250+ mph TESLA Roadster

[FikseGTS]

Could be solar power chargers at workplaces, or stop by a solar powered Supercharger once or twice a week. Powerwalls (10 year guarantee) will do it, or feed into the grid to offset and lower the burden... it's all VERY expensive right now but will eventually come down, point is, the technology is there and will only get better, when the demand comes around things will change.

Oh, so your car is going to be home during the peak sunlight hours, or you are going to have a bank of batteries at home that cost beaucoup bucks and have a limited lifespan.

 

[2112]

Summary on lithium, cobalt, copper, palladium and nickel needed for EV production.

https://www.motorists.org/blog/metals-crucial-electric-car-production-might-problem-part-1/

https://www.motorists.org/blog/metals-crucial-electric-car-production-might-problem-part-2/

 

[2112]

The shifting of the energy content consumed in petroleum to the electric grid will result in huge power costs to the lowest income consumers. The costs to charge for "road use" simply isn't there without an infrastructure change. Expect the purchase of an electric vehicle to come with a new meter requirement by your power company along with a commensurate road tax.

This will be used for social engineering and equalization more than any other purpose.

 

[Sinovac]

Summary on lithium, cobalt, copper, palladium and nickel needed for EV production.

https://www.motorists.org/blog/metals-crucial-electric-car-production-might-problem-part-1/

https://www.motorists.org/blog/metals-crucial-electric-car-production-might-problem-part-2/

Not to mention the fact that the production and disposal of the batteries on a scale large enough to support the nation’s fleet of vehicles would be an environmental disaster. To me, EVs are fluorescent bulbs. They appear to be a better alternative, but on closer examination, not so much. Then along came LEDs....

 

[ChipBeck]

Gentlemen,

I’m a gas station operator by trade but an economist by education. The two Freakonomics books are favorites of mine. Economics is simply the study of human behavior on a macro (large) scale. Societies push to alter vehicle development and push it in a new direction that is economic nonsense will smash into wall after wall of reality. Energy is the fuel of presperity, freedom, and healthy societies. Advances in solar, wind, and battery technology are slow and incremental. On the order of 1 or 2% a year at best. Wind and sunshine are intermittent and unstable sources that require obscene amounts of space to operate. One of the most important factors in energy generation, storage, and use is density. Packing a lot of energy into a small space. Solar and wind take us wildly in the opposite direction.

What we have here is akin to society building a bullet train from St. Louis, MO to Paris, France completely heedless of the known ocean they are going to run into at the coast. With a hail of “Somebody will have a solution for that by the time we get there!” they press on fueled by taxpayer money taken from society by force and spent by our political masters who are certain that their wisdom spending other people’s money exceeds the collective wisdom of the billion+ individuals who risk their own capital in the marketplace. What could possibly go wrong.

Here’s another Chipism to ponder.

“Reality is completely indifferent to hopes, wishes, and desires.”

Chip

 

[PeteK]

Chip, I hear ya and agree with ya, which makes me very pessimistic indeed. Unfortunately, your maxim, “Reality is completely indifferent to hopes, wishes, and desires,” is overwhelmed by another maxim I'll paraphrase from investing,

"Policies can remain irrational longer than you can remain sane."

 

[Special K]

Wind and sunshine are intermittent and unstable sources that require obscene amounts of space to operate. One of the most important factors in energy generation, storage, and use is density. Packing a lot of energy into a small space. Solar and wind take us wildly in the opposite direction.


Chip

I recommend taking a road trip through the Texas panhandle. The amount of wind turbines is astounding and the amount of government subsidies required to build, install, and maintain them are equally mind blowing. I’ve seen them hauled by numerous trains and trucks to location over the years. But boy, what green energy... lol


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[Awsum GT]

The shifting of the energy content consumed in petroleum to the electric grid will result in huge power costs to the lowest income consumers. The costs to charge for "road use" simply isn't there without an infrastructure change. Expect the purchase of an electric vehicle to come with a new meter requirement by your power company along with a commensurate road tax.

