Full Solar Charging

[JBee]

Sweet! Those inverters look familiar somehow.

I'm surprised he didn't run the inverter in batteryless mode on such a nice day. The only thing stopping you is that you have to make sure the EV is sucking less than the solar can give. Would need to feed the Tesla app a charge rate based on a solar light sensor from a wifi weather station. (Can all be done in software then)

Another way is to load up the PV input to its max power rating, that is at least 50-60% more than its 240V output rating, which means the PV side has some more headroom to keep the 240V output constant, so the EV charge rate doesn't have to be modulated much, when running without a battery.

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[JBee]

For anyone interested there's a bit of a convo here about off-grid charging of the CT:
https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/off-grid-solar.3383/

 

[ajdelange]

It's a little silly but I like to be able to say that I charge my car (X) completely from sunlight and thus operate it at $0.00/mile. So what I do is monitor my solar production and if it exceeds my demand by 11.5 kW and it's a clear day I initiate a charge at the max rate. If it exceeds demand by 8 kW I start a charge at 8 kW etc. I continue to monitor. As long as I am sending power to the grid (actually it goes to my immediate neighbors rather than the grid at large) I am clearly taking no power from the utility and the car is charging 100% on the solar. Here's how it looks on the energy graph. The dashed line is the Tesla. Note that a cloud rolled past at about 12:30 so a wee bit of Dominion juice, equal to the area of the red spike inside the dashed rectangle, snuck in there. The pure solar energy is equal to the area under the dashed rectangle (about 23 kWh or 23% of my battery) minus that little red spike.

The reason it is silly is that I don't really have to do this monitoring. I can just let the car charge whenever it wants to and as long as I am, overall, sending more power to the utility than I am taking from it, it still costs me $0.00/mi even though I am, in fact, charging using power that I lent to the utility when the sun was shining. That's how it works in the spring, summer and fall, anyway. Winter will be a different matter.

 

[tmeyer3]

We over built our solar to account for a future second EV (CYBERTRUCK!). To date, we've used much less than we generate and our utility bill this year will be nearly -$2000.
So maybe overbuilding wasn't such a bad idea. It's helping pay itself off. At first i assumed the loan would be more per month than just paying for electricity, but with the $2000/year difference, it's significantly less.

So in that sense, it's not only possible to drive on sunshine, but also completely live on it.

(We have our own well, all appliances are electric, etc. No gas connections on our home)


Cheers!

 

[FutureBoy]

We over built our solar to account for a future second EV (CYBERTRUCK!). To date, we've used much less than we generate and our utility bill this year will be nearly -$2000.
So maybe overbuilding wasn't such a bad idea. It's helping pay itself off. At first i assumed the loan would be more per month than just paying for electricity, but with the $2000/year difference, it's significantly less.

So in that sense, it's not only possible to drive on sunshine, but also completely live on it.

(We have our own well, all appliances are electric, etc. No gas connections on our home)


Cheers!

With this much generation, you could add a relatively small battery and make your home completely immune to power outages. Wish I had a setup like this.

 

[Klaxon]

I imagine a smaller roll like that:

could charge CT far away from the superchargers in wilderness.

 

[FutureBoy]

I imagine a smaller roll like that:

could charge CT far away from the superchargers in wilderness.

So instead of a destination charger, you just pack your charger and take it with you. Nice. Around here it might be impractical because of all the trees but maybe one could make it work. Possibly even out on fire service roads, you might find a large enough area. I could really see this in desert areas or across the midwest on the plains.

 

[tmeyer3]

With this much generation, you could add a relatively small battery and make your home completely immune to power outages. Wish I had a setup like this.

We have about 60kwh of battery. It's definitely come in handy!

I imagine a smaller roll like that:

could charge CT far away from the superchargers in wilderness.

100kw!! Holy crap ?

I guarantee that trailer is at LEAST $250k US.

But yeah, could easily power a whole encampment of EVs ?

A generalization, but 15kw on a full sun day can charge m3 long range in about 3 hours. Not to 100% from 0%, but at easily 20% to 80%. With batteries that can handle 100kw and sufficient current, you could charge 8-10 EVs fairly comfortably with that monster.

 

[GnarlyDudeLive]

We have about 60kwh of battery. It's definitely come in handy!

100kw!! Holy crap ?

I guarantee that trailer is at LEAST $250k US.

But yeah, could easily power a whole encampment of EVs ?

A generalization, but 15kw on a full sun day can charge m3 long range in about 3 hours. Not to 100% from 0%, but at easily 20% to 80%. With batteries that can handle 100kw and sufficient current, you could charge 8-10 EVs fairly comfortably with that monster.

I was just reading this thread and was thinking of something like this mounted in the bed of the truck. Knowing damn well it would be extraordinarily expensive, then I come across this last post with the above video. Scaled down to fit in the truck bed this would be pretty cool, pricey, heavy and pretty limited use being the space required to rollout the thing out fully. Apocalyptic event useful but I don't see it being as useful as just having a solar array on the house where it can collect the entire day every day and be more multiuse for the costs involved. It might be far more useful for city or government use in emergency scenarios though?

 

[Klaxon]

With batteries that can handle 100kw and sufficient current, you could charge 8-10 EVs fairly comfortably with that monster.

If that roll would be scaled down to a smaller roll that fits inside the CT we could have a freedom to go to the hellside.

 

[FutureBoy]

I was just reading this thread and was thinking of something like this mounted in the bed of the truck. Knowing damn well it would be extraordinarily expensive, then I come across this last post with the above video. Scaled down to fit in the truck bed this would be pretty cool, pricey, heavy and pretty limited use being the space required to rollout the thing out fully. Apocalyptic event useful but I don't see it being as useful as just having a solar array on the house where it can collect the entire day every day and be more multiuse for the costs involved. It might be far more useful for city or government use in emergency scenarios though?

Imagine a roll (like a paper towel roll but larger) that could be attached to the hitch under the tail gate. When you get to your destination you roll it out off the holder and charge while you are at camp.

The main problem I see is that while on an adventure, the time I most want to use my CT will be during daylight hours. So unless the solar array can be unrolled and set up to charge a battery while I go off on an adventure, it would mostly only be useful for emergency situations.

Plus like I said earlier in this thread, around here in the PNW, there are so many trees that it would be difficult to locate it in a useful spot.

 

[JBee]

That is generally the problem with anything solar powered, that it only works by day, and we want to work then too...

I found this solution using Starlink pretty nifty that works at night:

Starlink Solar

 

[ajdelange]

Please note that the linked article was posted on 1 April. Then, if you like, do a web search on "Quantum Mirror".

 

[JBee]

Please note that the linked article was posted on 1 April. Then, if you like, do a web search on "Quantum Mirror".

I know, hence the

 

[ajdelange]

Roger that. I don't take notice of those little faces.

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