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Solar superchargers

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I thought when we got our tesla that we would be able to drive to Florida from Toronto. I had heard that there were plans to have all superchargers be solar by the end of 2021. I have learned that that is not the case and that most of the superchargers on the route are powered by a lot of coal. Does anyone know when the superchargers are making the switch to solar energy? I'd still love to go but don't feel comfortable about using coal power.
 
Out here in California there are lots of solar panels stretching up the hill sides. We also have huge wind farms. They all feed the grid, but still, most of our power comes from natural gas generation. Personally, I have 66 solar panels at my house, so I'm doing my part, and when I'm on a trip I figure those electrons are still filling the grid and pushing electrons that I can use. But just because you have a coal fired generator near you, what matters is that you're doing what you can for your personal use. If that seems like it's not enough, maybe you need to put up a few solar panels at your house, but there's not much you can do about the big commercial generator near you. Driving a Tesla is a big step.
 
Out here in California there are lots of solar panels stretching up the hill sides. We also have huge wind farms. They all feed the grid, but still, most of our power comes from natural gas generation. Personally, I have 66 solar panels at my house, so I'm doing my part, and when I'm on a trip I figure those electrons are still filling the grid and pushing electrons that I can use. But just because you have a coal fired generator near you, what matters is that you're doing what you can for your personal use. If that seems like it's not enough, maybe you need to put up a few solar panels at your house, but there's not much you can do about the big commercial generator near you. Driving a Tesla is a big step.
I love that you can do that with your solar panels! Are they tesla ones? I can't wait for ours! Unfortunately, I believe Ontario is still just a one-way grid so I'm not giving, just taking!
 
There was never any plan to make all the superchargers solar. The chargers are at mercy of the local utility and the local governing laws regarding solar production and net metering. The cost to make awnings large enough to trickle charge a battery storage device would be extremely expensive.
 
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There was never any plan to make all the superchargers solar. The chargers are at mercy of the local utility and the local governing laws regarding solar production and net metering. The cost to make awnings large enough to trickle charge a battery storage device would be extremely expensive.
 
I thought when we got our tesla that we would be able to drive to Florida from Toronto.
Yes - you can drive your Tesla to Florida from Toronto. There is plenty of Supercharger coverage.

I had heard that there were plans to have all superchargers be solar by the end of 2021.
I've not heard of those plans, but I've only been following Tesla closely since 2017. It will take many more years before Tesla is able to equip even half of their sites with solar panels and batteries.

I have learned that that is not the case and that most of the superchargers on the route are powered by a lot of coal.
I wouldn't say most of the Superchargers are powered by coal. The most direct route takes you through West Virginia, which is very pro-coal state, but overall, the eastern seaboard has a very diverse mix of energy generation. Nevertheless, powering your electric car from the grid mix is far cleaner than flying or driving a gasoline car.

See www.pjm.com for more information on what's powering the mid-Atlantic region. It's about 50% natural gas, 25% nuclear, 20% coal, and the rest hydro, renewables and other sources.

pjm.png


Does anyone know when the superchargers are making the switch to solar energy?
It will be a long, ongoing process, and even with a full solar canopy and battery storage, they will still rely on the grid.

I'd still love to go but don't feel comfortable about using coal power.
You can mitigate that by driving more efficiently (slowly) through West Virginia. Slow down and enjoy the incredibly scenery. ;)
 
I believe that this link (on the same site) more directly addresses the question of how electricity is generated within each US state:


(As a side note, I was just poking around on that site, and I thought it ironic that Florida, the "sunshine state," produces less electricity via solar [3.7%] than does my home state of Rhode Island [4.2%].)

That said, there's a lot of variation from location to location within each state. Also, in many (most? all?) states, it's possible to buy electricity from particular sources. I'm on a residential "green-up" program here in Rhode Island, so that (on paper) my electricity all comes from wind power. Basically, I pay to sequester the renewable energy credits (RECs) from wind farms so that they don't count toward the state-mandated green energy goals imposed on the utilities, thus forcing them to build out more green energy. My own contribution is a drop in the bucket, of course.

As I understand it, both EVgo and Electrify America do something similar, but on an industrial scale. (I've not dug deep on these claims, though; it could be that they're "greenwashing" their activities.) I haven't heard anything similar about Tesla's Superchargers, but I could simply be unaware of what they're doing. There have indeed been pitches by Tesla suggesting widespread deployment of solar panels at Superchargers, but as a practical matter, I haven't seen it, myself, aside from photos of a few sites that I've never visited in person. Even if it were to happen, it might or might not matter; it depends on state regulations and how the RECs are managed. Artists' renditions, or even actual photographs, of solar awnings over DC fast chargers don't really mean much by themselves.
 
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Out here in California there are lots of solar panels stretching up the hill sides. We also have huge wind farms. They all feed the grid, but still, most of our power comes from natural gas generation. Personally, I have 66 solar panels at my house, so I'm doing my part, and when I'm on a trip I figure those electrons are still filling the grid and pushing electrons that I can use. But just because you have a coal fired generator near you, what matters is that you're doing what you can for your personal use. If that seems like it's not enough, maybe you need to put up a few solar panels at your house, but there's not much you can do about the big commercial generator near you. Driving a Tesla is a big step.
GODDAMN, 66 panels?!?! (I have like 13x400W, LOL.)
 
I thought when we got our tesla that we would be able to drive to Florida from Toronto. I had heard that there were plans to have all superchargers be solar by the end of 2021. I have learned that that is not the case and that most of the superchargers on the route are powered by a lot of coal. Does anyone know when the superchargers are making the switch to solar energy? I'd still love to go but don't feel comfortable about using coal power.
Even if your trip was 100% powered by coal, you'd probably still fare better (environmentally) versus taking a gas burner.

