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Power Transportation

Tesla Launches 'Charge On Solar' To Charge Your Cars With Sunshine (electrek.co) 133

Posted by BeauHD from the star-powered-cars dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla has officially launched its new 'Charge on Solar' feature to let its electric car owners charge their vehicles with sunshine. Tesla describes the feature: "With Charge on Solar, your Tesla vehicle can charge using only excess solar energy produced by your Tesla solar system. Using excess energy to charge your electric vehicle maximizes the value of your home's solar system. Use the Tesla app to set Charge on Solar limits and have your vehicle charge using extra solar energy."

If you have all the required hardware and software, you can go to your Tesla app, and under "Charge on Solar," you will be able to set your charge limit using excess solar energy. Tesla writes about the charge limit: "Your vehicle will charge from solar and the grid when your current charge level is below the left sun slider. After your vehicle's charge level passes the sun slider, your vehicle automatically switches to only charge on excess solar up to your charge limit. Solar power and home loads are variables so if you ever want to charge faster, you can simply increase the lower charge limit to a desired range." There's also a scheduling feature that stops charging with solar after a specific time if you know that your energy consumption will increase at a specific time.
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Tesla Launches 'Charge On Solar' To Charge Your Cars With Sunshine More

Tesla Launches 'Charge On Solar' To Charge Your Cars With Sunshine

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  • Fairly Basic Software Functionality (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @08:16AM (#63696206)

    Not really too much to this other than the software to get the car to talk to the power wall. The hardware already existed to choose between charging wall or sending power to the grid with excess power. All this does is detect the car and its charge state when making the decision whether to charge the power wall with excess power or let the car charge, and then it cuts of car charging when there's no excess solar power.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Indeed. IN fact, in places where they use the CCS2 connector, you already can buy EV chargers that do this. They monitor the power output of your PV array and tell the car how much power it can draw to basically "charge on sunshine". Nothing special needed than some current monitoring devices.

      Also, solar cars do exist, but there are many reasons why they're not great. You're far better off with a solar array on the roof and charging off that than relying on range extension using a solar car.

      Dave Jones on EE

    • We need AC V2G from Tesla.

  • Why not the cars ROOF? (Score:3)

    by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @08:22AM (#63696218) Homepage Journal
    Why don't they just cover the entire roof of the car with solar cells....and let that help recharge the cars as it drives about on sunny days?

    Seems a natural place to put solar cells would be ON the cars themselves?

    • That seems like a good plan, until you realize that a Tesla is expensive and best parked inside the garage. Both at home and in the city center parking garage.

      • Also the big open glass roof is a real selling point for the cars.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          You mean like the almost buttonless dashboard that most people don't like because they can't easily do stuff on the move?

          Don't mistake crap that looks good in a marketing brochure that appeals to geeks for stuff car buyers actually want. Many buy teslas despite their flaws not because of them.

          • And yet hundreds of thousands of people manage to operate them perfectly fine every day. And they keep selling hundreds of thousands more.

            Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean that everyone is exactly like you.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by skam240 ( 789197 )

              Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean that everyone is exactly like you.

              Just because people buy these cars doesnt mean they like every individual feature.

              Turns out we now actually have data supporting what most of us already knew, physical buttons and knobs are easier to use than a touchscreen while driving https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com] . Most folks prefer things that make their lives easier rather than harder so my money is that most folks dont like the lack of physical buttons.

              • I know this thread is old but thanks for pointing this out. There's a fine line between the machine working for you and you working for the machine. We need to talk about this. Particularly regarding smart phones. Whether tech is good or bad is a matter of utility not flashy fucking icons and ever wider, higher res screens.
            • It's been well studied that touchscreens are more difficult to operate for the driver vs. physical buttons. Just because you can operate something, doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. I still struggle to operate my touchscreen climate controls on my Mach-E vs. my old 2016 Kia Optima with physical buttons. I would pay $1,000 to rip out the stupid Mach-E screen and replace it with my Optima control system, as it is far easier to operate.

      • That's really not the problem. The car roof is small and car has a huge battery so it will take like a month to fully charge it.

      • It's a good plan according to the Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX which has has solar roof and is same price as a Tesla ("starting 110 000 GBP")

    • Re:Why not the cars ROOF? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @08:39AM (#63696256)

      The roof of a passenger car *might* be able to get 500W of power *peak* in the light if covered in cells. That means less than 4kw in a day, more likely 3kwh or so, between 12-16 miles of range in a day.

