How long would it take to fully charge a CyberTruck on Solar Panels?
So, as I am currently aware, the best consumer available solar panels in the US are 22.8% efficient, meaning 228W per square meter.
Assuming 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night, and Fixed Panels, you end up with roughly a 25% efficiency loss from that first efficiency figure, factoring in dust build up, inverter/battery system inefficiency, temperature dependent efficiency loss, average cloud cover and numerous other factors.
22.8 * .75 = 17.1
Sooo… to generate a full charge of CyberTruck, roughly 123 kWh…
171 watt hours * X sq m * 12 hours of daylight =
= Y watt hours generated per day.
Ok… so lets target Y as a full charge in one day.
171 watt hours * X sq m * 12 hours per day=
= 123000 watt hours per day
Solve for X.
171 x 12 = 2052
123000 / 2052 ~= 60
60 square meters of solar panels.
To be able to fully charge a Cyber Truck.
In the apocalypse.
So I hope you also have a small militia to guard your small compound of easily broken or damaged solar panels in the apocalypse.
Say youve got an array of 1x1 meter panels on the ground, spaced half a meter each with a fence around it, 6 rows of 10, then a meter to a fence.
The panels are angled at 35 degrees , so their foot print size is more like 1m x ~0.9m
So thats:
61 + (60.5) + 2 = 11m
x
100.9 + (100.9*0.5) + 2 = 15.5m
So basically, you need a plot of land roughly 170.5 sq m, or roughly 1534.5 sq ft just for solar panels.
So basically, in the apocalypse, youre gonna have something like your entire front yard as a solar panel field.
Estimated cost of setting this all up would be… what, nearly 200,000 dollars if you build the entire thing yourself, double that if you pay people to build it for you? Months of build time, half a year if you do it yourself?
Seems like a very practical way to prepare for and survive an apocalypse. Very inconspicuous.
Spend an absurd amount of money and time to be able to drive at most 175 ish miles away and then back to home base, never able to go further away in case of i dont know a mass group of starving violent people, unless you know a string of buddies every 330ish miles who /also/ have their own solar front yards they’ll just agree to let you use.
For someone who likes acting clever you sure did miss a lot of very obvious things in your speech.
There are many ways of generating electricity and most are fairly easy to establish if you know how. A petrol engine requires fuel that is pretty difficult to make and denatures fairly rapidly, they can’t run on ethanol or anything easy to make so well rapidly behind useless. Diesel lasts slightly longer and biofuels will work fairly well but take a lot of effort compared to electrical generation.
There is no doubt if you had an electric car after society collapsed you’d be far better off longterm. Especially as many areas are already solar and wind powered and would still have power.
Ah so your apocalypse vehicle solution requires setting up a bunch of infrastructure (build your own wind turbine? Dam? Solar array? Molten salt nuclear reactor?) while everyone is running around killing everyone else for food and water, as opposed to having a decent sized stockpile of petrol/gasoline with fuel preservative or diesel that could be easily and inconspicuous stored in a garage or even apartment.
You are also at least /plausibly/, though not /likely/ to be able to find some gasoline or diesel somewhere in an apocalypse scenario.
You are not likely to find a working power grid in an apocalypse scenario, not until years or decades later after the survivors of the initial phase of mass panic, starvation and murder have begun to meaningfully reestablish something resembling the previous societies.
And you kind of have to survive this initial phase for the ‘long run investment’ angle to make any sense.
Please, unironically please tell me what areas in the US are 100% powered by solar or wind. I am fairly certain there are none, excepting possibly some Tribal Lands (theyre not going to let you in) or basically communes in the middle of nowhere (they are also not going to let you in).
I’m from WA originally and to the best of my ability to research, WA is one of if not the most renewably powered states in the country, getting around 2/3 of its power from dams and other renewable sources.
I genuinely have no idea what youre talking about when you say there are areas of the US that are entirely solar and wind powered. Electrical grids are part of huge interconnected networks and they do not neatly subdivide into zones that are and are not totally renewably powered.
