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.

 

[SageBrush]

Modern coal plants, as bad as they are, are cleaner than gasoline automobiles. Even powered by coal, an EV is cleaner than a stinker.

Coal combustion emits Nox and Sox way in excess of a SULEV ICE
As for CO2, the devil is in the cars compared.

One fair example is the Prius Prime since it is a plug-in hybrid
It is rated 54 mpg as an ICE and 250 Wh per mile in EV mode; both drivetrains are highly optimized

If you take ICE carbon as 25 lbs/gallon (well to wheel) and
2 lbs per kWh utility emissions from coal

You end up with
Petrol: 25 lbs/gallon divided by 54 mpg = 0.463 lbs CO2 per mile
Coal: 0.5 lbs per mile

So for equivalent cars, EV from coal or ICE from petrol are pretty close CO2 wise.

This should not be a surprising result since both are combusting hydrocarbons.

 

[SageBrush]

By the way, @daniel,

You may find this link informative
Power Profiler | US EPA

The tool uses eGRID data to show you EV emissions by power utility.
It thinks that Spokane in 35% coal sourced for electricity so the EV results look good but not great. By that I mean they do not match my poor Prius Prime with its 25 mile range battery run off home PV and the rest from petrol.

 

[johnnyS]

At the original supercharger announcement event, Elon said superchargers would be net zero. It was exciting to think we could travel around the country on solar energy which is probably why Elon is making this promise again. In reality only a handful of superchargers have solar panels. I remember someone calculated how many panels would be needed at Barstow to meet usage--it would be a huge field. Barstow must be about the best location for solar, but the supercharger is surrounded by fast food businesses, a motel, and the interstate. It would be cool to see an acre of solar panels adjacent to the supercharger. Places that have space for that much solar do not have the amenities we like while we charge.

 

[whitex]

No grid connection at all? I can see the story headlines already: On a cloudy Thanksgiving weekend, hundreds of Teslas - S X and 3 - stranded at superchargers praying for sunlight. Elon Must tweets "hang on, energy coming soon!". I can see solar energy at each supercharger, but not as the sole energy source as the title of this post implies. The superchargers would have to store sufficient energy in batteries to handle the once or twice a year rush of travelers - extremely inefficient. Follow up story: Elon Musk solves SC peak demands times - suggests sliding holidays, "Celebrate Thanksgiving on your birthday!".

 

[SwTslaGrl]

I think Superchargers will be part of Tesla energy network: Tesla announces new electric grid services by bundling Powerwalls and Powerpacks

 

[franklandfield]

"coverted"?!?!

 

[franklandfield]

Or covfefe?!

 

[daniel]

"coverted"?!?!

Good catch!

 

[rolosrevenge]

The person who tweeted at Elon is an ignorant fool. Elon should have schooled him in how the national power grid mix actually works. Disconnecting the superchargers from the grid is a very, very, stupid idea, as it will only results in raising costs to Tesla. Some solar and batteries to manage demand charges are wise, but completely disconnect is beyond foolish.

 

[ggr]

Musk himself said, at the solar tile launch, disconnecting from the grid was not one of the goals.

 

[Lloyd]

If he could arbitrage the power in a Virtual Net Meter form, he could buy a large piece of desert, put solar panels, and while still using "grid power" he would be virtually off grid by the net usage.

 

[mongo]

What if Tesla built a semi tractor trailer based on powerpacks:
50,000 lbs net load / 3,575 lbs per power pack yields ~3 MWh with an AC delivery rate of 700 kW. DC would be higher and they already have DC-DC converters built in.

A 40' trailer would span 5 foot parking spaces, so it could supply 5 vehicles @ 120 kW each, or supply 10 vehicles at 60 (both sides of trailer).

Time to 0% SOC ranges from 4 hours to days, depending on usage. Starts out with drivers swapping trailers, and later goes full autonomous.

Costs:
3 MWh is around $3,000 depending where you live (10 cents per kWh). Powerpacks are 250/ kWh retail, say 200 internal pricing, $600,000 in packs, $12,000 in trailer (could be reused, but let's be conservative), 5000 cycles = 4.1 cents per kW. Range from solar plant, say 4 hours round trip (could also ship by train) 4*$25 = 100 driver cost, 3.3 cents per kW 7.4 cents total. Leaves 2.6 cents per kW/ $78 per cycle for generation and tractor.

