Semi Megacharger Output // + The Megapack Moat

Today I get into the power will the Tesla semi will require from the Megacharger and why I could be wrong. I also cover the grid scale implications for the megacharger, how the megapack fits in, and what this does the competitive moat of Tesla's charging network.

Bitcoin: 3B3UXCZsnoPZxG6vYQ6npsF4TW8f5kK4LH

*Timeline*
00:00 Intro
00:51 Megacharger Power Output
08:01 Megacharger Extreme Power Requirements
10:38 Megapack Bring in the Cavalry
11:40 Megapack Moat
12:49 Grid Opportunities
13:32 Summary

Intro Music by Dyalla: Homer Said

[thelimitingfactor]

Point of Clarification 1: Some people might note that starting at 04:26, the average lines I've drawn seem too low and don't reflect the average from what we might calculate from what we see in the charge slope. This is because:

1) This graph was repurposed from the Model 3 and applied to the Semi...

2) The Model 3 charges to 80% instead of 70% in 30 minutes. That means the model 3 likely has a higher peak charger rate. That means that the peak rate and therefore average charge rate line for the Semi must be proportionally lower to account for its lower charging power.

Point of Clarification 2: Yes, the Megapacks are not just rated for >3 MWh, but 3.9 MWh exactly. This was a poor editorial decision on my part 😛

[MCSGproject]

this guy's the goat, one of the only channels that gets their facts correct and has the right level of knowledge depth. Sometimes misunderstanding subtle details can ruin an entire theory, which happens to most other channels regarding EVs

[dr-k]

The value of this channel only becomes more and more apparent as Tesla begins to show us what Semi is capable of and as they roll out. Thanks so much Jordan for your diligent and hard work!

[EnerGeezerSquirrel]

I really appreciate your precise enunciation: it allows for a time savings as its clarity at accelerated playback is maintained.
Thank you.

[bru]

While some youtubers dish out daily content with limited or zero analysis, Jordan takes a different approach in spending 1-4 weeks on building high quality timeless content.
Keep up the great work!
You fairly pointed out your areas of speculation. It will be interesting to see how close you were, or if there will be an updated version of this content when new information comes to light.

[khuo]

Videos like this are what builds my confidence. Quality over quantity

[Clark-Mills]

Excellent summary. Probably mentioned but these MegaPacks would be well suited to areas where there are easy access to large solar arrays like fields and large warehouse roofs. The connection and distribution of these significant assets (and our cars / houses in the future) will be the saviour of our present fragile grid and should help with resilience in the case of a high tension line or substation outage.

[andreiandolya]

One possibility we have to also consider is that 750kWh comment was specific to Pepsi's use case and does not show actual max capability of mega charger but rather highlights specific location constraints. Like if they decided to dedicate 3MW to semi charging in Modesto and they want to have 4 charging bays then they could easily limit each to 750kW. As long as the intended use satisfies them they might never need max charging power and associated infra costs to support it

[chrisheath]

Great video, thanks ! It just shows the enormous power requirements of the modern world - and how the future will need to be "batteries all the way down "...

[thomasoneill]

Einsteinian homogenised with seriously classy oratorical articulation. Thank you Jordan 👍👍👍

[roberthotaling]

Love this channel. Always informative. Tesla energy is rarely discussed so I appreciate the insights.

[eamonstack]

Great video - exciting development of whole new charging infrastructure. We might allow for night time grid use and vehicles starting the day full of cheap power.

[nickmcconnell]

Spot on! It is almost like Tesla planned all this ahead of time!
Duh!
Now if Tesla can only get that Lithium refinery plant built and going! I figure the Austin cathode building will be up and running about at the same time the Lithium refinery is producing.

