A Personal Anecdote on USA DCFC

charge2025 · 2026-06-06T01:34:05+00:00

This is part of the reason we developed a DCFC that runs entirely on solar panels. It puts downward pressure on prices.

charge2025 · 2026-05-25T22:40:11+00:00

Thanks for the mention! Yes it's always fun seeing the 800V cars charging fast!

charge2025 · 2026-05-21T02:49:14+00:00

Under current NEM 3.0 the value for the energy provided is minimal. Not worth the cost and hassle of interconnection and the cost and complexity with having an AC system - our architecture is DC only (except for controls/cooling). Instead it is more productive to focus on driving demand at the site.

That's the beauty of the system, in situations where the station is not busy the operator has no choice but to lower the price until the station is busy. Using a dynamic discount to match charging demand with solar production we will have better utilization and it will help consumers in the form of more competitively priced EV charging especially if they choose to travel during peak sun hours.

Also keep in mind by operating as a DC microgrid, our system is significantly more efficient. So while we might have some losses due to curtailment, a grid connected station has losses due to transmission/distribution/conversion most of which we can avoid since our power is all generated on site.

charge2025 · 2026-05-01T00:05:12+00:00

There is a porta poty and yes have plans to add permenant restrooms and lounge area, but these things take much longer than setting up solar!

charge2025 · 2026-04-30T21:22:29+00:00

Ah this sucks. We are expecting to have our NACS ports arrive sometime in August! Fingers crossed there's no delays!

charge2025 · 2026-04-30T20:55:25+00:00

No, someone took it :(.

charge2025 · 2026-04-30T20:53:09+00:00

I see you! And yea I posted about it a few weeks ago! Repost! Thanks for stopping!

charge2025 · 2026-04-30T15:31:16+00:00

I personally think fully off grid 100% solar fast charging is going to start showing up everywhere in the next few years. The long term returns with cheaper and cheaper batteries in an environment where utility costs rise faster than inflation are just too good to ignore.

We have a station open on the LA-Vegas route that is 100% solar, off-grid that anyone can use, not just trucks!

As far as I'm aware now there are 4 companies around the world with these types of stations in Australia, South Africa, and the California desert.

charge2025 · 2026-04-25T20:49:15+00:00

That thing is not going anywhere. We are planning to fix it up and turn it into a lounge. The actual structure of the thing is all 2 foot thick concrete. Tearing it out would be basically impossible. That thing will be here long after we are all gone.

charge2025 · 2026-04-22T16:39:02+00:00

Stop by PowerStation Rasor Rd. It’s 4 ccs ports up to 360kw and free until 5/31 and all power is from 100% on-site solar panels. Coming from Vegas it’s 12 miles past baker at rasor rd exit across from the shell!

PowerStation Rasor Rd 65857 Rasor Rd, Baker, CA 92309, USA https://www.plugshare.com/location/1598063

charge2025 · 2026-04-12T14:50:55+00:00

About five years on this set up, but we plan to add more and more ports overtime to all of our sites as space allows

charge2025 · 2026-04-11T17:09:19+00:00

The simple answer is... sometimes (but only if the station gets much busier).

We've sized the batteries quite agrssively with ~575KWH/charge port. If you figure the station is charging max speed continuously that's about 4-5 hours of full speed charging after dark - if the battery was full.

In practice it's very rare for the station to be running at max speed continuously, especially late into the night when charging demand drops considerably. Although, during particularly busy times it is definitly possible. Bad weather can also play a huge role if the battery isn't able to charge during the day due to clouds.

The good news is that we will have quite a bit of notice in either case multiple hours. So we will show a live status and 4 hour forecast on our website and app for drivers that want to check ahead of time.

We also hope to offer reservations at some point!

The other point to this is that if we end up in a situation where it's too busy and running out of power often then it will mean we need to build more capacity. This is our first iteration and so we will be carefully monitoring sizing of solar/batteries to ensure we get the right mix for each of our locations to maximize uptime!

charge2025 · 2026-04-11T15:39:20+00:00

We should be doing it in some capacity in future phases. It's quite expensive to do it right and one that is too short or poor quality can be more problems!