      So not that useful for a passenger vehicle, except people who never drive more than 12 miles in a day or so, never park in a garage, and always have clear sunny weather.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Not everyone uses a car to commute every day. For a start more people work at home, secondly in civilised countries publiuc transport is a thing. So 12-16 miles of charge a day could meet a lot of peoples needs.

        • Electric vehicles only make sense financially if your daily driving exceeds some mileage threshold which is certainly more than 12 miles. At some point, I hope, Tesla enables grid-disconnect where the vehicle batteries charge first then the stationary ones and power is used in reverse.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mspohr ( 589790 )

            Electric vehicles are about 1/4 of the cost to fuel as ICE cars. In addition you don't have "routine maintenance" (oil, filters, brakes, etc.) so even cheaper.

            • Re:Why not the cars ROOF? (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @10:07AM (#63696522)

              Two factors:
              One: If you are sporting your 2003 car with less than 73k miles on it, then it's probably still not worth buying a car, your car has age related deteriotion, but much of the drivetrain is still near-new. Your 2003 car would not have been an EV. It's better to keep using an existing car than to try to 'save' money by going EV.

              Two: The initial price point of the EV is still pretty high. The TCO is lower assuming significant usage, but if it would take you three days to go through a gallon of gas, and an oil change every couple of years, and your brakes will last for many many years if you are only going 10 miles a day. The TCO difference won't pay off even in 20 years for such a hypothetical vehicle owner. The cheapest EV is still about 10k higher than the cheapest gas car (Bolt EV versus Mitsubishi Mirage ES, and they are pretty similar feature wise to each other). If you are planning on buying a car in the 30-50k price range *anyway*, EV is a solid option, and even at the 10k gap a car driven about 20-40 miles a day may eventually make up the cost difference. But if you want 'cheapest new car that I'll barely drive', then Gas still leads, unfortunately.

              EVs are great, but the contortions to try to imagine a use case for in-car solar are just unrealistic.

            • Yeah but you spent more up front on the EV. It's like when you buy an EV you have to prepay for gas for most of the life of a comparable ICE car. If you drive it a lot you may break even but that generally only happens at around 100,000 miles. My current ICE is five tears old now and I only just passed 50,000.

              • New EVs are cheaper than ICE to buy and much cheaper to run.
                Only fools are buying new ICE.

                • As I said, who cares if it is cheaper to run if you need to put yourself that much more in debt to get it.

                  • Can't compare a new car vs an old beater.
                    Old beater cheaper in the short run (literally they run for a short time then either trashed or expensive repairs).

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Junta ( 36770 )

                      But you can compare new car versus new car, and EVs still carry a premium for now, that takes some time to make up through reduced ongoing costs.

                    • I was talking about how a new ICE costs so much less than than a new comparable EV.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Junta ( 36770 )

                  Point to a new EV that is cheaper than a competitive ICE to buy.

                  Cheaper to run, yes, but not yet cheaper to buy.

                  You can say stuff like "A Bolt EV is cheaper than a Traverse", but those are hardly comparable experiences.

                  • Yes, cheaper to buy. New average EV price is cheaper than average new ICE car price.
                    https://thedriven.io/2023/02/0... [thedriven.io]

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Junta ( 36770 )

                      That article doesn't say what you said, I see no mention of average ICE car price.

                      To try to make the point that they are barely more expensive, he compared a Tesla Model 3 to an XC40 ICE. Again, cross-shopping things that would not normally be considered equivalent, because the price tags looked favorable to the point being made.

                      The closest EV equivalent to an XC40 ICE would be the XC40 Recharge. The XC40 ICE currently prices at $37k USD, and the EV is $54k. The Model Y would be closer than model 3, and it

          • Electric vehicles only make sense financially if your daily driving exceeds some mileage

            For many people the choice of a car is not only what makes sense financially; they might prefer the comfort of the electric drive and ready to pay the extra 9000$ that electric battery adds in cost (value according to https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org] ). About Tesla it's also more about status than saving on gas. Also there are some economical electric cars. A Nissan Leaf is $28,040 https://www.nissanusa.com/vehi... [nissanusa.com] . Maybe Nissan customers could get a less expensive ICE option but chose to have an electric

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          The room between "needs more than 10 miles a day" and "doesn't need a car at all" seems pretty thin. Besides, the cost and weight of the solar cells would likely never pay for itself for something the weight and size of a passenger vehicle. Meanwhile the solar panels associated with the house/covered parking that you could imagine could be installed instead could be:
          -More densely packed
          -More optimally angled toward the sun (the car would pack solar cells in accordance to aerodynamics).
          -Does not have to be

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            "The room between "needs more than 10 miles a day" and "doesn't need a car at all" seems pretty thin"

            Huh?

