For clarification, there are 4 superchargers proposed between Tucson and El Centro by Winter of 2013 (about 290 miles) and 2 proposed for the 250 mikes between Dallas and Houston....and none along the 360 miles of I-70 from Indy to Pittsburg. It looks like the Tucson - El Centro is close to the Mesquite Solar project. Thoughts?
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Tesla's new core business? CES Grid Storage Device For SuperCharger/SuperSwapper
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The plot thickens? Lol.
The proposed dots are not necessarily where the actual SuperChargers will be located. It would be best to hear what folks who live near these locations think.
I doubt these are being grouped near renewable generation sources (as opposed to on key routes). But again, someone who lives in the area would know the highway system better than I would. The charger locations I've been to here in California seem to be in logical locations. Though I would have preferred route 99 over Interstate 5 for the Central Valley, since its just a more interesting drive (if somewhat longer and out of the way).
It's an interesting line of thought though. CES is going to happen. If there are logistical reasons for a CES site to favor one route over another, then I could see Tesla adjusting the planned routes to accommodate this.
The superchargers look to be closer to Battle Creek and Jackson and would be easily accessible from Chicago with a 85kWh battery and Benton Harbor (on the west side) would make travelling with a 60 kWh battery very feasible. But I agree that I am confused as to why a Jackson station would help any more than the BC one...
Could there be local incentives at the city, county or utility level? I'm pretty sure there are large financial incentives at the state level in California, though I haven't gotten around to researching that yet.
The VT cluster appear to be one in VT on I-89 and another in NY on I-87, with Lake Champlain in between. Very different travel corridors.
The Southern New England cluster is a little more challenging to decipher.
. The Summer 2013 map adds three dots: I-95 near Stamford, Merritt Parkway near Stamford, and Providence RI. The two CT locations are on different travel routes; the Merritt allows no commercial traffic and is by far the more pleasant route into the NYC area. Why we need another SC on I-95 is a mystery to me, though perhaps the CT highway department has simply proved easy to deal with. Providence is a good link on the way to Cape Cod.
. Fall 2013 adds three new points in New England: Charlton MA, Concord NH, and Portland ME. Charlton is a great location, just east of the I-90/I-84 interchange but west of the I-90/I-495 split. Lots of long-distance travel through here. Concord and Portland both open up the New England ski areas and, generally, northward travel into areas with few EV charge options.
. Winter 2013 adds West Lebanon NH, at the junction of I-89/I-91. It's really essential for lots of routes, particularly to Montreal.
. 2014 adds Springfield MA, the Lake Champlain pair, and Bangor ME. The Springfield SC appears puzzlingly close to Charleton SCs, but it's real function is on the N/S drive on I-91, not the E/W drive on I-90. Bangor extends the end of the line.
The plethora of Michigan SCs has me puzzled.
Jonathan Hewitt
Active Member
My parents live close to the clump of two near Augusta, GA. I really don't know about why they need two there any more than any other location.
driver_EV
Member
I agree, I would like to see on of them used for a SC site west of Atlanta on I-20, perhaps near the GA/AL state line.
All things being equal, it has to be better to build SC's near renewable power. They could probably contract quite cheaply to make use of the lumpy wind and solar power being generated if they are storing in captive battery packs, which I think they will. I wouldn't read into it a plan to build out grid storage necessarily. If they believe so strongly in the economics of grid storage for renewables, they can just build grid storage facilities and not call them superchargers.
Its quite possible that this doesn't have anything to do with grid storage or renewable sources. We see this clustering in Northeast Florida. Short of outright graphical errors, I am of the opinion that Tesla is smart enough to avoid unnecessary clustering of Supercharger stations. So I assume there is a "method to their madness". We don't know how many Supercharging positions have been granted at each proposed location. It may be as simple as the host at one or more locations doesn't permit sufficient spaces and therefore clustering is needed to obtain sufficient spaces in a region on a well-traveled route in order to avoid congestion. Another possible explanation is that this is merely redundancy to allow for the failure to get approval of certain locations in a region. In other words, Tesla doesn't necessarily plan to install all of the dots in a cluster.
Larry
deonb
Active Member
I haven't seen this anywhere posted yet. But take a look at this article:
Power grid getting smarter with big battery in Salem
http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=990
So it looks like PGE just paid $23 million for 5 MW of grid storage.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's 5 MWh for now (I sent a mail off to the authors to clarify as well as to try and get a breakdown of the $23 million).
So PGE just spend $23 million for 5 MW. How much would Tesla's cost be to provide that capacity?
Let's see...
To get 5 MW of storage capacity you would need 63 x 75kWh batteries (discarding top and bottom of a 85). Let's just round that up and call it 100 batteries.
Now let's pretend they're $40'000 each. That would be $4 million. And PGE just paid $23 million for it??
This fruit is so low-hanging it's practically lying on the ground...
Ok, let's say the PGE number is actually 5 MW load for 12 hours. So 60 MWH. That would require 756 batteries. Round up to 1000 (swapper usage and what not).
Now we need to start looking at more worldly numbers. Let's say the batteries are $22k each * 1000 = $22 million. Still a deal and plenty of buffering built into my calculations.
With CO's battery cost math at $12'000 each, you can build 20 swapper stations around Salem with 50 batteries each and it will still be $1m cheaper than what PGE just spent on this.
Power grid getting smarter with big battery in Salem
http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=990
So it looks like PGE just paid $23 million for 5 MW of grid storage.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's 5 MWh for now (I sent a mail off to the authors to clarify as well as to try and get a breakdown of the $23 million).
So PGE just spend $23 million for 5 MW. How much would Tesla's cost be to provide that capacity?
Let's see...
To get 5 MW of storage capacity you would need 63 x 75kWh batteries (discarding top and bottom of a 85). Let's just round that up and call it 100 batteries.
Now let's pretend they're $40'000 each. That would be $4 million. And PGE just paid $23 million for it??
This fruit is so low-hanging it's practically lying on the ground...
Ok, let's say the PGE number is actually 5 MW load for 12 hours. So 60 MWH. That would require 756 batteries. Round up to 1000 (swapper usage and what not).
Now we need to start looking at more worldly numbers. Let's say the batteries are $22k each * 1000 = $22 million. Still a deal and plenty of buffering built into my calculations.
With CO's battery cost math at $12'000 each, you can build 20 swapper stations around Salem with 50 batteries each and it will still be $1m cheaper than what PGE just spent on this.
Reading through the article, the $23M is the total project cost, not just the battery cost. The total includes rectifiers, inverters and software/hardware enabling automatic economic dispatch - deciding the best time when to charge/discharge the battery banks.
While your particular calculation seem to be off, I am sure that Tesla could be quite competitive in this field, if and when it decides to participate.
Based on EM remarks during and after the SC announcement, Tesla currently focuses on using storage battery systems to decouple their plans for potential quick expansion of SC from the limitations imposed by local utility connections.
deonb
Active Member
Totally agree - I've followed up with PGE. They've pointed me to someone else and asked them to send me the breakdown, but I haven't received it yet.
At least we know that the SuperChargers + Battery Swappers + 50 batteries also already have the same rectifiers, inverters and hardware (and software is a fixed R&D cost) - and even with the swapper + chargers in there, it's still competitive.
Here is a techcrunch report detailing process to install SC. A lot of this is already known.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/26/in...d-commitments-of-electrifying-road-transport/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/26/in...d-commitments-of-electrifying-road-transport/
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