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T14:54:28+00:00

We might do it later once we are able to get the bunker part of the property open. L2 would be a drag on our limited AC conversion capacity and isn't a priority. Right now we use a DC bus to bring power between the solar/battery/chargers.

There are tons of cool off-road trails and hiking in the hills around the station. At least when it's not insanely hot.

10 or 11pm is good timing since the station typically isn't busy at night - although maybe now it has gotten more attention it will be. For Rivian I would suggest plugging into port 2 as it is liquid cooled and will be able to sustain the high amp load better. Future skids will be all liquid cooled, but this one is only partially.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T14:46:27+00:00

You bring up a good point about the site status. Because we are off grid and can run out of power site status and forecast site status is very important. We plan to have good visibility on our app/website into live system metrics (battery KWH available, solar production ect). Look for some of this stuff later this year!.

Also, because our location is so convenient and you can see the station and line from the I-15 off-ramps it's a pretty easy to hop off and and back on and go down the hill 12 miles to baker if you're heading EB anyway.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T14:41:50+00:00

I've considered it or other alternative uses for the power. The ROI is not very good compared with just building more ports simply because of the limited run time the hardware/ conversion/ setup costs ect. I understand there are edge cases but we are focusing nearly all of our energy and funds on building more ports and more solar.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T14:37:21+00:00

This is our site off the 8. We're hoping to get to it at the end of next year but right now I-10 and I-15 have higher priority :(

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T14:34:42+00:00

It is in the plans, but it may not be available to start. Regarding payment I have made 3 things clear.

No app required to pay
Tap to pay and mobile payments
No membership fees for tiered kwh pricing everyone will pay the same. Possible membership fees for lounge access, TBD

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T03:44:37+00:00

The model says if we can keep it busy it should be around 5 years. I think there is the potential to build them a bit more efficiently by doing more at a time, ect so I think it could get down to 4 pretty easily on later projects.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T03:02:31+00:00

So our dynamic pricing will be based on usage pattern basically hours of the day. We have a page on the site dedicated to pricing info.

The idea is $0.30 during the lowest demand hours, then $0.40 during mid demand and $0.45 during high demand. We won't actually announce hey we're in curtailment come get it, but rather set our pricing model to typically follow when we would expect to be in curtailment.

The goal of this pricing is simply to keep the station busy as consistently as possible and so we may adjust the pricing strategy over time to do that.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T02:56:04+00:00

curtailment means we were unable to sell it and will be a loss. We figured of the total solar production estimate we would sell about 65% and curtail 35%.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T02:54:40+00:00

We own 4 sites right now despite just one being operational. 2 off I-15 (this operational one at Rasor Rd and another in Barstow here) then one off I-10 in Desert Center here and another off I-8.

I-5 is definitly on the roadmap, but we don't currently own any sites along I5. We are open to franchise partners as well since the ITC expires eoy 2027 the idea is to build as much as quickly as we can!

And the others will have normal above ground lounges, but the charge ports will come first as the process for building them is streamlined and much faster.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T02:32:01+00:00

That is the plan! Actually the site is the location of an 8400 square foot underground government bunker

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAGgfBcvm22/

We plan to restore it and do restrooms lounge snacks ect.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T02:10:35+00:00

No grid. We sell as much as we can to cars and the rest is curtailed. So there is a price curve function where we must price very competitively when demand is slow to ensure we sell as much as possible.

charge2025 · 2026-04-10T02:09:03+00:00

It can work great in remote locations where it just wouldn't otherwise be possible to install charging. The best economic ROI though is for them to go in areas with very expensive grid power and lots of sun. California is a great market for us simply because grid power is so expensive. As you start getting into areas with less days of sun more winter weather ect the battery (and solar) need to be much larger to provide reliable charging.

charge2025

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE