What I don’t understand is why every gas station doesn’t throw up a solar panel, battery bank and a speed charger. You could charge $20-$30 per charge, the payback would probably be 6 months or less. Also risk mitigation for the future. Keep people used to stopping at “gas” stations.
Scale. But this is a great idea at home! Balcony solar is just starting to hit the US, and a couple of reconfigurable/portable panels as a supplemental system will be more and more common. They'll offset cost by feeding back into the grid directly. It's already common in other parts of the world.
Florida has had a power buy-back program for people that use solar and wind for over 30 years. had a neighbor in the 90's that had panels and a couple small wind turbines and they usually got a check each month instead of a bill. and this was dense suburbs, not rural.
US gas stations are rarely a place you want to hang out 10-30 minutes. European gas stations along freeways already got this right with proper restaurants and playgrounds. Instead put them where people stop 10-30 mins like grocery stores and restaurants. Again Europe gets this right and we suck
What would make me very happy is high speed chargers at freeway rest stops. That’s somewhere you’re pulling over for 10-20 minutes anyway…
And yes, I’m aware that federal law doesn’t currently allow this. That could be changed the next time we have a functional government.
A gas "fill-up" takes 3 minutes if you swipe a card, 10 minutes if you get a soda and pay cash inside. A "rapid charge" takes 30-90 minutes. Might that 'drive' more business into yout soda/chip store? Maybe? But that's a lot of infrastructure to "fill-up" a dizen cars a day.
Nonsense -- I rapid-charge 150-200mi in 15 minutes tops on my average trip if I have access to 480V+ chargers.
How about five minutes for a charge? spectrum.ieee.org/byd-megawatt...
Go look at the power required to charge that fast. It’s not a couple of solar panels
I don't believe that I implied that at all.
The electric demands of vehicle chargers are significant. One fast charger uses about as much power as 15,000 square feet of solar panels can produce. You can’t practically do on-site power generation for public chargers. You need to spend $$$$$ for electric hookups
The solar array needed to do what you’re talking about would be enormous. I have 24 panels and they can’t even reach full power of my level 2 charger. Let alone level 3.
Yeah they are drastically underestimating the power required to meet level 3 charging and nothing less would make sense
Okay assume 100kWh per car. Assuming you charge 40 of that on average. Assume a panel produces 4-5kWh per day, so you need at least ten, plus the batteries to charge one car. Now assume say 500 cars a day (Modern gas is about 1000). That is around 5000 solar panels if my math is correct..
That number is optimistic. I put top of the line (for home use) panels on my roof in March, and they pull 2-3kWh each on a long, sunny day. And my roof is almost ideally positioned for solar.
Panels are a distraction, there's zero benefit to producing the solar power onsite, and no way to have enough panels for the power needed. Just draw on the grid to charge cars.
I think they pretty much have to. Batteries might reduce the instantaneous draw on the grid, and maybe you can get enough so that the batteries last. I still think most charging needs to be overnight. Then again I think someday we will just order cars to our houses when we need them.
That way, when you are running out of charge, you could possibly just pick up a new vehicle, and let the current one charge at a sane pace.
As an early EV adopter, this is like all the disadvantages of rental multiplied by a hundredfold. Frankly at minimum you're gonna need cleaning staff at that charger.
China now has grids and EVs that can charge in five minutes. US looking more and antiquated. spectrum.ieee.org/byd-megawatt...
In terms of the grid draw, giant batteries at the consumer substation are already cheaper than upgrading interconnects for some grid scale infrastructure already.
There's no reason a gas station couldn't draw enough power to charge six cars simultaneously. It's not a crazy amount of electricity at all. The parking garage by my office charges six cars. So do the stations at the public park in my town. No panels or batteries at either.
150kW, that is the number I'm seeing. Six would be six times that. A lot of homes probably don't use more than 5kW on average. I'm not saying you can't build infrastructure that will handle those numbers, but those are big numbers.
Citgo and Sunoco should be able to be as technically proficient as my local parks and recreation department.
But I gather the level 2 to level 3 jump in power consumption is huge.
Depends on the gas station. If you are a remote gas station with a small restaurant and parking, you probably have the space for enough panels. Even if you don't have the restaurant, you can rent a nearby field.
Also, folk charging will be there for at least 20-30 mins. Plenty of time to sell them coffee, soda, snacks, fast food, etc etc.
Most gas stations already have huge awnings over the pumps. Slap some solar panels on those bad boys!
Ahhh, dangit
IDK where Dave's getting his info, but at my employer's former facility *in Minnesota* there's a bank of panels smaller than a gas station could have that'll charge multiple cars per day.
