A Supercharging Milestone | Hacker News Reader

A Supercharging Milestone

teslamotors.com

55 pointsph0rque14 comments

Nice, 168K gallons a month is 5600 a day (assuming 30 day months) or 295 barrels of oil per day [1]. You could supply the grid with the equivalent MW used by the entire super charging network with one solar thermal plant [2]

[1] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=24&t=10

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility -- had a look at this over the 4th of July weekend, its a pretty neat facility.

If I'm reading the figure in the article correctly, 1GWh/month of electricity works out to something like 1.34 MW average load. That much electricity could be supplied by a total of three (1.5MW nameplate) utility-scale wind turbines, at least if you assume the capacity factor (0.3-0.35) seen in the upper midwest.

Put differently, that is about 1/10 of the average electricity consumption of the (midwestern, state) university where I studied.

They edited it, it used to say it had produced a 1 GWh to date from all chargers. I wonder if they took that out because it was wrong or because it didn't seem impressive enough?

Are there any stats on where each supercharging station receives its power? Things like the percentage of power supplied to the supercharging station by fossil fuels.

I assume you're wondering the same thing I am, are they taking into account the Co2 created at the source?

Either way, they're ahead of the game, but I'd just like to know how they got their Co2 measurements.

They are currently all grid-powered, but the long-term plan is to install solar canopies at all locations (provided by Elon's other company, SolarCity) to offset the power usage. They even plan on making it a profit center for the business eventually.

Do any of these stations get busy enough during peak hours so that you have to wait in line for a charging spot?

This happens even at gas stations, but at least you don't have to wait 20 minutes!

It's happened to me once or twice, surprisingly mostly at Fremont (the factory). All the supercharging stations have data. When the superchargers were introduced to owners, the idea was that the car (also cellular / data-enabled) would know when it's likely to get to the supercharger, and reserve a timeslot at the charging station. Additionally, there were plans to make it so you could unlock / lock the chargers remotely, and potentially have single chargers able to reach more than one car.

All of this is possible, it's just a matter of time of if, and when it becomes reasonable to go implement it.

Also, battery swaps, which is faster than filling a tank of gas (though not free), will help. As Musk put it, when you'd come to a supercharger station, it be a decision between faster (battery swap) or free (supercharger).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

I wonder how much a battery swap would cost?

Elon Musk is losing his nerdiness. He should have waited for the 1.21GWh milestone.

Have they rolled out battery swapping yet?

Battery swapping is dumb. It's like propane tank exchange, except the price is reversed. With propane the tank is relatively cheap and you don't care so much if you get somebody elses used one. With battery costing in the neighborhood of $10K it's a bit different. OTOH if they were to automatically recycle the ones with diminished capacity it may be somewhat more acceptable. But doesn't it still seem a bit odd?

DC fast charging like in the supercharger is kinda hard on the battery. It doesn't void the warranty, of course, because then Tesla would be in the ridiculous position of stating that their own chargers damage their cars, but you shouldn't be doing it very often. With battery swapping, you can charge the battery nice and slow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com