The Cyber Truck may pay for itself.

[Ogre]

A better question is why wouldn’t Elon do this?

A better question is who pays for it all.

With the Powerwall, all of the switching equipment to push power back into the grid safely is built into the system design. You pay for it when you install the Powerwalls and solar. With the truck, there are a lot of extra costs which someone needs to pony up for.

Tesla isn't going to pay for this equipment because lots of cars aren't going to be good power donors because they aren't plugged in during peak hours. If you are only home in the evenings with a low battery, investing in a V2G setup doesn't make a ton of sense for anyone.

So consumers have to figure out for themselves if their setup is going to make economic sense. How many people are going to bother doing this math? I guess if you live in Texas it's pretty enticing, but where I am, power is reliable and the power companies can't rob us when the grid falls apart.

If there is only a 0.5% take rate, is there any point in installing the two way charging in every single Cybertruck? How much do those components cost? What does the take rate need to be in order for this kind of change in the truck's design to make sense?

I'm not against this idea at all, I just don't see it as a slam dunk. There are a lot more pieces involved in setting this up than you seem to take into account. On the flip side, seems like Ford has done at least part of it, so maybe it makes sense for Tesla as well.

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[LDRHAWKE]

Well we engineers are not known for our interpersonal or reading skills and so I guess I'll have to suggest that you read what I posted in number 23 in which I briefly described the system, how it works and how ingenious I think it is. Since you didn't bother to read it there I'll say again that I think this scheme is, for brilliance, on a par with the conception of the Supercharger network.

And to reiterate again: I am not looking for confirmation of Tesla's scheme. I am looking for some hint that it may involve the trucks (or cars) at some time in the foreseeable future.

I really hope Tesla's entry into the power supplier market turns out to be a huge success and that this is reflected in the stock price!

You obviously didn’t watch the YouTube video all the way to the end where plugging into Tesla EV’s is discussed. Also note the Tesla VPP contract is all about power walls, not solar systems. This doesn’t take a huge mental leap or engineering expertise to understand were Tesla VPP is going after reading the VPP agreement. My difficulty is trying to understand your argument, which seems to be “Elon has not announced it.” Not that it is logical or would be illogical not to plug into millions of Tesla EV’s.

Elon if you are following any of this help me out here!

 

[LDRHAWKE]

A better question is who pays for it all.

With the Powerwall, all of the switching equipment to push power back into the grid safely is built into the system design. You pay for it when you install the Powerwalls and solar. With the truck, there are a lot of extra costs which someone needs to pony up for.

Tesla isn't going to pay for this equipment because lots of cars aren't going to be good power donors because they aren't plugged in during peak hours. If you are only home in the evenings with a low battery, investing in a V2G setup doesn't make a ton of sense for anyone.

So consumers have to figure out for themselves if their setup is going to make economic sense. How many people are going to bother doing this math? I guess if you live in Texas it's pretty enticing, but where I am, power is reliable and the power companies can't rob us when the grid falls apart.

If there is only a 0.5% take rate, is there any point in installing the two way charging in every single Cybertruck? How much do those components cost? What does the take rate need to be in order for this kind of change in the truck's design to make sense?

I'm not against this idea at all, I just don't see it as a slam dunk. There are a lot more pieces involved in setting this up than you seem to take into account. On the flip side, seems like Ford has done at least part of it, so maybe it makes sense for Tesla as well.

I love when people make a complete circle argument….?

 

[Ogre]

I love when people make a complete circle argument….?

If your single best argument for why Tesla will do something is "Because Ford did it", you realize you are standing on pretty shaky ground right?

 

[LDRHAWKE]

If your single best argument for why Tesla will do something is "Because Ford did it", you realize you are standing on pretty shaky ground right?

That was your circle argument…not mine?

Everybody wants to argue. Ford didn’t do it! They simply allowed…a EV truck…to be plugged into a house…for back up power. A long way from make a VPP grid system with AI software and running a full scale Beta tying into thousands of existing batteries, tied into actual power plant grids for peak power. Using the Cybertruck for you home back up power is really not even the major point of this topic……It is that Tesla VPP is on the verge of becoming the Worlds leading supplier of electrical energy and they may want to pay you for access to your Cybertruck battery. And as Musk has said, VPP will be larger the EV division.