Sure, maybe a certain neighborhood has houses covered in solar panels. Thats great! But what that realistically ends up as is a situation where that neighborhood has a good deal less draw during the day, but still relies on a dam or coal plant or wind turbines somewhere to fill up the rest of the draw, and then all of that draw at night.
None of that load balancing happens in an apocalypse scenario. The grid stops working. No more power to cover the rest of that draw. You can /maybe/ run the AC/Heat on low all day, /or/ your refrigerator in your solar house, but plug in a hair dryer or your PC or EV and drain your batteries quite rapidly, now your refrigerated/frozen food thaws and goes bad and/or you are either much more warm or cold than youre used to.
As previously established, youre gonna need several houses covered in solar panels all wired together, by you, CyberTruck owner, likely not a trained electrician capable of manipulating a portion of the neighborhood into a personal solar network battery/inverter system, while there are roving, likely armed mobs and small groups or even individuals desperate for anything they think valuable, edible or drinkable.
You say there are ways of generating electricity as if you can set up a micro electrical turbine in a stream that will charge a CyberTruck or other EV at rates higher than a solid month to get a full charge, or as if you have a somehow human safe RTG in your home, or have figured out how to harness the casimir effect to generate free energy… maybe you have a personal geothermal power generator?
I don’t know if you’re being purposely weird about this but whatever, I’ve watched hundreds of hours of YouTube with people doing all the things you seem to think are impossible.
Honestly I’m fine with you having the worst possible vehicle so I’m not really going to try and convince you further.
The dumbest thing you said is load balancing, like it matters if you can change your vehicle in ai night. Like going by your ideas you seem to think you think you’re going to be commuting or something.
No, there are no false assumptions, the rough 25% degrade in efficiency is based on articles that cover this sort of thing for people trying to make their houses go solar that have done all the math on this.
Sure, depending on your /exact/ set up, certain parts of this will vary slightly, but you still end up in the ballpark of needing a roughly suburban front yard sized solar array and battery/inverter set up to charge a CyberTruck off of one day’s electricity.
Now, having a much smaller solar array to charge maybe an E-Bike?
Thats a faaaaar more apocalypse friendly concept.
It doesnt matter if certain other electric vehicles are slightly more efficient in terms of range per kWh: you are still gonna end up needing a fairly large solar array.
An EV for an apocalypse scenario is ludicrous.
You wont have a home charger or network of chargers if the grid goes down, and if it takes a stupendous amount of effort and time to set up a solar array giving you the ability to basically light local foraging in an EV…
A simple bicycle is faaar more practical, and an E-Bike gives you an enhanced ability to do that for faaar less investment.
Or you could have a gas powered vehicle with fuel stabilizer added to the gasoline. Thats pretty cheap and easy to stock pile, and you could put said fuel cans in your car for actual extended range.
Sorry, theres no societal collapse scenario where EVs make any sense.
They simply require /infrastructure/, and the hallmark of an apocalypse scenario is /infrastructure is broken/.
They simply require /infrastructure/, and the hallmark of an apocalypse scenario is /infrastructure is broken/.
See that’s where your argument for gas vehicles breaks down. You’re not going to be running a refinery in your back yard. Gas vehicles require a ton of infrastructure. It’s just much more widespread currently.
Lets assume you’re doing 200 miles of driving each day (you’re the one insisting on using a full EV battery daily), that’s 2 days per gas refill. Assuming you’re siphoning gas from nearby vehicles (since there is no electricity to charge EVs or run gas pumps at the local station), you’re going to run out of gasoline very quickly in your local area.
So while I can agree that day-to-day an ebike is decent transportation, assuming it’s safe to be outside in the sun for such extended periods. A gas vehicle is absolutely terrible in an apocalypse. An EV works well for decent range and will sure as heck get your further than going on foot.