Bonuses:
No infrastructure cost to deploy: can add them anywhere there is space in the time it takes to drive them there.
Flexibility for usage demands: holiday weekends add more units on interstates
Local events: add more chargers on routes to/ from (SpaceX launch, annual meeting)
Independent of grid: charge during an outage/ post natural disaster.
With feedback and tracking from vehicles, locations can be added in near real time with new spots fed back to nav system.

And totally off grid...

The powerpacks would only cover 50% of a 40 foot trailer. The additional space could serve as restrooms or storage for spare parts.

(For super annoyance, trailer sides could serve as digital billboards)

Edit: math error on pack cost

 

[Rocky_H]

This almost has to be the case. In much of the world, it is a common occurrence that there are cloudy skies during winter months, sometimes for days, weeks, months at a time (I've spent time in northern Europe). You will exhaust the batteries, no matter how robust, and no matter how many panels and how efficient they are.

There is a guy here in my town who has built a couple of houses for himself that are net zero energy, with solar and battery backup and no natural gas connection. He does have to deal with this occasional grid connection issue, though. Our city is in a valley between some mountain ridges, and sometimes in the winter we get a weather condition called "the inversion". Cold cloudy air gets trapped in the valley with high pressure systems that settle above it, and we sometimes get weeks of cold grey cloudy skies until some kind of storm can come in to disrupt it and blow it out of the way.

He has a transfer switch so he can keep his house disconnected from the grid for about 11-ish months of the year, but during the winter, there will sometimes be two or three times that the battery system gets depleted, and he'll have to turn on the grid connection for a day to refill it. It's one of those cases where being able to use the grid a very small percent of the time saves you huge costs in not needing a vastly oversized battery array to cover 100% uptime.

 

[JSkrehot]

Tejon ranch picture from google maps:

View attachment 230558

This is 379% larger system than mine (24 panel, 6.12 kWh), assuming panels produce same watts. Lets assume they produce more, and that it is 450% the capacity of mine. My system produces around 43 kWh on a south facing roof daily right now. That system there, can't produce more than 193.5 kWh/day on it's best days. I do not see how SuperCharger stations can go off grid.

 

[Rocky_H]

This is 379% larger system than mine (24 panel, 6.12 kWh), assuming panels produce same watts. Lets assume they produce more, and that it is 450% the capacity of mine. My system produces around 43 kWh on a south facing roof daily right now. That system there, can't produce more than 193.5 kWh/day on it's best days. I do not see how SuperCharger stations can go off grid.

Without the California-tinted glasses, there certainly are some Supercharger stations that could go off grid in the short term. In the areas that I drive like Baker City Oregon, Elko Nevada, Tremonton Utah, they probably only get around 5 cars a day at most. However, this brings in the opposite question, of how useful is it really to do solar there if the usage is so low?

 

[Lloyd]

Some supercharger stations are next to LARGE uncovered parking lots. If they covered all of the parking lots adjacent with solar AND sold the excess back to the power company Elon could do this and be financially feasible.

Other locations do not have the area available to provide that much power.

 

[Lloyd]

See Manteca supercharter with all of the adjacent parking uncovered!


Google Maps

 

[daniel]

Some supercharger stations are next to LARGE uncovered parking lots. If they covered all of the parking lots adjacent with solar AND sold the excess back to the power company Elon could do this and be financially feasible.

Other locations do not have the area available to provide that much power.

In areas with plenty of sun, it's definitely economical to put up photovoltaics and sell excess electricity back to the grid. But then you are not "disconnected from the grid."

 

[Lloyd]

In areas with plenty of sun, it's definitely economical to put up photovoltaics and sell excess electricity back to the grid. But then you are not "disconnected from the grid."

In Elon speak, that may mean not using a net amount of grid power, not a true disconnection from the grid.

 

[Skotty]

He should not have said anything about disconnecting from grid. Only that they would convert to solar power or renewable energy. There's no reason to disconnect from grid in places where power is already green, unless it has a financial advantage, which I highly doubt. And when the infrastructure is really sufficient to disconnect from grid, you may find it has actually become the grid, and thus you didn't really disconnect from it so much as replace it with a new grid. Disconnect from grid was just a popular catch phrase bandwagon that he really shouldn't have jumped on. At best, it's a stretch of the truth. That said, he should definitely talk about the initiative of converting to sustainable green energy -- that's the whole point of his company, and it's important to reiterate that this plan extends to powering the superchargers at some point down the road.