Large Tesla Charging station run by Diesel

[peakbagger]

Oops!

Tesla's Mega 98-Supercharger Location Runs In Part On A Diesel Generator: Report

Lauded as the largest bank of EV chargers in the world, the Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger has a dirty secret

jalopnik.com

At least they could run it on Biodiesel or the new "renewable diesel"

 

[EbS-P]

Better press for Tesla than chargers not working. They roll out more diesel powered charging stations during peak holiday travel too. Probably is cheaper than upgrading infrastructure. Did a 300 mile road trip last week and will do the same tomorrow. Along the 150 mile journey I have no fewer than 5 or 6 charging stations within 5 minutes of the planned route. None powered by diesel. Harris Ranch is unique. The route to Las Vegas is similar. Rural but with lots of Teslas making the trip. I imagine the generators will be replaced by batteries soon.

 

[joop]

how long from empty to full charge at a fast charger station

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Niedermeyer needs a hug, and maybe a coloring book. He should use quality crayons, I think the cheap ones that some restaurants give out could send him over the edge.


The guy I asked charging his car said it’d take him about 15 minutes. I’m sure that was something like a 20% to 80% charge.

 

[EbS-P]

how long from empty to full charge at a fast charger station

Probably a hour. 5-95% But That’s not really how anyone drives. First 50% is fast. My Tesla is a 2016. So it charges slower. I did 37 kWh in 15 minutes today battery wasn’t really hot. Hot batteries charge faster. 100 miles of range. Basically the charging curve is the charging rate in Kw plus the state of charge is always 140 for the first model S and X. So a 10% in charge 140kw, at 50% I’m down to 90-100kw.

New cars charge roughly more than twice as fast as mine. The last 10% takes a long time. Optimized your route for fast charging. Basically plan a route where you run down to 10-15% and charge to 60-65%. That about 15-22 minutes. Best I can really I figure is that charging ads 20% to drive time for really long drives. Now for tomorrow I’ll start with 90% get there turn around and charge just enough to get home with 30 miles left. The closer to home I wait to charge the faster it will charge. But what can I get to eat at that charging station?

 

[begreen]

Looks like BP has opened an even larger, 130 vehicle charging hub in the UK. They claim it to be 100% renewable powered, but say nothing about peak time loads.

BP launches Britain's largest EV charging hub near Birmingham

BP launched on Thursday Britain's largest electric vehicle charging hub near Birmingham, capable of serving up to 180 cars.

www.reuters.com

 

[peakbagger]

Tesla is company that builds large battery storage systems, and peaks are what batteries are for. IMHO, they thought they could away with it. The other question were they portable diesels (tier3) or fixed diesels (tier 4). Tier 4 diesels are a lot cleaner.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I don't think there's anything wrong with what they did. Would the people rather sit for hours waiting for an open charger?

 

[EbS-P]

I imagine we will see more of them in the next 24 months as sales will lead infrastructure.

Telsa Superchargers by city by The Ascent - Infogram

infogram.com

 

[woodgeek]

how long from empty to full charge at a fast charger station

In newer EVs, stops are about 20 mins every 150 miles. Many (perhaps most) folks do not consider this to be a big deal. Some consider it an absolute deal breaker.

In older (and cheaper) EVs, like my Bolt, stops are about 2-3X longer over the same distance. Some rather expensive EVs do slightly better, at compatible fast chargers.

 

[joop]

quebec's throwing a couple of million on setting up charging station's.at there speed should be done by the time we switch to hydrogen

 

[incinerator]

I own a Model 3 lfp rwd. After 5300 miles my car says i'm getting 214w/mile or about 157 mpg (33.7kwh/gallon). The grid around here is nuclear, nat gas, wind, coal, etc. I doubt much of the grid is diesel powered--seems like that would be very $$$ electricity. Having been to a few superchargers, the best idea would be to cover them in solar (providing rain/snow protection/shade/etc) and maybe put a large onsite battery (LFP or maybe down the road sodium ion)). When not in use the solar could be sold back to the grid and the batteries could be charged from the grid in offpeak times when rates are low.

 

[peakbagger]

My guess is it comes down to time of use pricing. If someone really needs/wants to charge and it means expensive utility power/ diesel is needed, let them pay for it. Very quickly the charging station owner will figure out that they can install large batteries to charge up during periods of low demand and low utility prices and resell that power during high demand periods at a premium. Folks forget that large commercial accounts pay surcharges for peak power demand with "ratchets" that set at the highest demand and stay locked in for month or year. Residential owners do not see that yet but various rate plans out there link cost of wholesale power with the customer cost.

Many of the local run of the river hydro stations near me have no water storage so they generate power based on river flow. The owner has recently installed several large multimegawatt batteries so they can charge up at night when power is cheap or on occasion "negative" and then resell during peak periods. In many cases the utilities will pay them a fee to have the capacity available on the grid. If there is major system interuption, like a transmission line outage or major plant outage (like a nuclear station tripping), its takes several minutes to hours to bring on more generation and usually the initial generation is peakers that start quick but very inefficient and expensive, far better to have some batteries to output a lot of power for this transition period.

IMHO, at some point even consumers are going to get "throttled" during high power demand periods and most will be do it willingly as the alternative is to pay very high monthly costs to have all the power they want available. Ercot customer in Texas are playing that game, cheap power 90% of the time but when it gets hot, they start paying throughj the nose to the point where a months power bill can be more than a years worth of power.

 

[woodgeek]

Sounds logical. It seems unlikely that diesel-genny power is cheaper per kWh than what is available on the grid, but I am sure the Harris supercharger is a large power customer. So they put in a diesel generator to kick on when the TOU rates get too high (or during a grid outage?), perhaps for only a small fraction of the time...

