“Also, what happens on a windless night to your home charger? Where is the power stored in such situations. “
Wind has never been needed in my charging situation but when the sun goes down if the grid is down for some reason I guess I could pull power from the trifuel 15,000 watt generator that backs up my panels. That puts out 50 amps at 240V it would fill that model 3 in three hours from 50% to 100%
It’s irrelevant since during the day it was filled in the first few hours of daylight on its designated charging day it only needs to be charged once a week from 50% to 100%. I take it to my fav sports bar 15 miles away or on a far trip to east Dallas that’s 45 miles away for an evening out in the trendy part or DFW. Either way it comes home to the stable of vehicles in the steel building. There is two 50 amp plugs in there it will be back at 80% in a few hours while I sleep. It’s cheaper to buy off peak power for it and sell every kWh turning the peak of the day vs using the panels to directly charge it. That doesn’t mean it can’t be charged by the panels it works out economically in my favor to not do that. Natural gas is cheap enough by the CCF that even running the generator would be cheaper than buying gasoline on a cost per mile basis but the extra wear on the generator would be not worth it only in grid down situations when it’s running anyways. There is a 250 gal propane tank on property I rent it for a back up fuel source should both the gas and electric grids go down like they nearly did in Feb 21. It’s only a few hundred extra a year to upgrade to a 500 gal tank but it just sits there the only thing I ever use it for is crawfish boils where you need high PSI propane for 200,000btu jet burners vs natural gas in the outdoor kitchen stove, grill and griddle.
I have looked at a ten kw wind turbine on a 30 meter monopole cable stayed tower why because wwhen it’s windy it tends to be cloudy so wind complements the panels well. It’s really.windy at night in the North Texas plains near Oklahoma and during the winter the wind howls at night all that energy is just begging to be captured.
First, your option costs thousands of dollars for a 15KW generator. Then there’s the fuel used to run it for 3 hours. Most generators can’t use natural gas directly but rely on propane, which means storage tanks like you mentioned. While you have access to a 250 gallon storage tank, some people living in condos or HOA communities don’t have such access. Same for sticking a 10KW wind turbine on a 30’ pole.
Finally, for most who do buy EVs, all that it does is push the fossil fuel source one step further down the line. Instead of putting distillate fuel into your car’s tank, you plug into a grid (that consumes energy itself to deliver the voltage) that goes back to a power plant that is often driven by some form of distillate fuel, natural gas, or coal. Green energy is actually brown when you factor in direct (fuel consumption), indirect (distribution costs), and amortized (capital depreciation) costs.