 

[ajdelange]

You obviously didn’t watch the YouTube video all the way to the end where plugging into Tesla EV’s is discussed.

More coulds, woulds and shoulds. No wills or has announced or even hinted that.

Also note the Tesla VPP contract is all about power walls, not solar systems.

You need to keep abreast of the market. Tesla no longer sells Powerwalls except as part of a solar system.

This doesn’t take a huge mental leap or engineering expertise to understand were Tesla VPP is going after reading the VPP agreement.

No it doesn't and you should really try to make it. It's potential is by no means limited to load leveling in California where the system is desperate. Look at your video and try to understand the system the guy is describing. It's real power is that it has the potential to implement distributed generation and storage over the consumer space without any infrastructure beyond what is in place today. You don't need new standards, you don't need more transmission lines, substations, peaker plants or any of that stuff. In fact you could shut a lot of that stuff down if society would implement thus system widely which of course it should.

My difficulty is trying to understand your argument, which seems to be “Elon has not announced it.”

That's hardly an argument. It is simply a statement of fact, AFAIK. You said in your first post that the CT will be part of this virtual grid. I asked you to confirm that. You cannot. End of discussion. In all probablility your CT will not be capable of being wired into Tesla's virtual grid at least at first. As an engineer I understand the possible benefits and I understand the drawbacks. I cannot accept that your fantasy is as much as a fait accompli because you like the idea.

Not that it is logical or would be illogical not to plug into millions of Tesla EV’s.

Whether it is logical from your or my perspective (or mine) is immaterial. It is Telsa's perspective that counts. Up to the last time Tesla commented on this they said they did not want to do it. As noted in earlier posts they may at some later point in time, motivated by changes in the business climate, decide that they do. They, as does any other business, need to be able to adapt.

Elon if you are following any of this help me out here!

I think a cold shower would probably be of more help than Elon.

 

[LDRHAWKE]

More coulds, woulds and shoulds. No wills or has announced or even hinted that.

You need to keep abreast of the market. Tesla no longer sells Powerwalls except as part of a solar system.


No it doesn't and you should really try to make it. It's potential is by no means limited to load leveling in California where the system is desperate. Look at your video and try to understand the system the guy is describing. It's real power is that it has the potential to implement distributed generation and storage over the consumer space without any infrastructure beyond what is in place today. You don't need new standards, you don't need more transmission lines, substations, peaker plants or any of that stuff. In fact you could shut a lot of that stuff down if society would implement thus system widely which of course it should.



That's hardly an argument. It is simply a statement of fact, AFAIK. You said in your first post that the CT will be part of this virtual grid. I asked you to confirm that. You cannot. End of discussion. In all probablility your CT will not be capable of being wired into Tesla's virtual grid at least at first. As an engineer I understand the possible benefits and I understand the drawbacks. I cannot accept that your fantasy is as much as a fait accompli because you like the idea.


Whether it is logical from your or my perspective (or mine) is immaterial. It is Telsa's perspective that counts. Up to the last time Tesla commented on this they said they did not want to do it. As noted in earlier posts they may at some later point in time, motivated by changes in the business climate, decide that they do. They, as does any other business, need to be able to adapt.

I think a cold shower would probably be of more help than Elon.

I agree….you need a cold shower.????????

 

[ajdelange]

I left out the crack about LiCO3.

 

[DarinCT]

Breathe...

The answer to the clickbait title is no. ( Any title that asks a question, the answer can be no. ) But that's not the reason I get so triggered at this foolishness.

I had to stop after 21 minutes. So painful. Then I powered through rest just to make sure they didn't have something I missed. Even at 2x, a waste of 16 minutes.

I get that they are fanboys and that it is YouTube and that part of their thing is the fun, the pump, the geek out, but I don't have enough time to go through all the inaccuracies. They speak like a green version of certain radio and TV hosts, asking presumptuous rhetorical questions and presuming an ignorant audience.

In general, they are in the ballpark. In reality, time and bureaucracy is the issue.