            "Besides, the cost and weight of the solar cells would likely never pay for itself"

            You realise the glass roof in certain teslas is pretty heavy too right?

            "-More optimally angled toward the sun (the car would pack solar cells in accordance to aerodynamics)."

            So what? The top of a car will always get the sun if its outdoors and you can move a car around.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Junta ( 36770 )

              The market size for people who need only 10 miles a day but need to own a car seems a pretty narrow niche.

              You realise the glass roof in certain teslas is pretty heavy too right?

              And it would be even heavier with solar. If your point is a solar roof might be a viable alternative if you don't want glass roof, then you could have a lighter weight opaque roof. There's always a reasonable lighter weight alternative to solar in the car, and a reasonably cheaper.

              So what? The top of a car will always get the sun if its outdoors and you can move a car around.

              Well, for one, it doesn't always get the sun, it's going into a parking deck, it's under a tree, etc. Second, the angle o

              • Not everyone lives in america. The market for people who want a car but do less than 10 miles a day in europe is huge because plenty of people use their cars for weekend driving not commuting.

                As for a parking shade with solar, LOL. Yeah, sure, we'll all put those up in the street over here.

                You use case in nowheresville USA is very different to elsewhere in the world. HTH

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Junta ( 36770 )

                  Looking at various European cities, I still see plenty of parking lots and parking decks.

                  If you are talking about street side parking, we have that too. So sure, if you have to do street parking, then your *individual* car will get solar coverage (if not in the shadow of buildings...), but your solar cells would still be doing more productive work down the street on a parking lot than they are doing on your car.

            • The top of a car will always get the sun if its outdoors and you can move a car around.

              Unless you live in a place where your car isn't the tallest thing around, it won't "always get the sun if it's outdoors". See: trees, buildings

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          "So 12-16 miles of charge a day could meet a lot of peoples needs."

          And that "lot of people's" logic for buying such a vehicle would be really interesting.

          1) I drive almost no mileage, so...
          2) I should get an expensive vehicle, because...
          3) it optimizes out the last few pennies of fuel cost that I don't have (assuming I have a lot more expensive equipment installed in my home).

          A classic effort from you.

          "...secondly in civilised countries publiuc transport is a thing..."
          You know another factor in those "civil

        • you don't buy a Tesla for 12-16 miles

        • Not everyone uses a car to commute every day. For a start more people work at home, secondly in civilised countries publiuc transport is a thing.

          "publiuc (public?)" transport is fine if you live in small apartments in dense urban cities.

          In some "civilised (civilized?)" countries we prefer to not live stacked up on top of each other like rats, and have single family dwellings with yards to do fun things like plant veggie gardens...set up smokers (for true BBQ) or have friends over for a crawfish boil.

          It

        • Until summer ends and we start seeing rain and such. Or you part somewhere that is shaded because your neighbor is an asshole and won't cut down their 80 year old tree so you can charge in the sun. Then what?

          An EV charges at like 4 miles of range an hour on a 120VAC@15A plug, which is something like 3x the absolute maximum wattage you could get from the roof area in full sun. It would be absolutely worthless in comparison to the manufacturing and assembly costs, which is why nobody is doing it.

        • Not everyone uses a car to commute every day. For a start more people work at home, secondly in civilised countries publiuc transport is a thing. So 12-16 miles of charge a day could meet a lot of peoples needs.

          And you still need to be parking outside, something that people with a fancy and really expensive new EV may not want to do.

          It's a feature with some extra cost and technical complexity that ends up useful to only a very small fraction of the user base and is largely disappointing to the rest.

          Though weirdly enough I can see a market that might find solar roofs useful. ICE or plug-in hybrid pickup trucks.

          There's a subset of pickup truck users who actually use their trucks for work, meaning they're left parked

      • And never have trees or shadows.

        There is technology to turn translucent glass into solar panels, but the efficiency is so low as to not be useful, especially for the needs of the car.

        Ultimately, this is the problem with this solution. Even if you covered the entire car in solar cells, they wouldn't be efficient enough to generate enough electricity to be useful. Yes, it could charge your car a little bit, but it's far easier to have large static solar cells and transfer the energy to the car.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          Yeah, at this point we have *so* many better places to put solar cells that we don't need to be looking for more places.

          The many many square miles of parking lots that contribute to heating that could be covered with nice shady solar covering would be a *much* better to put cells than on cars.

      • Honestly, I'd take it just to supplement the climate controls.

        It's going to produce some power while parked, unless you're completely covered, and it's going to produce power while driving.

        Little bit extra to run the heat pump or the resistive heater.