How long would it take to fully charge a CyberTruck on Solar Panels?
So, as I am currently aware, the best consumer available solar panels in the US are 22.8% efficient, meaning 228W per square meter.
Assuming 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night, and Fixed Panels, you end up with roughly a 25% efficiency loss from that first efficiency figure, factoring in dust build up, inverter/battery system inefficiency, temperature dependent efficiency loss, average cloud cover and numerous other factors.
22.8 * .75 = 17.1
Sooo… to generate a full charge of CyberTruck, roughly 123 kWh…
171 watt hours * X sq m * 12 hours of daylight =
= Y watt hours generated per day.
Ok… so lets target Y as a full charge in one day.
171 watt hours * X sq m * 12 hours per day=
= 123000 watt hours per day
Solve for X.
171 x 12 = 2052
123000 / 2052 ~= 60
60 square meters of solar panels.
To be able to fully charge a Cyber Truck.
In the apocalypse.
So I hope you also have a small militia to guard your small compound of easily broken or damaged solar panels in the apocalypse.
Say youve got an array of 1x1 meter panels on the ground, spaced half a meter each with a fence around it, 6 rows of 10, then a meter to a fence.
The panels are angled at 35 degrees , so their foot print size is more like 1m x ~0.9m
So thats:
61 + (60.5) + 2 = 11m
x
100.9 + (100.9*0.5) + 2 = 15.5m
So basically, you need a plot of land roughly 170.5 sq m, or roughly 1534.5 sq ft just for solar panels.
So basically, in the apocalypse, youre gonna have something like your entire front yard as a solar panel field.
Estimated cost of setting this all up would be… what, nearly 200,000 dollars if you build the entire thing yourself, double that if you pay people to build it for you? Months of build time, half a year if you do it yourself?
Seems like a very practical way to prepare for and survive an apocalypse. Very inconspicuous.
Spend an absurd amount of money and time to be able to drive at most 175 ish miles away and then back to home base, never able to go further away in case of i dont know a mass group of starving violent people, unless you know a string of buddies every 330ish miles who /also/ have their own solar front yards they’ll just agree to let you use.
For someone who likes acting clever you sure did miss a lot of very obvious things in your speech.
There are many ways of generating electricity and most are fairly easy to establish if you know how. A petrol engine requires fuel that is pretty difficult to make and denatures fairly rapidly, they can’t run on ethanol or anything easy to make so well rapidly behind useless. Diesel lasts slightly longer and biofuels will work fairly well but take a lot of effort compared to electrical generation.
There is no doubt if you had an electric car after society collapsed you’d be far better off longterm. Especially as many areas are already solar and wind powered and would still have power.
Ah so your apocalypse vehicle solution requires setting up a bunch of infrastructure (build your own wind turbine? Dam? Solar array? Molten salt nuclear reactor?) while everyone is running around killing everyone else for food and water, as opposed to having a decent sized stockpile of petrol/gasoline with fuel preservative or diesel that could be easily and inconspicuous stored in a garage or even apartment.
You are also at least /plausibly/, though not /likely/ to be able to find some gasoline or diesel somewhere in an apocalypse scenario.
You are not likely to find a working power grid in an apocalypse scenario, not until years or decades later after the survivors of the initial phase of mass panic, starvation and murder have begun to meaningfully reestablish something resembling the previous societies.
And you kind of have to survive this initial phase for the ‘long run investment’ angle to make any sense.
Please, unironically please tell me what areas in the US are 100% powered by solar or wind. I am fairly certain there are none, excepting possibly some Tribal Lands (theyre not going to let you in) or basically communes in the middle of nowhere (they are also not going to let you in).
I’m from WA originally and to the best of my ability to research, WA is one of if not the most renewably powered states in the country, getting around 2/3 of its power from dams and other renewable sources.
I genuinely have no idea what youre talking about when you say there are areas of the US that are entirely solar and wind powered. Electrical grids are part of huge interconnected networks and they do not neatly subdivide into zones that are and are not totally renewably powered.
