Biggest Tesla EV Charging Station in US Powered by Diesel Plant
Oil industry insider David Blackmon notes the irony of diesel-powered Superchargers, and says rising EV use is a 'huge problem’ for the US power grid.
By Joshua Philipp and Naveen Athrappully
10/9/2023
Excerpts
Tesla’s biggest EV Supercharger station in the United States uses diesel power to charge vehicles, according to an energy expert who confirmed that these types of diesel-powered stations are present elsewhere as well.
During an Oct. 6 interview with EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program, energy-related public policy analyst David Blackmon was asked whether Tesla’s Harris Ranch EV charging station in Coalinga, California, runs on diesel power.
“Yeah, in part," Mr. Blackmon replied. "The San Francisco Chronicle did an exposé on it. They found that this charging station has 98 high-speed Tesla chargers. There's a diesel-generating plant located behind the Shell station that's adjacent to the chargers. And it's providing power.
“People think, I guess they think the power comes from just the sky or something," he said. "But something has to generate the electricity that enables those chargers to recharge those batteries. And Tesla operates this charging station and decided they needed that diesel generating plant, and they strategically located it behind the Shell station."
Mr. Blackmon spent 40 years in the oil and gas industry. A senior contributor to Forbes magazine, he writes and comments frequently on energy issues.
Harris Ranch is one of Tesla’s first Supercharger stations. On its website, the Harris Ranch Resort describes the facility as "the world’s largest Tesla Supercharger station."
When asked whether diesel-powered EV charging stations are common, Mr. Blackmon said that he had personally found one such station at a supermarket in Houston five or six years ago. A grocery store manager told him a diesel generator powered the charger.
“I went [and] looked at it, he took me out there to see it ... Every time a car pulled up to recharge, that diesel generator came on and provided the power for it.”
Mr. Blackmon pointed out that the EV industry is going through “a lot of growing pains” and that proper infrastructure to support electric vehicles “just is not there.”
“Tesla's way out in front of all these other carmakers in the EV space here in the United States, and is doing whatever it needs to do to ensure electricity goes to these chargers so that the drivers in California—it's the biggest market for Tesla—and their automobiles, they want to make sure they can charge their cars as they're driving through the Central Valley. And yeah, the diesel generators are doing the job.”
The power grid issue is a “huge problem,” he said. “And it's much bigger than people know because right now, we have a crisis in [the] supply of electric transformers for our power grid.”
“Transformers are an integral part of every electricity project in America—around the world, really—and they're in very short supply. It's taking up to four years to source new supplies of these transformers. Inventories are very low.”
“And, you know, you can't expand the grid if you don't have the equipment to do it with. The federal government is not doing anything to solve this problem,” he said.
Professor Deepak Divan, director of the Center for Distributed Energy at Georgia Tech, estimated that multiple L2 chargers on a single distribution transformer can cut its life from 30–40 years to just three years, according to the report. L2 chargers provide faster charging than the regular L1 chargers supplied to EV buyers at the time of purchase.
Upgrading transformers can be a headache for electric utilities. Costs of transformers have jumped to as much as $20,000 each, from $3,000 to $4,000. As larger transformers may be required to support EVs, many of the 180 million power poles in America would also have to be replaced, pushing up the cost further, the report said.
Some experts argue that the threat to transformers can be minimized by encouraging EV owners to charge during off-peak hours when there is less load on the electric grid. However, the report notes that off-peak charging “may not fully solve” the peak-load problem once EVs become widespread.
“Transformers are passively cooled devices” that are designed to be cooled at night, Mr. Divan said. “When you change the [power] consumption profile by adding several EVs using L2 chargers at night, that transformer is running hot.”
The risk that uncoordinated overnight charging may end up resulting in transformer failure is a cause for concern, especially during summer heat waves.
Utility firms are also staring at high costs to enable EV adoption..................................
Please read the full article at https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/biggest-tesla-ev-charging-sta...
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Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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