Posted on 10/03/2023 11:16:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger station is an impressive beast. With 98 charging bays, the facility in Coalinga, California, is the largest charging station in the world.
In 2017, Tesla CEO said that all Superchargers in the automaker’s network were being converted to solar.
“Over time, almost all will disconnect from the electricity grid,” Musk posted on X, formally known as Twitter.
Superchargers charge vehicles up to the 80% sweet spot in as little as 20 minutes, but to provide that kind of power for nearly 100 bays takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators.
Investigative journalist Edward Niedermeyer discovered that the station was powered by diesel generators hidden behind a Shell station. Reporters at SF Gate tried to find out how much of the station's electricity was from the generators, but couldn’t get a response from Tesla.
The station isn’t connected to any dedicated solar farms, which means that absent the diesel generators, the station is powered by California’s grid. According to the U.S. Energy and Information Administration, in June 2023, natural gas supplied nearly 5,000 megawatt hours of electricity in California, whereas non-hydroelectric renewables supplied about 7,250 megawatt hours.
Energy analyst and writer David Blackmon, author of the “Energy Transition Absurdities,” told Cowboy State Daily that the use of diesel-powered generators is not limited to the Harris Ranch station.
He used to shop at a Whole Foods in Houston. The company had installed a charging station in front of the store for its customers. “It was the best parking spot in the lot, and it crowded out a bunch of handicap spaces,” Blackmon said.
He said there were diesel generators behind the store and whenever someone was using the chargers, the generators would kick on.
Just as these charging stations find they can’t run without some fossil fuel backup, the retirement of a coal-fired power plant in Kansas is being delayed to accommodate the energy demands of an electric vehicle battery factory that’s under construction.
Blackmon said that these stories illustrate well the lack of thought going into the demands that will be placed on the grid with increasing amounts of electric vehicle adoption.
As those demands pile on, U.S. energy policy pushes to remove coal, nuclear and natural gas from the grid.
Blackmon said he watched all summer as the Texas grid, which operates separately from the rest of the county, nearly collapsed with the incessant heat.
“We almost had blackouts on Aug. 24,” he said. State Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, told Cowboy State Daily that despite claims that wind and solar alone can power the grid, they lack the reliability needed to satisfy energy demand. So, parts of the country, such as Texas, are facing shortages.
“Adding the load required for electric vehicles and the transportation network to support them would exacerbate the looming shortages we already face in the near future if energy policies are not reformed,” Steinmetz said.
Blackmon said that the footprint required to generate enough power to satisfy all energy needs with wind and solar is enormous. It’s not just the wind farms, solar farms and battery factories, there are also thousands of miles of transmission lines to connect consumers with the power wherever it happens to be generated at any given moment.
This calls into doubt Musk’s plan to power charging stations off of solar. “If that’s what he wants, then he only wants the chargers to work six to eight hours a day. If they’re purely powered by solar, there’s just no way out of that,” Blackmon said.
Musk has made many exciting promises that so far haven’t come to pass. Someone went to the trouble to make a website documenting his pledges and how many days have passed since they were made.
Musk has also been taken to task for his solar promises. Energy expert Alex Epstein ran a fact check on Musk’s claim that we could power the world with a small area of the Sahara Desert and “some batteries.”
Epstein calculated that enough battery storage to create a reliable grid would cost $590 trillion for the batteries alone. It doesn’t include the cost of all the transmission infrastructure. And the batteries would have to be replaced every decade.
Science and stuff…
OH NOOOOOOEZ !!!!
The most retarded concept I’ve ever heard of in my life. Let’s avoid using fossil fuel engines by using electric cars where the electric is created by fossil fuel engines.
Well, a Diesel-powered facility in Coalinga beats a coal-powered facility in Dieselinga.
Hey EVs have great torque....
Just picture the Red Ball Express supplying the front on batteries? Imagine the legions of diesel powered charging stations set up all along the route and the fuel supply chain of electric trucks hauling diesel to run the generators.
Even more absurd, Imagine the banks of solar cells and wind turbines and battery storage banks being built and hauled to the front lines to charge the war effort.
These people are truly insane or intentionally perverse and evil with destruction their motive.
If you don't know what the Red Ball Express was, It was the endless line of trucks hauling supplies to the front lines in WWII. It as much as Patton or any other army was responsible for the German defeat.
Can anyone picture the amount of copper it would take to provide a grid capable of supplying renewable energy at a rate required for fast charging and everything else? It is mind boggling to me given the rate of transmission let alone the volume and the number of backups sources and battery banks that would be required.
How ironic.
You can take Bovine Fecal material. Put it in a box, wrap it in pretty paper an put a beautiful ribbon on it but when it’s all opened up its still cow poop. And so is this sin. Don’t go down this road.
LEX
You can take Bovine Fecal material. Put it in a box, wrap it in pretty paper an put a beautiful ribbon on it but when it’s all opened up its still cow poop. And so is this sin. Don’t go down this road.
LEX
When you sit back and think, it’s kind of hilarious that so many people think these cars somehow produce their own electricity.
(The leftists don’t seem to produce much except humor.)
I wonder how much power Commifornia imported. Inquiring minds want to know.
By the way, part of the scam is that Tesla gets fake carbon credits for so-called saving the environment. Having diesel generators for their chargers should make them have to give up those credits and not have as many to sell to oil refineries and such (to help oil refineries avoid the RIN fees, which I believe is about 50 cents for every gallon of gasoline IIRC).
Pay no attention to my bovine fecal material post it was meant for a different thread an to make it worse i posted it twice. my bad! lol
LEX
You forgot the garage fire.
They just built one of those massive Tesla Stations in Lenwood (Barstow) for the Teslas going to Vegas. Will have to check and see if they are hooked up to the grid or generators.
“Superchargers charge vehicles up to the 80% sweet spot”
Considering their in Harris Ranch, that 80% sweet spot is about the only thing that smells sweet then, given the 100,000 head of cattle next door.
Converting to electric cars is not about the environment. It’s about the revolution. For liberals, everything is about the revolution.
That's irrelevant. Because, virtue signaling.
Let's not be quite so formal and just say formerly known as Twitter.
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