      • So not that useful for a passenger vehicle, except people who never drive more than 12 miles in a day or so, never park in a garage, and always have clear sunny weather.

        I live in a large-ish city and know *lots* of people who qualify on all counts.

        BUT... I'm only saying that number's not zero, not that it's practical.

      • The range you calculated is also what the Mercedes Vision EQXX reports (15 mi / 25 km per day), and it could match the needs of a city commuter owner of a Hyundai Ioniq 5; both of these come with solar roofing, see this Top 10 of solar roofing car models https://interestingengineering... [interestin...eering.com]

        it's not about charging the car fully from zero.
        * It increases of the number of days before requiring to charge again, for city dwellers who don't have a garage (plenty of Huyndai's customers in large cities in Asia and Euro

      • That's more than my average driving, I don't have a garage, and I live in sunny California. And since I live in an apartment with no home charging options, solar charging would be a huge selling point to me in an electric car. But since people like me only buy used, perhaps aftermarket solar add-ons would be more successful (eventually, once used EV sales are plentiful)..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Askmum ( 1038780 )
      Lightyear tried this and went bust. It is economically unviable.

      And on an entirely unrelated note, why the F do I get a popup to subscribe to the /. newsletter every time I visit the the site. NO I do not want to subscribe to your newsletter!
      • I believe Lightyear came out of bankruptcy and are still going, just about.

        But I think it's more of a con than a great idea - solar cars can only ever charge at about 2mph.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        Costs them nothing to keep bugging you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jeadly ( 602916 )
      Because the math doesn't quite work out yet for solar panel density. https://www.solarreviews.com/b... [solarreviews.com]
      It would increase the cost and complexity of cars for very little benefit, delaying the transition to EVs waiting for "better" instead of buying "good" now. It's not that hard to charge an EV in most areas, and EVs charged from the grid are still better on emissions than gas with the grid getting cleaner every year. https://www.ucsusa.org/resourc... [ucsusa.org].

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        It may never make sense. Whatever you could put on the car roof would be more useful placed elsewhere.

        The only scenario where it might be useful is if the solar output could put out enough power to keep up with discharge (not possible, even in theoretical 100% efficiency, there's just not enough surface area) or if the grid was gone and you had to go nomadic without a house to put a solar panel in, and even then a portable solar array would probably still make more sense than vehicle integrated cells.

        Other

        • It may never make sense. Whatever you could put on the car roof would be more useful placed elsewhere.

          Yea, not for an enormous car/SUV. Moving them through the air requires too much energy compared to how much can be collected from the car's surface area.

          It's kind of approaching useful (ignoring costs) on something hyper-efficient with a relatively large surface area, like the Aptera. At least theoretically under ideal conditions and assuming they aren't full of shit.

    • Do the math. The amount of power you can get from - at best - a square meter of solar cells? Not worthwhile, especially since cars in sunny climates are often parked in the shade or in a garage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      we are no where near that efficient with our solar cell technology. If you could charge a Tesla in one day with just the surface are of the roof and hood, everyone would be running solar in their homes. A Tesla battery is what 100KWH? Lets say that the sun is at its peak for an entire 15hrs a day (its not). In that case you would need to output 7KW of power to fully charge the battery in 15hrs. Even at less than HALF that rate, 3KW, in just the surface area of the hood and roof (no trunk surface to really
    • Because the power that would be produced would be barely noticeable. Hyundai has tested a solar roof on one of it's cars, and even if it sits out in the sun all day, it only adds about 3-4 miles of range. A solar panel needs LOTS of area to produce much power.
    • At the moment the solarpanels are not good enough for putting over your car's body to actually charge with a meaningful level. Bmw did tests, here in holland there is the lightyear car that's useless. Maybe in a decade or so if they manage to increase the output of the solarpanels it might be useful.

    • the right place for solar panels is on the garage roof, not the car roof.
      Car roof is gimmick

  • Like others have done for years you mean ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JasterBobaMereel ( 1102861 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @08:31AM (#63696234)

    Really they have only just done this?!
    They have been selling EV's, solar panels, and battery walls for years now, why is this not already in place, I thought that was the whole idea?!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tx ( 96709 )

      They probably haven't done it before because it's not really that big of a deal. If you weren't charging your Tesla with your excess energy, they you were selling it back to the grid, it's not as if it was wasted. Maybe it works out to be a bit more financially worthwhile to charge your car with the excess energy than to sell it back to the grid, but I doubt there's all that much in it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jeadly ( 602916 )
        I think it's a method of increasing solar consumption to flatten the duck curve. https://www.energy.gov/eere/ar... [energy.gov]

      • IF you can sell power to the grid during the peak at the same price that you buy it from the grid at night, then this feature is not something you need.