It's like when we were living in Colorado in the late 70's. Jimmy Carter's Gas Lines were hours. Except at the diesel truck stops. We bought a 3 year old Mercedes 240D and when everyone was paying 50c/gal for gas (it was alot at the time) and waiting for an hour to get 10 gallons, we were paying 19c/gal for diesel and driving right in and out. Colorado didn't collect road tax on consumer diesel at the time since us passenger vehicles were just an annoying wart on the total consumption. Then they figured out the missing revenue and tax was collected at the pump and diesel jumped to the same price as regular gas over a few years. I still had our diesel (by then a 300D turbo) until the late 80's. The point is that electricity is now a smoking deal for electric cars. It won't be for long.

As a homebuilder building homes that are designed to produce as much energy as they comsume I believe that there are more people adding solar to their homes than electric cars being purchased. I believe that over time advancements in technology will continue to improve the efficiency of solar, wind and other renewalble energy sourses. California has a requirement for all new homes built after 2020 to be Zero Energy homes (that means they will be designed to produce as much energy as they use) I'm guessing other states will follow in the future.

That said, I don't think electric usage will go away but it should be reduced. I believe solar, wind and other renewable sourses are meant to be a back up to help reduce the electric grid usage not to replace it. Oh, and I believe Tesla has begun adding solar to many of their superchargers around the country to help cut down on the grid use.

By the way, I will never give up my petrol cars!

 

[nota4re]

The cars work fine but there isn’t any viable way to fuel them on a large scale. And NOBODY is even proposing a viable solution to that.

My experience with Solar is pretty much the total opposite of your experience, Chip - perhaps primarily due to the higher electricity expense here in SoCal? In the last days of 2012 ( I remember working on the roof on Christmas Day!) we finished the installation of solar panels here at our house. I wanted to get my Fed Tax rebate in 2013 hence the urgency to get the system completed and on-line by year's end. Unlike virtually everyone else, Ryan and I did the installation ourselves. My total out of pocket was $14K and we used micro inverters so I can monitor the individual performance of each panel through their entire lifespan. The Feds refunded me $4200 (30%) and I got another $1500 or so from the state. Prior to the solar installation, my electricity cost over the 3 previous years (2010-2012) was ~$5,400/year. We're generating about 14MWh per year and since installation my electricity costs have been ZERO. Payback for me was about 18 months and even if I didn't have the rebates, I would have been whole in 30 months. Quite frankly, this has been a real eye-opener for me... solar has arrived! IMO, there's a lot of companies making a lot of money in solar these days and in many cases, masking the real value that is there. Granted, most people would have to pay for installation costs, but those prices should be getting lower and lower with the advent of better, easier, more modular solutions. (Many of the "financing" options seem a little crazy to me.)

But with the shop, the compressor, the lights, welders, shop AC, etc., we consume pretty much all of the 14MWh we generate annually. However, I still have room to add more panels if needed and if I were to add another 10-12 panels (another 5-6MWh), I could EASILY generate enough power for an electric vehicle. So, my conclusion is that for high sunshine states, powering an electric vehicle is a no-brainer. However, still not sure if I want to drive one!

 

[Sinovac]

Solar can work can for sure, as you experience has shown. The problem as I see it is storage. Batteries are dirty, dirty, dirty in every respect from cradle to grave.

 

[Special K]

Net metering is a better alternative to battery banks. Another cost to consider with solar is homeowner’s insurance companies cringe when the hear solar... Since the panels are so costly to replace. Sure, they were cheap when the feds picked up half the bill... There are several companies working to produce cheaper panels. One company, Nano Solar was working on printing panels onto a film. Haven’t followed up on them in a while, but their goals was to bring costs down to pennies/kWh.


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[nota4re]

Solar can work can for sure, as you experience has shown. The problem as I see it is storage. Batteries are dirty, dirty, dirty in every respect from cradle to grave.

Yes, in California, Net Metering is mandated to the electricity company. This, primarily because CA did not want homeowners to each have stack of lead acid batteries to store the energy. My meter simply happily runs backward all day long rolling back the KWh and then starts going forward again at dusk.

Since the panels are so costly to replace.

They're not costly to replace. A 260w panel is about $199. Diagnosing WHICH panel needs replacement may be an issue for many, however.

