Forget 'Baby on board'

[Bill Howatt]

If your solar array can provide the Kw capacity I don't see why it can't charge the battery assuming somewhere in your equipment is an accessible inverter outlet that converts the solar DC into 240V, 60Hz AC.
If the power (Kw) available from either array size of poor sunlight is low then isn't it just an issue of taking longer? But I can't say if Tesla puts any quirks into a generic situation.

[mike stenson]

Most grid tie solar inverters need a source of power to sync to. Even if you had a transfer switch to isolate your solar the panels won't produce any power. This is starting to change. The latest Enphase microinverters can produce power even if the grid is down.

Those must be newer than a year.

[Steve Demuth]

Those must be newer than a year.

They've been available since 2021 from Enphase. If you have IQ8 inverters, those are grid-forming capable. Whether or not, and when, they will provide AC power absent grid input depends on how they're configured (which of course depends on what your utility will permit).

[Doug Garson]

PS: I have always wondered what a fully autonomous car would do if I am going straight through a busy intersection, while a big truck is going fast running the light, and there is a troop of Girl Scouts on the opposite sidewalk. Will it sacrifice my car full of Nuns, or the Girl Scouts? I know the manufacturers have thought of this, and I suspect they have addressed it somehow. I also suspect it will remain a dark secret.

Live long and prosper.

I wonder what the answers would be if that scenario was described on the driver's test and applicants were required to answer? I also wonder what % of drivers could think it thru and react in time to do what they say they would do.

[Rick Potter]

Roger's post (#38) made me curious, so when I left to get a burger, I went down my street about 100', since the car needs a bit of movement to know exactly where you are. I stopped, and entered the address of the house across the street from my house, then started out. About 50 feet down the street I was told to do a u=turn and go back. I did that, and it took me to the correct street address.

PS: Just got a notification telling me they have used data from thousands of trips to hone and improve the city street driving by nav. Sounds like a lot of people are trying the free month trial. I also got a notification that Tesla has reduced the price from $200 a month to $100, after only a couple of weeks into the trial subscriptions. Not sure about my car, but four others in the family will definitely be doing it.

[Bill Dufour]

I have heard that tesla now requires you to buy at least one powerwall if they add solar panels. People also take used car batteries that no longer hold a full charge and use those as solar backup batteries. A battery that is like 80% gone from original amp hours is considered a warranty item. It will last a long time inside a home with no big temperature swings, no vibration, no heavy load accelerations. Who has 700 Hp in their home shop?
A tesla battery breaks into something like six, 40 volt sections. If only five are good use those in the home system.
Frito Lay is using the Tesla semi trucks here. UPS no longer uses the BEV trucks. They lasted about five years. I understand the mega charger for the trucks are like 1,000 volts at 1,000 amps
BilL D

[Alan Lightstone]

Many years ago now, I had a Lexus LS that was perhaps the first car that could park itself. My daughter used it for her driving test, and when she had to parallel park and not hit the cones to pass the test, she had the car do it.

The instructor laughed hysterically, then said. OK. You pass. Now do it yourself.

[Rick Potter]

Only a young lady would get away with that.

[Jim Koepke]

Duke Energy only pays me back $.025/Kwh of electricity I send back to them as surplus, and now charges $15.6/kWh for usage.

Most people paying a rate like that would sit in the dark with the TV off.

In my county:

Cowlitz County PUD's patrons are charged an average residential electricity price of 8.79 cents per kilowatt hour

We are among the lowest 170 rates in the country.

It seems a bit coercive for them to pay you so little while charging so much.

jtk

[Alan Lightstone]

Whoops. Typo on my post. Duke Energy charges $0.156/kWh. Forgot the decimal point.

That being said, they now only pay back 16% of what they charge you for electricity for surplus you send them, that they then resell. Nice business to be in. Their rates they charge customers went up this year, and the amount they pay you for surplus went down even more.

[Steve Demuth]

Whoops. Typo on my post. Duke Energy charges $0.156/kWh. Forgot the decimal point.

That being said, they now only pay back 16% of what they charge you for electricity for surplus you send them, that they then resell. Nice business to be in. Their rates they charge customers went up this year, and the amount they pay you for surplus went down even more.

The rules on feed in tariffs in this country are a complete mess, with both solar advocates and the utilities arguing for - and in some places getting - absurd positions. The advocates think you should get net metering at full retail, with refunds for production over use. The utilities want to pay so little that no consumer would choose to self generate. None of this is helpful. It's particularly not so in a place such as where I live, where a Rural Electric Cooperative that serves almost entirely widely distributed customers on land parcels that range from 20 acres up to thousands - We should be encouraging levelized solar and wind on every farm they serve, either with on-farm batteries, or by building grid-scale batteries.

Currently, my own REC has basically two options for those who want to have distributed generation (which is mostly, but not entirely solar): you can go full net meter (which means you get a credit for every kwh you feed into the grid equal to what you pay for a kwh taken off the grid), provided you don't connect production that exceeds 125% of your annualized usage, or you can build as large as you want (up to 40kw), but be compensated at "avoided cost" rates set by the REC's wholesale supplier at maybe 10% of the retail meter rate. The full net meter option is crazy: there is no way the power a solar system feeds back into the grid for a couple of hours on a sunny day is worth full retail, and paying that rate just shifts the cost of continuous generation off those with solar to those without. But the avoided cost calculation option is absurd in the other direction: we sould be encouraging responsible renewable production, including levelized production, not strangling it at birth.

The absence of a national grid policy on this stuff is an embarrasement.

[Rick Potter]

Well, the decision is made. The free trial period is over and we decided not to spend $100 a month to get the full self driving experience. It was interesting, both super neat and annoying. Each time you over ride it, you get a message asking why, and I gave them my dislikes which were mostly about unwanted lane changes.

I am sure that with all the millions of feedback answers they are getting they will have the system smoothed out in just a few months. If I ever take a long trip in the car, I will see if I can just buy a month. Don't know if they will do that. I guess we will see.

[Alan Lightstone]

Well, the decision is made. The free trial period is over and we decided not to spend $100 a month to get the full self driving experience. It was interesting, both super neat and annoying. Each time you over ride it, you get a message asking why, and I gave them my dislikes which were mostly about unwanted lane changes.

I am sure that with all the millions of feedback answers they are getting they will have the system smoothed out in just a few months. If I ever take a long trip in the car, I will see if I can just buy a month. Don't know if they will do that. I guess we will see.

Yes, clearly still a work in progress. The automatic lane changing is often annoying. It would always try to go in the right lane at a spot where I knew up ahead would be a line of cars waiting to get into the Starbucks and Chick-fil-A. I would always have to change that.

I really didn't have much belief that anyone listens to those recordings you make when you cancel autopilot.

It drives MUCH better now with cars cutting across lanes ahead of you. Huge improvement in that.

Lane changing now has a different, and very annoying bug. It often starts a lane change, pauses, goes back to the original lane, then makes the lane change. Never did that before. It's in the latest software "upgrade". That's a real programming screwup.

So each major upgrade really does get better. It's clearly not a finished product by any measure. And you really do have to be ready to cancel at any time. But it is getting more and more impressive each year.