[Carl_in_AZ]

Before I retired two months ago I was asked to provide standby power for three DC warehouses in the Phoenix area. These DCs were looking at 9 to 18 MW per location to support up to 300 semi-trucks per warehouse. When the utility told them it could take three years to build out the power lines and the owner found out how much it cost to upgrade their existing services the projects were canceled. I heard Tesla is building V4 pull-through chargers in Casa Grande and Avondale AZ. These are not far from existing Pilot diesel truck stops and a couple proposed H2 processing facilities. They can easily be powered using 4, 010-megawatt base power from the local Palo Verde nuclear plant. Tesla also had approved plans to build V4 passenger car charging stations in Quartzsite AZ which is a prime truck stop location between LA and Phoenix. The utility APS is adding flow storage batteries not lithium batteries with solar panels near these locations so my guess would be they are not using Telsa packs. Keep in mind the first EV semi was from Cummins who recently invested in an mfg plant for 500Wh/kg batteries in Tucson and many H2 processing stations in other parts of the world. Due to NDAs utilities can not tell us much but a few beers can.

[charleswallace]

Great video, lots of valuable information, delivered concisely.

[mattforthelikes]

This video combined with the details from zerosum (regardless of how true the Tesla website leak) are our clearest look into Master Plan Part 3 yet.
SO EXCITING!

[jimparrUtube]

@5:30. When the 4680 is considered, I believe a few rules change with charge & discharge. Higher charge and discharge efficiency because of lower heating. AND this likely means Tesla can hike the charge-rate to somewhat higher levels than the 2170 for example.
I don't know for sure, but the ground-breaking physical construction and lower ESR of the 4680 implies many improvements overall in respect of charge & discharge rates.

[benson]

Jordan, the term for what you figured out (a battery energy storage system charged by renewable energy to supporting Megawatt+ charging) is a Microgrid. We can’t rebuild the whole grid just to charge big EV’s, but we can make it better with distributed energy resources, and charge those EV’s with sunshine/wind/water.

[genesismachine]

A typical substation feeder is something like 800A @ 12.5KV, and most substations I've been in run at about ~50% load during a typical day, so that should be enough for ~6MW of power if you are able to fully buffer it through powerpacks throughout the day/night. At the subtransmission level, Tesla will need to have some kind of data feed from the substation and throttle their charging depending on the feeder load - assuming they don't get their own feeder. I think they will basically have to do power packs because the cost would simply be too high for an unbuffered feeder. For semi trucks, I would imagine their charging would probabbly come at certain times, and largely be usused for the majority of the day - even more so than superchargers. Even 6MW of power might be enough to support at least 8 Megacharger stalls I would think.

A bigger problem is that those feeders are typically sized for worst case scenarios - like if everyone is at home using electric heat during a winter storm. In such a case, there might not be enough unused capacity in a 7 day period to support the Megachargers. That to me is the much bigger problem because it's likely that Megacharger usage would be higher in exactly those conditions since the cold/snow would negatively affect Semi truck range...

In short, it's not an unsolvable problem, and people sometimes forget that when air conditioning first hit the mainstream, that also caused a massive increase in power usage in a very short number of years and totally changed certain areas load curves from winter peaking to now summer peaking - this screwed up a ton of 'best practices' and standards for certain utilities that were very affected. In general, utilities don't make optimal use of assets in extreme conditions. At most, they might have a set of summer and winter load standards, but as temperatures get down to 20F or below, the substation can push far more power than at 70F. There may need to be more temperature monitoring to make more optimal asset usage. Even at the transmission level, you would be surprised how much truly unused capacity there is. I'm not talking about what the utilities' standards say is the limit for 'winter conditions', I'm talking the true minute to minute electrical limit - that is typically far higher in extreme cold situations than what utilities run at. Some of this may be unmeasurable, but if a financial incentive was present, I believe that a lot of it could be measured and capacity could be pushed up.

At the transmission level, natural gas power plants can be set up very fast, and I wouldn't be worried about there not being enough ENERGY available. There is also a pretty large surplus of capacity. POWER will have to be managed though - that is definitely a problem. Transmission lines are very hard to build, so there will likely need to be some sort of data feed from the utility that can throttle all these megachargers in case of transmission congestion. The solution will lie in more optimal saturation of existing transmission lines, setting up new lines in most areas is not practical in a <10 year timeframe. We would need a lot of Megachargers to cause problems on that level though. A 500kV line can support quite a lot of capacity.

[gregbailey]

Brilliant work, Jordan!
You are the sleuth of sleuths when it comes to EV's and how they will be accomodated into the grid!
Tesla certainly have their work cut out for them, and they also have the vision to achieve all that's ahead.