Towing and charging

[Hunter71294]

Whenever the Tesla Semis start hitting the roads there should be charging ports at truck stops. Assuming they're the same connector. The semis will have a giant battery pack and most will still be local delivery trucks, so it could take a while for these to be common even if they're the same.

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[ajdelange]

What I am hoping for is that that port (or ports - I'd like to see several) are for PV panels i.e. mate with typical PV connectors and have MPPT controllers behind them.

 

[jhogan2424]

What I am hoping for is that that port (or ports - I'd like to see several) are for PV panels i.e. mate with typical PV connectors and have MPPT controllers behind them.

Yes! This would lead to a lot of creative folks coming up with different solar designs. It would be so cool to have a built in MPPT with a simple + and - MC4 or similar plug that would accept a decent range of DC voltage and amps. This would be one of the coolest features for a CT in my opinion. Not particularly useful everyday, but definitely a major cool factor.

 

[ajdelange]

For the outlets to be useful they clearly have to be capable of being enabled when the truck is in park and the driver is away just as dog mode needs to be. Just as dog mode needs to work when the car is plugged in so must the outlets continue to be active when the truck is plugged in. OTOH you don't want any itinerant potter to be able to approach your truck and plug in his kiln. So I expect that, similar to dog mode, you will be able to enable or disable the outlets from the main screen and the app irrespective of whether the charger is plugged in.

 

[Dave Lyon]

. You could, for example, hook up some solar panels to an inverter and use the inverter to charge the truck but run the house from the truck inverter.

The inverter in the truck will not be large enough to power a house. Only a few critical circuits like your fridge or freezer.

You'd also lose quite a bit to conversion drains. You'd be better off to switch between having your solar charge your EV, and when done charge your house batteries or switch to grid tied.

 

[firsttruck]

The Cybertruck announced in 2019 was better than ICE F-150.

Cybertruck announced in 2019 is better than Ford announced 2022 F-150 Lightning.

Still Elon then adds rear wheel steering to Cybertruck.

Cybertruck has a ton of relevant truck features.

 

[ajdelange]

The inverter in the truck will not be large enough to power a house. Only a few critical circuits like your fridge or freezer.

The CT inverter will be 30A at 240V. That's 7.2 kW. I have a largish house and pulled, on average over the last month, 3.7 kW. The average American house uses 30 kWh per day. That's an average of 1.25 kW. And the truck will have a 200 kWh battery so it would last the average guy 6 days (and me more like 2). So clearly no problem with the inverter size as long as the peak loads are controlled (big ones shed). Lots of people install transfer switches and use 5 - 7 kW generators for emergency power. The CT is eqivalent, in terms of power deliverable to a house, to one of those.

You'd also lose quite a bit to conversion drains.

Not really. Today's inverters are better than 90% efficient.

You'd be better off to switch between having your solar charge your EV, and when done charge your house batteries or switch to grid tied.

You missed the point. It is that the CT is potentially quite flexible in terms of what one can do with it as a load leveler. Unless Tesla does something to prevent or make it difficult to use it as such.

 

[Dave Lyon]

The CT inverter will be 30A at 240V. That's 7.2 kW.

While that's impressive, it won't handle most houses. A water heater would use half that, and a central air conditioner would use almost all of it. You wouldn't be able to use them both at the same time. Much less any of the other loads a typical house has.

 

[Crissa]

The inverter in the truck will not be large enough to power a house. Only a few critical circuits like your fridge or freezer.

I can power my house on a 50a drop,

-Crissa

(Of course, I don't have A/C and you can just turn it off while you take a hot shower.)

 

[ajdelange]

While that's impressive, it won't handle most houses. A water heater would use half that, and a central air conditioner would use almost all of it. You wouldn't be able to use them both at the same time. Much less any of the other loads a typical house has.

I don't know where you are getting these ideas but as I mentioned in my last post I averaged 3.64 kW over the last 6 months which is 87.6 kWh/da, almost triple what the average US house takes. Median draw was 2.8 kW. I exceeded 7 kW 10.6% of the time. My baseline load was 1.65 kW. Given that power consumption (or at least mine anyway) is baseline plus a Weibul distributed random load it is pretty easy to suppose that the average house might have a baseline 1/3 what I do and that the difference between the median and baseline might be 1/3 of what it is for me. With those assumptions its easy to estimate that the probability of exceeding 7 kW is 1E-5 (0.001%). In a year it would be exceeded 5 minutes. For me it would be 929 hours so I wouldn't even try to run my whole house on the CT or a 7 kW generator. Now I would not hesitate to put 40 or 50 amps of loads on one of those priority circuit transfer panels they sell for this application with small generators. Their ubiquity should be sufficient evidence that you can indeed do what you are saying you can't do. Millions of people do it. Intelligent load shedding is, of course, part of this. Assuming it's a power emergency that has caused you to hook up your house to your CT you tell Mrs not to bake cookies in her electric over, fire her most recent pottery project of dry clothes until the power is back on. Not only does this protect the gnerator/inverter from overload but it makes the fuel/charge last longer. If you are hooked up legally no load of that magnitude is on the transfer panel. It is only connected to refrigerators, lights, communications, the well pump etc.

I said above that I wouldn't try to run my whole house on a 7 kW generator. In fact I used to do exactly that during power outages and what a PITA that was. But we could run the heat, the A/C, the well, watch TV etc but had to manage the load. Eventually I put in a bigger generator. It has automatic load shedding but AFAIK it has never triggered (IOW the generator I bought is too big).

 

[Dave Lyon]

I don't know where you are getting these ideas but as I mentioned in my last post I averaged 3.64 kW over the last 6 months which is 87.6 kWh/da, almost triple what the average US house takes. Median draw was 2.8 kW.

I get these crazy ideas by using math. Average loads really aren't relevant. Peak loads will exceed what the CT can supply. As I said, a central AC unit will use almost all the power it can supply. If the water heater kicks on at the same time, it's not going to be able to handle the load.

Sure, you could run it to a box that handles only the most important loads during an emergency, but that's not what we were talking about.

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