Painful Night Rather Than Waste It = Rough Number Crunching

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
"They" Not me. How many solar panel watts to fully recharge a Tesla in 5-1/2 hours? How many 350 watts panels? One solar recharge day? Someone is utterly unclear regarding reality and it isn't me.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
California 20 million electric cars. Annual average mileage data taken fro state online sources. Mileage based on various online estimates. Remember these are ROUGH figures. 4.5 hours worth of crunching.

To dedicate power to this number of electric cars and trucks will take the equivalent of the total capacity of 3.43 Hoover Dams generators.

Amortizations have to be made to homogenize this figure into current electrical production.

One thing is clear to me. California emerged from rolling blackouts SOLELY BECAUSE of millions of solar panels. The state does not have a big surplus of energy.

Food for thought. Sore fingertips :)

JaxDad wrote:

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
As an engineer papered to work on grid systems I can comment that grid analysis is difficult and challenging.

Domestic timers, scheduled on a rolling time basis will be an ABSOLUTE must-have. But then what about unscheduled distribution failures?

Let's have some fun. A dedicated home system for a TESLA. How many panels and how many batteries would it need to nurse the Tesla when the automobile comes home from work?

I think you might have missed one big variable, maybe two.

I’m willing to bet the numbers are more than just a little skewed depending on whether you’re talking about the millions of good folks in the SW or New England.

Here in Toronto it’s dark by 5pm and there’s not really any solar energy much before 9am for months over the winter. Oh, and it’s not unusual to have days at a time where it’s not above ~15 F. daytime and -5 F. overnight. Guess what that does to battery performance?

Oh, and we like some (electric) heat on during the 1 - 1.5 hr commute.


Houston, we have a problem.........

pnichols wrote:

JaxDad wrote:
I think you might have missed one big variable, maybe two.

I’m willing to bet the numbers are more than just a little skewed depending on whether you’re talking about the millions of good folks in the SW or New England.

Here in Toronto it’s dark by 5pm and there’s not really any solar energy much before 9am for months over the winter. Oh, and it’s not unusual to have days at a time where it’s not above ~15 F. daytime and -5 F. overnight. Guess what that does to battery performance?

Oh, and we like some (electric) heat on during the 1 - 1.5 hr commute.


Houston, we have a problem.........

Well stated!

I've always been taught in my college courses that electric heating takes a LOT of electricity. That's why electric baseboard heating in modern U.S. homes in cold areas is avoided like the plague if at all possible.

I have no idea how any affordable and currently available electric car on a single charge can handle a 200+ mile range ... plus do some of that 200+ miles with lights on during mornings and evenings and with the heater and defroster running full blast in 10-20 degree - or lower - weather. :h

FWIW, our daily driver sedan can do that for 400-450 miles without having to mess with refueling.

P.S. Maybe electric cars are using heat pumps for their cooling/heating? If so, I trust that they also have on board energy-hog pure electric heating for outside temperatures way down there where heat pumps no longer can heat.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
California issued an alert this last week about utilities being stretched to the 99% of capacity limit. Try and keep this non political. Idiot versus idiot arguments provides zero help.

Bill.Satellite wrote:
How much solar would I need to install at home to take car of my own car?

bucky wrote:
Do you think that we are not working on controlling theirs?
Tesla is burning $6,000,000.00 A DAY not building cars. Everybody is near worshipping Elon, cracks me up. Don't take that wrong, the cars are awesome but the stockholders are losing their shirts on this deal.
Make too much electricity with your solar? Watch out! The electric companies will be charging you for NOT using their product. It's already happening in some places.