SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I need a primer to understand your comment. I understand decisions based on a high discount rate in imply that investment is best left for a future generation. What would replace a single phase system ? 3 phase ? lol
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I need a primer to understand your comment. I understand decisions based on a high discount rate in imply that investment is best left for a future generation. What would replace a single phase system ? 3 phase ? lol
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I doubt that cost is anywhere close to realistic post 2020. I'm mostly going by the fact that my lowly Chevy Bolt retails for $25k and has a 48 Amp OBC. Which supports my claim that OBCs follow a steep price decline due to scale, while DC chargers do not.
First, DC chargers aren't $100k+. You can get a 25kW CCS charger for ~$20k. (I think you can get a 40kW one for a similar price.)
Second, OBCs likely aren't that cheap. I think Tesla charge ~$2k for their 11kW one. To get your ~75kW you would have to buy 7 of them, or about $14k worth per Semi. Of course there are no 100A EVSEs, so that would be more equipment that would have to be integrated into the Semi, say $~2k. But then you, also, have to deal with 7 discreet chargers and the wiring, contactors, control software, etc.
If you have 5 trucks rotating through your facility do you want to install $16k worth of OBCs/EVSEs on each, for $80k, plus the expense of wiring up "unprotected" 100A outlets, which won't be cheap as they would likely be required to have GFCI protection? Or would you rather install two ~$40k DCFC units?
Note: As far as we know the Semi can't use CCS chargers, it only has an MCS port, but I would imagine that a MCS charger would have a similar cost. (Or maybe Tesla has a CCS->MCS adapter?)
Edit: I see @Doggydogworld posted a link to Setec CCS chargers that are more like ~$6 for a 25kW one. And it looks like they have a 120kW one for ~$15k. Prices really are coming down. At those prices it really makes no sense to put AC chargers on-board.
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@Doggydogworld We'll swap trailers. They'll carry either logs or lumber and we'll pull an empty to a site unhook and leave with a full trailer of logs. I really don't think 300 is enough. Say you want to give yourself a 70 mile buffer just in case..life happens. Our typical trips range from 30-100 miles. If we did a 100 mile trip it's 200 round trip and that would send us back to the charger which we want to avoid during peak hours. We can negotiate down for nighttime rates. We are also looking at a megapack or similar. I'd like to see rates on those all fall quite a bit but for now demand for utility battery solutions exceeds supply. We'll wait. We will move to put up some solar (while we have cheap funding) early next year I hope. Maybe 10 acres to get to something around 1MW, less in winter and more in summer. We're in N Virginia so we get some clouds in winter plus less sun so we will just size the battery to support normal operations and put some extra juice back into the grid in all but the winter. We may bump the solar farm out to 15 acres, we have the space plus about 3 acres of buildings.
I would say Tesla could often sell megapacks in conjunction with Semis as a total energy management offering. This would let them achieve a bit of extra margin going forward when megapack offering starts seeing margin compression (2025/6 would be my guess- just as the Semi factory starts roccking).
I would say Tesla could often sell megapacks in conjunction with Semis as a total energy management offering. This would let them achieve a bit of extra margin going forward when megapack offering starts seeing margin compression (2025/6 would be my guess- just as the Semi factory starts roccking).
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
petit_bateau
Active Member
Almost always, yes.
The exceptions I have observed tend to be more rural.
Except that there are exceptions to exceptions where there are still areas of old DC networks (often for tram/trolleybus traction) that got embedded and reused as AC carriers, and they are of course urban. (This is an example of the perils of being a early mover in industrialisation, rather than the applied discount rate).
petit_bateau
Active Member
Grid build outs tend to be state managed either directly or indirectly.
Therefore ultimately a parsomonious central treasury will fiercely scrutinise the limited cash doled out for the overall project.
So why did a more rural France tend to install three phase to the home/industry, whereas a more densely populated UK tend to install single phase. You'd expect the reverse.
The answer is that the more statist economies of France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, (etc) tended to apply a discount rate of ~2% whereas the Anglo Saxon economies tended to apply a discount rate of ~7-10%. When one does a cost-benefit analysis of putting in 1ph vs 3ph against those discount rates, you rapidly discover that the long term benefit of installing 3ph to the home is entirely discounted away. And since the Treasury economist doles out the limited money they set the conditions against which the engineers had to work.
This is not an absolute - for example I've had to deal with situations in Italy where only 1ph was available. But as a broad generalisation it is correct. I've gone into old cottages in all sorts of rural statist Europe and found antique supplies, but amazingly 3ph.