As you travel though, the coal/natural gas content of the electric grid is going to vary. The map below shows what efficiency gas car you'd have to be driving to break even with a typical EV driving in the same area:


MicrosoftTeams-image-2-1125x900.png


and every year, this just keeps getting better and better.

As @srs5694 implied, Tesla's approach to "greening" Superchargers is likely to take the form of Tesla purchasing RECs rather than physically putting solar awnings on Supercharger sites. In fact, according to Tesla's 2021 Environmental Impact Report, you may not have anything to worry about as they claim that the Supercharger network is 100% renewably powered:

100% Renewable Supercharger network

Efficiency of an ICE vehicle does not improve throughout its lifetime. EVs will get cleaner over their lifetime as the grid becomes greener. We will continue to look for ways to enable our customers to further reduce their emissions beyond our vehicles — through solar and storage products and software to help differentiate when the grid is greener and pulling more renewable energy like solar or wind.

The global Supercharger network was 100% renewable in 2021, achieved through a combination of onsite resources and annual renewable matching. Additionally, all home charging in California was 100% renewable through annual renewable matching. Therefore, the only emissions from the use of Tesla vehicles were a result of home charging outside of California and use of third-party charging networks.

I'm not sure if by "renewable matching" they are talking about actual purchased RECs, or whether it's some kind of shell game being played with solar panel installations giving them the credits they need to count towards Supercharger energy expenditures. I'm also curious as to the California home charging statement. Are they somehow measuring how much home charging was done within California and including that amount of energy in the total they are seeking credit for?
 
I'm also curious as to the California home charging statement. Are they somehow measuring how much home charging was done within California and including that amount of energy in the total they are seeking credit for?
That struck me as odd, too. I suppose that Tesla could, in theory, monitor how much home charging Teslas are doing and purchase RECs to cover that total. This sounds like the sort of program that Tesla would be promoting heavily as a way of bolstering their "green" credentials. Without that public promotion, I can't think of any reason a profit-oriented business would do such a thing, since it'd just cost money with no benefit to the company. It also seems like an odd way to go about supporting renewable power, and it's a little Big Brother-ish, too. All in all, I'm just sort of scratching my head on this claim.
 
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Even if your trip was 100% powered by coal, you'd probably still fare better (environmentally) versus taking a gas burner.
This is basically true (some pedantic folks will argue that a Prius on gasoline is better than some EVs but if so, its only by a minuscule margin), however, it gets even better:
If you consider that, by driving electric, you're increasing the market size for EVs, thus enabling economies of scale to make them cheaper, so that more people will be able to afford them, that will further reduce costs and enable even more people to drive electric.
Since the average grid is much better than a coal-fired one; enabling more people to buy EVs instead of ICE will be significantly better, thus accelerating a virtuous cycle.
 
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Hmm just for grins, it looks like about 15000 sq ft of solar panels would be needed to power one 350kW Supercharger. That’s about 1/3 of a football field. At peak solar production time (only a few hours per day). Neglecting efficiency losses, sun angle, latitude, etc etc etc. and how do you charge at night or on a rainy day? ;-). Oh yea let’s add some Tesla batteries ;-)
 
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According to the EPA Power profiler, that section of Alaska is 63% powered by hdyro (and 27% by oil!) Power Profiler | US EPA

All the populous areas are AKGD. That's over half NG.

It'd be interesting to see a population-adjusted image.
 
Hmm just for grins, it looks like about 15000 sq ft of solar panels would be needed to power one 350kW Supercharger. That’s about 1/3 of a football field. At peak solar production time (only a few hours per day). Neglecting efficiency losses, sun angle, latitude, etc etc etc. and how do you charge at night or on a rainy day? ;-). Oh yea let’s add some Tesla batteries ;-)
The interesting thing is that overall DCFC charger use has a bell-curve that maps quite well to solar PV.
 
Hmm just for grins, it looks like about 15000 sq ft of solar panels would be needed to power one 350kW Supercharger. That’s about 1/3 of a football field. At peak solar production time (only a few hours per day). Neglecting efficiency losses, sun angle, latitude, etc etc etc. and how do you charge at night or on a rainy day? ;-). Oh yea let’s add some Tesla batteries ;-)
That mostly assumes continuous use of the DC fast charger. When nobody's charging, the solar panels' output would either be wasted or go elsewhere. Flipped around, using batteries, which you mention (dismissively?) would enable capturing and storing a smaller solar array's output for later delivery to cars. It would take more complex calculations, including estimates of usage at a fast-charging site, to estimate how many solar panels and how much on-site storage would be needed to make a site more-or-less self-sufficient in energy needs. This would, of course, be a statistical analysis, and so would inevitably be off for days with heavy or light use, very sunny vs. very cloudy days, seasonally, etc.

All that said, I find it hard to believe that solar canopies at DC fast charging sites would be likely to provide enough energy to offset the use at that site, unless that use was very light. That's not to say that such installations are useless, though. If we as a society want to increase the use of solar power (as I believe we should), then the solar panels have to go somewhere, and atop canopies to help protect drivers from the elements when they charge their cars is one of many places they can go that will have minimal negative impacts. (Compared to cutting down a forest simply to install solar panels, for instance.)
 
I find it hard to believe that solar canopies at DC fast charging sites would be likely to provide enough energy to offset the use at that site, unless that use was very light.
Maybe there's a Dennys, McDonalds, etc, nearby that could use a solar cover over its parking lot to increase the generation capacity.
- it would save gas by reducing A/C load for cars parked under it
- it could host signs such as "your shade provided by Tesla"
 
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