For starters, here's where this kind of VPP is even possible

Second, CAISO, the California market "caretaker", can get 4000MW of flex power. That flex power is not cheap. It is not clear if the CA VPP will hope to compete on the open spot market and/or part of the emergency event program (US1$/kWh). Tesla has approximate 350MW of PowerWall batteries installed in California, assuming 100% VPP Beta program signup. The participants would have to be in PGE, SDGE & SCE territory (as opposed to a municipal district like SMUD). Current net metering already exists and the ROI is/was near retail prices - more like 25 cents / kWh. The real question, still unanswered, is if the VPP as power provider can sell at spot market prices and then compensate PowerWall providers at a non-net-metered rate.

Third, the one that I am most curious about it, is arbitrage. Power companies do not appreciate it when you buy cheap power from them in the middle of the night and then sell it back to them during the peak, so much so that it was written into the bureaucracy as not allowable. Again, this is a moving target as the rules have softened somewhat. Does this circumvent that whole thing? I doubt the utilities would appreciate their customers topping up at night, then playing the shell game of unloading it to Tesla to have Tesla sell it back to the utilities.

But, that just might be the case because of the Duck Curve . Long story short, the increased solar production (good thing) does actually cause a problem (Duck Curve, bad thing) for the grid,and one of the tools to solve it is battery storage.

Back to the real issue, time. Tesla actually offered this peak shaving 10+ years ago. The regulatory environment is supportive. In the future and far future, peak shaving will occur more and more from scaling storage just not now. Now is a beta, now is a test run. When CAISO needs power in the next 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 24 hour period, they aren't even thinking about Tesla let alone calling them. This is the very beginning and the future is a long ways away, more akin to autopilot early days.

 

[DarinCT]

Well we engineers are not known for our interpersonal or reading skills

What a cop out. You could simply say, "I see you are geeking out on it. I don't see it that way. I see it as a technical problem where the CyberTruck isn't involved at all."

 

[ajdelange]

Thing is I do see it his way and if he had read my posts he'd have known that.

Your most informative post makes it clear that there are many regulatory hurdles to be cleared. Investor owned utilities won't be in a big hurry to get on board and will only do so when legislation forces them to.

That aside, what I love about the Tesla program is that it makes this sort of sharing possible within the current grid structure, that is, they have the technical part of the problem solved. No need for new anti-islanding protocols, voltage regulation, THD.... standards. The system works in the current infrastructure (understood that I am probably being naive about something here).

 

[Crissa]

Any car that has DC charging can be tapped like this by an external device. Only Tesla has software that's tough to crack.

Tesla has done backup power before - but it was on the Roadster. They had relatively small batteries and weren't used for utility like a truck. And the number of homes with inverters was small.

But now you have the case that more people do have power systems. And it's only a matter of plugging it into these systems. As pointed out, Tesla is already building the software and does this with Powerwalls.

The additional equipment for someone with a Powerwall system would be pretty small. Yeah, it'll be spendy for those of us without, but right now there are massive waiting lists for battery backup systems. And that almost entirely because of a lack of batteries.

So it makes sense for them to move into this space, because it solves some of their supply constraints.

Furthermore, most cars are not on the road during power outages. And most Teslas use much less than 20% of their capacity daily. So say you have a Model 3, you drive 20 miles to work (and then back), and let the Autobidder drain no more than to 40%. Let it charge your car to 80% at night and that leaves 14.4kWh for Autbidder to sell during prime-time - enough to power the average home.

So this investment even with a Model 3 would completely smooth out the prime-time hump from the average home and allow you to buy electricity at the low nighttime rate, lowering your electricity price by up to half.

For me, this is worth at least $540 a year right now, with a 7¢ difference in peak power price. And that's today, future savings would be higher; especially with something like Autobidder being able to buy on the duck's back instead of just time-of-use.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

Let it charge your car to 80% at night and that leaves 14.4kWh for Autbidder to sell during prime-time - enough to power the average home.

First you have to offset your own use from your car's battery. Then you can start selling power back.

If you have a Powerwall this isn't usually an issue because the solar is taking care of your home's power while the Powerwall can sell its surplus power back to the grid (likely along with any surplus solar).

At one point Musk suggested that having the whole ecosystem was important, and I think this is a big part of that. If you have the Powerwall and Tesla Solar, this all falls into place.

