Large 56 Stall Supercharger Site at Firebaugh, CA

ÆCIII

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I'm sure many have seen this post on Teslarati by now:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-worlds-largest-supercharger-restaurant-pictures/

This is going to be a massive supercharger location (it's in supercharg.info now). This would be a boon for EV travel up and down the I-5 freeway corridor. It's probably needed badly due to the number of EVs traveling up and down the I-5, considering the buzz over the past year or so about cars waiting in lines at superchargers in California already.

However, I hope they are considering installing a Solar farm nearby for at least some of it's power, as I think such a facility really needs to be as independent from the grid as possible. From satellite views it looks as though there could be land for a solar farm available.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/4...8402e97!8m2!3d36.6397844!4d-120.6254726?hl=en

56 Stalls at 250KW if all were charging, could draw as much as a whopping 14 Megawatts from the PG&E grid, which is no small demand. Given for this scenario, all the cars would have to have started charging at about the same time and with a low SOC, but still the facility would have to be built and connected to the grid to accommodate that potential power load. For California, I know its still a 'drop in the bucket', but it's still a lot of power.

Fourteen Megawatts could potentially power about 18,000 California homes at a given time, if one considers their average consumption (kudos to CA residents), which is almost the lowest per household in the country. Per electrochoice.com website data, the average home in CA uses 557 kWh per month, which divided by 720 hours in a month, equates to 0.77 kW being used on average during a given hour.

Californians are already consuming less per household than almost every other state in the country (https://www.electricchoice.com/blog/electricity-on-average-do-homes/). So with this low consumption per household, and California's high electricity rates and taxes, its puzzling there should still be any power infrastructure problems or rolling blackouts. Indeed there are a lot of people in California, which is also more people to pay the high energy rates/taxes, so if everyone is responsible/legal, it seems the infrastructure and grid improvement costs needed, would have been more than covered over the years by now.
Digressing...

Either way, I think of at least two reasons for the Firebaugh Supercharger location needing to be as independent from the grid as possible:

1) To avoid the possibility of the Superchargers themselves being affected by grid inadequacies and rolling blackouts.​
2) To avoid the potential stigma where people would blame Tesla for contributing to the rolling blackouts affecting homes.​

So I do hope they incorporate solar to make it at least partially independent from the grid. I think Elon has even mentioned this in some of his past discussions of Supercharger growth, even though I think those particular discussions were relative to the Semi.

One also has to wonder if there are also going to be some of the Semi 'Megachargers' at this location as well, because these would extend the range of Semi traffic (there could be an EV Truckstop with amenities/showers while a Semi is charging).

Anyway, lots of power needed, so I hope as much of it as possible can be from off-grid, because that would be an awesome example of energy independence and sustainability as well.
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ldjessee

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I think the plan is to have batteries to buffer the load on the grid.

The covered parking is with solar panels... not a lot, but something.

What I think was more interesting is that some of the spots are designed to be pull through spots. Now, I have not checked the plans in detail, so I am not sure how hard it would be to pull through with a longer trailer/RV...
 
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ÆCIII

ÆCIII

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I think the plan is to have batteries to buffer the load on the grid.

The covered parking is with solar panels... not a lot, but something.

What I think was more interesting is that some of the spots are designed to be pull through spots. Now, I have not checked the plans in detail, so I am not sure how hard it would be to pull through with a longer trailer/RV...
Absolutely a good point with the batteries, as Tesla Energy is already far ahead in those implementations. Also noticed there are some large power transmission lines and towers just a mile or so east, running parallel to I-5, but who knows if those will affect power availability there. With batteries, they can make either grid or solar power work better, replenishing them during non-peak usage while demanding less on the grid at peak usage. So batteries buffering the load actually do provide some 'instantaneous' or short periods of independence from the grid.
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