It also explains why you tend to find split phase only available in rural Anglo Saxon locations, i.e. to run the milking parlours in the outlying dairy farms. The French just ran 3ph 440V to all that whereas the cheapskate short termist Anglos did 2 x 240V splitphase. Guess which grids are easier to deal with and reinforce for solar these days ! You'll find that over large swathes of rural farming UK, Aus, NZ, USA, Can to the farms.
(The splitphase urban exceptions tend to be the conversions of the old tramway DC infrastructure, again by short term cheapskates. Ripping out the trams was in any case very short sighted and driven by the automotive sector, but that is a further digression.)
My company just ordered 150 new diesel trucks. We are changing our business model in California from ICs to employed drivers, so this is the first time we’ve had our own trucks. A lot of people in my company worked at others which had their own trucks and drivers so we have a good idea of how this system is going to work. Unfortunately, the timing of the purchase didn’t coincide with the Semi’s product maturity curve, so we decided to go with diesel for the next 4-5 years. When we experimented with an EV from a competitor several years ago, the results weren’t promising. The range was too short and payload too low since the battery was too heavy. I believe the range was around 300 miles and the payload was 10,000 lbs lower than that of a standard truck. It was pretty obvious these stats were not going to work for us.
I wasn’t around when we were still serious about trying out the electric truck, and I’m trying to find out who was involved in the experiment to ask about the driving experience and such. But the last time I heard from the person most familiar with trucks and will likely be responsible for purchasing more trucks in the future, Tesla is basically the only viable option on the market for at least another few years. Only Tesla has addressed the charging issue, the range issue, and the payload issue altogether. If we change our business model in another state next year and if the Semi will have been well tested at industrial scale by then we may consider the product. For now, we’re going to wait and see.
300 miles may work for us as long as there are enough 500-mile trucks in the fleet. We have a lot of pickup and delivery areas, and we can potentially designate specific trucks to areas closer to our terminals, and use the longer range vehicles for farther away places such as San Diego and for runs up and down the California coast (around 400 miles each way). Having shorter range trucks does impact our operations though since it reduces our flexibility. For example, if several 500-mile trucks are down for a few days, we may not be able to substitute them with 300-mile trucks. Battery cycles are less of a concern because the weekly mileage is still low enough that the battery will probably deteriorate more due to age than due to charging cycles.
The trailer changes daily. After deliveries in the morning, the empty trailer is taken to pickup locations. At night, the trailer gets emptied out, while another trailer gets loaded with freight coming from linehaul trips.
As far as maintenance goes, for the diesel trucks at least, we're going to take the trucks to the manufacturer's service center for routine maintenance. We contract with maintenance vendors to handle repairs.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
We would try to capture solar energy during the day and store it in a giant battery system like the Tesla Megapack so we can draw from it at night, but the numbers will never work. Even if we could collect sunlight at night, it still won't work...
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Yep. Have you run the math to see how much the cost of energy storage has to be to even start considering this approach ?
Oh, there's a number ...
15 MWh @ 6 hours of sun = 2.5 MW array / 400W panel = 6,250 panels over an area around 10,000 m^2
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Heck ya -- utilities love net metering.
At the wholesale avoided cost, less fees
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I calculate a lot more than 10,000 m^2
400 W panel is about 2 meter squared, and you need space between the rows to avoid shading. I think more like 20,000 m^2, or about a square that is 150 yards per side
I just took a quick perusal of the new NEM 3.0 terms that were passed in California last year. Homeowners and businesses have until April 13 to submit an interconnection application in order to get grandfathered into NEM 2.0 terms for 20 years. The new terms definitely encourage adding battery storage to solar installs.
No, but it should be pretty simple once you have all the accurate input.
I guess in theory this does work, assuming that your numbers are realistic. 10,000 m^2 is about 15%-30% the square footage of our service centers. Our largest service in California has already installed solar panels atop our dock and office area to cover the office needs and charging for our electric hostling units and forklifts. I suppose we could also install solar panels over the employee parking area, which I have seen other companies do. Not sure where else we could put the solar panels. We will definitely not sacrifice yard space for solar panels - industrial land in SoCal is very hard to come by.
Btw does anyone know the addresses of the Pepsi locations that are testing the Tesla Semis? I'd like to check the satellite view of those locations to try to find out where they put their solar panels and chargers.
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