 

[LDRHAWKE]

Breathe...

The answer to the clickbait title is no. ( Any title that asks a question, the answer can be no. ) But that's not the reason I get so triggered at this foolishness.

I had to stop after 21 minutes. So painful. Then I powered through rest just to make sure they didn't have something I missed. Even at 2x, a waste of 16 minutes.

I get that they are fanboys and that it is YouTube and that part of their thing is the fun, the pump, the geek out, but I don't have enough time to go through all the inaccuracies. They speak like a green version of certain radio and TV hosts, asking presumptuous rhetorical questions and presuming an ignorant audience.

In general, they are in the ballpark. In reality, time and bureaucracy is the issue.

For starters, here's where this kind of VPP is even possible

Second, CAISO, the California market "caretaker", can get 4000MW of flex power. That flex power is not cheap. It is not clear if the CA VPP will hope to compete on the open spot market and/or part of the emergency event program (US1$/kWh). Tesla has approximate 350MW of PowerWall batteries installed in California, assuming 100% VPP Beta program signup. The participants would have to be in PGE, SDGE & SCE territory (as opposed to a municipal district like SMUD). Current net metering already exists and the ROI is/was near retail prices - more like 25 cents / kWh. The real question, still unanswered, is if the VPP as power provider can sell at spot market prices and then compensate PowerWall providers at a non-net-metered rate.

Third, the one that I am most curious about it, is arbitrage. Power companies do not appreciate it when you buy cheap power from them in the middle of the night and then sell it back to them during the peak, so much so that it was written into the bureaucracy as not allowable. Again, this is a moving target as the rules have softened somewhat. Does this circumvent that whole thing? I doubt the utilities would appreciate their customers topping up at night, then playing the shell game of unloading it to Tesla to have Tesla sell it back to the utilities.

But, that just might be the case because of the Duck Curve . Long story short, the increased solar production (good thing) does actually cause a problem (Duck Curve, bad thing) for the grid,and one of the tools to solve it is battery storage.

Back to the real issue, time. Tesla actually offered this peak shaving 10+ years ago. The regulatory environment is supportive. In the future and far future, peak shaving will occur more and more from scaling storage just not now. Now is a beta, now is a test run. When CAISO needs power in the next 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 24 hour period, they aren't even thinking about Tesla let alone calling them. This is the very beginning and the future is a long ways away, more akin to autopilot early days.

The only thing I disagree with is “a long ways away”. Time is relative as we all know. But, when we are talking rapidly increasing large amounts of cheap
stored electrical energy, sitting unused, and for which there is a market demand; all bets are off. If anyone doesn’t believe Tesla VPP Beta will move rapidly they haven’t been watching what Musk can do over the last few years when he has unlimited financing available. The VPP is mainly AI software for accessing existing unused battery storage already connected to the power system.

He has changed the auto industry, space travel and about to change our power grid. What is different is the rate of change. We joke on this site about Tesla car model delivery dates sliding, but I sit in awe watching how fast Giga Plants are being built, build concepts turned upside down, and how SpaceX is putting space travel on a production line.…….all based on higher efficiency and lower costs, with little set in stone. Always open to a better way and willing to fight for Regulatory change.

To argue is it impossible, not probable or too costly, to connect Tesla EV’s stored energy into his new VPP is almost comical to me. If you don’t believe hardware is being designed and tested simultaneously, to access this stored EV power, as the VPP Beta is being tested; you are ignoring how Musk operates and Musk time when unlimited funding is available.

Am I pro Musk….let me think about it! ?

 

[Crissa]

First you have to offset your own use from your car's battery. Then you can start selling power back.

Literally, I did that. In that paragraph.

Limiting charging to 80% and discharge to 40%. This gives 40% of the battery - 100 miles of a Model 3 - to use daily. 40 miles per day driving, plus 60 'miles' per day devoted to energy shifting. That gives you 14.4 kWh per day to offset your use to a cheaper time of charging.

No solar or Autobidder in this value calculation, just time-shifting. Right now I am not allowed to even order a Powerwall, as I cannot have solar (we don't get noon day sun). Even so, there's a long backlog of orders because they don't have the batteries.

Allowing car owners to plug in would fill this gap and then some.

-Crissa.

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