Elon Musk announced the Tesla Semi months ago, now. Besides the low cost, one of the things people are most incredulous about are the Megacharger costs. Tesla announced just 7 cents per kWh, flat price, to charge at a Megacharger. And that’d be done with solar power, potentially even unhooked from the grid. How is this feasible?

First we must look at existing Tesla Superchargers. Superchargers are capable of up to 145kWh charge rates (internally). Some versions were made by simply ganging up multiple home charger units together to get the required power (like 12 individual 12kW units). The high power was produced by clustering mass-produced smaller units that also are provided with each car. Just a single connector goes to each car, however.

Superchargers use a very large amount of power. A bunch of supercharger stalls being used at once at a Supercharger location can draw Megawatts. Simply installing a megawatt connection to the electric grid is expensive. So Tesla has started installing Powerpacks (the larger versions of the Powerwall designed for utility and commercial installations… around 210kWh apiece… themselves composed of 16 individual battery packs similar to those used for the Model S/X/3 and each with a DC-DC converter, with a DC-AC inverter of between 50 and 500kW of output, depending on configuration). This allows Tesla to add additional supercharging stalls to existing supercharger locations without upgrading the utility connection, and for new locations allows them to avoid utility peak charges which could actually end up being larger than the actual energy usage charges. As a side benefit, it also means that Superchargers have backup power in case of power outages: https://electrek.co/2017/10/30/tesla-supercharger-stays-online-in-power-outage-powerpack-system/

…and in principle, Tesla could also optimize when the Powerpacks are charged to minimize time-of-day charges. That gives Tesla access to sub-7-cents-per-kWh electricity prices already. Industrial electricity prices are around 5 to 8 cents per kWh on average in the US (exception is Northeast, with about 9-12 cents per kWh), with off-peak electricity being about 2 or 4 cents per kWh less.

So Tesla probably ALREADY pays less than 7 cents per kWh for electricity on average. But they also have a significant amount of capital cost in the form of the chargers themselves and the batteries. The Batteries go for about $400/kWh retail, but Tesla’s internal price may be more like $150-250/kWh, especially without the inverter. That’s about 3 cents per kWh if they last for 20-25 years (which isn’t actually too unreasonable, given careful charging and discharging). 4 cents is more reasonable. But long-term, they hope to get cells below $100/kWh, and packs at, say, $120/kWh. (Raw material costs are about $35-45/kWh.) So <2 cents per kWh for the packs themselves is feasible, especially if they can get them to last a while. And ultimately, these packs can be assembled in an automated fashion, like their Model 3 packs. In fact, they could actually use the same battery line. (The biggest argument against automation is, like reuse, that it's not worth it at the volumes Tesla is considering, but if the same line is producing fairly standardized packs for multiple uses, that can dramatically improve the automation business case.)

But if you already are using battery packs for peak power reduction and maybe even time of day shifting, then the idea must occur to you: why not get rid of the utility entirely?

Solar cells are currently as low as 16 cents per Watt on the spot market (average 17.5 cents), without federal subsidies: http://pvinsights.com/. That means 16 cents of cells produces 16 cents of electricity (at 7 cents per kWh) in a SINGLE year in a place like the American Southwest that has a capacity factor of about 26% or better, paying back the cost of the cells. Modules are more, obviously, but still cheap at 27 cents per Watt. If Tesla can automate installation, they may be able to install them and string them together for less than 40 or 50 cents per Watt. That doesn’t pay for a connection to the grid or the inverter. Because Tesla doesn’t need those. In fact, the batteries already contain a DC-DC converter. Careful selection of voltages could allow a nearly direct connection of the solar panels to the batteries, perhaps with a small and cheap “power optimizer” (i.e. DC-DC converter) to improve solar array efficiency. These things only cost a few cents per Watt at utility scale, so let’s call it an even 50 cents per Watt. But Tesla can avoid the grid connection at both the solar array side AND the Supercharger side. And can avoid the cost of the inverters and the inefficiencies/losses from converting to and from AC. That previous 210kWh Powerpack thus has more like 225kWh. And over 25 years, therefore, a solar array that costs just 50 cents per Watt to install means electricity at less than 1 cent per kWh (0.9 cents) in a place with 26 percent capacity factor. However, there are sometimes cloudy days, where solar arrays will be less effective. To counter-act that, we make the solar array about twice the size. Cost per kWh doesn’t quite double, however, as not all the balance-of-system costs double. So let’s say 1.5 cents per kWh. Batteries also need to be about double, so cost of the battery is about 4 cents per kWh total, maybe less. But total cost of electricity is thus just 5.5 cents per kWh, leaving room financing costs. Doable if financing can be kept at low costs (and the solar arrays can actually last a LOT longer, like 50-100 years… and by doubling up the batteries as we did, they can also last a lot longer). And remember, solar costs will continue to decrease, long-term (tariffs notwithstanding). 3 cents per kWh raw solar+battery costs and 5.5 cents per kWh assuming roughly doubly up number of both li-ion and photovoltaic cells.

So that’s how Tesla can offer 7 cents per kWh for the Tesla semi while disconnecting from the grid and using solar power.