Sure, maybe a certain neighborhood has houses covered in solar panels. Thats great! But what that realistically ends up as is a situation where that neighborhood has a good deal less draw during the day, but still relies on a dam or coal plant or wind turbines somewhere to fill up the rest of the draw, and then all of that draw at night.
None of that load balancing happens in an apocalypse scenario. The grid stops working. No more power to cover the rest of that draw. You can /maybe/ run the AC/Heat on low all day, /or/ your refrigerator in your solar house, but plug in a hair dryer or your PC or EV and drain your batteries quite rapidly, now your refrigerated/frozen food thaws and goes bad and/or you are either much more warm or cold than youre used to.
As previously established, youre gonna need several houses covered in solar panels all wired together, by you, CyberTruck owner, likely not a trained electrician capable of manipulating a portion of the neighborhood into a personal solar network battery/inverter system, while there are roving, likely armed mobs and small groups or even individuals desperate for anything they think valuable, edible or drinkable.
You say there are ways of generating electricity as if you can set up a micro electrical turbine in a stream that will charge a CyberTruck or other EV at rates higher than a solid month to get a full charge, or as if you have a somehow human safe RTG in your home, or have figured out how to harness the casimir effect to generate free energy… maybe you have a personal geothermal power generator?
I don’t know if you’re being purposely weird about this but whatever, I’ve watched hundreds of hours of YouTube with people doing all the things you seem to think are impossible.
Honestly I’m fine with you having the worst possible vehicle so I’m not really going to try and convince you further.
The dumbest thing you said is load balancing, like it matters if you can change your vehicle in ai night. Like going by your ideas you seem to think you think you’re going to be commuting or something.
That’s a ton of false assumptions about solar panels you have there.
Also, there are a ton of other EVs that aren’t that terrible joke of a vehicle.
No, there are no false assumptions, the rough 25% degrade in efficiency is based on articles that cover this sort of thing for people trying to make their houses go solar that have done all the math on this.
Sure, depending on your /exact/ set up, certain parts of this will vary slightly, but you still end up in the ballpark of needing a roughly suburban front yard sized solar array and battery/inverter set up to charge a CyberTruck off of one day’s electricity.
Now, having a much smaller solar array to charge maybe an E-Bike?
Thats a faaaaar more apocalypse friendly concept.
It doesnt matter if certain other electric vehicles are slightly more efficient in terms of range per kWh: you are still gonna end up needing a fairly large solar array.
An EV for an apocalypse scenario is ludicrous.
You wont have a home charger or network of chargers if the grid goes down, and if it takes a stupendous amount of effort and time to set up a solar array giving you the ability to basically light local foraging in an EV…
A simple bicycle is faaar more practical, and an E-Bike gives you an enhanced ability to do that for faaar less investment.
Or you could have a gas powered vehicle with fuel stabilizer added to the gasoline. Thats pretty cheap and easy to stock pile, and you could put said fuel cans in your car for actual extended range.
Sorry, theres no societal collapse scenario where EVs make any sense.
They simply require /infrastructure/, and the hallmark of an apocalypse scenario is /infrastructure is broken/.
See that’s where your argument for gas vehicles breaks down. You’re not going to be running a refinery in your back yard. Gas vehicles require a ton of infrastructure. It’s just much more widespread currently.
Lets assume you’re doing 200 miles of driving each day (you’re the one insisting on using a full EV battery daily), that’s 2 days per gas refill. Assuming you’re siphoning gas from nearby vehicles (since there is no electricity to charge EVs or run gas pumps at the local station), you’re going to run out of gasoline very quickly in your local area.
So while I can agree that day-to-day an ebike is decent transportation, assuming it’s safe to be outside in the sun for such extended periods. A gas vehicle is absolutely terrible in an apocalypse. An EV works well for decent range and will sure as heck get your further than going on foot.