I have also not seen any evidence that Tesla plans to open existing stations to other EVs. It's possible that they will only use grants to open new stations and have dual TPC and CHAdeMO plugs on them, for example (which would meet the letter of the law for the grants, although it is more likely that they would do dual TPC and CCS plugs). But they have zero motivation to add plugs to existing stations unless the government pays them for ongoing maintenance, and the issue here is that the grants (at least in Texas) seem geared toward getting new stations constructed rather than maintaining existing sites.
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Biden meeting with Musk and other CEOs notes "broad consensus" on charging interoperability
- Thread starter Mockingbird
- Start date
The $7.5 billion subsidy, which is what Tesla is going after next, specifically requires CCS for funding, so no CCS is out of the question.
Money is also available for existing non-compliant stations (i.e. no CCS) to be upgraded.
Source? The bill I saw mentioned that it has to use a "standard" connector, and CHAdeMO is one of several standardized connectors. It was passed by Congress back in November of last year. Any changes to the law would have to come from Congress.
Yeah but what is Tesla's motivation to "upgrade" working stations? It does nothing to improve their network. Their design teams are busy enough filling in holes in their network.
The Secretary will not certify a State’s designated Alternative Fuel Corridors for electric vehicles as being “fully built out” until the Secretary finds that the State’s corridors meet the following criteria:
- EV charging infrastructure is installed every 50 miles along the State’s portions of the Interstate Highway System within 1 travel mile of the Interstate, unless a discretionary exception has been granted;
- EV charging infrastructure includes at least four 150kW Direct Current (DC) Fast Chargers with Combined Charging System (CCS) ports capable of simultaneously DC charging four EVs;
- EV charging infrastructure has minimum station power capability at or above 600kW and supports at least 150kW per port simultaneously across four ports for charging; and
- Such additional considerations deemed necessary and appropriate by the Secretary of Transportation
Mitigating demand charges.
Tesla may have profitable charging stations in California, but that is clearly not the case in states like North Dakota.
President Biden, USDOT and USDOE Announce $5 Billion over Five Years for National EV Charging Network, Made Possible by Bipartisan Infrastructure Law | FHWA
Joint Energy and Transportation Office and DriveElectric.gov Available to Assist States with Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plans
highways.dot.gov
Something tells me that Tesla isn't too concerned about whether they're making or losing money in ND. Those stations in ND are there to reassure their customers that Tesla vehicles (which are probably mostly purchased by urban customers at this point) are capable of traversing places like North Dakota if the need arises. The entire state of North Dakota has 5 SC sites with 40 total stalls; there are more stalls than that within 5 miles of me. My county alone has 22 SC sites, with 2 more under construction, and I'm too lazy to go through the map and count how many stalls there are at all 22 sites, but I'm pretty sure it's over 400. Hell, even if we look at rural areas in my state, Tesla has more SC stalls at Firebaugh (56), Kettleman City (95 at 2 sites across the road from each other, 40 at one and 55 at the other), and Tejon Ranch (56), than it does in all of ND.
You are missing the point.
There are plenty of unprofitable Superchargers around the country.
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The profit comes from: I literally would never have bought a Model Y had there not been superchargers in North Dakota.
No, the entire point is something similar to the network effect for internet services. The sites in rural areas add value to the entire system just by existing. With only 8 stalls per site in areas like ND, the value they add would actually degrade if they are ever busy to the extent that someone ever has to wait. And then Tesla would have to dedicate engineering resources to increasing the number of stalls at those sites instead of filling in holes in their existing network or increasing density of sites (i.e. I still can't comfortably make it to and from Yosemite using the CA-140 route in my M3 LR without charging to over 80% at Merced because there are literally no fast chargers at all in Mariposa -- no SCs and no other brands either).
Suppose that 10 years from now, those Superchargers in North Dakota fills up and Tesla has to upgrade them.
That leaves a very long time for Tesla to be losing money on demand charges.
That's the problem with your mindset: it's completely centered around California.
Much of the rest of the country is not like California.
