is hiding behind the wood slat enclosure. I would think that there would need to be some kind switchgear, but the renderings of the future Tesla station from a few months ago don't show that.

 

[miimura]

Renderings often don't show everything. IMHO, the grid connection is not going away anytime soon for any site that already has one.

The more interesting thing to me is when they will start building Supercharger sites in rural areas where a grid connection is not readily available. For example, the Nullarbor between Adelaide and Perth in Australia.

 

[TexasEV]

The things hiding inside the enclosures are the superchargers. What you see are just the pedestals (2 per supercharger).

 

[skitch23]

The things hiding inside the enclosures are the superchargers. What you see are just the pedestals (2 per supercharger).

Ok thanks. So it sounds like they would likely still need them. I'm only asking because I would like to make a tesla station for my matchbox cars and thought it would be fun to have solar panels on the shade canopies

 

[Ulmo]

Just to pick a few numbers out of the air:

An 8 stall unit x 120kw output x 25% average occupancy x 30% average load will output about 1,700 kwh / day.

Assuming 8 hours/day insolation and sufficient batteries to carry across the full 25 hour period, that means that you'd need 216 kw of solar panels (output).

Assuming 200 watts/sqm, that means 1000 sqm of solar panels. Let's triple that 3000 to allow for less than ideal weather, and/or higher demand days. That's an area 55m x 55m. And if you assume an installed cost of $1 per watt (unrealistic now, but it will get better), that's three hundred K$. That doesn't sound implausible.

You'll always need a grid connection to deal with high peaks and long periods of bad weather, but a zero net draw over the course of a year is probably not out of line.

That does seem like a lot of infrastructure, a lot of logistics, a lot of permitting, and a lot of land use planning, but let me do some more palm of the laptop keyboard thinking on it:

• They need to have a large area to cover to collect solar rays. Conveniently, most SuperChargers are already in and/or near to large parking lots, so they can offer covered parking to the entire large parking lots where many SuperChargers are located. Practically every SuperCharger I've ever visited has had a very large parking lot or a collection of many smaller parking lots near enough to it that they could completely cover the required energy needs.
• These would be huge arrays. It would require incremental, persistent and committed projects to one by one put them up in every part of every nearby parking lot as available. If the land use negotiators plan this right and do their job well, they could make these solar systems an asset to the property owners they'd be leasing the space from, by giving their patrons nice shaded parking. Do it wrong, and they can be eye sores, logistic nightmares, and constant problems for their landlords. This has to be done with experience and care.
• The current demands Tesla has for batteries is daunting. They are spending billions on a factory so large in Nevada they have to call it a Gigafactory, and even then, it is so insufficient that they sped up its construction and size by many times and plan many more copies of it worldwide. That is in addition to huge existing factories in Japan from Panasonic and even more factories they are using from Samsung, and that's just for Tesla's current needs, and Tesla currently has a backlog of battery production, at that! And, their needs are expanding!! So, once the Gigafactory #1 Battery (Nevada) gets up running at anything near a faster production run rate with enough output for larger portions of Tesla's huge battery demands, then they will finally start to have a battery supply big enough to sink into projects like this. This will be many months and years away. That allows them to install PowerPacks that effectively wash out all of the variations in the sun supplies being collected by the solar panels.
• Done!

I love this idea. As we can see, my three points above show that it is a lot of work, but very plausible, and the duality of it being a lot of work and plausible means that it's also sensible that it's taking them a long amount of time to do this. Of course, I want them to go faster. Of course, I'd look for ways to do all the above with more efficiency, with more exuberance and more sources for batteries. But, just from a corporate perspective, it makes plausible sense that it's taken them this long to get to this, and that it will be a while before they're deeper into it.

They already have various battery systems installed at various SuperChargers in various places: Gilroy and Hawthorne, to name a few off the top of my head. Ditto solar systems. But they are far smaller installations than would be necessary to go 100% clean energy into SuperCharger level uses.

 

[cpa]

I could envision this sort of installation at the 40-stall Supercharger sites in Kettleman City and Baker. I assume Tesla owns the land outright, the lot sizes are ample, the sun shines in those locations 300+ days per year, and the parking lot will have canopies over the charging stalls.

If the above is true (why not?) then Tesla will have an idea after a year or so as to the efficacy of having PV installations with battery storage. Then, Tesla can approach their landlords at "customary" Supercharger locations with the idea of installing X watts of PV panels with Y kWh of battery storage and making a deal for the cost of installation and the cost of electricity.