        That depends completely on what the buy-back agreement with the utility is, though. If it's simple net-metering, you're already covered. If the rates for buying and selling differ, though, this can be to your advantage.

      • Maybe it works out to be a bit more financially worthwhile to charge your car with the excess energy than to sell it back to the grid, but I doubt there's all that much in it.

        That would depend on which legal jurisdiction you happen to live in. If you live in a state that has reasonable net-metering regulations, then it makes no difference at all - the price for a kWh put on the grid is the same as one taken off.

        Now if you live in a place with asymmetric net metering (sell each kWh at wholesale back to the grid operator, buy it back at retail) then it's far better to have something like this so you can keep your generated power on-site.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Many other chargers have had this feature for years. For some reason it's news when Tesla does it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        Yes, large installed base.

      • Many other chargers have had this feature for years.

        No, they haven't.

        Less sophisticated time-dependent charging, yes.

      • Tesla's API has had this functionality for years as well. They simply wrote a function on their inverter hardware that gives you the option of having it automatically start / stop based on solar production and current household usage.

        My grid operator gives me $50 a month of bill credit to be able to do this (shift charging load to nighttime when their generation price is cheaper and demand is lower) via Tesla's API, but I can override it with my phone or a button on the screen if I want.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Trickling out remedial features a decade after they should be obvious is what Tesla is known for. That, and trickling them out using a rickety software stack Tesla didn't author themselves.

      The topper is that Tesla builds in data services, then disables them unless you pay, then won't use those data services, even of you pay for them, to do its own software updates. Transparent contempt for customers.

      My first experience with a Tesla software update was having to buy a service upgrade for my cellular becaus

      • It's not Tesla's fault that you don't know how to use WiFi.

        It's a car. Drive it to a coffee shop and put it on their WiFi if you really just HAVE to get the software update RIGHT NOW.

    • Because in the past, you would just plug in the car and charge it, and if the consumed wattage is coming from your solar array, then so be it.

      This basically just allows the solar inverter to use the Tesla API to tell the car to start or stop charging depending on the output of the solar array. There's literally nothing going on here other than a bit of software being loaded into the inverter that leverages the pre-existing car API for controlling charging, and only enabled if you have a powerwall to act as

  • If your system is tied to the grid, feeding your power back to the utility during peak demand and charging your car at night with grid power would have the same net result but cost you less. This seems like expensive bragging rights.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      If you're on straight net metering, it would make sense. If you are on TOU, not so much.

      • If you're on straight net metering, and not factoring in TOU rates, then wouldn't it cost exactly the same as not doing it? A complete net zero to charge your car at a probably inconvenient time.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mspohr ( 589790 )

          Yes, you're right.
          The only advantage I can see if you are on straight net metering is that you can make sure you are charging your car from solar and not some dirty old coal plant that operates at night.

        • My grid provider actually gives us a monthly credit to allow them access to our car's API to charge it at night by default, which can be overridden from my phone or the car at any time.

          Been doing it for months, never had a problem where I couldn't get where I needed to go because the battery wasn't charged. And in the meantime those credits stack up next to the credits I get from net metering, which will be used during winter.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jeadly ( 602916 )
      Different utilities have different forms of net metering. Some trade kWh 1 for 1, some buy at wholesale price and sell back at retail, others just take the excess for free. I think this is intended to address areas that have a surplus of solar energy during the day, a way to increase electric consumption to store otherwise unused solar production. https://www.energy.gov/eere/ar... [energy.gov]

      So the answer is yeah, it might not be worthwhile in your area yet until there's a tipping point of solar production.

      • A tipping point for solar is just going to make the peak worse. Until we incentivize feeding back battery-stored solar power with favorable metering terms.

    • If your system is tied to the grid, feeding your power back to the utility during peak demand and charging your car at night with grid power would have the same net result but cost you less.

      Depends on the buy-back arrangement that the utility has. If it's simple net-metering, true; you do just as well (and maybe better) selling your excess to the grid. But not all utilities use simple net-metering.

  • Ooher Im walking ... oh wait that;s Harly davidson another american POS.

  • I wrote a python script that does just that with a Sense power meter API and the Tesla API. Could only do a 90 second update period since the Tesla API would start to rate limit. Every 90 seconds it checks for more than 5 Amps of solar power are available (the minimum the Tesla API supports) and tells the car to chow down. Gives some stair stepping in the power production but I've had months where I've just driven on sunshine.

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