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Assuming, of course, that they haven't mitigated their demand charges by creating special contracts with utility companies to manage storage. Speaking of Tesla Storage Systems and the Dakotas:
BP Selects Tesla As Supplier For New Energy Storage System At Titan 1 Wind Energy Installation - CleanTechnica
Tesla will build and supply the energy storage facility to be installed at BP's Titan 1 wind energy power plant in South Dakota, US, the company has revealed. The new energy storage facility is expected to be installed during the second half of 2018, according to the company.
cleantechnica.com
So long as their energy division agrees to store several megawatt hours worth of energy during the day and release it when the utility can actually make more money selling it to other people, I don't see why utilities wouldn't waive their demand charges in a special contract. We know Tesla operates a storage site at Moss Landing, CA in a joint venture with PG&E.
But in any case, with only 8 SC stalls, the demand charges aren't going to be that high to begin with. Nothing compared to the demand charges for their 55 V3 stall site in Kettleman City across the street from another 40 V3 stall site.
Now, you are just making assumption that utility companies will waiver demand charges.Assuming, of course, that they haven't mitigated their demand charges by creating special contracts with utility companies to manage storage. Speaking of Tesla Storage Systems and the Dakotas:
BP Selects Tesla As Supplier For New Energy Storage System At Titan 1 Wind Energy Installation - CleanTechnica
Tesla will build and supply the energy storage facility to be installed at BP's Titan 1 wind energy power plant in South Dakota, US, the company has revealed. The new energy storage facility is expected to be installed during the second half of 2018, according to the company.
So long as their energy division agrees to store several megawatt hours worth of energy during the day and release it when the utility can actually make more money selling it to other people, I don't see why utilities wouldn't waive their demand charges in a special contract. We know Tesla operates a storage site at Moss Landing, CA in a joint venture with PG&E.
But in any case, with only 8 SC stalls, the demand charges aren't going to be that high to begin with. Nothing compared to the demand charges for their 55 V3 stall site in Kettleman City across the street from another 40 V3 stall site.
Sure, after you made the assumption that Tesla actually cares about the demand charges in the first place. But Tesla could also put the storage directly on-site if the utilities refuse. Then when demand is highest, they draw from their own storage in lieu of drawing from the grid to mitigate their own demand charges.
Electrify America has on-site energy storage in many locations and said that the on-site storage reduces demand charges at those locations by a third.
Of cause, there's the cost of the battery itself.
It's certain not a magical solution to demand charges.
How many Superchargers (in the US) have on-site energy storage anyway?
You'd have to ask Tesla, although what I'd be interested in figuring out (more generally) is how they manage demand charges. Note that Electrify America/Volkswagen has no energy storage solution division, so they wouldn't be capable of getting special contracts with utilities. The demand charges really only make sense if they're occurring at times when rates peak; at off-peak times, the utility probably doesn't really care what the demand is. Tesla's Moss Landing storage facility, for example, is capable of providing 182.5 MW of power to the grid and storing 730 MWh (i.e. it can provide 182.5 MW of power for 4 hours) which is basically the entire peak hour window for PG&E rate plans. That's enough to offset 730 V3 stalls all running at 250 kW. In the real world, since V3 stalls only run at 250 kW for a matter of maybe 5 minutes, it probably offsets the demand from 1500-2500 V3 stalls. If I were Tesla, I'd negotiate to have up to 182.5 MW worth of demand charges across the SC sites nullified by this power station, and to the extent that the various SC sites across PG&E territory are consuming less than the amount of power that the station is providing, PG&E can charge its customers peak rates for it and pocket the money.
Again, you are just making an assumption that Tesla gets special rate that no one else gets.
Even if it's true, it's only going to be in some special cases that's not going to be true throughout the country.
Elon just said that they are going to add Type 1 CCS connectors to the Superchargers in North America in an interview with Financial Times. No mention as to the timeline or if it will be all sites or only select sites. (Like they are keeping some sites Tesla only in Europe while opening others.)
Interesting. I wonder what the maximum current will be on the CCS1 connectors compared to the TPC connectors. I would expect the current limits to be lower because they have to conform to the standard.
When I was looking at this like last week in the J1772 standard, the only reference in that spec was for a 400 amp limit on the DC pins over the span of hours, if anyone was going to be plugging in a CCS1 for hours. For shorter periods, the J1772 incorporation of the IEC-62196 CCS1 spec at least seems to say, "Go wild as long as you don't short anything or overheat." It appears you can go at least to if not well above 500 amps and still be conforming, so at least 200 kW should be on the table.