But of course, I'm just guessing.

 

[EbS-P]

Sounds logical. It seems unlikely that diesel-genny power is cheaper per kWh than what is available on the grid, but I am sure the Harris supercharger is a large power customer. So they put in a diesel generator to kick on when the TOU rates get too high (or during a grid outage?), perhaps for only a small fraction of the time...

But of course, I'm just guessing.

With 98 stalls running 100kw each. Let’s call that a peak demand of 10000kw. Could be be a factor or two higher or lower depending on the version of charger.
That’s a lot of Juice. My guess is they don’t care care about cost at that location they just need the capacity and it’s not yet available via the grid. It’s just a guess.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

And if a car club rolls up with 98 near empty Teslas all of them will be on max draw at once, lol.

 

[Ashful]

In newer EVs, stops are about 20 mins every 150 miles. Many (perhaps most) folks do not consider this to be a big deal. Some consider it an absolute deal breaker.

... and some are on the hunt for any "deal breaker" they can cling to.

Renewable Diesel? That's one I hadn't heard before, and in a quick Google search, it appears to be an improvement on biodiesel (different process, lower cloud point, etc.). But if most of the product is coming from animal fats and the meat-processing industry, wouldn't the desired down-scaling of meat consumption negatively affect the availability of renewable diesel (and biodiesel)? I know that some fraction of it comes from plant material, but I imagine there's a lot more fuel potential in a cow than a recycled corn stalk.

I'd hope any EV charging station will be eventually powered by 90% battery-supported renewable power sources, with only ever some small fraction of peak loading requiring consumption of any combustible fuel. I'm not sure that transitioning from petroleum-based fuels to bio-based fuels is really the direction into which we should be placing our hopes and dollars, unless it can be shown that bio fuels are somehow very substantially better for greenhouse gas emissions, etc.

 

[peakbagger]

There are plenty of ways to get to renewable diesel, its just how much its going to cost. The Ensyn process uses any cellulosic waste product. http://www.ensyn.com/overview.html. I installed the first "commerical" system in the US using it in 2014 and the hospital is still running it. They had modified it to be a #4 heating oil replacement but they also can use is as drop in "biocrude" feedstock to refinery. The Germans developed Fisher - Tropsch process per WW2 and it was one of the reasons they could try to pull off WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process It can pretty well be used to produce any fossil product (and is more stable than the rapid pyrolysis based fuel like Ensyn). Valero is the big producer of effectively Biodiesel that they call renewable diesel. They just use standard refinery processes to further refine the biodiesel. With the exception of waste oils, biodiesel can be start looking "brown" as it can also consume large amounts of corn or other agricultural products. Many agricultural operations generate lots of waste and most wood products industries also generate cellulosic waste.

The problem to date has been cost, if oil was sustained over $150 barrel, there are scads of technologically viable projects for bio based fuels, but most of the firms realize that it just takes one oil slump be it real or artificial and their investment gets cratered. When I worked with Ensyn it was very obvious that they wanted someone else to take the big risk and they would just license the technology as they didnt want to bet their "farm". The big game changer is an electric economy starts to get far more attractive if oil prices heads that way.

With respect to peak load at charging stations, I have no doubt that load balancing is built into the charging station controller so that the available wattage at each charger can be varied to match the available and economical power available. I think it also would be quite easy to change the cost of power at each individual charger for each customer so that someone who wants/needs a fast charge can elect to pay a premium. I also expect that Tesla can sell "negawatts" to a utility to slow down the overall power demand of the station during short term grid events and obviously if the market is there run the generators to sell into the grid.

The business model of Tesla is to lease sites at commercial locations. This presumably draws in customers; I expect the commercial location doesn't really mind if the charge rate is lowered as it means more customers standing around killing time presumably spending money.

 

[EbS-P]

And if a car club rolls up with 98 near empty Teslas all of them will be on max draw at once, lol.

Just to compare to residential use. I don’t exceed 10kw very often. So it could be equivalent to 1000 homes.

 

[joop]

seem's to me to make this as clean as they want they will have to go nuclear.haha tree huggers

 

[woodgeek]

Bio-deisel? Pfft. Clearly you guys have not heard of carbon negative petroleum.

Can Carbon-Negative Oil Be Climate Positive?

Energy policy research from the University of Pennsylvania

kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu

I know some of these guys.

 

[Ashful]

Again, if we're still burning diesel, is the net carbon hit for production + transport + usage really that much better for biofuel versus petroleum? I'm not sure I really understand the advantage of any biodiesel for north America. Perhaps Europe, with greater dependence on Russia and Middle East for oil supply, has more non-environmental incentives to go that direction.

 

[joop]

nothing we do can be neutral.just try to make a small an impact as possible.

 

[EbS-P]

Again, if we're still burning diesel, is the net carbon hit for production + transport + usage really that much better for biofuel versus petroleum? I'm not sure I really understand the advantage of any biodiesel for north America. Perhaps Europe, with greater dependence on Russia and Middle East for oil supply, has more non-environmental incentives to go that direction.

It utilizes existing markets and infrastructure, and think it’s a big hedge. I doubt the fossil fuel companies are spending big R&D money now but any chance they see to make a profit on aging infrastructure they will go after it. There will always be a market for Jet A bio or Dino. Probably the same with off road. During the three weeks around harvest we would burn 10,000 gallons of off-road. No way you can ever replace that with a battery.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I think it’s a safe bet California is going to try! Lol.