News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf] by dreamcompiler on Thursday October 25, 2018 @02:49AM (#18298990)
350kW is about 1800 m^2 of PV panels; you need twice that plus a battery bank to operate at night. You might want a grid tie only so you can do net metering. At current prices for Chinese panels (not counting the Trump tariff) that's on the order of a million dollars. Now double that to pay for the electronic chargers themselves. So $2 million in capital costs and no recurring costs except maintenance. That's almost certainly cheaper to build and permit and operate than a petrol station, and those seem to pop up everywhere.

I don't think it will take more than a couple of years for well-maintained superchargers to be ubiquitous, and that's if you give away the power for free with government subsidies. If you charge customers for the energy, it might happen even faster.

Re:Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf] by consp on Thursday October 25, 2018 @03:30AM (#18299133)
> 350kW is about 1800 m^2 of PV panels;

Or about 1/7th of a windmill.

Re:Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf] by Retric on Thursday October 25, 2018 @08:36AM (#18300389)
Windmills require good locations to be cost effective, solar works almost anywhere.