Charge speed. To do a level 2 charge you want min 7.4kW of panels at full production (which is 5-8 hours per day depending on season). So say 16 x 500W panels. But level 2 charge for my EV is only ~ 10% capacity per hour, so not viable when traveling. I need level 3 charge speeds, 50-100kW
Of course I'm grateful to businesses that provide customers with level 2 charging, because it means I can usually recover what I expended on the roundtrip. But I wouldn't go to a gas station for a level 2 charge unless I was extremely desperate and willing to spend most of my day sitting in the car.
Thanks for all the replies! I got some good information in response to my hot take on gas stations from some people who took the time to run the numbers.
thats what the batteries are for. fill from grid, top up with solar. depending on area there could be "dead air" between customers enough to charge.
Let em supply power to the pumps and the enclosed kiosk. Every little bit helps.
This does not mean they can't just install a charger and run on grid, this is easily done. Might need upgrade from the electric co., but easy. Heck, the general store in Detroit Oregon has a 6-pack of Tesla chargers next door as a "destination charger", so no reason it can't be done everywhere.
Probably because of their contract with the company which supplies their gasoline
I’m wondering if it’s possible for stations that have a contract with a fuel company, but there are plenty of independents out there.
Even the independents have a contract with a gasoline supplier and there are only so many of those
Is it an exclusive contract, though?
Yes. Always. That's why you see the Chevron/BP/Amaco/whatever sign outside of the station. That's their supplier
That’s not who I’m talking about, the mom and pop generic ones.
Yes, especially the mom and pops. They don't have the power to negotiate for a non-exclusive contract
Over here in the Acela corridor and points SLIGHTLY westward, there's a set of Tesla chargers at a Sheetz every hour or so down the highway so at least some of the big chains are already getting on board with this idea.
We tried to roadtrip from Las Vegas to Ely, NV and we encountered a bunch of gas stations that had installed EV chargers and listed them on the various route planning sites, but had not maintained them, so they didn't work. Deeply frustrating.
Humans and their broken chargers... reminds me of when the kibble dispenser jams. The struggle is real but at least we can nap through it.
Your math is wildly wrong here. Wildly wrong.
Do... your gas stations not have chargers? Almost all the ones near me do. Now grocery stores I would love it. Charge while you shop.
Some do, most don’t. We’re seeing more at grocery stores, though. I’ve seen them at HyVee’s, Target, and Walmart.
No, most of them don’t. On the other hand, I only do grocery pickup, not wandering around the store, so I’m only there 5 minutes or less.
I don't get why Repubs are so anti green. They could make SO much money off wind and solar. Stuff like this. Just crazy
And I think a lot of red states ARE heavily invested in wind.
Kansas and Texas have a lot of windmills, and so does purple Colorado. I assume other windy Western/Midwestern states do too. comptroller.texas.gov/economy/econ...
Because the fossil fuel companies own the fossil President, and he's been campaigning for them since before his first turn. Also he hates windmills because Scotland was going to build one you could see from his golf course (not that oil drilling platforms would look any better.)
Stellantis is trying this, but charging EV station batteries from the grid then supplementing with solar is probably the way to go. driving.ca/auto-news/ne...
I can't speak for every.... But many don't have much parking or space for more. But you'd think where there is space, and the grid, they'd do so.
And a customer who has to wait fifteen minutes while their car charges is a customer who probably wanders inside and buys shit
Yup. We stopped to charge twice on a road trip this weekend. Both stops were at Walmarts and both times my wife went inside and bought stuff.
I’m firmly of the belief that a wholesale adoption of electric vehicles would utterly revolutionize the small towns that got strangled out by the interstate system by re-introducing Americans to the concept of fucking stopping for an hour somewhere and spending time instead of 36 hour marathons
Me. I am this customer.
According to a kick calculation, you would need the electricity generated during one hour by at least 250 square meters of reasonably efficient panels to charge a car?
I made that by head with a few numbers so take it with a grain of salt, and it does not factor energy loss associated with super charging. Solar panel efficiency also depends a lot of sunlight, I'm probably very optimistic on average
The charge could come from some really big capacitors buried under the forecourt, like the fuel tanks are. Trucks carrying large batteries could travel from solar plants to top em off.
Or they could use the electrical grid.
A typical DC fast charger uses 100kW to 250kW. That requires upgrading the electrical supply. You're describing a >$100k investment.
Fast chargers are really expensive.
...and take 30 minutes. That's 10-20 card a day. Not cost effective.
That's pretty much how it is in the UK. Not every petrol station, but most larger ones and every motorway service station, also most major supermarkets and retail parks/out of town shopping centres. So electric vehicles are more viable as drivers don't have to worry about finding a charging station.