As I mentioned previously, we used MicroInverters at every panel. Most installations combine all of the DC power on the roof and pull it down to a big inverter typically in the garage. Three key drawbacks of this single inverter approach. 1) If you want to grow the system you may exceed the capacity of your inverter; 2) Their efficiency is less than the micro-inverters (which convert DC to AC right at the panel), and; 3) if your power is down 10% on the year, for example, you have no idea whether the efficiency of the whole system is down or if you have a panel or two that is not performing. With micro-inverters.... I see the performance of every panel at any moment - for their entire predicted lifespan.

 

[nota4re]

Here's my system - right now..... the wattage of every single panel in real time with the ability to go back and look at any day and time - as far back as you want to go!

 

[Special K]

Here's my system - right now..... the wattage of every single panel in real time with the ability to go back and look at any day and time - as far back as you want to go!

View attachment 48791

Nice! I like the real-time info


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[Brombear]

Ouch. We have arounds 25cts/KWh for private households which I would not consider cheap but is manageable. Surprised that it is more expensive in CA. Is it an incentive for the population to insulate their houses and not spent thousands of KWh to run their ACs ?

 

[Brombear]

Wow, that’s a real fast payback time. Here in germany it is more than 10 years and you are only allowed to sell back 70% of the maximum capacity at peak times. This convinced some people to buy batteries, but from an economic point of view that doesn‘t make sense yet.

I still remember when all that started, panels have been expensive and everybody argued it doesn‘t make sense to subsidize. Unfortunately there is no energy source that hasn’t been heavily subsidized one way or the other. And for example with nuclear we still do not know what to do with waste and hope that there will be no incidents like chernobyl or fukushima.

 

[FikseGTS]

wow, that is awesome, we have about 70kW of solar here at work, still getting a handle on monitoring....

Here's my system - right now..... the wattage of every single panel in real time with the ability to go back and look at any day and time - as far back as you want to go!

View attachment 48791

 

[ChipBeck]

My experience with Solar is pretty much the total opposite of your experience, Chip - perhaps primarily due to the higher electricity expense here in SoCal?

At my Phoenix store I have a massive solar installation that covers the entire surface of my 4000+ sq ft fuel canopy. I didn’t install it myself nor could I. It’s now 8 years old. It cost $165,000 but I only paid 60K. The other 105K came from taxpayers and other utility users. That massive array only generates $440 per month or about 15% of my stores electricity. My store uses $3000 a month and my home uses about $1000 a month in electricity. Even though I only paid 1/3 of the cost my payback will take 12 years and that’s assuming a zero cost of money. During their entire 30 year projected life span they will not generate $165,000 worth of electricity. Payback without subsidies for me would be 33 years. Yeah I know they are better today but only about 10-15% better. And very few people are like my buddy Kendal who has the mechanical and construction abilities to do the installation themselves. If it made sense you wouldn’t have to force or heavily subsidize people to do it. The photo below is of Team CB Chevron. The store on the left is 3000 sq feet for perspective. AZ has 350 average sunny days a year and the huge array on the fuel canopy on the right generates about 67 Mwh per year (5.5 Mwh per month). It only made sense for me because it was massively subsidized.

Chip

 

[nota4re]

Yeah, Chip, I remember you having posted that elsewhere. It's nuts! I think the primary factor in our differences is the cost of "normal" line electricity vs the solar. Here in SoCal, our costs are very high - so Solar payback is faster. This factor far exceeds the other (savings) factor that we had in installing ourselves.

Generation amount (per panel) sounds almost the same for us. My 30 panels generate about 1.3MWh/day (summer) whereas your your 125 panel array generates 5.5MWh.... so more or less right on par. The difference is that over the lifetime, my roughly 1/4 the size, will save me about $165,000. As a rough rule of thumb, my energy costs here in Socal ~4X your costs! YIKES!

But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. A couple of years ago Terry and Monica gave me access to their on-line electricity bill so I could look at history and compute the cost of a system for them. Roughly speaking, they used about 2X the electricity that we did per year, but their cost was approximately 1/2 of ours. Like you, their cost was ROUGHLY 1/4 of ours. It was hard to make the business case for them.

Not sure if all states work the same but our electricity has two major components. The cost for the usage and the cost for delivery. Our "delivery" costs are very high since virtually all our power comes from other states.

One last thought. Not sure what the trend of electricity costs is for you. Good news/bad news is that as the cost of "normal" delivery trends upward, the business case for solar will become better.

 

[MNJason]

Great thread!